Measuring Changes in Social Communication in Response to Treatment and Education belongs in serious BCBA study because it shapes whether behavior-analytic decisions stay useful once they leave a clean training example and enter adult services and community participation, clinic sessions and day-to-day service delivery. In Measuring Changes in Social Communication in Response to Treatment, for this course, the practical stakes show up in service continuity, accurate reporting, and defensible clinical decisions, not in abstract discussion alone.
Provider: Autism Partnership Foundation
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Join Free →There is a critical need for measurements of change in behavior for children and adults with autism that can be used to monitor progress and also justify funding of treatments. Despite a long history of careful clinician documentation of behavior change in Applied Behavior Analysis, much of the world remains skeptical about such methods because of concerns about placebo effects and unconscious bias by clinicians, caregivers and teachers, as well as about generalizability. Recently there have been several questionnaires and interviews of caregivers and providers used to address these questions which can be extremely valuable, but still do not eliminate concerns about placebo effects and bias. Yet the most commonly used observational scales, including the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and the Screening Tool for Autism in Two-Year-olds (STATA), generally do not show short-term changes in response to treatments. Our goal was to use knowledge from the ADOS to develop a video-based measure of short-term gains in social communication that could be used widely and relatively inexpensively by providers of treatment and educational services for children and adolescents with autism. Consequently, we developed the BOSCC (Brief Observation of Social Communication Change), a measure that involves a 12-minute video observation of a child interacting with a caregiver, therapist or teacher or naïve researcher, that is then coded by an independent observer who is blind to the child's treatment condition (ideally, even before or post-treatment). Initial analyses by our group and two other groups have shown moderate to mild effect sizes in change in response to various early interventions and treatments with older, minimally verbal children lasting 3 – 6 months, particularly in interactions with caregivers and providers. Modules of the BOSCC appropriate for older and more verbal children are in development; many studies are underway to test the generalizability of findings wit
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB | 1 | General |
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Research-backed educational guide for behavior analysts
Research-backed answers to common clinical questions
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.