During early childhood, economically disadvantaged children can experience challenges that affect their social-emotional, language, and physical health development across the lifespan. Psychologists have tested several interventions to address developmental problems during early childhood, but information about the degree to which economically…

Adverse parenting practices, including child maltreatment, interfere with children's adjustment and life outcomes. In this article, Ronald Prinz describes the Triple P--Positive Parenting Program, designed to improve parenting population-wide. Prinz offers four main reasons to take a population approach. First, official records grossly…

The capacity for a parent to self-regulate their own performance is argued to be a fundamental process underpinning the maintenance of positive, nurturing, non-abusive parenting practices that promote good developmental and health outcomes in children. Deficits in self-regulatory capacity, which have their origins in early childhood, are common in…

The number of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) diagnoses is increasing rapidly, indicating a need for multi-faceted interventions. The addition of a parent training component to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has been effectively used to treat a variety of psychological disorders in children to support generalization of skills…

The use of applied behavior analysis (ABA) to treat persons with autism goes back several decades. Many specific target behaviors and intervention strategies have been developed. In the last two decades the most heavily studied of these methods has been Early Intensive Behavioral Interventions (EIBI). This package of ABA methods is unique in two…

Evidence-based interventions are often unavailable in everyday clinical settings. This may partly reflect practitioners' assumptions that research evidence does not reflect "real-world" conditions. To examine this further, we systematically assessed the clinical effectiveness of parent management training (PMT) for the treatment of child…

We used behavioral skills training to teach parents of 3 children with autism spectrum disorder and food selectivity to conduct a home-based treatment package that consisted of taste exposure, escape extinction, and fading. Parent performance following training improved during both taste sessions and probe meals and was reflected in increases in…

The study reported in this paper examined the effects of "First Step to Success (First Step)," a school- and home-based program intended to improve outcomes for students with moderate to severe behavior problems who may be at risk for academic failure. The study took place in six locations across five states: San Jose, California; Tampa,…

Great strides have been made in the development of skills and procedures to aid children with developmental disabilities to establish maximum independence and quality of life. Paramount among the treatment methods that have empirical support are treatments based on applied behavior analysis. These methods are often very labor intensive. Thus,…

The Nova Scotia early intensive behavior intervention model--NS EIBI (Bryson et al., 2007) for children with autistic spectrum disorders was designed to be feasible and sustainable in community settings. It combines parent training and naturalistic one-to-one behavior intervention employing Pivotal Response Treatment--PRT (R. Koegel & Koegel,…

Early behavioral intervention (BI), based on the methods of applied behavior analysis, has the strongest and most consistent scientific support as a means of teaching skills to young children with autism spectrum disorder and reducing their restricted and maladaptive behavior. Although individual applied behavior analysis (ABA)-based treatment…

The onset of appearance-related concerns associated with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) typically occurs in adolescence, and these concerns are often severe enough to interfere with normal development and psychosocial functioning. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for adults with BDD. However, no treatment studies…

Anxiety is a commonly occurring psychiatric concern in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This pilot study examined the preliminary efficacy of a manual-based intervention targeting anxiety and social competence in four adolescents with high-functioning ASD. Anxiety and social functioning were assessed at baseline, midpoint,…

The number of children who would be eligible for, and benefit from, early intervention programs has dramatically increased during the past several years. However, those programs would have to meet the U.S. Department of Education's criteria for being evidence based. Some programs that have proven successful would not be eligible but rather be…

This study compared the effectiveness of a culturally modified version of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), called Guiando a Ninos Activos (GANA), to the effectiveness of standard PCIT and Treatment as Usual (TAU) for young Mexican American children with behavior problems. Fifty-eight Mexican American families whose 3- to 7-year-old child…