Beacon is proud to contribute to the latest evidence based strategies in the field of ABA therapy. We regularly analyze clinical research reports to support our core value of utilizing evidence-based strategies that lead to functional treatment outcomes for clients, children and families.

Many individuals with autism present with feeding issues such as eating a limited number of foods and refusing to try or consume novel foods. Rigid eating patterns may include refusal to try new foods based on texture, brand, smell, or appearance (Hubbard et al., 2014). These restricted diets may lead to nutritional deficiencies, health concerns, and increased mealtime stress for families and caregivers.

Imitation is a critical skill for young children as it facilitates the acquisition of social and communicative behaviors and helps children learn from their environment. Many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) struggle to learn imitation skills, and these skills are often targeted as part of ABA therapy. When teaching imitation skills, a therapist might use a fixed model that involves modeling the movement one time and leaving a visible outcome (e.g., covering a doll with a blanket). Alternatively, a therapist might use a repetitive model, where the target movement occurs several times and returns an item to its original position, without a visible outcome (e.g., pushing a car back and forth four times).

When delivering clinical supports, it’s important to listen, reflect, and reconsider approaches to service delivery to ensure the most effective treatments for those within the autistic and neurodivergent communities and beyond.

Labeling (or tacting) describes the act of identifying or naming items or objects around us. For example, when a child picks up a block, their ability to verbally identify the item and say “block” would be a demonstration of labeling. For young children, learning to label objects is an essential communication skill. In this study by Yang, Wilder, Fernand, and McChristie, the authors investigated if the amount of time between when a child labels/tacts an item and when they are rewarded for this action impacts learning. They discovered that a reward or immediate praise by the parent, caretaker, or therapist was an effective contributor when teaching children new labels.

To read the full report:

Yang, Y.-C., Wilder, D.A., Fernand, J. K., & McChristie, A. (2024). The effect of variable delays to reinforce on the acquisition of tacts in children with autism. Behavioral Interventions, e2025.

When teaching a child how to use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), it’s important for Beacon Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) to develop a professional partnership with the child’s family. In this study by Biggs, Therrien, Abarca, Romano, Barton-Hulsey, and Collins, they examined the family-oriented beliefs and practices of SLPs who were working with preschool and school-aged children learning to use aided AAC.

When delivering ABA therapy, it’s important to listen, reflect, and reconsider approaches to service delivery to ensure the most effective treatments for those within the autistic and neurodivergent communities and beyond.

In this study by Allen, Mellon, Syed, Johnson, and Bernal, they reflected on an ongoing trend in the field of ABA that focuses on how to best listen and collaborate with autistic clients and their stakeholders. In the report, the researchers provided an overview of this trend as well as suggestions for best practice. At Beacon, our goal is to respect neurodiversity while working with each child and their family to identify and teach new skills that increase independence and autonomy.

We’re passionate about delivering ABA services that are supported by evidence-based peer-review research to young children with autism.

A characteristic of autism is repetitive behavior, and this often manifests itself in children by them lining up and ordering items such as toy cars, blocks, animals, or any household items. For some children, if an arrangement of items is disrupted, this results in problem behavior.

In this study, Anderson and Kenaston-Manasseh identified if the function of the participants problem behavior was environmental restoration, such as fixing an item out of sequence. In identifying the function, this demonstrated that children with this profile could be taught to request the items to be restored to their original locations without exhibiting problem behavior.

To read the entire report:

Anderson, J., & Kenaston-Manasseh, L. (2024). Environmental restoration as a reinforcer in ritualistic contexts. Behavioral Interventions, e2001. 

We’re passionate about delivering ABA services that are supported by evidence-based peer-review research to young children with autism.

A study by Pálsdóttir, Magnússon, and Sveinbjörnsdóttir conducted an experimental analysis of academic task refusal for a child with a developmental disability. Task refusal was analyzed in two experimental analyses. The first experimental analysis was to see if the child’s behavior was maintained by negative reinforcement, and the second was to see if the behavior exhibited by the child was the result of transitioning between academic tasks differing in preference. They discovered that task refusal did not occur in the demand condition of the functional analysis, indicating that the behavior was not maintained by escape from demands. Furthermore, task refusal occurred solely in the second experimental analysis when transitioning from a task that was highly preferred to one that was not preferred. It was determined that it wasn’t the less preferred academic task itself that was aversive, but rather transitioning from a preferred academic task to one that was not.

Often, sessions with your child’s therapist involve a cycle of learning trials followed by a break with a reinforcer. When children display challenging behaviors when learning tasks are presented, we often conclude that this behavior functions to avoid or escape the task. This study suggests that this sequence has multiple components: ending a task, transitioning to a reinforcer, ending a reinforcer, and possibly transitioning to a new task that is less preferrable than the preceding task. This study highlights the importance of considering all the possible reasons for challenging behavior. A careful assessment of any task refusal helps your Beacon clinical team provide a learning environment that will be successful for your child. The goal is keeping your child happy, relaxed, and engaged throughout sessions!

As a provider of services to young children with Autism, we’re passionate about delivering developmental, behavioral, and treatment services that are supported by evidence-based peer-reviewed research.

A major barrier that families and caregivers face is the potential to misunderstand the technical terminology that professionals use when trying to effectively communicate their valuable expertise.

In this study by Marshall, Weiss, and Critchfield, the effect that technical terms have during parent training was evaluated. Seventeen parents of individuals with disabilities were taught to implement teaching via individualized instructions that contained high or low percentages of jargon. The jargon that was utilized was individually determined for each participant based on a pre-evaluation. It was discovered that parents who encountered more jargon benefitted significantly less from the training, and the jargon damaged the professional-stakeholder relationship in several ways.

At Beacon, we recognize the importance of having constructive and collaborative discussions with families and stakeholders to provide the best services for children. Skills instruction and coaching must be easy to understand and implement. Be sure to ask your provider to explain any unfamiliar terminology.

If you would like to read the report:

Marshall, K.B., Weiss, M.J., Critchfield, T.S. et al. (2023). Effects of Jargon on Parent Implementation of Discrete Trial Teaching. Journal of Behavioral Education.

As a provider of services to young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Beacon uses compassionate interventions and state-of-the-art services to improve and support the development of children.

Children with Autism sometimes have restrictive eating patterns that are not related to an underlying medical concern. As such, it’s important that we teach them to eat a variety of healthy foods. Identifying successful methods that don’t involve restrictive procedures is a demonstration of compassionate interventions.

In this study by Gover, Hanley, Ruppel, Landa, and Marcus, it was shown that rewarding a child for eating small bites of food could be successful when using an individualized approach and providing frequent choice making opportunities. Standard feeding programs can be unpleasant for the child (and caregivers), so this type of intervention can be more reinforcing, thus enhancing effectiveness.

If you’d like to read the report:

Gover, H.C., Hanley, G.P., Ruppel, K.W., Landa, R.K., & Marcus, J. (2023) Prioritizing choice and assent in the assessment and treatment of food selectivity, International Journal of Developmental Disabilities, 69:1, 53-65.

When your child is expressing challenging behavior, the goal is to replace that behavior with communication skills that meet the same purpose. For example, a child who wants their parent’s attention may scream or hit because that “works” to get their attention. By teaching the child to ask for attention vocally or by handing over a picture, screaming and hitting should decrease.

As a part of this process, parents may be asked to ignore challenging behavior and only react to appropriate attempts to communicate. This article by Lloveras and McKeown caution that we should be careful in how we interpret “ignoring.” Ignoring challenging behavior shouldn’t mean not providing care to the child or standing by when unsafe behavior is occurring. When ignoring challenging behavior is recommended, it is important to ask your Beacon BCBA, “what specifically should I do?”. It might be that just limiting highly emotional responses to your child such as “WHAT DID YOU DO?” is what is necessary while continuing to provide calm care and attention. During parent training, work with your Beacon BCBA to determine how best to limit attention while being responsive to all attempts to communicate.

If you would like to read the report:

Lloveras, L.A., McKeown, C.A., Lichtenberger, S.N. et al. (2023). Recommendations Regarding Use of the Term “Ignore” in Applied Behavior Analysis. Perspectives on Behavioral Science.

For parents and caregivers of children with autism, pica, the ingestion of non-food items, can be an especially dangerous behavior. Sources (CDC, 2019) report that while pica only occurs in about 4% of preschool children without disabilities, it occurs in 14% of autistic preschool aged children without intellectual disabilities and in 28% of those with autism and intellectual disabilities. While there are many different treatments for pica, prevention is the most important. This article by Thomas and O’Connor demonstrates the successful use of a safety checklist as a tool to remind caregivers to remove unsafe items that could be ingested.

If your child engages in pica, it’s important to speak to your Beacon BCBA to identify what items are most likely to be ingested, as well as the settings and activities that may trigger the behavior. Identifying the function or the “why” of the behavior is important, as some children ingest items because of the way they taste while others may do so to get your attention. Different functions require different strategies to treat the behavior. In this study, it’s suggested that if you and your BCBA develop a safety checklist, you’ll be less likely to leave unsafe items accessible to your child.

If you’d like to read the report:

Thomas, B.R., O’Connor, J.T. (2023). Parent Use of a Safety Checklist to Prevent Their Child’s Pica. Behavior Analysis in Practice.

For some children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), it can be a struggle to know when they are feeling happy or sad. Communication challenges lead to children that can’t verbally report their feelings, which can add to parents’ frustration. In this study done by Ramey, Healy and McEnaney, they found that for children with ASD, happiness and unhappiness could be best identified by unique behaviors that they engaged in during enjoyable and unenjoyable conditions. For example, if the child flaps their hands and jumps when playing with bubbles, those behaviors may be their indicators of happiness. In these conditions, they also found that the children were not able to accurately self-report their feelings.

It’s important to understand what contributes to a child’s happiness. This study shows that for children with ASD, we may need to look for unique things that they do as signs of happiness. For Beacon parents and caregivers, this requires working closely with your BCBA to identify and measure these behaviors. While many preschools use emojis, emotional thermometers, or other visuals to identify emotions; children with autism may need explicit instruction on how to answer these questions.

If you’d like to read the report:

Ramey, D., Healy, O. & McEnaney, E. Defining and Measuring Indices of Happiness and Unhappiness in Children Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Behavior Analysis in Practice 16,194–209 (2023).