Telepractice has emerged as a potentially effective means of preparing parents and educators as interventionists for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of telepractice to train interventionists to implement incidental teaching with preschool children with ASD. Three interventionists were taught to implement incidental teaching using a telepractice training package consisting of an online module, self-evaluation, and delayed performance feedback delivered via videoconferencing. A single-case multiple-baseline across-participant design was employed to evaluate the effects of the telepractice training package on interventionist acquisition and maintenance of incidental teaching. The distal effects of interventionist implementation of incidental teaching on child mands were also evaluated. Results showed that following the telepractice training program, interventionist implementation fidelity improved and child mands increased. Within six telepractice sessions, all interventionists reached the preset performance criteria of four consecutive sessions above 90 % fidelity. Changes in interventionist and child behaviors maintained at 2-and 4-week follow-up sessions. Taken together, these results suggest that telepractice is a promising method of providing instruction in incidental teaching to interventionists of young children with ASD.
The use of mobile technology is ubiquitous in modern society and is rapidly increasing in novel use. The use of mobile devices and software applications ("apps") as augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is rapidly expanding in the community, and this is also reflected in the research literature. This article reports the social-communication outcome results of a meta-analysis of single-case experimental research on the use of high-tech AAC, including mobile devices, by individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including autism spectrum disorder. Following inclusion determination, and excluding studies with poor design quality, raw data from 24 publications were extracted and included 89 A-B phase contrasts. Tau-U nonparametric, non-overlap effect size was used to aggregate the results across all studies for an omnibus and moderator analyses. Kendall's S was calculated for confidence intervals, p-values, and standard error. The omnibus analysis indicated overall low to moderate positive effects on social-communication outcomes for high-tech AAC use by individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Antecedent physical exercise has emerged as a potentially promising treatment for reducing challenging behavior and increasing academic behavior in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of physical exercise conducted prior to instructional sessions (antecedent physical exercise) on academic engagement and stereotypy during instructional sessions for two children diagnosed with ASD. Functional analysis results suggested stereotypy was maintained by automatic reinforcement for both participants. A multielement design was employed to evaluate academic engagement and stereotypy during instructional sessions following randomly sequenced conditions involving either (a) no antecedent exercise, (b) brief durations of antecedent exercise, or (c) antecedent exercise that continued until the participant engaged in a systematically determined behavioral indicator of satiation. Both participants demonstrated higher levels of academic engagement and reduced levels of stereotypy during the instructional sessions which followed antecedent physical exercise that continued until behavioral indicators of satiation occurred. This study replicates previous research suggesting that individuals with ASD may benefit from physical exercise prior to academic instruction and further suggests that the duration of antecedent exercise may be optimally individualized based on behavioral indicators of satiation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.