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Full-Text Articles in Experimental Analysis of Behavior

Refining Noncontingent Reinforcement Treatments Using Behavioral Momentum Theory, Valdeep Saini May 2016

Refining Noncontingent Reinforcement Treatments Using Behavioral Momentum Theory, Valdeep Saini

Theses & Dissertations

One of the most effective and commonly prescribed treatments for children with autism and/or an intellectual disability who engage in severe destructive behavior is called noncontingent reinforcement (NCR). During NCR, the consequence that previously reinforced destructive behavior is delivered on a time-based schedule, independent of destructive behavior, and the contingency between destructive behavior and its reinforcer is discontinued (operant extinction; EXT). Conceptual and quantitative derivations of behavioral momentum theory (BMT) suggest that certain aspects of NCR may inadvertently promote persistence of destructive behavior, thereby prolonging the treatment process. Guided by Shahan and Sweeney’s (2011) model of resurgence based on BMT, …


Reinstatement Of Second-Order Fear, Matthew Nelson May 2016

Reinstatement Of Second-Order Fear, Matthew Nelson

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine if, after conditioning and extinction of a second-order stimulus, reinstatement of extinguished fear could be produced. The findings of Holmes et al. (2014) do not support reinstatement of second-order fear following post-extinction presentation of the unconditioned stimulus (US). The present study provides a second attempt at uncovering reinstatement following extinction of second-order conditioning. Rat subjects were randomly assigned to 5 groups (n=12), which received first- and second-order conditioning with Light and Tone counterbalanced. Responding to the second-order stimulus (S2) was extinguished through S2-alone presentations for all but the control subjects (Group NE-NR). …


Transitioning Children With Autism From A Discrete Trial Classroom To A Group Classroom, Alexandra Ennis Apr 2016

Transitioning Children With Autism From A Discrete Trial Classroom To A Group Classroom, Alexandra Ennis

Honors Theses

The goal of this project was to prepare children diagnosed with autism for the transition to group learning environments by teaching them to sit in their chair and attend while the teacher is at least five feet away. This is a skill that will help kids succeed when they make the transition from an early intervention program to a group learner environment because it allows the teacher to focus more on learning important skills. A proximity procedure was put in place for two children that focused on gradually increasing the distance between the tutor and the student with use of …


Sensor-Enabled Reduction Of Stereotypy, Aaron Brzezinski Apr 2016

Sensor-Enabled Reduction Of Stereotypy, Aaron Brzezinski

Honors Theses

The goal of this study was to create and implement an intervention to reduce stereotypic behavior in a child with Autism. The participant was chosen based on a high occurrence of target behavior and was recruited through his treatment center. The target behaviors were selected based on the subjective evaluation of his treatment provider and parents. The dependent variable in this study was hand-flapping. The independent variable was DRO training that included a buzzer and a chime noise contingent on the presence or absence of stereotypy respectively. A Microsoft Kinect© 2.0 was used to track occurrence of target behavior and …


Increasing Vocalizations In Children With Autism, Nicholette Christodoulou Apr 2016

Increasing Vocalizations In Children With Autism, Nicholette Christodoulou

Honors Theses

This study focuses on increasing vocalizations for students with Autism spectrum disorder. A three-part intervention was used to attempt to establish an echoic repertoire in students who had little to no vocalizations. Both students attended an early intervention classroom with a special education school. Students were selected from their classroom if they showed little to no vocalization or echoic skills. The goal during the first phase was to collect all sounds being made by the student to increase the overall number of vocalizations being made. This was done by continuous reinforcement using edible reinforcers. In phase two, the student’s dominant …


The Effect Of The Long Anchor Duration On Performance In The Temporal Bisection Procedure, Sho Araiba Feb 2016

The Effect Of The Long Anchor Duration On Performance In The Temporal Bisection Procedure, Sho Araiba

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study investigated the determinants of the location of the bisection point (BP) in the temporal bisection procedure. Interest in the study of temporal perception emerged from the finding of the scalar property such as Weber’s law for time and the ratio rule in behavior under Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning. One method to investigate temporal perception in both non-human animals and humans is the temporal bisection procedure. The primary dependent variable of this procedure is the BP, which has been taken as the subjective midpoint between two durations. The ratio similarity rule (Gibbon, 1981) hypothesizes that the location of …


The Effect Of Neighborhood Size And Morphology In The Chinese Language, Long Nguyen Jan 2016

The Effect Of Neighborhood Size And Morphology In The Chinese Language, Long Nguyen

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The Neighborhood Size Effect (NSE), characterized as the effect in word determination based on changing one orthographic aspect of that word. The amount of words that can be created through such manipulation is called a neighborhood size (NS). Number of other factors such as frequency, how often a word appears and morphology, the combination of meaningful word units, have been suggested to have an overriding effect on NSE. In addition, there is a lack of research on NSE with non-alphabetical languages such as Chinese, which uses characters comprising of a multitude of semantic or phonetic markers. In this experiment, participants …


An Analysis Of Stakeholders Communication In Collaborative Software Development Projects, Wei Zhang Jan 2016

An Analysis Of Stakeholders Communication In Collaborative Software Development Projects, Wei Zhang

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Software development is a multidisciplinary collaboration involving many stakeholders. However, existing software development processes exhibit many issues related to that collaboration. Because prior research on stakeholder analysis and teamwork revealed the importance of communication, this study analyzed stakeholder communication with reference to team activities as a social and cognitive process. The study’s goal was to understand the collaboration process during software development and to delineate factors that influence this process. We focused on communication between the software developers and their clients during the requirements gathering phase, the team process, and the inter-team and interdisciplinary collaboration, in particular between software engineers …