BUILDING RESPONSE CLASSES: A COMPARISON OF TWO PROCEDURES FOR TEACHING GENERALIZED POURING TO LEARNERS WITH SEVERE DISABILITIES

Five individuals with profound mental retardation received instruction on liquid pouring. The effects of two training strategies on performance with nontrained pitchers and receptacles were compared within a split multiple baseline design across subjects. One training approach followed general case instruction guidelines in which both difficult and easy teaching examples were selected that sampled the range of relevant stimulus and response variation. The second training approach approximated the early steps in an easy-to-hard sequencing strategy and involved using only a set of easy teaching examples that did not sample the full range of relevant stimulus and response variation required for successful pouring in natural settings. Results indicated that only after training with the full set of general case examples did the learners become competent with the nontrained generalization probe tasks. In addition, the set of easy examples resulted in learners performing topographically predictable errors with the generalization probe tasks.     

INCREASING GENERALIZED SOCIAL INTERACTIONS IN PSYCHOTIC AND MENTALLY RETARDED RESIDENTS THROUGH PEER-MEDIATED THERAPY

This study investigated whether withdrawn adults living in a residential center for psychotic and mentally handicapped persons could serve as peer therapists to increase the social interaction of other withdrawn residents. Two pairs of residents served as participants. Treatments were introduced and evaluated within a multiple baseline with reversal design. After baseline, the peer therapist was instructed to increase the social interactions of a target peer through engagement in social interactions. The results demonstrated that the peer therapist increased the social interactions of target peers. However, these increases did not generalize to other residents until the introduction of a multiple peer therapist condition. The percentage of time the peer therapists interacted with other nontarget residents also increased throughout the study. These results were maintained during a 4-month follow-up condition.     

A COMPARISON OF TWO APPROACHES FOR IDENTIFYING REINFORCERS FOR PERSONS WITH SEVERE AND PROFOUND DISABILITIES

The development of effective training programs for persons with profound mental retardation remains one of the greatest challenges for behavior analysts working in the field of developmental disabilities. One significant advancement for this population has been the reinforcer assessment procedure developed by Pace, Ivancic, Edwards, Iwata, and Page (1985), which involves repeatedly presenting a variety of stimuli to the client and then measuring approach behaviors to differentiate preferred from nonpreferred stimuli. One potential limitation of this procedure is that some clients consistently approach most or all of the stimuli on each presentation, making it difficult to differentiate among these stimuli. In this study, we used a concurrent operants paradigm to compare the Pace et al. (1985) procedure with a modified procedure wherein clients were presented with two stimuli simultaneously and were given access only to the first stimulus approached. The results revealed that this forced-choice stimulus preference assessment resulted in greater differentiation among stimuli and better predicted which stimuli would result in higher levels of responding when presented contingently in a concurrent operants paradigm.     

TRIADIC INSTRUCTION OF CHAINED FOOD PREPARATION RESPONSES: ACQUISITION AND OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING

This research examined whether constant time delay would be effective in teaching students with moderate mental retardation in triads to perform chained tasks and whether observational learning would occur. Three chained snack preparation tasks were identified, and each student was directly taught one task. The other 2 students observed the instruction. The instructed student told the observers to watch and to turn pages of a pictorial recipe book. The teacher provided frequent praise to the instructed student based on performance and to the observers for watching the instruction and turning pages. A multiple probe design across students and tasks was used to evaluate the instruction. The results indicated that each student learned the skill he or she was taught directly, and the observers learned nearly all of the steps of the chains they observed. The implications for classroom instruction and future research in observational learning are discussed.     

THE EFFECTS OF MODELLING ON THE CONTINGENT PRAISE OF MENTAL RETARDATION COUNSELLORS

A multiple-baseline design was used to evaluate the effects of a simple modelling procedure on the contingent praise of five counsellors while they conducted hygiene-training sessions in toothbrushing and hand-and-face washing with severely retarded children. After varying numbers of baseline sessions, each counsellor watched a model who conducted a series of toothbrushing sessions, in which he conspicuously praised correct toothbrushing responses and approximations to correct responses. No modelling occurred during hand-and-face washing sessions. As a result of several exposures to the model's performance, levels of response-contingent praise provided by four of the five counsellors during toothbrushing sessions increased sharply over baseline. The levels of counsellor praise showed parallel increases during hand-and-face washing sessions. A two-week followup showed that the levels of praise obtained through modelling were maintained in the model's absence.     

ESCAPE AS A FACTOR IN THE AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR OF TWO RETARDED CHILDREN

This study sought to identify some of the variables controlling the severely aggressive behavior of two retarded children. In Experiment 1, each child was presented with several demand and nondemand situations. Aggression was frequent in the demand situations and rare in the nondemand situations. When a stimulus correlated with the termination of demands was introduced, aggression fell to a near zero level. In Experiment 2, for one child, a variety of preferred reinforcers was introduced into the demand situation contingent on correct responding. Aggression abruptly decreased to a low level. Experiments 3 and 4 involved the second child. In Experiment 3, this child was permitted, in one condition, to leave the demand situation if he emitted a nonaggressive response. Aggression decreased to a low level. In Experiment 4, he was prevented, in one condition, from leaving the demand situation in spite of high levels of aggression. Aggression fell to a near zero level. In Experiments 3 and 4, he was permitted, in several conditions, to leave the demand situation following aggressive behavior. Aggression increased to a high level. The results suggested that: (1) aggression can sometimes function as an escape response; and (2) escape-motivated aggression can be controlled by: (a) introducing strongly preferred reinforcers to attenuate the aversiveness of the demand situation; (b) strengthening an alternative, nonaggressive escape response; or (c) using an escape-extinction procedure.     

Preference for free choice over forced choice in pigeons

Eight severely retarded young men learned color and line-tilt discrimination. After 95% accuracy was achieved for both dimensions, they were combined to form "conflict-compound" stimuli in which prior reinforcement history was reversed for one element of the compound and unchanged for the other. When responding to the compound was 95% accurate, control exerted by each element was measured. The unchanged element consistently exercised control in agreement with the reinforcement contingencies associated with the compound, regardless of whether it was color or line orientation. The reversed element, which had a conflicting prior history or reinforcement, most often exerted control associated wtih original training, or no control, suggesting that it had been "ignored" during the compound. Conflict compounds produced selective attention. When elements were combined to form "compatible-compound" stimuli, both exercised control in agreement with the compound in post-tests. Selective attention was not produced by compatible compounds.     

IMPROVING CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR IN MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN THROUGH CORRESPONDENCE TRAINING

Except for a few studies, most research investigating correspondence training procedures has been more analogue in nature. The purpose of the present set of studies was to examine whether a “say-do” correspondence training technique could be used with children in special education classes to improve classroom behavior. The specific behaviors targeted for change included: out-of-seat behavior (Experiment 1), sitting posture (Experiment 2), and on-task behavior (Experiment 3). The say-do procedure used in Experiment 1 resembled that of previous studies, whereas that in Experiment 2 was more elaborate in the specificity of verbal statements required from the children and the feedback given them. The training procedure in Experiment 3 used a format similar to the say-do approach, but stressed visual rather than verbal cuing because it was used with nonverbal children. All three studies used single-subject designs and examined maintenance and/or generalization questions. Experiments 2 and 3 also evaluated whether concomitant changes in performance on academic tasks occurred. The results of the three studies provide strong evidence that correspondence training can be effectively used with educationally handicapped children. Moreover, the successful modification of the “say-do” to a “show-do” procedure in Experiment 3 points out the flexibility of the correspondence training approach.     

THE VALIDATION OF PROCEDURES TO ASSESS PREVOCATIONAL TASK PREFERENCES IN RETARDED ADULTS

Three severely retarded young adults between the ages of 19 and 21 years participated in a prevocational training program, and worked regularly on six different tasks during the scheduled six-hour day. The study attempted to assess each subject's preferences for the six tasks: collating, stuffing, sorting, pulley assembly, flour-sifter assembly, and circuit-board stuffing. In Phase I, the procedure consisted of randomly pairing each task with all other tasks in a two-choice situation that required the subjects to select one task from each pair combination to work for a seven-minute period. The selection procedure consisted of presenting two representative task objects on a tray and requesting the subject to pick up one object and place it on the work table. The object selected represented the task worked for that period. The 15 possible pair combinations were presented randomly every two days for a period of 34 days to determine the preferences. During the validation phase (Phase II), each subject's least- and most-preferred tasks were paired separately with moderately-preferred tasks. As expected, these manipulations confirmed the baseline data, as choices for the moderately-preferred tasks decreased when consistently paired with the preferred tasks and increased when consistently paired with the least-preferred tasks.     

A PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF EMPIRICALLY DERIVED CONSEQUENCES FOR THE TREATMENT OF PICA

Individualized treatment packages were developed for 3 children with high-rate severe pica using a discrimination training paradigm and a behavioral assessment-based procedure known as empirically derived consequences. Children received empirically derived reinforcers for eating under appropriate stimulus conditions (i.e., eating food only from a plate and placemat that served as a discriminative stimulus) and empirically derived punishers for attempts to engage in pica. This treatment package resulted in marked reductions in pica and an increase in appropriate eating for all 3 children in a “baited” analogue condition. In addition, low rates of pica were maintained for 9 months for all 3 children. These results suggest that treatment effectiveness may be enhanced when behavioral assessment data are used to identify potent consequences.