Reviews and assesses current knowledge on children's aggression: the determinants and regulation mechanisms. (AJ)

Conditions associated with the maintenance of hand mouthing were studied in 3 experiments with 12 adults with profound mental retardation. Functional analysis of hand mouthing, reinforcers, and preference for hand-toy versus mouth-toy contact were assessed. Hand stimulation was the predominant reinforcer for all participants. (SW)

This paper argues that behavior analysis is not technological to a fault, but rather has a faulty technology by being incomplete. The paper examines reinforcers and punishers that result from the outcomes of either (1) striving for better experimental control, or (2) inventing theories to explain why current control is imperfect. (JDD)

Using a deliberately confusing and frustrating game exercise, the author attempts to present the student's perception of the conflicting demands that the school system places upon him. Despite the dearth of literature on behavior therapy as it relates to the adolescent, the author believes that the behavior therapist can help the adolescent. After…

The subject of this bulletin is achieving better discipline through the use of contingency management. Part 1 discusses the basic beliefs of behaviorists and the basic principles of behaviorism. It states that all human beings do what they do in pursuit of some variety or combination of tangible reinforcers, social reinforcers, and intangible…

A model of conditional discrimination performance (Davison & Nevin, 1999) is combined with the notion that unmeasured attending to the sample and comparison stimuli, in the steady state and during disruption, depends on reinforcement in the same way as predicted for overt free-operant responding by behavioral momentum theory (Nevin & Grace, 2000).…

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)

A token reinforcement system was introduced into a second grade classroom, and seven (out of 21) class members and the teacher were observed for 8 months. Each of the eight phases of the study lasted from 2 to 5 weeks. The first four phases established a base period and determined the separate effects of classroom rules, half hour academic…

Experimental procedures for modification of cognitive impulsivity in handicapped children (including required delay, direct instruction, self-verbalization, differentiation training, modeling, and reinforcement) are reviewed and their respective teaching implications identified. (BD)

This report outlines the limitations and weaknesses of singlecase, time-series research designs, of which the ABAB design is one of the widely used. An alternative design, the simultaneous treatment design, proposed by Browning and Stover (1971), has several advantages over the ABAB design. The design enables an experimenter to simultaneously…

In this book, the principles of behavior modification are presented as a set of guidelines for identifying recurrent behavior patterns and are then applied as techniques to change various undesirable behaviors. Progressively more complex steps toward behavior modification and its social influence are cited and illustrated in chapters which deal…

PAPERS OR STUDIES CONCERNED WITH THE APPLICATION OF BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION PRINCIPLES TO CHILDREN AND RETARDATES ARE INCLUDED IN THIS ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY. AUTHORS ARE LISTED ALPHABETICALLY. A SHORT PARAGRAPH DESCRIBES THE GENERAL NATURE OF EACH STUDY CITED, AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES ARE GIVEN. THERE ARE 130 ENTRIES IN THIS BIBLIOGRAPHY. (MS)

Recognizing that punishment for aggression often is noneffective or inadvertently reinforces the aggressive act, the authors discuss an alternative approach and provide an explanation of the exchange theory of aggression. Three classroom experiments, operated with children chosen as the most severe behavior problems in a local school system, are…

A description of the Social Exchange Laboratory's work with autistic children is presented. The laboratory's philosophy of the exchange theory of autism, seen as a set of habitual response patterns maintained and intensified by exchanges which are inadvertantly structured by others in the child's environment, is set forth with characteristics,…