GENERALIZATION AND MAINTENANCE OF COMPLEX SKILLS BY SEVERELY HANDICAPPED ADOLESCENTS FOLLOWING PICTURE PROMPT TRAINING

Three severely handicapped adolescents were trained, using a picture prompt package, to complete three complex vocational or daily living tasks. Results indicated that all students required many training sessions to learn the first training task. Following initial training, however, all students generalized their use of the pictures across settings without additional training. The students also needed substantially reduced amounts of training on the remaining two tasks. During maintenance, two of the students continued to perform at relatively high levels of accuracy with and without the picture prompts, whereas one student continued to need the pictures.     

Increasing designated driving with a program of prompts and incentives

Designated driving (DD) is a potentially viable but underutilized component of efforts to reduce driving while intoxicated. A reversal design was used to evaluate the effects of prompts and incentives in a bar on the frequency of DD. The results showed an approximate doubling of the number of designated drivers during the two intervention periods.     

TEACHING DAILY LIVING SKILLS TO CHILDREN WITH AUTISM IN UNSUPERVISED SETTINGS THROUGH PICTORIAL SELF-MANAGEMENT

We investigated the efficacy of pictorial self-management to teach daily living skills to 3 low-functioning children with autism. Stimulus and response generalization, stimulus control of self-management materials, and maintenance of behavior change were also assessed. Results showed that children with autism could successfully use pictures to manage their behavior in the absence of a treatment provider, generalize their behavior across settings and tasks, and maintain behaviors at follow-up. In addition, when compared to baseline, all children showed a substantial decrease in stereotypic behaviors. When picture order was manipulated in stimulus control probes, the children followed the new picture sequence, suggesting that the pictures were controlling their behavior. Further, a savings effect was demonstrated, in that 2 subjects reached criterion on second and third behaviors within less than 25% of original training time.     

INCREASING ENGAGEMENT IN DAILY ACTIVITIES BY OLDER ADULTS WITH DEMENTIA

This study analyzed the effects of nursing assistants' use of prompts and praise to increase the engagement of older adults with dementia in daily living activities. The multiple baseline design across morning and afternoon work shifts showed consistent increases in engagement by each of the 5 residents during the intervention. These results suggest that increasing prompts and praise by nursing assistants may, in turn, increase the rate of engagement of older adults with dementia.     

ERRORLESS LEARNING: REINFORCEMENT CONTINGENCIES AND STIMULUS CONTROL TRANSFER IN DELAYED PROMPTING

Delayed prompting can produce errorless discrimination learning. There is inherent in the procedure a disparity in reinforcement density which favors unprompted over prompted responses. We used three schedules of reinforcement to investigate the impact of reinforcement probability on transfer of stimulus control. One schedule of reinforcement was equal prior to and following a prompt (CRF/CRF), the second favored unprompted responses (CRF/FR3), and the third favored responses following the prompt (FR3/CRF). Experimental questions concerned the probability of errors, the probability of transfer, and the rate of transfer in the context of delayed prompting. Transfer was accelerated when reinforcement probability favored anticipatory responding. The schedule that favored prompted responses did not prevent a shift to unprompted responding. Errors were infrequent across procedures. Reinforcement probability contributes to but does not entirely determine transfer of stimulus control from a delayed prompt.     

Effects of a checklist on self-assessment of blood glucose level by a memory-impaired woman with diabetes mellitus

This study evaluated effects of a checklist on the accuracy of self-assessment of blood glucose level by a diabetic woman with memory impairments caused by viral encephalitis. The checklist consisted of 54 steps for operating an electronic glucometer, which the subject performed in sequence and checked off when completed. Following introduction of the checklist, the percentage of steps completed correctly increased in simulated and actual blood glucose tests and yielded clinically useful information.     

学习条件和样例相似性对类别学习元认知监控的影响

采用“学习-迁移”范式 ,探讨了学习条件和样例相似性对类别学习元认知监控的影响。实验选取虚构动物材料,采用2（学习条件：规则、无规则）×3（样例相似性：低、中、高）×2（匹配类型：正向匹配、反向匹配）混合实验设计,结果显示,在规则条件下,高样例相似性组正向匹配新项目的分类正确率显著高于反向匹配新项目的分类正确率;在无规则条件下,样例相似性越高,正向匹配新项目的分类准确率越高,所有项目的信心值也越高。这表明,规则和样例相似性是类别学习元认知判断的线索;在同一任务中,分类会涉及基于规则和基于相似性两个过程。     

“多”反而少：元认知推断视角下支付渠道数量对个体捐赠的影响

支付渠道通常是捐赠信息中的必要元素。研究基于元认知推断理论, 探讨了支付渠道数量因素(多个vs.单一)对个体捐赠的作用机制。通过6个实验和1个单文章元分析, 结果发现：相比单一支付渠道, 多个支付渠道反而会抑制个体捐赠的金额和意愿, 感知商业化和道德怀疑连续中介以上效应。关键原因在于, 多支付渠道在商业化背景下的频繁应用会使得人们持有“多支付渠道=商业化”的朴素信念。基于此, 个体会对多个(vs.单一)支付渠道的捐赠信息产生感知商业化的元认知推断, 进而怀疑捐赠对象的道德性, 最后弱化捐赠意愿与行为。此外, 朴素信念的可诊断性具有调节作用。具体而言, 当“多支付渠道=商业化”朴素信念的可诊断性低时, 个体将无法产生感知商业化的元认知推断过程, 从而弱化多个(vs.单一)支付渠道对个体捐赠的负面作用。     

Underlying mechanisms of initial feelings of knowing in children

Past research has pointed to two contrasting mechanisms behind feeling‐of‐knowing judgments (FOKs). The trace‐based account proposes a direct internal monitor that detects the presence or non‐presence of a target item. The inferential account dictates that judgments are actually based on cues external to the memory trace, such as familiarity; FOKs could therefore be based on sometimes misleading information. Thus, while a direct mechanism will lead to good learning strategies (i.e. successful searches), an inferential process could potentially lead to less optimal strategies (i.e. search for unknown target information). The question posed in this research was: What processes underlie the judgments children make prior to fully retrieving a target item? We used a simplified version of Reder and Ritter's (1992 ) game show paradigm to investigate the accuracy (and mechanism) of children's initial FOKs. The experiment found that initial FOKs were largely driven by familiarity of the cues. These data have important implications for strategies children utilize in educational settings.     

Embedding an identity-matching task within a prompting hierarchy to facilitate acquisition of conditional discriminations in children with autism

Least-to-most prompting hierarchies (e.g., progressing from verbal to modeled to physical prompts until the target response occurs) may be ineffective when the prompts do not cue the individual to attend to the relevant stimulus dimensions. In such cases, emission of the target response persistently requires one or more of the higher level prompts, a condition called prompt dependence (Clark & Green, 2004). Reinforcement of differential observing responses (DORs) has sometimes been used to ensure that participants attend to the relevant stimulus dimensions in matching-to-sample (MTS) tasks (e.g., Dube & McIlvane, 1999). For 2 participants with autism, we embedded an identity-matching task within a prompting hierarchy as a DOR to increase the likelihood that the participants attended to and discriminated the relevant features of the comparison stimuli in an MTS task. This procedure was compared with a traditional least-to-most prompting hierarchy and a no-reinforcement control condition in a multielement design. Results for both participants indicated that mastery-level acquisition of spoken-word-to-picture relations occurred only under the identity-matching condition. Findings are discussed relative to the use of DORs to facilitate acquisition of conditional discriminations in persons with autism or other conditions who do not attend to the comparison stimuli.