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An Attempt To Establish Approval As A Learned Reinforcer, Kelly T. Kohler
An Attempt To Establish Approval As A Learned Reinforcer, Kelly T. Kohler
Dissertations
Approval does not function as a powerful reinforcer for many children with autism, making it difficult to reinforce appropriate behavior in a functional and consistent manner. The current study first assessed the effects of establishing approval (“Nice,” accompanied by a smile and nod) and nonsense words as discriminative stimuli, with the intent that they might also become learned reinforcers. We conducted several experiments to assess the effectiveness of approval as a reinforcer, including tests on learning new responses (receptive, expressive, freeoperant, and simple simultaneous discriminations) and tests on the performance of previously mastered responses (receptive and expressive responses). Despite the …
A Comparison Of Two Variations Of A Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing Procedure On Novel And Infrequent Vocalizations Of Children With Autism, Andrew J. Bulla
A Comparison Of Two Variations Of A Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing Procedure On Novel And Infrequent Vocalizations Of Children With Autism, Andrew J. Bulla
Masters Theses
Despite the growth in a behavioral technology for the treatment of autism, a small population of individuals with autism fails to develop functional language. One procedure used for inducing vocalizations in non-verbal children is a stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) procedure. In an SSP procedure a vocalization is paired with a reinforcer over a period of time to establish the vocalization as a learned reinforcer, and any utterance of the target vocalization is believed to be automatically reinforced thus increasing the frequency of the vocalization. Past research has yielded mixed results with the SSP procedure, and more research is warranted to identify …