The goal of educators is to prepare students to live independent, productive lives. This objective is accomplished by helping students acquire the requisite skills to function independently. Most youths develop an aptitude to make wise behavioral choices by observing the individuals with whom they interact. Unfortunately, students with emotional…

Advantages and disadvantages of environment-focused methods (such as operant and parent training techniques) and of person-focused approaches (such as social skills training) with aggressive children are examined. A synthesis of the two approaches is urged. (Author/CL)

Traditional behavioral strategies used with adolescents with behavior disorders are reviewed and nontraditional approaches incorporating behavioral and cognitive psychology into social skills training and anger control training are described. (CL)

Background: Relatively little is known about the genetic architecture of childhood behavioral disorders in very young children. Method: In this study, parents completed the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment, a questionnaire that assesses symptoms of childhood disorders, as well as socio-emotional competencies, for 822 twin pairs…

The Corner Method, in which students must interact in such a way that the logical consequences of their actions force them to seek more socially useful behaviors, resulted in an increase in socially productive behaviors among eight behavior disordered students (10-12 years old). (CL)

Objective: Background: Children with velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS), a contiguous deletion syndrome, have an increased prevalence of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Method: The authors compared youth with VCFS+ADHD (from the SUNY Upstate VCFS Research Program) to those with ADHD but not VCFS (from the Massachusetts General…

The paper describes for elementary and secondary teachers a planned, direct, and systematic way of teaching prosocial behaviors to behaviorally disordered students. The assessment process involves a pre-teaching assessment in which students and specific instructional skills are selected and a post-teaching assessment phase which includes…

An 18-year-old youth placed in a residential state mental health facility because of social skills deficits participated in treatment over a 48-day period in which the student was observed in four settings. Results suggest that the skills taught--greetings and thanking behavior--were maintained and generalized to three natural settings. (Author/CL)

Differences between pervasive (home and day-care/school) versus non-pervasive (home only) conduct problems were examined in regard to various child, parent/family, and day-care/school characteristics in an outpatient clinic sample of 120 children aged 4-8 years. All children scored above the 90th percentile on the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) experience difficulty in the educational environment at two levels: behaviorally and academically. Behavioral and academic problems in students with EBD are reciprocal in nature. Behavioral problems may cause a disruption in academic engagement, including a student's attending to instruction,…

The Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD), a multistage screening system designed to identify elementary school--age children at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders, was evaluated for use with middle and junior high school students. During SSBD Stage 1, teachers identified 123 students in grades 6 through 9 with…

A teacher of behaviorally disordered children notes the unease which members of her profession feel towards therapy and urges that principles of psychotherapy be reexamined for possible incorporation into instruction. Four premises are addressed: (1) that excluding counseling and psychotherapeutic interventions limits the helping role of teachers;…

The factors that place children with Asperger syndrome at risk for comorbid psychiatric symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, remain poorly understood. We investigated the possibility that the children's emotional and behavioral difficulties are associated with social information and attribution processing. Participants were children with…

We conducted three studies which examined the performance vs. skill acquisition model of social skills deficits. In Study 1, baseline social behaviors for a random sample of 12 boys with comorbid emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), learning disabilities (LD), language delays, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) revealed that…

Objective: There is a dearth of cross-cultural research on hyperactivity. This article aims to quantify the prevalence of hyperactivity in schoolboys residing in an Arab/Islamic country, Oman. Method: 1,502 Omani schoolboys from eight randomly selected schools representing the urban population of Oman were screened for various indices of…