Shaping exhale durations for breath CO detection for men with mild mental retardation.

Rea, J., & Williams, D. (2002). Shaping exhale durations for breath CO detection for men with mild mental retardation. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 35, 415-418.

Roll, Higgins, and Badger (1996) used a carbon monoxide (CO) detector to determine whether participants smoked in a smoking-cessation study. We sought to replicate their work with adults with mild mental retardation. However, verbal instructions were inadequate to establish stable exhalations of sufficient durations for reliable and accurate CO evaluation. This report describes a shaping procedure that enabled 3 of 4 participants to achieve 20-s exhalation durations.

DESCRIPTORS: _exhale durations, carbon monoxide, mental retardation, smoking-cessation program, changing criterion design