Association for Behavior Analysis International

Technological advances continue to abound, while the use of evidence based best practice in terms of technology in educational settings remains relatively stagnant. This can partially be attributed to the lack of research on the use of technology in educational settings. This symposium will present three evidence based research projects that investigate the use of powerful, portable, and readily available technologies are used in instructional settings for students with autism or related disabilities. The first presentation will describe ways in which the use of technology can enhance staff training for individuals working in early intensive behavior intervention. The second presentation will describe an application for handheld devices that can be used to teach deictic frames to students with a diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder. Finally, the effects of handheld computing devices as a speech-generating device for teaching tacting in a complete sentence for learners with autism or a developmental disability will be described.

Applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapists working with children with autism in early intensive behavioral intervention programs have higher than average turnover rates. Thus, there is a need for use of job aids to alleviate organizations expenses in training new ABA therapists. At the outset of any intervention program, therapists should conduct a preference assessment with their clients. Undergraduate students, interested in a career working with people with disabilities, participated in a study comparing 2 data collection methods for conducting MSWO preference assessments: electronic and paper-and-pencil. An instructor trained, then evaluated with a checklist, participants in conducting preference assessments using both data collection methods. Paired t-tests were used to compare the 2 types of data collection methods across all mastery criteria. Of 6 checklist components, 2 showed significant differences, indicating the electronic method aided in accuracy in terms of data collection and appropriate placement of items. There was also a significant difference in the total number of checklist components completed correctly, indicating higher accuracy when using the electronic data collection methods. When asked to indicate preference of data collection methods, 31 of 33 participants indicated their preference was the electronic method. These findings should be interpreted with caution as the study had 33 participants and further research should be conducted to determine more conclusive results.

Deficits in age-appropriate social interaction in a variety of social situations are often a hallmark feature of autistic spectrum disorder, developmental disability, and intellectual disabilities. Early, intensive intervention using applied behavior analysis is the only intervention that has met criteria for being a ?well-established? treatment many types of these deficits. However, more complex forms of social behavior (e.g. perspective-taking) are not as readily remediated using traditional early, intensive behavioral intervention packages. Deictic framing protocols, instances of relational frames, have been implicated in various forms of complex social behavior. These frames, instances of operant behavior, have been successfully taught to young children with and without autism. Despite the presence of a teaching protocol, typically implemented by adults, such types of behavior are unlikely to generalize to same-age peers. The current study investigated the effectiveness of mobile technology, implemented by matched same-age peers, specifically designed to deliver and guide an intervention protocol.

The use of the iPad as a speech-generating device for mand training with individuals with autism or related developmental disabilities has received much attention in the literature, as of late. However, little research exists that investigates the use of the iPad as a speech-generating device beyond initial mand training. The purpose of the research was to determine what effect training sentence frame discrimination has on the emerging tact repertoire of children with autism or a developmental disability. To investigate this, participants were taught to answer questions regarding environmental stimuli using the iPad as a speech generating device (SGD), across two-to-three different sentence frames. Baseline data indicated that prior to training, none of the participants accurately labeled environmental stimuli, using a complete sentence, at 80% accuracy. During training, participants were instructed to label environmental stimuli using the electronic device until they reached mastery criteria of 80% accuracy across two-to-three-sentence frames. Following acquisition, discrimination training was introduced. Lastly, generalization was assessed through the removing the SGD and contriving an opportunity for participants to label the environmental stimuli vocally.