Browsing by Author "Stevens, M."

In recent years the environmental legislation has been working towards a common goal, namely to reduce VOC emission in all branches of industry. The paint industry also has to make its contributions and is focussing on more environmentally friendly coatings likes of water-borne systems and high solid paints. Profound, comparative research has already been performed in this field, still- the physical characteristics of the new coatings remain a debatable topic. In order to assess the penetration of several water-borne primers into wood, a combination of qualitative and semi-quantitative methods is applied. The used techniques are based on fluorescence microscopy and compare the penetration of several low VOC coatings with the penetrating ability of traditional solvent-borne systems.

We evaluated a set of instructional procedures for teaching two nonverbal boys with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to request the continuation of toy play using an iPad®-based speech-generating device (SGD). The effects of the instructional procedures were evaluated in a multiple baseline across participants design. Instruction focused on teaching the boys to select a TOY PLAY symbol from the iPad® screen when their toy play was briefly interrupted. The instructional procedures included behavior chain interruption, time delay, graduated guidance, and differential reinforcement. Results showed that both boys learned to use the SGD to request and maintained this skill without prompting. SGD-based requesting also generalized to other objects/activities. Acquisition of SGD-based requesting was associated with decreases in reaching and aggressive behavior. Results suggest that systematic instruction with the iPad®-based SGD effectively replaced reaching and aggression with socially acceptable communication.