Little research has been conducted on teaching children with autism spectrum disorders to be compliant with dental procedures. This study evaluated a behavioral package to train children with autism spectrum disorders to be compliant with an 8 component oral assessment. After a dental hygienist performed an assessment pretest, noncompliance on…

Forming new knowledge based on knowledge established through prior learning is a central feature of higher cognition that is captured in research on stimulus equivalence (SE). Numerous SE investigations show that reinforcing behavior under control of distinct sets of arbitrary conditional relations gives rise to stimulus control by new, "derived"…

Fifty participants were exposed to a simple discrimination-training procedure during which six S+ functions were established for six arbitrary stimuli, and S- functions were established for a further six stimuli. Following this training, each participant was exposed to one of five conditions. In the S+ condition, participants were exposed to a…