A behavior management program which uses play money to motivate students and reinforce appropriate behavior helps elementary school students (including disabled students) develop responsibility for their behavior. All students in the class participate and are allowed to buy items from the class store with money earned. (CB)

The article discusses the uses of mechanical vibration for stimulating, rewarding, and suppressing behaviors of multiply handicapped blind children. Suggestions for further research and refinement of the techniques are made. (Author)

In response to the prevailing attitude in American education today demanding higher academic standards and greater student achievement, this article lists 25 programs designed to increase academic excellence while still promoting a positive learning environment within the school. (DCS)

Parents can help their children feel secure and have a good self-image by communicating these feelings through words and actions. Suggestions for showing respect, building self-esteem, fostering security and success, and talking to children in a positive way are dicussed. (DF)

Compliments are not only common daily discourse, but they are also used in companies, government agencies, and universities as written recommendations to determine hiring and promotion decisions. This report analyzes compliments as to structure, form, and content; replies they evoke; characteristics of compliment givers and receivers; and manner…

Shows how program activities can be a major therapeutic tool as an aid in diagnosis, a specific treatment intervention, positive reinforcement after discussion, an aid to behavior management. Discusses general factors to be considered in choosing group activities. (JH)

Describes a behavior modification program that has proved effective with boys with learning and behavior problems. (SB)

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has been holding a series of stakeholder meetings focused on better understanding and planning for schools to be transformative environments for mental health, positive youth development, and academic achievement. This issue of the quarterly newsletter of the Center for Mental…

The relationship between engaging in pleasant activities and mood was examined as a function of age, sex, and diagnostic group (depressed, nondepressed, psychiatric and normal controls). Results indicate that: (1) a significant relationship existed between mood level and number of pleasant activities of all groups; (2) psychiatric controls and…

The application of the triadic model of therapeutic intervention was tested within a community-based program that trained indigenous nonprofessionals as behavior change agents to 42 youngsters, aged 11-17. These adult buddies attempted to influence their youngsters through their relationship and through the contingent use of social and material…

Social learning theory assertions of a relationship between self-esteem status and rates of self-reinforcement were examined under differing conditions of task ambiguity in a sample of seventh-grade males and females (N=90). (Editor)

Delinquent and non-delinquent male adolescents were asked to give memories from their early childhoods under treatment conditions of verbal praise, attitude agreement, or objective correctness. (Author)

The inhibitions which adults feel about praising themselves can be communicated to children. The existence of these inhibitions may help explain why few teachers directly teach children to praise themselves. Yet this type of teaching can be incorporated with other school experiences and can be a powerful tool in helping the child to be…