The Gamblers Treatment Clinic (GTC) opened in 1982 as a New York State Office of Mental Health Demonstration Program. The basic premise of the GTC is that excessive gambling is a disorder of impulse control. Treatment, conducted in the community in a time-limited fashion, attempts to uncover the underlying dynamics that precipitate disorders of…

Prevention and problem solving approaches to behavior management in classrooms for behaviorally disordered (BD) students are reviewed. Attention is focused on positive strategies teachers can use to manage inappropriate behavior and to teach students alternative appropriate behaviors. The following components of prevention that contribute to a…

Twelve author-contributed papers representing a cross-section of resarch, practice, and professional opinion are presented from a conference on severe behavior disorders of children and youth. The keynote paper, "In Search of Excellence in Special Education" by T. Lovitt is followed by these papers: "Autism: Some Commonly Accepted Presumptions"…

This study ascertained the relationship between language maturity and mode of aggressive expression. More than 100 second and third grade children from Tallahasee, Florida schools took an apperceptive aggressive test to determine aggressive modality and then completed a portion of the Paradigmatic-Syntagmatic Language List to assess language…

In this practicum, a plan to establish consistency in classroom management was implemented in order to enhance the positive behaviors of preschool and kindergarten children. Participating in the project were 7 classrooms serving 149 preschool and kindergarten children. A total of 14 staff members received inservice training in operant conditioning…

Discipline alone is not enough to make a school a better teaching and learning environment. Like punishment, discipline applied as control can cause more difficulties than it remedies; continual emphasis on discipline with constant surveillance by the teacher for infractions may produce more problems than it solves. By clearly connecting learning…

The assumption that therapeutic or homework directives enhance therapy has received little research attention. To explore compliance with homework directives in a behavioral self-control treatment of weight loss, the comparative importance of social support (S), support plus directives with no rationale (SD), support plus directives with rationale…

The monograph on severe behavior disorders of children and youth presents 23 papers on juvenile delinquency, behavior disorders at the secondary level, and self control instruction. Some of the papers included are: "A Comparison of Varied Teacher-to-Child Ratio on the Adaptive and Attending Behaviors of Two Autistic Children" (M. Zener,…

Rotter's social learning theory was used as a basis for studying the effects of locus of control on the frequency of the responses of undesirable behaviors. Subjects, 12 fifth graders who had operant levels higher than desirable were monitored by either themselves, a peer, or by no agent for a period of eight weeks. Classes of behaviors…

Psychological training programs developed and implemented for gymnasts of a wide range of age and varying ability levels are examined. The programs utilized strategies based on cognitive-behavioral intervention. The approach contends that mental training plays a crucial role in maximizing performance for most gymnasts. The object of the training…

Intended for those who want to reduce disruptive behavior in elementary and secondary schools, this book argues that children must be held responsible for their actions and prefers self-discipline to imposed discipline that evaporates when authority is absent. Schools need to take greater initiative in teaching students responsibility and giving…

This review of the literature on self-speech, a subset of a communicative speech (speech not intended for nor effectively adapted for communication with others), focuses on the concept of self-control through language. The theories of six major researchers in the area of self-speech--J. Piaget, L. Vygotsky, A. Luria, H. Reese, J. Flavell, and L.…

Although the augmental value of exercise to behavioral weight control programs has been suggested, demonstration of this value is dependent upon an assessment of adherence to change in eating habits and activity patterns. Self-report measures of adherence were obtained from overweight college women undergoing treatment that involved either dietary…

The classroom test performance of three groups, self-monitoring (SM), a combination of self-monitoring, self-reinforcement and self-punishment (SM+C), and controls, were compared in independent replications in a chemistry (n=149) and a calculus (n=80) class. In chemistry, but not calculus, the experimental subjects outperformed controls. It was…

This paper describes a program of research into children's understanding of psychological principles underlying social behavior. An initial study had indicated that at about 10 years of age children knew many of the basic principles of social behavior and the rules for social control. Two strategies were developed to explore these findings in…