The functional behavioural assessment (FBA) is a process used in identifying the reason (i.e., function) for challenging behaviours when working with students with disabilities and the circumstances and/or environment that reinforce the continued use of the problematic behaviour. However, the procedural definition of the FBA in US federal…

The assessment of support needs of children with an autism spectrum disorder and their families has been hindered by the ambiguity surrounding the definition of need and the lack of a conceptual framework to guide investigations. This paper examines two major approaches to measuring need and discusses their appropriateness for use in autism. We…

The Behavior Intervention Support Team (BIST) is a proactive school-wide behavior management plan for all students, emphasizing schools partnering with students and parents through caring relationships and high expectations. The BIST program is well-grounded in behavioral theory and combines strength-based and resiliency principles within the…

Teacher-student relationships are accepted as influential but the dynamics of those relationships are not well understood, especially with difficult students. A series of interviews were combined with classroom observations and written reflections to understand in what ways a teacher negotiated her relationship with a behaviorally challenging…

The current study extends the literature on teaching mands for information by assessing whether mands generalize across different establishing operations (EOs). Three children with autism were taught to perform multiple behavior chains, 3 of which included a common response (e.g., "Where is the spoon?") used for different purposes. An…

The present experiment examined the effects of acute and daily cocaine on spontaneous behavior patterns of pigeons. After determining the acute effects of a range of doses, 9 pigeons were divided into three groups that received one of three doses of cocaine daily, either 1.0, 3.0, or 10.0 mg/kg cocaine. Measures were taken of spontaneous…

There is substantial evidence for the effectiveness of psychological treatments for OCD, and various approaches have been widely recommended. These approaches tend to be characterized by exposure and response prevention (ERP) and also tend to be applied equally to all forms of OCD. Patients/clients (and some therapists) often find ERP to be a…

Repetitive and invariant behavior is a diagnostic feature of autism. We implemented a lag reinforcement schedule to increase response diversity for 6 participants with autism aged 6 to 10 years, 4 of whom also received prompting plus additional training. These procedures appeared to increase the variety of building-block structures, demonstrating…

Daily variations in secrecy with mothers and fathers were examined in 108 poor, urban, diverse middle adolescents (M = 15.16 years, SD = 0.89). Adolescents completed online diaries over 14 days assessing secrecy from parents about school, personal, and multifaceted activities (e.g., staying out late), and bad behavior. Three-level hierarchical…

When researchers use the term "mind wandering" for task-unrelated thoughts in signal detection tasks, we may fall into the trap of believing that spontaneous thoughts are task unrelated in a deeper sense. Similar negative connotations are attached to common terms like "cognitive failures", "resting state", "rumination", "distraction", "attentional…

In recent years, faculty have seen an increase in latecomers, sleepers, cell phone addicts, and downright discourteous students in their courses. Classroom incivility is the disruptive behavior that occurs in higher education learning environments at an alarming rate. Incivility is often a reciprocal process; both students and faculty may…

Every survey of teachers that's ever been conducted has shown that the number one reason for them staying or quitting their jobs is related to the quality of their work environment. Here's a book with practical strategies for how to make the job of teaching easier and more rewarding by overcoming day-to-day frustrations. Veteran educator Allen…

With restorative discipline, schools move beyond punitive approaches to shared expectations for learning and behavior. Used together with "The School Leader's Guide to Restorative Discipline," this teacher's guide shows how to create a welcoming and responsible community within your classroom, contributing to a consistent, schoolwide approach to…

Although professional development is an important means of improving both teachers' skills and student outcomes, there is a dearth of high quality empirical research on the efficacy of such efforts. The efficacy of the Challenging Behavior Process was assessed using a mixed method approach which included the use of pre-, post-, and follow-up…

This study examined the impact of Positive Behavior Support (PBS) on office discipline referrals (Category 1), suspensions (Category 2), and absence of infractions (Category 3) in an urban public elementary school in New Jersey. A sample of 267 second, third, fourth, and fifth grade students provided the data for the research. A chi-square…