Association for Behavior Analysis International

The current investigation examined the effectiveness of a metacontingency package in two experimentations. In experiment one, the metacontingency was utilized by embedding activities with interlocking behavioral contingencies to examine its effectiveness on reciprocal social interactions in two females diagnosed with an Intellectual Disability. Results demonstrated an increase of the dependent variable by the metacontingency activities. The results of experiment one were the premise for experiment two, which was to examine whether the metacontingency activities that were effective in increasing reciprocal social interactions were an effect of the metacontingency or an effect of engaging in an activity together. Experiment two utilized two activity types, parallel and metacontingency activities, to determine their relative effect on self-talk behavior, reciprocal social interactions, and conversational units in two males diagnosed with an Intellectual Disability. Results suggested that there were no relative effects demonstrated by the two activity types on self-talk behavior, however results demonstrated an increased effect by the metacontingency activities relative to the parallel activities on reciprocal social interactions and conversational units.

Research has shown that typically developing children tact at a higher rate when deprived of social interaction as compared to when satiated. The purpose of this study was to further examine the effects of presession social interaction on the acquisition of tacts. The participants were three children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, who learned tacts following presession conditions of deprivation of social interaction, satiation of social interaction, and control. Maintenance probes were conducted 2 weeks and 1 month following training. A functional analysis of language demonstrated that the newly acquired words functioned as tacts. All three participants learned tacts more efficiently following deprivation of social interaction, as compared to satiation or control. This study extended the literature by demonstrating the effects of pressession social interaction on tact acquisition.

Past research has demonstrated that oral labeling can emerge following equivalence-based instruction (Groskreutz et al., 2010). We designed an equivalence-based protocol to determine if intraverbals would emerge following EBI. A pretest/posttest control group experimental design was used to examine the effects of teaching specific conditional relations among stimuli representing planets, on the emergence of untaught relations, as well as intraverbals (i.e., answering questions about the planets). Class A was the written name of the planet (i.e., Neptune, Mars, and Saturn), Class B was a picture representing each planet, and Class C was a fact about the planet (e.g., has rings made of ice). A match-to-sample protocol using a linear training structure was used. Pretests were conducted for all relations and with the exception of C-A, scored at or below 50%. During a pretest for answering questions about planets, the participant scored 0%. The participant responded correctly on 100% of the trials during the posttest of all relations and answered 70% of the posttest questions accurately. The teaching as usual control comparison included questions about a different set of planets (i.e., Venus, Earth, and Jupiter) and facts that were taught using discrete trial instruction. The participant could not answer any questions from this set of planets during the pretest. After the participant was directly taught to answer these questions, he was able to answer 70% of the questions correctly. Results indicate that, for this participant, accuracy of intraverbal responding that emerged following EBI was similar to that trained directly using DTI.