A maintenance strategy for discontinuing aversive procedures: a 52-month follow-up of the treatment of aggression.

A strategy for systematically discontinuing aversive treatment components is illustrated with a 52-month follow-up of the treatment of severe aggression by an institutionalized, dually diagnosed deaf male. Phase 1 lasted 28 months and included: (a) contingent electric shock, (b) a high density positive reinforcement, (c) compliance training, (d) transfer of programmatic responsibility to others, and (e) a relaxation procedure. Phase 2 has lasted for 24 months and features (a) replacing shock with decreasing durations of nonexclusionary timeout and (b) naturally occurring reinforcers. Aggression has remained very low for over 4 years. The client is in an all day workshop, visits home frequently, and accompanies his parents on vacation. A social validity questionnaire revealed that he has become more sociable and less dangerous.

Cues-pause-point training and simultaneous communication to teach the use of signed labeling repertoires.

We taught two mentally retarded students who communicated by signing to answer questions with signed labels and evaluated the generalized effects of this training on their correct responding to untrained questions. The students received cues-pause-point training on one question set followed by generalization assessments on a different set in other settings. Periodic probes were conducted on two novel question sets in other settings to determine further the strength and spread of any generalization effects. A multiple baseline across-subjects design revealed that the students' incorrect signing was replaced with correct responding in the training and all generalization sets. These results replicate and extend previous research and suggest that cues-pause-point procedures can be useful in teaching students to use their manual signing repertoires.

Replacing a chronic schizophrenic man's delusional speech with stimulus appropriate responses.

This study attempted to extend the use of Cues, Pause, Point language training procedures (developed to treat the speech disorders of mentally handicapped persons) to delusional speech. The direct and potential generalized effects of the procedures on the delusional and socially appropriate responding of an institutionalized, chronic schizophrenic man were evaluated in a multiple baseline design across stimulus-response pairs. The procedures encouraged the subject to (a) remain quiet before, during, and after the presentation of verbal stimuli and then (b) respond on the basis of environmental cues (i.e. written word cards) that contained the correct responses. Delusional responding was rapidly replaced by appropriate responding on both sets of the trained stimuli. Across person and setting generalization occurred in assessments conducted immediately following training, and these effects were maintained for 15 months. The results suggest that Cues, Pause, Point procedures may offer some potential for replacing delusional responding with appropriate responding to social stimuli.

Replacing maladaptive speech with verbal labeling responses: an analysis of generalized responding.

We taught three mentally handicapped students to answer questions with verbal labels and evaluated the generalized effects of this training on their maladaptive speech (e.g., echolalia) and correct responding to untrained questions. The students received cues-pause-point training on an initial question set followed by generalization assessments on a different set in another setting. Probes were conducted on novel questions in three other settings to determine the strength and spread of the generalization effect. A multiple baseline across subjects design revealed that maladaptive speech was replaced with correct labels (answers) to questions in the training and all generalization settings. These results replicate and extend previous research that suggested that cues-pause-point procedures may be useful in replacing maladaptive speech patterns by teaching students to use their verbal labeling repertoires.

Cues-pause-point language training: teaching echolalics functional use of their verbal labeling repertoires.

We evaluated the direct and generalized effects of cues-pause-point language training procedures on immediate echolalia and correct responding in two severely retarded females. Two experiments were conducted with each subject in which the overall goal was to encourage them to remain quiet before, during, and briefly after the presentation of questions and then to verbalize on the basis of environmental cues whose labels represented the correct responses. Multiple baseline designs across question/response pairs (Experiment I) or question/response pairs and settings (Experiment II) demonstrated that echolalia was rapidly replaced by correct responding on the trained stimuli. More importantly, there were clear improvements in subjects' responding to untrained stimuli. Results demonstrated that the cues-pause-point procedures can be effective in teaching severely retarded or echolalic individuals functional use of their verbal labeling repertoires.

An analysis of social skills generalization in two natural settings.

The interactional behavior of two groups of elderly mentally retarded residents of a community facility was measured in two generalization situations before, during, and after one group received social skills training. The training group received social skills training within a game format, whereas the contrast group simply played a game with no emphasis on interactional behavior. Results suggested that generalization to natural interactional situations may be delayed following training and that it is more likely in some situations (i.e., with trained peers) than others (i.e., in the presence of untrained peers).