PennABA 2008 Conference Presentations

Workshops / Speaker Series

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Workshop 1

"Teaching Social Skills to Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders"

Mary Jane Weiss, Ph.D., BCBA

Workshop 2

"Applied Behavior Analysis for School-Age Children

with Autism Spectrum Disorders"

Tristram Smith, Ph.D.

Workshop 3

"From Automatic Reinforcement to Appropriate Social Behavior:

Assessing and Treating Stereotypic Behavior"

William Ahearn, Ph.D., BCBA

Speaker Series 1

“What's New in Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention?"

Tris Smith, Ph.D.

Speaker Series 2

"A Conceptual Analysis of Social Deficits in Children

with Autism Spectrum Disorders"

William Ahearn, Ph.D., BCBA

“Teaching Social Skills to Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders"

Mary Jane Weiss, Ph.D., BCBA

Rutgers University

This workshop will address several strategies for building social skills in learners with autism

spectrum disorders. Strategies for building social responsiveness, social initiations, and social

comprehension will be described.  Issues such as quality of response, independence of response,

and speed of response will be reviewed.  Special attention will be given to the use of role plays

and rule cards as strategies to teach socially relevant behaviors.  The use of formal and

naturalistic teaching strategies will be reviewed, and options for tracking progress objectively

will be discussed.

"Applied Behavior Analysis for School-Age Children

with Autism Spectrum Disorders"

Tristram Smith, Ph.D.

University of Rochester Medical Center

The needs of school-age children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are complex, differing

in many respects from those of younger children and evolving continually as the students

advance through elementary, middle, and high school. In addition, school-age children with

ASD are heterogeneous, with varying degrees of deficit in social interaction and

communication, and with cognitive and academic functioning ranging from superior to severely

delayed. Family, school, and community factors also must be considered in order to prepare

the students for independent, fulfilling lives as adults. While many treatment manuals and other

resources are available to support effective early intervention for preschoolers with ASD, few

resources are available to guide behavior analysts in setting up comprehensive intervention

programs for older children, especially those included in public education settings. However,

research has identified skills that are particularly important to teach to students with ASD,

evidence-based instructional strategies, effective methods for training non-specialists to

implement these strategies, and approaches for creating teams that facilitate high-quality

services. This workshop integrates this information to outline a step-by-step process for

developing comprehensive programs for school-age children with ASD in public schools.

"A Conceptual Analysis of Social Deficits in Children with ASDs"

William Ahearn, Ph.D., BCBA

"What's New in Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention?"

Tristram Smith, Ph.D.

University of Rochester Medical Center

Since 2005, a number of new studies have appeared on intensive early behavioral intervention

(EIBI) for children with autism.  These studies have yielded important information on the

outcome of EIBI, amount of EIBI that children should receive, age when children should start

EIBI, and effects of EIBI programs in community settings.  In addition, investigators outside of

applied behavior analysis are beginning to report research findings on novel interventions. The

goal of the presentation is to review this information and discuss its implications for children,

families, and service providers. 

"From Automatic Reinforcement to Appropriate Social Behavior:

Assessing and Treating Stereotypic Behavior"

This presentation will briefly review research on the prevalence and etiology of

stereotypy. Stereotypic behavior has been found to occur in both typically developing

persons and individuals with disabilities. It typically, but not always, is maintained by

automatic reinforcement by the sensory consequences produced by engaging in it. A few

studies have shown that stereotypy can also be maintained by escape from demands and

access to attention. Besides being encountered in many different situations, stereotypy

occurs in many different forms. Various forms of stereotypy, such as gross motor, fine

motor and vocal stereotypy and the challenges to defining and assessing them will be

discussed. Assessment procedures and data compiled using these techniques will be

presented for children and young adults that engage in various forms of stereotypy. A

discussion of the concept of automatic reinforcement, its relevance and the implications

of recent research on the persistence of automatically reinforced behavior will occur.

Intervention strategies will also be presented, through case examples, to demonstrate how

successful interventions have been developed in different environments in which

stereotypy is problematic. Intervention procedures discussed will include response

competition, differential reinforcement, prompting/teaching prosocial behavior, and

response interruption/redirection.

"Comprehensive ABA Programming"

Within ABA, there are different instructional approaches which can be used effectively to teach

skills to students.  This address will summarize several ABA instructional methods for teaching

skills, and will highlight the potential relevance and utility of each approach.  Specifically,

well-documented methods which will be covered include discrete trial instruction, incidental

teaching, and other naturalistic strategies.  Additional promising directions which have been

increasingly implemented in recent years will also be reviewed, including the use of the Verbal

Behavior classification system and rate-building to achieve fluency.  The presentation will

highlight the unique applications and advantages of each approach, and will summarize how

the use of multiple methods of instruction results in a more comprehensive program.  Finally,

we will discuss how the provision of comprehensive ABA services meets the needs of learners

in more complete and efficient ways.