Teaching complex verbal operants to children with autism and establishing generalization using the peak curriculum

The present study evaluated the feasibility of the PEAK Relational Training System's Generalization Module (Dixon, 2014b) to teach and establish generalization of autoclitic mands, distorted tacts, and creative path finding in three children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Using a multiple‐baseline design across behaviors, each participant was provided with differential reinforcement and a least‐to‐most prompting hierarchy for correct responses to a subset of stimuli, and responses to other similar stimulus sets were probed for emergent generalization. Following training, each participant successfully acquired the directly trained behaviors and demonstrated generalization to the nonreinforced test exemplars. These data support the utility of Skinner's (1957) analysis to teach complex forms of verbal operants, and suggest that a manualized curriculum such as PEAK may have utility for promoting skill development and generalization for front line staff and caregivers of children with autism.     

Not all automatic associations are created equal: How implicit normative evaluations are distinct from implicit attitudes and uniquely predict meaningful behavior

We propose a new construct (implicit normative evaluations) that purports to measure automatic associations about societal evaluations. We develop a new measure of this construct based on a modification of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and describe how it is related to but not redundant with implicit attitudes and explicit normative evaluations. Study 1 provided evidence that implicit normative evaluations and implicit attitudes uniquely predicted evaluations measured by the traditional IAT. Study 2 demonstrated that Asian-Canadian immigrants' implicit normative evaluations toward older people became more negative the longer they were in Canada. Study 3 found that engineering students' (both men and women) implicit normative evaluations toward female engineers became more negative as they were exposed to engineering and that for women these negative normative evaluations predicted their intention to drop out of engineering. Study 4 demonstrated that implicit normative evaluations predicted the speed at which participants decide to “shoot” an African Canadian target on a shooter bias task (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002). Finally, in Study 5, an experimental manipulation of an audience's reaction to racist jokes targeting people from the Middle East affected implicit normative evaluations about this group and that these implicit normative evaluations in turn affected discrimination. The implications of these results for the importance of social influence and culture in shaping thoughts and behavior are discussed.     

The Origins of Wittgenstein's Imaginary Scenarios: Something Old, Something New

The imaginary scenarios that appear in nearly every work of the later Wittgenstein – ones involving laughing cattle, disembodied eyes that see, and the like – are decidedly absent from the Tractatus. What necessitated this change in methodology? A comparison of the Tractatus with the Philosophical Remarks, Wittgenstein's first major work after his return to philosophy, reveals that these devices are the product of something old and something new. The rationale for these devices is already present in the notion of a “propositional variable,” but Wittgenstein had little use for them until he rejected the phenomenological language and laconic style of the Tractatus.