Association for Behavior Analysis International

Decades of research have demonstrated the effectiveness of behavioral intervention for teaching foundational verbal, social, and self-help skills to children with autism. Relatively less research has been devoted to teaching more complex skills. Executive function is a traditional psychology term that refers to a broad repertoire of behaviors that are critical for successful social, academic, and vocational functioning for older children and adults. Most executive function skills involve what Skinner referred to as secondary repertoires that are learned and maintained because they support other more basic repertoires of behavior; self-management and problem-solving being the prototypical examples. This symposium contains two experiments that aimed at teaching children with autism skills relevant to the repertoires labeled as executive function by the general psychology community. One study sought to teach children with autism a basic problem-solving skill, identifying when there is and is not a problem. The second study taught children with autism to engage in private coping strategies during situations in which they are usually highly inflexible. The symposium concludes with a discussion by Dr. Bill Potter, a leading scholar in behavioral conceptual analyses of complex human behavior.

Individuals with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) commonly experience an insistence on sameness or resistance to environmental change, especially change of specific daily routines. This rigid behavioral repertoire often results in challenging behaviors that often places limitations on the lives of the individual and his or her family. This study targeted increasing behavioral flexibility with three participants with ASD. A multiple exemplar training procedure was implemented in which various emotional self-management coping strategies were taught along with a Differential Reinforcement of Alternative Behaviors (DRA) procedure across repeated exposure to situations for which participants were particularly inflexible. The intervention was effective in the reduction of challenging behaviors as well as increasing self-management coping skills. In addition, indirect data were collected on affect and improvements in affect were generally noted post-intervention.