We evaluated the effects of a discrimination training procedure for establishing praise as a reinforcer for three children with autism spectrum disorder. After establishing two praise words as discriminative stimuli and two nonsense words as S-deltas, we evaluated whether the stimuli then functioned as reinforcers by presenting each stimulus as a…

A portion of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty acquiring conditional discrimination. However, previous researchers suggested that the discrimination of nonverbal auditory stimuli may be acquired more efficiently (Eikeseth & Hayward, 2009; Uwer, et al., 2002). For example, a child may learn to touch a…

This study investigated the potential for recreational gamblers to respond as if certain types of losing slot machine outcomes were actually closer to a win than others (termed the "near-miss effect"). Exposure to conditional discrimination training and testing disrupted this effect for 10 of the 16 participants. These 10 participants demonstrated…

One 9-year-old child was taught conditional discriminations between dictated names in Spanish and their corresponding pictures across three stimulus sets while her 10-year-old brother observed. Posttests revealed the emergence of symmetry relations in the form of oral naming skills by both children. (Contains 2 figures.)