Adolescent Psychiatric Patients

Socially appropriate means of interrupting, requesting behavior change, and responding to negative communication were trained within a multiple baseline design to modify the aggressive behavior of four adolescent psychiatric patients. Dependent measures included qualitative ratings of responses in these three behavior classes. Such training resulted in increased social appropriateness of responses to role played treated scenes and generalization scenes. Generalization of treatment effects to behavior in extra-treatment settings was demonstrated. Finally, reductions in the number of token economy fines and times in seclusion, and more than six months of successful community tenure were noted for the majority of subjects. The expedience of replacing aggressive behavior with socially appropriate alternative operants rather than merely punishing aggressive responses is discussed.