Empowering Families was focused on infusing the Providence Public School District (PPSD) elementary schools with an intervention centered on the Mind in the Making (MITM) training, designed to build the capacity of families, teachers, and schools to understand how children's executive function impacts social-emotional and cognitive growth. Data…

Bullying in schools has escalated far beyond childhood teasing. In recent years, torture, murder, and suicide have been associated with bullying (van der Kolk, Weisaeth, & McFarlane, 2007). While bullying is unacceptable behavior in any school, it is particularly problematic in Catholic schools, which must embody Gospel values. Catholic…

The research sites were "Blitar, Malang" and "Batu" in East Java Province, Indonesia since those areas are regarded to have problems of environmental crises. In the data collection, this study made use of four methods, namely: a) observation, b) In-depth Interviews, c) documentation, and d) focus group discussion. The results…

A single-subject multiple baseline design across four teacher-student dyads was used to investigate possible functional relationships between the independent variable of coaching and electronic performance feedback and dependent variables of teacher behaviors (BSP, general praise, OTR, reprimand) and student disruptive behavior. Subjects were four…

With recent advances in the behavioral treatment of depression and growing dissatisfaction with medical and cognitive interventions, a resurgence of interest in behavior analytic treatment of depression has occurred. Currently, several behavioral and cognitive behavioral models of depression exist. In reviewing these models, certain agreed upon…

The current study examined the variables that influence postreinforcement pause (PRP) duration in rats when wheel running serves as the reinforcing consequence. The relationship between revolutions and PRP duration when revolutions were manipulated within a session and the effect of changing the response requirement from fixed to variable on PRP…

This study evaluated an intervention package combining simple and conditional discrimination training and specific reinforcement for each stimulus class in teaching reading of simple words to individuals with intellectual disabilities. In conditional discrimination training, participants matched printed words and pictures to the recorded sounds…

This study evaluated a process for training raters to reliably rate clinicians delivering the Adolescent Community Reinforcement Approach (A-CRA) in a national dissemination project. The unique A-CRA coding system uses specific behavioral anchors throughout its 73 procedure components. Five randomly selected raters each rated "passing"…

An important aspect of goal-directed action selection is differentiating between actions that are more or less likely to be reinforced. With repeated performance or psychostimulant exposure, however, actions can assume stimulus-elicited--or "habitual"--qualities that are resistant to change. We show that selective knockdown of prelimbic…

Rett syndrome (RTT) is associated with a range of serious neurodevelopmental consequences including severe communicative impairments. Currently, no evidence-based communication interventions exist for the population (Sigafoos et al., 2009). The purpose of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of functional assessment (FA) and…

Behavioral flexibility is vital for survival in an environment of changing contingencies. The nucleus accumbens may play an important role in behavioral flexibility, representing learned stimulus-reward associations in neural activity during response selection and learning from results. To investigate the role of nucleus accumbens neural activity…

Learning complex skills is driven by reinforcement, which facilitates both online within-session gains and retention of the acquired skills. Yet, in ecologically relevant situations, skills are often acquired when mapping between actions and rewarding outcomes is unknown to the learning agent, resulting in reinforcement schedules of a stochastic…

This article provides a view of school bullying as a group phenomenon and practical implications stemming from this approach. The motivation for bullying perpetration often relates to one's social standing in the group. Peer bystanders are typically present when bullying takes place, often providing the perpetrators with social rewards. The…

Young children with autism often experience limited social motivation and responsiveness that restricts establishment of crucial social momentum. These characteristics can lead to decreased opportunities for parental engagement and the social learning associated with these moments. Early social interventions that capitalize on pre-existing…

Background: Several researchers have reduced engagement in stereotypy in individuals with intellectual disability and deafblindness using interventions containing a punishment component. The purpose of our study was to examine whether we could produce reductions in stereotypy in an individual with Cornelia de Lange syndrome and deafblindness by…