Science is being criticized within scientific domains and society. To address this, we suggest that researchers in special education, broadly, and those working in the behavioral disorders field, specifically, consider three critical facets of research: (a) importance of rigor, (b) value of replication, and (c) transparency of reproducibility in…

Students with or at risk of emotional and behavioral disorders can benefit from a variety of self-regulation strategies. One such strategy is goal setting, which can be used to improve both academic and behavioral outcomes in the classroom. In this article, we discuss the importance of goal setting and current research in this area. In addition,…

As the first major effort to use a behavioral economics lens to examine human services programs that serve poor and vulnerable families in the United States, the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project demonstrated the value of applying behavioral insights to improve the efficacy of human services programs. The BIAS…

Discrete trial teaching (DTT) is one of the cornerstones of applied behavior analysis (ABA) based interventions. Conventionally, DTT is commonly implemented within a prescribed, fixed manner in which the therapist is governed by a strict set of rules. In contrast to conventional DTT, a progressive approach to DTT allows the therapist to remain…

The purpose of the current paper is to describe the impact of applied behaviour analysis on language treatment for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) diagnoses. Specifically, this paper will describe Skinner's theory of verbal behaviour and its contributions to evidence-based treatments for communication deficits among individuals with…

Employing a randomized control group design, this study compared the efficacy of staff training using theory training, hands-on supervision and a self-instructional teaching manual. Participants were 12 undergraduate, health or social-work students. Initially, participants were given a three-hour lecture, and as a result, staff-participants…

Multidisciplinary practice has become an accepted approach in many education and social and health care fields. In fact, the right to a multidisciplinary assessment is enshrined in the United Nations Convention of the Rights for Persons with Disabilities (United Nations, 2007). In order to avert a "one size fits all" response to…

The current study meta-analyzed 47 single-subject studies of behavioral self-management interventions that were published between 1971 and 2011. In addition to obtaining an overall measure of effect across all self-management studies (f = 0.93), analyses were conducted to assess whether treatment effectiveness was moderated by factors such as…

Publication bias arises when studies with favorable results are more likely to be reported than are studies with null findings. If this bias occurs in studies with single-subject experimental designs (SSEDs) on applied behavior-analytic (ABA) interventions, it could lead to exaggerated estimates of intervention effects. Therefore, we conducted an…

Communicators of climate science seek ways to better educate and motivate individuals to personally commit to sustainable, energy-saving activities. However, critical psychological and social barriers to conservation make this task challenging. Behavioural scientists are well aware of the difficulties that individuals and groups have in responding…

Questions regarding the generalizability of results from educational experiments have been at the forefront of methods development over the past five years. This work has focused on methods for estimating the effect of an intervention in a well-defined inference population (e.g., Tipton, 2013; O'Muircheartaigh and Hedges, 2014); methods for…

The review will focus on the effectiveness of school-based "self-management" (SM) interventions--a widely-used cognitive behavioral intervention to address disruptive and challenging behaviors in school settings. Though SM interventions are referred by many names (e.g., self-control, effortful control, self-regulation), SM is defined as…

The present study examined proximal and distal barriers and supports within the Swedish service system that may affect implementation of early and intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) for children with autism. A case study approach with roots in ethnography was chosen to explore this issue. Two preschools exemplifying "high quality…

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and behavior analysts are key members of school-based teams that serve children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Behavior analysts approach assessment and intervention through the lens of applied behavior analysis (ABA). ABA-based interventions have been found effective for targeting skills across…

From the beginning of time, there has been a pervasive interest in getting some members of the human race to conform to the wishes of other members of the human race. The use of positive as well as not so positive methods have been utilized, researched and espoused upon. The current paper presents a review of the vast literature on the history of…