Association for Behavior Analysis International

The purpose of this technology-transfer research program is to develop instructional programming for teaching nonverbal children with intellectual disabilities to complete a behavioral audiometric evaluation in an audiology clinic. The training is designed to teach children who are unable to follow spoken instructions to press a button only when they hear a tone (a successive discrimination). The end goal is to produce a program that can be used outside the clinic to prepare children prior to an audiology appointment. The computerized program guides the operator in the presentation of tones and reinforcers, and collects data on performance. The poster describes the process of development, and presents data from participants exposed to the most refined version of the procedures. The participants were six nonverbal boys with intellectual disabilities; four were of unspecified origin, one had Down Syndrome, and one had additional handicaps including blindness and motor control problems. All had suspected hearing loss but were unable to complete a behavioral hearing test. Training occurred over four to seven sessions across children. Three of the children subsequently generalized to the clinic when tested by an audiologist each successfully completed a standard exam.

One approach to the treatment of feeding difficulties in community settings is gradual exposure to target food types, often embedded within play, targeting an increase in acceptance. Though commonly employed, the mechanisms underlying this approach and its utility in achieving desired outcomes have not been systematically evaluated in children with restrictive eating. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a response fading procedure of successive bite approximations, with and without positive reinforcement, on the acceptance of novel food types in a young man with restrictive eating. A multielement with reversal design across measures of food refusal, acceptance and mouth cleans was utilized to evaluate the different approaches. The participant was a young male with diagnoses of autism, avoidant restrictive food intake disorder and disruptive behavior disorder. He consumed a very narrow range of food types. Target foods were selected by parents using items commonly available at home and nutritional evaluation. Foods were categorized by preference using parent report and child consumption. Results indicate that response fading alone was successful in increasing consumption of medium preference foods only. When response fading was combined with positive reinforcement, acceptances of low preference foods increased. Advantages and outcomes of the approach are discussed.

Lalli and Mace (1995) conducted an analysis to identify behaviors maintained by the same source of reinforcement (i.e., within the same response class). After identifying that one topography of problem behavior was maintained by escape, the authors ran a series of sessions in which escape was provided for one topography of problem behavior while other topographies were placed on extinction. After varying which behavior was reinforced, they demonstrated that each behavior occurred when it was the only behavior reinforced with escape. Although the procedures were successful, it took a total of 155 sessions to identify all members of the response class. The purpose of the current study was to extend this research by increasing the efficiency of the procedures through a trial-based approach. A progressive lag schedule of reinforcement was utilized in which the first instance of a topography was reinforced and subsequently placed on extinction for the remainder of the trial. Data were collected on the latency from the start of the session to the occurrence of each topography. Results showed that several topographies were in the same response class for both participants, and this was identified efficiently in a total of three hours for both participants.

The Province of Ontario (Canada) recently legislated quality assurance measures governing the design and implementation of Behavior Support Plans for challenging behavior in individuals with intellectual disabilities receiving residential and day supports. The purpose of this presentation will be describe key features of the quality assurance measures and present preliminary outcomes of implementation of the quality assurance measures on the use of intrusive interventions and group home staff perceptions. The results showed a reduction in challenging behaviours, and intrusive interventions for persons with intellectual disabilities. Practical and ethical implications of the quality assurance measures will be discussed.

A multi-component treatment was developed to decrease inappropriate sexual behavior (ISB) emitted by a 16-year-old male diagnosed with an intellectual disability. In baseline, all attempts to engage in ISB were blocked. Treatment included honoring requests for private time. After the implementation of the ISB treatment, an increase in problem behavior was observed during bedtime hours. It was hypothesized that allowing access to sexual behavior during the day effected the motivating operation (MO) to engage in that behavior at bedtime. An MO is a condition that alters the momentary effectiveness of a reinforcer or punisher and alters the frequency of a specific behavior. Specifically, allowing the individual to engage in sexual behavior during daytime hours acted as an abolishing operation (MO) for sexual behavior at bedtime, leading him to re-allocate responding to problem behavior. This MO manipulation was evaluated in a reversal design. In baseline (for ISB), low rates of problem behavior were observed during bedtime hours. After the implementation of treatment, an increase in problem behavior was observed. When private time was again restricted, problem behavior decreased. These results suggest that an MO to engage in sexual behavior was present and competed with engaging in problem behavior at bedtime.

Treatments for drink refusal often use nonremoval of the cup which prevents escape from drinking. However, escape extinction procedures may become ineffective if a child refuses to open his or her mouth for the drink to be deposited. Groff, Piazza, Volkert and Jostad (2014) utilized a syringe as an alternative utensil to address this problem and successfully used syringe-to-cup fading to increase cup drinking in a typically developing four-year-old boy with 100% gastrostomy tube dependence. The current study replicated the results of Groff et al. (2014) with some modifications by utilizing a syringe-to-cup fading intervention for the treatment of cup drinking refusal for a three-year-old boy with autism and bottle dependence. A syringe was first used to increase liquid acceptance. Next, a syringe-to-cup fading procedure was implemented along with cup drinking escape extinction probes. Acceptance increased from 0% during baseline to 93% during the last three therapist-fed sessions of treatment, and refusal decreased from 3.4 rpm during baseline to 0.0 rpm during the last three therapist-fed treatment sessions. Although acceptance decreased to 70% during the last three caregiver-fed treatment sessions, all drinks continued to be consumed and refusal remained at 0.0 rpm. Treatment effects continue to be maintained three-months post-treatment.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a least-to-most prompting hierarchy was effective in teaching students with cognitive disabilities to increase the number of task-analyzed steps independently completed in folding a pizza box as a potential pre-vocational task. An additional and related purpose of this study was also to determine whether a least-to-most prompting hierarchy was effective in improving these students productivity while decreasing the level of least-to-most prompts required for these students to completed task-analyzed steps of a pizza box assembly task. Task-analysis procedures for the pizza box assembly task were implemented throughout the entirety of the study. The intervention (i.e., least-to-most prompting hierarchy) was expected to increase the number of task-analyzed steps each subject was able to complete independently while decreasing the level of least-to-most prompts required for each subject to complete the task-analyzed pizza box assembly task. The experimental design used in this student was a multiple-baseline design across subjects to analyze the effectiveness of the implementation of a least-to-most prompting hierarchy. Results of this study indicated that the use of a task analysis and a least-to-most prompting hierarchy was effective in teaching individuals with cognitive disabilities pizza box assembly skills.

Preference assessments are designed to identify an individuals hierarchy of preference among a selection of various stimuli. Research has demonstrated that preference rankings obtained via this assessment procedure predict reinforcer effectiveness. However, in some cases, these assessments are ineffective at determining an individual's preference, and no study to date has examined the effectiveness of preference assessments in a large sample of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the outcomes of preference assessments in 183 patients (admitted to a hospital unit for the treatment of severe problem behavior) and determine how often preference assessments needed to be repeated or modified to be effective. Results indicated that preference assessments were revised or repeated for 55 individuals (approximately 30% of cases). The most common reasons for repeating or modifying preference assessment procedures were: a) within-session satiation/habituation during the preference assessment, b) to identify more items that may be reinforcers for other treatments/assessments, and c) interference due to maladaptive behavior. Common and effective strategies for conducting or refining preference assessments are discussed.

In early intervention (EI), parents are especially important because the time they spend with their children can lead to many teaching opportunities. Parents can provide information regarding important family values and routines; they can also identify children's strengths and preferences. Thus, increasing parent involvement in their children's intervention and services is critical for successful development of young children with disabilities. However, service providers' personal perspectives may work as a discernment variable through which they reject or accept certain practices based on their beliefs (Campbell & Halbert, 2002). In the U.S., the studies investigating service providers' perspective of parent involvement in naturalistic behavioral communication intervention context are limited. The purpose of this study was to understand early intervention service providers? perspectives on parent involvement in naturalistic behavioral communication intervention. The questionnaire was sent to speech and language pathologists (SLPs) and developmental therapies (DTs) who provide early intervention service in Illinois. In addition to demographic questions, the questionnaire included questions about practices of involving parents and perceptions of parent involvement. Statisical analyses were used to describe the findings and examine relations between EI service providers? perceptions and practices. The research findings and the implications for both research and practice will be discussed.

Despite established utility, functional analyses sometimes result in inconclusive data. Undifferentiated data is often attributed to a deficit of discrimination skills of the individual. Greenwald, Senuik, & Williams (2012) evaluated the extent to which conditional discrimination abilities affected a participant's differential responding during a multi-element FA. Conditional discrimination abilities were assessed by the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA) developed by Kerr, Meyerson, and Flora in 1977. They concluded that individuals who were unable to make conditional discriminations were less likely to show differentiated results in an FA. The current study extends Greenwald et al. (2012) to further evaluate the use of the ABLA-R as a worthwhile assessment to administer prior to a formal functional analysis (DeWiele, Martin, Martin, Yu, & Thomson, 2010). Four of four participants demonstrating conditional discriminations in the ABLA-R responded differentially during the FA, while the single participant who did not demonstrate conditional discriminations responded variably throughout the FA.