Hazing prevention and education efforts continue to evolve in response to changing student behavior. The organic and anomic nature of hazing is deeply embedded in higher education, permeating across campus reinforced by cultural norms and institutional practices. While numerous approaches attempt to disrupt hazing, public health approaches,…

Differential negative reinforcement of alternative behavior is a technique in which students can escape a portion of a task they perceive to be unpleasant by reaching a predetermined criterion. In this article, we define the negative reinforcement trap and review research on differential negative reinforcement of alternative behavior. We then…

Objective: In the present study, we sought to determine the differences among college students using e-cigarettes, cigarettes, or both products (dual users) on smoking outcome expectancies and the role of smoking expectancies and e-cigarette use in cessation attempts. Participants: We surveyed 1,370 undergraduate college students from November…

The prevalence of students with behavioral problems who also have learning problems has been reported to be as high as 50% (Glassberg et al. "Behavioral Disorders," 25, 9-21, 1999). In the current study, we progressively evaluated the effects of positive reinforcement, instructional strategies, and, if needed, negative reinforcement on…

Positive, proactive classroom management strategies support academic and behavioral student outcomes while fostering positive teacher-student relationships. However, teachers often cite struggles with classroom management and challenging student behavior as key reasons they ultimately leave the field. Additionally, pre-service teachers often fail…

Classroom management is a common challenge in middle schools. Class-wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT) is a multi-tiered intervention designed to decrease problem behaviors at the classroom level (Wills et al., 2010). It is comprised of evidence-based practices such as teaching classroom expectations, increasing teacher praise, and…

In two studies, the systematic approach to designing functional assessment-based interventions (FABIs) created by Umbreit, Ferro, Liaupsin, and Lane (2007) was used with high school students receiving special education services in self-contained classrooms reserved for students with persistent behavior problems. In Study 1, an AB design was used…

The feeding behaviors of two children who maintained failure to thrive diagnoses and displayed food refusal are assessed in their homes. Descriptive assessments are used to identify schedules of consequence provided by each child's care providers for bite acceptance and food refusal behaviors. Assessments reveal rich schedules of praise and access…

This study examined whether direct, interval-by-interval measures of treatment integrity would make it possible to distinguish whether equivocal intervention results could be attributed to the intervention itself, or to poor implementation. Josh, an eight-year-old 3rd grader, performed at or slightly above his peers' academically, yet engaged in…

Two studies were done in which the subjects applied punishment contingencies to themselves for smoking cigarettes. After Baseline in Experiment I, the subject set a limit of 15 cigarettes for himself. If he exceeded the level, he was to tear a dollar bill into pieces for every additional cigarette he smoked. Every five days the criterion was…

Incentive and behavior were investigated in the study focusing upon a comparison of the effects of response cost (for errors) and response reward (for correct responses) on verbal performance of mentally retarded subjects. (KW)

Use of tokens as positive reinforcers for correct responses in speech therapy and no consequences for incorrect responses was compared with the use of tokens contingent upon correct responses and loss of tokens for incorrect responses. (Author)

Time-out from positive reinforcement was found to have a suppressive effect when the response alternative was reinforced with the same frequency as the punished response. When the response alternative was a response for which positive reinforcement had been withdrawn, time-out was significantly preferred. (MH)

It is customary in behavior analysis to distinguish between positive and negative reinforcement in terms of whether the reinforcing event involves onset or offset of a stimulus. In a previous article (Baron & Galizio, 2005), we concluded that a distinction of these terms is not only ambiguous but has little if any functional significance. Here, we…