IN AN ATTEMPT TO MODIFY OR SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCE UNDESIRABLE BEHAVIOR IN NURSERY SCHOOL CHILDREN, A TEACHING TECHNIQUE WAS INTRODUCED WHEREIN THE TEACHER WOULD ATTEND TO THE CHILD ONLY WHEN THE CHILD WAS MANIFESTING ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR AND WOULD IGNORE THE CHILD WHEN HE WAS MANIFESTING UNDESIRABLE BEHAVIOR. IT WOULD THEN BE POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE…

Four selected subtests from the WISC, Arithmetic, Digit Span, Picture Arrangement and Block Design, were administered to 111 pupils in the third and fourth grades at Florida State University Elementary School. Social reinforcers, i.e., verbal approval and disapproval, were systematically presented to the examinees after specified items and between…

Use of a tangible reinforcer plus social reinforcement was found to be more effective in training a 33-year-old male with profound mental retardation to brush his teeth than social reinforcement alone. Determination of true positive reinforcers and training staff members to carry out such treatment programs are also discussed. (Author/VW)

Five children with autism and mental retardation learned to discriminate objects in response to spoken names or to match amounts to numbers with a combined blocking procedure. The procedure involved presenting the same spoken word until 10 consecutive correct responses occurred and keeping the left-right location of objects constant. (Contains…

Psychology students frequently have misconceptions of basic concepts in operant conditioning. Prior classroom observations revealed that most students defined positive reinforcement as reward and equated negative reinforcement and punishment. Students also labeled positive reinforcement as rewarding good behavior and negative reinforcement as…

Michael (1975) reviewed efforts to classify reinforcing events in terms of whether stimuli are added (positive reinforcement) or removed (negative reinforcement). He concluded that distinctions in these terms are confusing and ambiguous. Of necessity, adding a stimulus requires its previous absence and removing a stimulus its previous presence.…

Four treatment procedures were evaluated for effectiveness in reducing self injurious behavior (SIB) of 22 severely handicapped students. Treatment procedures included contingent restraint, reinforcement withdrawal, differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior, and ommission training (rewarding the S for not emitting the SIB response).…

Reported are five studies related to the effects of a token reinforcement system based upon principles of operant conditioning on academic performance of trainable mentally retarded (TMR) children, conducted over a 9-month period in an entire school for TMR students. Study 1 investigated the effects of a school-wide reinforcement program on…

Two severely retarded adults were successfully trained (using modeling and programed cons equation) to use either the article-noun sequence or only the noun when describing pictorial stimuli. (DB)

The author urges wider use of positive reinforcement theories in helping emotionally disturbed and mentally handicapped children. Underlining the influence of environment on behavior, he also notes that behavior modification programs utilize fewer trained personnel more effectively and, like Tennessee's Re-Education Treatment, allow for therapy in…

A base rate of deviant behavior was obtained for the eight most disruptive children in a third grade adjustment class. In a token reinforcement program, the children received teacher's ratings, which were exchangeable for reinforcers such as candy and trinkets. With the introduction of the token reinforcement program, an abrupt reduction in…