Behavioral skills training (BST) (Parsons et al., 2012) is a common intervention for training staff and caregivers to engage in various important behaviors. However, BST is labor intensive, costly, and often requires extensive involvement from a supervisor or experienced trainer (DiGennaro Reed & Henley, 2015), which may not always be…

This study examined the effects of using behavioral skills training (BST) to teach peer models to engage students with moderate to severe developmental disabilities in interactive play. Two separate multiple-baseline across participants designs were used to determine the effectiveness of BST on the peer models' implementation of the procedural…

Social deficits are often a core area of development for students in special education, thus schools are charged with providing social skills interventions. Although many strategies are available, few schools successfully employ evidence-based interventions for students with autism and related disabilities. A way to address these concerns while…

This article extends Dr. Bob Remington's call for collaborations between those supporting behavioral approaches and those supporting more natural developmental approaches to beginning communication intervention. This article expands areas previously discussed by Dr. Remington. Topics that are addressed include pivotal behaviors that may facilitate…

Research demonstrates that combining video modeling and visual activity schedules into video activity schedules has been effective in increasing independence for students with disabilities. However, the instructional procedures used to teach students to acquire the necessary skills to navigate those tools vary among existent research. In this…

Of all the tasks that special education teachers are charged with completing, managing classroom behaviors has been reported as one of the most challenging and one of the top reasons the teachers are leaving the field. The task of providing effective support in classroom management is also daunting for leadership personnel in school systems. This…

The purpose of this study was to determine an effective training method of improving direct support professionals' (DSPs) ability to accurately and descriptively report antecedent, behavior, and function. A training method, multiple exemplar training (MET), which is not typically applied to this population, was utilized to determine its…

Teaching a skill within the highly controlled conditions of one setting and promoting the transfer of that skill to a less-structured setting may seem like an unattainable goal. Yet this is the challenge presented by many individualized education program (IEP) IEP objectives that involve generalization of a skill acquired in a resource room to be…

This study evaluated behavioral skills training (BST), in a multiple baseline across behaviors design, for teaching four job skills to an 18-year-old student diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The job skills were taught in the natural environment of a fully functioning restaurant. Following BST the four skills maintained at six months after…

Children with autism incur trauma and have increased vulnerabilities for experiencing trauma. This paper summarizes the current literature in the study of trauma in typically developing children and those with autism. A treatment model for children with autism, drawing on components from cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), trauma-focused CBT, and…

Preparing young children for kindergarten is an important task. There are many skills that need to be learned. Simple everyday school and daily living tasks are kindergarten readiness skills that need to be taught. Many preschool students struggle to learn these skills unless taught directly. There are a sufficient number of interventions that…

A behavioral skills training procedure that consisted of video instructions, video rehearsal, and video testing was used to teach 4 recreational gamblers a specific skill in playing blackjack (sometimes called "card counting"). A multiple baseline design was used to evaluate intervention effects on card-counting accuracy and chips won or…

We conducted a meta-analysis of 22 video modeling intervention studies that included 49 preschool children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. Using the Nonoverlap of all pairs ("NAP"), an index of data overlap between phases in single-case research, we calculated effect size. Effect sizes for subgroups were also calculated. The…

In 2 studies, we evaluated the feasibility and efficacy of peer-mediated, school-based discrete trial training (DTT) for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the first, 6 typically developing elementary-age students were trained to use DTT procedures to teach target academic skills to 3 students with ASD who had been educated in a…

The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to synthesize the available research on the "Skills for Social and Academic Success" ("SASS") program, a school-based cognitive/behavioural intervention for adolescents with social anxiety disorder. A search of online databases, combined with reference list examination…