Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have qualitative impairments in social interaction and often prefer food or tangible reinforcement to social reinforcement. Thus, therapists who work with children with ASD often use food or tangible items as reinforcers to increase appropriate behaviors or decrease problem behaviors. The goal of the…

The goal of this series of experiments was to develop an operant choice procedure to examine rapidly the punishing effects of intravenous drugs in rats. First, the cardiovascular effects of experimenter-administered intravenous histamine, a known aversive drug, were assessed to determine a biologically active dose range. Next, rats responded on…

The effects of rate of conditioned reinforcement on the resistance to change of operant behavior have not been examined. In addition, the effects of rate of conditioned reinforcement on the rate of observing have not been adequately examined. In two experiments, a multiple schedule of observing-response procedures was used to examine the effects…

A severely disabled and retarded 15-year-old girl was examined for: effect of music and approval as reinforcers for following a command; effect of a food-pairing procedure on an approval alone condition, an approval plus music condition, and an ignore condition; durability of newly conditioned reinforcers; and strength of the new reinforcers as…