Establishing conditioned reinforcers via a schedule thinning procedure

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2014

First Committee Member

Gould, Daniel

Second Committee Member

Bourret, Jason

Third Committee Member

Thompson, Rachel

Abstract

"A conditioned reinforcer is established when a neutral stimulus is presented immediately prior to an established, reinforcing stimulus and this pairing is repeated over time. For the majority of typically developing individuals social praise can function as a conditioned reinforcer. This is not always the case for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) for whom social praise, which is brief and audible, may not come to function as a reinforcer. We investigated a procedure for establishing a brief, audible stimulus (clicking sound, also known as Teaching with Acoustical Guidance, or TAG) as a conditioned reinforcer for individuals with ASD. The process of schedule thinning was used, where the neutral stimulus (TAG) was initially paired with the primary reinforcer on a dense schedule, and then the schedule of pairing was systematically thinned. This procedure was successful in establishing TAG as a conditioned reinforcer in all three participants. These results indicate that schedule thinning is an effective procedure for conditioning reinforcers. The neutral stimulus (TAG) that was successfully conditioned shares the brief and audible properties of social praise, which suggests that social praise could potentially be conditioned as a reinforcer using a schedule thinning procedure."

This document is available upon request to Western New England University faculty, students, and staff. Please contact D'Amour Library at for access.

Share

COinS