Newsletter
Volume 30 | 2007 | Number 1
2007 ABA Organizational Member
This section of the newsletter introduces ABA’s organizational members. ABA is pleased to announce a new 2007 organizational member, Judge Rotenberg Center.
Judge Rotenberg Center
The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) is a residential special needs program that was founded in 1971 by Dr. Matthew L. Israel. From its inception JRC has had the following cardinal principles:
- education and treatment is based on a consistent, systematic, and nearly exclusive application of the principles of Skinnerian behavioral psychology;
- psychotropic medication is avoided or minimized; and
- the program has a near-zero rejection and near-zero expulsion policy.
In 1971 this approach was revolutionary because the primary treatment modalities at that time included psychoanalytic treatment, psychotropic drugs, or multidisciplinary approaches.
Since 1971, JRC’s population has expanded from two to 250 and JRC has become a bastion of hope for children and adults from states in all parts of the country who have been rejected by, expelled from, or not helped by other treatment facilities. From its inception, JRC has been committed to the advancement of behavior analysis and behavior technology by combining the principles and procedures developed by researchers with technology, dedication, and an uncompromising effort to provide the most effective, least intrusive behavioral treatment available.
At the core of JRC’s behavioral program are frequent, varying, and powerful rewards. Students have the opportunity to earn almost any activity or item imaginable. JRC is constantly seeking to provide the most potent and salient reinforcers available. Students have the opportunity to move up a residential ladder with improved behavior, thereby earning reduced staffing and greater privileges and freedom. They can access the Internet, play video games, and watch movies from their rooms. Weekly barbecues, frequent field trips, visits to JRC’s Big Reward Store Arcade and to its Contract (retail) Store are just a few examples of the reinforcers available to our students.
JRC’s education program and its systems of behavior recording and charting are based on the principles of precision teaching pioneered by Dr. Ogden R. Lindsley. Each student completes academics on his or her own computer with JRC-developed software that measures rates correct and incorrect and not percent correct. The educational program is seamlessly integrated with systems of rewards to achieve the best possible academic/vocational performance from each student.
JRC believes in every individual’s right to the most effective/least intrusive treatment and to this end developed the Graduated Electronic Decelerator, a skin shock device, in 1989, as a supplementary decelerator to be used when positive-only procedures are insufficiently effective. Sixty-five percent of JRC’s incoming school-age students are treated with positive-only procedures; the remaining 35% benefit from the skin-shock procedure. To date, JRC has accumulated the most extensive experience with the use of skin shock as a supplementary aversive treatment of any organization. In addition, JRC has labored to assure that lifesaving treatment is surrounded with all possible safeguards. Informed consent, a detailed treatment plan, medical and psychiatric contraindications, peer reviews, human rights committee approval, and individualized court approvals are just a few of the safeguards JRC employs to assure safe and effective treatment.
JRC employs state-of-the-art technology to enhance and carry out its behavioral systems. For example, the entire JRC program (all classrooms, residences, and transportation vehicles) is monitored and recorded on a 24/7 basis by a digital video recording system that uses the Internet to enable real-time monitoring of residences that could be as much as 20 miles away from JRC’s central monitoring room. This system assures that every aspect of each student’s program is carried out according to design at all hours of the day and night. It also allows JRC’s clinical staff to observe environmental events that occasion problem behaviors and make changes to the environment accordingly.
JRC has also developed a computer-based charting system that deposits all behavior data in a central data bank and displays academic and behavioral progress on standard celeration charts that can be viewed from the desk of any clinician or teacher. These charts allow clinicians, teachers, parents, and students to view progress immediately and objectively and enable rapid adjustment of interventions to achieve desired goals.
For 35 years, JRC has provided effective treatment to people from all over the country who could not be successfully treated anywhere else. It has done so through an unwavering commitment to the science and application of behavior analysis and a willingness to combine technology and behavioral principles. The success of JRC is a testament to the effectiveness of the diligent and pervasive application of the principles of behavior analysis.
Organizational members prepare a description of their work and services to introduce themselves to the larger ABA community. The inclusion of this material is not an endorsement, authorization, sponsorship or affiliation by ABA of these members or their work and services or of the content of the material they present.