This paper presents a response to five commentaries on our article "An Analysis of Autism as a Contingency-Shaped Disorder of Verbal Behavior" (Drash & Tudor, 2004). One of the principal objectives of that article is to provide the behavior analysis community and the autism community with a conceptual basis for analyzing autism as a behavioral…

The study investigated whether young children's health status is significantly related to their performance on measures of intelligence, language, and behavior, as well as parents' concerns, stress, and perceptions of their children's development. One hundred twelve 3 to 5 year-old children, recruited from a large pediatric practice and three…

Child compliance is an important skill for young children to develop. It is often the focus of intervention efforts. This paper presents a six week program for professionals to use in parent training. At each week, new parenting skills are taught and utilized in real life child compliance situations. Data collection is built into the six-week…

We review existing studies of attrition in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), an empirically supported treatment for preschool-aged children with disruptive behavior disorders. Variables identified as pretreatment predictors of attrition in a statistically derived search for pretreatment predictors included maternal distress, negative…

This paper reviews the recent parent training research in which parents are taught to use principles of operant learning as well as general principles of positive verbal discourse. While this combination of interventions has been shown to have greater impact than the operant guidelines used alone, a rationale for the discourse strategy is not…

Asperger's Syndrome (AS) is a relatively recent term in education and psychology and has gained more interest since it became a recognized exceptionality in the United States in 1994. It is classified with autism under the term "Pervasive Developmental Disorder" (PDD). The primary criteria for diagnosis include linguistic, social, and behavioral…

Self-esteem has long been a subject of discussion regarding its effects on problem behaviors including crime and recidivism. The current literature suggests that low self-esteem is not related to crime for male offenders and perhaps it is inflated self-esteem that is to blame for violence and crime. The literature on females and crime still…

Positive behavioral support (PBS) refers to the application of positive behavioral interventions and systems to achieve socially important behavioral changes (Sugai et al., 2000). Implementation of PBS at the classroom level involves all stakeholders--those with interest and experience in that setting (e.g., teachers, paraprofessionals, students,…

This study examined the effects of effective command training with teachers on students' compliance rates and academic engagement. Three target students were selected who were exhibiting compliance rates substantially below peers. The students' teachers were taught how to provide effective commands. Results indicated that students' rates of…

Within the context of a multilayered prevention system, responsiveness to intervention (RTI) integrates increasingly intensive instruction and, at each layer, employs assessment to identify students who are inadequately responsive and who therefore require intervention at the next, more intensive layer in the system. Over the past decade, RTI has…

Research on the treatment of challenging behaviors such as aggression, tantrums, and self-injury expanded significantly over the past two decades. However, despite of the rather impressive numbers of studies, it is still uncertain whether positive behavioral support (PBS) is effective with everyone. To be able to tell family members and…

Objective: Several studies report a possible association of celiac disease (CD) with psychiatric and psychological disturbances, such as ADHD. Method: The authors assess 132 participants from 3 to 57 years of age (M = 19.3 years) affected by CD for the possibility of an associated ADHD-like symptomatology, using the Conner Scale Hypescheme, a…

Child welfare service agencies provide parent training as part of their legally mandated responsibility to provide services to assist families to keep their children at home or to achieve reunification. The use of parent-training programs for families in the child welfare system has undergone relatively little examination. Mental health, special…

The objective of this study is to examine preschool-age correlates of the maternal version of the Attachment Q-Set (AQS) (Waters & Deane, 1985) in order to provide validity data. Concurrent associations between the Attachment Q-Set and measures of separation-reunion attachment classifications (Cassidy & Marvin, 1992), quality of mother-child…

Despite Asperger's Syndrome (AS) becoming a widely recognized disorder on the pervasive developmental spectrum, surprisingly few studies have assessed the utility of psychosocial and/or pharmacological treatments for children with AS. Further, studies have not examined the effects of treatment on disruptive behavior problems commonly exhibited by…