Association for Behavior Analysis International

Limited college teaching research suggests that compared to voluntary question answering, random oral questioning increases written quiz scores (McDougall & Cordeiro, 1993), yet this has not been evaluated in online courses. In the context of an online master's course on single subject design, we evaluated the effects of oral quizzes on points earned on four written assessments: two quizzes, a midterm exam, and a final exam. During four quasirandomly selected weeks, oral quizzes were administered during the first 15 minutes of 2-hour, interactive videoconference sessions in which questions from the previous week's content were randomly asked to the students. Written quiz/exam points correlated with content from oral quizzes were compared to written quiz/exam points from content with no oral quiz; there were 84 points available in each condition. Six of 8 participants had more points in the oral quiz condition; 1 participant had more points in the no oral quiz condition; and 1 participant showed no difference between the conditions. Interobserver agreement for one of the written quizzes was 100%. Procedural integrity with one instructor on one oral quiz was 84%. These preliminary data suggest that weekly oral quizzes can improve written exam performance in online behavior analysis courses.

Literature has shown that parent training enables parents to develop behavior analytic skills that result in more effective treatment for their children (Matson, Mahon, and Matson, 2009). Other studies have shown that the skills mastered during a parent training program were not maintained under natural circumstances (Moore and Symons, 2011). This study focuses on the effects that a parent training program has on families with children with autism spectrum disorders. All participants currently receive in-home ABA services and approximately half of the participants had participated in an in-home 6-week parent training program. Participants completed a survey designed to assess parent's behavior analytic knowledge and skills and opinions regarding their child's ABA program. Comparisons between the two groups show the effects that parent training has on parent's implementation of ABA, understanding of the ABA program and behavior plan, and perception of their role as behavior change agent. The responses from the parent participation group show the extent to which the skills mastered during the program were maintained after the program's completion. Survey data also allows for recommendations to be made regarding areas of strength and areas of need in parent training programs.

After achieving the BCBA certification, many BCBA's immediately seek employment at an in-home ABA agency with having little to nfo actual supervisory experience managing staff and overseeing a diverse caseload of clients, diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum. There has often been a discussion that there has been a lack of quality control amongst BCBA practitioners, as currently, there is no mandate in terms how many years of experience a BCBA practitioner must work with clients and staff, in a supervisory capacity. The question becomes, how do in-home ABA agencies ensure that BCBA's are not only competent to work with clients and staff but also, have a certain level of competency? Additionally, how do they maintain that level of competency, to provide quality services for clients and families? An overview of how one in-home ABA supervises BCBA's will be discussed, including frequency of supervision, content of supervision, how feedback is provided to BCBA's, frequency of feedback to BCBA's, how BCBA's are formally evaluated, and how continued training for BCBA's are supported. Further discussion and future directions for maintaining continued supervision BCBA's will also be addressed.

The time-honored mantra of training medical students and residents, "See one! Do one! Teach one!," has a catchy sound, but often isn't adequate for the complex and even not so complex procedures and practices of clinical medicine. It is especially inadequate for teaching generalization to the myriad circumstances, and human tragedies, of day to day clinical medicine. It is time honored, but more and more readily seen as inefficient and unsafe. Integrating basic principles of behaviorally based education into the traditional practices of medical education can be challenging in that it must overcome several hundred years of learning history and traditional practices of those teaching. Examples of behaviorally based education include direct supervision in real time of procedures by students and junior residents, greater emphasis of teaching basic skills in preclinical years before they are expected to be performed in clinical clerkships on "real patients," the widespread use of technologically sophisticated simulation labs, and the particularly behavioral yet often not done practice of actually deconstructing a complex procedural skill into component skills and behavioral objectives, and then practicing these component behavioral chains until the basic pattern is learned well, and then generalized by gradually altering the practice circumstances including increasingly complex variables and decision trees. Facilitating attempts to implement more behaviorally based teaching strategies for healthcare providers creates a culture of higher expectations. This talk reviews examples of behaviorally sound teaching in the classroom, clinic, and bedside, as well approaches to changing habits of medical educators.

Interteaching is a behavioral teaching method with a growing body of evidence to support its efficacy. Interteaching has led to higher exam scores, increased student participation in class, and more positive course evaluations. No study has yet determined whether prep guides alone could be added to standard teaching to increase exam scores. This study used an alternating treatments design, using interteaching in some weeks, standard teaching in some weeks, and standard teaching plus prep guides in the other weeks. The standard lecture online format consisted of a video lecture and exam. The interteaching format involved a prep guide, a written group discussion in Canvas, and a brief clarifying lecture. Participants (N= 70) were undergraduate students between 19-60 yrs of age enrolled in Psychology of Learning. In the two classes complete so far (out of three), exam scores were higher in interteaching weeks (M= 89.76) compared to standard teaching weeks (M=82.94). Scores were not significantly higher when prep guides were added to standard teaching (M=84.42). If students score significantly higher in interteaching conditions, this will expand the application of this teaching method to an online asynchronous environment. It may also show that prep guides alone are not enough to affect scores.

Remote parent training has helped familes in rural or remote areas whom have limited access to evidence-based intervention for their children with disabilities. Recent literature has focused on the importance of parents knowledge of ABA strategies such as reinforcement, behavioral management, and improved their implementation of ABA strategies with their children.The current study sought to examine the effectiveness of delivery of postive reinforcement with feedback via GotoMeeting.Two of the three parents were able to increase their delivery of postive reinforcement. Future studies are warranted on a bigger sample size and with different technological outlets.

Technology has resulted in the emergence of Whatsapp and FaceTime as competitive alternate training platforms to in-person training sessions. The wide reach of Internet based technology has made Tele-health an effective and low-cost method of training parents as interventionists using the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The parent of the 6-year-old child with autism was trained to work on a given set of goals based on the VBMAPP (Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program) assessment. The treatment package consisted of in person training, watching the session over video call, playback of recorded footage and self-evaluation,both in person and using email. The objective was to shape the parent's teaching skills in using Verbal Behavior with the child, with a specific focus on contingencies for delivery of reinforcement, and application of extinction procedures. Results show that following the model, treatment fidelity improved and the child's inappropriate behaviors decreased, with an increase in rate of skill acquisition. These results suggest that use of technology in implementing ABA services can serve as a low-cost tool to effectively empower parents as interventionists.

The purpose of this study was to compare the efficiency of two prompt strategies (echoic versus echoic + picture) on establishing the intraverbal behavior (i.e., question answering) for three 4-year-old children with ASD in China. All three children had mand, tact, and echoic behavior in their repertoire, but had a limited intraverbal repertoire. An adapted alternating treatments design combined with a multiple probe across two behaviors (two question sets) was used. Results indicated that both strategies were effective to teach and maintain question answering for all three children. However, the echoic prompt strategy required fewer trials to criterion than the echoic plus picture strategy, suggesting the efficiency of echoic prompts to establish intraverbal repertoire for these children.

Many science instructors incorporate laboratory activities to facFilitate students' understanding of scientific principles that they are exposed to in traditional lectures (Hofstein & Lunetta, 1982). The Portable Operant Research and Teaching Lab (PORTL; Rosales-Ruiz & Hunter, 2016) is a tabletop shaping game designed as a parallel to Skinner's operant chamber. We evaluated the effects a sequence of PORTL activities on undergraduate students' understanding of reinforcement, extinction, differential reinforcement, and shaping. Students in five undergraduate introductory behavior analysis courses were given one of two versions of a pre/posttest before and after the PORTL sequence. The results suggest that the average pre/posttest scores in four of the five course sections improved after the PORTL activities; however, students from three of these four sections received posttest in form A. The average scores for the pre/posttest form A were also higher than the average scores for the pre/posttest form B regardless of when it was administered. The results are discussed with respect to the importance of developing functionally equivalent pre/posttests to determine if laboratory activities are effective in facilitating students' understanding of behavioral principles and the limitations of assessing changes in students' verbal repertoires as a function of participation in laboratory activities.