A parent advice package for family shopping trips: development and evaluation

THIS ARTICLE REPORTS ON THE PRIMARY STEPS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARENT ADVICE FOR POPULAR DISSEMINATION: (a) developing advice for one specific problem situation, family shopping trips; (b) testing the advice program for benefit to children and convenience to adults; and (c) packaging the advice so it can be used successfully by interested parents. Systematic observation of 12 families using the written advice package on shopping trips revealed its effectiveness in reducing child disruptions and increasing positive interactions between parents and children. These findings, along with interview information from families, showed that the package is usable, effective, and popular with both parents and children, and thus is ready for dissemination to a wide audience of parents-a step that in itself should involve research and evaluation.     

Using equivalence-based instruction to teach piano skills to children

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of equivalence-based instruction (EBI) on learning to play individual notes and simple songs on the piano. Participants were 4 typically developing children and 4 children with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They were exposed to a series of auditory–visual matching-to-sample procedures using musical stimuli. Following training, participants were tested on the emergence of novel untrained relations and generalization in the form of playing two songs on a keyboard. Results suggest that the EBI was effective in teaching piano playing skills with both typically developing children and children with ASD. The success of this procedure is indicative of the wide-ranging applications of EBI to novel and creative domains.     

Intentional Teaching Facilitates Young Children's Comprehension and Use of a Symbolic Object

Children are exposed to symbolic objects that they have to learn to use very early in life. The authors’ aim was to examine whether it is possible to intentionally teach young children the symbolic function of an object. They employed a search task in which children had to use a map to find a toy. Experiment 1 revealed that with no instruction 3-year-, 10-month-old children were quite successful; 3-year-, 6-month-olds showed a divided performance; and 3-year-, 0-month-olds failed. With this baseline, Experiment 2 compared the performance of 3-year-, 0-month-olds in three different conditions: no-instruction, complete instruction (before the task begins), and teaching (complete instruction plus corrective feedback); only children in the teaching condition succeeded. However, children 6 months younger, 2-year-, 6-month-olds, failed despite teaching that was provided (Study 3). This research shows that at some points in development instruction is not enough; intentional teaching in communicative contexts is the mechanism that boosts symbolic understanding in early childhood.     

Personalized System Of Instruction In Cyberspace

Four different undergraduate psychology courses with no allotted classroom time slots were taught in the same term by means of a computer-based version of Keller's personalized system of instruction (PSI), called computer-aided personalized system of instruction (CAPSI). Students' performance and ratings indicate that CAPSI is a viable on-line educational method.     

学前数学教法和儿童智能发展的追踪研究

本研究从儿童心理发展的特点和数学学习之间的内在规律出发,综合考查了各类教学法在学前施教的利弊;同时,在活动教法、指导操作法、演示法和讲授法之间做了对比实验,并设计了一整套以指导操作法为主的学前数学教法,以演示为主的数学教法之间进行了长期、深人的跟踪对比实验。结果表明,在其他变量基本被控制的条件下,指导操作法优于其他的教法;实验班儿童的智能发展,特别是数学能力的发展,明显好于对照班的儿童。这个优势一直持续到小学毕业。     

ASSESSING AND TRAINING TEACHERS IN THE GENERAUZED USE OF BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION WITH AUTISTIC CHILDREN1

This study investigated the feasibility of developing reliable, valid criteria for measuring and training the skills necessary to teach autistic children. The behaviors of 11 teachers and 12 autistic children were recorded in a series of different teaching situations. Teacher-training was initiated at different times for different teachers. The results showed: (1) it was possible to assess empirically whether a teacher was correctly using defined behavior-modification techniques; (2) generally, for any given session, systematic improvement in the child's behavior did not occur unless the teacher working in that session had been trained to use the techniques to a high criterion; (3) all 11 teachers were rapidly trained to use these techniques; and (4) the teachers learned generalized skills effective with a variety of children and target behaviors.     

Increasing the efficiency of instruction for a person with severe disabilities: The applicability of Fitts' law in predicting response time

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the applicability of Fitts' law in predicting the response duration of instruction-specific head movements for a person with severe multiple disabilities. Fitts' law is a motoric algorithm that calculates an index of difficulty (ID) for responses in relation to the variables of stimulus width and stimulus amplitude. Four functional tasks from the learner's current continuing education plans were targeted: photocopying, using a paint well, model painting, and communication symbol sequencing. For each of the four tasks, two sets of indices were calculated by (1) holding constant stimulus width while varying amplitude, and (2) holding constant stimulus amplitude while varying width. Results showed that response duration varied as a function of ID variation.     

Teaching a chained task with a simultaneous prompting procedure

Simultaneous prompting, a type of antecedent prompt and test procedure, was used to teach the chained task of making juice from a frozen concentrate using a pictorial recipe to four elementary-aged students with moderate intellectual disabilities. Using a multiple probe design, all students acquired the task and maintained the behavior with at least 85% accuracy up to 60 days after training was terminated. In addition, students generalized the skill across settings and materials. The students' ability to expressively identify the words shown on the recipe cards was tested prior to and after training. Although not directly trained, three of the four students increased their ability to read the words.     

Sentence comprehension and production in children with cochlear implants: Errorless procedures and equivalence-based instruction

Research supports equivalence-based instruction (EBI) and matrix training for increased listening and speaking skills in children with cochlear implants (CI). We incorporated errorless procedures to optimize the EBI and evaluated the effects on the auditory comprehension and verbal responding at-sentences level in six CI children who were readers and showed inaccurate tacting. Subject-verb-object sentences were arranged in two matrices; diagonal combinations were trained and evaluated non-diagonal combinations. EBI included stimulus fading and exclusion to directly teach the dictated sentence-picture matching; written-sentences construction upon dictation also was taught. Probes assessed the derived stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response relations. All participants learned the auditory-visual discriminations and the exclusion resulted in fewer errors than on a stimulus fading procedure. Five participants formed equivalence classes and increased verbal responding to equivalent stimuli, especially pictures tacting. They also showed recombinative generalization for both matrices. Professionals can incorporate errorless procedures to EBI for improving sentence comprehension, tacting, and productivity in CI children.     

The importance of multiple exemplar instruction in the establishment of novel verbal behavior

According to traditional linguistic accounts language, and its generative nature, cannot be taught. From a behavior analytic perspective, language is like any other behavior; it is learned and amenable to change. Based upon Skinner's radical behavioral analysis of verbal behavior, specific procedures have been designed to promote novel verbal relations. However, despite the strength and utility of this approach, using behavioral principles to understand the generativity of language has been challenging. Dependent upon the specific theory (e.g., stimulus equivalence, relational frame theory, bidirectional naming) within the radical behavioral orientation, researchers arrange unique procedures to evaluate the variables responsible for this phenomenon. This paper presents the commonalities and differences of two procedures (i.e., multiple exemplar training, multiple exemplar instruction) with examples of research highlighting the use of both in producing generativity. Further, it describes how multiple exemplar instruction is independent from other procedures leading to this outcome, and concludes by providing recommendations for both research and practice.