Association for Behavior Analysis International

Brief experimental analyses are a useful tool for quickly evaluating intervention strategies for individuals with academic deficits (Daly, Witt, Martens, & Dool, 1997). However, there is a lack of research investigating this method with individuals with developmental disabilities who emit severe problem behavior to avoid such tasks. For the current study, 1 participant with an intellectual disability and autism was admitted to an inpatient unit for the assessment and treatment of severe aggressive and disruptive behavior. A functional analysis revealed the participants problem behavior was maintained by negative reinforcement; a demand latency assessment showed subtraction problems were highly aversive. A brief experimental analysis was conducted to assess the effects of 5 academic treatments on the individuals problem behavior and compliance when prompted to complete subtraction problems. The participant only refrained from emitting high rates of problem behavior when he had access to a number line. Treatment consisted of stimulus fading and differential reinforcement procedures to increase compliance and accuracy, while maintaining low rates of problem behavior. Results indicate that after becoming more accurate with subtraction, independent, correct responses increased and problem behavior decreased.

Rapid eating is a frequent problem among individuals with developmental disabilities that can pose a threat to health. This study sought to reduce the rate of eating behaviors in2 adults diagnosed with moderate intellectual disability. Assessment of eating rate took place in the participants' group homes during lunch or dinner meals. Procedures included the use of vibrating pagers with verbal prompts, vibrating pagers alone, and verbal prompts alone to prompt eating (a bite every 15 sec) and prevent rapid eating behaviors. The procedures were evaluated in a reversal design embedded in a multiple baseline across participants design. Results demonstrated a clear reduction in rate of eating with the use of all3 procedures. The greatest reduction in eating rate occurred with the combination of the pager and verbal prompts

The acquisition of independent living and leisure skills enables adults to experience an enhanced quality of life by increasing competence, self-reliance, and the development of autonomy. This study examined the effectiveness of simultaneous prompting to teach behavior chains (i.e., independent living and leisure skills) to adults with severe intellectual disabilities (SID) individually in their home environments. Participants included 2 adults with SID receiving services from a not-for-profit agency that provides community-based services and supports to persons with disabilities. The results of this study are the first to indicate the effectiveness of simultaneous prompting to teach independent living and leisure skills to adults with SID using a one-on-one format in their home environment. Both participants learned3 different skills within 12 to 28 sessions and maintained each skill 1, 2, and 4 weeks after mastery.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of escape extinction (EE) with noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) used to treat food refusal in a 2 year-old boy with pervasive developmental disorder. A functional analysis was conducted prior to intervention, which determined a tangible function for aberrant behavior and led to the intervention chosen - EE NCR. The use of escape extinction in combination with noncontingent reinforcement decreased the percentage of negative behavior during feeding sessions as well as increasing the acceptance of nonpreferred foods.

Allocated time, instructional time, engaged time, and opportunities to respond are important to examine and refer to time within an individual instructional session. Equally important may be the density of instructionthat refers how close together sessions occur or how many times a week an instructional session is conducted. The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of density of instruction on the rate of learning. Participants were individuals with moderate intellectual disabilities (MOID) with 11 of them receiving sight-word instruction and 17 of them receiving phonics instruction as part of an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) grant to create an integrated literacy curriculum. Across 1 school year students received sight-word instruction during an average of 3.6 sessions per week (range 2.5–4.5) while other students received phonics instruction during an average of 4.1 sessions per week (range 2.8–4.9). For both groups of students, as the number of instructional sessions per week increased, the number of sessions to mastery decreased. Although there has been much research and discussion about length of school day and how that time is spent, we could not find any prior research that reported on the impact of density of instruction.

Children with Phelan-McDermid Syndrome have difficulty acquiring and maintaining self-help skills, including the ability to eat without assistance. This poster will show the techniques used to teach an 8 year-old boy with Phelan-McDermid Syndrome to use a fork independently. A task analysis was first created to identify the critical steps in the fork spearing and eating sequence. Intervention was then systematically developed and delivered, specifically controlling for components to instruction that were challenging to the individual student: the type of food container, type of food, number of bites, frequency and type of prompting used, and teacher proximity. Programming also utilized meta-level measurement systems in the early stages of instruction to (1) ensure that the student demonstrated progress across longer periods of time, and (2) to determine the efficacy of error correction and prompting procedures utilized during instruction. The data is displayed on a Standard Celeration Chart, which enabled the teacher to carefully monitor progress and make changes as appropriate. Data show an increased number of steps in the task analysis performed independently, an increase in the number of total successful bites taken, and maintenance of the skill across time.

The purpose of the current investigation was to use differential reinforcement procedures to increase tolerance for change and decrease disruptions and other aberrant behaviors associated with those changes. Paul, a 22-year-old male diagnosed with autism participated in the study. Paul exhibited qualitative impairments in verbal and nonverbal communication and had difficulties tolerating when things around the house or in his room were touched or moved by others. He spent a significant amount of his day making sure his belongings were perfectly organized and would become extremely agitated and upset when his things were tampered with. In order to increase tolerance, differential reinforcement procedures (i.e., DRA and DRO) were used to gradually increase compliance with therapists requests to temporarily touch and eventually move his belongings. High quality social praise was delivered for periods of tolerance (i.e., absence of problem behavior). Results indicated that across sessions over the course of several months, Paul began to slowly tolerate change around the house and his problem behaviors decreased. Subsequently, generalization of tolerance for change in community settings was evaluated.

There have been few studies exploring the ability of people with disabilities to run their own business, and none that report direct behavioral measures of outcomes. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the ability of 8 young adults with autism and other disabilities to learn skills related to running a recycling business. Skills were taught in three job areas (worker, supervisor, and office jobs), and a multiple-baseline-across-jobs design was used to evaluate the effects of teaching. After teaching, we used a multi-element design to evaluate the degree to which job skills generalized to the natural environment (working shifts maintaining a building-wide recycling program) under different conditions (working a shift alone versus working in pairs). All 8 participants showed improvements in the performance of all three sets of job skills following teaching. All 8 showed high levels of generalization of all three jobs to shifts worked in the natural environment when working in pairs, and 7 of 8 participants also showed high levels of generalization of all three skills when working alone on shifts. Results suggest that adults with disabilities can learn skills related to running their own business.

Japanese has three characters that are Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Japanese students with developmental disabilities often show difficulties in reading and writing kanji characters. Many researchers argued that the matching-to-sample (MTS) procedure and constructed-response matching-to-sample (CRMTS) procedure was effective to construct the equivalence relations among the printed words, vocal responses, and pictures. After these trainings, many participants showed the transfer to other topographic responses such as reading and writing. In this study, a student with pervasive developmental disorder participated, who had difficulties for the reading and writing. We developed the computer-based MTS and CRMTS training programs. The student was required to select or construct the correct Kanji characters. As results, the student could read Kanji characters after MTS training, but could not write Kanji characters. After CRMTS training, the student could read and write Kanji characters. There results were discussed in terms of the equivalence relations.

A comprehensive shaping and fading program across behaviors and response classes was implemented with a 30-year old male without functional communication. He had a history of self-injurious behavior (SIB), aggression toward others (ATO), and self-gagging leading to hospitalization and institutionalization. A functional behavior assessment indicated his behaviors served multiple functions including access to attention/ tangibles, escape/ avoid demands and indicate pain (automatic reinforcement). The shaping program addressed communication and inclusion within group activities. Client had limited mobility (in a wheelchair and functional use of only one arm) and limited vision field, therefore, forced choice stimuli preference assessments were conducted to identify items to use in communication training. The shaping program for communication started with touching the palm of staffs hand to indicate wants and needs. This was shaped into functional use of a communication device along with pushing his wheel on his chair to indicate to leave an area or task, and turn his head to the side to refuse items. Inclusion within group activities included slowly introducing stimuli from the natural setting into training settings and decreasing distance between the client and the group activity. The shaping and fading program resulted in increased communication responses, decreased aberrant behaviors, and inclusion within group activities.

This study investigated the effects of non-punitive-based interventions on the treatment of pica behavior of one 52-year-old male with profound mental retardation. We conducted a brief functional analysis, examining latency of first response and overall frequency of responses per session, and generalized the intervention to an adult day treatment setting at an Intermediate Care Facility (ICF) for adults with MR/DD. A within-subject reversal design was used to evaluate the effects of a function-based non-punitive intervention. The results of this investigation suggest that (a) brief functional analysis, examining latency of first response is an effective way to empirically validate the functionality of potentially dangerous behavior at an ICF and (b) non-punitive interventions that are function based can be effective strategies in reducing occurrences of pica. Limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed.