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AbstractResearch shows that caregivers of children with autism can be taught a variety of behavioral strategies, but there is little research on teaching caregivers to prioritize rapport building over skill acquisition during play. The current study evaluated the effects of a digital training package on the rapport‐building skills of four caregivers of children with autism. Target skills were derived from parent–child interaction therapy with specific adaptations for children with limited communication and play skills. The intervention package included asynchronous online modules with video models, active response opportunities, and automated feedback as well as synchronous feedback via video chat. All four caregivers demonstrated increases in rapport building skills, and three of four dyads showed increases in interactive play postintervention. Caregivers also rated the intervention favorably. Data on participant and interventionist time to complete the intervention guide a discussion of the efficiency of combining asynchronous and synchronous strategies.

AbstractEvery day we encounter situations in which decisions require trade‐offs between the delay to one reward and the likelihood of receiving another reward. The current study was designed to extend a general discounting framework to gain insights into this fundamental trade‐off process. Forty‐three undergraduates adjusted the probability of receiving an immediate hypothetical monetary reward (either $200 or $10,000) until that probabilistic reward was judged subjectively equal in value to the same reward received with certainty after a delay (ranging from 1 month to 25 years). We replicated previous findings that demonstrated a linear relation between log(delay) and log(odds‐against), derived from the subjective probabilistic values. This linear relation was predicted when these choices were analyzed with the hyperboloid functions that describe simple delay and probability discounting in human decision making. Additionally, we extended the discounting framework and showed that the trade‐off between risk and delay was well described by a modified hyperboloid discounting model (R2s = .99). These findings suggest that the discounting framework provides a valuable approach for capturing complexities of human decision making.

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Abstract Rats are a social species, often used as a research model to study social behavior. However, isolating the factors (i.e., environmental stimuli, experiences with social interactions, novelty, etc.) that influence rats' social behavior can be difficult in many existing social choice assessments. A procedure that may help researchers investigate these variables more systematically is the olfactory choice procedure. The present set of experiments used a free‐operant olfactory choice procedure to assess individually housed female rats' preference for social and nonsocial scents. In Experiment 1, rats ran daily sessions in which a response to a nose‐poke port produced either a social or nonsocial scent. A response to a second nose‐poke port produced a control scent. In Experiment 2, the same female rats could respond in one nose‐poke port to produce a social scent and in a second port to produce a nonsocial scent. The results from Experiment 1 indicate that rats prefer social and nonsocial scents over a control scent and that this preference persists across a location reversal and 100+ daily sessions. Although there were individual differences, group results from Experiment 2 suggest that rats prefer social and nonsocial scents relatively equally.

AbstractDifferential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) involves the delivery of a reinforcer following the absence of target behavior. Little is known about DRO with fidelity errors. Three experiments examined DRO implemented with various percentages of fidelity with commission (Experiments 1 and 3) and omission (Experiment 2) errors in a human‐operant arrangement. Both commission and omission errors degraded the response‐suppressing effects of DRO for some participants. In some cases, commission errors resulted in response rates exceeding baseline levels. Experiment 3 evaluated the potential order effects of first experiencing DRO with high fidelity followed by degraded fidelity with commission errors. When exposed to the conditions ordered 100, 60, and 80% fidelity with commission errors, increased response rates occurred more frequently during the degraded fidelity phases than when participants were exposed to fidelity that decreased in a stepwise fashion (i.e., 100 to 80 to 60%).

AbstractFunctional analysis has been shown to effectively identify the function of challenging behavior and inform the design of function‐based treatment that emphasizes reinforcement‐based procedures. However, there is minimal research on culturally responsive approaches to functional analysis with bilingual clients with a developmental disability who speak English and Spanish. This study evaluated a method of individualizing assessment conditions using culturally relevant variables, analyzing the data to evaluate the influence of language on functional analysis outcomes and considering the influence of language proficiency and preference on functional analysis results. The data for the influence of language on functional analysis were analyzed separately, which highlighted areas for further exploration and consideration with caregivers that likely would have been missed if the functional analysis had been conducted solely in one language. The influence of language during behavioral assessment and considerations of these variables in clinical practice for bilingual communities are discussed.

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Abstract The amount of time that organisms spend on a variable‐interval schedule of a concurrent pair before departing to the other one (i.e., the dwell time on the schedule) follows an exponential distribution, meaning that the probability of switching to the other schedule does not increase or decrease throughout the visit. This appears to reflect an innate behavioral pattern and implies that concurrent‐schedule performance can be modeled using continuous‐time Markov chains. In the two‐alternative case, the behavior of a Markov chain is completely determined by the leaving rates from each alternative (i.e., the number of departures per unit of time), so finding expressions for these leaving rates should suffice to completely characterize changeover behavior in concurrent schedules. Such expressions can be derived from the matching law in combination with either the mathematical principles of reinforcement or Baum's laws of allocation, induction, and covariance. The resulting equations are assessed in the particular case of concurrent variable‐interval schedules using a large data set from a published study that systematically manipulated both the relative and the overall rates of reinforcement, resulting in excellent fits. The performance of the model is also assessed against that of competing models, proving to be superior in most cases.

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