Free-time as a reinforcer in the management of classroom behavior

Six subjects, comprising one class at a school for the deaf, were given reinforcement consisting of time free from school work for remaining seated in the classroom. As a result, the frequency of leaving their chairs was sharply reduced. A second procedure presented free-time not contingent on remaining seated. Little change was seen in the already lowered response rate. An extension of the time required to be seated with corresponding reduction in the number of daily free-time periods did not reduce the effectiveness of the procedure. A one-day observation after six weeks indicated that the procedure was still effective. A one-day contingency reversal, requiring subjects to leave their chairs at least once during each seated period in order to receive free-time, substantially raised the frequency of out-of-seat responses.     

The detrimental effects of physical restraint as a consequence for inappropriate classroom behavior.

Functional analyses produced inconclusive results regarding variables that maintained problem behavior for 2 students with developmental disabilities. Procedures were modified to include a contingent physical restraint condition based on in‐class observations. Results indicated that under conditions in which physical restraint (i.e., basket‐hold time‐out) was applied contingent on problem behavior, rates of these behaviors increased across sessions for both subjects. Implications for the use of physical restraint in the classroom are discussed.     

A Social Stories intervention package for students with autism in inclusive classroom settings

A Social Stories intervention package was used to teach 2 students with autism to read Social Stories, answer comprehension questions, and engage in role plays. Appropriate social behaviors increased and inappropriate behaviors decreased for both participants, and the effects were maintained for up to 10 months. This intervention package appears to be useful in inclusive classroom environments and does not require intensive supervision of the child's behavior.     

Behavioral self-control in classroom settings: A review of the literature

Reviews the research on the use of behavioral self-control procedures with students in classroom settings. Thirteen published articles are reviewed. The three student classroom behaviors of on-task behavior, disruptive behavior, and academic behavior are considered. The use of behavioral self-control procedures appears promising with on-task and academic behaviors and inconclusive with disruptive behavior. The reviewed studies were weak regarding follow-up analyses and controlling for student prior experience with external contigency programs. Further research with behavioral self-control in different settings seems warranted.     

An evaluation of methylphenidate as a potential establishing operation for some common classroom reinforcers.

We conducted reinforcer assessments for 3 boys with a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder who alternately received either placebo or previously prescribed methylphenidate. Our purpose was to evaluate whether methylphenidate altered the relative reinforcing effectiveness of various stimuli that are often used in classroom-based behavioral treatment programs (e.g., activities, tangible items). Results showed clear differences for some stimuli between reinforcer assessments conducted when participants had received methylphenidate compared to placebo. Results suggest that methylphenidate might act as an establishing operation for some common classroom reinforcers. Implications for the development and evaluation of behavioral treatments are discussed.     

Seat belt usage: A potential target for applied behavior analysis

Results of 1,579 observations of cars entering or exiting campus parking lots showed direct relationships between seat belt wearing and the intrusiveness of the engineering device designed to induce belt usage, and between device intrusiveness and system defeat. For example, all drivers with working interlocks or unlimited buzzer reminders were wearing a seat belt; but 62% of the systems with interlocks or unlimited buzzers had been defeated, and only 15.9% of the drivers in these cars were wearing a seat belt. The normative data indicated marked ineffectiveness of the negative reinforcement contingencies implied by current seat belt inducement systems; but suggested that unlimited buzzer systems would be the optimal system currently available if contingencies were developed to discourage the disconnection and circumvention of such systems. Positive reinforcement strategies are discussed that would be quite feasible for large-scale promotion of seat belt usage.     

Impetus for a robust science of behavior: A review of Nevin's Behavioral Momentum: A scientific metaphor

Nevin provides a scientific role model, illustrating momentum in his own research and providing impetus through his effects on the scientific behavior of his students and his colleagues. I discuss his book in the context of a review of the history of the concept of extinction, I cite his introduction of signal‐detection analysis into behavior analysis as a contribution not covered in this book, I briefly consider applications, such as the potential extension to fluency procedures in education, and I critique his concept of momentum, relating it to other metaphors for maintained behavior such as the dynamics of sensory systems and robustness in biological accounts of the stability of phenotypes.     

Depression as a risk marker for aggression: A critical review

Depression is commonly thought of as counter-indicative of aggression because of apparent contradictions in energy requirements and blame orientation. However, empirical studies indicate that the presence of depression elevates risk for general aggression, intimate partner aggression, and self-aggression. Most of these studies are cross-sectional and retrospective, hence, there is scant empirical evidence for depression as a causal factor for aggression. However, there is considerable evidence for an association between depression and aggression. Depression as a risk marker for aggression may stem from a third factor such as genetics, personality disorder or insecure attachment. There are also a number of sequelae of depression that may contribute to this increased risk for aggression including isolation, lost social support, increased alcohol use, angry rumination, and impulsivity. Furthermore, affective swamping clouds attributional clarity so that internal and external attributions for negative feelings become fused and undifferentiated. Hence, negative events of sufficient affective impact can generate both depression and anger. One form of this affective swamping is scapegoating: finding an external person or persons to blame for “causing” aversive affect. For these reasons, depression should constitute a routine aspect of mental health assessment and where present, should be viewed as a risk factor for aggression.     

Multiple-choice testing as a desirable difficulty in the classroom

We examined whether the power of tests as learning events, frequently demonstrated in the laboratory, would also occur in a large undergraduate course. Our goals were to determine: if learning of information tested on multiple-choice quizzes administered across the course would be enhanced compared to non-tested control information; and what the effects of quizzing would be for the learning of information conceptually related to the tested information but not itself tested on the quizzes. Given that retrieval practice can have positive (testing effect) and negative consequences (retrieval-induced forgetting), our concern was that the learning and later retention of non-tested conceptually related information might be impaired by the multiple-choice quizzes. Importantly, learning benefits were found for both types of information on the final exam, indicating that quizzing within a course can enhance not only the learning of specifically tested information, but the learning of non-tested conceptually related information as well.     

Generalization in a child's oppositional behavior across home and school settings

A 9-year-old clinic-referred boy, his mother, and his teacher were observed in 38 home and 38 school sessions on the same days. Categories of the boy's oppositional behavior and the inappropriate social attention of his mother and teacher were graphed to visually inspect changes during baseline, a parent-training phase, a follow-up phase, and a final parent-training booster phase. Parent-training phases produced reductions in the mother's inappropriate attention and in the boy's oppositional behavior, whereas the follow-up and baseline phases were associated with higher rates of these categories. Generalization occurred in the school across these home phases, as seen in the increase in rates of the boy's problem behavior, despite the lack of change in his teacher's attention. Correlational analyses of proportion scores reflecting the boy's home-school oppositional behavior and mother-teacher social attention suggested his responsiveness to relative changes in adult social contingencies across settings.     

Delayed timeout as a procedure for reducing disruptive classroom behavior: a case study

The disruptive behavior of a 9-yr-old boy was eliminated by the illumination of a light on the subject's desk, which represented the loss of free time later in the day. Instructions alone failed to reduce the frequency of disruptive behavior. When the light was removed and disruptive behavior no longer resulted in a loss of free time, disruptive behavior returned to its previous level.     

Interventions for inappropriate sexual behavior in individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities: A brief review

Although prevalence rates vary, 6% to 28% of individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDDs) engage in inappropriate sexual behavior (ISB), ranging from public masturbation to sexually aggressive behavior. Along with increased risk for contacting the criminal justice system, people with IDDs who display ISB may encounter negative social consequences, restricted community access and barriers to independence, and a variety of counter-therapeutic outcomes. The purpose of the present review is to highlight recent, efficacious behavior-analytic treatments for ISB in individuals with IDDs. Ethical considerations and areas for future research will be discussed.     

Unit price as a useful metric in analyzing effects of reinforcer magnitude.

In this paper, we applied the behavioral-economic concept of unit price to the study of reinforcer magnitude in an attempt to provide a consistent account of the effects of reinforcer magnitude on behavior. Recent research in the experimental analysis of behavior and in behavioral pharmacology suggests that reinforcer magnitude interacts with the schedule of reinforcement to determine response rate and total consumption. The utility of the unit-price concept thus stems from its ability to quantify this interaction as a cost-benefit ratio (i.e., unit price = characteristics of the schedule of reinforcement divided by magnitude of reinforcement). Research employing the unit-price concept has shown that as unit price increases, a positively decelerating function exists for consumption (i.e., a function with an increasingly negative slope, when plotted on log coordinates) and a bitonic function exists for response rate. Based on these findings, the present analysis applied the unit-price concept to those studies of reinforcer magnitude and drug self-administration that examined the effects of reinforcer magnitude on response rate using simple schedules of reinforcement (e.g., fixed-ratio schedule). This resulted in three findings: (a) Reinforcer-magnitude manipulations and schedule manipulations interact in a manner that can be quantified in terms of unit price as benefit and cost factors, respectively; (b) different reinforcer-magnitude manipulations are functionally interchangeable as benefit factors in the unit-price ratio; and (c) these conclusions appear warranted despite the differences in reinforcers (food or drug), species (dogs, monkeys, or rats), and schedules (interval or ratio), and despite the fact that these studies were not designed for a unit-price analysis. In methodological terms, these results provide further evidence that employing the unit-price concept is a parsimonious method for examining the effects of reinforcer magnitude. In theoretical terms, these results suggest that a single process may underlie the effect of combined reinforcer-magnitude and schedule manipulations.     

Effects of training, prompting, and self-monitoring on staff behavior in a classroom for students with disabilities

This study extended the limited research on the utility of tactile prompts and examined the effects of a treatment package on implementation of a token economy by instructional assistants in a classroom for students with disabilities. During baseline, we measured how accurately the assistants implemented a classroom token economy based on the routine training they had received through the school system. Baseline was followed by brief in-service training, which resulted in no improvement of token-economy implementation for recently hired instructional assistants. A treatment package of prompting and self-monitoring with accuracy feedback was then introduced as a multiple baseline design across behaviors. The treatment package was successfully faded to a more manageable self-monitoring intervention. Results showed visually significant improvements for all participants during observation sessions.     

Observed classroom behavior of children with ADHD: relationship to gender and comorbidity

Examined hypothesized gender and comorbidity differences in the observed classroom behavior of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The behavior of 403 boys and 99 girls with ADHD, ages 7–10, was compared (a) to observed, sex-specific classroom behavior norms, (b) by sex, and (c) by comorbid subgroups. Boys and girls with ADHD deviated significantly from classroom norms on 15/16 and 13/16 categories, respectively. Compared to comparison girls, girls with ADHD had relatively high rates of verbal aggression to children. Boys with ADHD engaged in more rule-breaking and externalizing behaviors than did girls with ADHD, but the sexes did not differ on more neutral, unobtrusive behaviors. The sex differences are consistent with notions of why girls with ADHD are identified and referred later than boys. Contrary to hypothesis, the presence of comorbid anxiety disorder (ANX) was not associated with behavioral suppression; yet, as hypothesized, children with a comorbid disruptive behavior disorder (DBD) had higher rates of rule-breaking, and impulsive and aggressive behavior, than did children with ADHD alone and those with ADHD+ANX. Elevated rates of ADHD behaviors were also observed in children with comorbid DBD, indicating that these behaviors are truly present and suggesting that reports of higher ADHD ratings in this subgroup are not simply a consequence of negative halo effects and rater biases.