Identifying the multi-risk family prenatally: Antecedent psychosocial factors and infant developmental trends

Little is known about the relationship between mother and infant within multiproblem, so-called “hard to reach” families. In an effort to understand factors contributing to problems in caring for the young children of these parents, a group of 47 families was recruited for study by the Clinical Infant Development Program of the National Institute of Mental Health. Serious social pathology was found within 75 percent of families. The lives of mothers in these families was marked by long term disruptions: 64 percent were from families characterized by recurring poverty and psychiatric illness, and 69 percent reported disruptions in parental care prior to age twelve, while more than two-thirds reported a history of being physically and/or sexually abused as children. More than 75 percent of this group of women presently showed psychiatric distress. Many of these women have difficulty in providing adequately for their young children and require innovative intervention programs in order to facilitate parenting.     

Combining Operant baseline derived Conditioned Excitors and Inhibitors from the Same and Different Incentive Classes: An Investigation of Appetitive-Aversive Interactions

The dynamics of appetitive-aversive interaction theory were assayed in an experiment where excitors and inhibitors from the same and different incentive classes were compounded. Excitatory and inhibitory incentive properties acquired by the discriminative stimuli resulted from the reinforcement differences between components of four-component multiple training schedules, with the influence of competing peripheral responses factored into the design. Rats' barpressing was maintained in tone and in click by food or free-operant shock avoidance; extinction was programmed in click-plus-light and in the simultaneous absence of tone, click, and light. In Test 1, an excitor that occasioned operant responding and an inhibitor that occasioned response cessation were compounded. Here, compounding an inhibitor with an excitor from the same incentive class reduced responding significantly more than did compounding an inhibitor with an excitor from the other incentive class. In Test 2, the compounds consisted of elements that individually occasioned operant responding. Here, compounding stimuli that were excitors from different incentive classes appeared to create reciprocal inhibition that counteracted the additive effects produced when these stimuli were excitors from the same incentive class. Predictions from appetitive-aversive interaction theory and Weiss' two-factor model of stimulus control were confirmed within this experimental design, where all conditioning was a by-product of the behavioural contingencies programmed on the operant baselines.     

Student outcomes after 1 year of front line staff implementation of the PEAK curriculum

Systems‐level interventions built by behavior analysts often rely on others to implement, and this may be especially true in public education settings where behavior analysts are scarce. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Direct Training (PEAK‐DT) curriculum when implemented by school teachers and direct care staff. Thirty‐nine children with autism took part in the study (19 PEAK, 15 control), where the experimental group received applied behavior analytic instruction through the PEAK‐DT curriculum, and the quasi‐randomized control group received training as usual. The PEAK‐DT assessment was first administered to the participants at the onset of the study and again following 1 year. Participants who received PEAK training gained more skills on the PEAK‐DT assessment compared to the control group (PEAK: M = 16.0, SD = 17.8; control: M = 6.1, SD = 14.4, F(1,33) = 10.66, p < .05), suggesting that systems level implementation of behavior analytic procedures can be effective in teaching language skills as prescribed in a packaged curriculum designed by behavior analysts.