National Institute of Mental Health have published a guide for parents of children with ASD. This guide includes information on ASD, including diagnostic information and information on effective interventions. Read more…
Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) is an effective teaching procedure and an important part of most Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI) program. And effective error-correction strategies is important for effective and high fidelity implementation of DTT. Based on two studies published by Turan, Moroz and Paquet Croteau the evidence may indicate that the most effective error-correction procedure are individual between children – but consistent over operants.
Stereotypic behaviors are one of the diagnostic features of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Stereotypic behaviors are typically interfering considerably with learning and may lead to exclusion from social settings. Many children with ASD display vocal stereotypy that creates great challenges in intervention and programs.
Lanovaz and Sladeczek has conducted a review of the behavioral interventions targeting vocal stereotypy. Based on their review the authors recommend that first step in intervention, as other behavioral interventions, should be a functional assessment or analysis. Then the use of response interruption and redirection (RIRD) is found to have the most empirical support. When RIRD is not applicable the clinicians may consider non contingent access to matched stimuli.
Even if there is numerous studies documenting effect of behavioral interventions on vocal stereotypy, more replications and further research is recommended.
Pivotal Response Training (PRT) is an evidence-based intervention for children with autism focusing on changing pivotal responses and behaviors that may have widespread effects on communication and social interaction. One central part of PRT is involvement of parents or caregivers, and the implementation of PRT throughout all interacting with children. There has been published several studies showing training parents an others to implement PRT, in various ways. However there are several factors that may influence the effectiveness of PRT, and now Randolph, Stichter, Schmidt and O´Connor has investigated the influence of educational level of caregivers on fidelity and effectiveness of parent implemented PRT.
in their study they included three caregivers without a college degree. The provided 10 training sessions to the caregivers in how to implement PRT. Based on this research there are found that caregivers without a college degree may effectively and with high fidelity. As this study only includes participants without a college degree, it do not compare any differences to caregivers at other educational levels, thereby limiting the generality of the results. There are also several other factors that may affect the results, many of them mentioned in this article, that should be investigated to better understand how to effectively implement PRT.
Deficits or challenges with adaptive skills, such as self-help, leisure, hygiene etc is common for people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). There has been developed several effective behavior analytic interventions to help persons with ASD improving their adaptive skills, including as mentioned earlier high-functioning persons with autism.
Now Matson, Hattier, and Belva has published a review on behavioral interventions for treating adaptive living skills for persons with autism. In this review published in Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders they show that applied behavior analysis methods have proven to be highly effective in teaching adaptive skills in a variety of persons with autism, but compared to other challenging areas for persons with autism adaptive skills is understudied.
Based on clinical experience this is somewhat strange. Especially in services for adults with autism spectrum disorders the use of behavioral interventions to extensive. And the clinical experience supports the notion of the review that these interventions is highly effective. Even so more research should be conducted in order to support the extensive use of these interventions.
Teaching and training staff to conduct one-to-one training with children is an important element of any quality intervention program. How this is to be done vary greatly, but typically involves some instruction. van Vonderen, Didden and Beeking has investigated the use of instruction and video feedback in this process. Based on their study the instruction on how to conduct one-to-one training was not sufficient, but combined with video feedback the results improved significantly. The use of video feedback may be useful under several circumstances, especially in areas where supervisors has to cover a geographical area with sparse population.
In applying effective and evidence-based interventions and practice, data collection is an important element. The data collection may be done in various manners, and the use of electronic portable devices is increasing as the number of devices and applications is growing. How to use this devices and how to train staff to use them effectively needs to be systematically explored in order to support effective implementation of practices.
Dunkel-Jackson, Dixon and Szekely has studied how to train management-level staff to use personal digital assistants (PDA) to collect data in an agency for individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Based on their training the staff acquired the essential skills in using the PDA. This may be a time-consuming and standardized data collection procedure that can contribute to ensure the quality of evidence-based practices.
Teaching and training behavior therapists in different procedures and aspects of Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI) is an important part of supervisors tasks, and may increase the quality of intervention to the most effective level. How to train and teach the therapists responsible for day-to-day treatment may be conducted in different manners. One of the most used form is presentation of relevant theory and skills, and in-vivo feedback. And learning skills trough rehearsal and feedback is well documented.
Bishop and Kenzer has studied group classroom instruction and the need for in-vivo feedback when teaching behavior therapists to conduct brief paired-stimulus preference assessment, published in Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders. The data from this study indicates that classroom instruction is usually sufficient to teach EIBI therapists to perform the desired assessment. And in the cases where classroom instruction was insufficient – in-vivo feedback resulted in proficient performance.