Association for Behavior Analysis International

With the rising incidence in young children being suspended and expelled from pre-school settings, on-going examination of evidence-based social/emotional/behavioral interventions is essential. This paper explored the feasibility of a social/emotional/behavioral intervention on teacher and student behavior. Children and teachers were recruited from an inclusive early childhood center in a Midwestern city to participate in this study focused on explicitly teaching behavioral expectations. Using a multiple probe design, the impact of scripted stories, role plays, prompts, and social praise was examined for six children. Teachers were trained on how to implement the intervention through simple technical assistance meetings, including on-going feedback on their performance. Although teachers did not implement all intervention components with high fidelity, a modest change in behavior was observed for all six child participants which resulted in an established functional relation between the intervention package and child adherence to behavioral expectations. Discussion and future research will address increasing the intensity of training for teachers, including use of Behavior Skills Training (BST), matching the functional equivalence of the target behavior to the intervention, and teacher buy-in for the use of positive reinforcement.