A negative reinforcement intervention was used to toilet train a child with multiple disabilities. The child appeared to actively withhold urinating in the toilet and was unresponsive to two positive reinforcement training programs. Negative reinforcement required that the child remain in the bathroom during toileting opportunities until he…

Understanding excessive absenteeism is important to ameliorating the negative outcomes associated with the behavior. The present study examined behavioral reinforcement profiles of school refusal behavior: negative reinforcement (avoidance) and positive reinforcement (gaining parental attention or receiving tangible benefits from not attending…

Recently, high-probability request sequences has shown promise as a method to enhance student compliance using positive methods without sacrificing the quality of the assignment. High-probability request sequences use a series of preferred behaviors to increase the likelihood that nonpreferred behaviors will occur. For this intervention, a series…

Two experiments were designed to replicate and extend previous findings on the transformation of avoidance response functions in accordance with the relational frames of Same and Opposite. Participants were first exposed to non-arbitrary and arbitrary relational training and testing. Next, during avoidance conditioning, one stimulus from the…

For many years women have been under-represented in mathematics and related careers. Many women have been successful at the undergraduate level in a mathematics major, yet chose other career paths. In this study seventeen women, all of whom had done well in mathematics and have either graduated with an undergraduate degree in mathematics or had a…

The effects of manipulations of task variables on inaccurate responding and disruption were investigated with 3 children who engaged in noncompliance. With 2 children in an outpatient clinic, task directives were first manipulated to identify directives that guided accurate responding; then, additional dimensions of the task were manipulated to…

The Gambling Functional Assessment (GFA; Dixon & Johnson, 2007) is a 20-item self-report inventory identifying four potential consequences maintaining gambling behavior. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses are performed for two large, nonclinical samples of university undergraduates. For the exploratory analysis, the optimal model…

Social support is one of the most effective means by which people can cope with stressful events. Yet little research has examined whether there are cultural differences in how people utilize their social support networks. A review of studies on culture and social support presents evidence that Asians and Asian Americans are more reluctant to…

The procedures described by Sloman et al. (2005) were extended to an analysis of teachers' responses to problem behavior after they had been taught to withhold potential sources of positive and negative reinforcement following instances of problem behavior. Results were consistent with those reported previously, suggesting that escape from child…

The present study evaluates the effectiveness of two time-out (TO) procedures in reducing escape-maintained noncompliance of 4 children. Noncompliant behavioral function was established via a functional assessment (FA), including indirect and direct descriptive procedures and brief confirmatory experimental analyses. Following FA, parents were…

Two distinct analytic methods have been used to identify the function of problem behavior. The antecedent-behavior-consequence (ABC) method (Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, & Richman, 1982/1994) includes the delivery of consequences for problem behavior. The AB method (Carr & Durand, 1985) does not include consequence delivery, instead relying…

Heritage language learners soon learn that their verbal competence can be both a blessing and a burden. Reliance on aural cues can provide significant interference in attempts to master spelling conventions. Now, an unlikely source--the Russian-language internet--threatens to provide negative reinforcement for the very spelling habits that…

Binge eating is a serious behavior problem exhibited by individuals diagnosed with binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa. Binge eating is thought to be maintained by automatic negative reinforcement in the form of relief from negative emotional responding. Current treatments produce only moderate abstinence, perhaps because they do not attempt…

This study determined the effectiveness of noncontingent escape access to self-reinforcement, as a student-directed intervention. Three students successfully used a break card to systematically decrease inappropriate behavior maintained by negative reinforcement while increasing task engagement. In addition, teachers completed an Intervention…

A demonstration of the effects of reinforcement requires comparison of response rates in the presence of a contingency with those in another condition that controls for the influence of extraneous variables. We describe several control conditions that have been used in evaluating the effects of positive and negative reinforcement. The…