Activities to Reduce Inappropriate Behaviors Displayed by Children With Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities

The purpose of this dissertation study is to test the effectiveness of an everyday activities-based protocol (Holm, Santangelo, Fromuth, Brown & Walter, 2000) for managing challenging and disruptive behaviors of 13- to 23-year-old residential students (male and female) with Autism who live at Melmark Homes, Inc., of southeastern Pennsylvania, and attend school or adult day programs. Applied behavior analysis and a focus on everyday occupations (activities) will be combined during the intervention phase. Reinforcement will be for subtask completion and duration of participation, NOT for absence of target maladaptive or disruptive behaviors. Behavior analysts, however, will document the frequency/duration of the target behaviors during each condition. Interventions will occur daily, Monday through Friday. A single-subject, multiple-baseline, across-subjects design with nine subjects will be used to evaluate change in behaviors under alternating conditions. Data will be analyzed...
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