More than 400 children with a physical and/or mental challenge visit the Curacao Dolphin Therapy and Research Center (CDTC) for dolphin-assisted therapy every year. Dolphin therapy appears to be the right approach for many children. With the help of these special and very social animals, it is easier to make contact with the children. It motivates…

A major concern of this report was to compare the effect of three verbal reinforcement combinations (VRCs) on the rate at which children learn a simultaneous two-choice discrimination problem. The experiments were designed to test the following: (1) whether relative effectiveness of the VRCs was dependent upon task complexity or subject age; (2)…

This book contains a compilation of papers presented at the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends (InPACT) 2018, organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.). Modern psychology offers a large range of scientific fields where it can be applied. The goal of understanding individuals and…

A case is made for using hypnosis as a teaching technique. (CK)

The results of a group of studies, the objective of which was to clarify the conditions that account for the effectiveness of verbal approbation, are reported. Among the most significant findings were: (1) that the reinforcement properties of verbal approval are susceptible to distortion, misinterpretation or enhancement and must be applied in a…

Eleven institutionalized psychotic children 4- to 13-years-old received 13 weeks of traffic safety training using operant conditioning. (CL)

Although experimental analysis methodologies have been useful for identifying the function of a wide variety of target behaviors (e.g., Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, & Richman, 1982/1994), only recently have such procedures been applied to verbal operants (Lerman et al., 2005). In the current study, we conducted a systematic replication of the…

Few studies have made use of B. F. Skinner's (1957) behavioral analysis of language and precise taxonomy of verbal behavior when describing the controlling variables for the mand relation. Consequently, the motivating operation (MO) has not typically been identified as an independent variable and the nature of a spontaneous mand has been…

One control group and eight experimental groups, each composed of 12 first grade children, participated in this experiment. It was designed to investigate the effects of frequency of reinforcement and repeated evaluation of stimuli on the conditioning of preferences. Each child participated in the experiment for seven consecutive school days. The…

Operant conditioning techniques were used to teach a visually impaired deaf girl (six years old) to emit eye contact within a classroom for deaf-blind children. (Author/CL)

Innovative models for education are often quickly adopted. Behavior modification, or operant conditioning, is an example of a technique which has been widely used because, when properly applied in the classroom, it "works." However, the application of a technique should be carefully thought through in terms of the meaning of the behavior in…

Four groups of moderately retarded 7- to 13-year-old children (N =4 in each group) were trained to respond to a triangle with apex up (S+) and not to a triangle with apex down (S-), with and without errors. (Author)

Forty-five youngsters rehearsed one of three types of mediating response, involving different types of sentences. Analyses revealed that different training significantly influenced duration and intensity settings, with the "competence" group generally superior to the "stimulus" and "neutral" verbalization groups. (Author)