Despite the need for braille literacy, there has been little attempt to systematically evaluate braille-instruction programs. The current study evaluated an instructive procedure for teaching early braille-reading skills with 4 school-aged children with degenerative visual impairments. Following a series of pretests, braille instruction involved providing a sample braille letter and teaching the selection of the corresponding printed letter from a comparison array. Concomitant with increases in the accuracy of this skill, we assessed and captured the formation of equivalence classes through tests of symmetry and transitivity among the printed letters, the corresponding braille letters, and their spoken names.

Most often functional analyses are initiated using a standard set of test conditions, similar to those described by Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, and Richman (1982/1994). These test conditions involve the careful manipulation of motivating operations, discriminative stimuli, and reinforcement contingencies to determine the events related to the occurrence and maintenance of problem behavior. Some individuals display problem behavior that is occasioned and reinforced by idiosyncratic or otherwise unique combinations of environmental antecedents and consequences of behavior, which are unlikely to be detected using these standard assessment conditions. For these individuals, modifications to the standard test conditions or the inclusion of novel test conditions may result in clearer assessment outcomes. The current study provides three case examples of individuals whose functional analyses were initially undifferentiated; however, modifications to the standard conditions resulted in the identification of behavioral functions and the implementation of effective functionbased treatments. Descriptors aggression; autism; functional analysis; methodology; motivating operations; negative reinforcement; peer attention; siblings; social escape Functional analysis is a robustly-researched and experimentally-rigorous behavioral assessment technique for identifying environmental variables that occasion and maintains problem behavior (Hanley, Iwata, & McCord, 2003). This assessment technique, first described by Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, and Richman (1982/1994), involves exposing consumers' problem behavior to potentially evocative environmental situations in which putative reinforcing events are withheld and delivered dependent upon problem behavior. Through direct observation and measurement of problem behavior during repeated exposure to these

The current study compared the differential effects of choice and no-choice reinforcement conditions on skill acquisition. In addition, we assessed preference for choice-making opportunities with 3 children with autism, using a modified concurrent-chains procedure. We replicated the experiment with 2 participants. The results indicated that choice-making opportunities increased treatment efficacy for 2 of the 3 participants, and all 3 participants demonstrated a preference for choice-making opportunities.

The current investigation evaluated repertoires that may be related to performance on auditory-to-visual conditional discrimination training with 9 students who had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The skills included in the assessment were matching, imitation, scanning, an auditory discrimination, and a visual discrimination. The results of the skills assessment showed that 4 participants failed to demonstrate mastery of at least 1 of the skills. We compared the outcomes of the assessment to the results of auditory-visual conditional discrimination training and found that training outcomes were related to the assessment outcomes for 7 of the 9 participants. One participant who did not demonstrate mastery of all assessment skills subsequently learned several conditional discriminations when blocked training trials were conducted. Another participant who did not demonstrate mastery of the auditory discrimination skill subsequently acquired conditional discriminations in 1 of the training conditions. We discuss the implications of the assessment for practice and suggest additional areas of research on this topic.

Although the field of autism intervention and treatment is still emerging, a lack of knowledge about what to do should no longer be considered a significant challenge facing service providers. Recent large-scale, systematic, and robust research reviews have identified interventions with strong empirical evidence of effectiveness in some outcome areas. The results of these reviews provide support for the use of specific treatments with individuals who have autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially within certain subpopulations. Two initiatives, in particular, the National Autism Center's (NAC; 2009) National Standards Project (NSP) and similar efforts by the National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorders (NPDC; Odom, Collet-Klingenberg, Rogers, & Hatton, 2010; Wong et al., 2014), have resulted in the dissemination of lists of empirically validated treatments that can be implemented by teachers, parents, and therapists. Although differing somewhat in methodology, scope, and definitions (NPDC, 2013), the NSP and NPDC studies independently and reliably identified autism interventions and treatments considered to be "established" and "confirmed," respectively, as evidence-based practices (EBPs) in autism. The NPDC list originally specified 24 confirmed EBPs, 18 of which were also identified as established treatments by the NSP. Additional EBPs have recently been added (and one was removed) by the NPDC (Wong et al., 2015). Both the NSP and NPDC reviews developed criteria to systematically analyze the content (i.e., the "quality, quantity, and consistency," NAC, 2009, p. 31) of research findings and their corresponding strength of evidence. Both research teams sought to ensure adequate empirical evidence was available to reliably determine the efficacy of treatments for individuals with ASD before labeling any intervention as an established, confirmed, or emerging EBP. Despite this encouraging development, research in special education, applied behavior analysis (ABA), and other therapeutic fields suggests empirical evidence of effectiveness is often not sufficient to ensure the widespread use of potentially effective interventions, treatments, and programs (e.g., Bodfish, 2004; Carter, 2010). Although using EBPs in the public education of children with autism and other disabilities is mandated by federal regulations (e.g.