Association for Behavior Analysis International

A long-standing focus has been afforded to improving staff performance given the fiscal implications to organizations. To date, however, ABA-based approaches have remained relatively static in the use and conceptualization of behavioral skills training (BST) across myriad performance-based areas. Efforts to improve and increase the efficiency of training is and will remain a significant focus of organizations. To that end, the current symposium seeks to advance staff training practices by including modern behavior-analytic approaches to catalyze increased performance of services providers. The results and implications for said approaches are discussed.

beginning-intermediate

The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of acceptance and commitment training (ACT) to increase the percent per opportunity of behavioral skills training (BST) use in a train the trainer model within an ABA clinic. Acceptance and commitment training exercises are modeled off of the six processes for change consisting of values, present moment attention, acceptance, defusion, self as context, and committed action. This study included three participants, all of whom were RBT trained and had been working in the field for at least 6 months. This study utilized an ABC design embedded within a multiple baseline across participants. Each participant engaged in an initial BST instruction in which behavior skills training was used to teach senior staff how to train using BST. Data were then taken on the percent per opportunity of BST used with new staff in session. ACT training was conducted for all of the participants after BST alone did not produce sufficient results. The addition of ACT was found to be effective in increasing the percent per opportunity of BST used by senior therapists to train new staff, the results generalized to trainees who were not present during ACT training, and maintained after ACT training was terminated.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has been demonstrated as an effective strategy for improving pro-social behaviors including on-task behaviors, social skills, and value-directed behaviors. However, barriers to implementation is access to training in ACT strategies, specifically for behavior analysts. One strategy used by the Learning ACT book (Luoma, Hayes, & Walser, 2007) is the use of videos, which include commentary on therapist actions during role-played sessions. Long and Hayes (2018) utilized these videos to evaluate participant’s application of knowledge gained following training. The purpose of this research was to extend that study to explore the effects of feedback on the quality of ACT sessions, measuring therapist implementation scores and client-specific outcomes. Researchers watched videos of ACT sessions and scored therapist ACT-consistency on a Likert scale. Client-specific outcomes were determined based on their current curriculum (e.g. mindfulness; compliance within the session; challenging behavior), and researchers scored client outcomes accordingly. During baseline, no feedback was provided to the therapist, and ACT sessions were completed as usual. During training, feedback was provided to the therapist specific to the therapist score only, to explore effects of feedback on client measures. Implications for the use of feedback for implementer and client outcomes will be discussed.