A Structured Intervention to Increase Response Allocation to Instructional Settings for Children with Autism Spectrum Di
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A Structured Intervention to Increase Response Allocation to Instructional Settings for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Tom Cariveau1,2 · M. Alice Shillingsburg3 · Arwa Alamoudi4 · Taylor Thompson5 · Brittany Bartlett6 · Scott Gillespie6,7 · Lawrence Scahill6,7
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Access to early intensive behavioral intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder is commonly recommended. Intervention programs may include high rates of instructional trials, which may evoke escape-maintained problem behavior. Recent research on “pairing” or “rapport-building” interventions have sought to reduce the likelihood that problem behavior occurs during instruction using antecedent manipulations. The current study evaluated a structured intervention that included differential reinforcement and demand fading to increase participants’ response allocation to instructional settings without the use of physical guidance. Nine minimally verbal girls under the age of 6 years with autism spectrum disorder enrolled in the study. The protocol was effective for seven of the nine participants. One participant did not complete the protocol due to competing behavior and an additional participant did not require the intervention. Our findings suggest that the structured intervention was effective in increasing appropriate behavioral repertoires that are necessary for children with autism spectrum disorder to effectively benefit from early educational programs. Keywords Autism · Differential reinforcement · Demand fading · Pairing · Rapportbuilding
Introduction The benefits of early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have consistently been demonstrated over the last 30 years (Lovaas 1987; Reichow 2011; Remington et al. 2007; Smith et al. 2000). Available evidence has shown that EIBI produces better outcomes when the * Tom Cariveau [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Journal of Behavioral Education
intervention begins at an early age (Harris and Handleman 2000; Itzchak and Zachor 2011), is 25 h per week or more National Research Council 2001), and is based on the principles of applied behavior analysis (Peters-Scheffer et al. 2011; Reichow 2011; Warren et al. 2011). In line with this body of evidence, very young children with ASD are often exposed to a considerable number of hours of intensive intervention. Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) is one instructional procedure used in these interventions for children with developmental disabilities and was used in the earliest described EIBI program (Lovaas 1987). This approach typically includes therapist-driven instruction and provides numerous opportunities for the child to practice a skill during a single instructional period (Smith 2001). A discrete trial includes five components: (a) the presentation of a discriminative stimulus (e.g., the therapist saying “point to the dog”), (b)
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