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 current study utilized a multiple baseline design to teach olfactory discrimination skills to adolescent participants with autism spectrum disorders. Relational abilities among smells and causal relations were initially probed and an intervention was implemented via training and reversal testing probes using frames of distinction between stimulus depicting clean clothing (A) and worn clothing (B), causal framing to relate those odors with specific actions stimulus depicting clean clothing (A) with wearing or hanging the clothing (C) and stimulus depicting worn clothing (B) and placing the clothing in the laundry or hamper (D). Finally, these skills were tested in an applied setting when comparing clothing items that may or may not need to be laundered through the demonstrate of transformation of stimulus function in a novel setting by testing relations between clean clothing (Y) and wearing or hanging the clothing (C) and previously worn clothing( Z) and putting them in the laundry or hamper (D). The intervention was effective at establishing these relational responses for all 4 participants throughout each phase leading to the application of these responses in an applied setting with 80%-100%. Limitations and future application are discussed involving the use of cross modal stimuli in when teaching relations and broader implications of the science.

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 study evaluated the effects of discrete trial training versus the effects of relational training on the acquisition and retention of skills in four children with autism. Using a multiple baseline design across subjects, participants were trained on the skills sequencing from longest to shortest, discriminating full versus empty versus half empty, tacting “you” versus “I,” and responding to reasons why people cry. One of the four participants acquired and retained the skill. Many factors effected the results for the other three participants. Participant 2 never met mastery criteria with relational training procedures. Participant 3 learned PEAK programming four times faster than DTT, however, when using PEAK with the original target, 10 days were required to score all points opposed to the four days DTT required. Participant 4 displayed similar performance results using DTT and PEAK. Implications and limitations will be discussed.

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.

The present study evaluated the use of stimulus equivalence to train novel money relations with adults with developmental disabilities. Three programs from the PEAK Relational Training System: Equivalence Module (PEAK-E) were used: Reflexivity: Money, Symmetry: Money to Monetary Value and Equivalence: Monetary Exchange. The overall goal of the study was to evaluate how stimulus equivalence could help the subjects improve money skills, a socially significant behavior for all adults. The study used a multiple probe design across programs to evaluate skill acquisition following the train/test procedure for each program. Results demonstrated a significant increase in PEAK scores from baseline probes for two of the three programs for all subjects. Additionally, results showed that all subjects learned untrained skills. The results of this study demonstrated the value of stimulus equivalence for teaching money skills as well the efficacy of the PEAK-E training system to teach adults with developmental disabilities.

The PEAK Relational Training System's Direct Training Module was examined to determine age appropriate development norm ages in which to compare to persons with disabilities. Fifty-one typically developing children between ages of 2-18 were scored for the PEAK direct training assessment module by novel implementers (parents, caregivers) as well as professional educational teachers and administrators. Assessment implementation brought scores from fourteen different adult individuals and fifty-one different children's assessment forms for this study. The inter-rater reliability showed consistency of results with the relationship between Peak and age. Inter-rater agreement had a high degree of agreement through the same age, male or female, grade levels with student assessments on the PEAK rating pyramid. These subjective reports may be related and have one advantage that data results may be displayed conveniently in graphical form. The results suggest that there was no correlation between PEAK Total Scores and sex with R-Squared of .49, and produced a significant fit to the data (p < .001). Total PEAK by Age Group with an One Way Anova being: F(4,45) = 23.57, p < .001 suggest that the differences between ages in terms of PEAK total Score was significant.

The present study evaluated the utility of the methods outlined in the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Relational Training System Equivalence Module (PEAK-E) through a single-case evaluation. Validity, reliability, and effectiveness were the variables explored to assess the degree to which the assessment was able to identify appropriate skills for targeted intervention, and the degree to which the programs were efficacious in teaching the targeted skills. Baseline results suggested that the programs identified through the PEAK-E assessment were not within the participants’ repertoires prior to the intervention. Following the implementation of 9 programs across three participants with autism, mastery was achieved for all of the directly trained relations, and all targeted derived relations emerged for 8 of the 9 programs

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.