To establish diagnostic criteria, 12 fire-raising or pyromaniac children (7-15 years old) were compared with 12 control students matched for age, sex, and intellect. Six diagnostic procedures, including the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, the Lowenstein Fire Raising Diagnostic Test, and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, were used to…

Two papers describe studies to decrease inappropriate social behaviors of severely retarded students. R. Spangler and others in "The Effect of a Time-Out Procedure on the Duration of Tantrum Behavior in a 13-Year-Old Severely Retarded Male S" report on a three phase study in which a combination of verbal instructions and a timeout procedure…

Reproduced here are symposia papers dealing with behavior theory and therapy. Behavior therapy attempts to apply the findings of experimental psychology and the laboratory to the clinic. It takes the principles of learning and scientific psychology and makes them useful therapeutically. The two orientations in this area are operant and classical…

This interim report presents an introduction to a research study designed to develop educational procedures for modifying deviant behavior in children. A five-component treatment model was developed and research designed to evaluate the weights of each variable in the treatment process. Studies were designed to define strategies that would…

Special schools or special classes are the prevalent vehicles of deviant behavior modification, although it is proposed here that effort should be first made to determine variables which influence behavior development and disturbance in the regular classroom. A need is seen to develop methods useful in regular classrooms to prevent or intervene in…

Two methods of scheduling reinforcement, differential reinforcement of other behaviors (DRO) and differential reinforcement of low rates of responding (DRL), were investigated in two experiments that demonstrated each procedure's effectiveness in reducing misbehavior when used by teachers in school settings. A third experiment was undertaken to…

This book is a teacher's guide for dealing with and modifying childrens' behavior. Chapter one discusses behavior and how it is strengthened, weakened, or shaped by consequences of the behavior (rewarding, ignoring, punishing). Chapters two and three present techniques which can be used to strengthen desirable behaviors and weaken undesirable…

Examined was the ability of parents of 12 deviant and 12 nondeviant boys, age 4-8 years, to bias home observation data by influencing their child's behavior in socially desirable and undesirable directions. The parents were given the response set to present their child as "good", "bad", and usual (normal) during six 45-minute observations of…

This study demonstrated reinforcement control over pronounced feminine behaviors in a male child who had been psychologically evaluated as manifesting "childhood cross-gender identity." Reinforcement control over cross-gender behavior was demonstrated by identifying some behavioral treatment conditions under which feminine behaviors could be…

Four of the seven conference papers treating behavioral and emotional problems concern the Conceptual Project, an attempt to provide definition and evaluation of conceptual models of the various theories of emotional disturbance and their basic assumptions, and to provide training packages based on these materials. The project is described in…

Effects of a packaged teacher-consultant-mediated intervention program (CLASS) for modifying acting-out behavior in the regular classroom were evaluated. The experimental groups significantly increased their proportion of appropriate behavior postintervention and required fewer remedial services and special class placement years later. Training…

Presents electrophysiological and behavioral evidence for a neural process related to storage in short-term memory. Predicting recall performance on the basis of the storage component of brain responses is presented. A list of references is also included. (HM)

The experiment was designed to determine the relative effectiveness of teacher and counseling approaches in the reduction of disruptive or inappropriate classroom behavior of 12 academically low achieving, seventh-grade, Black male students. (Author/SBH)

The school-related problems discussed in this article cover three major areas: disruptive behaviors in the classroom; academic behaviors in the classroom and at home; and school attendance as related to both truancy and school phobias. (Author/AM)