New England Center for Children
William Ahearn, Ph.D.
The New England Center for Children is a private, nonprofit
autism education center that offers state-of-the-art skill
education and clinical programs for more than 300 children
diagnosed with autism and other related disorders. In 2005, NECC
was the recipient of the SABA Award for Enduring Programmatic
Contributions to Behavior Analysis. We are committed towards
sharing our expertise regarding autism intervention with others by
conducting empirically-validated assessment and treatment,
publishing in leading journals, and presenting at regional and
national conferences. In providing services to individuals with
autism for over 30 years, we have developed a substantial
curriculum of teaching procedures that have been rigorously refined
and replicated in 15 partner classrooms in local public schools. We
are currently conducting research in a variety of areas that may
further our understanding of how to best approach behavioral
correlates of autism, including teaching techniques for children
with severe learning problems, managing challenging behavior, and
early intervention practices. In this presentation, we will focus
on some areas of autism research that could make a significant
impact including increasing appropriate play skills using video
modeling, teaching social skills, and decreasing problem behavior
using function-based interventions, obviating the need for aversive
control techniques.
William H. Ahearn serves as the Director of Research at the New
England Center for Children and a Clinical Assistant Professor in
the Master's in Applied Behavior Analysis (MABA) Program at
Northeastern University. He is Past-President of the Berkshire
Association for Behavior Analysis and Therapy (BABAT). He received
his doctorate in experimental psychology at Temple University in
1992 and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of
Behavioral Psychology at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine. He then served as Program
Manager for the Inpatient Pediatric Feeding Program at the
Children's Seashore House in Philadelphia before moving to the New
England Center for Children in 1996. Bill has recently written a
book chapter on managing feeding problems in children with autism
and has published studies that have appeared in the Journal of
the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Journal of Applied Behavior
Analysis, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Behavior
Modification, Animal Learning and Behavior, The Lancet,
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, The
Behavior Analyst, and Behavioral Interventions. He
currently serves on the Board of Editors for the Journal of
Applied Behavior Analysis and Behavioral
Interventions.