This study systematically replicated and extended previous research on response interruption and redirection (RIRD) by assessing instructed responses of a different topography than the target behavior, percentage of session spent in treatment, generalization of behavior reduction, and social validity of the intervention. Results showed that RIRD…

Having a brother or sister with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can significantly impact the life of a typically developing sibling. These relationships are generally characterized by less frequent and nurturing interactions than are evident in sibling constellations with neurotypical children or children with other developmental disabilities.…

Error-correction strategies are essential considerations for behavior analysts implementing discrete trial training with children with autism. The research literature, however, is still lacking in the number of studies that compare and evaluate error-correction procedures. The purpose of this study was to compare two error-correction strategies:…

The use of applied behavior analysis (ABA) to treat persons with autism goes back several decades. Many specific target behaviors and intervention strategies have been developed. In the last two decades the most heavily studied of these methods has been Early Intensive Behavioral Interventions (EIBI). This package of ABA methods is unique in two…

Children with autism may not develop safety skills (e.g., help-seeking behaviors) without explicit teaching. One potentially hazardous situation is when a child with autism becomes separated from caregivers in a retail establishment or other public setting. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a treatment package (rules, role playing, and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a behavioral art program in improving social skills for two children with autism in group settings. A multiple probe design across behaviors was used. The results indicated that for both children, the program increased the percentages of spontaneous verbal communications,…

This study examined the effects of culturally relevant/responsive, computer-based social skills instruction on the social skill acquisition and generalization of 6 urban African American sixth graders with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). A multiple-probe across participants design was used to evaluate the effects of the social skills…

This study used a delayed multiple-baseline across-participants design to analyze the effects of coaching on special education teachers' implementation of function-based interventions with students with severe disabilities. This study also examined the extent to which teachers could generalize function-based interventions to different situations.…

The goal of any behavioral program is to facilitate lasting change. A significant criticism of behavioral programs is that they work in the clinical setting but do not generalize once the clinical program is stopped. The authors suggest that behavioral programs often do not generalize because clinicians fail to plan for generalization to occur…

Generalization gradients have been investigated widely in animal conditioning experiments, but much less so in human predictive learning tasks. Here, we apply the experimental design of a recent study on conditioned fear generalization in humans (Lissek et al., 2008) to a predictive learning task, and examine the effects of a number of relevant…

Everyone, including children with developmental disabilities, encounters stimuli they find aversive every day (e.g., the sound of a classmate tapping their pencil). These aversive stimuli may not be problematic for typically developing individuals, because they learn to behave in ways that allow them to escape or avoid this aversive stimulation.…

In this study, the effectiveness of a sibling training package offered for teaching social interaction skills that are used by typically developing children while playing iPad game activities with their siblings who have autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is investigated. Three children with ASD and their typically developing siblings participated in…

Response to Intervention (RtI) is being implemented as a new initiative in PK-12 schools with increasing frequency. However, the model must be sustained at the school level, which is potentially difficult due to a number of challenges brought about by systems change. This article applied the Stokes and Baer (1977) framework for programming for…

This clinical case study investigated the effectiveness of a multicomponent intervention for a child with autism and anxiety-related problem behavior that integrated components of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) with positive behavior support (PBS). One child with autism and his family participated. The dependent variable was the number of steps…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of coaching on special education teachers' implementation of function-based interventions with students with severe disabilities through the use of a delayed multiple baseline across participants design. This study also sought to examine if teachers could generalize the ability to…