The School-wide Positive Behavior Intervention Support model (SWPBIS) continues to gain widespread use across schools in the U.S. and abroad. However, despite its widespread use across schools and the large body of research demonstrating its utility, little research has examined the implementation process to see what factors contribute or inhibit its successful implementation. Informed by Rogers’ diffusion theory, this study examined factors that may influence the sustained implementation of the SWPBIS. These factors are relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialibility, and observability. Results of this study indicated that the relative advantage and observability of SWPBIS may explain school personnel’s willingness to continue with its implementation. These results led to some important implications for practitioners involved in the implementation of the SWPBIS. Limitations and recommendations for future research are also provided.

Young children with intellectual and developmental disabilities are at increased risk of developing persistent mental health and behavior problems. While the link between parenting behavior and the development of problem behavior is well understood in this population, there is a need for examination of key parent factors that affect parenting behavior and child problem behavior over time in families of children with developmental delay (DD). Private events such as parents’ feelings about their children and levels of dispositional optimism may impact parenting behavior through a variety of mechanisms, including experiential avoidance and relational schemas. As such, this study proposed to examine relations between parent feelings, optimism, parenting behavior, and child problem behavior for young children with developmental delay in a longitudinal context. Parents’ positive and negative feelings about their young children with developmental delay, dispositional optimism, and child problem behavior were assessed at three timepoints in 132 parent-child dyads. In addition, measures of observed effective parenting behavior during parent-child play interactions were collected at each timepoint. Negative feelings about the child significantly predicted child problem behavior across timepoints, with higher negative feelings predicting higher problem behavior. Positive feelings and optimism did not significantly predict problem behavior in the model including negative feelings, suggesting that correlations between these constructs and reduced problem behavior are primarily explained by reduced negative feelings. Increased negative feelings also significantly predicted a lower rate of praise across timepoints, indicating that parents with high negative feelings about their child with DD engaged in fewer praise statements during parent-child play interactions. These findings suggest that a strong and stable relationship between negative feelings and child problem behavior is present at a very early age for young children with developmental delay and that negative feelings may impact parents’ use of effective and positive parenting strategies. Future research should examine interventions designed to address both parent private events and child problem behavior as well as how these constructs develop both earlier and later in life.

Objectives: To examine the association between depressed mood and clusters of health risk behaviors. Methods: A nationally representative sample of adolescents (N=15,214) was utilized to construct 10 pseudocontinuous health risk behaviors. Cluster analysis was performed to group adolescents, and subsequent multivariable logistic models were created. Results: Compared to non-risk takers, belonging to risk clusters significantly increased the odds of reporting depressed mood. African Americans in high-risk clusters appeared to be more vulnerable to depressed mood, when compared to remaining racial groups. Conclusions: Results suggest that adolescents engaging in multiple health-risk behaviors do so in the context of depressed mood.

This study consisted of three parts. We first used a video observation method and statistical analysis to identify benign behaviors that occurred before the problem behavior. These benign behaviors are known as precursor behaviors. We then used a precursor functional analysis to identify the function of the precursor behaviors. Lastly, we developed and implemented an intervention based on the results of the precursor functional analysis. The interventions effectively reduced problem behavior for the participants in the study. The participants engaged in minimal instances of problem behavior throughout the study. The results of this study may be useful to teachers and caregivers of children who engage in severe problem behavior that would be unsafe to reinforce in an assessment. Results may also help when working with children whose caregivers are concerned with their children engaging in excessive problem behavior. Further research is needed to look at modifying the precursor analysis. Future research should also look at the social validity of the precursor assessment.

Literature assessing behavior among individuals with disabilities largely focuses on individuals with high incidence disabilities leaving a gap for those with rare, or low incidence, genetic syndromes. Specifically, individuals with CHARGE syndrome who exhibit a unique behavioral phenotype, as a result of numerous medical complexities, are absent in literature functionally assessing behavior. Because of this unique behavioral phenotype, caregivers of individuals with CHARGE Syndrome are likely to be most familiar and knowledgeable about their child’s behavior and should therefore be trained to be included in the functional assessment of behavior. Because CHARGE Syndrome is rare, families may have limited access to resources to adequately assess their child’s problem behavior, as well due to medical complexities, individuals with CHARGE may not be able to attend in-person assessment and ultimately treatment as a result of potential exposure to the novel COVID-19 virus. As a result, virtual training methods will allow more families to learn how to identify the cause of their child’s behavior and how to be involved in virtual behavioral assessments. This study evaluates virtual training methods focusing on training caregivers of individuals with CHARGE Syndrome to conduct brief functional analysis conditions.

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There is a limited amount of research that has evaluated all three types of modalities and consequences during stimulus preference assessments (SPA) or examined problem behavior during preference assessments with individuals with tangible maintained problem behavior. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to extend this line of research in two ways: (a) compare results of SPAs across three modalities and two consequence, (b) evaluate problem behavior during these SPAs with individuals with problem behavior maintained by access to tangible items. The results indicated that for all participants, there was preference stability across modalities and conditions. For all participants, problem behavior occurred during the no access condition or removal regardless of modality.

The term "resurgence" generally refers to the reappearance of certain behaviors during extinction. Different definitions describe these behaviors as previously reinforced, previously extinguished, or simply previously learned. At first glance, these definitions seem the same. And, researchers have not given much thought to the differences between them. However, these definitions could refer to different initial teaching procedures, and these differences may produce different results during extinction. The present study used the Portable Operant Research and Teaching Lab (PORTL) to examine how differences in the initial teaching procedure affected the behavior of college students during extinction. In the first condition, participants learned four behaviors. Each behavior was extinguished before the next behavior was taught. When all four behaviors were put on extinction, they resurged in the reverse order from how they were taught. A second condition followed the same procedure as the first with one difference. Each behavior was not extinguished before the next behavior was taught. When these four behaviors were put on extinction, they resurged in the order they were learned. These results indicate that the initial training procedure can influence the order in which behaviors appear during extinction.

Denna studie har, genom en tvärsektionell design, undersökt relationen mellan positiv och negativ självbild och fyra aspekter av internaliserad och externaliserad problematik. Självskattningsinstrumenten Structural Analysis of Social Behavior och Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire har fyllts i av en klinisk grupp bestående av 327 ungdomar i åldrarna 12 - 19 år. Data har analyserats med hjälp av stiganalys. Resultatet visade en positiv relation mellan negativ självbild och både uppförandeproblem och emotionell problematik, samt en negativ relation mellan positiv självbild och emotionell problematik. Sammanfattningsvis tyder resultatet från denna studie på att en klinisk ungdomsgrupp har liknande relation mellan självbild och problembeteende som ungdomar utan psykopatologisk problematik; där en negativ självbild associeras med mer- och en positiv självbild associeras med mindre problembeteenden. Studiens resultat accentuerar betydelsen av att inkludera både interpersonella och intrapersonella aspekter när problembeteenden utreds och behandlas. / This study examined the relationship between positive and negative self-concept and four aspects of internalized and externalized problem behaviors, through a cross-sectional design. The self-assessment instruments Structural Analysis of Social Behavior and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire were completed by a clinical group consisting of 327 adolescents aged 12-19 years. Data were analyzed through path analysis. The results showed a positive relationship between negative self-concept and both behavioral and emotional problems, as well as a negative relationship between positive self-concept and emotional problems. In conclusion, the result of this study suggests that a clinical youth group has a similar relationship between self-concept and problem behavior as do young people without psychopathological problems; where a negative self-concept is associated with more- and a positive self-concept is associated with less problem behaviors. The study's results accentuate the importance of including both interpersonal and intrapersonal aspects when problem behavior is investigated and treated.