2023 Events
Together We Go Far: Partnering with Families in Caregiver-Mediated Intervention
Featuring Dr. Mandy Rispoli, Ph.D., BCBA-D
Behavior analysts can enhance cultural responsiveness through steps like compromise, self-reflection, listening, and validation. Caregiver-mediated interventions should involve joint planning, align with family values, and focus on meaningful child outcomes within daily routines. Effective caregiver training includes specific interventions, practice opportunities, feedback, and ongoing support. Coaching, occurring within the home context, is a cyclical process supporting effective teaching practices and emphasizing the importance of building trust.
What We Learned
- Family systems theory helps us understand that the family unit is interconnected. What happens to one individual affect everyone in each family system as there are multiple pathways influence within their interconnectedness. As such, family members provide expertise that benefits providers’ ability to help patients and treatment ends up affecting the entire family unit.
- Caregiver-mediated interventions are interventions designed by professionals for parents to implement, usually within the home. They’re low-dose opportunities within everyday routines and activities to improve desired child outcomes, usually social interactions. These interventions emphasize the bidirectional relationship between parent and child actions by changing parent action, resulting in desired outcomes.
- Training should ideally occur in-home or in a simulated setting that replicates family routines, emphasizing individualized structures and ongoing support. Additionally, the coaching process involves observing intervention implementation, building trust, and focusing on strengths and needs assessments to enhance caregiver skills. The use of platforms with resources facilitates goal setting, planning, and generalization of learning across various routines, allowing for improved fidelity in caregiver-mediated interventions.
Considering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the Autism Service Delivery Pathway: From Research to Practice
Featuring Dr. Gazi Azad, Ph.D., and Dr. James Lee, Ph.D., BCBA-D
Autism interventions should be anti-racist and culturally responsive. There is no one-size-fits all treatment given diverse family needs, wants, values, cultures, and languages. Further, parent self-efficacy, parenting styles, parent-child interaction, amongst other things, should also be considered when treating patients with ASD and their families. As such, outcomes of treatment and parent concerns greatly vary and should be considered by practitioners.
What We Learned
- Implementation science aims to bring evidence-based practices into routine care settings, with the goal of optimizing clinical outcomes. Another topic covered was the facilitators and barriers to providing culturally responsive interventions, particularly to marginalized families. Research conducted by our speakers identified determinants and barriers for offering culturally responsive early Intervention (EI) treatments. Key themes included individual, organizational, and systemic factors affecting cultural responsiveness, highlighting the need for professional development and multi-level approaches.
- Capacity building focuses on how providers can enhance the capacity of other stakeholders in a child’s life through ecological systems and cascading models of intervention delivery. Challenging behaviors online modules (CBOM) were introduced as a tool to increase knowledge on behavioral principles and promote positive parenting. Adaptation of CBOM to local contexts, such as cultural and linguistic adaptations, reflects the needs of diverse communities, especially in low-resource settings. The Cultural Adaptations Checklist aims to address the underutilization of mental health evidence-based practices among minoritized communities by providing guidance on adapting interventions using culturally appropriate language, content, and processes.
- The speakers discussed an “implementation package” comprising various strategies, including a problem-solving consultation model and communication approaches to ensure parents and teachers supplement evidence-based practices. The EPIS model was highlighted, showing positive outcomes in reducing children’s target concerns when parents and teachers aligned their efforts. Improved communication between parents and teachers was reported, with enhanced communication skills and reduced problematic interactions.
Early Childhood Special Education Workshop: Executive Function
Featuring Stephanny Freeman, Ph.D., Kristen Hayashida, M.Ed. BCBA, Patricia Renno, Ph.D., Tanya Paparella, Ph.D., and the KidsConnect Staff
This two-day 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 executive function in the context of behavior problem assessment and using executive functioning skills in CBT approaches. On the second day, attendees visited UCLA to observe two KidsConnect treatment sessions centered around executive functioning whilst also engaging in discussion and activities regarding treatment and best practices.
What We Learned
- Executive functioning skills are those we use to plan, execute, and achieve goals, which require higher order thinking skills. They are paramount to school readiness and are often stunted in children with ASD diagnoses. By understanding these skills and their impact on preschoolers with ASD, professionals can tailor lesson plans, organize children into groups to target EF skills, group children based on their behavioral profiles, and more.
- Based on research conducted by our speakers, preschoolers with ASD who were better at rule shifting had more internalizing issues and more impaired social communication/ interaction. Those with better impulse controls have less impaired social responsiveness. And those with better working memory were more impaired in social communication.
- Executive functioning (flexible thinking, emotion regulation, working memory, sustained attention, organization, task initiation, impulse control, planning, and self-monitoring) impacts all domains of functioning throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, including school readiness, academic achievement, adaptive behavior, social communication, and quality of life.
- Through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and looking at the relationship between our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions, EF challenges common amongst preschoolers with ASD can be lessened. Though, these forms of treatment may be a better fit for cognitively-able and verbal children. Such treatments can be broadly disseminated, which shows their promise.
Considerations in the Assessment and Treatment of Rigid and Repetitive Behaviors
Featuring Jonathan Fernand, Ph.D., BCBA-D
Many types of Rigid and Repetitive Behaviors (RRBs) can occur in specific populations and these are likely to persist in an individual’s life. Without teaching other skills, coping strategies, or alternate options, it can be hard to make RRBs stop. When coming up with a treatment plan, it is important to consider context as a variable and keep in mind that not all RRB warrants intervention and not all RRB warrants reduction to an absolute zero.
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.
Understanding the Lived Experiences of Autistic Adults
Featuring Sneha Mathur, Ph.D., BCBA-D
Although there is a plethora of autism-related research, research related to transition and support needs for autistic adults remains limited. By including autistic people in research design, implementation, and support services, academics and therapists can learn from the neurodiverse about problems that the social and cultural worlds present them with, thereby moving toward a more socially just society.
What We Learned
- Transition planning is most beneficial when it begins early and focuses on client interest and strengths. Capitalizing on individual’s strengths is important, and using passionate interest is a great way to engage and motivate a student to develop unique strengths.
- “Nothing about us without us” — It is important to recognize that knowledge is based on perspective and that listening to those with autism helps us to understand their lived experiences.
- Autistic adults have a diverse set of needs and experiences that are currently not met by society. Trying to reconceptualize how we think about autism helps construct better understanding to be able to better support those with ASD.