The purpose of this study was to assess if Behavioral Skills Training (BST) can be used to train a sticker to function as a discriminative stimulus (Sᴰ) for engaging in household poison safety skills and assess whether this skill generalized to untrained household chemicals that bear the Sᴰ in the form of a sticker. Three typically developing children ages 3 and 5 and their parents participated in this study which took place in their homes. BST effectively taught children to engage in household poison safety skills when they come into contact with the trained household poison(s) labeled with the sticker Sᴰ and this skill generalized to novel household poisons that were also labeled with the sticker Sᴰ; however, some additional BST was required in two cases.

Physical inactivity is the fourth leading risk factor related to death (World Health Organization, 2016a). Thus, the World Health Organization (2016a) suggests engaging in at least 150 min of physical activity (PA) throughout the week. Many individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) engage in sedentary lifestyles that raise concern about their long-term health. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of exergaming on PA and intensity when implemented with adults with ID. Four adult males diagnosed with ID were recruited. During the scheduled phase, percent occurrence of PA was variable across both conditions for each participant. During the choice phase, all participants chose the exergaming condition. All ratings of intensity were attainable across both conditions for all participants. Results varied across participants. Participants reported high acceptability for exergaming.

The Class Pass Intervention (CPI) is designed to be implemented within school-wide PBIS to decrease disruptive behavior and teach an appropriate replacement behavior for students needing Tier 2 intervention. The purpose of the present study was to extend the literature on the CPI by further evaluating the impact of the first component of the CPI on disruptive behavior and academic engagement of elementary school children with disabilities engaging in mild to moderate disruptive behavior. Three students and their respective teachers participated in the study. A multiple baseline across participants design with an embedded reversal was used to demonstrate the impact of the CPI on student behavior during a targeted problematic routine. The results indicated that the CPI was effective in decreasing disruptive behavior and increasing academic engagement for all participating students. Results were maintained for one participant while fading the magnitude of the intervention. Students and teachers rated CPI as effective and acceptable.

Advances in mobile and pervasive computing, social network technologies and the exponential growth in Internet applications and services will lead to the development of the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT services will be a key enabling technology to the development of smart infrastructures that will revolutionize the way we do business, manage critical services, and how we secure, protect, and entertain ourselves. Large-scale IoT applications, such as critical infrastructures (e.g., smart grid, smart transportation, smart buildings, etc.) are distributed systems, characterized by interdependence, cooperation, competition, and adaptation. The integration of IoT premises with sensors, actuators, and control devices allows smart infrastructures to achieve reliable and efficient operations, and to significantly reduce operational costs. However, with the use of IoT, we are experiencing grand challenges to secure and protect such advanced information services due to the significant increase in the attack surface. The interconnections between a growing number of devices expose the vulnerability of IoT applications to attackers. Even devices which are intended to operate in isolation are sometimes connected to the Internet due to careless configuration or to satisfy special needs (e.g., they need to be remotely managed). The security challenge consists of identifying accurately IoT devices, promptly detect vulnerabilities and exploitations of IoT devices, and stop or mitigate the impact of cyberattacks. An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is in charge of monitoring the behavior of protected systems and is looking for malicious activities or policy violations in order to produce reports to a management station or even perform proactive countermeasures against the detected threat. Anomaly behavior detection is a technique that aims at creating models for the normal behavior of the network and detects any significant deviation from normal operations. With the ability to detect new and novel attacks, the anomaly detection is a promising IDS technique that is actively pursued by researchers. Since each IoT application has its own specification, it is hard to develop a single IDS which works properly for all IoT layers. A better approach is to design customized intrusion detection engines for different layers and then aggregate the analysis results from these engines. On the other hand, it would be cumbersome and takes a lot of effort and knowledge to manually extract the specification of each system. So it will be appropriate to formulate our methodology based on machine learning techniques which can be applied to produce efficient detection engines for different IoT applications. In this dissertation we aim at formalizing a general methodology to perform anomaly behavior analysis for IoT. We first introduce our IoT architecture for smart infrastructures that consists of four layers: end nodes (devices), communications, services, and application. Then we show our multilayer IoT security framework and IoT architecture that consists of five planes: function specification or model plane, attack surface plane, impact plane, mitigation plane, and priority plane. We then present a methodology to develop a general threat model in order to recognize the vulnerabilities in each layer and the possible countermeasures that can be deployed to mitigate their exploitation. In this scope, we show how to develop and deploy an anomaly behavior analysis based intrusion detection system (ABA-IDS) to detect anomalies that might be triggered by attacks against devices, protocols, information or services in our IoT framework. We have evaluated our approach by launching several cyberattacks (e.g. Sensor Impersonation, Replay, and Flooding attacks) against our testbeds developed at the University of Arizona Center for Cloud and Autonomic Computing. The results show that our approach can be used to deploy effective security mechanisms to protect the normal operations of smart infrastructures integrated to the IoT. Moreover, our approach can detect known and unknown attacks against IoT with high detection rate and low false alarms.

This study sought to determine if time spent engaging in online gaming, interpersonal communication skills, and introvert personality traits are predictors of an individual’s likelihood of experiencing symptoms of social anxiety. A sample of 128 participants (82 males and 46 females) completed measures of demographics, interpersonal communication skills, problematic online gaming, social anxiety, and introversion. Participants were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. There were significant correlations among social anxiety and interpersonal communication skills, problematic online gaming, and introversion. There was no significant correlation among social anxiety and time spent playing Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG), a specific form of online video game. It was also found that interpersonal communication skills, problematic online gaming, and introversion were all significant predictors of social anxiety. However, time spent playing MMORPGs was not a significant predictor of social anxiety.

Approximately 1.7 million people sustain a traumatic brain injury each year in the United States. Perspective taking is a repertoire known to be severely affected following a traumatic brain injury. The ability to take the perspective of another greatly contributes to social interactions and involves a complex set of skills. A small number of studies have attempted to train perspective taking skills in populations lacking the ability, but none with individuals diagnosed with TBI. This study aimed to teach perspective taking skills to adults with TBI through established protocols which teach deictic relational frames. Three adult males with traumatic brain injuries were exposed to the deictic relational training protocol. Each participant was tested on traditional theory of mind tasks prior to and following mastery of deictic training. All three participants achieved mastery of the relational training protocol and showed some improvement on theory of mind tasks following training and at follow-up.

This study explored the potential for physical activity to be an effective, healthy coping strategy alternative to self-harm behaviors. Regression analyses were performed to assess how physical activity level related to risk factors (i.e., emotional dysregulation, self-esteem, and depression) and self-harm behaviors. The relationship between selfharm and exercise motivations was also examined. Participants were recruited from two high schools (n = 95) and one university (n = 72) in the southeastern region of the United States. Analyses were run using the following measures from a survey packet: adapted Exercise Questionnaire (Helmerhorst, Brage, Warren, Besson, & Ekelund, 2012), Exercise Motivations Inventory—Second Edition (Markland & Ingledew, 1997), Inventory of Statements About Self-Injury (Klonsky & Olino, 2008), Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale – 2nd Edition (Reynolds, 2002), Eating Disorders Inventory – 3 (Garner, 2004), and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (Miller, Anton, & Townson, 2008). Of the 167 who participated, 41.3% endorsed at least one instance of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI). Results indicated that NSSI frequency was significantly negatively associated with physical activity (β = -.22, p < 0.01). An interaction was found between physical activity and depression, such that physical activity moderated the relationship between depression and self-harm. The overall model explained 28.2% of the variance, F(3,145) = 10.02, p < .01. Affiliation and appearancebased exercise motivations significantly associated with decreased (β = -.244, p = .047) and increased (β = .320, p = .001) frequencies of self-harm, respectively. Overall, the findings suggest that physical activity may possess a protective nature against self-harm behaviors, especially in individuals with depressive symptoms.

This thesis describes an investigation into experiences connected to the implementation of educational behavior-analytic interventions (ABA) for children with autism in kindergartens. The research questions and the methodological choices in this investigation evolved based on new experiences over the course of the research project. Three sub-studies were conducted: a single case study on the implementation of ABA teaching programs specifically targeting joint attention skills for children with autism in kindergartens (Study 1); a questionnaire survey on the experiences of ABA supervisors in implementing ABA in kindergartens (Study 2); and an interview study on the experiences of ABA teachers in implementing ABA in kindergartens (Study 3). During Study 1, it appeared that the teaching intensity of the targeted ABA teaching programs varied largely from what was initially planned for all four of the participating children. Under those conditions, the learning outcomes of the children also varied. With regard to Study 2, the survey data obtained from 29 ABA supervisors indicated that many children with autism who receive ABA in Norwegian kindergartens do not receive the number of teaching hours being planned for them. There also seems to be quite a large number of kindergartens that lack teaching teams and who receive supervision less than what is generally recommended to obtain the optimal outcome from ABA. With regard to Study 3, the interview data obtained from 10 ABA teachers illustrated how implementation factors such as compatibility, complexity, client responsiveness, and supervision can be manifested when ABA is implemented in the kindergarten. A main finding was that in some cases there seem to be conflicting opinions within the kindergarten about whether ABA is right for the child, something that was interpreted to reflect a conflict between the categorical and the relational perspectives of special education. / Baksidestext This thesis describes an investigation into experiences connected with the implementation of educational behavior-analytic interventions (ABA) for children with autism in kindergartens. The three sub-studies that were conducted illustrated in different ways how ABA is not always implemented as intended. An important question that was addressed was what practitioners who work with ABA perceive as facilitating factors or barriers to the implementation of ABA in the kindergarten. The results of the study illustrated how implementation factors such as compatibility, complexity, client responsiveness, and supervision can be be manifested when ABA is implemented in the kindergarten. A main finding here was that in some cases there seem to be conflicting opinions within the kindergarten about whether ABA is right for the child, something that was interpreted to reflect a conflict between the categorical and the relational perspectives of special education.

Behavior analysis procedures have been used to improve sports performance and enhance player safety across a wide variety of sports. The current study evaluated the effects of behavioral skills training on three common field hockey hits, a slap shot, drive, and sweep for young field hockey players. The procedures were evaluated in a multiple baseline across behaviors for three players. Results showed increases in each type of shot once intervention was implemented.

Children with ASD often display behavior problems that can lead to daily academic and social disruptions. Many teachers and therapists have sought to create classroom interventions that improve the length of time a child stays seated and focused on the required task. This has led to the introduction of stability balls as an alternative seating method for children, both on the autism spectrum and with other needs. This study used a multiple baseline design and duration data to evaluate the effects of stability ball seating on attending and in-seat behavior for children with ASD who received ABA therapy in their homes. The intervention replaced their standard seating method with a stability ball. In the final phase participants chose their own seating method before beginning table work to assess preference. Following intervention the stability ball was found to increase both attending and in-seat durations for children with ASD.