2022 Events

Medical Comorbidities and Issues for Children on the Autism Spectrum: Some Foundational Variables for Constructing Interventions

Featuring Kimberly Schreck, Ph.D., BCBA-D

Behavior analyst are highly trained in the foundations of trying to understand behavior. Within the BA's respondent conditioning, medical issues are being forgotten in assessments for individuals with autism. This might have an influence on the behavior plans that are being put in place.

What We Learned

  • Common comorbidities that individuals with a diagnoses of Autism Spectrum Disorder experience are related to sleep, for example Behavioral Insomnia of Childhood, feeding, such as food selectivity, or physiological comorbidities, such as MSSIII-A or commonly known as Sanfilippo Syndrome.
  • Treatment considerations for these comorbid issues require building a cohesive interventions approach. The first step is to get a medical evaluation before any other form of treatment or intervention.
  • When evidence-based practices for comorbid issues are not available, take a scientific decision making approach for treatments. To build a comprehensive intervention it requires collaboration with parents, children, and other professionals

Disseminating Behavior Analysis: It's Time to Expand our Repertoires

Featuring Nathan Call, Ph.D., BCBA-D

From its origin, behavior analysis has focused on studying behavior with the rigor of natural science. It focused directly on observable behavior and the behavior of the individual organism leading to methods focused on internal validity. Applied Behavior Analytic clinical works incorporates the same elements. There is a continuum of applied behavior analytic research questions and methods.

What We Learned

  • There are 7 types of behavior analytic research. There is single subject research, consecutive case series, efficacy trials, effectiveness trials, measure development research, implementation research, and participatory research.
  • Single subject research includes serendipitous research and prospective hypothesis testing and these are viewed as a strengths to the BCBA field. However, for many applied problems the most relevant research questions are no longer “Does anything work?”. It is important to consider disseminating applied behavior analytic work to new audiences and that may require adopting different new methods.
  • All behavior analysts can contribute by continuing to use single subject methods to innovate but it is important to also expand the depth of research behavior analysts consume. Train new behavior analysts on a broad range of research methods and seek opportunities to collaborate with partners from outside behavior analysis.

Early Childhood Special Education Workshop

Featuring Amanda Gulsrud, Ph.D., Reina Factor, Ph.D., Stephanny Freeman, Ph.D., Kristen Hayashida, M.Ed. BCBA, Patricia Renno, Ph.D., and Sara McCracken, Ph.D.

The one day training workshop was for Preschool Special Education and General Education Teachers, Teaching Assistants, Behavior Interventionists, Speech and Language Pathologists, Occupations Therapists, and School Psychologists from local school districts. Attendees became familiar with different play interventions, social skills training, identification of school readiness through executive functioning, developing emotional skills, and behavior management within the classroom.

What We Learned

  • Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) is a type of play intervention that focuses on what is motivating to the child through ongoing dialogue, embedding prompts, embedding interactions and initiating interactions.
  • Early signs of social reciprocity deficits include lack of social smiling, lack of eye contact, and lower facial processing. The goal for PEERS for Preschool program is to teach fundamental play and social skills in caregiver-assisted social skills.
  • Executive functioning is the ability to think and includes higher order thinking skills and cognitive control functions. Executive function skills are the underlying school readiness indicator and is the first to suffer disproportionately for young children with autism.
  • Anxiety is one of the most commonly associated psychiatric concern for autistic individuals and exacerbates many of the core ASD symptoms. Strategies for teaching emotional understanding include CBT, emotion identification, identifying “icky” and “calm” thoughts, and progressive muscle relaxation.
  • A setting or event does not directly cause the behavior but make it more likely that the challenging behavior will occur. Strategies within the classroom to decrease challenging behaviors include establishing structure, supporting different forms of language and communication, teaching emotion recognition, and preparing individual reinforcement systems.

Sensory Features and Sensory Interventions for Children with Autism

Featuring Grace Baranek, Ph.D., OTR/L, FAOTA

Sensory processing is a neurological process that organizes the sensations from one's body and from the environment, making it possible to function effectively in daily life. In addition to the 5 well-known sensory modalities (touch, taste, smell, hearing, and vision), there are other less-commonly described modalities: movement, postural, internal, temperature, and pain. Life experiences require us to integrate information from many sensory systems holistically. Therefore, it is important that we understand the sensory processes and how they can affect autistic individuals to learn strategies to help them face sensory challenges.

What We Learned

  • Environments can affect a child’s arousal level. Different people can function better in some environments than others. Stimulating environments can alter arousal levels and make thresholds for sensory information alter in ways that don’t support optimal engagement.
  • Sensory modulation is the brain’s ability to filter sensations and regulate an optimal level of alertness. Sensory modulation difficulties may result in trouble processing the nature or the intensity of sensory input to be matched to the demands of the environment. There can be sensory over-responsivity, sensory under-responsivity, and sensory seeking patterns.
  • Strategies to help regulate a child’s behavior in response to stimuli will vary according to the type of behavior pattern and the environment. Some general strategies are reaching out to occupational therapists, being aware of characteristics of the physical environments, and providing activities that help the child grow and develop.

Strategies for increasing participation and social engagement during everyday home routines for toddlers with ASD

Featuring Wendy Stone, Ph.D.

The success of evidence-based interventions for autistic young children highlights the significance of teaching them within the context of their daily routines. We can find rich social interactions within activities such as bath time and bedtime that can promote the learning of new behaviors. Numerous studies have shown that parents of autistic children can be taught to implement comprehensive behavioral interventions that lead to improvements in child behavioral outcomes and parenting stress and empowerment.

What We Learned

  • Autistic toddlers might present challenges with social communication and social interaction, demonstrate restricted behaviors, interests, or activities, and extreme sensitivity to some types of sensory outputs that can cause discomfort. These challenges can impact daily activities at home.
  • Caregivers should pick one routine to focus on and identify each step in the routine. They should choose one step to improve and identify the child’s current level of participation in that step and select and employ strategies to attain the goal. Different strategies will be used for different challenges.
  • When thinking about strategies, caregivers should consider their child’s understanding of the routines, if steps can be shortened or eliminated for simplicity, and if it is possible to include their child’s favorite toys and activities in the steps.

Executive Function: Bridging Research and Practice

Featuring Deborah Fidler, Ph.D. and Kristen Hayashida, M.Ed., BCBA

Executive functioning is the set of cognitive processes that help us self-regulate so we can plan, prioritize, and sustain effort toward our long-term goals. The processes include working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and planning. Across studies, a moderate level of overall executive function difficulties is observed in ASD with small to moderate challenges being found in each domain, with the largest impact in the area of planning. Executive function skills are important for early learning and practical skills in home, school, and community settings.

What We Learned

  • Executive function was found to be associated with social cognition, and theory of mind in ASD, as well as with activities of daily living. In adults, challenges with executive functioning are associated with mental health and functional outcomes, and self-reported EF in autistic adults significantly predicts academic performance in higher education settings. In school, kindergarteners’ EF performance was found to be associated with academic achievement.
  • Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention was shown to be effective in changing EF skills. Research also suggests that EF skills can and should be directly taught as well as practiced in childhood activities.
  • There are a series of practical interventions for young children that can be applied to support EF. Throughout the lecture, attendees were given a series of examples of skill-building, multiple exemplar training, and generalization interventions to improve the different areas of functioning.