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Adults with autism spectrum disorder ( ASD ) and no intellectual disabilities were taught to increase the social play skills of children with ASD as part of a vocational training program. Participants included 3 adults, aged 21 to 27 years, and 6 children with ASD . Probes conducted throughout the study evaluated whether play skills training affected a measure of rapport between the adult and child. Results demonstrated the effectiveness of behavioral skills training for teaching the adult participants the appropriate play skills. In addition, the children's social engagement increased. Finally, rapport probes showed that play skills training increased levels of proximity, our measure of rapport, between the adults and children.

Human delay discounting is usually studied with experimental protocols that use symbols to express delay and amount. In order to further understand discounting, we evaluated whether the absence of numbers to represent reward amounts affects discount rate in general, and whether the magnitude effect is generalized to nonsymbolic situations in particular. In Experiment 1, human participants were exposed to a delay‐discounting task in which rewards were presented using dots to represent monetary rewards (nonsymbolic); under this condition the magnitude effect did not occur. Nevertheless, the magnitude effect was observed when equivalent reward amounts were presented using numbers (symbolic). Moreover, in estimation tasks, magnitude increments produced underestimation of large amounts. In Experiment 2, participants were exposed only to the nonsymbolic discounting task and were required to estimate reward amounts in each trial. Consistent with Experiment 1, the absence of numbers representing reward amounts produced similar discount rates of small and large rewards. These results suggest that value of nonsymbolic rewards is a nonlinear function of amount and that value attribution depends on perceived difference between the immediate and the delayed nonsymbolic rewards.

The current study extends the literature on the assessment and treatment of rumination through the evaluation of a combined reinforcement‐ and punishment‐based intervention. The study included a single participant with a history of rumination maintained by automatic reinforcement, as identified via a functional analysis. Both noncontingent reinforcement ( NCR ) with preferred edible items and punishment, in the form of a facial screen, were implemented separately to evaluate their independent effects on the occurrence of rumination. The final treatment package included both NCR and punishment procedures. Implementation of the combined treatment resulted in a 96.5% reduction in rumination relative to baseline. Procedural modifications and integrity errors also were evaluated.

We used discrete‐trial training to teach 3 children with autism to tact shapes of countries using 3 levels of reinforcement delay for correct responding: 0 s (immediate delivery), 6 s, and 12 s. Two of the 3 participants acquired the targets more quickly in the immediate‐delivery condition, suggesting that delays as brief as 6 s may be detrimental to learning tacts for some children.

The sunk cost effect is the bias or tendency to persist in a course of action due to prior investments of effort, money or time. At the time of the only review on the sunk cost effect across species (Arkes & Ayton, 1999), research with nonhuman animals had been ecological in its nature, and the findings about the effect of past investments on current choice were inconclusive. However, in the last decade a new line of experimental laboratory‐based research has emerged with the promise of revolutionizing the way we approach the study of the sunk cost effect in nonhumans. In the present review we challenge Arkes and Ayton's conclusion that the sunk cost effect is exclusive to humans, and describe evidence for the sunk cost effect in nonhuman animals. By doing so, we also challenge the current explanations for the sunk cost effect in humans, as they are not applicable to nonhumans. We argue that a unified theory is called for, because different independent variables, in particular, investment amount, have the same influence on the sunk cost effect across species. Finally, we suggest possible psychological mechanisms shared across different species, contrast and depreciation, that could explain the sunk cost effect.

We investigated the effects of a script‐fading and discrimination‐training procedure on mand variability in preschoolers with autism. Participants were taught to vary their vocal mands in the presence of written scripts, a green placemat, and a lag schedule of reinforcement. They were also taught to engage in repetitive mands in the presence of the same written scripts and a red placemat. When the scripts were removed, all 3 participants continued to engage in varied manding in the presence of the green placemat and lag schedule, and they continued to engage in repetitive manding in the presence of the red placemat. When the lag schedule was also removed, 2 of the 3 participants continued to engage in varied responding in the presence of the green placemat and repetitive responding in the presence of the red placemat. Finally, all 3 participants demonstrated generalization and maintenance of mand variability during snack sessions with their peers.

Many adults engage in ultraviolet indoor tanning despite evidence of its association with skin cancer. The constellation of behaviors associated with ultraviolet indoor tanning is analogous to that in other behavioral addictions. Despite a growing literature on ultraviolet indoor tanning as an addiction, there remains no consensus on how to identify ultraviolet indoor tanning addictive tendencies. The purpose of the present study was to translate a behavioral economic task more commonly used in substance abuse to quantify the "abuse liability" of ultraviolet indoor tanning, establish construct validity, and determine convergent validity with the most commonly used diagnostic tools for ultraviolet indoor tanning addiction (i.e., mCAGE and m DSM‐IV‐TR ). We conducted a between‐groups study using a novel hypothetical Tanning Purchase Task to quantify intensity and elasticity of ultraviolet indoor tanning demand and permit statistical comparisons with the mCAGE and m DSM‐IV‐TR. Results suggest that behavioral economic demand is related to ultraviolet indoor tanning addiction status and adequately discriminates between potential addicted individuals from nonaddicted individuals. Moreover, we provide evidence that the Tanning Purchase Task renders behavioral economic indicators that are relevant to public health research. The present findings are limited to two ultraviolet indoor tanning addiction tools and a relatively small sample of high‐risk ultraviolet indoor tanning users; however, these pilot data demonstrate the potential for behavioral economic assessment tools as diagnostic and research aids in ultraviolet indoor tanning addiction studies.

The purpose of this three‐experiment study was to evaluate whether performance consistent with the formation of equivalence classes could be established after training adults to tact and intraverbally relate the names of visual stimuli. Fourteen participants were exposed to tact training, listener testing, and intraverbal training (A'B’ and B'C’) prior to matching‐to‐sample ( MTS ) and intraverbal posttests presented in different sequences across experiments. All participants demonstrated emergent MTS and intraverbal relations consistent with equivalence class formation. More importantly, all participants emitted experimentally defined or self‐generated tacts or intraverbally named the correct sample‐comparison pairs at some point during posttests. These results are consistent with the intraverbal naming account (Horne & Lowe, 1996) in that participants who passed novel relations MTS tests also demonstrated emergence of corresponding intraverbal relations. However, verbal reports and latency data suggest that participants did not necessarily have to use intraverbal naming as a problem solving strategy continuously throughout MTS posttests. These results extended previous research by showing that verbal behavior training of baseline relations (A'B’ and B'C’) is sufficient to establish novel conditional relations consistent with equivalence class formation.

The procrastination behavior of students from a small rural university was decreased by presenting them with a rule indicating that a sooner final due date for a writing assignment would be contingent on procrastination during earlier phases of the paper. A counterbalanced AB BA design was used to measure the effects of the rule‐based treatment across 2 introductory psychology classes ( N = 33). Overall, participants engaged in less procrastination, missed fewer deadlines, and produced higher quality writing in the treatment condition.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of simplified habit reversal in reducing filled pauses that occur during public speaking. Filled pauses consist of “uh,” “um,” or “er”; clicking sounds; and misuse of the word “like.” After baseline, participants received habit reversal training that consisted of awareness training and competing response training. During postintervention assessments, all 6 participants exhibited an immediate decrease in filled pauses.