Many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) display stimulus overselectivity, wherein a subset of relevant components in a compound stimulus controls responding, which impairs discrimination learning. The original experimental research on stimulus overselectivity in ASD was conducted several decades ago; however, interventions for…

Many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) display stimulus overselectivity, wherein a subset of relevant components in a compound stimulus controls responding, which impairs discrimination learning. The original experimental research on stimulus overselectivity in ASD was conducted several decades ago; however, interventions for…

This investigation evaluated the use of conditional discrimination (CD) instruction and multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) to establish derived relational responding in accordance with hierarchical frames with school aged children. The first experiment used a multiple probe design to evaluate the effectiveness of MEI to teach participants to…

Context renewal is identified when the conditioned response (CR) elicited by an extinguished conditioned stimulus (CS) reappears as a result of changing the contextual cues during the test. Two experiments were designed for testing contextual renewal in a conditioned taste aversion preparation. Experiment 1 assessed ABA and AAB context renewal,…

The purpose of this study was to analyze fear extinction and reinstatement in humans using fear-potentiated startle. Participants were fear conditioned using a simple discrimination procedure with colored lights as the conditioned stimuli (CSs) and an airblast to the throat as the unconditioned stimulus (US). Participants were extinguished 24 h…

Research was conducted on two selective attention systems in learning situations. The theoretical and experimental approaches are presented in a set of six papers. One paper considered directions in attention theory and five papers report experiments with pigeon and children subjects. The two attention systems are (1) coding response, which…

Given reflection symmetry, the moment generating function symmetry is necessary and sufficient for the random walk model to be equivalent to a sequential probability ratio test. For a related article, see TM 501 715. (Author/RC)

Research supported by University of Massachusetts Faculty Research Grant, National Institute of Mental Health grant MH-03803-06, and National Science Foundation grant GS-386.

Children and adults were trained and tested on formation of novel simple discriminations and conditional stimulus relations. Subjects who formed these sets were trained and tested on formation of stimulus equivalence classes. A modest majority of children matched directly paired stimuli; a few matched indirectly paired stimuli. All normal adults…

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)

STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH DISCRIMINATORY RESPONSES TO PAIRS OF STIMULI WITHOUT ERROR RESPONSES TO THE UNREINFORCED (S-) STIMULUS. THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY WAS TO DETERMINE THE EFFECTS OF 2 METHODS OF INTRODUCING S- (FADING AND CONSTANT) AND 2 RESPONSE CONTINGENCIES (DELAY AND NO DELAY) ON THE OCCURRENCE OF S- RESPONSES.…

Whether a stimulus compound is separable or integral has predictable consequences for several human information processing tasks. The purpose of these experiments was to explore the implications of this distinction for research in animal learning and the development of learning theory. (Author/RK)

The possible effects of acquiescence response style upon endorsement of items in the Vocational Development Inventory-Attitude Scale were investigated. It was concluded that responses to the VDI-Att are not significantly affected by acquiescence; rather, it was hypothesized that they can be conceptually related to discrimination learning…