This investigation identified children whose noncompliant behavior was maintained by negative reinforcement through brief functional analysis conditions and then evaluated the effectiveness of a contraindicated treatment (i.e., time-out package) for decreasing the noncompliant behavior to developmentally appropriate levels. The current results provided initial supporting data that time-out, in conjunction with other treatment variables, can be an effective strategy in reducing escape maintained noncompliance. Brief experimental analysis conditions consistent with the methodology demonstrated by Northup and colleagues (1991), were utilized to identify escape as the maintaining variable for noncompliance. Following identification of the function of the behavior, baseline data were collected. Across all participants, the average percentage of intervals of noncompliance during baseline was above 60% of observed intervals, which has been defined as maladaptive (Forehand, 1977) and may be indicative of future externalizing behavior problems, as well as the inability to acquire appropriate academic and social skills (Forehand et al., 1978; Rhode et al., 1993). The time-out package consisting of time in, effective instructions, time-out, and escape extinction was then implemented. Inspection of the data revealed that all participants exhibited clinically significantly lower percentage of intervals of noncompliance during intervention phases that were developmentally acceptable. Follow up data revealed that developmentally acceptable levels of noncompliance were maintained at one month. Overall, these data support the findings that the treatment package was effective in reducing the percentage of intervals of noncompliance for each participant, thus, demonstrating the effectiveness of this time-out procedure (i.e., a contraindicated treatment) in reducing the occurrence of an escape-maintained behavior.

The purpose of this investigation was to (a) use the positive routines procedure to decrease child noncompliance and the time it takes the child to comply (latency) at bedtime, (b) to assess treatment fidelity, and (c) to record objectively parent behavior. Research was conducted with four children and five parents in their homes. The treatment was explained to each parent and introduced to each child after the baseline phase. Positive routines requires the parent to implement a low-stimulation “routine” at the time the child naturally gets sleepy. The routine gradually begins earlier so that by the end of treatment, it is completed at the time the parent originally attempted to establish bedtime. The data reveal that with high treatment fidelity, the treatment was effective in reducing bedtime noncompliance, latency, and parental reinforcing behaviors. The data also supported the notion that parent behavior can be controlled by child behavior.

Thesis advisor: Jennifer Erickson / The use of chemical agents in attacks in Syria, England, and Malaysia in the past several years have raised questions about the efficacy of international efforts, specifically the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), to prohibit the use of chemical weapons. These attacks highlight that even after the CWC’s entry into force, there is still more progress to be made towards the complete elimination of chemical weapons. Understanding the factors that influence a state’s decision to comply or not comply with the CWC is essential for moving forward with future disarmament efforts. Using case studies, this thesis examines issues of compliance and noncompliance regarding states’ chemical weapons programs and their ability to implement and enforce the CWC on a national level. The resulting analysis indicates that domestic and external pressures have a strong influence on states that comply with the CWC. The availability of resources, the presence of threats to security, and domestic norms are the most influential factors among states that do not comply with the CWC. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Arts and Sciences Honors Program. / Discipline: Chemistry.

The treatment of schizophrenia today consists of a multi-component system of services. Mental health professionals generally agree that anti-psychotic medications are an essential treatment for schizophrenia. However, adherence to medication regimens by patients with schizophrenia is notoriously poor. To identify correlates and predictors of medication compliance, the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS), a semi-structured diagnostic interview, was administered to 90 outpatients with schizophrenia. The results suggest that there are specific variables (i.e., mood symptoms, psychotic symptoms, and socio-demographic variables) that predict medication compliance. In addition, the confirmation of these variables was effective (90.0%) at identifying non-compliant patients. The results suggest that schizophrenia is a complex disorder composed of heterogeneous symptoms. However, a specific group of symptoms is proposed which may provide a screening measure for predicting patients who are likely to be non-compliant with their medications.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / For written word to reach the public in hardcopy form, a manuscript is submitted to a publisher. After numerous review and modification cycles, the document is printed and distributed, often through intermediaries. Finally, it reaches the hands and eyes of perhaps thousands. This contrasts dramatically with the Internet where, within minutes of completion, text can be seen by millions. The Internet offers enormous research power. With a PC and a phone line, one can locate a recipe for delicious meringue or deadly ricin; can research a thesis or the step-by-step fabrication of a thermonuclear device. Recognizing the potential for misuse as well as for informing the public, the Department of Defense charged each of its agencies with the responsibility of policing content and form of that agency's publicly accessible websites. As the United States Navy command responsible for this daunting assignment, FIWC faces a job that grows in complexity and size by the day. Taking on this problem manually would result, at best, in unitary growth of dedicated resources and a similar increase in potential for error, both of oversight and of inappropriate action. This thesis provides one approach to automating FIWC's website monitoring and enforcement activities. The approach it advocates is focused on reducing manpower and increasing accuracy. This architecture - a generic model with a GUI database frontend - is presented, not as an ultimate solution, but rather as a solid first step. / Civilian, Department of Defense

Clarifying processes associated with emerging externalizing behavior problems during early childhood was the focus of this study. Data were collected from 100 parent-child dyads when children were 2, 3, and 4 years. An incremental risk model was hypothesized to explain the emergence of externalizing behavior problems. Theoretically, children's temperamental propensity towards negative emotional reactivity increases risk for noncompliance, noncompliance that increases risk for externalizing behaviors by age 4. Parenting was identified as the mechanism by which children's progression along the incremental risk pathway is amplified or minimized; progression is only expected under conditions of harsh parenting. No statistical support emerged for the incremental risk model or the moderational effects of harsh parenting. Harsh parenting was a statistically significant predictor of children's noncompliance one year later. Implications of the current findings for future research are discussed.

Difficulty getting ready for bed and settling at bedtime, commonly referred to as bedtime resistance, are prevalent problems in early childhood (Goodlin-Jones, Tang, Liu, & Anders, 2009; Johnson, 1991). Despite an abundance of previous research, few studies have considered the role of emergent developmental process in the context of bedtime resistance. The current study addresses this gap by examining the relationship between parenting practices and bedtime resistance in early childhood from a developmental perspective. Specifically, need-supportive bedtime parenting practices (i.e., autonomy-support, structure and involvement) were examined from a self-determination theory perspective (Deci & Ryan, 2000) and children’s bedtime behaviours were conceptualized within a differentiated model of compliance and noncompliance. Two instruments were developed to capture these constructs and their psychometric properties were examined. One hundred thirty-one caregivers completed a series of online questionnaires about their parenting practices and children’s behaviours. Findings provided preliminary evidence for the validity and reliability of the two newly constructed measures. Analyses revealed that child age was associated with how children respond to caregivers at bedtime. Although parenting practices were associated with less sophisticated forms of bedtime noncompliance, child age did not significantly moderate these relationships. Findings highlight the importance of examining bedtime resistance from a developmental perspective and the need for future research in this area. / Graduate

Behavioral momentum theory (BMT) provides a theoretical framework for studying the persistence of behavior when challenged. The typical experimental arrangement to study persistence involves reinforcing a behavior according to a multiple schedules design. Unique schedules of reinforcement are programmed to each component. When steady-state responding occurs, the schedules of reinforcement are disrupted by a challenge condition (e.g., extinction, distraction, or prefeeding). The multiple schedules component that maintains the greatest level of responding during disruption is described as being more persistent. Basic research has shown that rate of reinforcement is a reliable predictor of persistence. The multiple schedules component associated with the higher rate of reinforcement persists longer than the multiple schedules component associated with the lower rate of reinforcement during disruption. Applied researchers have recently begun translating BMT to problems of social significance. The success of these initial translations suggests that relations between other dimensions of reinforcement and persistence should be studied. The current two-experiment study investigated the effect of quality of reinforcement on the persistence of task completion. Three participants with a history of engaging in problem behavior to escape from demands participated in Experiment I. After showing the conditions under which participants would and would not allocate away from a work task to engage with a preferred item, a baseline measure of task completion was obtained. Task completion was then reinforced with attention or tangibles within a multiple schedules design. Orange tokens signaled access to tangible reinforcement and yellow tokens signaled access to attention reinforcement. After steady-state responding occurred, preference for attention and tangibles was assessed within a concurrent schedules design. Extinction was then implemented to disrupt task completion within each component of the multiple schedules design. Results showed modest differences in the persistence of task completion with task completion in the multiple schedules component associated with the delivery of the more preferred reinforcer persisting longest. The modest differences in persistence were smaller than what has previously been shown in the literature. Thus, a follow-up experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of reinforcer potency on the persistence of task completion. Three participants with a history of engaging in problem behavior to escape from demands participated in Experiment II. After identifying relatively more and less preferred stimuli with a multiple stimulus without replacement (MSWO) preference assessment, a unit price analysis was conducted to evaluate the potency of these two items within a concurrent schedules design. Task completion was then reinforced with the more and less potent reinforcers according to a multiple schedules design. After showing steady-state responding, task completion was disrupted by extinction. Results clearly showed greater persistence of task completion under the component associated with the delivery of the more potent reinforcer for two of three participants. Results from both experiments are discussed in terms of their conceptual and applied implications.

The intent of this study was to determine whether implementation of the Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) model, that has proven successful in psychiatric settings, was equally effective in reducing restrictive practices in public school settings. Many peer-reviewed, published reports suggest that educators are poorly prepared to manage the extremely challenging behaviors of aggression and non-compliance, which are common in students classified with an emotional disturbance (ED). Too often educators rely on ineffective, potentially harmful interventions such as seclusion and restraint, which adversely impact students as well as staff. The nonrandom sample was comprised of students enrolled in two segregated special education schools located in large communities in northwestern Pennsylvania. The enrollment was 69 students in School A and 26 students in School B. The schools serve students, kindergarten through twelfth grade. All students were evaluated and classified as ED by their referring home school district as per Chapter 14 Regulations of the Pennsylvania Department of Education and received one-hundred percent of their special education program in this restrictive school-based environment. This study used a quasi-experimental, pre-test-post-test research design and used two separate existing electronic data sources to test for relationships between the implementation of the CPS model and identified variables (standardized measures of externalizing maladaptive behaviors, incidents of aggression, noncompliance, and disruption, as well as incidents and duration of seclusion and restraint). The analyses included frequency comparisons, a series of Wilcoxon Signed Rank Tests, a series of dependent samples T-tests, and two-way repeated measures analyses of variance. Implementation of the model reduced the incidents of aggression, noncompliance, and disruption, as well as incidents and duration of seclusion and restraint. However, only one of the schools in the study demonstrated a statistically significant reduction of aggression incidents and the use of restraint procedures. The results suggest that when implemented with fidelity, the research-based CPS model is a promising, preventative behavior approach for students classified with ED in a segregated special education school. / School of Education / Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program for Education Leaders (IDPEL) / EdD / Dissertation

Errorless academic compliance training is a proactive, noncoercive approach to treating oppositional behavior in children. Three teaching staff in a special education classroom were trained to conduct this intervention with three male students diagnosed with autism. During baseline, staff delivered a range of classroom requests and recorded student compliance with these requests. A hierarchy (of 4 levels) of compliance probabilities for requests was then calculated. Requests ranged from Level 1, those yielding high compliance, to Level 4, those leading to oppositional responding. At the beginning of intervention, teaching staff delivered Level 1 requests, providing praise and other reinforcement for compliance. Subsequent levels were faded in gradually over time. By the end of intervention, students demonstrated substantially improved compliance to requests that had yielded high levels of noncompliance before intervention. Follow-up at 4 weeks indicated that treatment gains were maintained. Covariant improvement in academic on-task skills was also evident.