The world often goes too fast for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to process. We tested the therapeutic effectiveness of input slowing in children with ASD. Over 12 months, 12 children with ASD had weekly speech therapy sessions where stimuli were slowly played on a PC, while 11 age- and level-matched children with ASD had speech…

The participant was a boy diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who displayed severe food selectivity, which raised concerns about imbalanced nutrient consumption. The intervention used combined stimulus fading with simultaneous stimulus presentation without escape extinction (EE) and was implemented by teachers in a school setting. In…

The present study aimed to develop a proposed training program based on DTT to improve the nonverbal communication skills in children with ASD. To achieve the objective of the study, the author developed a scale of non-verbal communication skills consisted of (20 items) measures attention and eye contact, imitation and using the signal,…

Based on the principles of applied behavior analysis (ABA), discrete trial training (DTT) is used to develop a new response to a stimulus. DTT is based upon the principle of breaking down behavior into discrete steps called a "single teaching unit" or learning trials. Trials are repeated several times with the learner receiving…

Early and intensive behavioral intervention has been shown to result in favorable outcomes for children with autism spectrum disorder. Procedures and practices based on and influenced by B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior (VB) have been increasingly integrated into EIBI curricula in recent years. In this article, I give an overview of some basic…

The provision of reinforcement to increase desired behaviors is a crucial element of behavior analytic intervention for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Formal preference assessments, like the multiple stimulus without replacement procedure (MSWO), are often used to determine reinforcers used during intervention. While…

The most researched and effective practice for instructing children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is applied behavior analysis (ABA; Baer, Wolf, & Risley, 1968; Reichow, 2012; Smith & Eikeseth, 2011; Virués-Ortega, 2010). ABA is a scientific approach to systematic instruction, data collection, and data analysis based on observable…

Effectively managing a classroom is crucial in promoting positive student outcomes. Behavior-specific praise is an empirically supported strategy to reinforce desirable student behaviors. Following a review of the literature, we identified tactile prompting and self-monitoring as effective methods to increase teachers' use of behavior-specific…

Today, the use of formal preference assessments, including paired-stimulus preference assessments, is widely utilized to help determine which items to use as reinforcers during intervention. A second way to determine potential reinforcers is to analyze multiple dimensions of a stimulus in the moment, a procedure known as in-the-moment reinforcer…

Successful conversation requires that the speaker's behavior is sensitive to nonvocal listener responses. We observed children with autism spectrum disorder during conversation probes in which a listener periodically displayed nonvocal cues that she was uninterested in the conversation. We used behavioral skills training to teach conversation…

The authors evaluated the effects of matched and unmatched stimuli on immediate and subsequent engagement in targeted vocal stereotypy (Experiment 1) and untargeted motor stereotypy (Experiment 2). Results of Experiment 1 showed that (a) matched stimulation decreased immediate engagement in vocal stereotypy for 8 of 11 participants and increased…

Background: Fear of medical procedures in general and needles in particular can be a difficult clinical challenge to providing effective health care for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Methods: A changing criterion design was used to examine graduated exposure treatment for blood-injury-injection phobia in an adult…

Research on the functional independence of verbal operants (Skinner, 1957) has demonstrated inconsistent findings. One explanation may be that these studies have not manipulated the motivating operation (MO) to facilitate the emergence of mands (Hall & Sundberg, 1987; Lamarre & Holland, 1985). In the current study, 1 participant, diagnosed with…

Mands sometimes are taught using the question "What do you want?" as a supplement to the required features of the mand relation: an establishing operation and a related consequence. Although verbal prompts have been used during mand training, they also may result in undesirable stimulus control. However, no direct empirical evidence exists to…

This study examined relative preference for familiar and novel stimuli for 31 children with autism. Preference surveys, completed by 39 staff members, identified high and low preference familiar stimuli for each participant. Novel stimuli were selected by experimenters and included items that were not reported on a preference survey for that…