Association for Behavior Analysis International

Quality of Life (QoL) is defined as a term that integrates objective and subjective indicators of a broad range of life domains and individual values and has long been a focus of mainstream society. When it comes to people with disabilities, however, attention to a QoL has historically not been a priority. While educational and civil rights litigation has advanced quality of life for individuals with disabilities and the literature is replete with studies assessing QoL, including happiness, little attention has been given to parental perceptions and priorities for their children when it comes to QoL concerns. The purpose of this symposium is to further the extant research to include information from families regarding what factors they believe are important to obtaining a QoL for their child and whom they perceive is responsible to ensure that their child obtains a QoL, and to present a behavior analytic procedure to assess specific factors that might be highly correlated, if not causally related, to indices of happiness, and to challenge the current staff training model during pairing in order for staff to exceed beyond becoming conditioned reinforcers, but to become primary reinforcers to the individuals they serve.

Clinicians, teachers, human service providers, BCBAs, psychologist, social workers.

This study seeks to investigate the effects of staff preference (highly preferred staff versus less preferred staff) on the affect, compliance, and on-task behavior of adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during demand activities that require prompting for on task engagement and task completion. Individual participants who indicate (through a preference assessment) a clear preference for certain staff members when compared to others, will be included in the study. Each participant will engage in the same demand activity conditions while direct-care staff members will be randomly alternated (highly preferred and less-preferred). Data will be evaluated through an alternating treatments design. Post hoc analysis will be conducted in order to identify the specific characteristics of the highly preferred staff (e.g., physical contact, facial expression, praise). Implications for the study include the value of providing choice and assessing preference of staff members and the potential impact for changing traditional staff training models to emphasize training for staff to position themselves as conditioned reinforcers to the individuals they serve.