Effectiveness of a Train-the-Trainer Model to Teach Water Safety Skills to Children With Autism

Recently, the Czech Republic has moved toward establishing licensure and securing funding for the advancement of applied behavior analysis (ABA). However, the breadth and quality of ABA services remains limited. Most practitioners are providing in-home ABA services with irregular oversight, are working in regions without access to support and collaboration, and forming partnerships with parents that may result in dual relationships. In an effort to improve ABA provisions, a structured professional development curriculum was presented across six behavioral skills training (BST) workshops. Six practitioners working in the field of ABA and toward behavior analyst certification participated in the workshop series. In addition to advancing ABA in the region, the aim of the BST series was to pilot an adapted approach to professional development training using an extended format, practitioner-driven curriculum, and self-assessment checklist. The information was modularized and focused on the progression of establishing ABA services and development of skills associated with: moving through the intake process, assessment, behavior plan development, curriculum planning, and parent involvement. The validity and applicability of providing consultation services in this format for emerging behavior analytic markets was evaluated using practitioner-provided self-assessment. Despite limited data collection, the results indicate that the modified BST package was socially valid for the practitioners in the Czech Republic. This project may set the stage for future research in supporting new ABA practitioners in settings where the community of behavior analysts is small.

The Effects of Behavioral Skills Training on Teachers’ Implementation of Guided Compliance Carmen D. Reisener, Daniel L. Gadke, Tuan Q. Ho, Candice M. Jostad Abstract The current study analyzed the effectiveness of a behavioral skills training package and an instruction plus feedback component on the correct implementation of the 3-step guided compliance procedure. Special education teachers received training on 3-step guided compliance to increase compliance rates of four students with autism. The experimenters collected data on teachers’ accuracy of implementation and corresponding student compliance levels. Training teachers using typical school consultation procedures (i.e., instruction plus feedback) and behavioral skills training resulted in increased accuracy of implementation of the 3-step guided compliance intervention and an increase in levels of student compliance. Furthermore, the experimenters observed highest levels of accurate treatment implementation and child compliance during the packaged behavioral skills training component. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jpbs.v2n3-4a1

Using acceptance and commitment training to enhance the effectiveness of behavioral skills training

This study examined the effects of behavioral skills training (BST) on teachers' implementation fidelity of a reading racetrack (a board game designed to increase sight word fluency) with elementary students identified as struggling readers. BST, an alternative to traditional professional development, is a performance-based protocol incorporating instruction, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. A multiple probe design across teacher-student dyads demonstrated that BST was functionally related to the teachers' implementation of a reading racetrack with 100% fidelity on at least three consecutive sessions. Additionally, students met mastery criteria for sight word acquisition and demonstrated maintenance at least one to two weeks post intervention.

This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of Behavioral Skills Training (BST) program in improving personal safety skills for a Down syndrome adolescent with mild intellectual disability. Personal safety is defined as an ability to recognize touch appropriateness, including four self-protective skills, consisting of resisting, removing, telling others, and reporting about any inappropriate touch she/he experiences. The single-subject design was administered in three days. The results show that the program was effective to improved subject’s personal safety skills and reached 97 % of the maximum score. The subject was able to master the skills of recognizing, resisting, removing and telling others with 100% score, while on the reporting skill, the obtained score was 83%. Rerunning the program, specifically with reporting skill as the target, has been recommended to improve reporting skill. Overall, to improve the effectiveness of the program, in situ training, training for trainers, and providing reinforcements are suggested.

This study investigated the effects of behavioral skills training (BST) with video modeling and in situ training on workplace conversational skills of four transition-age students with autism enrolled in a U.S. community-based internship program. Intervention sessions began with BST, which included direct instruction, video modeling, conversational practice, and feedback on practice performance, and concluded with in situ training, during which participants conversed with coworkers in their internship settings. Data were collected on participants’ accuracy in conversing with coworkers through mock conversations and in situ trials in internship settings. Findings demonstrated a functional relation between the implementation of the intervention package and increases in skill accuracy on in situ trials for all participants. Substantive improvements in participants’ mock conversation scores within training settings were also noted. Findings highlight the importance of in situ training and how video modeling can be incorporated within a BST instructional sequence.

With unemployment rates for adults with autism as high as 85%, it is important for young adults to learn necessary prevocational skills (e.g., interviewing) to help them succeed in their search for employment. There is little research showing that individuals with autism can be taught to respond appropriately during an interview to secure future employment opportunities. We replicated the results of Stocco et al. (J Appl Behav Anal 50:495–510, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.385) who evaluated the effects of behavioral skills training on the interview skills of college students. We used a multiple baseline design across three responses (i.e., asking questions, answering questions and appropriate body language) to extend these results to three young adults with autism. During baseline, responding was low across all three responses for all three participants. Behavioral skills training consisted of role-playing simulated interviews, providing feedback and performance rehearsals. For two of the participants, behavioral skills training alone was effective at increasing all three responses. For the third participant, we added textual cues and reinforcement during behavioral skills training to reach criterion performance. Results demonstrated that adults with autism can benefit from modified behavioral skills training to improve interview skills and employment opportunities. Social validity of responses was assessed by asking community members to rate video-taped segments of the interviews.

Discrete trial training is a popular teaching method for individuals with autism, but it is not easily implemented with fidelity due to its complexity. This is the first meta-analysis of single-case experimental design studies to quantify the impact of behavioral skills training on individuals’ ability to implement discrete trials with fidelity. Furthermore, this meta-analysis examines the four training methods that make up behavioral skills training—feedback, instruction, modeling, and rehearsal—to determine the “active ingredients” of behavioral skills training. A total of 46 single-case experimental design studies are included in this meta-analysis. Hierarchical linear modeling, which has the ability to analyze clustered data, is the meta-analytic technique used to estimate the effectiveness of behavioral skills training across studies. Results show that behavioral skills training has a statistically significant positive effect on discrete trial training implementation fidelity; therefore, behavior skills training is recommended for discrete trial training implementation instruction.

A concurrent multiple baseline across participants design evaluated the effects of behavioral skills training (BST) on abduction-prevention skills of four children with autism. Across phases, confederates presented four types of abduction lures: (a) simple requests, (b) appeals to authority, (c) assistance requests, and (d) incentives. During baseline, lures resulted in children leaving with confederate strangers. During intervention, BST targeted a three-step response (i.e., refuse, move away, and report) and the abduction-prevention skills of all participants improved. Improvements generalized to novel settings and confederates and were maintained at 4weeks. There is currently limited research on abduction-prevention pertaining to individuals with ASD. BST can be used to teach abduction-prevention skills to individuals with ASD. BST can be effective at teaching appropriate responses to multiple types of abduction lures. The effects of BST on multiple responses to multiple types of lures can generalize across settings and people and maintain over time.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioral skills training (BST) and in situ training (IST) for teaching abduction prevention skills to young adults with intellectual disabilities. Four individuals, ages 18–24, participated. Five BST sessions were conducted for each participant. Following BST, in situ assessments took place at the participants’ school to assess acquisition of the skills. The data show that none of the participants reached criterion level following BST although some of the participants improved their score from baseline. IST was then implemented with two of the participants achieving criterion level and two participants exhibiting two of the three safety skills.

The effects of instructions, rehearsal, modeling, and feedback on acquisition and generalization of staff use of discrete trial teaching and student correct responses

The effects of behavioral skills training on instructor and learner behavior across responses and skill sets

Teaching individuals a safety response when they encounter a firearm may be one way to prevent accidental injuries or death. Previous researchers have used behavioral skills training (BST) with and without in situ training to teach individuals with and without disabilities to engage in a safety response in the presence of a firearm. However, few studies have arranged BST to ensure the safety response occurred in response to a representative sample of all relevant stimulus features for which a response should be evoked. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the extent to which BST conducted in a single context established stimulus control that would evoke the safety response across a range of contexts under which young children could encounter a dangerous stimulus in a room in their house. All participants demonstrated a discriminated safety response following BST. Further, safety responses generalized across all contexts not associated with training for all participants.

This experiment used a pyramidal training model to evaluate the effects of behavioral skills training (BST), delivered in a 1-time group-training format, on the extent to which 25 human service staff implemented BST when training others how to implement behavioral procedures. Results indicated that (a) the training workshop increased BST integrity to mastery levels for the majority of participants with varying levels of education, organizational positions, and training experience, (b) the training effects generalized to teaching an untrained skill, and (c) high levels of BST integrity maintained at follow-up 4 to 6 weeks after training for all 3 participants with whom probes were conducted. Moreover, participants indicated high levels of satisfaction with both the training workshop and BST as a training procedure.

Behavioral Skills Training (BST) is an effective, well-designed package to train educators of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this study, BST was used to train three teachers on how to accurately implement the Power Card Strategy (PCS). Multiple probe design with probe conditions across participants was used for assessing effects of using BST to train teachers on PCS. Data indicated that all three teachers showed significant improvement in PCS practice. The mean score was 14% for all three teachers during the baseline session. After training, they achieved 100% accuracy in three consecutive sessions. Those results were maintained three weeks later. Social validity data also showed that BST was effective and acceptable.