Association for Behavior Analysis International

Behavior Skills Training (BST) is an efficacious training methodology that has been used to teach a variety of skills from safety skills (e.g., Johnson et al., 2013) to interviewing skills (e.g., Stocco et al., 2017) to animal training (e.g., Lewon et al., 2019). The current symposium shares applications of BST to teach meaningful skills to caregivers and professionals across several settings and contexts. The first presentation (Wahdain et al.) will detail a study that evaluated the effects using of BST via telehealth to teach six caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to implement discrete trial training. The second presentation (Sweetman et al.) will describe an application of BST to teach safety intervention skills, found to contribute to staff-related injuries, to twelve staff members working at a school for children with ASD. Finally, the third presentation (Cervantes et al.) will describe an application of BST to train four staff members working in a residential facility for individuals with high behavioral support needs; staff members were taught how to correctly select and implement behavioral interventions. The current symposium provides further evidence of the effectiveness and generality of BST.

Intermediate – Given that this symposium will cover effective methods for training caregivers to implement skills and procedures, attendees should have mastered the skills and procedures themselves prior to training others.

To maximize the efficacy of behavioral interventions for consumers of clinical behavior analytic services, the interventions must be implemented with a decent degree of procedural fidelity (Fryling et al., 2012). Numerous studies have demonstrated that behavioral skills training (BST) is an effective method for training staff and caregivers to implement such interventions (Maffei-Almodovar & Sturmey, 2018). However, what is less certain is whether trained caregivers can also select the correct intervention to implement under the correct circumstances (e.g., Van Camp et al., 2008). For example, should attention be delivered or withheld after the occurrence of a specific behavior? The present study was conducted at a residential facility for individuals with high behavioral support needs. The procedures evaluated the effects of BST on four direct support professionals' correct selection and implementation of indicated interventions via a multiple baseline design. Skills were assessed using varied role-play scenarios. BST effectively increased correct selection and implementation to a mastery level for three participants and increased correct responding above baseline levels for a fourth participant.