Association for Behavior Analysis International

Children with autism may be unable to communicate sensations such as pain to caregivers and other individuals. Inability to describe pain may have serious implications for quality of life, family interactions, and medical care. Since parent report is not a sufficient indicator of pain in children with developmental delays, it is imperative that they learn to describe sensations such as pain. A behavior analytic view suggests that children can learn to tact private events when a publicly observable event occurs simultaneously. The present study evaluated a proposed method of teaching children with autism to express stimulation of specific body parts by various objects. In a multiple baseline design across participants, each participant experienced a baseline phase, followed by an intervention phase in which tacts of stimulation to three body parts were taught, and the evaluation concluded with tests of generalization to three novel body parts. Thus far, two participants have completed the study and acquired the tacts of sensations, and a third participant has completed pre-experimental probes. The first participant successfully generalized sensation tacts to two of three body parts, and to novel objects for two of three sensations. He did not demonstrate generalization to novel sensations. This study provides a foundation for research investigating teaching children with autism to tact sensations such as pain.

Including instructive feedback (IF) targets in discrete trial training (DTT) has been shown to increase the efficiency of DTT. Students may self-echo the feedback, which mediates later responding. The present study sought to understand the role of self-echoics in the acquisition of IF by including three conditions: a typical IF procedure, a vocal mediation-blocking procedure (participants engaged in a competing vocal response after the IF was presented), and a motor-distraction procedure, (participants engaged in a motor response after the IF was presented). Inclusion of the vocal mediation-blocking task had little effect on the participants’ ability to learn the IF statements.

Behavior chains are often named as singular response units, such as tooth brushing or hand washing. However, these skills are actually complex sequences comprised of many individual responses (i.e., component steps) that, when performed in a specific order, result in the completion of a complex, composite skill. Behavior chains are often taught using chaining, with the most widely used chaining procedures commonly called forward chaining, backward chaining, and total task presentation. The purpose of this presentation is to highlight selected findings from a comprehensive literature review of the applied research on chaining from 2007 - 2017. This review was warranted given 1) that a such a broad review of chaining does not appear to have yet been conducted, 2) the last review of any kind on chaining is over 10 years old, and 3) chaining procedures are still widely used by applied behavior analysts. In addition to reviewing interesting findings from the quantitative literature review, this presentation will also include a proposal for restructuring the terminological taxonomy to be more technological and conceptually systematic. Recommendations for clinical practitioner and suggestions for future research will also be included.