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As a result of findings of a previous study, this study, which sought to program preschool subjects to wait one minute for reinforcement, used pause-building procedures before delay conditions were started. The children, 3- to 5-year-olds, were designated either Baseline (control) subjects (n=3) or Programmed (experimental) subjects (n=5). Though procedures varied in detail for each subject, the general plan followed was for the Baseline subjects to be put right into 60 second delay periods (after initial pause-building training) and for the Programmed subjects to receive a program of training steps in addition to the pause-building training before facing the 60 second delay of reinforcement. These training steps involved multiple schedules of continuous reinforcement and progressive differential reinforcement, discriminative stimuli that were gradually faded out, and increasing delay of reinforcement. The pause-building training, apparently a prerequisite for successful entry into the training program, was effective, and so was the programmed training for the experimental group, but only up to the point where discriminative stimuli for not responding were faded out. (MH)

Several 3- to 5-year-old children participated in this study designed to discover the necessary procedures to establish nonresponding in preschool children during delay of reinforcement. The children were divided into two groups: (1) the programed group (PG), to which a 60-second delay period was introduced gradually and (2) the baseline group (BG), to which the 60-second delay was introduced abruptly. They were told to push a button, which sometimes resulted in the child's receiving poker chips which could later be exchanged for a toy. During the test sessions the BG was reinforced on a variable interval (VI) schedule of two to nine seconds. The abrupt delay condition was introduced on the first response after a VI, and no reinforcement occurred for responses until 60 seconds had elapsed. The PG received the gradual 60-second delay condition, in which the duration of the delay was increased in 2-second incre ents. In both groups, supportive stimuli (a tone and a light) were used to indicate the delay period. Results of subject response data indicated that children of this age can learn the discrimination involved, but at least one PG subject did not learn it. The BG subjects did not appear to learn to discriminate between responding during the VI schedule and during the delay condition. (WD)

A multiple baseline design for modifying the gross motor coordination of a 31-month-old boy suspected of suffering from congenital brain damage was conducted at the University of Kansas Infant Study Laboratory. The primary purpose of the study was to establish, by experimental procedures, the desired, but absent, behavior of walking, getting up, and climbing stairs, at the expense of the existing behavior of scooting, pulling up with support, and not climbing stairs. It was hypothesized that, incidental to establishing the three desired behaviors, the behavior of standing without support would replace the subject's need to stand with support. The training sessions for each of he three desired behaviors were based on the gradual modification of undesirable into desirable behavior through selective reinforcement. The three desired behaviors were initially of zero incidence but were ultimately established as part of the child's response repertoire, although not to the complete displacement of the undesirable behaviors. (WD)

A 2-year, 8-month old boy with a language handicap was the subject of a 5-month training program which investigated the generalization of articulatory ability during and after a series of sessions aimed at correcting the boy's misarticulation of the letter "t." Before training began, three matters necessitated attention: (1) the establishment of instructional control, (2) the assessment of the boy's language behavior, and (3) the administration of a 26-word probe test. The training condition consisted of five phases interspersed with six probe tests. The training procedures were to correct the subject's misarticulation of the letter t. The probe tests were to measure the improvement and generalization of the subject's ability to articulate. Training phase five and probe tests five and six involved a change in procedure from auditory stimuli to visual stimuli. The results indicated that proper articulation of training and nontraining words ending in t increased, with some fluctuation, during the program and led to the conclusion that generalization of articulatory ability was demonstrated. (WD)

This document is the final report to the Institute of Educational Development for Head Start Research Evaluation activities at the University of Kansas for 1966-67. It contains 16 separate reports of studies completed or in the process of completion. The subject matter of the reports contains 15 distinct topics and warrants individual abstracts. The 15 abstract numbers and topics are as follows: PS 001 218 (reinforcement behavior of teachers); PS 001 219 (auditory discrimination); PS 001 220 (verbal imitation); PS 001 221 (language program); PS 001 222 (brie oral responses); PS 001 223 (peer group influence); PS 001 224 (reinforcement of intelligence); PS 001 225 (differentiated speech response); PS 001 226 (color labeling); PS 001 227 (errorless discrimination of delay of reinforcement); PS 001 228 (gross motor responses); PS 001 229 (physical development); PS 001 230 (matching abstractions); PS 001 231 (social reinforcement); and PS 001 232 (verbal recall). (WD)

Different procedures have been used in the past to control the correspondence between verbal and its related nonverbal behavior. This study proposes a variant of these procedures for controlling that correspondence. This variant caIls for reinforcement contingent on related intermediate behaviors. Intermediate behaviors are those that occur between verbal behavior and its related nonverbal behavior. Ten preschool chiIdren ranging in age from 3 to 5 years, served as subjects. In this study, reinforcement was applied either to promises to engage in a certain activity later or to a series of intermediate behaviors specified for each of four preschoo1 activities. Consistently higher levels of correspondence occurred after reinforcement of intermediate behaviors in comparison to reinforcement of promises.