摘要:

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 therapeu

ISSN:0021-8855    

DOI:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-9

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Functional communication training has been reported to be a promising treatment for severe behavior problems. In this study, functional communication training alone and combined with extinction and/or punishment was evaluated for 4 clients with severe retardation, behavior problems, and communication deficits. The participants were inpatients on a hospital unit for treatment of severe behavior disorders. They received individualized interventions based on functional assessment that included reinforcement of a communication response with the same function as their destructive behavior. Results showed that for some patients, functional communication training was not sufficient to produce clinically significant reductions in destructive behavior, and the combination of training plus punishment produced the largest and most consistent reductions.

ISSN:0021-8855    

DOI:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-23

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

We conducted two studies extending basic matching research on self‐control and impulsivity to the investigation of choices of students diagnosed as seriously emotionally disturbed. In Study 1 we examined the interaction between unequal rates of reinforcement and equal versus unequal delays to reinforcer access on performance of concurrently available sets of math problems. The results of a reversal design showed that when delays to reinforcer access were the same for both response alternatives, the time allocated to each was approximately proportional to obtained reinforcement. When the delays to reinforcer access differed between the response alternatives, there was a bias toward the response alternative and schedule with the lower delays, suggesting impulsivity (i.e., immediate reinforcer access overrode the effects of rate of reinforcement). In Study 2 we examined the interactive effects of reinforcer rate, quality, and delay. Conditions involving delayed access to the high‐quality reinforcers on the rich schedule (with immediate access to low‐quality reinforcers earned on the lean schedule) were alternated with immediate access to low‐quality reinforcers on the rich schedule (with delayed access to high‐quality reinforcers on the lean schedule) using a reversal design. With 1 student, reinforcer quality overrode the effects of both reinforcer rate and delay to reinforcer access. The other student tended to respond exclusively to the alternative associated with immediate access to reinforcers. The studies demonstrate a methodology based on matching theory for determining influential dimensions of reinforcers governing individuals

ISSN:0021-8855    

DOI:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-37

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

We investigated the effectiveness of a simplified program for the treatment of stuttering in children. The simplified treatment included awareness training, in which the subjects learned to detect every occurrence of stuttering; training a response incompatible with stuttering, which involved relaxation and regulation of air flow over the larynx when speaking; and social support, which involved parent‐delivered prompts and praise of children's use of the techniques in everyday environments. Eight children were treated in their homes with the simplified treatment, in a multiple baseline across subjects design, and all reached the criterion level of less than 3% words stuttered. In addition, the reduction in stuttering generalized to the school setting and was maintained at posttreatment (10 to 13 months). The subjects' rates of speech remained stable throughout baseline and treatment. Pretreatment and posttreatment ratings by the parents showed that they found treatment to be both acceptable and credible. Finally, social validity measures revealed a noticeable improvement in the subjects' speech to parents and speech pathologist

ISSN:0021-8855    

DOI:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-53

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

We taught 4 students with profound multiple disabilities to use a microswitch communication system to request a change in recreational stimuli during social interactions with nondisabled peers. In Study 1, we conducted a preference assessment across a range of stimuli for each student. The most and least preferred stimuli were incorporated into microswitch communication system training in Study 2. During the second study, 3 of the 4 students (a) learned to use the microswitch communication system to control stimulus presentation, (b) more clearly differentiated their time among stimuli, and (c) increased their level of general alertness. Study 3 extended the use of the microswitch communication system to social interactions with nondisabled peers. Two students were more engaged in interactions when they chose when to change stimuli; 1 student was more alert when a peer chose when to change activities; a 4th student showed an undifferentiated pattern. The outcomes of the investigation are discussed in terms of the effects of controlling stimulus presentation on the behavior of students with profound multiple disabilities and the stability of preference hierarchies over time.

ISSN:0021-8855    

DOI:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-63

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The effects of a prosthetic memory aid on the conversational content and social skills of dyads with dementia were evaluated. Six individuals with moderate to severe dementia served as either subject or partner in dyads during 5‐min conversational probes conducted three times per week in daycare and nursing‐home settings. During phases when a memory aid, consisting of personally relevant picture and sentence stimuli, was available, most subjects used their own aid to improve the quality of conversations by increasing the frequency of on‐topic statements, diminishing nonproductive utterances, lengthening their conversational turn, and/or increasing the frequency of turns taken. Most partners demonstrated awareness of social discourse conventions by appropriately relinquishing conversational dominance, decreasing both content and nonproductive utterances, and increasing acknowledging or affirmative comments when subjects used memory aids. Naive judges' ratings of aided and unaided conversational samples on seven conversational dimensions reflected differences in perceptions of significant improvement as a function of the conversational discourse style of each

ISSN:0021-8855    

DOI:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-77

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

We used a graduated guidance procedure to teach 4 boys with autism to follow photographic activity schedules to increase on‐task and on‐schedule behavior. The multiple baseline across participants design included baseline, teaching, maintenance, resequencing of photographs, and generalization to novel photographs phases. The results indicated that photographic activity schedules (albums depicting after‐school activities) produced sustained engagement, and skills generalized to a new sequence of photographs and to new photographs. The acquisition of schedule‐following skills enabled these children with severe developmental disabilities to display lengthy response chains, independently change activities, and change activities in different group home settings in the absence of immediate supervision and prompts from

ISSN:0021-8855    

DOI:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-89

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

We used an alternating treatments design to compare the effects of two procedures for correcting student errors during sight word drills. Each of the 5 participating students with developmental disabilities was provided daily one‐to‐one instruction on individualized sets of 14 unknown words. Each week's new set of unknown words was divided randomly into two groups of equal size. Student errors during instruction were immediately followed by whole‐word error correction (the teacher stated the complete word and the student repeated it) for one group of words and by phonetic‐prompt error correction (the teacher provided phonetic prompts) for the other group of words. During instruction, all 5 students read correctly a higher percentage of whole‐word corrected words than phonetic‐prompt corrected words. Data from same‐day tests (immediately following instruction) and next‐day tests showed the students learned more words taught with whole‐word error correction than they learned with phonetic‐prom

ISSN:0021-8855    

DOI:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-99

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

We used an alternating treatments design to compare the effects of active student response error correction and no‐response error correction during sight word instruction. Six students with developmental disabilities were provided one‐to‐one daily sight word instruction on eight sets of 20 unknown words. Each set of 20 words was divided randomly into two equal groups. Student errors during instruction on one group of words were immediately followed by the teacher modeling the word and the student repeating it (active student response instruction). Errors on the other group of words were immediately followed by the teacher modeling the word while the student attended to the word card (no‐response instruction). For all 6 students, the active student response error‐correction procedure resulted in more words read correctly during instruction, same‐day tests, next‐day tests, 2‐week maintenance tests, and generality tests (words rea

ISSN:0021-8855    

DOI:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-111

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

A script that was systematically faded from end to beginning was used to teach peer initiations about recently completed, current, and future activities. The effectiveness of the script‐fading procedure was assessed via a multiple baseline design across 4 children with autism. During baseline, the children seldom initiated to peers, although all had previously acquired some functional expressive language and sometimes spontaneously addressed adults. When the script was introduced, peer initiations increased, and as the script was faded, unscripted initiations increased. With the minimal written prompts available in the final fading steps, initiations generalized to a different setting, time, teacher, and activity; and for 3 of the 4 children, peer initiations were maintained at a 2‐month follow‐up. After the script was faded, the participants' levels of peer initiations were within the same range as a normative sample of 3 nondisabled youngsters. The script‐fading procedure enabled children with severe social and verbal deficits to practice context‐specific, peer‐directed generative language that was not prompted by adults or peer c

ISSN:0021-8855    

DOI:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-121

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1993

数据来源: WILEY