Indices of Happiness During Treatment for Pediatric Feeding Disorders becomes clinically important the moment a team has to turn good intentions into reliable action inside home routines, treatment sessions, interdisciplinary consultation, and health-related skill support. In Indices of Happiness During Treatment for Pediatric, for this course, the practical stakes show up in safe, humane intervention that respects health variables and daily-life feasibility, not in abstract discussion alone.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via New Jersey Association for Behavior Analysis
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Join Free →To date, there is no research on the measurement of indices of happiness and unhappiness for children receiving behavior-analytic treatment for feeding disorders and the research on caregiver treatment acceptability during feeding treatment is limited. The purpose of the current study was to measure child indices of happiness and unhappiness during extinction-based treatment with and without noncontingent reinforcement and to evaluate caregiver treatment acceptability through the course of treatment. Child indices of happiness were idiosyncratic, while indices of unhappiness increased at the onset of treatment and were higher during extinction without noncontingent reinforcement, but eventually decreased. Overall, caregiver treatment acceptability remained high despite temporary increases in emotional responding. The current study introduces measures of social validity to use during feeding treatment (i.e., indices of happiness and unhappiness) and provides evidence that dense schedules of noncontingent reinforcement could serve to mitigate indices of unhappiness during the initial implementation of extinction-based treatment.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1.5 | General |
Dr. Kathryn Peterson is the Director of Intensive Feeding Program Operations at Children’s Specialized Hospital, in Somerset, New Jersey. Dr. Peterson also serves as an affiliate faculty member in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University and as an assistant professor in the Division of Child Neurology and Neurodevelopmental Disabilities at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The focus of her research is on the assessment and treatment of pediatric feeding disorders, with an emphasis on treatment of food selectivity in children with ASD. Dr. Peterson earned her doctoral degree in applied behavior analysis from the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in 2013 and has served as an assistant professor at UNMC’s Munroe-Meyer Institute. She has published in and reviewed for numerous journals, and received the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis’ 2017 Contribution of the year award for her article comparing the sequential oral sensory approach to a behavior-analytic approach in the treatment of food selectivity. She has secured grant awards through UNMC’s Pediatrics, Diversity, and the Munroe-Meyer Institute’s guild funds to conduct her research. Dr. Peterson has served on the editorial board for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and has fulfilled numerous positions on the boards for the Heartland and the Nebraska Associations for Behavior Analysis.
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All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.