The use of behavioral skills training (BST) to educate 3 adolescent boys on the risks of lighters and fire setting was evaluated using in situ assessment in a school setting. Two participants had a history of fire setting. After training, all participants adhered to established rules: (a) avoid a deactivated lighter, (b) leave the training area,…

The delivery of food contingent on 10 s of consecutive toy engagement resulted in a decrease in engagement and a corresponding increase in other responses that had been previously reinforced with food. Similar effects were not observed when tokens exchangeable for the same food were delivered, suggesting that engagement was disrupted by the…

We taught 2 children with visual impairments to select a coin from an array using tactile cues after hearing its name and then to select a coin after hearing its value. Following the acquisition of these listener (receptive language) skills, we then observed the emergence of speaker (expressive language) skills without direct instruction.…

Five individuals with autism or other developmental disabilities participated in paired-stimulus preference assessments during repeated baseline probes. All subjects initially showed a pronounced bias by typically selecting the stimulus placed in either the left or right position. Biased responding for 3 subjects was eliminated when training…

In recent years, researchers and practitioners in the behavioral sciences have profited from a growing literature on delay discounting. The purpose of this article is to provide readers with a brief tutorial on how to use Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and Excel for Mac 2011 to analyze discounting data to yield parameters for both the hyperbolic…

This paper provides an overview and task analysis for creating a continuous ABC data- collection application using Xcode on a Mac computer. Behavior analysts can program an ABC data collection system, complete with a customized list of target clients, antecedents, behaviors, and consequences to be recorded, and have the data automatically sent to…

We used giant African pouched rats ("Cricetomys gambianus") as land mine-detection animals in Mozambique because they have an excellent sense of smell, weigh too little to activate mines, and are native to sub-Saharan Africa, and therefore are resistant to local parasites and diseases. In 2009 the rats searched 93,400 m[superscript 2] of land,…

Recent research has demonstrated the effectiveness of programmed instruction that integrates derived relations to teach college-level academic material. This method has been demonstrated to be effective and economical in the teaching of complex mathematics and biology concepts. Although this approach may have potential applications with other…

Previous research on the acquisition of verbal behavior in children with developmental disabilities has focused on teaching four primary verbal operants: (1) "mand"; (2) "tact"; (3) "echoic"; and (4) "intraverbal". In Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior, he stated that each verbal operant is maintained by unique antecedent and consequence…

We describe a procedure for differentiating among potential precursor responses for use in a functional analysis. Conditional probability analysis of descriptive assessment data identified three potential precursors. Results from the indirect assessment corresponded with those obtained from the descriptive assessment. The top-ranked response…

Examination of responding under various schedule arrangements is a core component of many analyses of operant behavior. Much of the pioneering work in applied behavior analysis was bred from laboratory research involving the exposure of nonhuman subjects to a variety of schedule arrangements. Hodos (1961) described a schedule arrangement in which…

Variable reinforcement schedules are used to arrange the availability of reinforcement following varying response ratios or intervals of time. Random reinforcement schedules are subtypes of variable reinforcement schedules that can be used to arrange the availability of reinforcement at a constant probability across number of responses or time.…

The present paper provides a task analysis for creating a computerized data system using a Pocket PC and Microsoft Visual Basic. With Visual Basic software and any handheld device running the Windows MOBLE operating system, this task analysis will allow behavior analysts to program and customize their own functional analysis data-collection…

Fjellstedt and Sulzer-Azaroff (1973) used differential reinforcement of short latencies to decrease a child's latency to comply with instructions. We replicated this contingency with a young man diagnosed with Asperger syndrome across two tasks (question answering and math problem solving). We added a differential reinforcement contingency to…

Using a multiple probe design across responses, we demonstrated the effectiveness of intensive intervention in establishing spontaneous verbal responses to 2 3-year-old children with autism with generalization to novel settings involving novel persons. Intervention involved discrete-trial instruction (i.e., repeated instructional opportunities…