Generalized negatively reinforced manding in children with autism.

Individuals with developmental disabilities are often unable to influence their social environment in traditional ways (i.e., vocal language) and frequently exhibit challenging behaviors (e.g., aggression and self-injury) because such behaviors were previously reinforced under similar conditions. While the area of positive reinforcement manding has been well-documented and empirically validated, there is less research in the area of negatively reinforced manding-particularly in the area of negatively reinforced manding of nonpreferred items. Using a multiple baseline design across participants, this study sought to teach three children with autism to replace their challenging behaviors with more socially appropriate ways to request the removal of nonpreferred items. Results showed that all participants were able to learn the negatively reinforced mand response and these mand responses were generalized to other untrained items. In addition to extending the research in the area, the study empirically defined a procedure for teaching negatively reinforced manding of nonpreferred items. Moreover, teaching the mand response resulted in quality of life improvements for all participants and their families.

An introduction to joint control.

Lowenkron and colleagues (Lowenkron, 1984; 1991; 1998; 2006; Lowenkron and Colvin, 1992) describe a model that explains complex behavior using only well-established behavioral principles, concepts and terms. The model, called joint control, is especially useful for understanding complex and delayed discriminations within a purely behavioral framework and with no appeal to hypothetical concepts or structures. In it the listener is an active behaver rather than a processor of information. In fact, on this account the listener becomes a speaker. Several examples of the relevance of this approach to the explanation of complex behavior are provided, including cases of stimulus selection, conditional discrimination, and generalized identity matching.

Joint control and the selection of stimuli from their description.

This research examined the role the two constituents of joint control, the tact and the echoic, play in producing accurate selections of novel stimuli in response to their spoken descriptions. Experiment 1 examined the role of tacts. In response to unfamiliar spoken descriptions, children learned to select from among six successively presented comparisons which varied in their color, shape, and border features. Repeated testing and training revealed that accurate selecting with new combinations of the same colors, shapes and borders, did not occur until after the children could themselves tact the individual color, shape and border features with the unfamiliar descriptions. Experiment 2 examined the role of self-echoics. Here, the stimulus features were given their familiar names, but the rehearsal of these names, while searching among the six successively presented comparisons, was impeded by a distracter task. Under these conditions selection of the correct comparison was found to depend on its position in the order of presentation. Correct comparisons presented earlier in the order, and presumably less effected by the distracter task, were more likely to be selected than correct comparisons presented later in the serial order. Taken together, these data suggest that generalized stimulus selection must be under joint tact/echoic control. The data also illustrate the distinction between mediated selection of a stimulus in response to its description (i.e., selection under joint control) and the traditional conception of an unmediated selection response evoked as a result of a heightened response probability in a conditional discrimination.

Meaning: A verbal behavior account.

Although the verbal operants that comprise Skinner's account of verbal behavior provide a seemingly complete description of the behavior of the speaker with respect to what is ordinarily called the expression of meanings, it may be shown that the account is intrinsically deficient in describing the receptive behavior of listeners with regard to their comprehension of the meanings of novel words, sentences and propositions. In response to this perceived deficiency, the notion of joint control is presented here. Joint control occurs when a verbal-operant topography, currently evoked by one stimulus, is additionally (i.e., jointly) evoked by a second stimulus. This event of joint stimulus control then sets the occasion for a response. This simple mechanism is shown here to have exceedingly broad explanatory properties: providing a coherent and rigorously behavioral account of various aspects of language ranging from meaning, reference and comprehension, to the development of abstraction in children's speech.