Addressing the surge in mental health and social and emotional needs of students and staff will be critical in the upcoming years. The increased understanding of the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trauma, and their negative effects on the social, emotional, and academic success of students, has propelled a growing number of…

Beginning with the 2015-2016 school year, the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) partnered with the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) and Marshall University to conduct a five-year study of the quality of the West Virginia Universal Pre-K (WV Pre-K) program. The study was designed to examine the effectiveness of the…

Check-in/check-out (CICO) is a resource-efficient, mentor-based, Tier 2 intervention. Various problem behaviors of students with and without disabilities across traditional and alternative school settings have been impacted positively by CICO. Not all students respond to the traditional, five-step approach, however. This article provides an…

There is a growing body of opinion that we should view autism as fractionable into different, largely independent sets of clinical features. The alternative view is that autism is a coherent syndrome in which principal features of the disorder stand in intimate developmental relationship with each other. Studies of congenitally blind children…

The effectiveness of four antecedent treatments for rumination was compared for two individuals with autism, severe intellectual disabilities and long histories (at least 20 years) of rumination. Comparisons of increased meal size, supplemental feedings, fixed-time provision of peanut butter, and liquid rescheduling found liquid rescheduling to be…

The Communities In Schools (CIS) Model of Integrated Student Supports aims to reduce dropout rates by providing students with integrated and tiered support services based on their levels of need. The model includes preventive services that are available to all students (Level 1 services) as well as intensive, targeted, and sustained services…

The purpose of this article is to describe the practice-based coaching model used in BEST in CLASS, a Tier-2 classroom-based intervention comprised of evidence-based instructional practices designed to prevent and ameliorate the chronic problem behaviors of young children at risk for the development of emotional/behavioral disorders. Following a…

Positive behavior support (PBS) emerged in the mid-1980s as an approach for understanding and addressing problem behaviors. PBS was derived primarily from applied behavior analysis (ABA). Over time, however, PBS research and practice has incorporated evaluative methods, assessment and intervention procedures, and conceptual perspectives associated…

This article describes the journey toward evidence-based transport and implementation in usual care settings of Multisystemic Therapy (MST) for youth with drug abuse and behavioral problems (Henggeler, Schoenwald, Borduin, Rowland, & Cunningham, 1998). Research and experience informing the design of the MST transport strategy, progress in…

The Formal Elements Art Therapy Scale (FEATS) is a measurement system for applying numbers to global variables in two-dimensional art (drawing and painting). While it was originally developed for use with the single-picture assessment ("Draw a person picking an apple from a tree" [PPAT]), researchers can also apply many of the 14 scales of the…

Intended to be an instructive, yet sobering, introduction to the complex and disturbing nature of the juvenile justice system, this article details the "numbers," including selected percentages, ratios, and dollar amounts, that are relevant to developing a better understanding of the juvenile justice system. General statistics about juvenile and…

Sensitivity theory attempts to account for the variability often observed in challenging behavior by recourse to the "aberrant motivation" of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In this article, we suggest that a functional analysis based on environmental (challenging environments) and biological (challenging needs) motivating…

"Science Briefs" summarize the findings and implications of a recent study in basic science or clinical research. This Brief summarizes the findings and implications of "Exposure to Repetitive versus Varied Stress during Prenatal Development Generates Two Distinct Enxiogenic and Veuroendocrine Profiles in Adulthood" (H. N. Richardson; E. P.…

This paper provides an overview of current trends in the mental health problems of Australia's youth and adolescents. It presents information derived from the most recent and comprehensive Australian surveys of youth mental health, and provides international comparisons and views from professional practice where relevant. An update of trends for…

A model of conditional discrimination performance (Davison & Nevin, 1999) is combined with the notion that unmeasured attending to the sample and comparison stimuli, in the steady state and during disruption, depends on reinforcement in the same way as predicted for overt free-operant responding by behavioral momentum theory (Nevin & Grace, 2000).…