Association for Behavior Analysis International

Although the benefits of routine physical fitness and activity are well documented, there is limited behavioral research on this important repertoire. Additionally, the gym environment contains multiple potential health hazards, such as unclean gym surfaces that can cause infection. The behaviors related to both physical performance and gym safety could be improved using behavior analysis. This symposium presents a series of successful interventions that improved behaviors related to physical performance and gym related safety with different populations. The first presentations showcases a treatment package of teaching with acoustic guidance, modeling, and feedback, and was successful in teaching a golf swing to a novice golfer without disabilities. The next presentation discusses how a physical activity routine was taught to three people with severe intellectual disabilities. Results of this study indicated moderate success using the simultaneous and least to most prompting package. We end with a presentation on the use of an antecedent intervention package to increase cleaning gym equipment post-use . Results of this last study indicated that a combination of a visual prompt and accessibility to cleaning supplies were needed for the greatest increase in cleaning behavior. The results of these presentations will be discussed as will the potential for behavior analysis in this non-traditional are of applications.

Practitioners, graduate students, and researchers interested in the application of behavior analytic principles in the field of physical activity

People with intellectual disabilities are at higher risk for obesity and associated disease. Often they do not engage in enough physical activity. By teaching people with intellectual disabilities how to engage in physical activity, there are not only health benefits but also the potential to develop a new leisure activity. Previous literature has shown that evidence-based practices are needed to teach people with intellectual disabilities physical activities. The purpose of this study was to teach three adolescents with a severe to profound intellectual disabilities how to engage in three different exercises a. Three multiple probe across behavior designs were used and results indicated that using this prompting package was only moderately successful. Future research is needed to find best practice techniques for teaching physical activity to people with intellectual disabilities. Furthermore, examining the effects of fluency training, compliance training, and gross motor assessments has on teaching physical activities to this population would be beneficial.

Teaching with Acoustical Guidance (TAGteach) was used as a treatment package along with modeling, feedback, and error correction procedures to train a novel male golf. Using a multiple baseline across behaviors probe design with a two-week follow up, the participant met mastery in all six skill sets and behavior maintained for all skill sets that entered maintenance. During a two-week follow-up, four of five skill sets eligible for follow-up remained at mastery during all five attempts, and the fifth skill set met mastery criteria during the final three attempts. Limited research is available on Teaching with Acoustical Guidance (TAGteach) methodology and skill acquisition in sports, but results from the current study add to the available literature.