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An Exercise In Exceptions: Personhood, Divergency, And Ableism In The Star Trek Franchise, Jessica A. Blackman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1987, more than two decades after Star Trek: The Original Series aired on television for the first time, the Enterprise returned to delight audiences with an all-new crew in Star Trek: The Next Generation. With the new generation came new issues and adventures for the crew and the audience to explore, and the popularity of the show lead to the production of three successful spin-offs. These four new shows in the Star Trek franchise dealt with more complex plots and commentaries than the original series before them; three characters in particular – Lt. Commander Data, Dr. Julian Bashir, and …

Training And Assessment Of Toothbrushing Skills Among Children With Special Needs, Rachel A. Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The success of applied behavior analysis (ABA) interventions relies heavily on adherence to measures of social importance. One area identified by caregivers, educators, and researchers as having social importance is the area of daily living skills; particularly in populations of children with special needs. A number of studies employed the use of a task analysis to objectively measure toothbrushing, with various training procedures utilized. Behavioral Skills Training (BST) is an effective procedure used to train a variety of skills. Further, research indicates the addition of an in situ assessment promotes generalization of trained skills. The current study examined the use …

Spelling Errors In Children With Autism, Khalyn I. Wiggins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study was to examine the spelling errors of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) when asked to spell morphologically complex words. Specifically, this study sought to determine if percent accuracy across morphological areas would be similar to patterns noted in typical developing children, correlate with participant age, and correlate to performance on standardized measures of achievement. Additionally, the study wanted to highlight the types of errors made by children with ASD on homonyms and the specific linguistic patterns noted when spelling derivational and inflectional word types.

Participants included 29 children diagnosed with Autism, PDD-NOS, and Asperger’s …

An Assessment Of A Naturalistic In-Home Training Protocol To Establish Joint Attention Responding With Children Diagnosed With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Heather Burris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Children with autism have deficits in social interactions and verbal and nonverbal communication and engagement in rigid and repetitive activities and/or interests (ASA, 2008). A joint attention (JA) repertoire has been identified as a behavioral cusp for later social development and thus, JA deficits serve as an early indicator for diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (Vismara & Lyons, 2007; Whalen & Schbreibman, 2003). A JA repertoire consists of both responses to- and initiations for-bids for coordinated attention. Previous research has shown teaching strategies such as pivotal response and discrete trial training for joint attention skills to be effective (Vismara & …

Studying The Effects Of Motivation On The Emergence Of Untrained Verbal Operants, Alysia Gilliam

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior, the tact and mand are suggested to be functionally independent verbal operants. Many studies evaluating the verbal operants have provided results consistent with Skinner's notion of functional independence. For example, previous studies have yielded results showing that responses taught as tacts failed to emerge as mands unless they were directly trained as such. However, in many of the studies evaluating the functional independence of the verbal operants it is unclear whether the mand conditions were designed to actually evaluate that response function. The current study replicated and extended the findings of Wallace, Iwata, …

The Morphological Complexity Of Spelling, Ages 8 To 15 Years, Courtney R. Mossing

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Learning to spell requires integration of phonological, orthographic, and morphological knowledge. Historically, spelling development has been characterized by linear stages in which children learn to use these knowledge bases in succession. A more recent view challenges the linearity of this approach and proposes that spelling development from the beginning is characterized by the simultaneous interaction of all three linguistic factors. Minimal research exists that qualitatively investigates the integration of these three factors, especially as noted in derivational morphology. The study's purpose was to investigate spelling accuracy and qualitatively analyze the morphological error patterns of typically developing children, ages 8-15 years, …

The Effects Of Reinforcement Magnitude And Session Length On Stereotypical Behavior Of An Adolescent With Autism, Spiro Kotsios

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Functional Analysis is an important component of creating a treatment plan for individuals with autism. A concern of functional analysis is that it might not match the natural environment in which the problem behavior occurs. Dimensions such as varying reinforcement duration and session length may affect response rates during functional analyses in natural settings. This study investigated if varying reinforcement duration and session length during functional analyses would affect the identification of the function of problem behavior across assessors, and the intervention designed based on the functional analyses would be effective in reducing stereotypic behavior and teaching communicative skills of …

The Association Between The Measles, Mumps, And Rubella Vaccine And The Development Of Autism: A Meta-Analysis, Rashad Carlton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Autism is a childhood developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction, difficulty with verbal and nonverbal communication and limited activities. The root cause of autism is unknown. However it has been postulated that administration of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine may be causally related to the development of autism. MMR vaccination is a requirement for entry into schools, so any increase in adverse events associated with the vaccine carries widespread public health importance.

The primary objective of this study was to conduct a meta-analysis of the association between the MMR vaccination and the development of autism. The meta-analysis …