Children and youth with deficits in social competence present substantial challenges for schools, teachers, parents and peers. These challenges cut across disciplinary, instructional and interpersonal domains and they frequently create chaotic home, school and classroom environments. Schools are charged with teaching an increasingly diverse…

Internalizing behaviors are directed inward toward the child and are frequently overlooked in classrooms compared with externalizing behaviors. When internalizing behaviors are identified, cognitive-behavioral interventions (CBIs) are typically the intervention of choice; however, CBIs are time-consuming and require considerable skill and…

Class-wide interventions such as the Mystery Motivator are an easy and effective way to remediate problematic behavior in the classroom and increase the level of classroom management. Multiple procedural variations to the Mystery Motivator intervention have successfully changed student behavior, but a systematic comparison of two procedural…

Universal screening for emotional and behavioral risk in schools facilitates early identification and intervention for students as part of multitiered systems of support. Early identification has the potential to mitigate adverse outcomes of emotional and behavioral disorders. The purpose of this study was to extend existing research on the…

The present study investigated the effectiveness of peer-mediated check-in/check-out (CICO) on the internalizing behaviors of elementary school students. A nonconcurrent multiple-baseline design across participants was utilized to evaluate the intervention's effectiveness for 3 students in 1st and 2nd grade. Two 5th grade students were trained to…

Behavioral consultation has been shown to be an effective way for school psychologists to work with teachers in implementing interventions for student problem behavior. Some teachers are resistant to the behavioral consultation process and thereby fail to implement agreed upon interventions with integrity, which is problematic considering the…

The author was favorably impressed with the breadth, scope, and quality of the articles in this issue that dealt with the various aspects and correlates of social behavioral functioning as well as assessment and intervention considerations. Each of these articles dealt with a unique aspect of social behavioral functioning in children and youth and…

This manuscript describes a research project designed to examine the relative effectiveness of a two non-function-based interventions (differential reinforcement of other behavior and self- monitoring) for decreasing problem behavior in a general education classroom for three students whose problem behaviors were hypothesized to be functionally…

Social skills are specific behaviors that individuals exhibit in order to successfully complete social tasks whereas social competence represents judgments by significant others that these social tasks have been successfully accomplished. The present investigation identified the best sociobehavioral predictors obtained from different raters…

This study compared the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS; Gresham & Elliott, 1990) with the revision of the SSRS, now called the Social Skills Improvement System-Rating Scales (SSIS-RS; Gresham & Elliott, 2008), across three raters (teacher, parent, and student) for elementary- and secondary-aged students. A detailed comparison of these…

One of the most consistent findings in rating scale research with children and adolescents is the modest agreement among different informants' ratings. The present study systematically explored patterns of agreement among teachers, parents/caregivers, and students in domains of social skills and problem behaviors using the Social Skills…

Base rate information is important in clinical assessment because one cannot know how unusual or typical a phenomenon is without first knowing its base rate in the population. This study empirically determined the base rates of social skills acquisition and performance deficits, social skills strengths, and problem behaviors using a nationally…

The concept of treatment integrity cuts across a diversity of fields involved with providing treatments or interventions to individuals. In medical treatments, the concept of "treatment compliance" or "treatment adherence" is an important and problematic issue. In the field of nutrition, the concept of "dietary adherence" is important for…

Maintains that intelligence tests contribute little to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of instructional interventions for children. Suggests that intelligence tests are not useful in making differential diagnostic and classification determinations for children with mild learning problems and that such testing is not a cost-beneficial…

Students with emotional and behavioral problems are placed in a variety of classroom settings, presumably where their needs can be best served. Little attention, however, has been dedicated to monitoring their behavioral progress in these settings. This study analyzed data on student engagement, disruption, and destruction during 10 types of…