Precision teaching (PT) is a measurement system used in multiple settings for all types of behavior, from driving to mathematics. The ultimate goal of PT is to develop fluent, free operant behaviors through analyzing response frequencies on a standard celeration chart. Research has found PT to be effective at improving both the speed and accuracy of academic skills. There is little research, however, in the effects of learning channels, a component of PT, as they relate to the acquisition of academic skills. The present study examined the relationship between single and multiple learning channels on the acquisition of mathematics skills by five 1st graders in a public school setting. Implications related to universal designs for learning (UDL) utilized in educational environments are also discussed.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is the fastest growing disability category in U.S. schools. Current legislation mandates that students with disabilities be educated in the classroom setting to the greatest extent possible. The increase in prevalence combined with placement regulations presents a challenge for classroom teachers who support students with ASD, as many of these students struggle with the necessary classroom skills to function appropriately in that environment. Classroom skills have been referred to in the literature as skills that are required for learning to occur, including: (a) looking at the teacher, (b) keeping hands to self, (c) raising a hand before talking, and (d) completing appropriate academic tasks. This study will focus on the classroom skill of attending. Since ASD is a spectrum, an intervention that is effective for one individual may not be successful for another, despite having the same diagnosis. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a discipline that is among the most effective, scientifically-based methods, for educating children with ASD. Covert audio coaching (CAC) is an intervention that adheres to the principles of ABA. Covert audio coaching is a form of performance feedback that involves an instructor coaching a participant from a distance. Both have a two-way radio, and the participant wears an earpiece so that they can receive feedback from the coach without anyone except the participant knowing they are being supported. While CAC has been used successfully to support individuals with disabilities throughout the past several years, there is only one published study that explored the effectiveness of CAC with its use on an elementary school student with a disability. The current study examined the effect of CAC on the classroom skill of attending of four elementary school students with ASD in their classrooms. The researcher provided supportive and corrective statements to participants via an earpiece device during instructional time. A multiple probe design across participants was used. A visual analysis showed that the CAC intervention was successful for all four participants, with increased levels of attending maintaining for up to five weeks once the intervention was removed. The results of this study suggest that CAC can be an effective intervention for improving the classroom skills of children with ASD in the classroom setting.

Imitation is a prerequisite for the development of several important abilities. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit a distinct deficit in imitation. There has been a considerable amount of research into the most effective ways to teach this crucial skill. Unfortunately, there are drawbacks to many prevalent teaching strategies including difficulty with implementation and lack of generalization. The present study sought to determine whether video modeling (VM) might function as a successful alternative for teaching imitation to young children with ASD. The literature on VM has demonstrated that it can be a highly effective technique for teaching a variety of skills to individuals with ASD. Additionally, VM has been identified as easy to implement and has lead to improved generalization when compared to other treatments. However, there are still a number of questions about when, and for whom, VM is most effective. The current study begins to answer some of these questions by analyzing a treatment comparison between VM and live modeling (LM). Eight children were taught to imitate two equivalent behaviors each, one using VM and the other using LM. The trials to criterion required to learn the behaviors were then compared. Results indicated that there was a significant difference between the two treatment types, and that six of the participants were more successful with VM. Neither social skills nor technological literacy were significant predictors of treatment success. However, pre-treatment imitative abilities were shown to significantly predict success. Those children with the fewest imitative abilities were shown to be more successful with the VM technique, while those children with more imitative abilities were more successful with LM. An additional analysis was conducted to evaluate the predictive relationship between social skills and imitation. Results indicated that social skills significantly predict imitative abilities. These results could have widespread implications for imitation training, as they verify the relationship between social skills and imitation, demonstrate that VM can be an effective treatment for teaching young children with ASD to imitate, and further indicate that a pre-treatment imitation assessment may help to identify the most effective and efficient treatment for each child.

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This poster presents development and pilot-testing of an electronic survey evaluating behavior analysts perceptions and use of Evidence-Based Practices (EBPs). Demographic information, ratings of quality indicators (Horner et al 2005) in evaluating and choosing behavior interventions, and resources identifying EBPs were assessed. Fourteen graduate trainees in a behavior analysis certification program were participants. Test-retest intra-rater agreement was assessed approximately 2 weeks apart and varied considerably across survey items. Overall exact agreement was 71 % while agreement within 1 rating point was 91 %. The most highly rated quality indicators were clear descriptions of baseline and intervention conditions, measures of inter-observer agreement, and repeated measures of target behaviors. Lowest rated were group experimental designs, statistical analyses, and numbers of participants. Surprisingly, multiple studies with 20+ participants, integrated intervention packages, and written intervention manuals were not as highly rated. Most frequently reported EBP sources were professional society websites, university courses, practitioner journals, and professional peer-reviewed journals. Least frequently reported were webinars by private entities, non-peer-reviewed journals, and government websites (e.g., What Works Clearing House). Participants identified time constraints, difficulty finding research relevant to their current situation and technical rather than practical nature of research as impediments to keeping current with EBPs

Prompt dependence can be a serious problem for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or intellectual disabilities. The ability to perform skills independently is important for a high-quality life and assimilation in the community among many other things. Assessments of instructional strategies may be an effective tool for identifying instructional strategies that decrease one’s reliance on prompts. An alternating treatment design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of an assessment of instructional strategies on independent responses during auditory-visual discrimination tasks. Assessment conditions included positional prompt, gestural prompt, physical prompt, and identity matching to sample. The most effective instructional strategy was identified as the strategy that corresponded to quickest acquisition of independent responses. Results of the assessment demonstrated differences in individual learning patterns for each of the 3 participants. However, the differences observed in the assessment among instructional strategies were not significant. Implications of these results do suggest to educators that conducting an assessment of instructional strategies may be a useful strategy for identifying differences in learning patterns. Limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.

The increasing prevalence of autism in the United States is a growing concern, with access to evidence-based services failing to keep pace with the demand. Families located in rural or remote areas are further hindered in attempts to access services due to both location and general lack of medical and behavioral healthcare providers. A major advancement in spreading the reach of interventions, such as applied behavior analysis, has been the development and refinement of telehealth. With growing interest in using technology to reach a wider client base, research on telehealth-based parent training for families impacted by autism has begun to increase. Despite the increase in research, many areas remain underdeveloped; therefore, this project sought to contribute to the literature by investigating the effectiveness of and expanding upon a manualized, behaviorally based parent-training program designed specifically for telehealth delivery. Procedures in Study 1 examined the relationship between standardized, parent-report measures of child problem behavior and an observational measure delivered via telehealth using Pearson Correlation Coefficients. Results of this study suggested using a combination of standardized measures and comprehensive observation-based data collection methods may enhance remote monitoring of child problem behavior. Procedures in Study 2 replicated and extended previous research to evaluate the Online and Applied System for Intervention Skills (OASIS-D) parent-training program as a method for increasing parent knowledge and skill in delivering applied behavior analytic (ABA) services to their child with autism. Effectiveness of the training program was evaluated in a multiple baseline across family dyad design. The results indicated that telehealth delivery of the OASIS-D program increases parent skill and knowledge in delivering ABA services, with four of four participants showing similar effects. Furthermore, the results indicated that telehealth-based training programs could benefit individuals in rural and remote areas. These studies provide needed information and support for increasing the availability and continued access of telehealth-delivered interventions when providing treatments to families impacted by autism.

While the popularity of animal-assisted interventions (AAI) continues to increase, the empirical support to justify its use is still debatable. What is also largely absent from the extant literature are large-scale examinations of clinician populations that may incorporate AAI in their practices. This survey study was conducted to examine the use, perceptions, and knowledge of animal incorporation practices incorporated into ABA services by ABA clinicians that serve children and youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A total of 544 ABA clinicians within the United States completed the web-based survey instrument. Data confirmed that respondents have not only considered the incorporation of animals into ABA services, but a meaningful number have also engaged in animal incorporation practices. Dogs were the most frequently incorporated animal with intervention and animal characteristics variable across respondents. Respondents reported animal incorporation as desirable and feasible, but had generally low levels of knowledge about animal-assisted interventions. Perceptions of the effects of human-animal interactions on children and youth with ASD were overall positive. Results of this study uncovered a number of concerns related to professional implications and animal welfare.

The goal of this thesis is to develop a set of tools for continuous tracking of behavioral phenomena in videos to support human behavior study. Current standard practices for extracting useful behavioral information from a video are typically difficult to replicate and require a lot of human time. For example, extensive training is typically required for a human coder to reliably code a particular behavior/interaction. Also, manual coding typically takes a lot more time than the actual length of the video (e.g. , it can take up to 6 times the actual length of the video to do human-assisted single object tracking. The time intensive nature of this process (due to the need to train expert and manual coding) puts a strong burden on the research process. In fact, it is not uncommon for an institution that heavily uses videos for behavioral research to have a massive backlog of unprocessed video data. To address this issue, I have developed an efficient behavior retrieval and interactive tracking system. These tools allow behavioral researchers/clinicians to more easily extract relevant behavioral information, and more objectively analyze behavioral data from videos. I have demonstrated that my behavior retrieval system achieves state-of-the-art performance for retrieving stereotypical behaviors of individuals with autism in a real-world video data captured in a classroom setting. I have also demonstrated that my interactive tracking system is able to produce high-precision tracking results with less human effort compared to the state-of-the-art. I further show that by leveraging the tracking results, we can extract an objective measure based on proximity between people that is useful for analyzing certain social interactions. I validated this new measure by showing that we can use it to predict qualitative expert ratings in the Strange Situation (a procedure for studying infant attachment security), a quantity that is difficult to obtain due to the difficulty in training the human expert.

In a time when technology is an integral part of life, virtual workplaces are becoming more of a staple in organizations and will likely continue to do so as technology use increases (Cascio, 2000). Due to the rise in virtual workplaces, employees are interacting face-to-face less, and organizations are requiring more from them. Employees must perform behaviors that are outside of their formal job description. These positive behaviors are considered to be organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), which are employee behaviors that promote organizational effectiveness that are not part of an employee’s formal job description and are therefore not formally recognized by the organization’s reward system (Organ 1988, 1997). No research to date has examined whether employees can engage in OCBs through a virtual medium. This study worked to develop a model for assessing virtual OCBs using a four-factor traditional face-to-face measure as a starting point. Items were generated, categorized, and then analyzed using a confirmatory factor analysis. A three-factor model demonstrated the best fit, but because the items in the fourth factor demonstrated content validity, recommendations regarding model revisions are provided.