Association for Behavior Analysis International

Video-based instruction has shown to be effective to successfully teach a wide range of skills to individuals of typical development and with autism spectrum and related disorders. The purpose of the symposium will be to showcase recent developments in the use of video-based instruction. The first paper will discuss the effects of video modeling to teach six staff members how to implement a specific behavioral speech program, the Natural Language Paradigm (NLP), to children with ASD. Results show readily acquired NLP as a result of video modeling. The second paper assessed the effectiveness of video modeling to teach exercise behaviors to four adolescences with autism. Results showed that all participants acquired the skills, generalized the skills to a novel environment, and maintained the skills one-month post-intervention. The third paper evaluated the comparative results of video modeling and in-vivo prompting to teach personal care skills to six individuals with moderate to severe disabilities. Implications and areas of future research will be discussed.

Cost-effective and efficient training methods must be considered when teaching staff members how to treat children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; Weldy, Rapp, & Capocasa, 2014). The current study aimed to teach six staff members how to implement a specific behavioral speech program, the Natural Language Paradigm, (NLP) solely via video modeling. A multiple baseline design across participants assessed the efficacy of this training technique. A nine-step NLP checklist was used to measure learning acquisition. In baseline, staff members engaged in free-play sessions with a child with ASD. Following baseline, staff members were individually trained how to administer NLP using video modeling. After mastery criterion was met, staff members were resumed their play sessions with a child with ASD, this time implementing NLP. Results show that each staff member learned how to administer NLP in one to two training sessions, with training sessions lasting between 15 minutes to 45 minutes. Preliminary evidence of four staff members, presented, here suggests that they were able to efficiently learn and effectively implement NLP. Increases in child verbalizations can also be reported for the majority of post-training NLP sessions. Implications of using video modeling in future staff training will be discussed.

Children with autism tend to engage in repetitive and stereotyped behaviors, leading to a decrease in age-appropriate leisure activities. It is recommended that the average child engage in an average of 60 minutes a day of physical activity. Video modeling has been shown to be effective in teaching a variety of leisure skills to children with autism. Therefore the purpose of the present study was to determine whether (a) video modeling can effectively increase engagement in exercise in four children with autism, 10 to 13 years old (b) engagement in exercise increased on-task behavior during the video, (c) the exercises learned generalized to novel exercise videos, and (d) the exercises learned maintained over time. Three video models were used to teach the children jumping jacks, squat thrusts, sit-ups, squats, and push-up. Results indicated that all participants met criterion on engaging in exercises with a video model in 25 or fewer sessions. Skills generalized from the training videos to novel exercise videos. Maintenance data also showed that skills maintained even a month post treatment.