Everyone, including children with developmental disabilities, encounters stimuli they find aversive every day (e.g., the sound of a classmate tapping their pencil). These aversive stimuli may not be problematic for typically developing individuals, because they learn to behave in ways that allow them to escape or avoid this aversive stimulation.…

In the context of instructional demands, compliance and problem behavior can be considered concurrent operants. Of applied interest is increasing one response (i.e., compliance) while decreasing the other (i.e., problem behavior). Strategic arrangement of reinforcement can alter response allocation accordingly. Such schedules can also influence…

Results of an analogue functional analysis indicated that noncompliant vocal behavior exhibited by a young girl with autism was maintained by negative reinforcement. Follow-up analyses suggested that the immediate escape contingency assessed in the demand condition did nor appear to maintain the behavior. Instead, noncompliant vocal behavior…

Functional communication training (FCT) is an intervention frequently used for students with developmental disabilities to reduce problematic behaviors and to increase prosocial behaviors. This intervention appears to be very effective when the communication responses trained are matched to the function of the student's problematic behaviors. In…