Hiselgis Perez received her A.A. with honors and distinction from Miami-Dade Community College in 1992. A year later she became a Certified Behavior Analyst in the State of Florida, and in 1994 she received a B.S., Summa Cum Laude, in psychology from Florida International University.
In her description of her doctoral program, Perez wrote:
I am currently investigating several topics in child psychology from a behavior analytic perspective. My Master’s thesis, The Nature of Attention and its Reinforcer Efficacy for Infant Behavior, uses an alternating-treatments design to compare the relative efficacy of visual, tactile and auditory social stimulation as reinforcers for infant behavior. The speed of learning, measured in terms of trials to criterion and increases in the infants’ behavior rate, served as indices of stimulus efficacy. Another project, Social versus Non-social Sensory Stimuli as Reinforcers for Infant Behavior, compares visual, tactile and auditory social stimuli with visual, tactile and auditory non-social stimuli as reinforcers for infant behavior. Next, Conjugate versus discrete Social Reinforcers: A Comparative Analysis compares the relative reinforcer efficacy of discrete tactile and auditory social stimulation (administered at a fixed duration and intensity) versus “conjugate” tactile and auditory social stimuli (whose duration and intensity are proportional to the response the are reinforcing). Finally, The Effects of Previous Learning on the Efficacy of Novel Reinforcers explores the effects of previous conditioning on subsequent acquisition of behavior and on the efficacy of novel reinforcers.
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