Decelerative treatment practices with persons who have mental retardation: a review of five years of the literature.

The literature from 1981 through 1985 in seven major journals on the treatment of behavior problems in persons with mental retardation was reviewed. We included all studies designed to decrease a target behavior that included formal pre- and posttreatment data. Behavior problems were categorized into seven classes. Treatment procedures were grouped into three levels by degree of restrictiveness according to the model proposed by Brazier and MacDonald (1981). We reported the problems treated with various procedures and the frequencies and effectiveness values for all the problem--procedure combinations. Differential reinforcement and overcorrection were the two most widely used procedures. We drew conclusions about treatment of specific classes of problem behaviors based on the results of this review.