Fear extinction-based exposure therapy is the most common behavioral therapy for anxiety and trauma-related disorders, but fear extinction memories are labile and fear tends to return even after successful extinction. The relapse of fear contributes to the poor long-term efficacy of exposure therapy. A single session of voluntary exercise can…

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is an effective intervention to reduce disruptive behavior. The GBG typically involves immediate stimulus presentation (e.g., delivery of a token) following disruptions; however, experimenters have also removed tokens contingent upon disruptions. In the present study, we compared the effects of the GBG-stimulus…

Clinical Question: In adolescents, does incorporating hippotherapy with speech-language intervention improve speech- and language-based outcomes more than traditional therapy alone? Method: Systematic Review Study Sources: CINAHL, PubMed, PsycINFO, ERIC, ASHA Search Terms: communication disorders OR speech therapy OR speech pathology OR speech…

Background: Maintaining an external direction of focus during practice is reported to facilitate acquisition of non-speech motor skills, but it is not known whether these findings also apply to treatment for speech errors. This question has particular relevance for treatment incorporating visual biofeedback, where clinician cueing can direct the…

Effectively managing a classroom is crucial in promoting positive student outcomes. Behavior-specific praise is an empirically supported strategy to reinforce desirable student behaviors. Following a review of the literature, we identified tactile prompting and self-monitoring as effective methods to increase teachers' use of behavior-specific…

Successful conversation requires that the speaker's behavior is sensitive to nonvocal listener responses. We observed children with autism spectrum disorder during conversation probes in which a listener periodically displayed nonvocal cues that she was uninterested in the conversation. We used behavioral skills training to teach conversation…

In this meta-analytic review, we critically evaluate procedures and outcomes from nine intervention studies in which students used tactile-cued self-monitoring in educational settings. Findings suggest that most tactile-cued self-monitoring interventions have moderate to strong effects, have emerged only recently, and have not yet achieved the…

Background: Fear of medical procedures in general and needles in particular can be a difficult clinical challenge to providing effective health care for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Methods: A changing criterion design was used to examine graduated exposure treatment for blood-injury-injection phobia in an adult…

Discrete-trial functional analysis (DTFA) is an experimental method for determining the variables maintaining problem behavior in the context of natural routines. Functional communication training (FCT) is an effective method for replacing problem behavior, once identified, with a functionally equivalent response. We implemented these procedures…

Prompting procedures have been used in community settings to change many public health related behaviors. The current study took place on a college campus and used a multiple baseline across settings design to evaluate the effectiveness of visual prompts to decrease urinal splatter on men's restroom floors. Results indicate that prompts were…

Implicit approach associations are well documented for substances such as alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs. This study reports two experiments designed to establish and modify such associations specifically in the food craving domain. Experiment 1 used a pictorial implicit association task to examine approach-avoidance associations with…

The present study evaluated the extent to which a low-cost, antitheft intervention impacted theft and sales in a multiple baseline design across two grocery stores. Previous research has measured the impact on theft of items that have a sign indicating their high theft rate and stickers next to or on the items. In contrast, this study tracked four…

In this study, the effectiveness of a sibling training package offered for teaching social interaction skills that are used by typically developing children while playing iPad game activities with their siblings who have autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is investigated. Three children with ASD and their typically developing siblings participated in…

Although exposure-based treatments appear to be efficacious for the treatment of anxiety-related disorders, many individuals experience a renewal of the original fear response at follow-up. In an effort to prevent fear renewal, researchers have begun to use exposure of the conditioned stimulus in different contexts during extinction. Although…

Eight young children who displayed destructive behavior maintained, at least in part, by negative reinforcement received long-term functional communication training (FCT). During FCT, the children completed a portion of a task and then touched a communication card attached to a microswitch to obtain brief breaks. Prior to and intermittently…