The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Outline

I. Behavioral Observation Efficiency: While documentation of discrete trial training and related ABA observations often follow common formats, forms for parents and forms used by OTs, speech pathologists and non-ABA clinicians are diverse, and reports are largely narrative. The forms used by all are typically individualized for recording narrative, rating scales, checklists and numbers correct, but rarely are consistent across disciplines; the data across disciplines are rarely presented together along consistent timelines. The forms lack data collection versatility, data analytic acuity, power and efficiency. What's more, families rarely participate in the data collection and rarely see charts demonstrating progress and efficacy of interventions. Their data about generalization to extramural behavior are rarely linked to school-based data.

Research to improve the efficiency of behavioral observations and Functional Behavior Assessments through handheld technology was conducted at Georgia Tech University and by some families in Massachusetts; these data will be reported. Staff reported that they spent much less time constructing charts depicting progress and, therefore, were able to spend more session time doing treatment. More frequent chart review led to more increased adjustments of the therapeutic programs. Mobile data collection also enabled more data to be recorded per unit time than was possible with paper and pencil. Families were able to provide school personnel more information about generalization of school treatment to the home environment.

The following data collection issues will be reviewed: A. results of qualitative research about forms used by families and professionals with children on the spectrum; and B. measurement requirements/monitoring metrics (counts, percentages, ratings, latencies, durations, etc.).

II. Intervention Implementation: If and when behavior plans are created with clearly articulated environmental stimulation and reinforcement strategies, their consistent implementation often lags because those working with the children do not have tools to guide them "in the moment." Elaborate point systems and/or token economy systems require computation of points on the fly to give children immediate feedback and reinforcement. It is often difficult to share details of the behavior plans and methods for computation of reinforcement strategies with families for follow-up outside of school.

The following behavior plan implementation issues will be reviewed: A. methods for quantifying activities of daily living, sensory sensitivities, communication and negative behaviors, and associating the behavior with quantitative-based consequences; and B. technologies for simplifying standardization of consequences across behavior domains and communication among team members.

III. Barriers to Adequate Outcomes Evaluation: Staff must transcribe data for charting, limiting the number of observations they make and the data per observation. Charts that communicate vital behavioral differences as a function of task variation take time to make and are therefore costly. The cost of charting is from the time it takes to transcribe the data and do these graphics by hand. Many professionals are not comfortable with the software available to simplify making the wide variety of charting types – line graphs, bar charts, scatter plots -- yet each of these chart types have different communication value for different types of data. Sometimes the chart summarizes behavior aggregated across stimuli, reinforcements and timing. At other times, time or accuracy in different contexts is charted. Progress charting is useful for description and documentation, but also enables exploratory analysis to discover where, when, why and how behavior happens.

The following use of mobile computing in combination with other systems to document progress and help with trigger detection will be reviewed: A. the communication value of a variety of chart types, and B. the range of software available for making charts and including the charts in progress reports.