The CDC (2016) recommends children engage in 60 min of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily to achieve health benefits. Recess in school settings can provide opportunities for children to try and meet these guidelines. However, research suggests that recess alone does not increase physical activity levels. To combat this problem, antecedent manipulations (e.g., manipulating the physical environment or introducing planned activities) are commonly implemented as an intervention to increase physical activity. These interventions, however, do not provide salient consequences for physical activity to ensure the likelihood that these behaviors will occur again in the future. A more promising approach might be to develop interventions that assess the use of group contingencies in an effort to increase physical activity during recess time. The purpose of the current study was to implement the Step it UP! game (a modified version of the good behavior game) in three different classrooms during their recess periods and to evaluate the effect of group contingencies on physical activity levels in elementary school-aged children. The Step it UP! game was compared to traditional recess periods (i.e., without the game) in an alternating treatment design. The overall results of the study indicated that the Step it UP! game engendered higher mean step counts than traditional recess periods. These results suggest that schools should provide contingent reinforcement for children’s increased physical activity during recess.

The master thesis focuses on the topic of support for parents of children with autism spectrum disorders in the development of daily living skills according to the principles of Applied behavior analysis. In the literature review the theoretical background of the topic and current research findings based on the literature are described. The empirical part is conceived as a qualitative research. The goal is to monitor the change in the behavior of parents and their children with ASD when practicing hand washing after using two different ways of parent training - behavioral skills training and video manual. The method of data collection was an observation of video recordings provided by families which were assessed by two observers using an evaluation checklist. Furthermore, the data were supplemented with information from a questionnaire which was used to receive feedback from the participants. The results of the research map the progress of each participating parent and child in hand washing procedure according to the principles of ABA. The conclusions can be the foundation for future research to create a suitable parent training model in practice of daily living skills in children with ASD. Keywords Applied behavior analysis; Autism spectrum disorder; Behavior skills training; Daily living skills;...

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There is ever-increasing pressure on school officials to provide a safe school environment that is conducive to learning. There is also a growing concern from teachers and administrators that many students are unrecognized for their continual appropriate behavior(s), in part, because of the attention consumed by both challenging students and students with exceptional talents and abilities. In response, a School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) approach is growing in popularity to address both of these issues. SWPBS is implemented across an entire school population and involves all individuals whether they are challenging, exceptional, or typical. The initial research shows encouraging results and supports the effectiveness of a School-Wide Positive Behavior Support program. This study focused on the development, implementation, and results of a SWPBS program at a rural high school. Data collected included office daily referrals, suspensions, expulsions, attendance, and the number of reinforcers (Mo-Bucks) distributed by staff. Outcome data indicated that compared to the year prior to the SWPBS program's implementation, there was a reduction in office daily referrals, a reduction in expulsions, and an increase in attendance. The results of this 3-year study supported the effectiveness of SWPBS as an intervention for reducing disruptive behaviors at the high school level for typical students as well as for students with special needs.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of teaching functional assessment skills to three Prekindergarten teachers and their teaching assistants. The effects were measured by examining the behavior of the teachers and assistants, as well as the behaviors of the students; before, during and after the delivery of three, two-hour functional assessment classes. The teaching staff videotaped themselves and their students during a regular class time, predetermined by the researcher and each teacher prior to the onset of baseline data collection, over an approximate nine-week period. The video was taken in twelve-minute segments every day. Later, the video was coded for specific behaviors. Although there were gains in appropriate intervention strategies from teachers and assistants during the intervention phase, the interventions generally peaked a week or two after the classes ended and gradually declined. Teacher skills were retained however, as most ratios of appropriate interventions maintained at higher rates than baseline. Relationships between student behavior and correct teacher interventions were established and maintained. The intervention resulted in changes in staff behavior, but results did not sustain at high levels over time. The realization that escape maintained some student behavior, and teaching skills to "test" for function, were likely the most important concepts for many of the participants. Further research should include adding a behavior coach to assist in shaping the teaching staffs' emerging skills and to provide a sounding board when developing specific student interventions.

The effectiveness of videotape recorded feedback on reducing the rate of inappropriate, bizarre mannerisms n hospitalized individuals was examined using a multiple baseline design across three subjects. Results indicate that the technique was effective in reducing the rate of these behaviors in the treatment setting. Data on generalization of treatment effects were inconclusive. Theoretical explanations for the procedure's effectiveness are discussed.

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The present study was designed to investigate the role of sensory extinction and sensory reinforcement in the moti- vation of self-injurious behavior. The intervention was based on the assumption that each subject's SIB behavior was motivated by the sensory consequences of the behavior. A pre- assessment phase was used to select appropriate sensory ex- tinction devices and sensory reinforcing toys, although no appropriate sensory toys could be identified. Thus, treat- ment consisted solely of sensory extinction using a reversal design. Results showed that the sensory extinction devices reduced tactile stimulation of face slapping and pica for two developmentally disabled adults. Maintenance of treat- ment gains was programmed by fading the device both on the unit and in the experimental setting. This procedure was minimally successful in achieving long term reduction in SIB.

The Neighborhood Size Effect (NSE), characterized as the effect in word determination based on changing one orthographic aspect of that word. The amount of words that can be created through such manipulation is called a neighborhood size (NS). Number of other factors such as frequency, how often a word appears and morphology, the combination of meaningful word units, have been suggested to have an overriding effect on NSE. In addition, there is a lack of research on NSE with non-alphabetical languages such as Chinese, which uses characters comprising of a multitude of semantic or phonetic markers. In this experiment, participants coming from mainland China were presented with 60 individual characters and 59 characters with Chinese morphology made up of two characters which form single words. Both conditions, were manipulated with NS by adjusting the semantic or phonetical radical within a character and with frequency by using a website that measures how frequent a character appeared within the language. Both character conditions were found to have a significant effect with frequency and neighborhood size (NS) with characters with higher frequency and lower NS found to have higher accuracy and lower reaction times. With low frequency single characters, it was that those with higher neighborhood size had greater delay in reaction time and lower accuracy. With low frequency morphologically constructed characters, it was found that lower neighborhood size had higher accuracy, but no significant result with regards to reaction time. Due to differing accuracy results with NS and character condition, it is suggested that further factors such as morphological processing in single characters and bigram frequency in morphologically constructed characters might have an effect on word determination in conjunction with neighborhood size. Thus, it is a possibility that Chinese morphological may depend more on other factors than neighborhood size.