This paper reports three applications and my dissemination efforts of behavior analysis in businesses, which is not popular yet in Japan, and include the following : 1) Application of behavior analysis in teaching Arabic language, office-automation techniques, and computer programming to business people. 2) Teaching behavior analysis to business people by lectures and seminars. 3) Suggestions for dissemination in companies, such as finding opportunities for application, publishing elementary books for business people, development of human resources engaged in application in businesses, providing consultation services to businesses, integrating behavior analysis as business activities, and teaching behavior analysis as a teaching technology to university students who are leaders of various sports and cultural clubs.

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This paper presents a case study in which a training program was developed to teach how to use a statistic software package to students of a women's university. First, we conducted task analyses, defined target behaviors, developed instructional materials and criterion tests, and provided the training program. The results of the criterion tests showed the program was effective in achieving the behaviorally defined objectives. Then we revised the training program to reduce the errors frequently observed in the criterion test, by adding practices and a checklist. The effectiveness of the training was shown to be improved further. Thus, the use of the behavioral methodology in designing and revising a training program in university was validated.

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In a day-care program for pre-school children with developmental disabilities, choice-making opportunities were provided in the following settings; snack, individual's task, and educational materials. Next, choice-making opportunities were systematically incorporated in a play activity program. Prior to providing choice-making opportunities, children had experienced six kinds of play activities. Then children could choose a picture card among three, which illustrated each activity tool, and go to each activity room. Almost all children could express play-activity preferences through the procedures. The results are discussed in terms of choice-making function as social behavior.

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The purpose of this study was to increase adaptive free play activities of a child with mental retardation. Before the free play time, the child was asked to express the preferred toy from the "free play menu board" illustrated with photographs. If he selected the "NO!" card for given choice options, he could choose other play toys in the "card file." The effect of choice-making on free play activities was evaluated using an before-after design. During pretest phase, the child did not play with the toys. In the training phase, play activities were gradually increased, and maintained in the posttest phase. These data suggest teaching choice-making may influence toy play in the free play activity.

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Two autistic children were taught to convey a message from one teacher to another, which occurs within the ordinary context of a school for mentally retarded children. For example, the subject was taught to tell "Mrs.〜, lunch is ready. Please come" to a second teacher. Whether the subject spontaneously forwarded the message or only with prompting, the teacher provided social reinforcement. After the message-forwarding behavior was established, instruction was given to forward a reply message. For example, a child was taught to tell the message "She said 'please go ahead and eat first'", when he/she returned to the first teacher. Both children succeeded in learning this two-way communication behavior, generalized it in their ordinary interpersonal relations wherever they happened to be, and maintained this behavior for a long time. As for the reply message, however, one child confused it with previous message-forwarding, while the other could only show one form of the reply. The benefits and points to keep in mind when teaching verbal communication behavior in school life were discussed.

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In 2 autistic children attending a school for mentally retarded children, there were no signs of mand using words, as such. As a step toward learning such verbal behavior when they wanted something instead of their already acquired "give me" sign, we attempted to form in them this mand using speech. The training was arranged to use manding opportunities within the context of the daily school routine in order to instill the mand. Parallel with this, individual guidance was given in imitative training from action to utterance (5 vowels). As a result, in the training sessions, over twice the pre-training expression of the mand by both children was seen in their monosyllabic utterances. The frequency of this type of mand using speech was low, but it increased with utterances in response to the teacher's verbal prompting or by oral imitation. Based on these results, methods to instill such mand using speech and achieving greater skill therein through use of the ordinary manding opportunities within a school for the mentally retarded, as well as ways to provide individual instruction within the actual school setting, were discussed.

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This study was designed to seek effective assistance for a child with developmental delays who had had problem behavior in individualized instructional setting for speech therapy and for a teacher in charge of the class. We assumed that if the teacher's task requests were difficult to comprehend or accomplish, the child would display problem behavior with escape function. Then we examined whether a child's problem behavior decreased while their task accomplishment increased through improving communication behavior for both teacher and child. Basing on pre-assessment for communication behavior both of teacher and child, we asked the teacher to clarify her task requests through improving communication behavior and organizing materials, physical environment, and procedures. For child, we trained clear communication behavior functionally matching to his problem behavior. The results showed that the child's problem behavior reduced while his task accomplishment increased. These results indicate that for children with developmental delays who have problem behavior in instructional setting, it is important to ask not only the children but also the people around them so as to improve communication to complement the children's comprehension and expression.

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Special education in Japan has been conducted and discussed separately according to children's diagnostic impairment such as visual impairment, speech and communicative disorders, physical disabilities, and mental disability. Above all, the educational method for students with visual impairment has been developed only on the basis of empirical experiences within the framework of this field. So the research has been conducted by the anecdotal method in applied settings. On the other hand, the behavioral approach has been introduced into the research field of persons with multiple disabilities in U.S. In this paper, the need of behavior analytic approach, including single case study in Japan, was discussed at first. Then, for the future development of the education, welfare, and rehabilitation of the persons with visual impairment, recent issues of such research in U.S. were addressed concerning the selection of target behavior from the viewpoint of rule-governed behavior and contextualism.

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Clinically, it is important to grasp the change in a child's behavior in the therapist-child interaction situation. Furthermore, it is even more important to understand the intention of the child's behavior. The therapist should not only catch the behavior -for example, a child turning his or her eyes toward another person-but also grasp the intent behind such behavior. From this point of view, the INREAL method emphasizes communication analysis and examines how the speaker and listener use the so-called "Conversational Principle" through this analysis. A therapist treated an autistic child with the INREAL method to improve his communication ability. The child strongly persisted in specific instruments and the therapist analyzed this persistence and grasped the intention behind it using the "Conversational Principles." The child could try to communicate with others. It was suggested that the "Conversational Principles" were effective in treating the autistic child.

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The framework of practical research in special education was discussed in comparison with teaching reports and teaching records. Fifty research papers published on special issue of the Journal of Special Education devoted to "Current Issues in the Practice of Special Education Japan" were categorized according to their research contents. Ten papers on motor impairment were selected out of the fifty papers, and they were further meta-analyzed regarding contents of research, whether or not intra-individual changes were discussed, presentation methods of research results, duration of intervention, and other aspects. Methodological problems of practical research in special education were revealed by the meta-analysis. Coals in intervention, target behavior, design of variable control, and selection of parameters, intra-individual changes in research on positioning of the motor impaired are discussed for further improvement of research.

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This paper examines important questions to be widely discussed in the Methods and Tasks of Practice-oriented Research Forum. The conceptual analysis of practice-oriented research leads us to the scientist-practitioner model, adopted as a training model for professional psychologists by the American Psychological Association. The model advocates the training of professional psychologists satisfying the role of consumers of scientific findings, evaluators of their own interventions, and productive researchers reporting data to the scientific community. Applied behavior analysis as a scientific discipline is a legitimate successor of the S-P model in proclaiming seven specific conditions, i.e., applied, behavioral, analytic, technological, conceptual systems, effectiveness, and generality. It has also added two additional dimensions, social validity and the right to have the most effective treatment. A proposal is made to focus discussions on the problems of how to instill an analytic mind into the practitioners, how to encourage researchers to conduct practice-relevant research, how to make interventions that might be accepted by consumers, and how to ensure client access to effective and scientifically valid treatment.

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