Applied Behavioral Analysis Master's Theses

Describing naturally occurring schedules: analysis of feedback functions for shooting during basketball games

Nicholas Vanselow — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:24:24 PDT

A number of recent studies have applied the matching law in analyzing behavior occurring in the context of sports including two- and three-point shot allocation by basketball players. This research contributes to our understanding of matching in that it suggests that the matching law may describe responding in naturally occurring human environments. However, because there is no experimental manipulation, the schedule in effect is unknown and it is unclear if obtained matching is a behavioral phenomenon (i.e., behavior conforming to relative reinforcement rates) or merely a relation between responding and reinforcement forced by ratio-like properties of the schedule. In the...

Descriptive assessment of problem behavior in transitions between activities

Berglind Sveinbjörnsdóttir — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:47:39 PDT

Transitions between activities are reported to be difficult for children with autism. In this study, descriptive data from 6 children with autism were analyzed to determine which of the following six conditions were associated with the most frequent occurrence of problem behavior: non-preferred activities, preferred activities, transitions from non-preferred to other non-preferred activities, transitions from non-preferred to preferred activities, transitions from preferred to other preferred activities, and transitions from preferred to non-preferred activities. A preference assessment was later conducted which verified that the activities were in fact high- and low-preferred. Results of the descriptive assessment indicated that for all but...

The effects of simultaneous presentation and fading on consumption of non-preferred foods

Julie A. Johnston — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 05:31:23 PDT

This study evaluated the effects that simultaneous presentation of preferred and non-preferred food had on consumption of non-preferred foods. The study simultaneously presented a 5-year-old boy diagnosed with autism, preferred and non-preferred foods in a changing criterion design. The non-preferred food was systematically increased and the preferred food then faded out. The results indicate that simultaneous presentation and fading were effective methods for increasing consumption of two non-preferred foods.

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Conditioning a novel token as a generalized conditioned reinforcer

Benjamin M. Dawes — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 05:27:50 PDT

Unconditioned, novel black tokens were systematically conditioned to conditioned, currently utilized tokens in 5 phases for two participants. The unconditioned token resulted in an increased latency from presentation of token to task engagement when first presented. On all subsequent sessions the latency remained at or below baseline levels. The total session time showed a downward trend for both participants, suggesting the unconditioned tokens attained reinforcing properties. A reinforcer assessment indicated that the black tokens served as reinforcers for a novel, untrained task.

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The impact of formatting skill acquisition procedures and treatment integrity

Kara E. Lamb — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 07:53:14 PDT

Treatment integrity is an essential component of staff training. In order to implement discrete trail training procedures, treatment integrity must be monitored and taken into consideration when evaluating student's performance. This study examined levels of treatment integrity using three therapists in a home-based setting. There is a lack of literature surrounding formatting of skill acquisition protocols. In the field of Applied Behavior Analysis, there is no specific format used to write skill acquisition procedures for staff members to correctly implement discrete trial training. Using a multiple baseline across participants design, a discrete trial checklist was used to determine levels of...

Establishing eight-member classes with class-specific reinforcers

Elizabeth S. Morrison — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 04:42:10 PDT

In this systematic replication of Meleshkevich (2007), a typically-developing adult was taught two separate, non-overlapping sets of conditional discrimination baselines (AC, BC; and DF, EF) with common class-specific reinforcers (e.g., A1-C1-Reinforcer1 [R1], A2-C2-R2...; D1-F1-R1, D2-F2-R2...) in PowerPoint® using a match-to-sample format. Performances on unreinforced tests for emergent relations between stimuli from the separate baselines met criterion (at least 16/18 correct), indicating that the separately established equivalence classes had merged to include all conditional and discriminative stimuli associated with particular reinforcers (e.g., A1, B1, D1, F1; A2, B2, D2, F2). Further tests indicated that the class-specific reinforcers (e.g., R1 and R2),...

Effects of varied discriminative stimuli during discrete trial training

Ying-chun Shen — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:59:31 PDT

The responses of three participants with Autism to different speech stimuli in discrete trial training were examined. A multielement design demonstrated acquisition trends in three speech conditions (auditory, visual and audiovisual condition). The results showed that three participants respond inconsistently. One participant presented best performance in the auditory condition; the second participants showed similar performance in the auditory and audiovisual condition. The third participant made fewer errors in the audiovisual condition compared with the other two conditions. These results suggest that evaluation of the response to different aspects of the speech stimuli may be important when developing discrete trial teaching...

A descriptive assessment of peer attention and problem behavior in students diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder

Elizabeth S. Spring — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:06:06 PDT

Peer attention has been cited as a maintaining variable for problem behavior in several studies (e.g., Jones, Drew, and Weber, 2000). However, there is little information on how often and under what conditions peers deliver attention. The purpose of the current study is to evaluate the relative probabilities of different forms of peer attention and problem behavior in a middle school classroom for students diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Observers recorded the occurrence of problem behavior, as well as forms of attention provided by peers. Results indicate that peer attention was more likely to occur following problem behavior than...

The effect of differential reinforcement and response cost on vocal stereotypy

Lauren K. Palmer — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 08:00:51 PDT

Previous research implies that vocal stereotypy is often reinforced automatically and is not sensitive to social consequences. Researchers have had success in suppressing vocal stereotypy through comprehensive treatment packages. The current study examined the repetitive and perseverative vocalizations of a 14 year-old boy with autism. First, an analog functional analysis was conducted to determine the function of the vocal stereotypy. Then a naturalistic functional analysis was conducted to confirm these results. It was determined that the student's stereotypic behavior was automatically reinforced, and possibly multiply maintained with social reinforcement. Following these assessments, a differential reinforcement procedure was implemented in a...

Assessing the role of stimulus cues in promoting discriminated responding in abbreviated functional analysis

Monica L. Frisbee — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 07:00:03 PDT

There is limited empirical research evaluating the extent to which stimulus cues may promote discriminated responding in an abbreviated functional analysis (FA). Past studies including Kahng and Iwata (1999) along with Conners and Iwata, (2000) have evaluated the efficacy of conducting brief functional analysis in an outpatient settings, and participants with severe problem behavior where safety becomes a concern. Of the studies completed thus far in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, studies concluded that brief assessments (single exposure or shorter duration session length) could be useful with some participants. In the current study, we included some the limitations mentioned...

Increasing task engagement in an individual with autism

Jessica Paredes — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 07:46:04 PDT

A systematic replication of previous research by Leif et el (2008) evaluated the effects of prompts and DRA components on appropriate independent task engagement in a participant that engaged in high rates of noncompliance. Results extend previous findings that the use of prompts and DRA schedules increase appropriate engagement. Additionally, current study was able to pair DRA schedule with a timer which aided in increasing amount of time participant independently engaged with task.

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The effects of behavioral momentum on social skills

Kristen Storey — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 08:59:29 PDT

The effects of a high-probability request sequence on compliance with social requests was examined. The participant was a 14 year-old boy diagnosed with autism who frequently avoided social interaction. Assessments of hypothesized low and high-probability requests were conducted and resulted in four requests being included as the high-probability requests and three requests were included as the target low-probability responses. A multiple baseline across responses design was used. Compliance was at or near zero levels during baseline and increased for all three responses when the intervention was applied. Responding remained variable so an intervention plus reinforcement condition was added making reinforcers...

The effects of "restricted interests" on caregiver presentation of items

Corey Scot Stocco — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 08:50:39 PDT

Restricted and repetitive behavior (RRB) is more pervasive, prevalent, frequent, and severe in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), relative to their typical peers. One subtype of RRB is restricted interests in items or activities, which is evident in the manner in which individuals engage with items (e.g., repetitious wheel spinning), the types of items or activities they select (e.g., preoccupation with a phone book), or the range of items or activities they select (i.e., narrow range of items). Restricted interests may limit sources of stimulation, and interruption of engagement with restricted interests may evoke problem behavior (Charlop-Christy & Haymes,...

An evaluation of pre-teaching assessment of response prompting

Ashton Elizabeth Nalley — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:30:10 PDT

Individuals with developmental disabilities, such as autism, often require prompts to acquire certain skills. Several teaching methods have been developed however few direct comparisons of these methods have been conducted to date. Once new skills are acquired, stimulus control must be transferred from the prompt to a naturally occurring stimulus with prompt fading. Evidence suggests that some procedures are more effective than others for particular individuals and, therefore, assessment of the effectiveness of various teaching methods for specific learners is warranted. The current research involved the evaluation of a pre-teaching assessment for determining a combination of the most effective prompting...

Delayed consequence delivery in applied settings: examining unsignaled feedback delay in visual-visual matching tasks

Casey Moore — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:24:39 PDT

A reinforcer is a stimulus presented closely following a response which results in a future increase in frequency of that response. In an ideal applied setting, a stimulus should be presented immediately. But, it may not always be possible to present stimuli immediately in the applied setting. The current study compares the effects of consequence delivery delivered immediately to consequences delayed by five seconds. Three typically developing males, ages 25-30 participated in visual-visual matching tasks using arbitrary stimuli. Half of the stimuli were always presented with immediate consequences, while the other half was only followed by delayed consequences. Participants quickly...

The establishment of stimulus-stimulus relations without differential reinforcement

Barbra Mills — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:16:26 PDT

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether stimulus-stimulus relations (AB) could be established without differential reinforcement and to assess these relations for symmetry. Two typically developed individuals, ages 7 and 26 participated in this study. Participants were first presented with a series of matching to sample tasks using familiar stimuli, and accurate performance on these tasks was maintained without any differential consequences. Target stimulus-stimulus associations involving three pairs of visual arbitrary symbols were then introduced through sequences of matching to sample trials in which two random stimuli served as incorrect comparison (S-) in every trial. During this phase,...

Multiple schedule assessment of competing items: effect on motivating operations

Cassie Herman Lynn — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:12:30 PST

Rapp (2007), suggested that, when treating automatically-reinforced behavior using competing stimuli, whether a stimulus is matched or unmatched is a predictor of whether an AO (for matched stimuli) or EO (for unmatched stimuli) effect will be obtained following response competition. Two young males, with an autism spectrum disorder, who engaged in high levels of stereotypic behavior maintained by automatically reinforcement participated. The effects of competing stimuli on levels of stereotypy were assessed using a three-component multiple schedule (i.e., BL - access to stimuli - BL). During the assessment, the competing item was either a matched or unmatched stimulus identified using...

An evaluation of prompting and fading procedures in teaching socially significant skills to a student with autism

Alixandra Raymond — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:08:59 PST

This study compared three methods of prompting and three methods of fading procedures in teaching one student with autism to successfully build plastic building block constructs, fold pants, and fold a shirt. Three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 compared verbal, model, and manual guidance prompts to determine the prompt with which the participant acquired the behavioral chain most rapidly. Experiment 2 used these prompt type results to compare most-to-least, least-to-most, and time delay fading procedures to determine with which method the participant acquired the chain most rapidly. Experiment 3 used the most and least effective prompt type and fading procedure...

A comparison of differential reinforcement of other behavior and response interruption and redirection on vocal stereotypy

Molly Marie Gilbride — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:57:57 PST

Vocal stereotypy is a common problem behavior among persons with autism spectrum disorder and can prove to be a fairly difficult behavior to treat. One of the main reasons that this behavior is often challenging is that it is usually maintained by the sensory consequences that it produces. Response interruption and redirection and differential reinforcement of other behavior are two treatments which have been shown to be effective in reducing stereotypy. RIRD is often a staff intensive procedure which can be difficult to implement and may not always be done with 100% procedural integrity. While DRO is an easier procedure...

Increasing the reinforcing efficacy of low-preference teachers and caretakers for individuals diagnosed with developmental disabilities

Dewey DeLisle — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:55:25 PST

Although research has been conducted on methods to increase the reinforcing efficacy of low-preference items such as edibles and leisure items, little research has been conducted on methods to increase the reinforcing efficacy of low-preference personnel. We first identified high-preference (HP) and low-preference (LP) personnel for two participants with developmental disabilities through a paired-stimulus preference assessment. A progressive-ratio (PR) assessment on HP and LP personnel was then conducted to determine relative reinforcing values. Through use of descriptive assessment, we then identified social interaction styles of the HP personnel and taught the LP personnel to behave similarly during the PR assessments...