In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the assessment of treatment integrity. Current studies have examined means by which to increase treatment integrity but may be limited by an overreliance on indirect measures of treatment integrity and failure to address multiple training methods within one study. The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between training procedures and treatment integrity. Participants first read a case description and intervention plan for a client (confederate) exhibiting a facial tic. Participants were trained using one of three procedures (didactic, modeling, or rehearsal/feedback) to implement the treatment protocol and then conducted a treatment session with the client. Treatment sessions were coded for accuracy of implementation (integrity). Higher levels of treatment integrity were associated with direct training procedures (i.e., modeling and rehearsal/feedback training). Implications of the results for treatment planning and the potential ramifications for consultants working in the schools are discussed.

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Active student responding is often required to remedy computation skill deficits in students with learning disabilities. However, these students may find computation assignments unrewarding and frustrating, and be less likely to choose to engage in assigned computation tasks. In the current study, middle school students with learning disabilities worked on control assignments containing 15 four-digit minus four-digit target computation problems and interspersal assignments containing 15 similar problems and five additional one-digit minus one-digit problems. Results showed that interspersing the brief problems did not reduce target problem accuracy levels or opportunities to respond to target problems. Students did complete more total problems (i.e., target and single-digit problems) on the interspersal assignment. Even though the interspersal assignment contained more work, significantly more students rated it as requiring less effort to complete and selected it for homework. Discussion focuses on applied implications, causal mechanisms, and future research related to the interspersal procedure and the discrete task completion hypothesis.

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