Disproportionality and the poor post-school outcomes for African American youth with disabilities have been ongoing issues in special education. Limited opportunities to engage in social interactions may exacerbate these poor post-school outcomes for African American students with mild intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviors. African…

Discusses behavioral momentum and the general behavioral relation between the persistence of behavior and the rate of reinforcement obtained in a given situation. Strategies for establishing the generality of behavioral relations are reviewed, followed by a brief summary of evidence for the generality of behavioral momentum. (Author/CR)

When two nonhandicapped peers of an autistic five-year old were trained to initiate social interaction, social interaction increased and then dramatically decreased in a reversal phase, and no decrease in the autistic child's disruptive behaviors was observed. When the autistic child was trained to initiate interaction, social interaction…

A review of nine studies on the efficacy of metacognitive interpersonal problem-solving training with students who have learning and behavior problems found demonstrated cognitive gains but less success in demonstrating that such gains were subsequently applied to actual behavior or generalized to other social behavior. (DB)

Three mentally retarded students (ages 9-12) who exhibited challenging behaviors to escape from academic demands and to receive social attention were taught alternative assistance-seeking and attention-getting phrases. Data indicated that the intervention reduced challenging behavior. The results transferred across settings, and were maintained 18…

This study of two primary-grade students with learning disabilities and behavior problems found that an instructional package incorporating videotaped self-assessment, self-modeling, discrimination training, and behavioral rehearsal helped the children acquire cooperative classroom behaviors and generalize and maintain those behaviors. (Author/JDD)

Resource teachers' and regular teachers' ratings for 32 elementary-level learning-disabled (LD) students were compared to identify teachability characteristics and behaviors. Though the two groups of teachers did not note differences in problem behaviors of the same LD child in different settings, differences in cognitive/motivational and…