Evaluating caregivers arrangement of infant sleeping environments in the home.

Sleep-related infant deaths are one of the top causes of infant mortality in the United States. A few behavior analytic studies have examined behavioral skills training to teach adults to arrange safe infant sleeping environments. These studies were conducted in an analogue environment, and no data were collected outside the training setting. The purpose of the current study was to replicate and extend the extant literature. We taught caregivers to arrange safe infant sleeping environments in a community-based organization. Thereafter, we assessed the feasibility and effectiveness of a technology-based contingency management procedure to examine caregivers' adherence with arrangement of a safe sleeping environment for their newborns across a 2-week period. As in previous studies, behavioral skills training resulted in positive outcomes, and follow-up data suggested that the technology-based contingency management procedure may be a promising approach to promoting adherence with infant sleeping environment recommendations.

Training medical students to teach safe infant sleep environments using pyramidal behavioral skills training.

Medical personnel play a critical role in caregiver safe infant sleep education. However, training outcomes in the safe infant sleep training literature have been mixed. Promising approaches that warrant further investigation are the use of behavioral skills training and pyramidal training. The current study consisted of two experiments. Experiment 1 extended Carrow et al. (2020) and Vladescu et al. (2020) by teaching medical students safe infant sleep practices using behavioral skills training. Discriminated responding was examined across trained and untrained environmental arrangements using a multiple-baseline design. All participants arranged safe sleep environments following behavioral skills training. In Experiment 2, we used pyramidal behavioral skills training to train medical students to teach others safe sleep practices. Results indicated high procedural integrity scores following training and generalization of skills.

Safe to sleep: Community-based caregiver training.

Annually, thousands of infant deaths are classified as sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUIDs). In an effort to reduce the risk of SUIDs, the American Academy of Pediatrics has made a number of recommendations to educate caregivers, childcare providers, and healthcare professionals on safe infant sleep practices. The purpose of the current study was to extend the literature on safe infant sleep practices by teaching caregivers to arrange safe infant sleep environments using a mannequin and common infant items. We partnered with community-based agencies to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioral skills training delivered in a single training session as part of the ongoing pre- or postnatal care these agencies provided. Following training, all participants demonstrated a substantial change in responding and returned favorable social validity ratings. We discuss these outcomes in light of previous studies, limitations, and future directions.

Infant positioning: A brief review.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (2016a) has made several recommendations regarding the safe positioning of infants by caregivers, including placing infants in a supine position for sleep and in prone for supervised periods of tummy time. However, caregivers may have difficulty adhering with these recommendations. A small, but growing, number of behavior analytic studies have examined these infant safety recommendations and strategies for increasing adherence. This review describes behavior analytic research on infant positioning and provides suggestions for future research.

Assessment to identify learner-specific prompt and prompt-fading procedures for children with autism spectrum disorder.

Few studies have evaluated the use of assessment to identify the most efficient instructional practices for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. This is problematic as these individuals often have difficulty acquiring skills, and the procedures that may be efficient with one individual may not be for others. The experimenters conducted instructional assessments to identify the most efficient prompt type (model, partial physical, full physical) and prompt-fading procedure (progressive delay, most-to-least, least-to-most) for teaching auditory-visual conditional discriminations for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Each assessment was conducted at least twice, and a final generality test combined the most and the least efficient prompt type and prompt-fading procedure for teaching novel auditory-visual conditional discriminations. The results demonstrated learner-specific outcomes for the prompt type assessment, whereas the least-to-most prompt fading procedure was most efficient for all participants.

Reinforcer Choice on Skill Acquisition for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: a Systematic Replication.

Providing students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) a choice of putative reinforcers during learning trials may confer advantage during skill acquisition programming. However, such advantage should not be assumed and may not be associated with the most efficient instructional arrangement. In the current study, we taught labels of common object or conditional discriminations to participants with ASD and evaluated efficiency of instruction across child- and experimenter-choice instructional conditions. The results indicated that the most efficient acquisition was observed during the experimenter-choice condition for both participants.

Effects of stimulus presentation order during auditory-visual conditional discrimination training for children with autism spectrum disorder.

Children with autism spectrum disorder are typically taught conditional discriminations using a match-to-sample arrangement. Consideration should be given to the temporal order in which antecedent stimuli (the sample and comparison stimuli) are presented during match-to-sample trials, as various arrangements have been used in the extant literature. The purpose of the current study was to compare the effects of four stimulus presentation orders on the acquisition of auditory-visual conditional discriminations. The study included participants from a clinically relevant population (three children with autism spectrum disorder), employed clinically relevant teaching procedures, and included two presentation formats not included in previous comparison evaluations (simultaneous and sample-first with re-presentation conditions). Results were found to be learner-specific; that is, a different stimulus presentation format was most efficient for each participant. We provide suggestions to evaluate stimulus control topographies and enhance experimental control in match-to-sample arrangements.

Comparing procedures on the acquisition and generalization of tacts for children with autism spectrum disorder.

Generalization is a critical outcome for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who display new skills in a limited range of contexts. In the absence of proper planning, generalization may not be observed. The purpose of the current study was to directly compare serial to concurrent multiple exemplar training using total training time per exemplar, mean total training time, and exposures to mastery across three children diagnosed with ASD. Additionally, we assessed the efficiency of presenting secondary targets in the antecedent and consequence portions of learning trials and evaluated generalization to tacts not associated with direct teaching. Results suggested that all training conditions produced acquisition and generalization for trained and untrained exemplars. However, the serial multiple exemplar training condition was more efficient for two participants, whereas the instructive feedback condition was the most efficient for the third. Findings are discussed considering previous studies and areas for future research.

Effects of computer-based training on procedural modifications to standard functional analyses.

Few studies have evaluated methods for training decision-making when functional analysis data are undifferentiated. The current study evaluated computer-based training to teach 20 graduate students to arrange functional analysis conditions, analyze functional analysis data, and implement procedural modifications. Participants were exposed to training materials using interactive software during a 1-day session. Following the training, mean scores on the posttest, novel cases probe, and maintenance probe increased for all participants. These results replicate previous findings during a 1-day session and include a measure of participant acceptability of the training. Recommendations for future research on computer-based training and functional analysis are discussed.