Autism and other child developmental disorders: Early behavior-analytic interventions.

Abstract

This special issue of Behavior Development Bulletin attempts to bring together in an integrated way the latest research and advancements in the field of child and infant autism and behavior analysis. The issue contains 18 articles that include research, theory, and practice, with an emphasis on early behavioral interventions. The issue begins with the work of Neimy, Pelaez, Carrow, Monlux, and Tarbox (2017), which identified the early markers of infants and children at risk of developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other developmental disorders, and reviewed studies that used operant conditioning to shape critical social skills that are typically missing in these children. It continues with Eby and Greer’s (2017) report of two experiments on the effects of social attention versus token contingencies on the emission of verbal operants by preschoolers, with and without disability diagnoses, as well as Schmelzkopf, Greer, Singer-Dudek, and Du’s (2017) research on two experiments examining the effects of establishing conditioned reinforcers for adult attention on the initiation and continuation of vocal verbal operants by 3and 4-year-olds. Next, Olaff, Ona, and Holth (2017) examined the establishment of naming in children with autism through multiple response-exemplar procedures that expanded on previous findings. In this research, the participants had to echo the teacher’s tacts of the sample stimulus during matching-to-sample training before naming probes occurred. This special issue also includes a review of the research literature supporting the importance of imitation as an effective therapy for children with ASD (Field, 2017). Kent, Gavin, Barnes-Holmes, Murphy, and Barnes-Holmes (2017), in a series of three studies, investigated specific relational responding repertoires and the importance of sequencing the training in typically developing children and children with autism. Subsequently, Speckman, Longano, and Syed (2017) conducted an experimental demonstration of conditioning three-dimensional objects as reinforcers of imitation and match-tosample responses of young children with autism. Cihon et al. (2017) demonstrated that textual prompts and transfer of stimulus control can be effective in establishing intraverbal responses regardless of the inclusion of fluencybased instruction. It continues with a paper by Bennett, Crocco, Loughrey, and McDowell (2017) that reports the effects of video prompting without narration on a daily living skill among students with autism, and an experimental manipulation by Rodriguez and Gutierrez (2017) to compare operant and respondent procedures to condition social stimuli to function as reinforcers in children with autism. The issue also includes Hayes, Stewart, and McElwee’s (2017) careful examination of the use of the relational evaluation procedure in research considering theoretical approaches including joint stimulus control and relational frame theory. It contains Ashbaugh, Koegel, and Koegel’s (2017) investigation of specialized programs to assist college students with ASD to succeed, Commons et al.’s (2017) report of an instrument to measure developmental outcomes in ASD, Voulgarakis, Bendell-Estroff, and Field’s (2017) review of inEditor’s Note. This is an introduction to the special issue of Behavioral Development Bulletin, “Autism and Other Child Developmental Disorders: Early Behavior-Analytic Interventions.” Please see the Table of