Effects of Treatment on Disruptive Behaviors: A Quantitative Synthesis of Single-Subject Researches Using the PEM Approach

Abstract

The present study uses the PEM approach to synthesize the effectiveness of treatment on disruptive behaviors and simultaneously tests whether the higher validity of the PEM approach than that of the PND approach is repeatable. A hand search of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis was conducted, and reference lists from reviewed articles were traced to locate relevant studies. Altogether, 106 single-subject studies, which produced 694 effect sizes, were analyzed. The grand mean of 106 averaged effect sizes was significant. Results demonstrated that the PEM approach was more congruent with the original authors’ judgments than the PND approach. Important findings regarding the effectiveness of interventions on the disruptive behaviors are that the strategies of differential reinforcement and the token economy system along with multi-components intervention were highly effective.