To date, only a limited number of studies have focused on functional assessment with typically developing populations. The most commonly reported method of functional assessment with this population seems to be descriptive assessment; however, the methods used in the descriptive assessment often are unclear. This is unfortunate as researchers and…

Social Effectiveness Therapy for Children (SET-C) is a comprehensive behavioral treatment combining social skills training, peer generalization experiences, and individualized in vivo exposure for the treatment of social phobia in youth. SET-C results in positive treatment outcome and its effects are maintained at least 3 years later. In this…

The use of toys in child clinical contexts is advocated by a number of researchers in the field as a means of overcoming developmental constraints on children's reports of their psychological states and their experiences. This paper reviews the literature relating to the impact of toys on children's ability to recall and communicate clinically…

Children who fail to become fluent readers by the end of the primary grades are likely to achieve below same-age peers throughout their school careers. With growing use of curriculum-based measures (CBMs), it is easier to identify those students who are achieving below same-age peers. Moreover, a process of conducting individualized assessment and…

Discriminatory ability of several pediatric outcome tools was assessed relative to Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) level in patients with cerebral palsy. Five hundred and sixty-two patients (400 with diplegia, 162 with hemiplegia; 339 males, 223 females; age range 4-18y, mean 11y 1mo [SD 3y 7mo]), classified as GMFCS Levels I to…

The primary goal of this project was to increase schools' resources and staff skills in providing function-based behavior support to individual students with chronic problem behaviors. Over the course of a 3-year period, 10 school teams received training in and on-site consultation on functional behavioral assessment (FBA) and behavior support…

"Positive Action," a K-12 program, aims to promote character development, academic achievement, and social-emotional skills and to reduce disruptive and problem behavior. The program is based on the philosophy that you feel good about yourself when you think and do positive actions, and there is always a positive way to do everything.…

The PLAY Project Home Consultation (PPHC) program trains parents of children with autistic spectrum disorders using the DIR/Floortime model of Stanley Greenspan MD. Sixty-eight children completed the 8-12 month program. Parents were encouraged to deliver 15 hours per week of 1:1 interaction. Pre/post ratings of videotapes by blind raters using the…

Functional analyses of problem behavior for 4 young boys with developmental delays showed that problem behaviors were maintained by both negative and positive reinforcement. Functional communication training was conducted with one set of training stimuli in which the child's mother presented a work task in the family living room. Pretreatment…

The conventional use of standardized testing within a discrepancy analysis model is reviewed. The Response-to-Intervention (RTI) process is explained, along with descriptions of assessment procedures within RTI: functional assessment, authentic assessment, curriculum-based measurement, and play-based assessment. Psychometric issues relevant to RTI…

This study examined the effects of functional assessment and positive behavior support on classroom behaviors of young children. An experimental program, entitled FACET, was implemented by school-based teams in pre-kindergarten through first-grade classrooms. Observations of child behaviors and classroom variables were compared between…

Functional analysis methodology has become the hallmark of behavioral assessment, yielding a determination of behavioral function in roughly 96% of the cases published (Hanley, Iwata, & McCord, 2003). Some authors have suggested that incorporating the results of a descriptive assessment into the design of a functional analysis may be useful in…

Critical thinking is often absent from classroom endeavor because it is hard to define (Gelder, 2005) or is difficult to assess (Bissell & Lemons, 2006). Critical thinking is defined as application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Browne & Minnick, 2005). This paper shows how self-experimentation and single-subject methodology can be used to…

The ability of students to plagiarise coursework assessments has been a topic of much debate in recent years. The consequences of plagiarism for students may be devastating, since their failure to learn and use appropriate study skills will affect both their university experience and their subsequent career. This project set out to investigate…

A child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and a history of aberrant behaviors participated in this study with his mother. The primary purpose of the current study was to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of FCT on decreasing problem behaviors, increasing communication mands, and increasing spontaneous communication with a child with ASD…