Education and Treatment of Children最新文献

Behavior analysts are frequently responsible for teaching concepts and operations. Whether teaching in academia, training employees within corporations, working with young learners, or serving disabled learners, behavior analysts primarily find themselves in an instructional position relaying information from themselves to others. They often design how this information is transmitted to the learner so that the person can operate upon the world proficiently with the new concept or operation. As a result, behavior-analytic instructional design has spent much time piecing together optimal ways of making instruction effective. Nevertheless, these instructional design practices are not widely disseminated or adapted to everyday clinical practice. Therefore, the current article proposes a comprehensive framework where a learner contacts different hierarchical instructional levels while establishing proficiency on each level before progressing toward the ultimate goal of the concept or operation. These levels include Discriminate, Generate, Operate, and Demonstrate. By progressing through this framework, the learner will apply and generalize the instructional concept or operation regardless of context and nuance.

Even in the age of spellcheck and other assistive tools, spelling remains an important skill. Learning how to spell can be challenging, especially for students with high-incidence disabilities. Fortunately, tools such as graphic organizers may assist students with spelling. In this study, we evaluated the effects of a novel flowchart tool on spelling outcomes for two students with disabilities in a behavior-focused alternative school. We used a multiple probe across spelling concepts to measure the intervention’s effects on spelling as well as accuracy of flowchart usage. Following training, students used the flowchart with fidelity, and their spelling accuracy improved. Both students sustained increases over an extended maintenance phase. Implications for practice, limitations, and directions for future research are presented.

This study used an adapted alternating treatments design to compare the effectiveness of two different procedures for fading video prompts for teaching two individuals with developmental disabilities and moderate intellectual disability to independently perform two different daily living tasks. The tasks were systematically faded from video prompts to video models or from video prompts to picture prompts. Results indicated that both methods of fading were effective for increasing the participants’ level of correct, independent performance. However, all four participants scored higher on their posttests for the skill taught through the video modeling condition. Students’ preferences in relation to their performance and teachers’ perspectives of the video instruction are also discussed. Implications for practice and future research are included.

A growing body of literature suggests manipulating some graphing conventions can affect visual analysis and adherence to graphing conventions varies widely in single case design publications. Yet use of graphing conventions by the wider population of behavior analysts is largely unexplored. The current study examined relations among types of graphing conventions (established versus unestablished functions), demographic variables (e.g., education level, primary job setting), and likelihood of revision ratings reported by 631 board certified behavior analysts (BCBAs, BCaBAs, and BCBA-Ds). Statistically significant differences in ratings were detected across types of conventions and demographic categories. Master’s level BCBAs in clinical roles were more likely to revise conventions that affect visual analysis than conventions whose functions are unknown, whereas there were no differences between types of conventions for doctoral level BCBAs in academic roles. We discuss these findings in the context of audience control of graphing conventions.