Date of Award
8-1-2025
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Behavior Analysis and Therapy
First Advisor
Boydston, Paige
Abstract
Social skills are an integral part of human life, so it stands to reason that teaching methodologies should be developed to instruct people in this complex topic. One method to teach social skills has been behavioral skills training, in which the four-step sequence of vocal and written instruction, modeling, roleplay, and feedback exposes learners to the social concepts until a mastery criterion is reached. Skills relevant to socialization have also been taught with equivalence-based instruction, in which the concept of stimulus equivalence is employed to generate novel relations between stimuli for the purpose of teaching some skill. No instance was found in the published literature in which both of these strategies were used together to instruct learners in social skills. This study contributes to the literature by filling that gap, attempting a teaching modality of behavioral skills training embedded with equivalence-based instruction to increase context-appropriate social behavior in four adults with disabilities. Three out of the four participants showed a 36% average increase in appropriate social responding, with the other participant increasing their score by 28% after additional prompting was employed.
Access
This thesis is Open Access and may be downloaded by anyone.