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Items considered valuable by the subject and originally his property were surrendered to the researcher and incorporated into a contractual system of prearranged contingencies. Each subject signed a legal contract that prescribed the manner in which he could earn back or permanently lose his valuables. Specifically, a portion of each subject's valuables were returned to him contingent upon both specified weight losses and losing weight at an agreed-upon rate. Furthermore, each subject permanently lost a portion of his valuables contingent upon both specified weight gains and losing weight at a rate below the agreed-upon rate. Single-subject reversal designs were employed to determine the effectiveness of the treatment contingencies. This study demonstrated that items considered valuable by the subject and originally his property, could be used successfully to modify the subject's weight when these items were used procedurally both as reinforcing and as punishing consequences. In addition, a systematic analysis of the contingencies indicated that punishing or aversive consequences presumably were a necessary component of the treatment procedure.Comparatively few therapeutic techniques displaying generality in natural settings have been developed to deal with the behavior problems of normal non-institutionalized adults. Two major reasons for this are suggested. First, it is difficult for a therapist to discover and/or gain systematic control over relevant consequences of an adult's behavior in its natural settings. Second, even if a therapist did have such control, it would still be difficult to maintain reliable measurement of the behavior. Without reliable measurement, it would be difficult to deliver relevant consequences at appropriate times. Similarly, it would be difficult to assess any changes that might occur in the behavior. Thus, an applied demonstration of a therapeutic change in behavior could be made, but with difficulty.

The present study attempted to assess one condition of language exposure that might be operative in a normal environment, and experimentally determine its relevance to the acquisition of productive speech. The results demonstrated that the development of receptive language skills can be functionally related to productive speech. Specifically, the data indicated that exposure to words that have stimulus control over a subject's nonverbal pointing behavior can facilitate later articulation of those same words. Thus, this study draws attention to the fact that at least some classes of operants, in this case verbal, can be affected not only by their consequences, but by not obviously related antecedent events as well.

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