Comparing stimulus preference and response force in a conjugate preparation: A replication with auditory stimulation.

This study examined a conjugate approach for evaluating auditory stimulus preference for 81 participants using force as a continuous response dimension. First, the researchers used a verbal preference assessment to evaluate each participant's preference for listening to five genres of music. This process identified high-preference and low-preference music for each participant. Thereafter, the researchers exposed each participant to the five music genres in a randomized order while using a hand dynamometer to measure their response force to increase the auditory clarity of the music. The results indicate (a) 63% of the participants' high-preference music genres corresponded to the genre for which they exerted the highest mean force and (b) most participants' low-preference music genres corresponded to the genre for which they exerted the lowest mean force. These findings are consistent with those from Davis et al. (2021) and further support using conjugate preparations for measuring the relative value of some stimulus events.

A Survey of Safety Skills Training Used by Behavior Analysts in Practice.

This survey study examines the clinical practices and opinions of Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) certificants regarding safety skills training with their clients with neurodevelopmental disabilities. This article focuses on five safety threats: abduction, sexual abuse, poisonous substances, firearms, and fire-starting agents. Respondents were asked to rate the importance of teaching their clients safety skills for each of these safety threats. Furthermore, the survey included questions pertaining to the use of behavioral interventions, notably behavioral skills training. Results from this preliminary survey of BACB certificants (N = 695) are included and we provide a discussion of current practices and recommendations for future research related to safety skills training among practitioners in clinical settings.

Evaluating Remote Behavioral Skills Training of Online Gaming Safety Skills.

This study assessed the use of behavioral skills training for teaching online safety skills to two children, 7 and 9 years old. In situ assessments took place while playing the popular online game, Among Us, and consisted of confederates presenting lures to the child participants. Before training, the participants scored 1s and 0s, indicating a lack of online gaming safety skills. Both participants scored at mastery criterion (i.e., three scores of 3 in a row) following training. During the first 2-week follow-up, one participant scored a 1 because he did not leave the game following the presentation of a lure; his mother immediately implemented in situ training (IST). He scored at mastery criterion during the next follow-up assessment, indicating the effectiveness of the caregiver-implemented IST. The second participant scored a 3 during his 2-week follow-up.

Teaching Safety Skills to Children: A Discussion of Critical Features and Practice Recommendations.

Children may encounter safety threats from the physical environment (e.g., firearms or poisonous substances) or from the behaviors of others (e.g., abduction or sexual abuse lures). Such encounters may result in injury or death if children do not learn skills to respond safely. Research over the last 40 years has investigated approaches to assessing and training safety skills. This article discusses critical features that have emerged in the research related to best practice for assessing and training safety skills. We emphasize the importance of in situ assessments, effective training approaches, the need for data-based decision making, strategies for enhancing generalization and maintenance, the accessibility of training programs, and approaches to training individuals with disabilities. Following a discussion of each critical feature presented in this article, we provide recommendations for practicing behavior analysts.

A nutrition education intervention to improve eating behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder: Study protocol for a pilot randomized controlled trial.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that affects communication and social behaviors. Children with ASD often experience mealtime behavior challenges and selective eating behaviors. They also tend to consume fewer fruits and vegetables and more high-energy dense foods, compared to neurotypical peers. A nutrition intervention was designed to prevent the development of feeding disorders and the long-term negative health impacts associated with poor dietary intake. This randomized controlled trial will evaluate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of the nutrition education intervention for children with ASD and their parents through the Early Intervention (EI) services. We will recruit EI providers and parent-child dyads (n = 48) from EI programs, and randomly assign them into Autism Eats intervention (n = 24) or enhance usual care (EUC) comparison group (n = 24). The Autism Eats is 10 weekly sessions delivered individually as part of EI, while the EUC group will receive only 1 nutrition education session and then weekly parent handouts. The Autism Eats integrates ASD-specific feeding strategies and behaviorally-focused intervention strategies such as goal setting. Feasibility indicators include reach/participation, attrition, completion, fidelity, compatibility, and qualitative participant feedback. Outcome measures include dietary intakes and mealtime behaviors of children with ASD using 3-day food records and a validated questionnaire, the Brief Autism Mealtime Behavior Inventory (BAMBI). We will examine whether there are differences in children's food intakes, variety, diet quality, and mealtime behaviors between Autism Eats and EUC groups at post-intervention and 5-month follow-up assessment. This study will provide critical data to inform a full-scale randomized controlled trial.

Training soccer goalkeeping skills: Is video modeling enough?

Scant literature exists assessing the effectiveness of video modeling (VM) alone in the sports literature. Further evaluations of VM to improve sports skills is warranted because VM is an accessible and efficient procedure that has successfully improved skills in other fields of practice (e.g., staff training, medical procedures). Additionally, behavior analysts have not evaluated interventions for improving goalkeeping skills for individual soccer players. Therefore, we replicated the 1 behavior-analytic sports study on VM (Quinn et al., 2020), using a multiple baseline design across behaviors to evaluate the effects of VM and VM + video feedback (VF) to train 3 goalkeeper skills to two 9-year-old soccer players. The results showed that, although VM had some effect on performance compared to baseline, VM + VF resulted in the robust outcomes necessary for proficient performance of the goalkeeper skills. We discuss the results and limitations.

Decreasing nervous habits during public speaking: A component analysis of awareness training.

Awareness training can produce decreases in nervous habits during public speaking. A systematic replication of Montes et al. (2020) was conducted to evaluate the independent and additive effects of awareness training components (i.e., response description, response detection) on speech disfluencies during public speaking. We extended prior research by evaluating response description alone, delivering the intervention virtually, using novel videos and speech topics during training, and measuring collateral effects on untargeted responses and speech rate. Response description was sufficient at reducing speech disfluencies for 4 of 9 participants. Response detection (video training) was necessary for 2 participants, and the subsequent addition of response detection (in-vivo training) was necessary for 3 participants. Reductions were maintained during follow-up and generalization probes for most participants. Collateral effects of awareness training components were idiosyncratic. A post-hoc analysis revealed that response description, when effective as a stand-alone intervention, may be more efficient than the full awareness training package.

Evaluating a modified behavioral skills training procedure for teaching poison prevention skills to children with autism.

Accidental poisonings can occur for children with disabilities as a result of ingesting household products, such as medications and cleaning chemicals, if the products are not stored safely. Behavioral approaches such as behavioral skills training (BST) have been used in previous research to teach safety skills to children with disabilities. However, research suggests that BST is not always effective for teaching safety skills to children with and without disabilities. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a modified BST package that incorporated a system of least prompts. A nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across participants was used to evaluate the effects of intervention with three 6-8-year-old children with autism. Results showed that BST with the prompt sequence increased poison prevention skills for all 3 participants and the skills maintained at follow-up.

Using Video Self-Evaluation to Enhance Performance in Competitive Dancers.

This study used a multiple-baseline across-behaviors design to evaluate the use of video self-evaluation on the performance of 3 dance movements. The procedure improved all 3 dance moves for 3 adolescents on a competitive dance team. Video self-evaluation was shown to be an efficient, accessible, and socially valid procedure to increase the performance of competitive dance movements.

Reducing risky behavior with habit reversal: A review of behavioral strategies to reduce habitual hand-to-head behavior.

Habit reversal training (HRT) has been a mainstay of behavior analysts' repertoire for nearly the last 50 years. HRT has been effective in treating a host of repetitive behavior problems. In the face of the current coronavirus pandemic, HRT has practical public health importance as a possible intervention for reducing hand-to-head behaviors that increase the risk of viral infection. The current paper provides a brief review of HRT for hand-to-head habits that is designed for a broad audience and concludes with practical suggestions, based on HRT, for reducing face-touching behaviors.

Pediatric Prevention: Teaching Safety Skills.

Serious threats to child safety are infrequent and unpredictable but can lead to serious injury and death. To stay safe, children must identify and avoid contact with a safety threat, escape from it, and report it to an adult so the adult can remove the threat. Research shows that active learning approaches are effective for teaching children to engage in these safety skills. Passive learning approaches are not effective. Active learning approaches require children to practice the skills in the presence of simulated threats with feedback to reinforce correct responses and promote generalization of skills to the natural environment.

Evaluating small-scale simulation for training firearm safety skills.

There is limited research using small-scale simulation in applied behavior analysis. We used small-scale simulation to train firearm safety skills to 3- to 5-year-old children and assessed whether the skills generalized to the natural environment through in situ assessment. Three participants completed the training, and all participants learned the safety skills from simulation training. Two of the participants acquired the safety skills after the first simulation training, and the third participant required one booster training before demonstrating the safety skills in the natural environment.

Perspectives from 30 Years of Training Behavior Analysts.

This commentary describes my perspective on training behavior analysts based on over 30 years of experience. The two important activities involved in training behavior analysts are teaching and mentoring. In this paper, I describe my perspectives on each.

Evaluating behavioral skills training to teach safe tackling skills to youth football players.

With concussion rates on the rise for football players, there is a need for further research to increase skills and decrease injuries. Behavioral skills training is effective in teaching a wide variety of skills but has yet to be studied in the sports setting. We evaluated behavioral skills training to teach safer tackling techniques to six participants from a Pop Warner football team. Safer tackling techniques increased during practice and generalized to games for the two participants who had opportunities to tackle in games.

Data presentation options to manage variability in physical activity research.

This paper presents seven tactics for managing the variability evident in some physical activity data. High levels of variability in daily step-count data from pedometers or accelerometers can make typical visual inspection difficult. Therefore, the purpose of the current paper is to discuss several strategies that might facilitate the visual interpretation of highly variable data. The seven strategies discussed in this paper are phase mean and median lines, daily average per week, weekly cumulative, proportion of baseline, 7-day moving average, change point detection, and confidence intervals. We apply each strategy to a data set and discuss the advantages and disadvantages.

Effects of student pairing and public review on physical activity during school recess.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of student pairing and feedback during recess on children's step counts. During baseline, participants wore a sealed pedometer during recess. During intervention, we paired participants with higher step counts with participants with lower step counts. We encouraged teams to compete for the highest step count each day and provided feedback on their performance during each recess session. Results showed a large mean increase in step count from baseline to intervention. These results suggest that children's steps during recess can be increased with a simple and cost-effective intervention.

Using habit reversal to decrease filled pauses in public speaking.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of simplified habit reversal in reducing filled pauses that occur during public speaking. Filled pauses consist of "uh," "um," or "er"; clicking sounds; and misuse of the word "like." After baseline, participants received habit reversal training that consisted of awareness training and competing response training. During postintervention assessments, all 6 participants exhibited an immediate decrease in filled pauses.

Using video feedback to improve horseback-riding skills.

This study used video feedback to improve the horseback-riding skills of advanced beginning riders. We focused on 3 skill sets: those used in jumping over obstacles, dressage riding on the flat, and jumping position riding on the flat. Baseline consisted of standard lesson procedures. Intervention consisted of video feedback in which a recorded attempt at the target behavior was immediately shown to the rider and the instructor. The rider and instructor reviewed the video while the instructor delivered feedback. After the lesson, experimenters scored riding position according to checklists that corresponded to each skill. For all participants, video feedback increased their correct riding skills.

Using TAGteach to improve the proficiency of dance movements.

Behavioral research to enhance sports performance has been conducted in numerous sports domains and often involves feedback from the coach to the student. One promising form of feedback is the use of an acoustical stimulus such as a clicker to provide more immediate feedback. Similar to clicker training with animals, acoustical stimuli are used with humans to reinforce desired behavior in a procedure called TAGteach, which involves using a clicker as a conditioned reinforcer in training. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of TAGteach, implemented by dance teachers, to increase the fluency of 3 dance movements in a multiple baseline design across behaviors with 4 students of dance. Target behaviors included a turn, kick, and leap. The targeted dance movements remained at relatively low levels of performance during baseline and improved for each participant after the introduction of the TAGteach intervention. Implications for future research are discussed.

Using goal setting and feedback to increase weekly running distance.

We evaluated goal setting with performance feedback to increase running distance among 5 healthy adults. Participants set a short-term goal each week and a long-term goal to achieve on completion of the study. Results demonstrated that goal setting and performance feedback increased running distance for all participants.