Nesrhten……….

Mary Jane Weiss, Nicole Pearson, Kristin Foley, and Sara Pahl has published an article describing the importance of fluency outcomes for children with autism in this issue of The Behavior Analyst Today.

As the authors points out several children with autism display fluency deficits, that may affect learning and social outcomes. The level of evidence of providing fluency intervention is not established, and more research on fluency interventions for children autism is needed.

The article discusses to issues that may be especially relevant for children with autism: teaching of motor component skills and the evaluation of the outcomes of fluency building.

As this paper points out fluent performance in motor component skills may be potentially important for children with autism in a wide area of skills and possibilities and enhance further learning.

The outcome of fluency building is described in the acronym RESA – retention, endurance, stability and application. This outcomes is of course relevant for all children and learner, but may be especially relevant for children with autism and the common challenges in generalization and maintenance.

There exists a wide range of treatment options for autism, with varying degree of evidence. One of the treatment optioins that regularly are promoted in Europe and Norway is elect Eclecticism. And professionals and governments founding treatments argue that by combining the best from different treatments, one can create a more individualized and potentially more effective treatment.

As a response to this challenge Karola Dillenburger from the Queen´s University Belfast has an article in press in the journal Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders. The paper addresses the issues of eclecticism and applied behavior analysis (ABA), and how misinformation may stand in the way of evidence-based procedures such as ABA.
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