Since the helping professions are not immune to current conditions of economic stringency, effective treatments that require reduced therapist contact should be seriously considered. A selective review of the literature is presented, and it is concluded that minimal intervention is more cost effective particularly for less severe problems. Issues related to the nature of minimal intervention therapy are discussed.

Measures of component behaviour have been put forward as valid and reliable predictors of social competency. This study assessed the consistency of verbal and nonverbal component behaviours across situations and time. Thirty-seven people participated in an informal conversation with a confederate and a mock job interview with a second confederate. This scenario was repeated three weeks later. Social competency ratings were obtained from the confederates and subsequently from two observers along with specific measures of nine component behaviours. While nonverbal component behaviours were quite consistent across settings and time, verbal behaviours were less so, although none consistently predicted competency ratings across settings and time. Subjects who received high competency ratings were found to behave more variably across settings than those who received low ratings. The findings support the notion that evaluation of social skills training will require measurement of functionally equivalent, rather than topographically defined, classes of behaviour.

In this study a visual screening procedure and a forced arm training procedure were compared within an alternating treatments design in terms of their effects in reducing self-injury in an intellectually disabled boy. Visual screening was found to be clearly the superior procedure, producing a marked decrease in the rate of self-injury. Subsequent experimental phases combined visual screening first with toy play training and then with contingent social interaction. Further marked decreases in self-injury occurred, which remained in evidence at a four month follow-up. Generalisation data were obtained from both morning and afternoon sessions. Collateral behaviour change was monitored in both treatment and generalisation sessions, generally indicating increases in neutral behaviours and reductions in self-stimulatory behaviours accompanying reductions in self-injury. Implications of these results for examining the wider physical and social contexts in which self-injury occurs were noted.

We examined the use of a guided compliance procedure for increasing compliance with occupational and household tasks in community dwelling, mildly retarded adults. Two clients were admitted to an inpatient unit and were observed in a training room and a behaviour unit setting. In both settings, the clients were requested to engage in a number of occupational and household tasks, similar or identical to tasks they confront in the community. Training consisted of contingent praise for compliance, and physical guidance, applied contingent upon occurrences of noncompliance. Data were collected on compliance, aggression, verbal abuse, and proper application of the training procedure. Training was conducted in a multiple baseline across the two settings. These preliminary results suggest that guided compliance was successful in increasing compliance, with only a minimal and transitory increase in aggression and verbal abuse observed for one client, predominantly in the early phase of training. Largely anecdotal follow-up data suggest that the effect generalised to the community and maintained for at least five months.

Recent commentaries on developments in behaviour analysis and modification have noted the inclusion of ‘cognitive’ variables in what was previously a more radically operant discipline. This trend has been received with some gratitude by those researchers and practitioners who were impressed by the neo-Freudian theories of early psychotherapists such as Carl Jung.

For example, the tendency of behaviour analysts to ignore the projections of personality types on to clients has always been difficult to accept by those therapists who are imbued with deep clinical insight. In such cases, the exclusive use of observable behaviour has represented a denial of the prolific generation of immediate and profound clinical judgements, many times quite effortlessly performed without recourse to data. While we do not deny the value of event-recording, time-sampling, psychophysiological monitoring and self-report behavioural scales, we wish to point out that there are many much simpler procedures that enable assessment to be made on the basis of split-second insight, even with no regard at all for external facts. To this end, we have devised and recently field-tested an instrument designed to assess the potential of behaviour therapists for attributing immediate and archetypal classifications to their clients.