This study investigated the efficacy of a self-control technique to reduce the incidence of self-injurious behavior. The 15-year-old subject had a history of mumbling to himself; yelling, laughing, and cursing in class; rocking in his seat in class; and self-injurious behaviors such as hitting himself with a closed fist. The study was conducted in three different settings: regular mathematics and English classrooms and a behavior disorder resource room. Videotaping to promote self-monitoring by the subject was used in two of the settings, the resource room and the mathematics classroom. The student reviewed the videotape with the special education teacher in the resource room and expressed a desire to eliminate the target behavior as a result of the observation of the videotape. After assessing his own behavior using videotape, self-injurious behavior decreased sharply in the resource room but only slightly in the other two settings. Following treatment in the mathematics classroom, self-injurious behavior also decreased in both the mathematics and English classrooms.
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