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Biomedical subjects

L E Barton

Publications and source records attributed to L E Barton.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1988

Basing the treatment of stereotypic and self-injurious behaviors on hypotheses of their causes.

Stereotypic and self-injurious behaviors are common forms of maladaptive responding demonstrated by severely handicapped persons. Various review papers suggest that no single treatment procedure is universally effective. Although there may be many reasons for this finding, one could be that people engage in these behaviors for various reasons, and that procedures that are incompatible with the cause of the behavior are unlikely to be effective. These studies also suggest many hypotheses for the development and maintenance of these behaviors, three of which are the self-stimulation, positive reinforcement, and negative reinforcement hypotheses. The purpose of this paper was to determine whether one of these hypotheses could be matched to the cause of the behavior and used as an effective treatment procedure. We therefore compared one hypothesis with one other for 3 subjects in a three-phase study. During baseline, data were taken in two classrooms for each subject, and a judgement was made about the hypothesis most likely to be related to the cause of the behavior. During the second phase, a treatment based on that hypothesis was used in one classroom, and a treatment based on another hypothesis was used in the second classroom. During the third phase, the treatment that was most effective in the second phase was used in both classrooms. Results showed that a successful treatment program can be developed on an hypothesis of why the behavior occurred during baseline. Results are discussed in terms of supporting the argument that treatment programs should be based on a functional analysis of the behavior in its environmental context.

Behavior Therapy↗
PubMed1986

Maintenance of therapeutic change by momentary DRO.

Differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) involves delivery of reinforcement at the end of an interval during which the target behavior has not occurred. Momentary DRO, however, is a procedure in which reinforcement is delivered if a response did not occur at the end of an interval. We examined the extent to which momentary DRO maintained suppression, following initial treatment with whole-interval DRO, of nine retarded students' maladaptive behavior. Results indicate that momentary DRO maintained response suppression comparable to that obtained by whole-interval DRO.

Behavior Therapy↗
PubMed1986

Measuring severity of behavior: a revision of Part II of the Adaptive Behavior Scale.

This study was designed to: (a) assess the degree to which rehabilitation staff rate the severity of maladaptive behaviors on Part II of the AAMD Adaptive Behavior Scale (ABS) and, on the basis of the obtained rating, (b) develop a socially validated revision of the scoring system to allow more accurate classification of mentally retarded individuals as having mild, moderate, or severe behavior problems. On the basis of the modal ratings obtained from various service agencies for "occasionally" and "frequently" on Part II of the ABS, we constructed a revised scoring system. Preliminary use of the scoring system suggests satisfactory agreement between "severity profile" scores and subjective ratings of individuals classified by service agencies as demonstrating mild, moderate, or severe behavior problems.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Reduction of stereotypic behaviours using differential reinforcement procedures and momentary restraint.

This study explored the effectiveness and classroom applicability of a combination of DRO and momentary restraint procedures to reduce the stereotypic responding of four severely or profoundly mentally retarded, multihandicapped students aged 6-16 years. Modifications were made in the application of both of the procedures in order for them to be usable by classroom staff; (a) whole-interval DRO was used with no interval reset contingent upon inappropriate responding; and (b) the momentary restraint procedures were very short in duration (i.e. 3, 5 or 10 s). The results indicate that the combination of these two procedures could be readily implemented by classroom staff without a disruption in educational programming. In addition, in each of the four subjects substantial and relatively rapid results occurred. These results are particularly interesting in that the stereotypic behaviours to which they were applied were topographically very different.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The effects of initial interval size on the efficacy of DRO schedules of reinforcement.

The differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) is a behavior-reduction procedure that has been popular for several years. In classroom settings, it provides reinforcement when a student does not display inappropriate responding for a particular interval of time. Unfortunately, relatively little is known about how to use DRO effectively in applied settings. Most research has been conducted in laboratory settings; the purpose of the present study was to provide a replication of one of those studies. This study examined the effect of the size of the initial DRO interval on the disruptive behavior of students with moderate disabilities. In the first experiment, a group of six students was observed during baseline in two classes. Two different DRO values were then used. In one classroom, it was equal to the mean number of 10-second intervals between disruptions during baseline. In the other classroom, it was twice the mean number during baseline. In the final phase, behavior in both classrooms was put under the same DRO program. In the second experiment, the disruptive behavior of three students was studied in a different design in which both methods of determining the initial DRO value were compared. The results of both experiments showed that an initial DRO value equal to the mean number of intervals between responses in baseline was much more effective than a value twice that size in reducing disruptions.

Behavior Therapy↗