Caldwell University

Identifying component skills necessary for the emergence of intraverbal tacts, or verbal responses under control of both a verbal and nonverbal antecedent stimulus, is important because the occasion for this skill often occurs in a child's everyday life. Previous research has begun to identify a sequence of component skills that may lead to the emergence of multiply controlled intraverbals. However, it remains unclear which component skills are necessary versus sufficient. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of teaching a subset of component skills, element tact and intraverbal categorization, to identify the skills sufficient for emergence of intraverbal tacts. A multiple-probe design was used to assess intraverbal-tact emergence for five participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder during pre-and post-element-tact and intraverbal-categorization teaching sessions. Emergence of intraverbal tacts was also assessed during recombinative-generalization probes. Results indicated that intraverbal tacts emerged for all participants following acquisition of element tacts and intraverbal categorizations. As no other component skills were taught, these data suggest that these component skills may be sufficient for intraverbal tact emergence. Implications for identifying necessary component skills and directions for future research are discussed.

ABSTRACT As fluency in technology becomes more of a requirement in many fields, identifying an effective and efficient way to teach technology skills, such as spreadsheets, is necessary. In the field of behavior analysis, many studies assessed methods to teach graphing skills, but few have reported programming for or assessing generalization of these skills. One effective way to program for generalization is through general‐case procedures, which produces behavior change across a variety of stimuli and responses while requiring minimal training time. The current study used a nonconcurrent multiple‐baseline design across participants to assess the effects of general‐case procedures and computer‐based instruction on graph training in Excel and to program for and assess within and across‐category generalization of responding with undergraduate college students. These procedures resulted in generalized responding within and across stimuli and response categories for most participants. Future research should further evaluate the application of general‐case procedures outside of behavior analysis.

The core use of human language is communicating complex ideas from one mind to another in everyday conversations. In conversations, comprehension and production processes are intertwined, as speakers soon become listeners, and listeners become speakers. Nonetheless, the neural systems underlying these faculties are typically studied in isolation, using paradigms that cannot fully engage our capacity for interactive communication, and with indirect measures of similarity. Here, we used an fMRI hyperscanning paradigm to measure neural activity simultaneously in pairs of subjects engaged in real-time, interactive conversations. We used contextual word embeddings from a large language model to quantify the linguistic coupling between production and comprehension systems within and across individual brains. We found a highly overlapping network of regions involved in both production and comprehension spanning much of the cortical language network. Our findings reveal that shared representations for both processes extend beyond the language network into areas associated with social cognition. Together, these results suggest that the specialized neural systems for speech perception and production align on a common set of linguistic features encoded in a broad cortical network for language and communication.

Cerebral aneurysm (CA) is a life-threatening condition caused by a weakened spot in the blood vessels of the brain that balloons out and fills with blood. The rupture of an aneurysm can lead to severe complications such as hemorrhagic stroke, brain damage, coma, and even death. Effective aneurysm therapy includes inducing intra-aneurysmal wound healing by promoting tissue ingrowth that seals off the aneurysm, thereby preventing rupture. Therefore, quantifying the extent of tissue ingrowth in the aneurysmal sac is crucial to understanding the progression of treatment and predicting the risk of rupture. In this study, we propose an AI-based pipeline to automatically segment and quantify ingrown tissue using a UNET-style deep learning model. We identify the boundary of the aneurysmal sac using the model and then apply subsequent processing steps to calculate the percentage of ingrown tissue. Our model achieved a high accuracy of 0.96±0.01 in identifying and predicting the boundaries of the aneurysmal sacs based on our experiments with 64 images. Future work will focus on further refining the model for improved performance and exploring its application to predict the risk of aneurysm rupture based on tissue ingrowth patterns. By integrating our pipeline with clinical data, we aim to provide valuable insight into the progression of aneurysm treatment and improve patient safety.

Competing stimulus assessments are one technology that aids in the development of treatment for automatically reinforced behavior. However, competing stimulus assessments do not always yield robust results. Stereotypic behaviors of different subtypes may require procedural modifications to successfully identify competing stimuli. The current investigation included functional analyses to determine whether participant responding aligned with proposed subtypes for such behaviors. Next, we implemented augmented competing‐stimulus‐assessment (A‐CSA) procedures across target and generalization stimuli to determine whether (a) responding across either subtype was more likely to require intensive modifications and (b) the A‐CSA procedures promoted generalized target behavior reduction within stimulus classes. Lastly, a treatment evaluation was conducted to determine the durability of these findings and the generalization of the reduced target behavior to other settings. The general applicability of the subtyping model remains unclear, but two participants demonstrated maintenance of competition effects.

The field of digital therapeutics (DTx), software programs that prevent, manage, and treat medical conditions, continues to grow. DTx offers new treatment options and has the potential to close gaps in care caused by unmet patient needs, provider shortages, or socioeconomic or geographical disparities. However, the field of DTx has not seen steady adoption owing to barriers, particularly related to coverage, payer acceptance of the category, provider use, and integration within existing health care delivery tools. One challenge for payers to effectively evaluate and cover DTx products is ensuring that consistent data elements are listed for these products in traditional drug compendia databases. Managed care organizations will need similar information about DTx product features as are available for traditional medications to inform coverage and reimbursement decisions. The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy DTx Advisory Group developed and distributed a request for information to the 5 top drug compendia companies to assess how compendia products incorporate DTx and prescription DTx. This article summarizes how DTx are listed within different compendia products and offers insights on future data needs to adequately inform payers. As the DTx sector grows and consumer demand rises, compendia listing services will need to evolve to accommodate these new therapies and treatment modalities and facilitate patient access and efficient claims processing. Recommendations for how compendia companies can support managed care in these efforts are outlined.

ABSTRACT Equivalence classes are typically established using match to sample (MTS) procedures with single stimuli serving as samples and comparisons. In a recent study, however, equivalence classes were established with samples and comparisons consisting of compound stimuli (i.e., pairs of abstract symbols). One potential problem using compound stimuli during equivalence class formation, however, is that one element may overshadow the other, thereby disrupting class formation. To address this, the current study used two different compound configurations for incorrect (negative) comparisons during MTS. One group of participants was exposed to negative comparison compounds containing stimuli from only one class (referred to as Type 1 trials) while the other group was exposed to negative comparison compounds containing stimuli from both classes (Type 2 trials) along with Type 1 trials. Class formation was assessed with a test block containing single-element-to-single-element, single-element-to-compound, compound-to-single element, and compound-to-compound derived relations trials. A card sorting test with single elements was also conducted. Results showed that class formation was high and equally likely for both groups; therefore, overshadowing did not occur for either group. Thus, Type 2 trials may be unnecessary during class formation with compound stimuli, and their omission would likely increase efficiency of instruction.

ABSTRACT In a recent study, Gallant et al. (2021) found that both match-to-sample (MTS) and the stimulus-pairing yes/no procedure (SPYN) resulted in a high likelihood of equivalence class formation. Due to this ceiling effect, however, any potential differential effects of the SPYN and MTS trial formats could not be identified. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of MTS and SPYN using procedures that were less likely to result in class formation. A pretest-train-posttest sequence was used. During the pretest and posttest, both MTS and SPYN trials were used to assess all trained and derived relations. Class members consisted of abstract visual stimuli. We also assessed the degree to which class-consistent responding would generalize to a card sorting task. During training of baseline relations, half of the participants were exposed only to MTS or only SPYN trials. Posttest results showed that the trial format used to train the baseline relations had no differential effects on class formation; however, participants exposed to MTS training mastered the baseline relations in fewer trials and required less time than those in the SPYN group. Implications of these results and suggestions for future studies are discussed.