Criticisms of behavior modification, which charge that it violates ethical and legal principles, are discussed and reasons are presented to explain behavior modification's susceptibility to attack. (GW)

Psychologists in a large institution for mentally retarded persons present their observations from a week of serving as direct care staff. They report on the effectiveness of such procedures as reducing the noise level, alleviating crowding, structuring activities, and persisting in correcting resident behavior. (CL)

The need for effective behavior therapy for retarded individuals is emphasized, and relaxation training is suggested as a potentially useful behavioral treatment. Several reports of its use are reviewed. (Author)

The paper suggests guidelines for administrators to determine the use of punishment for retarded clients. (CL)

Presented is a rationale for producing intelligent behavior through operant conditioning rather than predicting it by means of standardized intelligence tests which are said to require circumstances explicitly precluding intervention. (GW)

The paper presents guidelines for training staff to implement positive reductive procedures to decrease undesirable behaviors of their retarded students and clients. Considerations relevant to all reductive procedures are briefly discussed in the first portion of the paper, while guidelines indigenous to positive reductive procedures are discussed…

Three moderately to severely retarded children who demonstrated a limited expressive noun vocabulary were placed in a language program to be trained to produce the basic grammatical relations (subject-verb-object responses). (Author)

Self-injurious behaviors of two nonambulatory profoundly retarded young adults were monitored. Despite considerable variability within conditions, mere provision of attached toys resulted in decreased biting and face slapping. (Author)

A survey of 190 public and community residential facilities indicate that staff in community and public residential facilities must be prepared to deal with maladaptive behavior, that behaviorally oriented response strategies appear to be most effective, and that there is a need for greater attention to training direct-care residential staff in…

Reinforcement was administered contingent upon appropriate actions in order to reduce hyperactive behavior of a trainable mentally handicapped boy. A followup indicated substantial improvement in behavior. (CD)