This article describes the intervention strategies and quantitative analyses used to address the challenging behaviors of a 9-year-old boy with severe disabilities. A collaborative team including his mother designed and implemented functional assessment and hypotheses-based interventions that reduced problem behaviors and increased desirable…

This study evaluated the effects of choice making within functional communication training (FCT) to increase the task engagement of two participants with inappropriate behaviour. Pretreatment functional analyses indicated that both participants' inappropriate behaviour was maintained by escape. For one of the participants, inappropriate behaviour…

To investigate the feasibility of a physical exercise programme with treadmill for persons with Rett syndrome (RS) in order to promote fitness and health. A daily training programme on a treadmill was designed for four females with RS over a period of 2 months with tests performed in three intervals, at time 1, 2 and 3, 2 months apart with…

Among families who have young children, feeding concerns are quite common (Brazelton, 1992). Feeding concerns can include, but are not limited to, inappropriate mealtime behaviors, lack of self-feeding, food selectivity, and food refusal (Kerwin, 1999). Given the complex nature of assessment of and intervention for feeding concerns in young…

The purpose of this study was to develop standardization data for the Functional Assessment Intervention Program (FAIP; University of Utah, Utah State University, & Utah State Office of Education, 1999), a computerized, functional behavioral assessment expert system. Reliability, validity, and utility analyses were conducted with students serving…

Results of prior studies (e.g. [J. Appl. Behav. Anal. 32 (1999) 285]) showing that participants chose alternative behavior (compliance) over escape-reinforced destructive behavior when this latter response produced escape and the former response produced positive reinforcement may have been due to (a) the value of the positive reinforcer…

Research on the treatment of challenging behaviors such as aggression, tantrums, and self-injury expanded significantly over the past two decades. However, despite of the rather impressive numbers of studies, it is still uncertain whether positive behavioral support (PBS) is effective with everyone. To be able to tell family members and…

With the still relatively recent advent widespread technological innovation in the global marketplace, leading to the "information age," massive automation, and corporate capital flight to Third World labor markets, future leaders are still needed, but increasingly, future workers are not. As result, students previously educated to be future…

While the majority of students in schools tend to respond to effective general academic instruction and proactive schoolwide discipline systems, some continue to exhibit intense and chronic problem behaviors, even in the best schools. For these students, schools are highly variable in their ability and capacity to provide accurate and durable…

Twelve children (CA, 12 to 32 months) with developmental delay were observed in their homes during monthly analogue functional analysis probes to document patterns of emerging self-injurious behavior. Two patterns of emerging self-injury were observed for 5 participants: (a) The topography and functional analysis pattern remained the same, but the…

The author found it very satisfying to reread "Toward a technology of 'nonaversive' behavioral support," written in 1990 by Rob Horner and seven of his colleagues. Their predictions of the critical themes for advancing positive behavior support (PBS) ring true. Fifteen years have passed since the publication of this article, and much has happened…

This chapter examines problem and pathological gambling among college students and reports on prevalence rate, risk and protective factors, prevention and intervention, and recommendations for college student personnel and other university administrators.

This study was conducted to examine the effects of functional communication training when used by mothers to address the serious challenging behaviors of toddlers. Multiple baseline (across home routines) designs were used with two mother-child dyads. The data showed mothers used the procedures correctly and interventions produced reductions in…

Fiona was a 14-year-old 7th-grader whose academic history, frequent behavior problems, and low levels of academic engagement put her at-risk for academic failure. This study's purpose was to examine the effectiveness of a systematic process for identifying the function of her problem behaviors and designing interventions that directly addressed…

Access to public community job-training sites can be restricted if students with moderate mental retardation exhibit behavior unacceptable to nondisabled coworkers or the general public. The authors conducted a functional behavioral assessment (FBA) in public community settings to determine the function of each student's problem behavior. They…