Individuals with deaf-blindness and co-occurring diagnoses, such as intellectual and developmental disabilities, may experience difficulty with independence, specifically with communication. One behavior-analytic procedure that may be useful for increasing independence and teaching communication to this population is the behavior-chain interruption strategy (BCIS). The current study examined the use of the BCIS to teach a 65-year-old deaf-blind participant with severe intellectual disability to use a SadoTech Elderly Monitoring Pager to notify others in the environment when help was needed. The researcher alternated between establishing operation (EO; help needed, items missing, or inoperable) and abolishing operation (AO; help not needed, items present, and operable) trials for three previously mastered daily living routines. The results demonstrated that following intervention, the participant used the device independently during EO trials and never used it during AO trials across behavior chains, and similar results were obtained during a treatment-extension phase. Limitations and implications for applied practice are discussed.
UNASSIGNED: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40616-024-00204-8.

Academia and business have shown an increased interest in using neurophysiological methods, such as eye-tracking and electroencephalography (EEG), to assess consumer motivation. The current research contributes to this literature by verifying whether these methods can predict the effects of antecedent events as motivating functions of attention, neural responses, choice, and consumption. Antecedent motivational factors are discussed, with a specific focus on deprivation as such a situational factor. Thirty-two participants were randomly assigned to the experimental and control conditions. Water deprivation of 11-12 h was used as an establishing operation to increase the reinforcing effectiveness of water. We designed three experimental sessions to capture the complexity of the relationship between antecedents and consumer behavior. Experimental manipulations in session 1 established the effectiveness of water for the experimental group and abolished it for the control group. Results from session 2 show that participants in the experimental group had significantly higher average fixation duration for the image of water. Their frontal asymmetry did not provide significant evidence of greater left frontal activation toward the water image. Session 3 demonstrated that choice and consumption behavior of the relevant reinforcer was significantly higher for participants in the experimental group. These early findings highlight the potential application of a multi-method approach using neurophysiological tools in consumer research, which provides a comprehensive picture of the functional relationship between motivating events, behavior (attention, neural responses, choice, and consumption), and consequences.

Most studies of operant relapse phenomena have studied the role of exteroceptive discriminative features of context in the recovery of behavior after extinction. Interoceptive stimuli (i.e., stimuli arising from the bodies of organisms) may also serve as a part of learning contexts and contribute to relapse. Recent studies have demonstrated that events that function as motivating operations (MOs) may contribute to relapse both by a) eliciting interoceptive conditions that serve as a discriminative context for relapse (i.e., discriminative function) and b) altering the amount of operant responding in the presence of discriminative stimuli associated with reinforcers (i.e., motivational function). The current study examined interactions between these functions of food and water deprivation MOs in the relapse of operant behavior. During acquisition of an operant response, one group of mice was food-deprived and another was water-deprived. The groups then received extinction sessions under the opposite condition. Renewal and reinstatement tests were conducted under both conditions, and more renewal and reinstatement were observed in the motivational states in which acquisition occurred for each. These results are discussed in the context of state-dependent learning.

Two groups of mice were exposed to stimulus discrimination training and testing under different motivational conditions to study interactions between motivating operations (MOs) during initial discrimination training and MOs when performance is tested following training. One group received all discrimination training sessions under 24-h food deprivation while the other received all sessions under 0-h food deprivation. The number of responses allowed during discrimination training sessions was limited such that the two groups experienced the same number of response-outcome contingencies. The groups then received two post-discrimination training tests: one conducted under 24-h food deprivation and the other conducted under 0-h food deprivation. Results indicated no difference between groups in terms of discrimination ratio. However, subjects trained under 24-h deprivation made more responses in the 24-h test, while subjects trained under 0-h deprivation made more responses in the 0-h test. These results are discussed in terms of motivational state-dependent learning.

The current study evaluated a procedure used to teach two children with autism to ask \"why\" questions maintained by causal information about an event. To increase the value of information as a reinforcer, the experimenter denied access to preferred items and did not provide a reason for the denial. Participants were taught to ask \"why\" questions and were provided with information that led them to access preferred items. To ensure that \"why\" questions only occurred when the information was valuable, we included a condition wherein access to preferred items was restricted but causal information was available. Both participants learned to ask \"why\" questions when causal information was not available and refrained from asking \"why\" questions when causal information was available.

Many individuals with developmental disabilities exhibit noncompliance during intensive instruction. As a treatment for noncompliance, the high-probability instructional sequence (high-p sequence) consists of delivering several high-p instructions before a low-p instruction. The purpose of this study was to extend the research on comparing consequences for high-p demands-namely, praise, edibles, and videos-with an 11-year-old girl diagnosed with CHARGE syndrome. CHARGE syndrome is a rare medical condition often resulting in multisensory impairments and developmental delays. In Treatment Analysis 1, we compared praise versus edibles as consequences for compliance with high- and low-p instructions. Results showed the edibles were initially more effective than praise, but the effects did not maintain. In Treatment Analysis 2, we changed the consequence for compliance with high- and low-p instructions to a music video and then attempted to fade the number of high-p instructions. We replicated the efficacy of the high-p sequence but failed to fade the number of high-p instructions and failed to achieve maintenance. Therefore, in Treatment Analysis 3, we conducted presession preference assessments of music videos in order to use a selected video as the consequence for compliance. This \"varied reinforcement\" intervention resulted in high levels of compliance. Results are discussed in terms of motivating operations and recommendations for practice.

The motivating operations concept has been of considerable interest and practical value to behavior analysts, including practitioners. Nonetheless, the concept has generated substantial controversy and has significant limitations. To address some of these limitations, we suggest that it would be wise to redefine motivating operations, to deemphasize the importance that has historically been placed on subtypes of conditioned motivating operations, to emphasize how motivating operations and discriminative stimuli interact, and to further examine the kinds of environmental changes that alter the reinforcing value of particular kinds of stimuli. These suggestions are detailed elsewhere and summarized in this article.

Aggressive behavior is a source of many significant human problems, most notably the catastrophic loss of life and resources that can result from violent conflicts between groups. Aggressive behavior is particularly likely to arise from aversive conditions that function as motivating operations (MOs) that establish the stimulation produced by aggressive acts as reinforcing. We describe the behavior that arises from these circumstances as aversion-induced aggression (AIA) and argue that the MOs associated with AIA are important factors in initiating and sustaining violent conflicts between groups. In support of this, we survey the basic nonhuman research that has demonstrated the aggression-motivating functions of aversive stimuli. We extend our analysis of AIA to humans and describe how the special properties of verbal stimuli serve as the basis for notable differences between AIA in humans and nonhumans. We describe how aversive conditions may be exploited by leaders to establish support for aggression against another group in the pursuit of their objectives. We suggest that conflicts between groups cannot be resolved in the long term unless the motivational conditions from which conflicts arise are alleviated. Aggression is rarely effective in this regard because it exacerbates these conditions. For this reason, we advocate against the use of aggression as a tool for resolving conflicts between groups and consider how behavior science may contribute to the development and evaluation of alternative nonviolent practices.

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People diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may need specific teaching to learn mands for information. Unfortunately, little research has been published on methods for teaching the mand \"When?\" to this population. The purpose of the current study was to replicate and extend previous research by teaching 3 children diagnosed with ASD to mand \"When?\" by teaching multiple topographies of the mand, measuring mand variability, assessing social validity, interspersing a previously acquired mand for information, using multiple-exemplar training, employing a different experimental preparation, and including participants with different skill sets. All participants (a) learned to mand \"When?\" only during establishing operation trials (not during abolishing operation trials) within 8 teaching trials, (b) generalized manding with novel items and a novel person and setting, (c) maintained a previously learned mand for information, and (d) maintained skills at follow-up. Upon mastery, 2 participants varied mand topography. Respondents rated the intervention as having high social validity.