An experiment was conducted to contrast the effectiveness of Behavior Therapy administered in self, individual, or group therapy versus a no-treatment control condition. The therapy conditions were administered to two subgroups, high and low self reinforcers, as defined by Rosensky and Bellack (1976). The general hypothesis was that high self reinforcers would engage in countercontrol and therefore do poorly in group and individual therapy, but would lose weight in self therapy. Individual behavior therapy showed the best long term results, but self and group therapies also showed significant weight loss. It was also found that low self reinforcers as a group lost more weight than did high self reinforcers.

The present study explored whether (a) positive or negative reinforcement would produce higher percentages of on-task student behavior at set timed intervals, (b) positive, negative, or total reinforcement would increase student attentiveness after reinforcement, and (c) if natural fluctuations in teacher approval/disapproval would have any bearing on percentages of student attentiveness. Findings of the 15-day study concluded that (a) positive reinforcement maintained significantly higher levels of student attentiveness over negative reinforcement, (b) negative reinforcement did not significantly lower percentages of student attentiveness, and (c) natural fluctuations in rates of teacher approval/disapproval had no apparent effect on the amount of on-task behavior in the beginning strings class.

Aggression in dogs is a significant public health concern with 7.2 mortality cases per 100 million inhabitants and approximately 4.7 million dog bites annually. Canine aggression is typically viewed as a genetic trait and treated as pathology through the use of medical or respondent behavioral procedures. In this study the effects of the differential negative reinforcement of safe, alternative behaviors to aggression using distancing as the reinforcer were evaluated. The results demonstrated that even when the aggression was in evidence throughout most of the dog's lifetime, it responded quickly to changes in reinforcement contingencies.

Four elementary school children were tested on 120 words containing the short e (e.g., ten, pen) and short a (e.g., tan, pan) sounds. Words were tested in the hear-write (H/W) and see-say (S/S) channels. No programmed consequences were scheduled during baseline (BL) tests 1-3. After BL, an error analysis categorized words based on channel error and topography of error. Praise was delivered during tests 4-6 for correct responses. Children's responses were variable within channel and across channels for a majority of words. By the end of the praise phase, there was a decrease in the number of words with errors, for all children in their error word group. Error topographies began to stabilize for some words during praise.

Social stimuli that function as reinforcers for most children generally do not function as reinforcers for children diagnosed with autism. These important social stimuli include smiles, head nods, thumb-ups, and okay signs. It should be an important goal of therapy for children with autism to condition these neutral social stimuli to function as reinforcers for children diagnosed with autism. There is empirical evidence to support both a pairing procedure (classical conditioning) and a discriminative stimulus procedure to condition neutral stimuli to function as reinforcers. However, there is no clear evidence as to the superiority of effectiveness for either procedure. Despite this most textbooks and curriculum guides for children with autism state only the pairing procedure to condition neutral stimuli to function as reinforcers. Recent studies suggest that the discriminative stimulus procedure may in fact be more effective in conditioning neutral stimuli to function as reinforcers for children diagnosed with autism. The present research is a further comparison of these two procedures. Results from one participant support recent findings that suggest the discriminative stimulus procedure is more effective in conditioning neutral stimuli to function as reinforcers. But the results from the other participant show no effects from either procedure, suggesting future research into conditions necessary to condition neutral social stimuli to function as reinforcers for children with autism.

Contingency management has been utilized to improve treatment compliance and attendance in a medical setting. A related question involves the effect of contingency management on attendance in outpatient psychotherapy. Sixty-nine individuals ranging in age from 8 to 50 years agreed to participate in such a study. These individuals agreed to sign a contract specifying consequation for failure to notify the centers 24 hours in advance of an impending absence. Data on attendance and notification of impending absences were collected weekly for five sessions. After five sessions, dropouts and remainers were interviewed and the course of treatment was discussed. For the purpose of this study, a "dropout" occurred whenever an individual terminated therapy by missing an appointment and not rescheduling, or whenever an individual missed three consecutive appointments.

Observational learning (OL) occurs when an individual contacts reinforcement as a direct result of discriminating the observed consequences of other individuals' responses. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may have deficits in observational learning and previous research has demonstrated that teaching a series of prerequisite skills (i.e., attending, imitation, delayed imitation, and consequence discrimination) can result in observational learning. We sequentially taught these prerequisite skills for three young children with ASD across three play-based tasks. We assessed the direct and indirect effects of training by assessing OL before and after instruction across tasks and task variations (for two participants) during both in-vivo and video-model probes using a concurrent multiple-probe design. All participants acquired the prerequisite skills and demonstrated observational learning during probes of directly-trained tasks. Generalization results varied across participants. Observational learning generalized to one untrained task for one participant. For the other two participants, observational learning generalized to variations of the trained tasks but not to untrained tasks. Generalization additionally occurred during the in-vivo probes for both participants for whom we assessed this response. Implications of these findings, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.

Behavior-specific praise has been shown to increase rate of desired behaviors for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, though it is rarely used by caregivers in residential facilities for adults with disabilities. Prompting in the form of tactile stimulation has been demonstrated to increase rate of behavior-specific praise delivered by teachers and caregivers. The purpose of the current study was to increase the quantity and quality of behavior-specific praise statements that were delivered by caregivers to individuals at a large residential facility for adults with disabilities. A tactile prompting device (Gymboss Interval Timer and Stopwatch) was provided to the caregivers and set to vibrate for one second at intervals of five minutes, for a total of six intervals. Instructions were provided to the caregivers to deliver behavior-specific praise statements, for appropriate behaviors, to their assigned clients every time a vibration occurred. Examples of behavior-specific praise statements were provided to the caregivers before each session, but no feedback was delivered during the prompting phase. Results indicated that a tactile prompting device was effective at increasing rate of behavior-specific praise statements delivered by caregivers in as little as one session.

Behavioral skills training (BST) is often used to train caregivers to implement various behavior management procedures; however, additional strategies are sometimes required to promote the generalization of skills from a contrived setting to the natural environment. Generalizing skills to the natural environment requires that the caregiver's behavior transfer from control of stimuli in the contrived setting to stimuli in the natural environment, and the skill continues to be performed with high levels of accuracy. The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which caregivers generalized the use of social reinforcement, in the form of descriptive praise, from the contrived setting to the natural environment. When caregivers failed to respond to opportunities, a progressive prompt delay was used to bring caregivers' responding under the control of relevant client behavior; feedback was used to improve the accuracy with which caregivers implemented reinforcement. Five caregivers in a large residential facility participated in the study; single-opportunity probes were used to assess caregiver's identification of opportunities and accuracy in implementing reinforcement for two defined client behaviors, compliance and appropriate attention-getting behavior. Results of the study suggest that skills failed to generalize from the contrived setting to the natural environment. However, prompting was effective in training caregivers to identify opportunities to provide reinforcement, and feedback improved implementation of reinforcement.

The present study demonstrates the effectiveness of combining medication packaging, verbal and graphical feedback, and pill count probes on increasing medication compliance. Eight chronic adult outpatients were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (a) a regimen card medication packaging system, and (b) a 7- day baggie medication packaging system. A staggered group treatment design was used to ascertain whether either of the two special packaging systems was effective relative to baseline and reversal conditions (using the standard medication vial) in increasing medication compliance behavior among both over-and undercompliant outpatients. Results indicated that the use of the special packaging of medication in combination with the behavioral techniques of verbal and graphical feedback aided in improving compliance in 4 out of 8 noncompliant outpatients.