Children with ADHD comprise one of the most common groups requiring supports from school mental health providers, yet current school structures and special education policies are not optimally situated to support and adapt to the inconsistent behaviors that are the hallmark of children with ADHD. The present paper reviews the evidence base for…

Students may engage in behavior during instruction that impacts the acquisition of skills. Intervening on student behavior using group contingencies may be more efficacious than other intervention methods. Directly programming for generalization of treatment effects may increase the durability of behavior change and further increase the efficacy…

In elementary school classrooms, students commonly recruit teacher attention at inappropriately high rates or at inappropriate times. Multiple schedule interventions have been used to teach stimulus control by signaling to students when reinforcement is and is not available contingent on an appropriate response. The purpose of the current study…

The purpose of this article is to discuss the application of behavior analytic procedures for advancing and evaluating methods for teaching literacy skills in the classroom. Particularly, applied behavior analysis has contributed substantially to examining the relationship between teacher behavior and student literacy performance. Teacher…

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a classroom management system that employs an interdependent group contingency, whereby students work as a team to win the game. Although previous anecdotal data have suggested that this arrangement may promote prosocial behavior, teachers may have concerns about its fairness and potential to evoke negative peer…

In resurgence, an operant behavior that has undergone extinction can return ("resurge") when a second operant that has replaced it itself undergoes extinction. The phenomenon may provide insight into relapse that may occur after incentive or contingency management therapies in humans. Three experiments with rats examined the impact of several…

Findings from a randomized controlled design study of an ability-based versus needs-based approach to response-contingent learning among children with significant developmental delays and disabilities who did not use instrumental behavior to produce reinforcing consequences are reported. The ability-based intervention and needs-based intervention…

In 2 separate longitudinal studies, infants and their mothers were seen in 3 longitudinal visits. At 2 months, they were observed in free play where mothers' contingency toward their infants was obtained. At 5 months, a goal blockage response was produced when a previously learned contingent response became ineffective in producing an interesting…

Children with disabilities play less often and demonstrate fewer varied pretend play behaviors than children with typical development. A multiple-probe design was used to examine the relation between teachers' use of the system of least prompts and contingent imitation and the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of pretend play and…

Although massed-trial instruction, distributed-trial instruction, and task interspersal have been shown to be effective methods of teaching skills to children with autism spectrum disorders, they have not been directly compared. In the current study, we taught 6 children to tact shapes of countries using these methods to determine which would…

The concept of reinforcement is at least incomplete and almost certainly incorrect. An alternative way of organizing our understanding of behavior may be built around three concepts: "allocation," "induction," and "correlation." Allocation is the measure of behavior and captures the centrality of choice: All behavior entails choice and consists of…

The present study investigated the effectiveness of a novel class-wide intervention, the Classroom Password, for increasing the academic engaged behavior of middle school students. The effectiveness of an independent group contingency was evaluated using a concurrent multiple baseline design across three seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms.…

The daily report card (DRC) is a commonly employed behavioral intervention for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in schools. Much of the support for the DRC comes from single-case studies, which have traditionally received less attention than group studies. This lack of attention to single-case studies results in an…

Many schools are beginning to implement universal behavior management interventions as part of multitiered systems of support. Past research suggests that teachers need support to implement new practices with fidelity. Coaching is one method for supporting implementation, but little is understood about how coaching takes place when relying on…

Math fact fluency is critical for understanding complex mathematics. Explicit timing interventions have shown promise for improving math fluency, and they may benefit from being paired with group-oriented contingencies. Further, investigations of independent and dependent group-oriented contingencies would help to identify their relative…