Parent Perceptions of Behavior Analytic Interventions.

Unlabelled: Current trends in the general American population favor parenting strategies with a relationship-focused approach highlighting secure attachment, respecting children, parenting proactively, showing empathic leadership, and using positive discipline. However, these strategies generally have not been validated by the research literature or may be based on behavior analytic strategies without reference to their origins. Although behavior analytic strategies have been shown to be effective throughout decades of research, these approaches have acquired a negative reputation in many communities with the perception of applied behavior analysis (ABA) being cold, harsh, and robotic.

A method to establish stimulus control and compliance with instructions.

We evaluated a unique procedure to establish compliance with instructions in four young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who had low levels of compliance. Our procedure included methods to establish a novel therapist as a source of positive reinforcement, reliably evoke orienting responses to the therapist, increase the number of exposures to instruction-compliance-reinforcer contingencies, and minimize the number of exposures to instruction-noncompliance-no reinforcer contingencies. We further alternated between instructions with a high probability of compliance (high-p instructions) with instructions that had a prior low probability of compliance (low-p instructions) as soon as low-p instructions lost stimulus control.