This study examines a naturally occurring experiment in a large urban hospital faced with budget cuts, in which departments were ordered to reduce employees' overtime without jeopardizing service quality. The study focuses on two departments that chose to use behavior modification techniques. In one department (Radiology) the intervention combined…

The book discusses current issues and trends in special education programming at the secondary level. An introductory chapter by Cynthia L. Warger outlines service delivery program models and the range of curriculum content options. In Chapter 2, Janet Sansone focuses on the issue of accountability in secondary education as it relates to…

Mathematics anxiety involves feelings of tension and stress that interfere with the solving of mathematical problems in academic and daily life situations. To investigate the relative effectiveness of group negative practice and group anxiety management training in reducing mathematics anxiety, 72 math-anxious high school students were divided…

St. John's University (New York) is developing a baccalaureate program which produces graduates who can successfully cope with demands in the expanding realm of human services. Because the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required of the human services worker are congruent with the expertise of a typical education faculty, the training of human…

The current study examined instructors' discrete-trial teaching responses after a performance-based training procedure in which instructors were required to demonstrate criterion-level performance on written and oral quizzes and on performance demonstrations. Twelve discrete-trial teaching responses were labeled and operationally defined.…

This paper analyzes the responses of 50 practicing business managers who were asked to identify the most troublesome communication situations experienced by supervisors in their organizations. The authors put the responses in rank order according to two popular management systems, Management by Objectives (MBO) and Organizational Behavior…

An analysis of the textbooks of five leading Midwest publishers revealed that (1) no safety measures were to be found in the regular basal reading textbooks; (2) safety was always treated as an extra, supplementary issue; (3) the opportunity to easily insert safety messages into regular texts and illustrations was overlooked; (4) the highly…

The Model Behavior Shaping Resource Unit (BSRU) project was designed to provide behaviorally oriented intervention techniques to reduce levels of highly inappropriate behaviors in children classified as Trainable Mentally Retarded (TMR) and Severely and Profoundly Impaired (SPI). By modifying or reducing the frequencies of targeted behaviors to…

This annotated bibliography presents 126 selected references on the topic of cults. Focusing mainly on religious cults, including the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church and the Hare Krishna groups, the entries examine allegations of mind control tactics over converts, issues raised by the allegations, and controversial methods used by…

The lack of rigorous evaluations and variations in operation of adolescent diversion programs has led to a state of confusion concerning the effects of diversion. In a program at Michigan State University, youths referred to the project from the juvenile court are randomly assigned to undergraduates who are trained and supervised by project…

New treatments of reading disabilities have recently been developed. New medical therapies for reading disabilities link poor functions of the mechanism that controls balance and movement to reading disability and focus medical attention on diet as a cause of hyperactive behavior and learning disorders. These medical therapies are still…

Numerous studies report that depression is the most common psychiatric disorder of the elderly. According to the behavioral view, depression results from inadequate, ineffective or insufficient positive reinforcement. In contrast, the cognitive position sees depression as a result of negative thinking about oneself, one's experience, and the…

Counselors at the Research and Guidance Laboratory for Superior Students at the University of Wisconsin prepared specific suggestions designed to assist participating high school students in their educational development. One hundred and eight academically superior students were assigned to three experimental groups and one control group.…

Six severely disabled young adults were taught to self-monitor work rate on job tasks, evaluate daily performance against a criterion, and recruit contingent feedback from supervisors. Performance results indicated a functional relationship between self-recruited feedback and maintenance of improved work rate. (Author/JW)

Three profoundly retarded students (ages 6, 8, and 12) were taught prelanguage signalling behaviors (grasping the experimenter's finger and tapping the back of one hand with the other) to initiate co-active imitation behaviors with an adult. (JW)