Sidney W. and Janet R. Bijou Fellowship Recipients
2009: Cara Phillips, University of Florida
Cara Phillips received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Her undergraduate career involved only a minimal exposure to behavior analysis, but her summer jobs working at a camp for children with physical and developmental disabilities led her to accept a position with the New England Center for Children after graduation. There she discovered the field of Applied Behavior Analysis truly in practice, working with an adult developmentally disabled population whom exhibited severe problem behavior. Intrigued with the field, but often out-sized by her clients, Cara decided to examine the application of behavior analysis with additional populations. She worked in a supported housing program, in which behavioral contracting was used extensively, with individuals with chronic mental illness. She also worked as an integration aide for a six-year old boy with Asperger’s Syndrome in a kindergarten classroom before finding a home with the Faison School for Autism in Richmond, Virginia. Cara worked as a lead teaching assistant for two years in this ABA based program. In addition, Cara served as lead therapist and program coordinator for home-based ABA programs during her three years in Richmond.
Following five years of learning about the principles of ABA through first-hand experience, Cara felt that her clinical growth required a stronger understanding of the theoretical foundations of the science of behavior analysis. Cara obtained a Master’s Degree in Psychology with a specialization in Applied Behavior Analysis from Florida State University in 2003. While at FSU, Cara worked as a Behavior Assistant/Behavior Supervisor for a home-based service program for children with developmental disabilities affiliated with the university. Her time at FSU only further whetted Cara’s appetite for information about the conceptual side of the field, leading her to continue her graduate studies at the University of Florida under the supervision of Dr. Timothy Vollmer. Cara is the site coordinator for one of Dr. Vollmer’s research sites – a local elementary school.
Cara’s primary research interests are related to skill acquisition in children diagnosed with autism, specifically the use of prompting procedures to teach relatively complex skills. Cara is particularly interested in how children with autism spectrum disorders learn generalized skill sets. She is in the process of conducting a series of studies on the stimulus control of different forms of prompts during task analyses. These studies are designed to encourage the participants to form a skill set of following a specific form of instructions (e.g. textual or pictorial) by engendering stimulus control by one form of prompts in order to facilitate – with that form of prompt – the following of generalized instruction. Also, related to skill acquisition, Cara is in the early stages of planning a series of studies examining computer-based Discrete Trial Training programs. A secondary focus of Cara’s research is to properly evaluate autism treatments that are commonly used, but heretofore inadequately tested. This involves an estimation of the prevalence of behavioral and other treatments for problem behavior, as well as a functional analysis and treatment comparison of behavioral and alternative treatments.
Other 2009 Recipient:
Kevin Luczynski, Western New England College
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