Five adolescents with moderate to severe mental retardation, including one with hearing impairments and blindness, were taught 12 associated work skills through an approach featuring reinforcement for desirable behavior and negative consequences and cueing for undesirable behavior. (CL)

Functional behavioral assessments (FBAs) were used to develop and implement behavior support plans for three middle school students who were not successful under a check-in, check-out system. Following implementation of function-based support, each participant demonstrated both reduced level of problem behavior and reduced variability in problem…

The study examining the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioral training program with 30 behaviorally disordered adolescents found participating students exhibited fewer aggressive behaviors and demonstrated greater self-control than nonparticipating students. The addition of an incentive for implementing the training strategies did not appear to…

Two functional communication training (FCT) conditions were compared to treat behavior problems of a child with mental retardation. The child was taught to emit a single FCT response to obtain one of six items or multiple FCT responses that specified the exact item. Only the FCT-multiple conditions reduced problem behavior. (Contains four…

Effective management of disruptive behaviors in schools is a national concern. While substantial resources are often allocated toward individual students who exhibit challenging behavior, less emphasis is placed on preventative interventions in common areas such as hallways, cafeterias and playgrounds. The purpose of this study was to determine…

Investigated in a longitudinal study were the variables affecting the efficacy of a token economy used with 16 institutionalized severely and profoundly mentally retarded males (16-24 years old) exhibiting disruptive behaviors. (Author/CL)

The effectiveness of a procedure for systematically analyzing and intervening with oral reading was investigated with three learning disabled children (10 to 11 years old). Correct and error responses in oral reading were recorded during baseline and experimental conditions (which included contingent teacher praise and antecedent modeling on words…

Nine preconstructed programs applying the principles and techniques of programed instruction to the procedures of articulation modification were analyzed. (Author/IM)

Potential hazards and dangers of using the token economy approach to behavior change with head injured individuals are identified and it is suggested that the injured person's active awareness of reinforcement contingencies may sometimes be deleterious. (DB)

The paper discusses efforts to reduce maladaptive behaviors in retarded persons including seven desirable characteristics of behavioral change agents, programmatic factors contributing to failure (such as a reactive rather than active intervention model), appropriate use of reinforcement, reasons clients misbehave, and research based suggestions…

Seventy mentally retarded students, successfully taught to conserve number and substance in the Piagetian sense, resisted attempts at extinction but were unable to generalize to other conservation tasks. (Author)

The effects of reinforcement choice on task performance were examined with six individuals (ages 6-39) who had been diagnosed with severe to profound mental retardation. Findings indicated that access to choice did not improve the task performance of the subjects when highly preferred items were already incorporated into instructional programs.…

Three experiments involving three adults with profound mental retardation whose self-injurious behavior (SIB) was maintained by automatic reinforcement, examined interactions between stereotypic SIB and the manipulation of objects that appeared to provide substitutable sources of reinforcement. Attempts to reduce SIB using the preferred objects as…

Concerns about noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) are illustrated in a case study of a 13-year-old girl with severe mental retardation who was demonstrating severe aggression. Her NCR treatment produced an extinction burst and incidental reinforcement. A brief omission contingency was added to the reinforcement schedule, which resulted in decreased…