Some students who have developmental disabilities avoid settings and activities that can improve their learning and quality of life. This two-phase study concerned an adolescent boy with autism who avoided the gross-motor exercise room, gymnasium, and music room at his school; he demonstrated distress, agitation, and problem behaviors when…

Three children diagnosed with pervasive developmental disabilities emitted a high rate of mands and a low-to-zero rate of appropriate play responses when the two responses were reinforced on concurrent Fixed Ratio 1 (FR1) schedules. When mands were reinforced on an FR10 schedule and play responses were concurrently reinforced on an FR1 schedule,…

Discrete-trials teaching (DTT) is commonly used to implement applied behavior analysis treatment for children with autism. The authors investigated a revised self-instructional manual for teaching university students to implement a 21-component DTT procedure to teach three tasks to confederates role-playing children with autism. Also, as a…

Research shows that after training in the philosophy and practice of mindfulness, parents can mindfully attend to the challenging behaviors of their children with autism. Parents also report an increased satisfaction with their parenting skills and social interactions with their children. These findings were replicated and extended with four…

There is growing evidence of an association between physical illness and problem behavior in children with developmental disabilities. Such behavior can compromise school performance. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to evaluate, using a group design, the effectiveness of medical intervention alone (N = 11) versus behavioral plus…