The current study evaluated the efficacy of a set of procedures described in the PEAK Relational Training System’s Generalization Module in teaching three skills to two 3-year old boys with autism. The three skills taught were tacting sensory feelings, tact collateral responses, and tacting then asking for reinforcing items for each participant. These skills were not only trained but also generalization probes were conducted throughout the study. The results suggested that the procedures were effective in not only direct training participants to label sensory feelings, emotions, and reinforcing items, but also promoted the untrained emergence of novel skills through generalization.

The PEAK Relational Training Program has been recently published and favorable results for reliability and validity measures have been reported (Dixon, 2014). Results of two studies have demonstrated a high correlation with scores on the PEAK assessment scores, IQ scores as well as high reliability in scoring the PEAK assessments (Dixon, Carman, Tyler, Whiting, Enoch, & Daar, In press; Dixon, Whiting, Rowsey, & Belisle, In press). The current study evaluated normative data for Module 1 using 45 children ages 1 through 6 to validate it's utility in measuring the language of typically developing individuals. Normative data was collected and a strong positive correlation was identified between participants' age and PEAK assessment scores (r=.832, p=<.001). Implications support the use of PEAK to teach language and learning and continual investigation of its psychometric properties.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a rival- model learning procedure on the acquisition of variations of color tacts and assessment of generalized tacting with children with autism. The participants IQs ranged from 49 to 63 and all were eleven years of age or younger. A multiple baseline across participants with embedded multiple probe was used. The child’s typical therapist functioned as an observational model but participants never received programmed consequences for responding related to the target behavior. The results of this study indicated that using a rival-model procedure produced accurate responding on trained stimuli tacting shades of color as well as generalized shades of color. This study adds to the limited amount of research published on the rival-model observational learning method with children with autism and related disabilities. Keywords: Autism, generalization, PEAK Relational Training System, rival-model,

The current set of experiments sought to evaluate and address current, empirically based assessments and treatment protocols for children who have autism and/or other developmental disabilities. The past few decades of research have been successful in developing effective behavioral treatments, however, the dissemination of these strategies has not been maximized in applied settings. Furthermore, many existing treatments are outdated or not widely used in school or social settings. The current experiments evaluate existing effective assessments and treatments and extend them with the implementation of a novel package based off of commonly utilized discrete trial training behavioral techniques in behavior analysis. This treatment protocol was shown to have high inter observer reliability scores throughout the use of this assessment, as well as a high correlation with a commonly used language assessment in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 examined the positive effects of this treatment curriculum guide following skills training. Experiment 3 evaluated the validity of the programs that examined higher order learning from Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior. The results suggest that this assessment and training protocol has significant potential in efficiently training students with and without disabilities. Implications of these finding are discussed in terms of future progress of translational research in applied settings. Furthermore, the present set of experiments contributes largely to the dissemination of emerging research and practice in behavior analysis.

As a field, Behavior Analysis lacks an evidence based solution to assessing and treating language deficits in individuals with brain injuries. Research suggests that using direct instruction with persons with brain injuries is the most effective approach for teaching skills. Research on the PEAK Relational Training System suggests it may be applicable to adults with brain injuries because it does not have an age maximum and it assesses and trains complex language skills. The purpose of the current research is to determine the PEAK Relational Training System's potential applicability in assessing language and cognition functioning in adults with brain injury. 20 adults with brain injuries served as the participants for this study. Using a Pearson Correlation, the relationship between performance on the PEAK assessment and the Ross Information Processing Assessment (RIPA-2), pre-morbid education levels, Glasgow Coma Scale scores, and the location of injury in the brain was analyzed. Significant relationships between PEAK and RIPA-2 scores and PEAK and number of years since injury were shown. Furthermore, implementation of the PEAK was shown to be highly reliable. The current research has shown the effectiveness of the PEAK Relational Training System Direct Training Assessment for adults with brain injury.