Twenty suggestions for building community and empowering students stress the role of community in facilitating inclusion, influence, and openness. Suggestions include mapping the community, finding common threads, conducting community interviews, matching compelling literature with student characteristics, conducting classroom meetings, providing…

This article presents a detailed example of how faculty and staff at one middle school implemented team-based functional behavioral assessment (FBA) planning procedures with a student exhibiting recurring minor problems. Insets list tasks and considerations for an FBA, a sample formatted antecedent-behavior-consequence summary of team member…

Provides a wide range of information for 100 articles published from January 1980 through July 1999 that describe the functional assessment (FA) of behavior in school settings. Results indicate that FA is useful for ascertaining the variables that control high-frequency problem behaviors in students with low-incidence disabilities and for…

Scores for academic performance, adaptive functioning, DSM-oriented scales, and empirically based scales on the Teacher's Report Form were compared for demographically similar samples of 7- to 16-year-old students assessed in 1981, 1989, and 1999. Problem scores increased from 1981 to 1989 and decreased from 1989 to 1999, with all effect sizes…

This article reviews research on the use of strategies by children with autism to repair communicative breakdowns and discusses the possible links between communicative breakdowns and the emergence of problem behavior in children with autism. Strategies for decreasing risk of communicative breakdown and teaching repair strategies are considered.…

Examined the association of neighborhood characteristics on competencies of Canadian preschoolers. Found that verbal ability positively related to residing in neighborhoods with affluent residents and negatively to residing in neighborhoods with poor residents and in neighborhoods with low cohesion, even after controlling for family SES. Behavior…

This study examined behavioral adjustment in 22 siblings of children with autism. Mothers rated these children as having more behavior problems and fewer prosocial behaviors than a normative sample. Analysis of variables revealed that male siblings and children younger than the autistic sibling engaged in fewer prosocial behaviors. Psychological…

Argues that a thorough understanding of factors that influence aggression in children cannot be achieved without including behavior genetic studies that allow examination of the effects of shared versus non-shared environment, as well as genes, on aggressive behaviors. Details the growing body of evidence on the genetic effects on aggression.…

Study demonstrates a method for integrating in-class and out-of-class procedures to assess and treat an adaptive behavior deficit. Assessment and teaching procedures were implemented outside the classroom in a multiple baseline design across students, followed by generalization programming in the classroom. All students generalized correct…

This article describes a "Quiet Room" project for students with social, emotional, and behavioral problems at a British primary school. The Quiet Room was designed to provide a nurturing environment away from the classroom in which a child's emotional needs can be explored on a one-to-one basis. Benefits for children, parents, and…

Reports on the evaluation of the Earlscourt Girls Connection, a program for young girls with conduct problems. Analyses of behavioral change according to primary caregivers' ratings were conducted comparing admission scores with 6-month and 12-month follow-up. At follow-up, the girls were rated as lower on the total score for externalizing…

Discusses the nature of substance use during adolescence and the causal factors which contribute to it. Emphasis is placed on parent and family factors that are associated with substance use. Research findings indicate consistent intervention effects on children's problem behaviors, and on potential mediating processes such as parenting behaviors…

Thirty-four staff providing services to people with intellectual disabilities completed the Challenging Behaviour Attribution Scale with respect to a specific client before, during, and after completing a course in assessment and intervention for challenging behavior. Significantly more staff attributed challenging behavior to negative…

Studied behavioral problems that 19 Scottish adoptive families experienced with their adopted children. Also studied families' experiences with, views on, and suggestions for postadoption services. Discusses implications for adoption practices. (BG)

This article reviews the literature on acceptability of various treatments with children having disabilities. Treatment acceptability is defined and instruments used in its assessment reviewed. Also discussed are analogue and clinical research methodology as well as the treatments and problem behaviors evaluated in the literature. Extension to…