I am most interested in research that involves explicit manipulation of independent variables (i.e., is experimental), seeks direct, reliable and quantitative measures of behaviour, utilizes small-N research designs, involves non-parametric statistical analyses, and explains phenomena in terms of variables that exist outside of the participant. Most of my current research is concerned with discrimination and stimulus-equivalence learning in children with developmental/intellectual disabilities and animals. The specific area on which I have focused has been learning and performance in procedures known as conditional discriminations. Matching-to-sample (MTS) tasks are a subset of these procedures and they feature prominently in the interventions provided to children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) because they teach the rudimentary skills that are important for communication. The overall aim of this research is to understand the mechanisms underlying variables that affect performance of MTS tasks. Some of the papers I write are empirical reports and some are conceptual, including a paper advancing a new quantitative model of performance measures in MTS tasks. More generally, I am interested in research that aims to improve techniques for teaching verbal behaviour to children with an ASD, and enhancing the efficiency of Early Intensive Behavioural Intervention for this population. I have also maintained my interest in research investigating odor-detection tasks performed by animals, and enjoy finding new applications for Applied Behaviour Analysis
