This article delineates the reasons why educators find punishment a more acceptable approach for managing students' challenging behaviors than positive reinforcement. The article argues that educators should plan the occurrence of positive reinforcement to increase appropriate behaviors rather than running the risk of it haphazardly promoting…

This study analyzed specific stimuli reinforcing destructive behavior in two 11-year-olds males with mental retardation and severe destructive behavior problems maintained by attention. The use of concurrent schedules of reinforcement identified alternatives to the reinforcing verbal reprimands and led to development of effective treatments to…

A sample of 103 intervention outcome studies was considered to confirm best practices for intervention for challenging behavior in persons with intellectual disability and acquired brain injury and to establish service conditions associated with its effectiveness. Evidence supports the effectiveness of behavioral interventions. Problems with…

Positive Behavior Facilitation (PBF) is a comprehensive approach to understanding and intervening in the behavior of youth. Research clearly indicates that the behavior of children is best understood and ultimately managed by comprehensive strategies and techniques that consider not only what a child is doing but also why a child is demonstrating…

Research continues to reinforce the desirability of non-punitive environments for children. This article describes a school for severely emotionally impaired children that was transformed from a coercive climate to empowering children to develop their own controls. The author stresses that removing systems based on punishment and control can be…

The extended parallel process model (EPPM) is receiving increasing attention in many undergraduate and graduate persuasion and health communication textbooks and classes. The EPPM is concerned with the effect of four variables on behavior: (1) perceived susceptibility; (2) perceived severity; (3) response-efficacy; and (4) self-efficacy. The first…

The combined tools of psycholinguistics and systems analysis have produced advances in motivational profiling resulting in numerous applications to behavioral engineering. Knowing the way people frame their motive offers leverage in causing behavior change ranging from persuasive marketing campaigns, forensic profiling, individual psychotherapy,…

The concept of treatment integrity cuts across a diversity of fields involved with providing treatments or interventions to individuals. In medical treatments, the concept of "treatment compliance" or "treatment adherence" is an important and problematic issue. In the field of nutrition, the concept of "dietary adherence" is important for…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that 16-33% of children and adolescents in the United States are overweight or obese, making this the number one nutritional disease of this group. The prevalence appears to be increasing annually, as are the associated consequences. Moreover, the CDC estimates that less than…

This paper is the first of several papers designed to demonstrate how the application of item response models in the behavioral sciences can be used to enhance the conceptual and technical toolkit of researchers and developers and to understand better the psychometric properties of psychosocial measures. The papers all use baseline data from the…

Older Americans are suffering from both physical and social losses as they age. These losses are sometimes accompanied by the elderly person's entrance into a long-term care facility. Some researchers have suggested that such facilities fail to maintain the residents' independent behavior. Others contend that behavior is plastic and can be…

The monograph describes a systematic attempt to develop language behavior in a nonverbal autistic 4.5-year-old boy who was essentially unresponsive to environmental stimuli of any kind. The 45-session intervention focused on teaching him to attend, increasing his responsiveness to people, effecting discriminative responses to a variety of…

The publication presents five articles dealing with research and methodology for teachers of behaviorally disordered children. In the first paper, R. Gable et al. describe "A Classroom-based Curriculum Validation Process for Teaching the Behaviorally Disordered," which focuses on static and dynamic evaluation of curricular materials. E. Anderson…

Two newsletters focus on alternatives for community living and approaches to teaching social skills to children and youth with disabilities. The first issue provides information on some family support services and community-based living arrangements that are currently available for children with severe and profound handicaps or chronic illnesses.…

The Evaluations of Classroom Observations Project had three major purposes, all related to direct observation of classroom behavior. First, the project was meant to assess the effectiveness of a behavioral treatment program in furthering the acquisition of appropriate classroom participation skills by disruptive students. Second, the project was…