THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL PUNISHMENT ON NONCOMPLIANCE: A COMPARISON WITH TIMEOUT AND POSITIVE PRACTICE

The effects of social punishment, positive practice, and timeout on the noncompliant behavior of four mentally retarded children were assessed in a multitreatment withdrawal design. When programmed, the experimental procedure occurred contingent on noncompliance to experimenter-issued commands. Commands were given at 55-sec intervals throughout each experimental session. The results showed (1) lower levels of noncompliance with social punishment than with the positive-practice or timeout conditions, and (2) that relatively few applications of social punishment were required to obtain this effect. The advantages of social punishment over other punishment procedures, considerations to be made before using it, and the various aspects of the procedure that contribute to its effectiveness were discussed.     

Correspondence between saying and doing: teaching children to share and praise

Five small groups of preschool children were taught to share and praise by the modelling of these behaviors and reinforcement of their reports of sharing and praising. Experiment I demonstrated that modelling and reinforcement of any (true or untrue) reports of sharing, and then of praising, promptly increased reports of the corresponding behaviors. Modelling and reinforcement for true reports of each behavior increased both reporting and actual behavior. Experiment II showed that both reported and actual sharing and praising may be increased by modelling and reinforcement for true reports of the target behavior, without previous reinforcement for any (true or untrue) reports of those behaviors. Sharing, but not praising, generalized to a second setting. Experiment III replicated the results of Experiment II for sharing and praising, and demonstrated similar success in increasing a third behavior, specific praising. In general, these experiments show that developing correspondence between children's reports of behavior and actual behavior may be an efficient means of increasing prosocial responses.     

Evaluation of home-based programs for teaching personal safety skills to children

We evaluated the efficacy of a commercially available program, the Red Flag, Green Flag Prevention Book, used by parents to teach their children personal safety skills. Children's knowledge and skills regarding the prevention of sexual abuse and abduction were assessed prior to, during, and after training. In one group, training consisted of parents using the prevention book to train their children. Parents of children in the second group used the prevention book with added instructions. Children who did not achieve criterion performance after training with the prevention book received behavioral skills training provided by the experimenter. All children acquired safety skills following behavioral skills training. Follow-up probes 2 months later showed skill maintenance among the older children. Parents reported satisfaction with the procedures and no signs of behavioral or emotional problems following the follow-up probe.     

Training young parents to identify and report their children's illnesses.

We developed a comprehensive training program to teach young parents what symptoms to look for to judge the severity of their children''s illnesses, what to do at home to comfort their children, and when to consult their children''s physician or take them for emergency treatment. Three pairs of subjects received training that included written handouts, verbal instructions, modeling, positive practice, and verbal reinforcement. Skill acquisition was assessed by a behavioral test in which parents assessed, treated, or reported a simulated illness in a child. Written materials when used alone did not improve the parent''s ability to identify and report children''s illnesses. Modeling and role-playing followed by positive practice were successful in teaching these parents skills that were maintained for 3 months without additional training or instruction.     

RECREATING THE SCENE: AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO PROVIDE DELAYED PUNISHMENT FOR INAPPROPRIATE MOTOR BEHAVIOR

A mediated punishment procedure that involved recreating a behavioral sequence by guiding the subject through the behavior in the situation in which it occurred was used to suppress several severe problem behaviors in two developmentally delayed children. The mediational procedure was first used with a 4-year-old autistic boy for biting and then for foot stomping. Next the procedure was used for stealing and hoarding behavior with a multiply handicapped 17-year-old girl. Results indicated that the procedure was effective and produced relatively rapid results. One advantage of the procedure is that it provides an opportunity for trained personnel to apply restrictive procedures to low frequency behavior that occurs in their absence rather than relying on less qualified staff to implement the procedure immediately after the behavior occurs.     

Response restriction and substitution with autistic children.

Few studies to date have examined time reallocation in naturalistic, multiresponse human repertoires when one or more responses are restricted. For this experiment, free-operant baseline levels of six responses were measured for four autistic children. The high-probability responses were made unavailable, one at a time, such that subjects had access to five, four, three, and two responses in successive restriction conditions. A return to the six-response free-operant baseline condition completed the experiment. Results were compared to predictions made by four time-reallocation models. These results were described accurately only by the selective substitution model. Further analyses examined alternative explanations for the individual reallocation patterns obtained. An expanded selective substitution definition is proposed that may characterize orderly patterns observed in multiresponse repertoires under restriction conditions more accurately than the other existing models.     

SELF-RECORDING OF ATTENTION VERSUS PRODUCTIVITY

We investigated the relative effects of self-recording of attentive behavior and self-recording of academic productivity with 5 upper elementary-aged special education students in their special education classroom. Following baseline, both self-recording treatments were introduced according to a multielement design. After the multielement phase, we assessed the pupils' performance under a choice condition, faded the overt aspects of the treatment program according to a withdrawal design, and probed maintenance over 5 weeks. Results revealed that both treatments produced clear improvements in arithmetic productivity and attention to task, neither treatment was clearly and consistently superior to the other, pupils preferred the self-recording of attention treatment, the effects were maintained for all pupils, achievement test scores improved, and pupils generally recorded accurately.     

Correspondence in children's self-report: Tacting and manding aspects

Four boys and 4 girls (3 to 5 years old) played with as many as three toys chosen from a set of six, and were then asked whether they played with each of the toys. After a baseline in which all children showed high levels of correspondence between reported and actual behavior, reports of play were differentially reinforced, first in an individual and then in a social context. Two children in the individual condition began to report play with all six toys, even though no more than three toys had been played with. When reports of play were reinforced in a group context, 5 children reported play with all six toys. When correspondence was subsequently reinforced, virtually complete correspondence returned and was maintained in a third noncontingent reinforcement condition. Correspondence and lack of correspondence were discussed in terms of self-tacting and distorted tacting or manding.     

Effectiveness and persistence of precurrent mediating behavior in delayed matching to sample and oddity matching with children.

Two kinds of mediating behavior were compared with respect to their effectiveness in variable-delay matching-to-sample and oddity-matching tasks. Each of four 5-year-old children was trained to emit either differential or common mediating responses. The differential mediating response consisted of pressing a specific computer key corresponding to either of two possible sample stimuli (a red or a green square). The common mediating response consisted of pressing one of the two response keys regardless of the sample. The differential-response subjects did not show the typical, delay-related decrease in matching-to-sample performance that characterized the behavior of common-response subjects. An oddity-matching task was then introduced, and subjects were instructed to use the mediating keys however they preferred, including not at all. Differential-response subjects continued to respond on the originally trained mediating keys in response to sample presentation and later reversed their choice responding, thus accommodating the oddity-matching requirements. Common-response subjects continued to emit the previously trained mediating response and experienced limited success in oddity matching. Results were interpreted in terms of stimulus control, instructional control, and experimental history.     

PROGRAMMING “LOOSE TRAINING” AS A STRATEGY TO FACILITATE LANGUAGE GENERALIZATION

This study investigated the generalization of spontaneous complex language behavior across a nontraining setting and the durability of generalization as a result of programming and “loose training” strategy. A within-subject, across-behaviors multiple-baseline design was used to examine the performance of two moderately retarded students in the use of is/are across three syntactic structures (i.e., “wh” questions, “yes/no” reversal questions, and statements). The language training procedure used in this study represented a functional example of programming “loose training.” The procedure involved conducting concurrent language training within the context of an academic training task, and establishing a functional reduction in stimulus control by permitting the student to initiate a language response based on a wide array of naturally occurring stimulus events. Concurrent probes were conducted in the free play setting to assess the immediate generalization and the durability of the language behaviors. The results demonstrated that “loose training” was effective in establishing a specific set of language responses with the participants of this investigation. Further, both students demonstrated spontaneous use of the language behavior in the free play generalization setting and a trend was clearly evident for generalization to continue across time. Thus, the methods used appear to be successful for training the use of is/are in three syntactic structures.