Association for Behavior Analysis International

Decades of research have validated the effectiveness of behavioral intervention for treating children with autism. However, many regions still suffer from unavailability of good quality behavioral intervention services, largely due to a lack of well-trained and equipped providers. This symposium contains four papers that describe evaluations of various programs that have been created to help disseminate information on best practices in behavioral intervention. The first presentation consists of a randomized controlled trial of a web-based tool for aiding in the creation of function-based behavioral intervention plans. The second presentation consists of an evaluation of a program for providing supervision and training to BCBAs-in-training, as well as established BCBAs. The third presentation consists of a comparison of a web-based indirect curriculum assessment to direct probes of child skills. The fourth presentation consists of a comparison of a web-based indirect functional assessment to experimental functional analyses. The symposium concludes with a discussion by Dr. Michael Dorsey.

Challenging behaviors are prevalent in children with autism and can have a negative impact on a variety of child outcomes. The creation of good-quality behavior intervention plans is critical to decreasing challenging behaviors but little previous research has developed or evaluated practical tools for designing intervention plans. This study consisted of a randomized evaluation of a web-based tool designed to aid clinicians in choosing treatment procedures for inclusion in behavior intervention plans. The effects of the tool were assessed on the inclusion of three types of intervention components that likely contribute to the quality of intervention plans: 1) function-based intervention components, 2) evidence-based intervention components, and 3) non-punishment-based intervention components. Use of the web-based behavior intervention plan builder produced a statistically significant increase in the inclusion of function-based intervention components but no statistically significant effect was observed on the other two measures. Results are discussed in terms of the implications for improving the quality of behavior intervention plans, as well as the dissemination of knowledge of best practices in behavioral intervention.

The development of the Board Certification for Behavior Analysts (BCBA) was among the most pivotal developments in the evolution of professional standards and quality for the discipline of behavior analysis. As the certification process evolves, the standards are continually made more stringent, in hopes of further raising the bar for training, professionalism, and quality in the provision of behavioral services. Accordingly, scores of training and mentorship programs have proliferated, across vast geographical expanses and presumably representing a wide range of quality and rigor. Very few of the existing programs have been subjected to evaluation. This presentation describes the roll-out of two such programs and presents initial data on user satisfaction and learning outcomes.

Accurate assessment is a critical prerequisite to meaningful curriculum programming for skill acquisition with children with autism. The purpose of this study was to determine the validity of a web-based indirect curriculum assessment. Criterion validity of the assessment was evaluated by correlating parent responses to each item on the assessment with participants' actual abilities, as indicated by direct probes of those skills. Results of statistical analyses showed good levels of agreement between parent report and direct observation of the behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of implications for efficiency of assessment and treatment.

Experimental functional analyses (EFAs) are generally considered the gold standard for assessing the function of challenging behavior in individuals with developmental disabilities. However, the current day reality is that the vast majority of educational and therapeutic settings do not have the financial or clinical staff resources required to conduct EFAs to any significant degree. Accordingly, indirect functional assessments are conducted in a majority of cases. A major relative advantage of indirect assessments is that they can be relatively fast and affordable to administer and web-based assessments have the potential to spread access to functional assessment technology to a greater proportion of the globe than currently has access. However, given the well-established inconsistency of indirect assessments, research is needed to confirm the ability of individual assessments to identify behavioral function. This presentation consists of a study that compared the results of a web-based indirect functional assessment to results from EFAs, in order to evaluate the extent to which the indirect assessment produced useful results. The results suggest that the indirect assessment can produce useful results in many cases but it isless dependable than an EFA in doing so.