From 2016 to 2022, the "Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis" published 7 studies that evaluated the effects of habit reversal training on speech disfluencies (filled pauses) during public speaking. This review summarizes the participants, dependent variables, procedures, experimental design, and outcomes from this research including…

Behavior analysts frequently collaborate with interdisciplinary colleagues to share information and make decisions about client services. This study evaluated the effects of behavioral skills training on preparation for and presentation during interdisciplinary review team meetings by clinicians (n = 4) and nurses (n = 4) at a residential school…

We report the effects of peer-mediated training as a performance improvement intervention on recording of well-body checks by classroom instructors at a specialized school for children and youth. The instructors were trained as peer mediators and then assumed performance monitoring responsibilities in the classroom. Compared to baseline phases in…

This case report concerns a woman with intellectual disability, schizoaffective disorder, and avoidance and refusal of having her blood drawn. She required but refused blood draws to properly monitor the therapeutic dose of a necessary psychotropic medication. During intervention at a community-based habilitation setting and under simulated…

Between 2001 and 2005, football-related injuries accounted for 1,060,823 emergency room visits to U.S. hospitals (Mello, Myers, Christian, Palmisciano, & Linakis, 2009). Among high school football athletes, statistics reveal that for the period of 1984 to 1999, there were 63 injuries resulting in permanent disability (Mueller, 2001). Additional…

Background: This review describes procedures to reduce and eliminate physical restraint of people with intellectual disability. One approach is to assess antecedent conditions associated with restraint and change them so that they no longer produce restraint-provoking behaviour. A second approach is to decrease the duration of restraint by…

With rising interest in the role of treatment integrity on student outcomes, research has primarily focused on isolating the techniques and procedures necessary to improve staff's acquisition and maintenance of adequate levels of integrity. Despite increasing numbers of publications on this topic, there has been little discussion of the variables…

The present study describes a case of a 9-year-old girl diagnosed on the autism spectrum who averaged nearly 1200 hand-to-head self-injuries (+attempts) per school day. Given the resources of the school and the significance of the self-injurious behavior (SIB), analog functional analysis is not possible. Moreover, functional assessment results…

Chronic absenteeism is a problem encountered by many human services organizations. Large-scale intervention projects to reduce staff absences have incorporated applied behavior analysis methods but there are few studies in the extant literature. In the present study, the authors record staff absenteeism at a specialized school for students with…

This study examined the use of an antecedent-based intervention to reduce the vocal stereotypy of a student diagnosed with Autism within the general education classroom. The student displayed frequent nonfunctional speech and disruptive vocal sounds. An antecedent-based intervention, involving the use of qualitatively different cards--to cue the…

Rumination is a serious problem demonstrated by some people with developmental disabilities, but previous research has not included a functional analysis and has rarely compared intervention methods during the assessment process. We conducted functional analyses with 2 children who displayed postmeal rumination and subsequently evaluated a…

The research evaluated whether extremely brief durations of overcorrection could be utilized efficaciously with two severely handicapped students displaying high rates of stereotypic behavior. In both studies, effects of intervention were durable. Findings suggested that very brief durations of overcorrection can be therapeutically effective while…

We conducted a brief (8 days) functional analysis to identify sources of control over persistent saliva-play displayed by a 6-year old child with autism in a school setting. The functional analysis suggested that saliva-play was maintained by automatic reinforcement, leading to an intervention evaluation (3 days) that compared two methods of…

A functional analysis with a 13-year-old girl who had autism documented that her problem behavior was maintained by escape from instruction. Additional assessment revealed that certain types of requests and specific practitioners were associated with the highest frequency of problem behavior. In a subsequent intervention evaluation, response…

Two developmentally disabled children were held in seated position during application of timeout procedure. For autistic-like girl procedure produced dramatic reduction in tantrums and aggressive behavior and for mentally retarded boy reduced aggression. For both, immobilization timeout proved more effective than reinforcement methods alone. (CMG)