Behavioral Interventions最新文献

Behavior-specific praise (BSP) is an evidence-based strategy that reinforces appropriate student behavior and improves classroom engagement, yet its implementation remains inconsistent among preservice special education teachers. This study examines the effects of BSP training on the instructional practices of preservice special education teachers and the on-task behavior of middle school students with moderate intellectual disabilities. This study employed a single-subject multiple-baseline design, wherein three preservice teachers received structured training, real-time coaching, and performance feedback to enhance BSP implementation. Results showed increased BSP implementation among preservice teachers, highlighting the need for ongoing support to sustain these practices.

Direct observation and measurement of behavior are the cornerstones of effective research and practice in applied behavior analysis (ABA). Despite the importance of data collection, little research is available to guide behavior analysts on issues, such as accuracy, as it relates to data collection integrity. In this paper we examined the extent to which observer reliability is influenced by observer load (i.e., the number of behaviors being simultaneously recorded) and response rate. Results show that both load and response rate may impact the reliability of data collected by newly trained direct care staff. Implications for the design of data collection systems will be discussed, as well as additional considerations and future directions needed on the topic of data collection integrity.

This study examines the efficacy of fully immersive virtual reality (VR) to teach pedestrian safety skills to children with autism spectrum disorder. Four autistic children who met inclusion criteria related to tolerance of VR equipment, absence of problem behavior, and limited baseline skills participated. Using VR with an omnidirectional treadmill, participants were taught safe pedestrian crossing across three traffic conditions: clear crossings, busy crossings, and crossings where a vehicle came to a stop. Through a concurrent multiple probe design, pedestrian skills taught in VR were assessed for generalization across both virtual environments (VEs) and natural environments (NEs). All participants acquired the target response within the virtual teaching environments, and three of four participants demonstrated generalization across VE and NE, supporting the efficacy of immersive VR for promoting safety and independence. The findings highlight VR’s potential as a low-risk and customizable teaching environment capable of promoting real-world skill generalization.

Children on the autism spectrum who exhibit a restricted range of interests may engage less in appropriate toy play and display stereotypy, which may negatively affect their social engagement and task performance. Our study replicated and extended prior research by implementing response-stimulus pairing to increase appropriate toy play and decrease inappropriate toy play and stereotypy in three Chinese children (aged 4–5 years) on the autism spectrum. We used a multiple probe design across participants. Results indicated that the intervention effectively increased appropriate toy play while decreasing inappropriate toy play and stereotypy. These improvements were also observed during free play. Two weeks after the completion of the intervention, all participants maintained the target behavior. Future research should consider collecting generalization data from home settings and conducting more rigorous functional behavior assessments.

Staff training is an essential component of effective behavior analytic interventions. This study examined behavioral skills training (BST) to teach staff in a juvenile residential facility to conduct appropriate room searches. The participants in the study were four staff members over the age of 18 years old who worked in the facility. All staff increased the fidelity of room searches after BST, however, room searches took less time when an observer was not present. A feedback component was implemented after behavioral skills training if the durations of room searches were shorter when the participant was unaware that they were being observed. Room search duration increased after feedback was delivered.

Individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions sometimes engage in self-induced vomiting, a behavior associated with serious medical complications and increased risk of exposure to communicable diseases. Despite its clinical significance, the functional dimensions of self-induced vomiting remain understudied, particularly in cases where it occurs within a hierarchical response class of attention-maintained behavior. This study describes the functional assessment and treatment of self-induced vomiting in an adolescent male with multiple neurodevelopmental conditions. A response class hierarchy analysis was conducted to evaluate whether self-induced vomiting, self-gagging, pica, and other challenging behaviors were functionally related. Findings revealed systematic shifts in challenging behavior topographies with sequential exposure to extinction, supporting the presence of a hierarchically organized response class maintained by attention. Treatment involved functional communication training, extinction, and an individualized levels system involving token reinforcement and a probabilistic exchange schedule. This multicomponent intervention eliminated self-induced vomiting, self-gagging, pica, and other challenging behaviors within the attention-maintained response class. These findings underscore the need for function-based assessments in the treatment of self-induced vomiting and related behaviors.

Immediate echolalia is a communication excess often associated with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Most studies evaluating immediate echolalia have focused on antecedent manipulations to address deficits in stimulus control. However, most research on function-based interventions for immediate echolalia has focused on antecedent analyses to hypothesize the potential maintaining variable, without including a functional analysis (FA) to formally evaluate the maintaining variable of immediate echolalia. The purpose of the current study was to extend the antecedent analyses that have been previously used to develop interventions for immediate echolalia and determine if a maintaining variable for immediate echolalia could be determined through a functional analysis. In the second phase of the study, an alternating treatments design was used to compare the effectiveness of a nonfunction based intervention to a function-based intervention.