Behavior Modification

Positive practice has several components that may function within the procedure including the following: (1) the contingency aspect of the procedure, (2) the extensive reeducative practice of alternate, correct responses, and (3) the period of timeout from positive reinforcement. A single case reversal design was used to determine if the contingency component of positive practice was necessary to reduce the frequency of SIB. The results showed that positive practice was not effective when applied noncontingently but highly effective when administered contingently. Because practice alone was not sufficient to reduce the frequency of SIB, positive practice appears to be a punishment procedure. Also, because timeout is a component of contingent positive practice, it is still unclear whether or not time-out is a necessary component of positive practice.

Six subjects with multiple phobias were given performance-based treatment for each of their phobias in succession until marked behavioral improvement occurred in each. To test for generalization of behavioral change within and across phobias, behavioral tests of the treated and yet untreated phobias were administered before and after each treatment phase in settings different from those used for treatment. Results showed that although the behavioral gains generalized quite well within the phobic domain treated, there was little generalized improvement across phobias. These findings suggest that multiply phobic conditions such as agoraphobia may be better conceptualized as collections of partially independent phobic reactions than as unitary conditions with global underlying causes.

A six-month multifocal behavioral treatment program was compared to clinic blood pressure monitoring only. Subjects were 50 men and women with blood pressures in the borderline hypertensive or upper normotensive range. The behavioral treatment combined relaxation therapy, reduction of salt intake, and weight reduction. After six months, both groups showed a significant decline of systolic pressure (5.7 and 6.1 mm Hg, respectively), but there was no difference between the groups. There was no significant change in diastolic pressure in either group. There was a significantly larger decline of weight in the behavioral group. At the one-year follow-up, there was a significant decline of diastolic pressure in both groups, and systolic pressures remained significantly below baseline levels. Again, the changes were equivalent in both groups. Thus both interventions were associated with decrease of blood pressure, but there was no advantage of the behavioral treatment over clinic blood pressure monitoring.

Recent research has found the time students spend actively engaged in task appropriate activities to be a powerful predictor of student achievement. However, attempts to apply the research with a view to increasing student academic engagement have been generally limited to complex and expensive procedures requiring a high degree of involvement by consultants and teachers, resulting in overly intrusive approaches to classroom innovations. This study evaluates a service-delivery strategy of minimal complexity and intrusiveness, designed to increase academic engagement rate in the regular classroom. Intervention, initiated and withdrawn in two classrooms of 12-15 year olds from an Australian school, involved 1) informing teachers of relevant research on time-related controllable classroom variables, and 2) telling teachers whether academic engagement rates of selected low-engaged students were increasing or decreasing after each lesson. Academic engagement rates increased substantially for target students in both classes and marked increases were evidenced for their nontarget peers. Withdrawal of intervention resulted in decreasing levels of student engagement. The results are interpreted in an applied behavioral framework, and implications of the findings are discussed in terms of cost-effectiveness, ease of application, limited need for external professional involvement, and maintenance of the effect.

Four agoraphobics were assessed repeatedly with three different cognitive measures-in vivo cognitive assessment, imaginal cognitive assessment, and thought-listing procedure-to evaluate the stability and congruence of the measures. Results showed all three measures to have an unstable course across assessment sessions. In addition, several subjects evinced marked cognitive improvement across assessments, suggesting that these measures may be "reactive" in some cases. Finally, the congruence or one-to-one correspondence between two of the cognitive measures, administered in the same situation, was only modest.

Physiological and cognitive responses were assessed in a 12-year-old fire-setting child during exposure to slides depicting both fire-setting and nonfire-setting scenes. Results from physiological measures (heart rate and skin potential) were useful in establishing a hierarchy of responses to different aspects of fire-setting activities. Cognitive data indicated that thoughts of negative evaluation tended to be associated with fire-setting scenes, whereas thoughts of positive evaluation were associated with nonfire-setting stimuli. The potential utility of a multidimensional approach to assessing fire-setting is discussed.

An ABA design was used to evaluate the effects of reinforcer displacement on the self-stimulatory behavior of two severely retarded 19-year-old males. Reinforcer displacement involves the imposition of continuous reinforcement followed by sudden extinction. It was hypothesized that application of this procedure would result in the rapid weakening of undesirable behaviors thought to be maintained by unidentifiable contingencies. Use of the reinforcer displacement procedure produced substantial decreases in the targeted inappropriate behaviors for both subjects. Two-week follow-up assessments indicated that treatment effects were maintained for one subject, but recovery to baseline levels was observed for the other. Treatment effects, ethical considerations, and therapeutic potential are discussed.

Three normal adults, who considered their eating habits socially unacceptable, were trained in the family home to eat at normal pace by gradually increasing their meal duration. Additional food, descriptive praise, and self-approval were made contingent upon a step-wise increasing criterion of meal duration. During maintenance, the additional food component was withdrawn. A multiple baseline experimental analysis showed that the treatment package was successful in decreasing rapid eating to normal rates, as measured by the subjects' self-monitoring of their meal durations. In addition, the increased durations were maintained when the food component was withdrawn from the treatment package in a subsequent phase.