Training Manual for Behavior Technicians Working with Individuals with Autism

Training Manual for Behavior Technicians Working with Individuals with Autism

Jonathan Tarbox

Courtney Tarbox

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

Biographies

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Introduction

Abstract

1.1 Format of the Book

1.2 A Brief Note on Studying With This Book

1.3 Seven Dimensions of ABA

1.4 Foundational Principles

Chapter 2. Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

2.1 History and Background of Autism

2.2 Diagnostic Criteria

2.3 ABA Treatment for Autism

Chapter 3. Measurement and Data Collection

Abstract

3.1 Preparation for Data Collection

3.2 Continuous Measurement

3.3 Other Data Collection Methods

3.4 Summarizing and Graphing Data

Chapter 4. Assessment

Abstract

4.1 Observable and Measurable Descriptions of Behavior and Environment

4.2 Skill Acquisition Assessment Procedures

4.3 Functional Assessment Procedures

Chapter 5. Skill Acquisition

Abstract

5.1 Essential Components of a Written Skill Acquisition Plan

5.2 Session Preparation

5.3 Contingencies of Reinforcement

5.4 Motivating Operations

5.5 Discrete Trial Training

5.6 Naturalistic Teaching Procedures

5.7 Shaping

5.8 Task Analysis and Chaining

5.9 Discrimination Training

5.10 Prompting

5.11 Prompt Fading

5.12 Stimulus Control Transfer Procedures

5.13 Generalization Procedures

5.14 Maximizing Learning Opportunities

5.15 Maintenance Procedures

5.16 Caregiver and Staff Training

Chapter 6. Behavior Reduction

Abstract

6.1 Essential Components of Behavior Reduction Plans

6.2 Antecedent Modifications

6.3 Differential Reinforcement Procedures

6.4 Extinction

6.5 Crisis/Emergency Procedures

Chapter 7. Documentation and Professional Conduct

Abstract

7.1 Documentation

7.2 Legal, Regulatory, and Workplace Reporting

7.3 Professional Conduct

7.4 Stress and Burnout

7.5 Conclusion

Appendix A. Sample Skill Acquisition Ideas Sheet

Imaginary Play Ideas

Imaginary Actions + Objects

Imaginary Locations | Themes

Appendix B. Ethical Guidelines

1.0 Responsible Conduct of Behavior Analysts

2.0 Behavior Analysts’ Responsibility to Clients

3.0 Assessing Behavior

4.0 Behavior Analysts and the Behavior-Change Program

5.0 Behavior Analysts as Supervisors

6.0 Behavior Analysts’ Ethical Responsibility to the Profession of Behavior Analysts

7.0 Behavior Analysts’ Ethical Responsibility to Colleagues

8.0 Public Statements

9.0 Behavior Analysts and Research

10.0 Behavior Analysts’ Ethical Responsibility to the BACB

Appendix C. Sample Field Evaluation

Behavior Technician Competency Exam—School Based Version

A-02 Implement continuous measurement procedures

A-03* Implement discontinuous measurement procedures

A-04* Implement Permanent Product Recording Procedures

A-05 Enter Data and Update Graphs

B-02 Conduct Preference Assessments

B-04 Assist With Functional Assessment Procedures

C-03 Use Contingencies of Reinforcement

C-04† Implement Discrete Trial Training Procedures

C-05† Implement Naturalistic Teaching Procedures

C-06† Implement Task Analyzed Chaining Procedures

C-07* Implement Discrimination Training

C-08* Implement Stimulus Control Transfer Procedures

C-09* Implement Stimulus Fading Procedures

C-10* Implement Prompt and Prompt Fading Procedures

D-03† Implement Interventions Based on Modification of Antecedents

D-04† Implement Differential Reinforcement and Extinction Procedures (LIVE)

D-05† – Implement Differential Reinforcement and Extinction Procedures (ROLE PLAY)

D-06 Implement Crisis/Emergency Procedures According to Protocol (ROLE PLAY)

E-02 Generate Objective Session Notes by Describing What Occurred During Sessions

References

Index

Copyright

Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier

125 London Wall, London EC2Y 5AS, United Kingdom

525 B Street, Suite 1800, San Diego, CA 92101-4495, United States

50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States

The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions

This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein).

Notices

Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods or professional practices, may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information or methods described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN: 978-0-12-809408-2

For Information on all Academic Press publications visit our website at https://www.elsevier.com

Publisher: Nikki Levy

Acquisition Editor: Emily Ekle

Editorial Project Manager: Barbara Makinster

Production Project Manager: Sruthi Satheesh

Cover Designer: Mark Roger

Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India

Biographies

Jonathan Tarbox, PhD, BCBA-D, is the Program Director of the Master of Science in Applied Behavior Analysis program at the University of Southern California, as well as Director of Research and a Regional Clinic Director at FirstSteps for Kids. He is associate editor of the journal Behavior Analysis in Practice and serves on the editorial boards of five major scientific journals related to autism and behavior analysis. He has published two previous books on autism treatment and well over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters in scientific texts. His research focuses on behavioral interventions for teaching complex skills to individuals with autism. He is a frequent presenter at autism and ABA conferences worldwide, and a regular guest on television and radio.

Courtney Tarbox, MS, BCBA, is a Regional Clinic Director at FirstSteps for Kids, an ABA service provider offering comprehensive intervention to children on the autism spectrum. Her early work in developmental disabilities included working in therapeutic, residential, and educational settings, with individuals diagnosed with a variety of developmental disorders and ranging in age from early childhood to adolescence. She has worked at FirstSteps since 2009 and is responsible for designing and overseeing individualized treatment plans that are unique to each child’s needs, as well as monitoring the service provision implemented by behavior technicians to ensure that competent and dedicated individuals are providing intervention leading to meaningful progress for the children with whom they work. She is actively engaged in treatment evaluation research and has published in peer-reviewed journals. She is a regular presenter at autism and ABA conferences and gives parent and community presentations with the aim of dispelling common misconceptions about ABA treatment for children with autism.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Shawn Quigley, Thea Davis, and Demetria Contreras for their input on the content of this book, as well as their generous sharing of behavior technician training resources they have developed. We thank Taira Bermudez for her thoughtful input and guidance on versions of the manuscript. We thank Dr. Jennifer Harris and Lisa Stoddard, for sharing clinical resources used in this book and for creating and leading an incredible organization, FirstSteps for Kids, Inc., that encourages behavior analysts to thrive. We thank our editors at Elsevier, Emily Ekle, and Barbara Makinster, for their guidance on this and the other books we have worked on together. We would like to especially thank our moms, T. Carole Eden and Melody Riggs, for their help with proofreading. We want to thank Jamie Nicole Scott and the rest of the incredible photographers at Spectrum Inspired for the beautiful cover image. Their dedication to documenting the beauty in the everyday experiences of children with autism and their families is truly inspiring. To learn more, visit www.spectruminspired.org.

We dedicate this book to current and future generations of behavior technicians who choose to make their lives about helping families affected by autism. Your dedication means more than you know.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Abstract

Applied behavior analysis (ABA) is a science that uses principles of learning and motivation that have come from decades of scientific research to solve problems of behavior that matter to society. In order to address the most important problems, several levels of practitioners are often needed. ABA services are generally overseen by a masters (BCBA) or PhD (BCBA-D) level Board certified behavior analyst, may receive mid-level oversight by a bachelors level (BCaBA) practitioner, and are implemented directly by Registered Behavior Technicians. Behavior technicians are the ones that work directly with the learners and they are the ones whose behavior most directly affects client outcome. Therefore, when you are working in your future job as a behavior technician, you are going to be the tip of the spear. The job of the behavior technician is hugely important and has tremendous responsibility, but the benefits of the job are truly remarkable. In a very real way, your job will make a meaningful difference in the life of someone every day.

Keywords

Multiple exemplar training; ABA; Registered Behavior Technician; ASD; technical audience

Applied behavior analysis (ABA) is a science that uses principles of learning and motivation that have come from decades of scientific research to solve problems of behavior that matter to society. In order to address the most important problems, several levels of practitioners are often needed. ABA services are generally overseen by a master’s (BCBA®) or PhD (BCBA-D®) level Board Certified Behavior Analyst®, may receive mid-level oversight by a bachelors level (BCaBA®) practitioner, and are implemented directly by Registered Behavior Technicians (RBT™). Behavior technicians are the ones that work directly with the learners and they are the ones whose behavior most directly affects client outcome. Therefore, when you are working in your future job as a behavior technician, you are going to be the tip of the spear. The job of the behavior technician is hugely important and has tremendous responsibility, but the benefits of the job are truly remarkable. In a very real way, your job will make a meaningful difference in the life of someone every day.

Our goal in writing this manual is to provide a written text to be used as part of a 40-hour training program that is based on the Registered Behavior Technician (RBT) Task List (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2013) and is designed to meet the training requirements for the RBT credential. You should print out the task list and refer to it regularly while you read this book and take your training. It is important to note that this book and any training program that it is used as a part of is offered independently of the Behavior Analyst Certification Board® and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Board in any way.

1.1 Format of the Book

This book contains seven chapters. You are reading Chapter 1 right now and we hope your interest is already captured. Chapter 2, Autism Spectrum Disorder, gives you introductory information about autism and ABA and an overview of ABA treatment for autism. Chapter 3, Measurement and Data Collection, teaches you some of the many ways that you will use data collection to measure behavior. Chapter 4, Assessment, teaches you how you will assist your supervisor in assessing behavior. Chapter 5, Skill Acquisition, is the longest and most important chapter because it explains how to teach new skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Chapter 6, Behavior Reduction, teaches you how to decrease challenging behaviors. Chapter 7, Documentation and Professional Conduct, the final chapter, covers professional issues that are critical to your daily practice as a behavior technician.

In this training manual we are going to teach you to speak in a few different languages. First, we are going to teach you the meaning behind the concepts that you need to learn to perform excellently as a behavior technician and to pass the RBT examination. Second, we are going to teach you the technical definition of those terms. Finally, we are going to teach you how to explain those terms to a nontechnical audience. You will notice that we use very plain language and we make no attempt to sound technical or scholarly. For example, we often write something like …do the behavior instead of …execute the response or …having a tantrum instead of …engaging in tantrum behavior. We made this choice of language deliberately because the goal of this book is to teach you the meaning behind the principles and procedures of behavior analysis, not to teach you technically and scientifically perfect language. There is a reason and purpose for technically precise language and we have published other books and articles that are good resources for learning such language. After you achieve your RBT credential and are ready for more training, we encourage you to read Applied Behavior Analysis (Cooper et al., 2007) and Handbook of Early Intervention for Autism Spectrum Disorders: Research, Policy, and Practice (Tarbox, Dixon, Sturmey, & Matson, 2014). For now, we invite you to not worry too much about sounding smart and just focus on learning the meaning behind the many new principles and procedures you are about to be trained in. Similarly, we intentionally left out references to research articles throughout this book. If you are interested, the two books cited above contain thousands of scientific references and including them in this book would only make it less readable.

1.2 A Brief Note on Studying With This Book

A large amount of research has shown that people learn best when they are taught many different examples of a concept. This is called multiple exemplar training (see section on generalization in chapter: Skill Acquisition) and it works as well for teaching learners with ASD as it does for training adult staff members like you. This book is intentionally written to give you terms, the definitions of those terms, and then multiple examples that illustrate the concept. In order to make the learning experience most effective, you should try to create at least three of your own new examples for every new term in the book. If there are other trainees who are being trained with you, we recommend you form study groups and quiz each other. But more