Self-management within a classroom token economy for students with learning disabilities.

Students with disabilities who are served in restrictive educational settings often display inappropriate behavior that serves to preclude their integration into the mainstream. One approach to managing difficult behavior is a levels system (Smith & Farrell, 1993), which typically consists of a hierarchy of levels in which students must meet increasingly demanding standards of behavior before advancing through the hierarchy. In the present study, two middle-school students with learning disabilities participated in a classroom-wide token economy based on a levels system. The levels system, which was used in a self-contained classroom, targeted the acquisition and maintenance of academic skills and social behaviors with the goal of integrating these students into an inclusive classroom. The two participants showed little or no progress within the levels system because of a very high rate of inappropriate verbalizations. Therefore, a self-management system that involved training on the accuracy of self-recording these verbalizations was added to the levels system for these students. In addition, the investigator discussed with these students the consequences of inappropriate behavior and socially appropriate behavioral alternatives. A multiple-baseline-across-subjects experimental design revealed that the intervention resulted in a substantive reduction in inappropriate verbalizations, as well as greater progress through the levels system. Implications of these findings for the use of self-recording within a token economy, the importance of students' accuracy of self-recording, and methodological issues are discussed.

The self-management of skills by persons with mental retardation.

The transition of persons with mental retardation to less restrictive environments is often hindered by difficulties in managing their own behavior in the absence of external controls. This observation has led to an upsurge of interest in the advantages of teaching self-management skills to persons with mental retardation. This article reviews evidence about the effects of self-management training on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of skills. The analyses show that self-management training has been useful in promoting the maintenance of behavior change first effected by external control procedures, but that a dearth of evidence and a number of methodological problems preclude convincing conclusions about its value in promoting generalization. The empirical evidence also suggests that the effectiveness of these procedures may depend upon the cognitive and linguistic abilities of the persons receiving self-management training. Finally, the design of much of the empirical research does not enable the disentanglement of the specific effects of self-management training from those arising from the concurrent application of external control procedures. Carefully controlled componential studies of the effects of self-management training and external control procedures are sorely needed.

Stereotyped behaviour, alternative behaviour and collateral effects: a comparison of four intervention procedures.

The effects of four procedures (i.e. a mild slap to the forearm, differential reinforcement of an alternative behaviour (DRA), overcorrection plus DRA, and a mild slap plus DRA), on a sterotyped behaviour, an alternative behaviour, and collateral self-injurious behaviours of a profoundly retarded five-year-old girl were assessed in a modified multiple baseline, reversal design. A mild slap resulted in rapid suppression of target and nontarget behaviours. During DRA, a slight increase was achieved in the target behaviour. However, no suppression of the other behaviours were evidenced. Overcorrection plus DRA proved relatively ineffective both in suppressing the target stereotyped behaviours and in accelerating the alternative behaviour. The most effective procedure was mild slap plus DRA. Near zero suppression of the stereotyped behaviour was attained on the first day of implementation, collateral self-injurious behaviours were virtually eliminated, and alternative behaviour increased dramatically. There was some evidence for generalisation across trainers, settings, and time.

Learning, memory, and transfer in profoundly, severely, and moderately mentally retarded persons.

Discrimination learning, memory, and transfer capacity were assessed in representative samples of institutionalized retarded persons in order to provide information on trainability. The 56 subjects were selected from moderately, severely, and two levels of profoundly retarded adults. They learned and relearned three successive two-choice discrimination problems. Generally, the higher functioning subjects, defined by IQ and adaptive behavior learned more rapidly than did the lower functioning subjects. Forgetting was related to IQ/adaptive behavior level. Interproblem transfer was negligible at all levels of retardation, but ceiling effects may have obscured positive transfer in the higher functioning groups. Backward learning curves revealed large differences between lower and higher functioning persons in the presolution trials, but once learning began even profoundly retarded subjects solved these problems as rapidly as did the moderately retarded subjects. Ten of the 56 subjects failed to learn all three problems.