Multiple-exemplar

For most children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), manding for information is an important skill that must be systematically taught. Although previous studies have evaluated interventions for teaching other mands for information, to date no studies have demonstrated effective procedures for teaching the mand "why?" The purpose of the present study was to teach 3 children with ASD to mand "why?" under relevant establishing operation conditions in 3 distinct scenarios. A trial-unique multiple-exemplar procedure was used to promote generalization and increase the value of information provided across trials...

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an adaptive, computer-based staff training software program called Train-to-Code (TTC) to teach the administration of a social skills intervention. The software program actively trained participants to identify whether video models illustrated each step of the procedure effectively or ineffectively. Multiple exemplars of each step of the social skills task analysis were represented. Most-to-least prompting as well as feedback and error correction were embedded into the software program and prompts were faded through seven levels as the participant reached criterion accuracy...

Recent studies have shown that extinction training including the conditional stimulus (CS+) and stimuli similar to the CS + enhances extinction retention and generalisation to novel stimuli. The aim of the present study was to confirm that these effects are specific to presenting stimuli similar to the CS+ during extinction and not merely an effect of additional trials or additional stimuli unrelated to the CS+. In an experiment conducted in a single session on the same day, participants (134 adults; 70.7% female; 17-40 years of age, M = 20...

We taught three children with autism how to respond to abduction lures presented by strangers. We then tested undesirable generalization of the safety response to matched instructions to leave by a familiar adult. Following training, all three participants engaged in the safety response across both strangers and familiar adults. Thus, we evaluated a set of procedures for establishing discriminated responding. Appropriate responding to instructions to leave by strangers versus familiar adults was achieved only after discrimination training...

Behavioral research has demonstrated that children with autism spectrum disorder can be taught to recognize the false beliefs of others using video modeling (e.g., Charlop-Christy & Daneshvar Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 5 (1), 12-21, 2003; LeBlanc et al. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 36 (2), 253-257, 2003). The current study extended such research by teaching three children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities to respond appropriately to false-belief tasks using behavioral intervention strategies conducted in the natural environment with people in their enviornment...

We conducted an empirical examination of derived relational responding as a generalized operant and concurrently evaluated the validity and efficacy of program items contained in the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge - Equivalence (PEAK-E) curriculum. A first study utilized a multiple-baseline across-skills experimental arrangement to determine the efficacy of equivalence-based instruction guided by PEAK-E, replicated across 11 children with autism. A total of 33 individualized skills were taught, and the subsequent emergence of untrained relations was tested throughout the investigation...

Various forms of humor are an important aspect of social interactions, even at an early age. Humor comprehension is a repertoire that is said to emerge between the ages of 7 and 11 years, and this is primarily attributed to a child's level of cognitive development. The behavioral literature has suggested that various forms of complex verbal behavior, including the use and comprehension of humor, are learned operants that can be taught using systematic teaching procedures. The current study used multiple exemplar training and a three-step error correction procedure to teach comprehension of double-meaning jokes to 4 children (2 females and 2 males) aged between 5 and 6...

Bidirectional naming is an important ability which enables children to acquire listener and speaker behaviors through exposure to relevant word-object associations. Many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or developmental delays do not demonstrate this ability and require systematic instruction. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of computer-assisted multiple exemplar instruction to facilitate bidirectional naming. Three 5-year-old Chinese boys with ASD participated in a multiple probe across three participants design...

Electrophysiological studies on adults suggest that humans are efficient at detecting threat from facial information and tend to grant these signals a priority in access to attention, awareness, and action. The developmental origins of this bias are poorly understood, partly because few studies have examined the emergence of a generalized neural and behavioral response to distinct categories of threat in early childhood. We used event-related potential (ERP) and eye-tracking measures to examine children's early visual responses and overt attentional biases towards multiple exemplars of angry and fearful vs...

The salamander genus Salamandra is widespread across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East and is renowned for its conspicuous and polymorphic colouration and diversity of reproductive modes. The phylogenetic relationships within the genus, and especially among the highly polymorphic species S. salamandra, have been very challenging to elucidate, leaving its real evolutionary history and classification at species and subspecies levels a topic of debate and contention. However, the distribution of diversity and species delimitation within the genus are critically important for identifying evolutionarily significant units for conservation and management, especially in light of threats posed by the pathogenic chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans that is causing massive declines of S...

Sidman et al.'s (1982) failure to find evidence for symmetry (bidirectional associations between stimuli) in monkeys and baboons set the stage for decades of work on emergent relations in nonhumans. They attributed the failure to the use of procedures that did not (1) promote stimulus control based on the relation between the sample and correct comparison and (2) reduce control by irrelevant stimulus features. Previous reviews of symmetry in nonhumans indicated that multiple exemplar training and successive matching might encourage appropriate stimulus control...

Bidirectional naming (BiN) is the integration of speaker and listener responses, reinforced by social consequences. Unfortunately, these consequences often do not function as reinforcers for behavior in children with autism. Accordingly, the repertoire of BiN is also often limited in these children. Previous research has suggested that so-called multiple-exemplar instruction, a rotation between different speaker and listener operants, may be necessary to establish BiN. The present experiment aimed to investigate whether sequential operant instruction might also work as a successful intervention to improve BiN skills after the establishment of standard social reinforcers...

The irregularities of the world ensure that each interaction we have with a concept is unique. In order to generalize across these unique encounters to form a high-level representation of a concept, we must draw on similarities between exemplars to form new conceptual knowledge that is maintained over a long time. Two neural similarity measures - pattern robustness and encoding-retrieval similarity - are particularly important for predicting memory outcomes. In this study, we used fMRI to measure activity patterns while people encoded and retrieved novel pairings between unfamiliar (Dutch) words and visually presented animal species...

Class inclusion (CI) requires responding to an item simultaneously as a member of both a class and a more inclusive class that contains that class. This study extends previous research by Ming et al. (2018) who trained CI responding in typically developing children and individuals with autism using a Relational Frame Theory (RFT) approach according to which CI involves responding in accordance with relations of containment and comparison. In Ming et al., participants experienced multiple exemplar training in which class containment relations were represented by placing pictures (of subclasses of animals) within nested transparent boxes...

All components of behavioral skills training may not be necessary to effectively train staff to implement behavior-analytic technologies with children with disabilities. This study evaluated manualized instruction to train inexperienced staff to implement a token economy with a confederate and collect data on learner responding. A nonconcurrent multiple-baseline design across staff trainees was used to evaluate the effectiveness of manualized instruction to increase the staff trainees' accurate implementation of a token economy...

People diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may need specific teaching to learn mands for information. Unfortunately, little research has been published on methods for teaching the mand "When?" to this population. The purpose of the current study was to replicate and extend previous research by teaching 3 children diagnosed with ASD to mand "When?" by teaching multiple topographies of the mand, measuring mand variability, assessing social validity, interspersing a previously acquired mand for information, using multiple-exemplar training, employing a different experimental preparation, and including participants with different skill sets...

According to traditional linguistic accounts language, and its generative nature, cannot be taught. From a behavior analytic perspective, language is like any other behavior; it is learned and amenable to change. Based upon Skinner's radical behavioral analysis of verbal behavior, specific procedures have been designed to promote novel verbal relations. However, despite the strength and utility of this approach, using behavioral principles to understand the generativity of language has been challenging. Dependent upon the specific theory (e...

PURPOSE: To verify the effect of the multiple exemplar instruction at the acquisition and integration of listening and speaking behaviors, with substantives and substantive-adjective combinations, in children with Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder (ANSD) and cochlear implant (CI). METHODS: Participants were two children with ANSD that were users of CI. We adopted dictated stimulus and pictures that corresponded to words (substantive) and substantive-adjective syntactic units...

We compared children's gains in oral reading fluency after applying a standard fluency-building intervention to three training passages that differed in word overlap (high, low, and multiple exemplar) with an untrained generalization passage. Participants were 132 White and Hispanic third-grade children from two schools in the northeast and mountain west. Children were randomly assigned within classrooms to the three word overlap conditions, pre-tested on their assigned training and a common generalization passage, received a fluency-building intervention on their assigned training passage, and then post-tested on the same two passages...

Match (MTS) and non-match-to-sample (NMTS) procedures are used to assess concepts of identity and oddity across species and are measured by transfer performance to novel stimuli. The number of exemplars used in training (set size) has been shown to affect learning with evidence of larger set sizes promoting concept learning in several species. The present study explored the effects of set size and procedure on concept learning in rats using olfactory stimuli. Concept learning was assessed for 20 rats via transfer tests consisting of novel stimuli after rats were initially trained to either MTS or NMTS with two or ten stimuli as exemplars...