Association for Behavior Analysis International

Using Behavior Skills Training (i.e., providing instructions, modeling, role play, and feedback) to train individuals is effective but can be time intensive, costly, and requires direct interaction with a trained clinician. These resources can be scarce in settings that train staff to implement applied behavior analytic interventions with children with autism/autistic children. Therefore, there is a need to identify more efficient ways to train individuals to implement behavior-change procedures. In the current study, we used a 100 min audio-only (i.e., podcast) training with worksheets to teach listeners how to use positive reinforcement. We conducted the study with three new direct-line staff at a university-based autism center and evaluated the effects using an A-B design across multiple target behavior scenarios with a confederate. Two participants showed mastery-level performance in one or more of the target behavior scenarios following listening to the podcast, and one participant required additional training. All participants had higher scores on a knowledge assessment following the podcast. Results suggest that an audio-only training can teach staff to implement positive reinforcement and may be an efficient and efficacious way for delivering staff training. Implications for future research directions are discussed.

The Center for Autism and Social Inclusion of the University of São Paulo (CAIS-USP) was created in 2007 as a result of a binational project involving the Brazilian research agency CAPES, the american FIPSE and north American universities. CAIS´s mission is to teach professional behavior analysts to effectively assist people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. This mission is relevant due to both the shortage of free services for people with ASD in Brazil, and the growing demand for this type of service, which results in few qualified professionals prepared to implement effective interventions. The present study aimed to teach the following discrete trial training domains to therapists: organization of the environment, attention, instruction, consequence, intertrial interval, data recording and randomization of stimuli. Nineteen students from the psychology course at the University of São Paulo (USP) participated. Teaching consisted of BST elements such as modeling, testing and practice with feedback. Baseline data were initially collected to verify students repertoire prior to the teaching procedure and 2 reassessments were conducted throughout the process to monitor student performance. Results indicate that the teaching procedure using some BST components was effective in discrete trial teaching. Students demonstrated higher score in domains such as: instruction, consequence, interval, record and randomization. In addition, students with greater participation in the practical class performed better than students with a number equal to or greater than 4 absences throughout the semester.

Recently, psychology in general has explored concerns around the publication process, though this exploration is less so in behavior analysis. One potential source for identifying areas of interest in understanding the publication process is through behavioral product analysis. In our study, we semi-randomly selected five articles from 2020 across three behavior-analytic journals that were based on at least one author’s thesis or dissertation. We then compared graph construction and general participant data between published and unpublished works. Our findings show some graphs improving in quality, graph construction changes (e.g., moving from bar charts to line charts), and changes in participant representation. Possible sources of explanation are explored with an eye toward future efforts to better understand the process of change from unpublished to published capstone work.