Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often emit errors during the establishment of conditional discriminations. These children may not respond to more traditional error-correction procedures, such as least-to-most prompting. In this study, we compared two other types of error-correction procedures, namely embedding an identity-matching…

Extinction and recovery of the discriminative stimulus effects of nicotine (0.3 mg/kg) was investigated with a devalued food reinforcer (rats sated). Sixteen rats were trained in a counterbalanced one manipulandum (nose-poke) drug discrimination procedure with the roles of nicotine and saline counterbalanced as S[superscript D] and S[superscript…

Although intelligence has traditionally been identified as "the ability to learn" (Peterson, 1925), this relationship has been questioned in simple operant learning tasks (Spielberger, 1962). Nevertheless, recent pieces of research have demonstrated a strong and significant correlation between associative learning measures and intelligence…

One of the most robust and reliable learning phenomena documented in the animal learning literature is the enhancement of discriminative performance by differential outcomes. To date, very few studies have focused on this effect in humans. The results obtained in these studies support the potential use of the differential outcomes procedure in…

The results of three experiments involving 6 young children suggest that the generalized imitation effect may not be entirely due to the child's inability to discriminate reinforced fron nonreinforced occasions. Instructional and social variables may strongly influence the generalized imitation effect. (WY)

Investigates third- and fourth-grade children's verbal evaluations of syllables paired with different reward schedules (full, partial, or none) for "pleasantness" and "curiosity." (Author/ED)

Investigates the effect of delay of reinforcement upon human discrimination learning with particular emphasis on the form of the gradient within the first few seconds of delay. In previous studies subjects are usually required to make an instrumental response to a stimulus, this is followed by the delay interval, and finally, the reinforcement…

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)…

As a result of findings of a previous study, this study, which sought to program preschool subjects to wait one minute for reinforcement, used pause-building procedures before delay conditions were started. The children, 3- to 5-year-olds, were designated either Baseline (control) subjects (n=3) or Programmed (experimental) subjects (n=5). Though…

Four male and five female Negro children (ranging in age from 5 to 9 years) served in an experimental comparison of the discriminative control exerted by sex and race aspects of other children. A baseline was established in which color photoslides of a Negro girl and a Caucasian boy differentially controlled responding on two push buttons.…

In this study, 48 third-grade children learned a successive, two-choice discrimination under one of three conditions: (1) immediate reinforcement (IM), (2) 10-second empty delay (ED), and (3) 10-second delay with the discriminative stimuli in view of S (FD). The performances of groups IM and FD were only marginally different, and were both…

Three studies, using handicapped children, investigated: effects of three different reinforcement contingencies (positive reinforcement, removal of positive reinforcement, and combination of positive reinforcement and removal of positive reinforcement) on a steady-state discrimination task; effect of a conditioned emotional response procedure on a…

The stimulus summation hypothesis predicts that the response strength of individual stimuli, when placed in combination, algebraically summate to produce a greater response strength than that of individual stimuli. (Author)

This paper develops a stimulus selection theory, based on an extensive review of previous research, which gives weight to context change or stimulus generalization decrement. The theory assumes no special compounding or configurational process, and accounts for the learning of successive discriminations without the addition of any special process.…