Association for Behavior Analysis International

There are several factors that clinicians should consider when designing skill acquisition programs for individuals with autism, such as identifying and arranging reinforcers effectively, and identifying effective prompting strategies. In this symposium, we will review three studies that illustrate these concepts. In Study 1, preference for and the reinforcer efficacy of social stimuli was assessed using a video-based preference assessment and subsequent reinforcer assessments. The video-based preference assessment results were predictive of the reinforcer assessment results for two individuals with autism, thus providing a valuable technology to identify social reinforcers to be used in programming. In Study 2, six individuals with developmental disabilities were taught simple discriminations; reinforcers were delivered for correct responses under satiation and deprivation conditions. Five of 6 participants acquired skills faster when pre-session access to reinforcers was withheld. In Study 3, instructional assessments were conducted with three individuals with autism spectrum disorder to identify the most efficient prompt type and prompt-fading procedure for teaching auditory-visual conditional discriminations. The results demonstrated learner-specific outcomes for the prompt type assessment while the least-to-most prompt fading procedure was most efficient for all participants. Taken together, these studies illustrate factors that clinicians should consider when implementing skill acquisition programs.

Practitioners and clinicians who are responsible for developing and implementing skill acquisition programs for individuals with autism spectrum disorders and developmental and intellectual disabilities.

Pictorial depictions of social stimuli are most common for preference assessments of social interactions (Kelly, Roscoe, Hanley, & Schlichenmeyer, 2014; Lang et al., 2014). However, social stimuli are dynamic and videos may better depict the salient features of social stimuli (Synder, Higbee, & Dayton, 2012). The purpose of the study was to assess the preference and reinforcing value of social stimuli using a video-based preference assessment and subsequent reinforcer assessment. Two children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder between 3- and 5-years old participated in the study. The study was conducted in three phases. First, the experimenter interviewed caregivers to identify a list of preferred social interactions. Next, the experimenter evaluated the top six ranked social stimuli using a video-based, paired-choice preference assessment. Finally, the experimenter evaluated the reinforcing quality of high- and low-preference social stimuli using a concurrent operants, progressive-ratio reinforcer assessment. The experimenter collected reliability and procedural integrity data for at least 33% of sessions and met or exceeded 95%. The video-based preference assessment results were predictive of the reinforcer assessment results. The results will be discussed in terms of future research directions and clinical practice.

Assessment plays a vital role in the programming and education of students with autism spectrum disorder, but few published studies have evaluated the use of assessments to identify the most efficient instructional practices for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. This is problematic as these individuals often have difficulty acquiring skills and the procedures that may be efficient with one individual may not be for others. In this study, we conducted instructional assessments to identify the most efficient prompt type (model, partial physical, full physical) and prompt-fading procedure (progressive delay, most-to-least, least-to-most) for teaching auditory-visual conditional discriminations for three individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Each assessment was conducted at least twice, and a final generality test combined the most and the least efficient prompt type and prompt-fading procedure for teaching novel auditory-visual conditional discriminations. The results demonstrated learner-specific outcomes for the prompt type assessment while the least-to-most prompt fading procedure was most efficient for all participants. Interobserver agreement was above 90% on all dependent measures.