Widely recognized as a gold-standard resource, this authoritative book has been revised and expanded with 50% new material. It provides a complete introduction to functional behavioral assessment (FBA), complete with procedures, forms, and tools that have been piloted and refined in both general and special education settings. Numerous vivid…

This Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) guidance report is designed to support senior leaders in primary and secondary schools to make better-informed decisions about their behaviour strategies. It includes a number of practical examples of programmes and approaches that should be helpful in schools and classrooms where behaviour is generally…

Differential reinforcement of low rates of responding was used to reduce the disruptive behaviors of a blind 12-year-old boy with a learning disability. The subject earned reinforcers by not exceeding the established criterion of disruptive behaviors. An overall 88 percent reduction in target behaviors was observed across a 26-day period.…

This study examined whether problem behaviors of three adults with profound mental retardation, which had been maintained by continuous reinforcement schedules, could be extinguished more rapidly than those maintained on an intermittent schedule of reinforcement. No significant differences in extinction rate were found between the two conditions.…

In this study with three children (ages four and five) with severe developmental disabilities and aberrant behavior maintained by tangible positive reinforcement, noncontingent reinforcement, and differential reinforcement of alternative behavior were found to decrease the frequency of aberrant behavior while strengthening mands. (Author/DB)

Functional assessment is redefining the standards for clinical interventions with problem behavior and reemphasizing the importance of basic behavioral mechanisms. It has shown the importance of complex patterns of behavioral control, functional assessment as an ongoing process, and the importance of attention to antecedent variables. Future…

A review of the January 1993 issue of the "Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior" concludes that behavioral interventions produce collateral effects, but predicting those effects in applied work is complicated because of verbal and instructional influences and because of interactions among reinforcer types. (JDD)

This paper argues that behavior analysis is not technological to a fault, but rather has a faulty technology by being incomplete. The paper examines reinforcers and punishers that result from the outcomes of either (1) striving for better experimental control, or (2) inventing theories to explain why current control is imperfect. (JDD)

Seven parents conducted assessments in an outpatient clinic using a prescribed hierarchy of antecedent and consequence treatment components for their children's problem behavior. Brief assessment of potential treatment components identified variables controlling children's appropriate behavior. Experimental control was achieved for six of the…

This commentary summarizes methodological and conceptual issues in functional analysis methodologies and offers some suggestions for their resolution. Considered are increasing complexity, absence of contingencies during assessment, use of subtle manipulations, alternative assessment strategies, analysis of antecedent influences on behavior,…

Thirty-four staff providing services to people with intellectual disabilities completed the Challenging Behaviour Attribution Scale with respect to a specific client before, during, and after completing a course in assessment and intervention for challenging behavior. Significantly more staff attributed challenging behavior to negative…

A brief functional analysis indicated that the object mouthing of a young girl diagnosed with autism was maintained independent of social consequences. Separate and combined effects of response blocking and non-contingent reinforcement were then evaluated as treatments. Although both interventions were unsuccessful when implemented separately,…

Individuals (n=55) with mild to moderate mental retardation rated the acceptability of differential reinforcement and time-out. Community-based subjects and institutionalized subjects differed in their ratings depending on the severity of the problem. (DB)

This replication study found that only 16 of 55 raters agreed on the category of reinforcement maintaining a disabled individual's self-injurious behavior after using the Motivation Assessment Scale. Additionally, only 15 percent of the correlation coefficients obtained were above 80 percent, and none of the reliability scores was above 80…

This study examined the effects of methylphenidate drug therapy and differential reinforcement on the disruptive behavior and task engagement of 3 children (ages 6 through 11) with mental retardation. Results indicated that both interventions were effective for two of the children. No evidence of an additive or synergistic effects of the two…