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Biomedical subjects

S Striefel

Publications and source records attributed to S Striefel.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1991

Establishing mirror-image discriminations with progressively delayed extra-stimulus prompts.

Progressively delayed extra-stimulus prompts were used to help normal preschool children discriminate left-right mirror-image stimuli. Two issues were addressed, the attention guiding properties of the prompts and the necessity for their gradual elimination. The study consisted of four experiments in which one or multiple prompt conditions were used. Each condition involved three prompts: a reference prompt for indicating the S+ and two superimposed prompts, one on the S+, and one on the S-. The prompts required subjects to respond to the orientation of the S+ (Orientation condition) or to the location of the reference prompt (Location condition); or allowed them to respond to the discriminative shapes of the superimposed prompts (Shape condition). The results showed the following. First, most subjects rapidly learned to respond to the Orientation prompts. Second, delayed orientation prompting was always successful regardless of how the prompts were eliminated. Delay training was never successful in either of the other two conditions. Third, the Orientation condition did not reliably produce learning unless the delayed prompting procedure was used.

Attention↗
PubMed1991

Regulating behavioral procedures for individuals with handicaps: review of state department standards.

We reviewed standards (i.e., mandatory policies or recommended guidelines) from 39 state departments of special education and 41 state departments of developmental disabilities/mental retardation (DD/MR) to determine how they addressed the use of behavioral procedures. Results indicated that many standards described procedures to change behaviors of individuals with handicaps and identified ways to regulate usage. Major findings were that (a) standards from state departments of DD/MR addressed behavioral procedures more frequently than standards from special education departments; (b) many standards addressed procedures to decrease, but not increase, behavior; (c) several standards identified safeguards to clients' rights, such as prior approval requirements and periodic review of behavioral procedures' effects; (d) some standards prohibited and/or restricted the use of specific procedures, such as those judged to be aversive; (e) about one-fifth of special education standards and two-thirds of DD/MR standards described staff training requirements for using some procedures; and (f) relatively few standards used decision models to select behavioral procedures. Implications of these findings for policy makers, service providers, and future research efforts are discussed.

Aversive Therapy↗
PubMed1990

Discrimination training of mirror-image stimuli with a delayed-prompt technique: some critical dimensions of extra-stimulus prompts.

Research on fading and delay procedures has shown that extra-stimulus prompts frequently fail to help children learn difficult discriminations. The present study analyzed two delay conditions for an extra-stimulus prompt to help preschoolers discriminate mirror-image stimuli as a function of the configurations and locations of the prompts. All subjects were selected on their ability to discriminate the task stimuli in the presence of a third stimulus, a replica of the S+ and an arrow pointing to that stimulus; and on their inability to do so without these stimuli. Experiments 1 and 2 compared these prompt configurations (S+ replica, arrow) when presented equidistant from the task stimuli. Experiment 3 analyzed the contribution of the replica configuration in terms of its location, in between stimuli or immediately above the S+. Experiment 4 investigated the extent to which the results of the previous experiments could be influenced by the methodology for the assessment of prompt control. The results consistently demonstrated that most subjects did not learn the task unless the extra-stimulus prompt had the same configuration as the S+ and was located equidistant from both task stimuli.

Attention↗
PubMed1990

Time-delay discrimination training: replication with different stimuli and different populations.

Two time-delay conditions for teaching complex visual discriminations to normal preschoolers and children with mild and moderate intellectual handicaps were compared. One condition involved spatially separating the distinctive components from the redundant parts of both stimuli (multiple dynamic distinctive-feature prompts). The other condition involved adding a colored field to the correct stimulus (single static nondistinctive-feature prompt). The effect of the latter condition was assessed with unlearned and learned tasks. The study consisted of four experiments. In one experiment, children were also required to use the prompts for self-monitoring responses given before prompting had occurred. The results indicated that for all populations and stimuli (a) time delay of multiple dynamic distinctive-feature prompts consistently produced learning, and (b) time delay of the single static nondistinctive-feature prompt almost never produced learning and frequently led to a complete loss of discriminative performance on previously learned tasks. The resistance to disruption was a function of the training history (i.e., with or without time delay) and IQ level. Self-monitoring increased the efficacy of time delay when multiple dynamic distinctive-feature prompts were used but not when the single static nondistinctive-feature prompt was used.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Time-delay discrimination training with impulsive children: self-monitoring nonwait responses and the dimensions of prompts.

This study investigated whether in time-delay discrimination training, the performance of impulsive children can be improved by requiring self-monitoring of the correctness of nonwait responses, and to what extent these improvements are a function of the dimensions of the prompts. Four experiments, in each of which multiple prompts were used, one for each stimulus (S+, S-), were done. Comparisons between time delay of distinctive- and nondistinctive-feature prompts, with and without self-monitoring, were made across and within subjects. Time delay of distinctive-feature prompts without self-monitoring did not produce learning. The added requirement of self-monitoring nonwait responses led to a dramatic improvement in performance, but only when distinctive-feature cues were used for prompting and self-monitoring.

Behavior Therapy↗
PubMed1988

Response restriction and substitution with autistic children.

Few studies to date have examined time reallocation in naturalistic, multiresponse human repertoires when one or more responses are restricted. For this experiment, free-operant baseline levels of six responses were measured for four autistic children. The high-probability responses were made unavailable, one at a time, such that subjects had access to five, four, three, and two responses in successive restriction conditions. A return to the six-response free-operant baseline condition completed the experiment. Results were compared to predictions made by four time-reallocation models. These results were described accurately only by the selective substitution model. Further analyses examined alternative explanations for the individual reallocation patterns obtained. An expanded selective substitution definition is proposed that may characterize orderly patterns observed in multiresponse repertoires under restriction conditions more accurately than the other existing models.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1987

Stimulus manipulation versus delayed feedback for teaching missing minuend problems to difficult-to-teach students.

The present study evaluated two procedures, Stimulus Manipulation and Delay Feedback Only, for teaching difficult-to-teach students to solve missing minuend problems (i.e., missing number problems starting with a minus sign). The Stimulus Manipulation procedure was directed at establishing the target skill with a minimum of errors. The training consisted of three phases of several steps each. The first phase was designed to establish a nonnumerical response to a prompt, the shape of which was gradually transformed into the final discriminative stimulus. The second phase was designed to extend the control of this stimulus to the numerical operations and to eliminate all supplementary stimuli. The third phase gradually eliminated the originally trained nonnumerical responses. The Delayed Feedback Only procedure included no stimulus manipulation and consisted of the experimenter giving only delayed right.wrong feedback on the solutions. The data indicate that both procedures resulted in all (N = 4) subjects (a) learning to solve the target problems, (b) generalizing this skill to similar, more advanced problems, and (c) maintaining it over multiple intervals of several consecutive weeks. However, systematic differences in error rate and long-term retention across training methods were observed, favoring the Stimulus Manipulation procedure.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Developing generalized instruction-following behavior in severely retarded people.

A sequence of studies used a transfer of stimulus control procedure to train severely and profoundly retarded people to follow verb-noun instructions and to perform correctly when given only a verbal label for an action or object. Procedures were developed and utilized for providing the subjects with strategies for successfully generalizing to untrained instructions. When training was initiated on more complex instructions involving color or size adjectives, all subjects had some difficulty in acquiring the conditional discriminations. Modifications in the training procedures resulted in most of the subjects learning to respond correctly. Many of the variables deemed critical in training instruction-following skills with such a population are discussed in detail based on the data presented. The implications for training expressive skills in such a population are also discussed.

Child↗
PubMed1976

Acquisition and cross modal generalization of receptive and expressive signing skills in a retarded deaf girl.

A transfer of stimulus control procedure was used to teach a retarded deaf girl manual signing skills. Eight manual signs were trained in the receptive modality; eight others in the expressive modality. Acquisition of receptive and expressive signing skills occurred for most signs after they had been trained in multiple baseline order. There was a marked difference in cross modal generalisation between each of the trained signing modalities. With some exception training of receptive sign discrimination had little effect on the expressive usage of these signs. In contrast, training in the expressive usage resulted in a near perfect acquisition of receptive sign discrimination.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1975

The effects of different reinforcement conditions on the test performance of multihandicapped deaf children.

The present study explored the effects of different reinforcement conditions on the number of correct responses on the Rvaen Progressive Matrices. Four groups of 11- to 18-year-old multihandicapped deaf children matched on the basis of mean age and pretest scores were used. The groups were randomly assigned to any of four posttest conditions: end-of-session reinforcement, noncontingent reinforcement, delayed reinforcement, and immediate reinforcement. The mean posttest score of subjects tested under the immediate-reinforcement condition was significantly higher than that of any other group. No significant differences were observed between the mean posttest scores of the three other groups. The practical implications of using reinforcement procedures for testing purposes are discussed.

Achievement↗
PubMed1974

Transfer of stimulus control from motor to verbal stimuli.

A transfer of stimulus control procedure was used to teach three profoundly retarded adolescents a series of specific responses to specific verbal instructions. After imitative control of a behavior was established, a verbal instruction was presented immediately before the behavior was modelled. Each correct response was followed on the next trial by inserting a delay between the verbal instruction and the modelling of the behavior. The delays increased from trial to trial. Transfer of stimulus control was indicated when a subject responded correctly on five consecutive trials before the behavior was modelled. All three subjects responded correctly to each verbal instruction after that item was trained in a multiple-baseline order. Generalization did not occur to items that had not been trained. Probe data revealed that some variations of the verbal instructions controlled responses after training was completed.

Adolescent↗