Effects of Presession Pairing on the Challenging Behavior and Academic Responding of Children with Autism

Abstract

Presession pairing is an antecedent-based procedure in which an instructor engages with preferred items with a child for a few minutes before an instructional session. Although this procedure has been described in manualized treatment guidelines for working with children with autism, there are currently no direct investigations of whether this manipulation has a beneficial impact on target responding or the child's social interactions. Functional analyses with three children with autism showed escape or attention and escape as reinforcers for their challenging behavior. Preference assessments identified highly and moderately preferred stimuli. In the context of a multiple baseline across participants design, the participants exhibited fewer challenging behaviors when instructional sessions were preceded by presession pairing than when they were not. Academic responding showed modest increases. Subsequently, in the presence of presession pairing with a novel task, the participants emitted no challenging behavior and similar or higher levels of accurate academic responding. One participant was available for a maintenance session without presession pairing 5 months later and showed near-zero levels of challenging behavior and comparable levels of accurate academic responding. The implications of the findings and future directions are discussed.

Developing Procedures to Improve Therapist–Child Rapport in Early Intervention

“…While these procedures are recommended in the EI literature (e.g., Sundberg & Partington, 1998), few empirical evaluations have been conducted on their effects on child behavior (e.g., Kelly et al, 2015;Shillingsburg, Bowen, & Shapiro, 2014). Future research should examine the effects of this procedure on variables such as compliance, problem behavior, and acquisition of new skills.…”

“…Rapport, as a component of a treatment package, has been effective in reducing problematic behavior (e.g., McLaughlin & Carr, 2005). Most recently, presession pairing has shown promise in reducing the aversive nature of the therapeutic context as an independent antecedent-based treatment (Kelly, Axe, Allen, & Maguire, 2015;Shillingsburg, Bowen, & Shapiro, 2014). While multiple clinical resources and empirical investigations identifying rapport as an important therapeutic component in EI, there are no technological procedures or operational definitions in research or clinical practice from which to replicate.…”

“…Seven presession pairing skills were selected from previous pairing literature (i.e., Kelly, Axe, Allen, & Maguire, 2015;McLaughlin & Carr, 2005;Shillingsburg, Bowen, & Shapiro, 2014), FA methodology (Iwata et al, 1982(Iwata et al, / 1994, and behavioral parent training (Reitman & McMahon, 2013) to represent the several individual behaviors of presession pairing. Table 1 details each presession pairing skill, the definition, an example of each skill, and the measurement procedure used in the evaluation.…”

Improving quality of life through caregiver training and support

“…It is an effective yet demanding intervention, and children may develop avoidance behavior that limits outcomes. PSP is a technique that tends to involve pairing preferred items and activities with non-preferred stimuli such as demands (Kelly et al 2015). This is used to establish a positive association with those non-preferred stimuli.…”

MOs can evoke behavior and CMOs remain useful: Commentary on Edwards, Lotfizadeh, and Poling (2019)

“…Regarding the reflexive CMO (CMO‐R), Edwards et al () state that it “does not improve our ability to predict and control behavior. Therefore, the concept is of no practical or conceptual value.” Contrary to this statement, behavior analysts have shown that the CMO‐R has both conceptual and practical value (e.g., Carbone, ; Carbone, Morganstern, Zecchin‐Tirri, & Kohlberg, ; Carter & Driscoll, ; DeRosa, Fisher, & Steege, ; Johnson, Rocheleau, & Tilka, 2015; Kelly, Axe, Allen, & Maguire, ; Kettering, Neef, Kelley, & Heward, ; Langthorne & McGill, ; McCormack, Arnold‐Seritepe, & Elliffe, ; McGill, ; Shillingsburg, ; Shillingsburg, Bowen, & Shapiro. ).…”