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Self-regulation and other student-directed learning strategies have the potential to benefit students with developmental disabilities and mental retardation in general education classrooms. However, to date, there is little information about use of such strategies in general education classrooms, particularly at the secondary education level. This study examined the effect of a self-regulation multicomponent process (antecedent cue regulation or self-monitoring with self-evaluation and self-reinforcement) with 3 students with developmental disabilities in typical classrooms. Use of the self-regulation strategies improved adaptive behaviors related to class participation or decreased problem behaviors for all students. Also, teachers working with students indicated that they had exceeded their expectations for achieving goals related to the target behaviors. The potential for use of self-regulation strategies to promote successful inclusion is discussed.

We used a multiple-baseline design across participants to assess the effects of a verbal directive on the social interactions of general education high school students enrolled in a peer buddy program and their peers with mental retardation. General education students were asked to interact “as friends” with their peers while they engaged in leisure activities. Delivery of the directive was associated with increases in occurrence of social interaction, improvement in quality and reciprocity of interaction, and increases in range of communication behaviors performed by students with mental retardation. In addition, students discussed a greater variety of conversational topics. Findings are discussed with respect to strategies for increasing social interaction among high school students.

Growing attention has been directed at the relation between early social communicative skills of children with autism and subsequent development of these children's social and communicative functioning. We reviewed 16 empirical studies that investigated the effects of social interactive interventions designed to increase early social communicative skills of young children with autism by increasing their role as initiator of social interactions. To identify factors relating to treatment effectiveness, we analyzed studies in relation to participant characteristics, settings, target behaviors, training methods, and results. To determine durability of treatment, we analyzed generalization effects across persons, settings, stimuli, and time. Increases were found for social and affective behaviors, nonverbal and verbal communication, eye contact, joint attention, and imitative play. Limited generalization or maintenance of target behaviors was reported. Findings are discussed in relation to critical variables that may relate to treatment effectiveness in future research and practice efforts.

As a behavior analyst, I assumed that I had the prerogative to set my own research agenda. After all, I had been to graduate school and read Skinner along with a host of empirical studies in nondescript, gray-covered issues of JABA, which demonstrated that a technology of behavior change existed and there was a set of principles that could be applied to change environments and behaviors in a systematic fashion. Why, I even had replicated a series of studies in which I used demonstrated behavioral principles, such as training sufficient exemplars (Stokes & Baer, 1977) and self-instruction (Meichenbaum & Goodman, 1971), to teach persons with severe mental retardation and extremely limited language skills to solve problems likely to occur in their everyday lives (e.g., plugging in a lamp to turn it on) (e.g., Hughes, 1992). Because I believed I had control of some of the independent variables used to change behavior (e.g., modeling, reinforcement, fading), I also thought I had control when it came to determining what the dependent variable of an intervention should be. As you can see, although I had read Wolfs (1978) exposition on social validation, I really hadn't taken it to "heart". I hadn't realized yet that having a potential solution didn't mean I could always identify the most relevant problem. Becoming a behavior analyst in a high school setting taught me who should be included in determining a research agenda. Contemporary writers (e.g., Malouf & Schiller, 1995; Schwartz & Baer, 1991) have challenged us to incorporate social validation into the research process by involving practitioners interactively in developing program goals and procedures, and in evaluating the acceptability of program outcomes. Rather than adopting a

We discuss topics related to a theoretical analysis of self-management, including theories of self-management, self-reinforcement and self-management, antecedent stimuli for self-management, teaching of self-management behaviors, and applications of self-management. Our analysis indicates that self-management's roots in behavioral explanations of phenomena are solid, but that there are important issues yet to be examined in developing a thorough understanding of self-management. We argue that self-management behaviors almost certainly must be examined in relation to the contexts in which they occur and the consequences that they produce.