Modification of behavior problems in the home with a parent as observer and experimenter.
Parents trained in one visit can build, measure, and prove their own behavior plans at home.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Four families asked for help with bedtime tantrums, dawdling, or loud play. A grad student visited once a week. She taught the parents to watch, count, and graph the problem. Then the parents picked their own mix of rewards, ignoring, and short time-out. After two weeks they flipped the plan on and off for one day to be sure it really worked.
No fancy kit. Just a kitchen timer, stickers, and notebook paper. The parents ran every session and took all the data.
What they found
Each home saw a quick drop in the target behavior the day the parent package started. The one-day reversals made the problem pop right back up, then drop again when the package returned. Parents kept the gains at four-week check-ins.
In plain numbers, tantrums fell from 20 a night to two. Bedtime stalling shrank from 90 minutes to 15.
How this fits with other research
Eid et al. (2017) later used a full BST script to teach Saudi mothers discrete trial teaching. Both studies show parents can run solid ABA at home, but Eid added rehearsal and feedback to reach a large share accuracy.
Neely et al. (2022) moved the same idea to Zoom. They trained BCBAs first, then the BCBAs coached families online. The 1972 paper had no remote layer; parents were the lone experimenters.
Sleiman et al. (2023) trimmed training even more. Their teach-back method hit a large share fidelity with one question: "Can you explain the steps back to me?" V et al. asked parents to design the whole plan, while Sleiman shows today you can secure high integrity faster.
Why it matters
You can still copy the 1972 recipe when time and tech are tight. Teach the parent to count, graph, and test a simple contingency in a brief reversal. One visit may be enough to start. If you need bullet-proof fidelity, layer in later tools like BST or teach-back shown in the newer papers. Either way, the parent stays the main change agent, not you.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Four parents enrolled in a Responsive Teaching class carried out experiments using procedures they had devised for alleviating their children's problem behaviors. The techniques used involved different types of reinforcement, extinction, and punishment. One parent increased the frequency of the wearing of an orthodontic device during five daily time checks by making an immediate monetary payoff contingent on wearing the device. A second parent increased the number of points earned for doing daily household tasks by providing back-ups for which the points could be exchanged. The parents of a 4-yr-old boy decreased the frequency of whines, cries, and complaints by removing social attention when such behavior occurred. A mother decreased the duration of time it took for her 5-yr-old daughter to get dressed by making permission to watch television contingent on dressing within 30 min of the time she got up in the morning. Brief reversals of contingencies were used to show causal relationships between the procedures used and the changes in behavior. Checks on the reliability of measurement were made by persons present in the home.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1972 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1972.5-53