Jason C Vladescu

SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University · Applied Behavior Analysis

Statistics for Applied Behavior Analysis Practitioners and Researchers provides practical and useful content for individuals who work directly with, or supervise those who work directly with, individuals with ASD. This book introduces core concepts and principles of modern statistical analysis that practitioners will need to deliver ABA services. T...

As more staff enter the field of applied behavior analysis, trainers must ensure that staff are trained to accurately perform a variety of behavioral technologies. The purpose of this chapter is to describe best practices in staff training. An overview of behavioral skills training is provided, including a discussion of each component of the traini...

Recent behavior analytic studies have examined behavioral skills training to teach adults to arrange safe infant sleeping environments. These studies were conducted in an analogue environment and with all training components delivered by an expert staff trainer. The purpose of the current study was to replicate and extend this literature by substit...

Play provides children learning opportunities in the natural environment to acquire communication skills. While working to establish skills that may lead to additional leisure and social opportunities of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), procedures need to be both effective and efficient. One way to increase efficiency of teaching is th...

Behaviors maintained by automatic reinforcement pose unique challenges for behavior analysts because identifying and controlling the maintaining consequence variables can be difficult or even impossible. Response interruption and redirection (RIRD) is an evidence-based procedure to reduce such behaviors (Dowdy et al., 2020). While this intervention...

Evaluating the extent to which applied-behavior-analytic interventions are carried out accurately (i.e., procedural fidelity) is important for quality control, data-based decision making, and facilitating optimal consumer outcomes. This study explored several questions related to procedural fidelity in practice by distributing a survey to behavior...

Graphing is an important skill that is used across various career fields. Behavior analysts have examined various methods for training individuals to use various graphing software packages (e.g., GraphPad Prism, Microsoft Excel) to manually create graphs. Behavior-analytic techniques, however, have been underused in fields outside of behavior analy...

Recently, there has been a call for the application of behavior analytic technology to more diverse domains. Although general-case procedures are most often applied in autism service delivery, they can be applied to more diverse domains ranging from organizational behavior management to public health initiatives. This literature review, therefore,...

The purpose of this study was to assess whether variations in visual stimulus presentation during tact training would affect efficacy, efficiency, and the emergence of listener responses. Participants included two preschool-aged children diagnosed with autism. We implemented two teaching conditions using an adapted alternating treatment design with...

Allergic reactions to allergenic foods can pose a lethal threat to children with food allergies. Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of using behavioral skills training (BST) plus in situ training (IST) to teach safety responses to children. However, there has not been an evaluation of using BST to teach food safety to children wit...

Worldwide 4.9 million people died in 2016 from injuries that could have been prevented. An evidence-based behavior-analytic approach to safety instruction could teach valuable safety responses that could decrease the number of preventable childhood and adolescent deaths. This chapter seeks to provide an overview of the research on assessing, design...

The current study examined the efficacy and efficiency of incorporating instructive feedback within matrix training to teach children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to label common characters and cities. Experimenters taught one set of responses using a non-overlapping matrix, a second set of responses using an overlapping matrix, and a third...

Group contingencies are evidence-based behavioral interventions frequently employed in educational settings. Group contingencies are composed of four distinct parameters: (1) a criterion, (2) a reward, (3) target students, and (4) target behaviors. Although it is common practice for teachers to reveal these parameters to students before the interve...

Both caregiver training and the collection of social validity data are considered to be important and integral part of applied behavior analytic treatment for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Previous reviewers have offered repeated calls for increased frequency of social validity data collection but recently, the increased understanding...

This chapter will briefly summarize the applications of VM to staff training and associated benefits. Next, we provide more detailed information about variations of VM, their strengths and limitations, and considerations for incorporating these variations into training. We conclude the chapter with a step-by-step guide for creating video models.

Intraverbal behavior is a type of verbal behavior in which the response form has no point-to-point correspondence with its verbal stimulus. However, the form and occurrence of most intraverbals is under the control of multiple variables. Establishing this form of multiple control may depend on a variety of preestablished skills. The purpose of Expe...

Sleep-related infant deaths are one of the top causes of infant mortality in the United States. A few behavior analytic studies have examined behavioral skills training to teach adults to arrange safe infant sleeping environments. These studies were conducted in an analogue environment, and no data were collected outside the training setting. The p...

Equivalence classes are typically established by teaching arbitrary conditional discriminations with discrete single stimuli as samples and comparisons. The current study was the first to use compound stimuli as both samples and comparisons during training of conditional relations. We compared compound-to-compound stimuli MTS training with the more...

Behavioral skills training (BST) is considered one of the most effective staff training techniques to implement a wide variety of behavioral technologies; however, research has found a lack of implementation of BST across human service settings due to a shortage of organizational time and resources. The purpose of the present study was first to dem...

Objectives Previous reviews highlight the similarities in teaching healthcare and hygiene routines to individuals with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities. Additionally, similar interventions are used when interfering behaviors occur. Although these routines are topographically distinct, there are enough similarities to suggest...

Unlabelled: Evidence-based procedures, such as computer-based instruction, have been used to train staff to implement behavioral technologies with high treatment integrity. The purpose of the present study was to address the gaps in Romer et al. (2021) by assessing the same computer-based instruction module to train relevant staff to implement dis...

Medical personnel play a critical role in caregiver safe infant sleep education. However, training outcomes in the safe infant sleep training literature have been mixed. Promising approaches that warrant further investigation are the use of behavioral skills training and pyramidal training. The current study consisted of two experiments. Experiment...

Staff training is an important line of research to ensure that clinicians in the field of applied behavior analysis provide quality services. One approach to providing training involves the use of asynchronous training materials in which the trainer and trainee do not need to be physically present at the same time. This allows for training despite...

The current study compared equivalence‐based instruction (EBI) to self‐study of American Sign Language (ASL) videos to teach eight 3‐member classes of signs with 24 college students. Four of the equivalence classes consisted of verbs (i.e., throw, touch, blow, spin) and four classes were object nouns (i.e., truck, dollar, egg, ball). Each class con...

Many behavior analysts currently work in school settings, or with individuals who may qualify for educational services through federal special education law. However, it remains unclear what training, if any, behavior analysts receive in this law. Behavior analysts have an ethical responsibility to practice within their scope of competency and in c...

Equivalence-based instruction (EBI) involves the teaching of socially relevant material (e.g., academic material) with stimulus equivalence procedures. In the research literature, training and testing of equivalence classes has been almost exclusively conducted on an individual basis. To extend the literature, the present study compared the effects...

Research is needed to identify staff training techniques that optimize training time and do not require the presence of a staff trainer. Asynchronous training procedures, such as video modeling and computer-based instruction, do not require the simultaneous presence of a trainer and trainee, but include different training characteristics that must...

The purpose of the present study was to use behavioral skills training (BST) that incorporated feedback through the Quality Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (QCPR) Learners application to teach hands-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The QCPR Learners app is an application downloaded to the user's mobile device which is connected to a training...

The impact of Verbal Behavior (Skinner, 1957) on behavior analytic research, although not immediate, has steadily increased. Empirical investigations of verbal operants initially focused on mands and tacts, yet other operants such as intraverbals, echoics, and autoclitics have started to receive more attention. Aguirre et al. (2016) reviewed intrav...

Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder are often taught using discrete trial instruction. Because of low trainer-to-staff ratios commonly found in human service settings, research is needed to find an efficient method to train staff to implement discrete trial instruction with little to no in-vivo training by a qualified trainer. One such...

Behavioral skills training (BST) is an empirically supported procedure consisting of instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. BST is applicable to training a variety of skills, including how to conduct instruction, teach communication abilities, promote activity engagement, and assess preference among service recipients. This chapter will p...

To reduce sleep-related infant deaths, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has identified safe infant sleep recommendations; however, it is unclear which training strategies to teach safe infant sleep practices are most effective. Since the AAP released updated safe sleep recommendations in 2016, no analysis of the safe infant sleep training l...

Due to the low employment rates of adults with autism spectrum disorder, it is important to identify efficient and effective methods to teach these individuals vocational skills. The purpose of the current literature review was to expand on the previous reviews, to identify all studies regardless of participant age that taught vocational skills. A...

The rapid acquisition and generality of skills are important considerations when developing teaching techniques in various educational settings. Acquiring skills without direct teaching reduces instructional time, improves efficiency, and saves money. These desirable outcomes can be achieved through generative instruction such as matrix training. N...

Deficits in safety skills and communication place individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at risk of danger. Abduction prevention remains an understudied area. Video modeling has proven to be effective in some research on teaching safety skills to individuals with ASD. Existing research has yet to assess responding to lures from known peopl...

The current study compared two equivalence-based instruction (EBI) protocols to each other and to a self-study control group to teach classes of logical fallacies to college students. The two different EBI protocols were stimulus-pairing yes-no (SPYN) responding and match-to-sample (MTS). Four three-member logical fallacy classes were taught (i.e.,...

Didactic approaches are commonly employed to train staff despite limited evidence to support their use. On the other hand, behavioral skills training (BST) has been successfully used to teach a range of trainees a variety of skills. Moreover, trainees seemingly value BST components. As such, BST represents a drastic departure from didactic training...

A number of variables may influence the effectiveness and efficiency of skill acquisition. One variable that may be important is set size. The current study replicated and extended Kodak et al. (2020) by evaluating the stimulus set size that led to the most efficient skill acquisition for two adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. More specific...

Accurate analysis of data is vital to the validation of interventions. As such, there has been a recent increase in studies evaluating visual analysis training procedures. However, past investigations have not evaluated direct and indirect visual analysis training methods with matched instructional content that was systematically designed. Furtherm...

Annually, thousands of infant deaths are classified as sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUIDs). In an effort to reduce the risk of SUIDs, the American Academy of Pediatrics has made a number of recommendations to educate caregivers, childcare providers, and healthcare professionals on safe infant sleep practices. The purpose of the current study wa...

One strategy to program for generalization is to vary noncritical features in teaching exemplars, thereby avoiding noncritical features from being highly correlated with reinforcement and thus gaining faulty stimulus control. In the current translational evaluation, 2 groups of adults of typical development were taught to respond to arbitrary stimu...

Stimulus equivalence-based instruction (EBI) was used to teach young children of typical development three 4-member equivalence classes containing contact information from three caregivers (e.g., mother, father, and grandmother). Each class comprised the caregiver's (a) photograph, (b) printed name, (c) printed phone number, and (d) printed name of...

The American Academy of Pediatrics (2016a) has made several recommendations regarding the safe positioning of infants by caregivers, including placing infants in a supine position for sleep and in prone for supervised periods of tummy time. However, caregivers may have difficulty adhering with these recommendations. A small, but growing, number of...

Asynchronous training procedures, which do not require the simultaneous presence of a trainer and trainee, may offer benefits over synchronous training because they may be more efficient, cost‐effective, and easier to disseminate. Additionally, asynchronous training may address low trainer to staff ratios. The purpose of this literature review was...

Instructive feedback (IF) is a modification to discrete trial instruction that may increase instructional efficiency for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Several variations of IF have recently been evaluated in the literature; however, few studies have assessed the effectiveness and efficiency of presenting secondary targets on continuous...

Thousands of children die each year as a result of unintentional injuries. Some of these deaths may be preventable. Given that there are different types of safety responses, a comprehensive review of the literature would provide information on important deficits and avenues for future research. The purpose of the present review was to evaluate the...

Obesity, which increases individuals’ risk for a variety of health problems and is associated with increased health-care expenses, is considered a public health concern due to the rapidly increasing rates of people who are considered obese (World Health Organization [WHO], 2018). One potential method for decreasing rates of obesity is to teach peop...

Over 3,000 children under 10 years old died in 2017 as a result of unintentional injuries (e.g. suffocation, drowning, firearm discharge, burns, and accidental poisonings). Some of these deaths likely occurred when children came across a dangerous item while unsupervised. In the current study two typically developing 4-year-olds were taught to enga...

Procedural integrity errors have widespread implications for the success or failure of behavior analytic interventions. However, previous research has not examined the effects of procedural integrity errors during auditory-visual conditional discrimination with clinical populations. The purpose of this preliminary investigation was to replicate and...

There are over 3,000 sleep related infant deaths each year in the United States. Attempts to teach medical personnel and parents safe infant sleep practices in the infant sleep training literature have demonstrated mixed results. Thus, strategies to teach arrangements of safe infant sleep environments warrant further investigation. Behavioral skill...

Video-based instruction has been effective in teaching a range of skills, including functional living skills, to individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Few studies have compared the efficacy and efficiency across video modality-specifically, comparing video modeling to video prompting. Consequently, practitioners have little empirical guidance...

Unintentional injury is a leading cause of death for infants and children. Although the specific causes of these deaths vary, a subset is the result of contact with dangerous stimuli. Along these lines, effort has been made to evaluate ways to teach children to engage in a safety response when a dangerous stimulus is encountered. Following a discus...

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, there are approximately 3,500 sleep related infant deaths each year in the United States. National campaigns and legislation have advocated adherence to safe sleep practices since the 1990’s, however, rates of infant mortality have remained fairly unchanged since the recommendation of the supine posi...

Noncompliance can be a concern for some children with autism and can affect their interactions with their parents. A token economy may be an effective and easily transportable strategy for parents to provide reinforcement to their children for compliance with directions. The results of this study (a) systematically replicated Spiegel, Kisamore, Vla...

Assessment plays a vital role in the programming and education of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To date, only a small handful of studies have evaluated the use of assessment to identify the most efficient instructional practices for individuals with ASD. This is problematic as these individuals often have difficulty acquiring skills...

All components of behavioral skills training may not be necessary to effectively train staff to implement behavior-analytic technologies with children with disabilities. This study evaluated manualized instruction to train inexperienced staff to implement a token economy with a confederate and collect data on learner responding. A nonconcurrent mul...

Early intensive behavioral intervention is costly and comprehensive; thus, research is needed to identify procedures that increase instructional efficiency for learners with autism spectrum disorder. A growing body of literature provides support for the use of instructive feedback. Broadly speaking, research has shown instruction is more efficient...

Few studies have evaluated the use of assessment to identify the most efficient instructional practices for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. This is problematic as these individuals often have difficulty acquiring skills, and the procedures that may be efficient with one individual may not be for others. The experimenters conducted instru...

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effect of implementing differential reinforcement at different times relative to the onset of teaching new skills to learners with autism spectrum disorder. Specifically, we first determined the most efficient differential reinforcement arrangement for each participant. Using the most efficient a...

The current experiment is a systematic replication of previous studies that evaluated the efficiency of echoic and tact prompts on the acquisition of intraverbals (i.e., French‐to‐English translations) following exposure to each prompt type. We extended these studies by (a) evaluating participants' language skills on standardized assessments, (b) i...

We assessed the effects of trainees observing and rating the accuracy of others implementing a paired-stimulus preference assessment from video on the trainees' subsequent implementation accuracy. These observational experiences increased implementation accuracy with both a confederate and an actual consumer. These results suggest conducting observ...

Teaching individuals a safety response when they encounter a firearm may be one way to prevent accidental injuries or death. Previous researchers have used behavioral skills training (BST) with and without in situ training to teach individuals with and without disabilities to engage in a safety response in the presence of a firearm. However, few st...

Being familiar with world religions and their diverse practices is referred to as religious literacy. The present study compared the effects of stimulus equivalence-based instruction (EBI) and video lecture (VL) to increase religious literacy in middle-school students; 10 participants were assigned to either the EBI or the VL group. Participants in...

Providing a choice of reinforcers is a commonly used strategy with children with autism spectrum disorder; however, less is known about the differential effectiveness and efficiency of providing choices before or after responding during acquisition tasks.Therefore, we evaluated reinforcer choice using untaught targets prior to and following respond...

Behavior analysis is among the most sought-after early-intervention programs for children with developmental disabilities, with language training being a common primary objective. Many early-intervention programs subscribe to a traditional conceptualization of language skills and focus on developing a robust vocabulary. Conversely, Skinner's (Verba...

Social behavior ranges from simple responses (e.g., making eye contact when speaking to another, imitating the behavior of others, initiating conversations) to complex responses such as understanding and taking the perspective of others, empathizing with others, maintaining conversations, using and understanding figurative language, understanding w...

Stimulus equivalence paradigms are successful interventions for teaching individuals a variety of skills. In particular, researchers have taught individuals how to more accurately estimate portion sizes of foods using equivalence-based instruction (EBI). This area of research lacks information on the effects of using nonfood items during EBI. The p...

Correctly installed child passenger safety restraints may reduce the risk of child injury and death during accidents. The present study evaluated behavioral skills training and self‐monitoring to teach correct installation and use of a child passenger safety restraint in the rear‐facing position. Extension probes were conducted with untrained insta...

The primary method of data analysis in applied behavior analysis is visual analysis. However, few investigations to date have taught the skills necessary for accurate visual analysis. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate computer-based training on the visual analysis skills of adults with no prior experience. Visual analysis was taught...

Generalization is a critical outcome for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who display new skills in a limited range of contexts. In the absence of proper planning, generalization may not be observed. The purpose of the current study was to directly compare serial to concurrent multiple exemplar training using total training time per...

Behavior analysts frequently use stimulus preference assessments to identify putative reinforcers for consumers with autism spectrum disorder. The current study evaluated the effect of video modeling with voiceover instruction and on-screen text (VMVOT) and performance feedback to train staff to implement the multiple-stimulus-without-replacement,...

Research on tact acquisition by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has often focused on teaching participants to tact visual stimuli. It is important to evaluate procedures for teaching tacts of nonvisual stimuli (e.g., olfactory, tactile). The purpose of the current study was to extend the literature on secondary target instruction and t...

Providing students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) a choice of putative reinforcers during learning trials may confer advantage during skill acquisition programming. However, such advantage should not be assumed and may not be associated with the most efficient instructional arrangement. In the current study, we taught labels of common object o...

Although choice of task has been effective in reducing noncompliance, it may provide an opportunity to escape from less-preferred tasks. We used a reversal design to evaluate the effects of choice of a low-preference task sequence on noncompliance, task engagement, and duration to complete activities across two individuals with autism spectrum diso...

Few studies have evaluated methods for training decision-making when functional analysis data are undifferentiated. The current study evaluated computer-based training to teach 20 graduate students to arrange functional analysis conditions, analyze functional analysis data, and implement procedural modifications. Participants were exposed to traini...

Children have been taught to demonstrate a safety response when they encounter a dangerous stimulus using behavioral skills training (BST). However, little research has evaluated the usefulness of BST to teach safety skills to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the current study, we evaluated BST to establish a generalized repertoire...

We replicated Fritz, Iwata, Hammond, and Bloom (2013) by evaluating the efficacy of an experimental methodology to identify precursors to aggression displayed by an adolescent with autism spectrum disorder. Using their trial-based precursor analysis, we identified seven precursors to aggression. Next, we compared the outcomes of separate precursor...

The current study examined the outcome of presenting multiple secondary targets in learning trials for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. We compared conditions in which (a) a secondary target was presented in the antecedent and consequence of trials, (b) two secondary targets were presented in the consequence of trials, (c) one secondary t...

Behavior analysts frequently use stimulus preference assessments to identify putative reinforcers for consumers with autism spectrum disorder. The current study evaluated the effect of video modeling with voiceover instruction and on-screen text (VMVOT) and performance feedback to train staff to implement the multiple-stimulus-without-replacement,...

Differential reinforcement procedures may promote unprompted correct responding, resulting in a quicker transfer of stimulus control than nondifferential reinforcement. Recent studies that have compared reinforcement arrangements have found that the most effective arrangement may differ across participants. The current study conducted an assessment...

Noncompliance with requests is a problem for some children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (Wilder, 2011). Video modeling is effective for teaching a variety of skills, but has not received much attention in the parent training literature. The purpose of the current study was to extend the parent training literature by (a) evaluating the effects of v...

The present study compared continuous and discontinuous data collection systems on acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of tacts, and on-task behavior, during discrete trial teaching with three children with autism. A constant prompt-delay procedure was used to teach tacts. Performance across data collection systems was compared using conti...

The identification of putative reinforcers is a critical component of programming for individuals with disabilities. A multiple stimulus without replacement preference assessment is one option for identifying putative reinforcers; however, staff must be trained on the steps necessary to conduct the assessment for it to be useful in practice. This s...