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Biomedical subjects

J A Mulick

Publications and source records attributed to J A Mulick.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Parental report of sleep problems in children with autism.

This research evaluated parent reports of sleep behaviors of four groups of children: those with Autism or Pervasive Developmental Disorders, those with General Mental Retardation alone, those attending Special Education classes (with no MR diagnosis), and a control group of similar aged children without a developmental diagnosis. Diagnostic classification and demographic information were determined through parent report, report of classroom registration, and the Gilliam Autism Rating Scale (Gilliam, 1995). To evaluate sleeping behavior the study used a 28-item, five-factor scale (Behavioral Evaluation of Disorders of Sleep/BEDS; Schreck, 1997/1998) constructed from the diagnostic criteria for childhood sleep disorders found in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders: Diagnostic and Coding Manual (ICSD, American Sleep Disorders Association, 1990). Findings suggest that reports of parents with children with autistic characteristics exhibit expected quantities of sleep, but parent perception of their sleep difficulties and sleep quality is different for children with autism than for children in all other study groups.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed2000

System and cost research issues in treatments for people with autistic disorders.

Parents of children with autism and pervasive developmental disorder and educational and clinical practitioners providing services to them regularly confront a wide range of service selection and financial decisions that are not as yet effectively addressed by applied research. Relevant systems issues span a very broad range of concerns: (a) systems delivery models and issues (e.g., costs of services, implementation of intensive intervention, and teacher or therapist training); (b) how best to integrate treatments; (c) providing treatment to those with limited monetary resources; (d) cost and cost/benefit analyses; (e) how to educate adult psychiatrists (as well as other practitioners and personnel) regarding autism; and (f) gaps between research and practice.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Objective and subjective factors in the disproportionate referral of children for academic problems.

R. S. Drabman, K. J. Tarnowski, and P. A. Kelly (1987) and K. J. Tarnowski, D. F. Anderson, R. S. Drabman, and P. A. Kelly (1990) examined children's month of birth in relation to referral for psychological services and found that younger children in the classroom were disproportionately referred for services. No differences were found between younger and older students on standardized measures of intelligence or academic achievement. Results of a replication and extension of these studies indicated (a) that younger children in the classroom were referred at a disproportionately higher rate, (b) that the referral pattern could not be explained by differences in children's competencies, (c) that Caucasian students were referred at disproportinately higher rates than minority students, and (d) a trend in which the proportionate referral rate of students as height or weight increased. Results are discussed within the context of teacher expectancies.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Influence of mental retardation severity and respondent characteristics on self-reported attitudes toward mental retardation and eugenics.

Eugenics refers to the investigation of means of social control to improve the mental or physical qualities of future generations. The present study investigated whether the self-reported attitudes toward mental retardation and eugenics of a sample of 572 respondents would vary as a function of (I) severity of the mental retardation attitude referent; and (2) respondent sociodemographic characteristics. Among the respondents, 380 were health and human service providers (66% upper division undergraduate students and 34% graduate level professionals) and 192 were upper division undergraduate students majoring in fields other than health and human services. The results supported these conclusions: (1) psychometric characteristics of the scales used to measure attitudes were adequate; (2) increasing mental retardation severity was related to increasing endorsement of eugenic principles, independent of global attitudes toward people with mental retardation; and (3) respondent education was related to the expression of eugenic attitudes toward mild mental retardation, while familiarity with people with mental retardation was related to the expression of eugenic attitudes toward moderate and profound mental retardation.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1993

A scale of attitudes toward the application of eugenics to the treatment of people with mental retardation.

As part of a larger study of the attitudes of diverse samples towards the application of eugenics to the treatment of people with mental retardation, a 32-item summated rating scale was developed as a contemporary, brief, easy to administer and score, and psychometrically sound instrument. Data were collected and analysed that indicated satisfactory item characteristics and reliability, and initial support for the content and construct validities of the scale. Analyses of social desirability data revealed that scale scores were not influenced by the subjects' desire to adhere to socially desirable expectations. The scale should be useful for the investigation of questions concerning the formation, structure and correlates of attitudes toward the application of eugenics to the treatment of people with mental retardation, and the relationship of these attitudes to contemporary mental retardation policies and practices.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Acceptability of behavioral treatments: influence of knowledge of behavioral principles.

The relation of staff knowledge of behavioral principles to ratings of treatment acceptability for interventions used in the management of self-injurious behavior (SIB) was examined with 57 direct-care staff members from an ICF/MR. Case descriptions of an adult with severe mental retardation who exhibited SIB were presented, followed by descriptions of six behavioral interventions rated on acceptability. Subjects also completed a 25-item measure of general knowledge of behavioral principles. Results indicated that staff age and educational attainment but not treatment acceptability ratings were significantly related to knowledge scores. Implications of the findings were discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Review of Behavior on a Disk from CMS Academic Software: instructional programs for teaching teachers.

The programs on BOAD represent a set of useful simulations and demonstrations of learning phenomena that successfully convey important practical and theoretical information to students. The most successful modules deal with shaping and the selective effect of positive reinforcement on behavior. The range of examples is sufficiently broad to convey the generality of these learning phenomena, but the graphics and particular examples are better suited to the college classroom (for which they were developed and in which they have received extensive field testing) than to the general public, where some users might be distracted by working with simulated animal "subjects" or bored by the simple graphics. There is a separate application on the disk that drills students on behavioral vocabulary, a useful resource for helping to assure that behavioral issues are discussed using consistent terminology. Although a single disk is initialized for a single user so that individual progress can be tracked accurately in printed reports, the cost of a disk is so low that no student who needs to learn about teaching would be discouraged from purchasing it. In truth, this is the best deal in instructional software I have seen yet.

Animals↗
PubMed1992

Compliance and quality in residential life. Analyzing the impact of regulations on residential ecology.

Viewed from a behavior analytic perspective as a form of verbal behavior, regulatory rules affect the behavior of service providers in residential programs directly and indirectly; they can facilitate habilitative services or exert a powerful counter-habilitative influence. Because regulations are written to apply to the general case, regulatory rules tend to become decontextualized, often failing to address (a) the needs of individuals and (b) specific environmental circumstances. Ecobehavioral analysis of rule-governed behavior in residential settings can provide a means of understanding and measuring the effects of regulatory rules. Feedback from field settings about the effects of regulatory rules on the behavior of people who live and work in residential settings would help to recontextualize the rule-making process and promote better correspondence between the intended effects of regulations and their actual effects.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1990

The ideology and science of punishment in mental retardation.

The conflict between those who view aversive therapeutic interventions from an ideological perspective and those who view them from a scientific perspective was examined. Special attention was devoted to the most detailed review of punishment procedures in mental retardation that has been written from an ideological perspective, a monograph published by The Association for Persons With Severe Handicaps (Guess, Helmstetter, Turnbull, & Knowlton, 1986). The monograph was found to suffer from a number of serious conceptual and methodological flaws that militate against accepting its conclusions as bases for research and social policy in mental retardation. The conclusion was drawn that some of those who reject aversive therapeutic interventions do so out of a poor understanding of behavioral science and a primarily ideological frame of reference.

Aversive Therapy↗
PubMed1990

Acceptability of behavioral interventions for self-injurious behavior: replication and interinstitutional comparison.

Using a case description methodology, Tarnowski, Rasnake, Mulick, and Kelly (1989) examined the effects of behavior problem severity and intervention type on staff ratings of six behavioral interventions used to treat self-injurious behavior (SIB). Results indicated that accelerative interventions were judged more acceptable than reductive treatments, and acceptability of treatments varied as a function of SIB severity. We hypothesized that judgments of treatment acceptability might vary as a function of specific institutional characteristics and conducted a replication of the previous study in a setting where the institutional treatment philosophy was explicitly behavioral. Results indicated that (a) accelerative interventions were preferred to reductive treatments, (b) acceptability ratings were not significantly influenced by SIB severity, and (c) interventions were generally found to be more acceptable by staff working in a behavioral treatment milieu.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Counter-habilitative contingencies in institutions for people with mental retardation: ecological and regulatory influences.

Different levels of influence result in contingencies of reinforcement that can affect the behavior of staff members and residents in facilities for people with mental retardation. Although the intent of any residential facility is surely habilitation, some types of influence result in contingencies of reinforcement that do not promote adaptive behavior by residents, that is, are counter-habilitative. Some of the conceptual issues involved in understanding the operation of these contingencies in complex caregiving environments were discussed. Preliminary data gathered from one highly specialized residential facility were used to illustrate the influence of social, ecological, and regulatory contingencies that could have a counter-habilitative impact on residents. We concluded that a close examination of all levels of influence affecting institutions, their staff, and residents will be necessary if better progress is to be made towards adequately serving the needs of people who live in institutional settings.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1989

Behavioral adjustment of pediatric burn victims.

Investigated the relationship of a variety of biopsychosocial variables to maternal ratings of children's psychosocial adjustment in a sample of 68 child burn survivors. Results indicated that (a) the mean maternal ratings of behavioral adjustment for pediatric burn patients did not differ from those reported for nonburned, nonclinic children, (b) a relatively small but statistically significant percentage of children had overall adjustment scores in the deviant range, and (c) little variance in the behavioral outcome measures was accounted for on the basis of three sets of predictor variables (demographic, burn severity, injury visibility) hypothesized to influence children's adjustment. Results suggest that the prevalence of behavioral disturbance in long-term pediatric burn survivors may be lower than previous reports have indicated. Implications of the results for consultation and future research are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

Ecobehavioral characteristics of a pediatric burn injury unit.

Behavioral observations were conducted on 40 children admitted consecutively to an inpatient pediatric burn care unit (PBCU) over a 6-month period. Children's responses to the PBCU environment as well as adult responses to patients were assessed. Data indicated that children most frequently (a) were oriented and alert, (b) emitted vocalizations or verbalizations, (c) were environmentally engaged, (d) and demonstrated positive or neutral affective responding. Adult-child interactions occurred during the majority of observations. Age was found to be significantly related to the type of distress response exhibited. Positive responses indicative of patient well-being were found to be associated with environmental engagement and the presence of other patients. In general, little evidence emerged to support the notion of a PBCU response pattern which resembles that observed in pediatric intensive care units (i.e., ICU syndrome). The use of observational methods for studying the behavioral adaptation of children in medical settings and the implications of the data for the design of interventions on PBCUs are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1989

Acceptability of behavioral interventions for self-injurious behavior.

Using a case description methodology, we examined the effects of behavior problem severity, intervention type (accelerative vs. reductive), client status (child vs. adult), and type of work setting (child vs. adult unit) on staff members' acceptability ratings of six behavioral interventions used to treat self-injurious behavior (SIB). Results indicated that (a) accelerative interventions were rated more acceptable than reductive treatments, (b) acceptability of treatments varied as a function of SIB severity, and (c) client status and type of work setting failed to significantly influence acceptability ratings. Findings were discussed in the context of the current controversy surrounding the use of aversive treatments. The implications of the results for the design of institutionally based behavioral intervention programs were examined.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Misconceptions relating to mental retardation.

An updated version of a 9-item questionnaire concerning misconceptions about mental retardation originally developed by Winthrop and Taylor (1956) was administered to a total of 558 individuals from heterogenous samples. The relations of the demographic, experimental, and contact characteristics of the respondents in the 1986 sample to their misconceptions score were explored as were differences in the distributions of the percentages of endorsements of the nine misconceptions for the samples in 1956 and 1986.

Adolescent↗