Use the Electronic Tally Counter to stay on track! This week only, you can also take 15%* off your order of the Electronic Tally Counter by using promo code ETALLY at check-out!
When activated, an audible beep sounds to verify that a count has been registered. With a carrying cord and a large rubber button, the Electronic Tally Counter is an easy-to-use tool.
Don’t forget to apply our promo code ETALLY at check-out to redeem your savings on the Electronic Tally Counter this week only!
Brand-new and just added, these SchKIDules Visual Schedules for Kids are a great and easy way to create visual schedules in the home and classroom. This week only, we’re offering 15% off* the SchKIDules Home Collection and the SchKIDules School Collection! Just use promo code SCHKIDULE when you place your order online or over the phone with us!
This 70-piece Home Collection depicts home essentials, chores, and outings, and is a great tool for easily creating visual schedules in the home. It helps manage communication, expectations, predictability, independence, improving memory, and more.
The Home Collection contains one 14″ x 12″ magnet board; 19 Headings magnets for structuring your schedule including: Days of the Week, Morning/Afternoon/Evening, Numbers 1 to 5, To Do/Done, and First/Then.
Seventy 2″ x 2″ magnets display daily activities such as:
The School Collection contains 30 pieces that depict typical school day activities to support the easy creation of a visual schedule for the day. The School Collection contains one 14″ x 12″ magnet board; 19 Headings magnets for structuring your schedule including: Days of the Week; Numbers 1 to 5; To Do/Done; First/Then; and Morning/Afternoon/Evening. Thirty 2″ x 2″ magnets depict school activities and objects such as:
Don’t forget to use our promo code SCHKIDULE to save 15%* on either or both of the SchKIDule Home Collection and the SchKIDule School Collection this week only!
We’re incredibly excited to let you know about a new collaboration between Sam Blanco, MSEd, BCBA and Val Demiri, PhD that will focus on data collection and effective behavior change in the classroom while utilizing the most effective tools in ABA. Different Roads to Learning is proud to have this excellent resource scheduled for publication in early 2016. The partnership between these two powerhouses is sure to make ABA Tools of the Trade: A Resource for Data Collection and Effective Behavior Change a must-have for your library.
The book bridges the gap between applied research and real-world settings, including the classroom, home, and community environments. It provides information about efficient tools available for effective data collection and meaningful behavior change. Beyond exploring a wide range of tools available for your use, it offers a comprehensive analysis of the decision-making process for increasing desirable behaviors, decreasing maladaptive behaviors, and examining your own behavior.
We’ll be sharing a tip from Sam and Val’s excellent Facebook page – ABA Tools of the Trade – with you every week so be sure to stay tuned.
We’re absolutely thrilled to introduce Function Wheels, an easy-to-use system that enables users to identify the function of behavior and immediately intervene. Created and piloted by Keith Amerson, MSEd, Different Roads to Learning is a proud partner in bringing you the first all-inclusive, systematic approach for identifying the functions of problem behaviors and implementing research-based interventions to manage them.
Get your kit today at the introductory price of $149.95 through July 31st! No promo code necessary.
Click to enlarge.
Be sure to check out this nifty video below for a more in-depth look at the Function Wheels Kit!
Often, we focus on how to improve the behavior of an individual, but there are many times in which teachers must figure out a way to improve the behavior of the entire class. In ABA, we might implement a group contingency, a strategy in which reinforcement for the whole group is based upon the behavior of one or more people within the group meeting a performance criterion (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007).
Group contingencies can be especially beneficial for teachers because it may not always be possible to implement a contingency for an individual or there may be several students who need improvement with the same behavior. It’s also a useful strategy for individuals who respond well to peer influence. Furthermore, there are several studies that demonstrate the group contingencies can increase positive social interactions within a group.
Let’s look at examples of each type of contingency. In the first type, a dependent group contingency, reinforcement for all members of the group depends on the behavior of a single person within the group or a small group of people within the group. For example, you might say, “If Joseph remains in his seat for all of math, we will have five extra minutes of recess today.” This can be highly motivating for Joseph, because his peers will respond well to him if he earns them access to five more minutes of recess (leading some to call it the “hero procedure” because the individual is viewed so positively upon earning the reward.) It’s clear that if you have a student who is not motivated by social reinforcement from peers, this type of contingency would backfire. However, there is plenty of research that shows it’s benefits. (Allen, Gottselig, & Boylan, 1982; Gresham, 1983; Kerr & Nelson, 2002)
In the second type, an independent group contingency, criterion for accessing reinforcement is presented to everyone, but only the individuals who meet criterion earn the reinforcer. For example, you might say “If you remain in your seat for all of math class, you will earn five extra minutes of recess today.” In this contingency, every student who reaches criterion accesses the extra recess time, but those students who left their seat do not earn the extra five minutes. Another example might be, “Each person who turns in all homework earns two bonus points on their spelling test.” In this set up, the entire class is working towards a common goal, but the individuals who achieve the goal earn reinforcement no matter how their peers perform.
In the third type, an interdependent group contingency, reinforcement for all members of the group depends on the behavior of each member of the group meeting a performance criterion. Mayer, Sulzer-Azaroff, & Wallace put it very well when they wrote “Independent group contingencies involve treating the members of a group as if they were a single behaving entity. The behavior of the group is reinforced contingent on the collective achievement of its members” (2014). In many classrooms there some type of independent group contingency in place, such as earning behavior points per class period or keeping your name on the green light (with yellow and red lights indicating problematic behaviors.) It’s quite simple to add an interdependent group contingency to these systems already in place. For example, you might say, “If all students names are still on the green light at the end of math, everyone earns an extra five minutes of recess.” There is evidence that interdependent group contingencies promote cooperation within groups (Poplin & Skinner, 2003; Salend & Sonnenschein, 1989).
Group contingencies are an excellent tool for classroom teachers, as well as anyone else working to manage a group of individuals.
Allen, Gottselig, & Boylan. (1982). A practical mechanism for using free time as a reinforcer in the classroom. Education and Treatment of Children, 5(4), 347-353.
Cooper, Heron, & Heward. (2007). Applied Behavior Analysis – 2nd edition. Englewood Cliffs; NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Gresham, F.M. (1983). Use of a home-based dependent group contingency system in controlling destructive behavior: A case study. School Psychology Review, 12(2), 195-199.
Kerr, M.M. & Nelson, C.M. (2002). Strategies for addressing behavior problems in the classroom (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Mayer, Sulzer-Azaroff, & Wallace. (2014). Behavior Analysis for Lasting Change (3rd ed.). Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing.
Popkin, J. & Skinner, C. (2003). Enhancing academic performance in a classroom serving students with serious emotional disturbance: Interdependent group contingencies with randomly selected components. School Psychology Review, 32(2), 282-296.
Salend, S.J., & Sonnenschein, P. (1989). Validating the effectiveness of a cooperative learning strategy through direct observation. Journal of School Psychology, 27, 47-58.
Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.
Photo courtesy of Books and Blogs by Cindy Andrews
There are many concerns that come up when considering moving a child with autism to a general education setting. One is that the child with autism may not initiate interactions, which makes it less likely they’ll raise their hand to either ask or answer questions. Hand-raising is an important social behavior in the classroom setting as it facilitates learning as well as teacher-understanding of a child’s comprehension of the current topic. In the general education setting, there is much more group instruction than in the special education setting, which makes hand-raising all the more important. A study by Charania, LeBlanc, Sabanathan, Ktaech, Carr, & Gunby (2010) focuses on this skill, stating “Failure to raise a hand when one could answer means a missed opportunity for reinforcement or error correction, whereas raising a hand when one has no subsequent response to provide could be embarrassing or disruptive to ongoing instruction.”
The participants in the study were three boys with autism, ages 8, 9, and 10 who were preparing to transition from a center-based program to a general education setting and had substantial verbal repertoires as assessed by the VB-MAPP. The researchers recognized that often the boys would know the correct answer to a question posed by the teacher during a group activity, but would not raise their hands to respond. They addressed this by building three successive skills. The goal was to teach the boys to raise their hand when they did know the answer, and keep their hands down when they did not know the answer.
In the first task, the boys were placed together for group instruction. Each child was given an opaque bag with a different item in it. The instructor would ask “Who has the [item]?” The boy with that item would raise his hand. Once this skill was mastered, the second task was introduced. In this task, the instructor would tell one boy a “secret” word, while whispering a greeting to the other two boys. The instructor would then ask “Who knows the secret word?” The boy who heard the secret word would raise his hand. Finally, after mastering the second task, the final task would be introduced. Here, the task involved providing verbal responses to factual questions, such as “What animal has a tail and four legs?”
This successive teaching of skills is important to the acquisition of the target skill. In the first task, there was an auditory and a visual stimulus provided to elicit the target response of hand raising (the question and the object in the bag). In the second task, the visual stimulus was replaced with another auditory stimulus, making it two auditory stimuli (the question and the whispered secret word). Finally, the last task consisted of the auditory stimulus, the question itself. The final task emulated the stimulus that would naturally occur in the classroom to elicit hand-raising.
The authors note in their discussion that “The results suggest the importance of conducting both hand-up and hands-down learning trials to establish discriminated responding, rather than simply reinforcing hand raises on every question (i.e., excessive hand raising during hands-down trials might be just as problematic as a complete lack of hand raising).” The method of successive conditional discrimination can be useful for teaching both children who do not raise their hands when they should or who raise their hands when they shouldn’t. All three boys learned how to raise hands appropriately for each of the three tasks. And while there are many more skills related to hand-raising that the three participants would need to learn, the skills taught in this study are essential to promoting success in the general education environment.
Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.
Last year, I had the opportunity to interview Gary Weitzen, the Executive Director of POAC Autism Services and the Autism Shield Program. (You can see the blog post about that interview here.) In the months since our interview, many of his comments have stuck with me, but one in particular has impacted my daily work with students. He said, “A lot more boys have autism than females but the vast majority of educators in special ed, and in particular with autism, are females.” He went on to provide examples of how this fact influences some skill development, specifically with toilet training.
This leads to several considerations to take into account when toilet training boys. I agree with Weitzen that some of these issues arise from the simple fact that women are predominantly toilet training boys. However, it’s also possible that such issues arise from the fact that many boys are trained in early intervention or preschool years without consideration of the implications of those training techniques several years down the line, and without further intervention or training later in life. Either way, it’s important to recognize that training of life skills should be completed in such a way as to develop effective skills that are similar to those of the child’s same-age peers. To that end, here are two considerations:
Consider hygiene. Something I had never thought about prior to my conversation with Weitzen is that after boys use the bathroom, then zip up their pants, it’s easy for a little urine to drip onto their pants. Especially once children reach upper elementary and middle school grades, a spot of urine can be socially isolating or an invitation for bullying. Weitzen acknowledges that it can be difficult to teach boys to gently shake their penis before zipping up, especially because teachers don’t want to inappropriately touch the students. However, for the long term, it’s essential that teachers find a way to teach this simple action.
Consider the topography of the behavior. When we think about topography, we basically mean, “What does the behavior look like.” When initially toilet training, teachers will typically have the student pull his/her pants down to the floor. Weitzen shared a personal experience from several years ago, when he was a chaperone on a field trip with his son who is autistic. At one point, the teachers asked him to take the boys to the bathroom, so Weitzen went in with eight 14-year-old boys with autism. He said, “They took their pants and pushed them right down to their knees at the urinal at Medieval Times. So we had seven hairy tushies in the room. Out in public! And what happens is other dads and other boys came in there and everyone’s laughing and commenting and pointing.” This is the type of situation that teachers and parents do not want students to experience. When toilet training, it’s essential to recognize that the topography of the behavior in the male restroom is to unzip the pants, and then pull the fabric aside in order to urinate in the urinal. While it may be easier to teach students to pull their pants down in the initial phases of toilet training, it’s important to continue shaping behavior until it has the appropriate topography.
If our students continue to pull their pants down completely, they become targets for bullying, or worse. Weitzen says that on multiple occasions, he’s had parents report to him that their child used the bathroom at the urinal, and when they pulled their pants to the floor, another student took a picture of them. “Four different moms told me that, and if four moms told me that, I can’t imagine how often that’s happening,” Weitzen said. “And even if they’re not sharing the photo, well now you’re the weird kid who sticks his butt out. And you’re isolated and you’re picked upon, so we have to be real. We have to realize our guys live in the real world and teach them the skills that they need.”
Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.
When I first came across this study, Behavioral Training for Siblings of Autistic Children, I was immediately hesitant. There’s something about the idea of sibling-as-therapist that makes me cringe a little bit. When I work with the families of children with autism, the hope is that the siblings of the child with autism still have a childhood without being pushed into the role of caregiver. And I also want the child with autism to have independence and feel like an individual who is heard, which may be more challenging if their siblings are issuing demands just as a parent or teacher would. But as I read the study, I realized that the work they completed had incredible social significance.
In the study, there were three pairs of siblings. The ages of the children with autism ranged from 5 years old to 8 years old. The ages of the siblings ranged from 8 years old to 13 years old. The researchers trained each sibling of a child with autism how to teach basic skills, such as discriminating between different coins, identifying common objects, and spelling short words. As part of this training, the researchers showed videos of one-on-one sessions in which these skills were taught, utilizing techniques such as reinforcement, shaping, and chaining. What the researchers did next was the part that really stood out to me: they discussed with the siblings how to use these techniques in other environments. Finally, the researchers observed the sibling working with their brother/sister with autism and provided coaching on the techniques.
It should be noted here that the goal of the study was not to have the siblings become the teacher of basic skills. Instead, it was to provide a foundation of skills in behavioral techniques for the sibling to use in other settings with the hope of overall improvement in the behaviors of the child with autism. The researchers demonstrated that, after training, the siblings were able to effectively use prompts, reinforcement, and discrete trials to effectively teach new skills. But, perhaps the most meaningful aspects of the study were the changes reported by both siblings and parents. The researchers provide a table showing comments about the sibling with autism before and after the training. One of the most striking comments after the training was, “He gets along better if I know how to ask him” (p. 136). Parents reported that they were pleased with the results and found the training beneficial.
This study provides excellent evidence that structured training for siblings has real potential for making life a little easier for the whole family. The idea isn’t that they become the therapist, but instead that knowledge truly is power.
Schriebman, L., O’Neill, R.E. & Koegel, R.L. (1983). Behavioral training for siblings of autistic children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. 16(2), 129-138.
Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.
We’re thrilled to announce that the popular Time Timer Watch PLUS (Youth Size) now comes in new, bright colors! The Time Timer Watch PLUS allows you to visually see how much time has elapsed while simultaneously displaying the actual time. It has a sporty design and uses simple icons and a large display to ensure ease of use for all age and ability levels.
This week only, take 15% off* your order of a brand new Time Timer Watch PLUS with promo code TIMER15 at checkout!
Ideal for anyone who wants a discrete and portable visual timer, the Time Timer Watch PLUS is customizable: there are two Time Timer modes (Original 60 minutes and Customized), vibrating and/or audible alerts and repeatable time segments for interval training. There is also a 12- or 24-hour clock with one alarm.
Water-resistant, the soft, silicon watch band measures from 4.75″ to 7″, making it perfect for children or adults with small wrists. The Youth Watch PLUS comes in bright, vibrant blue, green or berry and in charcoal.
Watch the video below to see how the Time Timer Watch PLUS works!
Don’t forget to use our promo code TIMER15 at check-out to save 15%* on your order of the Time Timer Watch PLUS (Youth Size).
*Offer is valid until 11:59pm EST on April 14th, 2015. Not compatible with any other offers. Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in your code at check out!
The YAI Autism Center in New York City will be hosting free social skills groups every Thursday for teens aged 15–18 years and on the autism spectrum starting on April 23, 2015. 
This social skills group will promote positive peer relationships among teens through role playing, recognizing emotions, social stories, and modeling. This group is ideal for teens who can independently engage in conversation.
Group Information
Time: Every Thursday from 4:00–5:00 pm EST
Location: 460 W. 34th Street, New York, NY 10001
For intake information, please contact Michelle Lang at (212) 273-6238 or at michelle.lang@yai.org.