Studies on preference assessments have shown that when both edible and leisure items are compared, edible items tend to displace leisure items in preference hierarchies. However, the mechanisms behind this process are currently unclear. One possibility is that displacement may be a product of the relatively brief periods of access to leisure items typically used in preference assessments. The purpose of the current investigation was to examine whether the duration of access to leisure items affects displacement. In this study, participants chose between preferred leisure items and the edible items that had previously been shown to displace those leisure items in a preference hierarchy. Duration of access to the leisure item was systematically increased across series to identify the magnitude at which leisure items became more preferred than edible items. Results indicate that as the duration of access to leisure items increases, displacement decreases.

Unlike potential tangible positive reinforcers, which are typically identified for inclusion in functional analyses empirically using preference assessments, demands are most often selected arbitrarily or based on caregiver report. The present study evaluated the use of a demand assessment with 12 participants who exhibited escape-maintained problem behavior. Participants were exposed to 10 demands, with aversiveness measured by average latency to the first instance of problem behavior. In subsequent functional analyses, results of a demand condition that included the demand with the shortest latency to problem behavior resulted in identification of an escape function for 11 of the participants. In contrast, a demand condition that included the demand with the longest latency resulted in identification of an escape function for only 5 participants. The implication of these findings is that for the remaining 7 participants, selection of the demand for the functional analysis without using the results of the demand assessment could have produced a false-negative finding.

Recent increases in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses, and the escalation of stimulant prescriptions, has raised concern about diversion and abuse of stimulants, as well as the ethics of using these drugs as “cognitive enhancers.”Such concern appears misplaced in the face of substantial evidence that stimulant drugs do not improve the academic performance of ADHD-diagnosed students. Moreover, numerous studies have found little or no benefit of stimulants on neuropsychological tests of ADHD-diagnosed as well as normal, individuals. This paper examines the apparent paradox: why don't drugs that improve “attention,” produce better academic outcomes in ADHD-diagnosed students? We found that stimulant drugs significantly improved impairment of episodic memory in ADHD-diagnosed undergraduate students. Nevertheless, we also found consistent academic deficits between ADHD students and their non-ADHD counterparts, regardless of whether or not they used stimulant medications. We reviewed the current literature on the behavioral effects of stimulants, to try to find an explanation for these conflicting phenomena. Across a variety of behavioral tasks, stimulants have been shown to reduce emotional reactions to frustration, improve the ability to detect errors, and increase effortful behavior. However, all of these effects would presumably enhance academic performance. On the other hand, the drugs were also found to promote “risky behavior” and to increase susceptibility to environmental distraction. Such negative effects, including the use of drugs to promote wakefulness for last minute study, might explain the lack of academic benefit in the “real world,” despite their cognitive potential. Like many drugs, stimulants influence behavior in multiple ways, depending on the environmental contingencies. Depending on the circumstances, stimulants may, or may not, enhance cognition.

Instructors of the visually impaired need efficient braille-training methods. This study conducted a preliminary evaluation of a computer-based program intended to teach the relation between braille characters and English letters using a matching-to-sample format with 4 sighted college students. Each participant mastered matching visual depictions of the braille alphabet to their printed-word counterparts. Further, each participant increased the number of words they read in a braille passage following this training. These gains were maintained at variable levels on a maintenance probe conducted 2 to 4 weeks after training.

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These findings suggest that self-monitoring might be used to improve academic performance in college students with ADHD.

Children with developmental disabilities (DD) are more likely than typically developing peers to have issues with enuresis. Past research has shown the success of behavioral treatments consisting of scheduled sits and reinforcement for continent voids. However, this research has included small sample sizes, while studies with larger numbers have lacked key information (i.e., baseline rates and follow-up data to evaluate maintenance and generalization). The current study conducted a consecutive case series analysis of 44 individuals with developmental disabilities who completed a 2-week program for enuresis. Results showed significant improvement in continent voids and follow-up data suggested positive results maintained when treatment was implemented by caregivers in a home environment.

We taught three children with visual impairments to make tactile discriminations of the braille alphabet within a matching-to-sample format. That is, we presented participants with a braille character as a sample stimulus, and they selected the matching stimulus from a three-comparison array. In order to minimize participant errors, we initially arranged braille characters into training sets in which there was a maximum difference in the number of dots comprising the target and nontarget comparison stimuli. As participants mastered these discriminations, we increased the similarity between target and nontarget comparisons (i.e., an approximation of stimulus fading). All three participants' accuracy systematically increased following the introduction of this identity-matching procedure.