Special education professionals and teachers of students with autism face many behavioral and instructional challenges. In addition to teaching content to a demanding population, teachers are often faced with particular circumscribed and special interests that often take up time and divert attention from the students. It is an educators job to…

Autism is a disorder in the growth and development of a brain or central nervous system that covers a large spectrum of impairment, symptoms and skills. The children who are suffering from autism face difficulties in communicating and adapting well in the community as they have trouble in understanding what others think and feel. Therefore, there…

Self-management is a set of procedures that students can be taught to apply to their own behaviors to change them. In self-management, students are taught to observe, assess, and modify their own behavior. These procedures include such things as self-identifying and observing a target behavior and setting a goal to change it. Self-management…

Restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRBs) are a core symptom of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). There has been an increased research emphasis on repetitive behaviors; however, this research primarily has focused on phenomenology and mechanisms. Thus, the knowledge base on interventions is lagging behind other areas of research. The literature…

Food selectivity by texture is relatively common in children. Treatments for food selectivity by texture have included components such as stimulus fading, reinforcement, and escape extinction. The purpose of the current study was to attempt to treat food selectivity by texture utilizing antecedent manipulations and reinforcement in the absence of…

Echolalia is common in children with autism and may interfere with the development of functional language. Given the variety of vocal stimuli included in teaching language to children with autism, it is possible that discrimination between instructions and targeted responses may not always occur. Thus, children may engage in very high rates of…

We examined a procedure consisting of a preference assessment, prompting, contrived conditioned establishing operations, and consequences for correct and incorrect responses for teaching children with autism to mand "which?" We used a modified multiple baseline design across 3 participants. All the children learned to mand "which?" Generalization…

The behaviors frequently displayed by students with autism can place them at risk for overly reactive behavior interventions with unwanted side effects. The current study examined the level of intrusiveness of behavioral treatments developed for 198 students with disabilities from 13 different states. Results demonstrated that students diagnosed…

As the diagnoses of autism in young children continually increase, the need for families to have access to research-based treatment models that are effective and efficient has become clear. Current research demonstrates the demand for parent-delivered behavioral interventions. The aim of this single-case study, conducted as part of an integrated…

Individuals with autism have difficulty with social skills across the lifespan. Few social interventions have been examined for older individuals with autism who also have significant intellectual disabilities (ID). Previous research suggests that reciprocal imitation training (RIT) improves imitation and social engagement in young children with…

Background: Play is critical for the development of young children and is an important part of their daily routine. However, children with autism often exhibit deficits in play skills and engage in stereotypic behaviour. We reviewed studies to identify effective instructional strategies for teaching play skills to young children with autism.…

Recent research has emphasized the importance of manipulating antecedent variables to reduce interfering behaviors when teaching persons with autism. Few studies have focused on the effects of the rate of teacher-presented instructional demands as an independent variable. In this study, an alternating treatment design was used to evaluate the…

Objective: To examine the efficacy of a modular cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) protocol relative to treatment as usual (TAU) among children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and clinically significant anxiety. Method: A total of 45 children (7-11 years of age) with high-functioning ASD and clinically significant anxiety…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at higher risk for developing self-injurious behaviors (SIB) and other challenging behaviors than typically developing individuals. SIBs often occur owing to deficits in communicative ability and can have undesirable consequences in an individual's environment. This study demonstrated the use of…

This study evaluated the effects of a behavioral summer treatment program for children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFASD). Twenty boys (M = 9.2 years) diagnosed with HFASD participated in the 6-week program across 6 years. Detailed daily behavioral data were collected on a variety of positive and negative social behaviors.…