Advisor(s)

D. Daniel Gould

Contributor(s)

Karen E. Gould, Pamela M. Olsen

Date of Award

2011

Date Accepted

8-2011

Degree Grantor

Northeastern University

Degree Level

M.S.

Degree Name

Master of Applied Behavior Analysis

Department or Academic Unit

Bouvé College of Health Sciences. Department of Counseling and Applied Educational Psychology.

Keywords

psychology, behavioral, conditioned reinforcement, pairing, SD, social consequences, social praise

Subject Categories

Praise, Reinforcement (Psychology), Developmental disabilities - Psychological aspects

Disciplines

Child Psychology | Developmental Psychology

Abstract

Social praise is generally considered to be a conditioned reinforcer. However, many children with developmental disabilities do not respond to social stimuli as a typically developing child would. The present study replicated the procedures of Gibson (2009) to establish 2 social consequences, back pats and verbal praise, as conditioned reinforcers for a 3-year-old boy with autism. Both a stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure and an SD procedure were evaluated. In the stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure, the delivery of the social stimulus was immediately followed by the delivery of the primary reinforcer. In the SD procedure, the social stimulus was established as a discriminative stimulus for the primary reinforcer. The results indicated that neither the stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure nor the SD procedure effectively conditioned the social stimuli as reinforcers.

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Rights Holder

Erin D. Olsen


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