Research has shown that different maladaptive behavior categories may be maintained by different contingencies. We examined whether behavior categories or behavior topographies determine functional properties. The "Questions about Behavioral Function" with its five subscales ("Attention", "Escape", "Nonsocial", "Physical", and "Tangible") was…

Background: The prevalence, phenomenology aetiology and correlates of four forms of challenging behaviour in 32 children and adults with Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS) were investigated. Methods: Cognitive assessments, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to gather data on intellectual disability, verbal and physical aggression,…

This report summarizes the evolution of family intervention procedures and considers some of the primary assumptions made within the social learning framework about the determinants of agression and the determinants of behavior change within the family system. (Author/RK)

This paper reviews three studies which illustrate the use of two different techniques of behavior modification to control aggression in preschool children in classroom situations. The first technique demonstrated the use of "time-out" as a mild punishment procedure. The teacher changed events following aggression by briefly removing the child from…

Recognizing that punishment for aggression often is noneffective or inadvertently reinforces the aggressive act, the authors discuss an alternative approach and provide an explanation of the exchange theory of aggression. Three classroom experiments, operated with children chosen as the most severe behavior problems in a local school system, are…

Written in the form of programmed instruction, this book is designed to help parents and teachers understand and correct situations in which a child's behavior is distressing. The book utilizes the social learning approach (that people learn most behavior patterns from other people). The first section discusses how parents and children learn and…

Aggression, tantrums, and self-injury can function as escape behaviors, allowing children to terminate aversive demand (teaching) situations. In one group of six psychotic children, these behaviors were frequent in demand situations, and rare in nondemand situations. Further, when stimuli correlated with the termination of demands were presented,…

Four developmentally disabled children (ages 3-5) identified as noncompliant received a standard set of adult requests under three conditions: no reinforcement, noncontingent reinforcement, and reinforcement contingent on compliance. Among results was that the contingent reinforcement procedure produced covariation in all subjects' compliance and…

Results of an experiment with preschoolers and adolescents indicated that aggression by females toward females was relatively stable over age, while aggression by males toward other males increased markedly. The implication of findings for reinforcement explanations of sex differences in aggression are discussed. (Author/SB)

Sex differences in antisocial behavior in 20 elementary school children were explored by using two constructs: need for achievement and need for social approval. It was hypothesized that sex differences would appear only under certain conditions. For boys, more antisocial behavior would occur when the need for achievement was frustrated, while for…