This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. This project will compare the effectiveness of 3 different types of discrete trial training (traditional vs. mastery-interspersed vs. incidental) in terms of speed of acquisition and strength of generalization of Joint Attention in children with Autism. The initial phase of the project will be limited to 9 participants and 9 additional participants will be added during each subsequent phase. The dependent measures include scores on standardized tests administered pre and post-intervention, the percent of correct responses per session and number of trials and sessions required to reach the mastery criteria during the acquisition and generalization phases. Data analysis will include standard small-N design methods as well as time-series methods for behavioral data when appropriate. Repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) will be increasingly appropriate as the n increases. At the completion of the second phase of this study (n = 18), a preliminary analysis relating the effectiveness of each type of discrete trial to participant characteristics (test scores) will be done in order to address the question of relative effectiveness of trial types. Undergraduate students will be involved in every aspect of this project. All students will complete the Protecting Human Research Participants ethics tutorial (http://phrp.nihtraining.com) and additional specific training goals will be based on the Behavior Analysis Certification Board (BCBA). This project will be directly integrated into the Psychology Department curriculum at Salve Regina University through the Learning and Behavior course (psy320), Applied Behavior Analysis I (psy210), Applied Behavior Analysis II (Psy410) and Field Placement in Psychology (psy499).
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