EFFECTIVENESS OF FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION TRAINING WITH AND WITHOUT EXTINCTION AND PUNISHMENT: A SUMMARY OF 21 INPATIENT CASES

Functional communication training (FCT) is a frequently used treatment for reducing problem behavior exhibited by individuals with developmental disabilities. Once the operant function of problem behavior is identified by a functional analysis, the client is taught to emit an appropriate communicative response to obtain the reinforcer that is responsible for behavioral maintenance. Studies on FCT have typically used small numbers of participants, have reported primarily on clients for whom FCT was successful, and have varied with respect to their use of other treatment components. The main purposes of the present study were to evaluate the efficacy of FCT for treating severe problem behavior in a relatively large sample of individuals with mental retardation (N = 21) and to determine the contribution of extinction and punishment components to FCT treatment packages. FCT with extinction was effective in reducing problem behavior for the majority of clients and resulted in at least a 90% reduction in problem behavior in nearly half the applications. However, when demand or delay-to-reinforcement fading was added to FCT with extinction, treatment efficacy was reduced in about one half of the applications. FCT with punishment (both with and without fading) resulted in at least a 90% reduction in problem behavior for every case in which it was applied.     

Perseverative Writing Errors in a Patient with Alzheimer's Disease

This study reports the writing performance of a dysgraphic patient with Alzheimer's disease and moderate dementia who frequently perseverated on strokes and letters. Letter formation errors were also frequently produced. Oral spelling was superior to written spelling. The habitual style of writing (cursive writing) was significantly more prone to perseverations than writing in uppercase letters, a form of writing less frequently used by the patient. Central (linguistic) spelling processes were relatively preserved. The pattern of preserved and impaired functions is consistent with impairment of the peripheral mechanism that generates the graphic motor patterns code. We suggest that damage to the peripheral orthographic mechanism may cause deficits in some patients with Alzheimer's disease.     

Recognition and recall by children and adults as a function of variations in memory encoding instructions

In four experiments Ss were instructed to learn a set of 40 words by producing implicit associative responses to each item (association instructions), by repeating items over and over (repetition instruction), or by using their own devices (neutral instructions). Experiment I showed that recognition memory (RM) accuracy was greatest under association instructions for adults and children and least under repetition instructions for children. The implications of these results for a frequency theory analysis for RM were discussed. Experiments II, III, and IV examined free recall (FR) as a function of encoding instructions at short (1 min) and long (either 90 min or 24 h) retention intervals. FR was worst under repetition instructions, with little overall difference between the association and neutral conditions. However, in Experiments III and IV, using school children, the neutral condition exceeded the others in FR after 90 min but not after 1 min.     

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