Association for Behavior Analysis International

Virtual reality is one of the fastest growing areas of accessible technology in the world. Educators have begun to explore the use of virtual reality in classrooms and the early findings are extremely promising. This paper reports on a pilot project where 35 pre-service behaviour analyst graduate students in higher education taught clients from a community partner agency in a synchronous, networked, multi-player virtual environment. Qualitative data were collected in the form of reflective journal entries and survey responses from the students. Some survey responses were quantified and analyzed using basic statistical analyses. The remaining qualitative data were analyzed from both the perspective of Relational Frame Theory (RFT) and Verbal Behavior Developmental Theory (VBDT), using an analysis of the verbal behavior reports in both journal and short answer form from the students. The value that this type of analysis can bring to our understanding of verbal behaviour is explored. Findings showed the emergence of several themes suggesting that there may be benefits from using the virtual medium for teaching and that training in these situations should be further explored.

Children with Autism often engage in less complex and fewer spontaneous pretend play behaviors. Although research has highlighted the value of providing parents with sustained support to promote positive child outcomes, parents rarely receive coaching around play skills. This study examined the effects of a multi-component remote coaching package on parents’ implementation of a systematic, multi-step modeling procedure with fidelity, to engage in pretend play with their children. A multiple-baseline design across pretend play behaviors was replicated across two triads. Each triad consisted of a parent, a preschool-age focal child with Autism and a sibling. The coaching package included three virtual trainings and email performance feedback. Caregivers were trained on using the modeling procedure to teach three pretend play behaviors. During intervention, email feedback was provided to caregivers on each video submitted. There was a functional relation between the coaching package and caregivers’ fidelity to the modeling procedure. Nonoverlap (NAP) indicated that the change from baseline to intervention condition was statistically significant for caregivers’ modeling procedure fidelity. Caregivers found the coaching to be beneficial and expressed strong interest in continuing to use the strategies. This study expands applied behavior analytic ways to support caregivers of children with autism around play.

Treatment fidelity is the extent to which essential intervention components are implemented accurately and consistently. This is an important component to implementing evidence-based practices for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, as higher levels of treatment fidelity are directly related to improved outcomes and strength of the intervention. Therefore, it is important to identify methods to promote and maintain high levels of treatment fidelity among practitioners implementing behavior analytic interventions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relative effectiveness of immediate and delayed performance feedback on the implementation of interventions incorporating compound schedules of reinforcement (i.e., multiple and chain schedules). Specifically, we provided immediate feedback for implementation of one of the compound schedules and delayed feedback for the implementation of the other compound schedule. We randomly assigned feedback to compound schedules ensuring an equal number of pairings across the participants. Participants were graduate students enrolled in a verified course sequence and completing supervised field experience. The results indicate that both immediate and delayed performance feedback effectively increased the fidelity of implementation, however participants did report a preference for immediate performance feedback.