Dissertation Defenses

Doctoral Dissertation Announcement

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Candidate: Kristen Lynn Gaisford

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Psychology

Title: Trial and Error, Delayed Prompting, and Reinforcement of Prompted Responses in Teaching Receptive Identification of Pictures

Committee:
Dr. Richard Malott, Chair
Dr. Ron Van Houten
Dr. Alan Poling
Dr. Steven Ragotzy

Date: Friday, December 11, 2009 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
3715 Wood Hall

Abstract:
Three strategies to train receptive identification of pictures are compared: (a) trial and error, (b) delayed finger-point prompt followed by a reinforcer, and (c) delayed finger-point prompt followed by the spoken word, “good”. These three strategies are compared using a multi-element design, assessing the performance of four children, ranging from two to four years of age, selected from a classroom that provides services to children with Early Childhood Developmental Delays (ECDD). Two children mastered the receptive identification of pictures at the same rate regardless of the strategy. For the remaining two participants, the rate of mastery was the same for both of the prompting strategies; but for one child the rate of mastery was much slower with trial and error and for the other child the skill was never acquired with trial and error. Additionally, there was no difference between prompting strategies, suggesting that the reinforcement of prompted responses did not hinder the rate of mastery for all four children. While it was not the focus of the study, generalized receptive identification data are also presented for two of the children. Both of the children who tested for generalization acquired at least some concept generalization.