Five adolescents with autism, 5 adult control participants, and 4 child controls received rewards for varying their sequences of responses while playing a computer game. In preceding and following phases, rewards were provided at approximately the same rate but were independent of variability. The most important finding was that, when reinforced, variability increased significantly in all groups. Reinforced variability could provide the necessary behavioral substrate for individuals with autism to learn new responses.

We examined college students' procrastination when studying for weekly in-class quizzes. Two schedules of online practice quiz delivery were compared using a multiple baseline design. When online study material was made available noncontingently, students usually procrastinated. When access to additional study material was contingent on completing previous study material, studying was more evenly distributed. Overall, the mean gain in percentage correct scores on weekly in-class quizzes relative to pretests was greater during contingent access than during noncontingent access conditions.

Institutions such as universities are responsible for a significant amount of recyclable material entering landfills. This problem could be addressed in part by increasing the percentage of waste recycled by consumers on campuses. Building on previous research, we evaluated the effects of bin proximity and visual prompts on rates of recycling within a university building. The total weight of recyclable materials (aluminum, plastic, and paper) placed into the building's garbage and recycling bins was measured each day, and a reversal design was employed in which the environmental arrangement of the recycling bins was systematically manipulated. Both interventions produced a decrease in the amount of recyclable material being thrown in the trash cans, with visual prompts plus bin proximity being slightly more effective than bin proximity alone. However, neither intervention produced large increases in recycling. Interpretations of these findings and suggestions for future researchers are discussed.

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Many children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders have difficulty making appropriate eye contact and engaging in joint attention. The current study evaluated a computer-assisted instruction package (pairing visual stimuli with vocal stimuli) as a novel treatment to improve the eye gaze accuracy in 3 elementary school children with autism. The researchers measured the latency from a recorded verbal stimulus to the students making eye contact with pictures of familiar individuals displayed on a computer screen, and the duration for which eye gaze on the stimulus was main-tained. An automated infrared camera system for measuring eye gaze was utilized that eliminated the need for an instructor to make subjective judgments regarding participants' eye gaze. For all three participants, duration of eye contact increased, and latency to responding decreased following exposure to the computer-assisted instruction. The implications of these findings for the treatment of individuals with autism are discussed, along with suggestions for future research on the topic.