Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder often receive Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention to acquire skills and manage problem behaviors. However, gains made in the clinic cannot generalize to other contexts without caregiver support. Currently, the most common method of providing caregiver training is in vivo, which is resource intensive and inaccessible to many. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relative efficacy of content delivered via self-directed online training modules relative to group in vivo training. After a 6-week training, participants in online and in vivo groups showed significant improvements in positive parent-child interactions and knowledge of Applied Behavior Analysis content compared to the waitlist control group, suggesting comparable effectiveness of both training methods. These results suggest that asynchronous online training can serve as a cost-effective alternative for the delivery of parent training and potentially other behavior-analytic services.

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The current study evaluated the efficacy of a video-based training to teach 4 staff working in a human service setting to use behavioral skills training (BST) to teach job-related skills to others. Low levels of BST integrity were observed during baseline. Immediately after viewing a 13-min training video, 2 participants implemented BST at mastery (i.e., 100% integrity). The remaining 2 participants required brief supplemental performance feedback to reach criterion performance. The effects of the training generalized to training 2 novel skills and maintained in follow-up probes conducted 1 to 4 weeks posttraining. A social validity measure indicated high levels of satisfaction with the video-based training and high acceptability of BST. Implications of these findings for organizational training practices and directions for future research are discussed.

The present study examined whether resurgence of a previously reinforced target response upon removing alternative reinforcement would be greater when (1) returning to the original training context (ABA context changes) versus (2) remaining in the analogue treatment context in which the alternative response was differentially reinforced (ABB context changes). Experiment 1 arranged reinforcement of button pressing with points exchangeable for money in university students. Experiment 2 arranged reinforcement of lever pressing with food for rats. Experiment 3 arranged reinforcement of responses to a touchscreen with small bites of food with children diagnosed with ASD. Overall, resurgence of target responding tended to be greater when returning to the original training context (A) than when remaining in the analogue treatment context (B). These findings suggest context changes with differential reinforcement treatments could exacerbate the recurrence of problem behavior resulting from reductions in treatment integrity through failure to reinforce appropriate behavior.

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