A Parametric Single-Case Analysis and Social Validation of the High-Probability Request Sequence

Noncompliance with adult instruction is a common problem exhibited by individuals diagnosed with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The high-probability (high-p) request sequence was designed to increase compliance with low-probability (low-p) instructions by rapidly presenting high-p instructions immediately prior to the targeted low-p instruction. This study evaluated the use of three different levels of the high-p request sequence (i.e., one instruction, three instructions, and six instructions) to increase the compliance of five children who were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Results indicated that all three levels of the high-p request sequence were often successful in increasing compliance with low-p instructions; however, when given the opportunity to choose, participants and caregivers (i.e., mothers and therapists) tended to prefer the high-p request sequence with three instructions.

The Use of Social Media

This chapter provides the readers with an overview of the use of social media technologies and how the media is applied in adult teaching and learning environment. It examines the current educational purpose of using social media based on a review of scholarly publications. The aim is to keep up-to-date changes in social media, and to better understand the paradigm shift, including the trends and issues pertinent to the application of social media in adult learning. The chapter reviews the literature on the benefit of using social media and provides strategies and guidelines for adult instruction using social media. The chapter discusses some challenges facing social media use in adult teaching and learning. The idea is to help the reader determine if social media is a valuable tool to improve learning and develop better instructional strategies for engaging students and stimulating academic dialogue using social media.

Trends in adult complementary education in the modern digital space

The paper examines the application of different methods and approaches in teaching adults a foreign language as part of additional education. The authors of the article aim to identify modern trends in the development of additional adult education, ensuring the creation of an optimal educational environment for successful adult instruction in a foreign language. This paper examines the social and psychological characteristics of adult learners. Emphasis is placed on the superiority of active training methods using information and communication technologies. It is concluded that for the most effective realization of the educational potential of a foreign language by adult students in the conditions of additional education, it is necessary for the teacher to combine pedagogical and anagogical models of education using digital technologies.

A Naturalistic Behavioral Intervention to Increase Interaction between Siblings with and without Autism

Research suggests that including typically developing siblings in interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be beneficial. However, studies have predominantly involved only participants with mild symptoms of ASD and have not also reported outcomes for the typically developing sibling. The purpose of this study was to address these gaps by replicating and extending an intervention package consisting of structured, interest-based play activities, adult instruction and modeling, and response to child questions. A reversal design across two sibling dyads was used to demonstrate the effects of the intervention on the social interaction behaviors of the child with ASD and typically developing sibling. Social interaction increased for both sibling dyads, results generalized for one dyad, and multiple measures indicated a high level of social validity. Recommendations for practitioners and caregivers working with children with ASD and potential areas of future research are discussed.

The Use of Social Media

This chapter provides the readers with an overview of the use of social media technologies and how the media is applied in adult teaching and learning environment. It examines the current educational purpose of using social media based on a review of scholarly publications. The aim is to keep up-to-date changes in social media, and to better understand the paradigm shift, including the trends and issues pertinent to the application of social media in adult learning. The chapter reviews the literature on the benefit of using social media and provides strategies and guidelines for adult instruction using social media. The chapter discusses some challenges facing social media use in adult teaching and learning. The idea is to help the reader determine if social media is a valuable tool to improve learning and develop better instructional strategies for engaging students and stimulating academic dialogue using social media.

Theories and Practice of Humor for Adult Instruction

This chapter is designed around the research questions: 1) What are the most plausible theories behind why we laugh, and 2) How can the theories help to enhance the learning environment. The author utilized a meta-synthesis for the research component, which is a scientific approach to selecting, appraising, and summarizing empirical qualitative studies on a specific topic and systematically analyzing the data to cross-check the evidence for repeating themes. In other words, “to steal from one is plagiarism, but to steal from many is research.” While there are a multiplicity of theories on why people laugh, this chapter only discusses the main concepts: relief theory, superiority theory, incongruity theory, entropy, and the benign violation theory. If you know why people laugh, you can use this information to transform your leadership, improve your teaching, and build relationships. Consequently, for a teacher of adult students, once you get people laughing, you can teach them anything. Laughing students become engaged students and learning students. (Drop the mic.)

Computer-Based Perceptual Training as a Major Component of Adult Instruction in a Foreign Language

Millions of adult learners have acquired good-to-excellent literacy in English, but most of them continue to have difficulty with oral communication in that language. The more obvious their problem is with pronunciation, which varies from just noticeably “foreign” to very difficult to understand, the less apparent, but possibly fundamental to their overall skill level in English, is their difficulty in recognizing spoken sounds, words, and phrases of that language. Contemporary research has shown that adults are capable of learning to perceive a new language quite accurately, through systematic training. Perceptual skills acquired through such training are likely to contribute to continuing improvement in pronunciation and to an increasing vocabulary. Such a training program is described in this chapter, the Speech Perception Assessment and Training Program for ESL (SPATS-ESL). After 20-30 hours of training with this program, most ESL students are shown to achieve near-native recognition of the sounds of English and of words in sentences spoken at normal conversational rates.