Alan E. Harchik

Social Skills Intervention for Children with Autism during Interactive Play at a Public Elementary School

We evaluated a social skills intervention with four children who had autism during interactive play with typical peers at a public elementary school. Paraprofessional staff (classroom assistants) used preteaching, rewards, and prompting to increase social initiations by the children toward peers. The children’s social responses to peer initiations also were measured and rewarded. Intervention was introduced in a multiple baseline design and produced increases in social interactions between the children and peers. The application of social skills training in naturalistic settings and topics for future research are discussed.

Training Instructional Skills With Paraprofessional Service Providers at a Community-Based Habilitation Setting:

The present study evaluates a training program with paraprofessional service providers at a community-based habilitation setting. Four staff were taught to implement alternative and augmentative communication instruction with an adult who had autism and mental retardation through a combination of instruction, demonstration, behavior rehearsal, and performance feedback. Training was conducted under natural conditions at the adults group home residence. Three of the four staff were able to maintain near-100% instructional accuracy following initial training. The results add to the limited research literature concerning community-based training of direct-care personnel.

The Use of Self-Management Procedures by People with Developmental Disabilities: A Brief Review.

Self-management procedures, such as self-monitoring, self-administering consequences, and self-instructing, are frequently taught to people with developmental disabilities. In this paper, research examining the use of self-management procedures is reviewed and critiqued. Areas for future investigation are discussed.

Elimination of Drooling by an Adolescent Student with Autism Attending Public High School.

We evaluated a multicomponent intervention that successfully eliminated drooling by a 17-year-old student with autism who attended a public high school. The student was taught to perform compensatory responses (wiping his mouth and swallowing saliva), received positive reinforcement for having a “dry mouth,” and was given opportunities to monitor his appearance. Implemented in a multiple-baseline design across three school locations, intervention was applied with high integrity and judged positively by staff.

Choice and Control New Opportunities for People with Developmental Disabilities

Over the past few years, people with developmental disabilities have had an increasing number of opportunities to make choices and have control over their lives. There has also been a considerable amount of experimental research conducted on the effects of providing opportunities to make choices or to exercise control. The results of this research strongly suggest that providing opportunities for choice and control over events can affect the degree to which people participate in activities, the types of behaviors displayed during the participation, and peoples perceptions about the situation. This article reviews this experimental research, discusses traditional views and current perspectives regarding choice and control for people with developmental disabilities, and presents ways of increasing the amount of choice and control available to people with developmental disabilities.

The Use of High-Probability Requests to Increase Compliance with Instructions to Take Medication.

A simple, positive procedure was used to increase the number of times that a woman with severe disabilities complied with requests to take prescribed oral medication. The procedure involved asking the woman to follow a number of requests with which she typically complied, reinforcing her compliance with these requests, and then presenting the request to take the medication. The procedure was implemented by direct-care staff during their daily ongoing responsibilities and was functionally related to increases in the number of times that she complied with the request to take her medication.