The effect of response interruption and redirection with and without a differential reinforcement of alternative behavior component on stereotypy and appropriate responses

A review of the concurrent-chains arrangement to assess intervention choice: 2018-2023

The purpose of this review is to summarize recent literature on the use of concurrent-chains arrangements in the assessment of preference for interventions (or intervention components) in the applied literature. The types of interventions and participants are described briefly, and procedural variations, ethical considerations, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Brief Report: Mobile Technology to Support Parents in Reducing Stereotypy

Although behavioral interventions have been known to effectively reduce stereotypy in children with ASD, these types of interventions are not accessible to all families. In response to this issue, we evaluated the effects of the iSTIM, an iOS application designed to support parents in the reduction of stereotypy in their child with ASD. We used a series of AB designs to determine the effectiveness of the iSTIM on stereotypy using parents as behavior change agents. The use of iSTIM by the parents led to a reduction in stereotypy for six of seven participants. Our results suggest that the use of technology may be a cost effective and easily accessible method for parents to reduce stereotypy in their child with ASD.

Collaborative Research Project: Developing and Testing a Robot-Assisted Intervention for Children With Autism

The present work is a collaborative research aimed at testing the effectiveness of the robot-assisted intervention administered in real clinical settings by real educators. Social robots dedicated to assisting persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are rarely used in clinics. In a collaborative effort to bridge the gap between innovation in research and clinical practice, a team of engineers, clinicians and researchers working in the field of psychology developed and tested a robot-assisted educational intervention for children with low-functioning ASD (N = 20) A total of 14 lessons targeting requesting and turn-taking were elaborated, based on the Pivotal Training Method and principles of Applied Analysis of Behavior. Results showed that sensory rewards provided by the robot elicited more positive reactions than verbal praises from humans. The robot was of greatest benefit to children with a low level of disability. The educators were quite enthusiastic about children's progress in learning basic psychosocial skills from interactions with the robot. The robot nonetheless failed to act as a social mediator, as more prosocial behaviors were observed in the control condition, where instead of interacting with the robot children played with a ball. We discuss how to program robots to the distinct needs of individuals with ASD, how to harness robots' likability in order to enhance social skill learning, and how to arrive at a consensus about the standards of excellence that need to be met in interdisciplinary co-creation research. Our intuition is that robotic assistance, obviously judged as to be positive by educators, may contribute to the dissemination of innovative evidence-based practice for individuals with ASD.