Helping professionals have an important role in supporting access to education for individuals regarding health-promoting and responsible sexual behaviors, including context-appropriate masturbation. Sexuality education is limited for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, despite evidence supporting its place in teaching and supporting positive and appropriate sexual expression. While prior research has identified perception of professionals related to sexuality education and barriers to providing access to these programs and topics, none have identified methods to increase provider effectiveness in responding to sexual behaviors for the people they support. This study evaluated the components of behavioral skills training as a method of teaching Board Certified Behavior Analysts to develop interventions for sexual behavior.

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Active engagement is important in enhancing the quality of life of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities being served in residential programs. In addition, focusing on socially significant goals and communication is essential to ensure quality treatment. The following study examined the use of employee training in combination with positive reinforcement and in vivo coaching and modeling in a Behavioral Skills Training model to increase the efficacy and consistency of active engagement from direct care employees aimed toward clients with intellectual and developmental disabilities in a residential setting. The results of the current study demonstrated that direct care workers can be trained to increase active engagement with residents with developmental disabilities. Further, the study demonstrated that the instructional training method alone reflected a small increase in skill acquisition. However, more socially significant changes resulted from the establishment of the in vivo modeling component of Behavior Skills Training in relation to the skill development of direct care employees. / Psychology

The current study evaluated the effects of a Behavioral Skills Training (BST) package on parental implementation of escape extinction in a feeding clinic. Three parents of children enrolled in a clinic-based three-week intensive feeding disorder treatment program participated. The goal of the current study was to improve the already existing parent training component of the clinic’s program by utilizing BST to teach the participants critical skills needed to implement the feeding interventions at home. The BST package included verbal instruction, modeling, and role play with feedback. Generalization probes were conducted during parent-child feeding trials. A multiple baseline across behaviors design demonstrated the effectiveness of the BST package for all participants: percentage of steps implemented correctly increased to high levels for each skill. This study was limited by aspects of the experimental design and lack of generalization data. Future research should aim to close the gaps in the feeding disorder literature regarding parent training; additional research is needed in this subject area. / Applied Behavioral Analysis

Behavioral and cognitive skills training for increasing assertive behavior in college students were compared to an equally credible expectancy-control. One significant multivariate function successfully discriminated between the behavioral and control groups, and between the cognitive and control groups. This function was interpreted as showing enhanced behavioral/cognitive construction competencies in the behavioral and cognitive groups. A second function, though not significant, suggested that the cognitive training resulted in more aggressive behavior.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often do not use their leisure time appropriately. Previous studies have shown that children with ASD tend to engage in inappropriate actions and maladaptive behaviors (such as engaging in stereotypy and tantrums) that decrease their quality of life. Establishing age-appropriate leisure skills is important for these children as these skills have been recognized as fulfilling habilitative needs, and can increase the quality of life and social acceptance and decrease the amount of stress for these individuals. The present study used a multiple baseline across-participants design to investigate whether children with ASD can learn and maintain the skill of photography. Eight children (5 boys and 3 girls, ages 5-16) with ASD were taught using behavioral skills training to engage in an appropriate leisure skill–taking pictures. When mastery criterion was met during training (participants were able to take two consecutive pictures following the six operationally defined steps), participants completed a follow-up three weeks later to examine whether they were able to maintain the skill. Six out of the eight participants were able to successfully learn how to take pictures. This study furthers the current literature on teaching leisure skills to children with ASD and future studies can focus on expanding appropriate leisure skills that are taught to children with ASD, as well as measuring the effects (i.e. social, therapeutic) of learning photography, in addition to other leisure skills.

Functional behavior assessment is a process that should involve all individuals that work closely with a student who is engaging in problematic behavior that impacts their own or others’ learning. General educators are typically involved in this process through indirect or descriptive assessments, such as collecting antecedent-behavior-consequence data (ABC). However, there are many factors that can impact a general educator’s ability to collect accurate ABC data. Inaccurate data can misinform appropriate responses and interventions for challenging behaviors made by a student’s decision-making team, such as an Individual Education Program (IEP) team. Therefore, it is critical that researchers empirically evaluate training interventions that can be used to provide instruction on this skill. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of behavioral skills training (BST), with video vignettes used for modeling and rehearsal, to train pre-service general educators how to collect accurate antecedent-behavior-consequence (ABC) data using a structured recording format via a single-case research design. This study also sought to program and assess generalization of the skill to a narrative format. This format is typically used in schools but often yields less reliable and more subjective data. Lastly, four administrations of a pre- and posttest were used to assess incidental learning of non-target information provided via instructive feedback. Results indicate BST was effective for training pre-service general educators to collect ABC data using a structured recording format. Participants were able to generalize the skill to a narrative recording format. Performance on non-target information posttests were variable across participants. These findings extend the literature on BST and highlight a way for researchers to facilitate generalization within the context of an experimental design.

Abstract Behavior Skills Training (BST) typically consists of an initial informational component presented to the learners either vocally, through a handout, presentation, or both. Results from the active student responding literature indicates these methods as the least effective means of conveying important information to learners. This study sought to utilize an alternative instructional component, fluency training, and to evaluate if any effects are observed on implementation of the behavior chain of Discrete Trial Training (DTT). Teacher's had previous training and experience on implementing DTT prior to this study--however, all teachers implemented strategies with low integrity. Teachers were trained to fluent levels on verbally stating the component steps of DTT and were then observed during probe sessions to evaluate percentage of steps implemented correctly. The probes indicate an initial improvement, but decreases over time that are consistent with results on other passive in-service trainings. Teachers then took part in a single session of Modeling, Role-Play, and Feedback. Results suggest that while fluency training had an impact on participants' verbal performance on discrete trial information, and affected overt performance during subsequent probes, the effects were small and transient. Performance improved only after training on the components of BST and additional training had been completed in-situ.

This study evaluated a parent implemented in-situ pedestrian safety skills intervention for three individuals with autism. Specifically, this study examined the utility of using a behavioral skills training (BST) to help parents implement the most-to-least prompting procedures in training their children with autism pedestrian safety skills in community settings. A multiple baseline design across participants was used to assess parent implementation of in-situ pedestrian training as well as child participants' independently performed correct skills. Results indicated that parents implemented most-to-least prompting procedures with high levels of accuracy across streets during intervention and fading of BST. All child participants improved their safety skills significantly during intervention. For one child, the acquired skills maintained during follow- up. The percentages of their independent correct use of pedestrian safety skills were similar to those in baseline during generalization probes.