Efeitos do Behavioral Skills Training sobre o Desempenho de Universitários no Atendimento a Crianças Autistas

Six college students in Brazil learned to teach verbal operants to kids with autism. The trainer used Behavioral Skills Training: short demo, practice, immediate feedback, then later feedback too.

Each student ran short discrete-trial style lessons with a child. The team tracked how many trials the students ran correctly.

All six students hit 90 % correct during training. In a later test with a new child, every student scored 100 %.

The skills stuck; no extra coaching was needed.

Souza et al. (2023) looked at 15 studies and found BST is the main way to train parents or staff to run discrete trials. Matos adds one more clear win to that pile.

Briggs et al. (2024) showed teams often trim BST to save time. Matos kept both immediate and delayed feedback, yet still reached mastery fast—so the trim may not always help.

Vladescu et al. (2020) used one 30-minute BST to teach safe baby sleep. Matos used the same four-step BST shell, but for a new task—teaching verbal behavior—showing the method travels well.

If you supervise new staff or student interns, this study gives you a ready script: model the trial, let them practice, give on-the-spot feedback, then review later. In two short sessions you can hit 100 % fidelity, even with zero-hour trainees.