AN ANALYSIS AND REDUCTION OF DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR ON SCHOOL BUSES

Thousands of children are injured or killed each year in school bus accidents. A significant number of these tragic incidents is precipitated by disruptive child behavior that distracts the drivers from their difficult task. Two experiments were conducted which addressed this problem. For both experiments an automated sound recording device (referred to as a Noise Guard) selectively responsive to frequencies above 500 Hz (i.e., unresponsive to bus drone) recorded both the duration and frequency of noise outbursts above a tolerable threshold. Additionally, an observer made in situ measurements of other disruptions including roughhousing and getting-out-of-seat. In the first experiment, following baseline measurements of these behaviors, middle-school students received feedback for noise outbursts. That is, when “Noise Guard'” was activated, it in turn operated one of several lights on a panel visible to all passengers. Each day students were allowed to listen to high-appeal taped music while riding the bus and to participate in a raffle for prizes, provided the number of outbursts on the preceding day remained below a specified criterion indicated on the light panel. This intervention resulted in drastic reductions of noise outbursts with a concomitant reduction in other disruptive behaviors. Comparable results were obtained in the second experiment which eliminated the raffle from the intervention.     

THE EFFECTS OF A GOOD-BEHAVIOR CONTRACT ON THE CLASSROOM BEHAVIORS OF SIXTH-GRADE STUDENTS1

The effects of a good-behavior contract on the on-task behavior, disruptive behavior, daily assignment completion, and weekly grades of four sixth-grade students were examined in a public school classroom. The contract consisted of presenting the students with a list of good conduct and assignment completion goals and a list of disruptive behaviors coupled with a list of rewards and penalties that could be earned. The rewards and penalties made use of existing facilities and classroom privileges. At the beginning of each morning work period, the teacher negotiated the good-behavior contract with each experimental subject. During the negotiations, the teacher emphasized student self-management and encouraged each student to earn a reward by achieving the good-conduct goals and completing the contract assignments. An isolated work area was provided to allow students the opportunity to remove themselves from their desks for a fixed period of 15 min. At the end of the work period, the teacher determined whether each student earned a choice of reward or penalty dependent on assignment completion and whether the teacher had observed disruptive behaviors. Thus, the contract permitted the student to negotiate the goal behaviors and contingencies with the teacher. Throughout the study, the students were in agreement with the teacher on whether a choice of reward or penalty had been earned. The contract was introduced for different children at different times, constituting a multiple-baseline analysis. On-task behavior and daily assignment completion increased, weekly grades were higher, and disruptive behavior decreased when the contract was in effect. Three contrast subjects were selected from the class as model students who consistently produced acceptable assignments and who did not engage in high rates of disruptive and/or off-task behaviors. When the contract was in effect for the experimental subjects, their performance compared favorably with the contrast subjects, who never received the daily contract. The results demonstrated that the contract was effective within the confines of the facilities and contingencies readily available in a public school classroom setting.     

A COMPARISON OF THE EFFECTS OF FIXED AND VARIABLE RATIO SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT ON THE BEHAVIOR OF DEAF CHILDREN

The performance of all five students in an adjustment class for deaf children was compared under fixed and variable ratio schedules of reinforcement. During the fixed ratio (FR) condition, students earned checks if they were attentive and did not engage in disruptive behavior. These checks could be exchanged for the opportunity to draw a prize from a grab bag. During the variable ratio (VR) condition, they earned a draw from the grab bag according to a variable ratio schedule with a mean ratio equal to the value of the preceding FR schedule. During the VR condition, students visually attended more and engaged in disruptive behavior less often than during the FR condition. The number of math problems completed per minute was also higher during the VR condition although no specific consequences were applied to math performance.     

AN ANALYSIS OF SOME VARIABLES INFLUENCING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF REPRIMANDS

Although several studies have shown that social reprimands can function as punishers, no study reported to date has isolated any of the factors influencing reprimand efficacy. Three experiments were conducted to investigate several factors. Experiment 1 used an alternating treatments design and was conducted on two elementary school boys, one of whom was in a special education class. Results showed that verbal reprimands delivered with eye contact and firm grasp of the student's shoulders reduced disruptive behavior to a greater extent than did verbal reprimands delivered without eye contact and grasp. Both types of reprimand were more effective than a baseline condition during which disruptive behavior was ignored. Experiment 2 also used an alternating treatments design and was conducted on one elementary school boy. Results demonstrated that reprimands delivered from one meter away were considerably more effective than reprimands delivered from seven meters away. Experiment 3 used a reversal design and was conducted on two pairs of elementary school children, one a pair of boys and the other a pair of girls. Results demonstrated that reprimands delivered to just one member of the pair reduced the disruptive behavior of both members of the pair. Thus, the effects of reprimands “spilled” over to nonreprimanded students.     

THE USE OF AN ENHANCED SIMPLIFIED HABIT-REVERSAL PROCEDURE TO REDUCE DISRUPTIVE OUTBURSTS DURING ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE

An enhanced simplified habit-reversal procedure was used with a 14-year-old boy who presented with a long history of disruptive, angry outbursts during tennis matches. Initial treatment involved simplified habit-reversal procedures delivered in a multiple baseline design across settings. Modest results led to additional supporting contingencies, including response cost. Results showed elimination of disruptive outbursts during both nontournament and tournament matches and highlight the importance of adding additional supporting contingencies to simplified habit reversal for some self-control problems.     

Effects of background music on phonological short-term memory

Immediate memory for visually presented verbal material is disrupted by concurrent speech, even when the speech is unattended and in a foreign language. Unattended noise does not produce a reliable decrement. These results have been interpreted in terms of a phonological short-term store that excludes non-speechlike sounds. The characteristics of this exclusion process were explored by studying the effects of music on the serial recall of sequences of nine digits presented visually. Experiment 1 compared the effects of unattended vocal or instrumental music with quiet and showed that both types of music disrupted STM performance, with vocal music being more disruptive than instrumental music. Experiment 2 attempted to replicate this result using more highly trained subjects. Vocal music caused significantly more disruption than instrumental music, which was not significantly worse than the silent control condition. Experiment 3 compared instrumental music with unattended speech and with noise modulated in amplitude, the degree of modulation being the same as in speech. The results showed that the noise condition did not differ from silence; both of these proved less disruptive than instrumental music, which was in turn less disruptive than the unattended speech condition. Theoretical interpretation of these results and their potential practical implications for the disruption of cognitive performance by background music are discussed.     

USE OF ESCAPE AND REWARD IN THE MANAGEMENT OF YOUNG CHILDREN DURING DENTAL TREATMENT

A reinforced practice procedure was used to facilitate cooperative behavior in five children, aged 3 to 6 years, during dental treatment. In a multiple baseline design across subjects, the children were rewarded with escape, inexpensive stickers, and praise for cooperative behavior in the presence of the sights, sounds, and some sensations of the dental instruments prior to actual dental treatment. Direct observations of disruptive behavior via a 15-s interval recording system indicated baseline levels as high as 90% were reduced to less than 15% by the final treatment visit. In addition, the procedure was effective in reducing overall heart rate and blood pressure reactivity to dental treatment. All children were rated by the involved dental professionals as more cooperative and relaxed following exposure to reinforced practice.     

DISTRACTION: ITS UTILIZATION AND EFFICACY WITH CHILDREN UNDERGOING DENTAL TREATMENT

We investigated the utilization and efficacy of distraction in reducing the anxious and disruptive behavior of 4 children undergoing dental treatment. During the distraction procedure, the children were shown a poster and told a story about it during dental treatment. They earned a prize if they attended to the poster and story and could correctly answer questions about them following each intervention visit. The children's disruptive behavior was assessed via direct observation, and results were analyzed within a multiple baseline design. The children exhibited high levels of anxious and disruptive behavior across baseline visits, regardless of the length of time in treatment or number of visits. Anxious and disruptive behavior decreased upon introduction of the intervention for all children. This was accompanied by the children meeting the criterion for correct answers on the distraction quiz. However, 2 of the children demonstrated an increase in their anxious and disruptive behavior across intervention visits. Results are discussed in terms of the need to evaluate treatment strategies that promote maintenance as well as initial changes.     

Shaping data collection congruent with experimental hypotheses

The influence of instructions and feedback from an experimenter on observational recordings of disruptive behavior was evaluated. Four subject-observers recorded four categories of disruptive behavior from videotapes of children in a classroom setting. Two sets of videotapes, labelled "baseline" and "treatment", were matched for rates of disruptive behavior in each category. The observers were told that two target behaviors were expected to decrease and the other two control behaviors were not expected to change during the treatment condition. During observational recording of treatment videotapes, the observers were given positive feedback when they reported decreases in the two target behaviors, and negative feedback when they reported either to change or increases in the two control behaviors. The target behaviors were recorded less frequently by observers, while recordings of control behaviors were unaffected during the treatment phase. These results suggest that contingent feedback to observers should be avoided as a possible source of bias in behavioral recordings.     

OPERANT PROCEDURES AND THE COMATOSE PATIENT

Operant procedures were tested on three patients who had been in vegetative coma for 6 months, 10 months, and 38 months. A discrete trial procedure was used to test compliance to verbal requests for three behaviors for each patient, including lateral head movement or finger movement, eye focus or eye squeeze, and mouth movement. The design for each patient consisted of multiple baselines across three behaviors with a withdrawal phase and a reinstatement phase (ABAB) for one behavior. Baseline phases were followed by contingent music phases in which 15-second taped excerpts of patients' preferred music sounded immediately following the emission of targeted behaviors. The contingent music treatment affected all three behaviors for Patient 1, but was less effective for two out of three behaviors for the second and third patients who had been in coma for more extensive periods of time. Results are discussed in terms of the potential contributions of the use of operant assessment and treatment procedures in an area of medicine where they have not been used before.     

THE USE OF NONCONTINGENT ESCAPE TO REDUCE DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIORS IN CHILDREN WITH SPEECH DELAYS

Noncontingent escape (NCE) was used to reduce disruptive behavior in 3 children during regularly scheduled speech therapy sessions. Results showed rapid decreases in disruptive behavior and accompanying increases in compliance across children. Findings suggest that speech therapists with little expertise in behavior analysis can effectively implement NCE.     

Human pelvis motions when walking and when riding a therapeutic horse

A prevailing rationale for equine assisted therapies is that the motion of a horse can provide sensory stimulus and movement patterns that mimic those of natural human activities such as walking. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively measure and compare human pelvis motions when walking to those when riding a horse. Six able-bodied children (inexperienced riders, 8–12 years old) participated in over-ground trials of self-paced walking and leader-paced riding on four different horses. Five kinematic measures were extracted from three-dimensional pelvis motion data: anteroposterior, superoinferior, and mediolateral translations, list angle about the anteroposterior axis, and twist angle about the superoinferior axis. There was generally as much or more variability in motion range observed between riding on the different horses as between riding and walking. Pelvis trajectories exhibited many similar features between walking and riding, including distorted lemniscate patterns in the transverse and frontal planes. In the sagittal plane the pelvis trajectory during walking exhibited a somewhat circular pattern whereas during riding it exhibited a more diagonal pattern. This study shows that riding on a horse can generate movement patterns in the human pelvis that emulate many, but not all, characteristics of those during natural walking.     

A COMPARISON OF TWO PROCEDURES FOR PROGRAMMING THE DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT OF OTHER BEHAVIORS

The relative effectiveness of two methods of programming DRO schedules of reinforcement was examined in two experiments. In these two methods, reinforcement is delivered if inappropriate responding is not occurring (a) at the end of an interval (momentary DRO), or (b) throughout the entire interval (whole-interval DRO). In Experiment 1, the effects of these schedules on disruptive responding of three retarded students were assessed in a multiple-baseline design. For two students, the momentary schedule occurred first and was ineffective, whereas the whole interval that followed was effective; for the third student, the whole-interval schedule occurred first and was effective, and reduced responding was maintained under the momentary schedule. In Experiment 2, baseline and the two DRO schedules were each presented in random order each day to one student in an alternating treatments design. The momentary DRO schedule reduced responding, but the whole-interval schedule was more effective.     

The experience of agency in sequence production with altered auditory feedback

When speaking or producing music, people rely in part on auditory feedback - the sounds associated with the performed action. Three experiments investigated the degree to which alterations of auditory feedback (AAF) during music performances influence the experience of agency (i.e., the sense that your actions led to auditory events) and the possible link between agency and the disruptive effect of AAF on production. Participants performed short novel melodies from memory on a keyboard. Auditory feedback during performances was manipulated with respect to its pitch contents and/or its synchrony with actions. Participants rated their experience of agency after each trial. In all experiments, AAF reduced judgments of agency across conditions. Performance was most disrupted (measured by error rates and slowing) when AAF led to an ambiguous experience of agency, suggesting that there may be some causal relationship between agency and disruption. However, analyses revealed that these two effects were probably independent. A control experiment verified that performers can make veridical judgments of agency.     

Joint Trajectories of Symptoms of Disruptive Behavior Problems and Depressive Symptoms During Early Adolescence and Adjustment Problems During Emerging Adulthood

The joint, longitudinal trajectories of symptoms of disruptive behavior problems and of depression were examined in a community sample drawn from neighborhoods with elevated rates of delinquency. Growth mixture modeling was applied to a 6?year transition period from childhood to adolescence, age 10 to 16?years, to identify latent classes of trajectories for each symptom type. Several classes emerged for the two types of symptoms, namely a group of youth with high levels of disruptive behavior, a group with increasing levels, and a group with low levels, as well as a group with increasing levels of depression, a group with high levels, a group with decreasing levels, and a group with low levels. Within each symptom type, membership in either the high or in the increasing classes was related to a variety of problematic outcomes during emerging adulthood. The co-occurrence of the disruptive behavior and depression classes was then evaluated using parallel process analysis. Youth exhibiting high depressive symptoms were at increased risk for disruptive behavior problems, and youth with increasing disruptive behavior problems were at risk for depressive symptoms. However, only a very small number of youth had both a high depression trajectory and a high disruptive behavior trajectory. Implications of the findings for the design of prevention and treatment programs are discussed.     

THE ROLE OF ATTENTION IN THE TREATMENT OF ATTENTION-MAINTAINED SELF-INJURIOUS BEHAVIOR: NONCONTINGENT REINFORCEMENT AND DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT OF OTHER BEHAVIOR

Because there are potentially serious limitations to differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) (which is probably the most widely used treatment procedure for behavior problems), we examined an alternative procedure—noncontingent reinforcement (NCR). Three females with developmental disabilities, all of whom engaged in severe self-injurious behavior, participated. During a pretreatment functional analysis, each subject's self-injury was shown to be differentially sensitive to social attention as a maintaining consequence. Next, each subject was exposed to a DRO treatment and an NCR treatment. During DRO, attention was delivered contingent on the absence of self-injury for prespecified intervals. During NCR, attention was delivered on a fixed-time schedule that was not influenced by the subject's behavior. Results showed that both procedures were highly effective in reducing self-injury, probably because the functional reinforcer for self-injury was used during treatment. Furthermore, there was evidence that NCR attenuated several of the limitations of DRO. These results are particularly interesting in light of the long experimental history of NCR as a control rather than as a therapeutic procedure.     

DENTIST-IMPLEMENTED CONTINGENT ESCAPE FOR MANAGEMENT OF DISRUPTIVE CHILD BEHAVIOR

We evaluated the effectiveness of a dentist-implemented intervention in which brief escape from dental treatment was provided to manage disruptive child behavior during restorative dental treatment. Within a multiple baseline design across subjects, 4 children, aged 3 to 7 years, were provided temporary escape from dental treatment contingent upon brief periods of cooperative behavior. Disruptive behavior decreased when the appropriate escape contingency was used at least 80% of the time. The escape contingency required no more time than traditional management procedures (e.g., tell-show-do, reprimands and loud commands, restraint) to bring disruptive behavior under control. Independent ratings by two dentists provided social validation of the efficacy of the escape contingency.     

THE EFFECTS OF SEXUALLY VIOLENT ROCK MUSIC ON MALES'ACCEPTANCE OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

The effects of sexually violent music on undergraduate males'( N = 75) attitudes toward women, acceptance of violence against women, and self-reported sexual arousal were evaluated. The experimental manipulation involved exposure to sexually violent heavy-metal rock music, Christian heavy-metal rock music, or easy-listening classical music. One month before the experimental manipulation, participants were administered two covariate measures (religious orientation and sex-role orientation); the Attitudes toward Women Scale; the Sex-Role Stereotyping, Adversarial Sexual Beliefs, Acceptance of Interpersonal Violence, and Rape Myth Acceptance subscales from the Sexual Attitudes Survey; and a sexual arousal index. The results indicated that males with an extrinsic religious orientation were more accepting of sexist and rape-supportive beliefs. Exposure to heavy-metal rock music, irrespective of lyrical content, increased males sex-role stereotyping and negative attitudes toward women. An unexpected finding was grearer self-reported sexual arousal in response to classical music. Results are discussed with respect to participant and stimulus characteristics and experimenters'gender.     

THE INFLUENCE OF SEXUALLY VIOLENT RAP MUSIC ON ATTITUDES OF MEN WITH LITTLE PRIOR EXPOSURE

This article is among the first to focus on commercially available, sexually violent rap music, so-called "gangsta" rap (GR) and its influence on attitudes toward women. Collegiate males with little experience with GR were exposed to GR music, lyrics, both, or neither. Thus the effect of GR music and lyrics were isolated from each other and from acculturation to GR. Collapsing across all attitude measures, neither lyrics alone nor lyrics with music resulted in significantly more negative attitudes toward women than music-only or no-treatment control conditions. Participants in the lyrics conditions had significantly greater adversarial sexual beliefs than no-lyrics participants, however.     

SOCIOMETRIC AND DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR AS A FUNCTION OF FOUR TYPES OF TOKEN REINFORCEMENT PROGRAMS1

Children in a first-grade classroom were divided into four groups. Baseline measures of disruptive classroom behavior were taken on a well-behaved and disruptive child in each group. Following baseline, four types of token economies were simultaneously introduced and rotated every 10 days within a Latin Square design. The token economies were: (1) individual reinforcement determined by individual performance; (2) group reinforcement determined by the behavior of the most disruptive child; (3) group reinforcement determined by the behavior of the least disruptive child; (4) group reinforcement determined by the behavior of a randomly chosen child. The token economies were compared on their effectiveness in changing target behavior, preference by the targets, ease of use, and cost. Additionally, sociometric responses were taken on questions of responsibility, friendship, and funniness. Results showed a significant decrease of inappropriate behavior for the disruptive children and no difference between the effectiveness of the four types of token economies in producing behavior change. However, there were other differences that indicated that the system in which group reinforcement was determined by a randomly selected child would be desirable for most teachers. Results also showed changes in the sociometric status of the disruptive children. As predicted, disruptive children were rated as more responsible when they were in the group reinforcement determined by the most disruptive child in the group token economy. Using behavior modification techniques indirectly to change sociometric status is suggested as offering a new potential technique for behavior change agents.