Research has shown that well-trained staff within early and intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) provide more effective treatment. An important part of training is learning the vocabulary and concepts of treatment. This aids in conceptual understanding of the principles and procedures. The process of learning behavioral concepts also develops the necessary verbal repertoire needed to communicate among members of a community of practice; a group of people who have common reinforcers and are working toward a common goal. Learning to tact a series of sequential descriptions, or verbally narrate, exemplary teaching interactions should be a goal when teaching behavior analysis because it is how we, as a community, interact and establish an understanding of behavior analysis. The purpose of the current study is to train novice behavior analysts to narrate exemplary intervention sequences that are responsive, flexible, and effective teaching interactions. The effects of the training were evaluated using a multiple baseline design across training conditions, replicated across 3 participants. The results suggest that the training was effective in increasing the number of narrative statements as well as the number of narrative statements related to five critical features of a teaching interaction and the relations between those features. The results are …

Training parents of a child with autism to increase the frequency of their child's social behavior may improve the quality of parent-child interactions. The purpose of this methodological study was to develop a direct observation method for rapidly sampling social harmony between parents and their toddlers with autism during parent training interactions. The current study used a pre and post probe design, with benchmark comparisons to test the discriminability of the measurement protocol across two sets of data. The first set of data came from pre and post training videos from a parent training program for children with a diagnosis of autism or at risk for a diagnosis. The second set of data came from videos of typically developing toddlers and their parents. The results of the study show that the measurement system differentiated in the level of harmonious engagement between the benchmark sample and the sample including children diagnosed with autism. The results are discussed in the context of future directions and the utility of the measurement system for behavior analytic practices in parent training and other settings where rapport and complex interactional behaviors are an intervention priority.