This projects evaluates two different methods for mitigating the effects of treatment integrity failure. Despite abundant caregiver training, caregivers often fail to fully adhere to recommended treatment protocols, such as functional communication training; these failures may be instances in which communication goes unnoticed, or instances in which problem behavior produces a reinforcer. In the first phase, we compare continuous to intermittent schedules of reinforcement for communication during an initial communication training phase, and then evaluate persistence of the communication during subsequent treatment integrity failure conditions. In the second phase, we alternate full-integrity treatment sessions with reduced integrity treatment sessions in a “booster” style, and evaluate whether communication persists during the reduced integrity sessions. Data presented at BABAT 2017 and ABAI 2017
Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC)
Autism Research Database (AFD)
