Association for Behavior Analysis International

There have been recent calls for multi-directional knowledge exchange involving active collaboration and partnership between researchers and the community stakeholders they are trying to assist (Addis, 2002; Beutler, Williams, Wakefield, & Entwistle, 1995; Wells & Miranda, 2006). The use of participatory or collaborative models to develop effective community interventions is congruent with the need for a paradigm shift in how intervention research for the ASD population is conducted (Lord, et al., 2005). Yet, there have been few examples of how to develop collaborative groups, elicit information from stakeholders and utilize findings to improve implementation. We will present two examples of adaptation of evidence-based interventions, one for use in school settings and the other for very early parent intervention. In both cases, community collaboration and input was used to guide researchers in choosing an intervention or developing adaptation studies and procedures. Proximal and distal outcomes of each collaboration will be presented and benefits and barriers of collaborative research will be discussed.

People with autism have a number of difficulties, such as problems recognizing emotions, difficulty understanding theory of mind, and social impairments, all of which are likely to make them especially vulnerable to being arrested and prosecuted in the criminal justice system. Yet, at the same time, they may have other characteristics that act as protective factors, such as a tendency to stick very strictly to rules. Research evidence regarding the involvement of people with autism in the criminal justice system will be reviewed and evidence of their involvement in a particular type of offending, sexually abusive behaviour, will be considered in detail, using data from the long-term research project known as SOTSEC-ID. This project was started in 2002 and has offered group cognitive behavioral treatment to more than 100 men with intellectual disabilities and/or autism who have sexually offended, of whom about 25% have autism. Outcome data and follow-up data show that men with autism tend to engage in more noncontact abuse than other men and it seems that they have more difficulty stopping offending than other men. Reasons for this will be discussed.

BACB-behavior analysts and licensed psychologists.

Autism is defined by a common set of behaviors, and not by a singular genetic or environmental cause. Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including those with known genetic conditions, are at increased risk of having behaviors characteristic of autism in comparison to the general population. Recently, more research is under way to examine autistic-like symptomatology in known genetic conditions. This is increasingly important for two reasons, a) understanding ASD symptomatology in a specific population informs providers of additional intervention needs outside of that typically associated with the disorder’s phenotype, and b) linking phenotype to known genotype may assist in informing on the complex genetic causal mechanisms that likely exist to produce the ASD phenotype. The specific objectives of this presentation will be to 1) provide an overview of the increased risk of ASD symptomatology across neurodevelopmental disorders, 2) review behavior and neurobiological findings on social cognitive functioning in several neurodevelopmental disorders in relation to and in direct comparison to ASD, and 3) highlight the clinical and research implications for continued examination of ASD symptomatology in disorders that are not classified under the ASD umbrella.

BACB-behavior analysts and licensed psychologists.

According to Stokes and Baer (1977), an intervention should produce a change in behavior across a variety of situations and related behavior for a skill to have maximum utility. One effective way to plan for this generalization is to create multiple opportunities under a variety of related conditions for a student to learn a skill. In the areas of play and social skills, the development of such a generalized repertoire can prove to be quite challenging. This presentation will review several studies that used a variety of relevant training stimuli to adequately reflect the diversity of social stimuli characteristics likely to be present under generalization conditions. Specifically, social stimuli were grouped into experimenter-defined stimulus classes or categories for the purposes of teaching. Additional teaching procedures, such as video modeling, prompt/prompt fading, and script/script fading, were used to teach these skills. All studies resulted in generalized repertoires of a variety of social and play skills, including helping, sharing, engaging in joint attention, sociodramatic play, and social commenting. Integration of these findings will be discussed as well as future areas of research.

BACB-behavior analysts and licensed psychologists.

Children with autism often display difficulty with repertoires commonly labeled as “perspective-taking” and “executive functions.” Perspective taking is said to consist of the ability to understand others’ mental states and to adjust one’s own social behavior accordingly. Executive function is a broad term which refers to a person’s ability to pay attention, remember, create a plan, execute a plan, and self-monitor progress toward goals. A radical behavioral perspective on these “cognitive” skills is that they are actions of an organism occurring in relation to environmental events. That is, they are learned behaviors and they therefore can be taught. Furthermore, Relational Frame Theory (RFT) provides a conceptual framework that is useful for identifying the behavior – environment relations that characterize these repertoires. Such conceptual analyses serve as useful roadmaps for designing interventions to teach these skills, as well as experiments to test the effectiveness of the interventions. Recent publications will be presented and practical guidelines will be described in these areas. Expanding applied behavior analysis into the topics of perspective-taking and executive function has the dual potential of helping individuals with autism learn critical social and self-management skills, as well as expanding behavior analysis into a more comprehensive science of human behavior.

BACB-behavior analysts and licensed psychologists.

Many individuals with autism display associated symptoms of the disorder, including challenging behavior such as aggression and self-injury. The typical progression of treatment is as follows: (a) initial medical/psychological evaluations, (b) assessment of environmental determinants, (c) individualized treatment development, and (d) caregiver training and treatment generalization. This presentation will describe several case examples in which this general pattern of assessment and treatment was applied across a range of problem behaviors. Specifically, case examples will be presented for self-injury/self-restraint, aggression/disruption, food selectivity, and pica. In considering each case, attention will be given to the various decision-making procedures that underlie the successful remediation of these behaviors (e.g., ruling out a physiological underpinning of the behavior). Video of pre- and post-treatment behaviors will augment the oral presentation. In addition, the presentation will review recent findings on the pharmacological and behavioral treatment of challenging behavior within this population. The overarching goal of this presentation is to enhance the audience member’s knowledge of current approaches to the assessment and treatment of challenging behavior.

BACB-behavior analysts and licensed psychologists.