An Operant Pursuit of Generalization - Republished Article.

We outline some principles and tactics which are recommended as likely to facilitate the occurrence of generalization and maintenance in programs of clinical importance. In general, clinicians and researchers would do well to implement and analyze procedures that follow the generalization programming principles of exploiting current functional contingencies, training diversely, and incorporating functional mediators. More specifically, the tactical armamentarium should include contacting natural consequences, recruiting natural consequences, modifying maladaptive consequences, reinforcing occurrences of generalization, using sufficient stimulus exemplars, using sufficient response exemplars, making antecedents less discriminable, making consequences less discriminable, incorporating common salient physical stimuli, incorporating common salient social stimuli, incorporating self-mediated physical stimuli, and incorporating self-mediated verbal and covert stimuli.

The Effects of a Delay of Noncontingent Reinforcement during a Pairing Procedure in the Development of Stimulus Control of Automatically Reinforced Vocalizations.

Children with autism and related disabilities frequently fail to develop echoic repertoires. Among the ways in which treatment approaches vary is the extent to which automatic reinforcement is utilized. The present experiment was designed to test the efficacy of a procedure that incorporates automatic reinforcement and socially mediated reinforcement in the development of an echoic repertoire.

The functional role of preschoolers' verbalizations in the generalization of self-instructional training.

We examined the functional role of verbalizations in the generalization of self-instructional training with preschoolers. Children learned to overtly self-instruct during classroom work periods prior to covert training. Data were collected on children's acquisition of verbal regulation during training and on overt use of self-instructions in the classroom generalization setting.

Saying and doing: A commentary on a contingency-space analysis.

This article addresses the contingency-space analysis (Matthews, Shimoff, & Catania, 1987) of the verbal regulation of behavior. From an applied perspective, the conceptualization of the relationship between saying and doing Matthews et al. present may be more complex than is necessary.