بررسی اثر ناظر بر آموزش انطباقی در نوجوانان مبتلا به اوتیسم

Three mothers conducted behavioral observations of video clips of a mother conducting compliance training to varying degrees of accuracy. Subsequently, two mothers correctly conducted compliance training and their children emitted compliant behavior. Upon addition of feedback, the third mother correctly implemented compliance training and her child also emitted complaint behavior. Conducting behavioral observations may be a viable and efficient option for training parents to conduct compliance training and, if ineffective, can be supplemented by feedback.

Approximately 1 in 88 children are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in the USA (Baio, 2008) and applied behavior analysis is one of the few evidence-based practices for ASD (National Autism Center, 2009). Although behavioral skills training may be effective in training parents to implement ABA (Sarakoff & Sturmey, 2004), there is a continuing need to develop maximally efficient training methods, including those that could be disseminated through web-based technology. One promising method that has been effective and efficient in changing behavior is the so-called observer effect, which refers to the effects of conducting behavioral observations on the subsequent behavior of the observer. For example, Alvero and Austin (2004) found that when undergraduate students working in a simulated office observed and collected data on a confederate's safe and unsafe posture that their own behavior subsequently changed in that they emitted more safe behavior. Two papers have evaluated the effects of behavioral observations on staff performance when working with individuals with disabilities. Guerro and Dixon (2011) evaluated the effects of making behavioral observations of videotapes of appropriate interaction skills in staff working with individuals with acquired brain damage. They found that behavioral observations resulted in large increases in staff interactions. Further there were benefits for individuals as demonstrated by increases in individual engagement and behavioral indices of happiness. More recently, Thomas (2013) evaluated the effects of behavioral observations of peers conducting discrete trial teaching. He found that this resulted in an increase in staff correct implementation of discrete trials teaching. Making behavioral observations is an interesting and potentially efficient and effective technology to train caregivers. Although there have been only two previous studies of the effects of conducting behavioral observations on staff implementing ABA procedures with individuals with disabilities, no studies have evaluated its effects on training parents and the range of teaching skills is limited. Therefore, this study evaluated the effects of parents conducting behavioral observations of video clips of compliance training, which is an effective procedure for reducing non-compliance (Wilder et al., 2010 and Wilder et al., 2012), on their subsequent use of compliance training and on their children's complaint behavior.