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The Hoot Chronicles XVI – Pill Swallowing

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Hello everyone,

This is June’s episode of The Hoot Chronicles and you can listen to it on our podcast Chirping with ABA Owls. This should take you to our podcast page or you can listen on iTunes, Podbean and other podcasting apps. 

Every month, we discuss a book or article(s) that we find interesting – For this episode, Lauren will take us through an article called: Behavioral training for pill-swallowing difficulties in young children with autisitic disorder by Ghuman, Cataldo, Beck and Slifer. It was published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology and is from 2004. 

What is the topic?

This study targeted the increase of pill swallowing behaviours in children aged 5 years old and upwards.

Who should read this article?

Anyone who works in the field of behavioural analysis, people who work with individuals with ASD, parents who need advice on how to encourage pill swallowing and other professionals and carers.

Contents

The therapists who ran the study used multiple teaching strategies to teach these children to swallow pills, which included instructions, modelling, gestural prompts, physical prompts and visual aids (a small poster with an actual example of each of the increasingly larger practice pills).
They (the therapists) gradually moved through the different sizes based on a set criteria of mastery, when they were confidently able to swallow pills of a certain size they would move to a bigger size pill. The child would receive reinforcement after successfully swallowing the pill. 

If you’re curious about extra comments on this article, you can always listen here.

Where can you get the article?

There are various online platforms, such as google scholar, wiley library, research gate, etc. 

We found this particular article in the research gate website and in the National Library of Medicine. 

Ghuman, J. K., Cataldo, M. D., Beck, M. H. & Slifer, K. J. (2004). Behavioral Training for Pill-Swallowing Difficulties in Young Children with Autistic Disorder. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 14(4), 601-11. doi:10.1089/cap.2004.14.601

We hope you’ve found this helpful, we will try our best to publish blog posts as the podcast episodes come out.

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

The Hoot Chronicles XV – The Supervisor’s Guidebook

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Hello everyone,

This episode of The Hoot Chronicles came out on 16th May and you can listen to it on our podcast Chirping with ABA Owls. This should take you to our podcast page or you can listen on iTunes, Podbean and other podcasting apps. 

Every month, we discuss a book or article(s) that we find interesting – For this episode, we’ve chosen a book: The Supervisor’s Guidebook: Evidence-Based Strategies for Promoting Work Quality and Enjoyment Among Human Service Staff by Reid, Parsons & Green. 

We’ve read the 2021 edition, published by Charles C. Thomas.

About the authors

Dennis H Reid has over 40 years of experience providing, directing, and researching provision of support and services for people with intellectual disabilities and autism. He has published over 150 journal articles, chapters, and books as well as several widely used training curricula. 


Marsha B. Parsons has worked with individuals across the lifespan and disabilities spectrum beginning as a classroom teacher for children with mild intellectual disabilities and later, as a curriculum specialist and director of vocational programs for adults with severe disabilities and autism. 

She has authored or coauthored more than 50 journal articles and book chapters and has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and Behavior Analysis in Practice. 

Carolyn W Green is a noted practitioner, educational administrator, and applied researcher in the human services. She has provided many professional presentations across the United States as well as in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. 

All the information regarding the authors was retrieved from one of the author’s website, which you can access to find out more.

What is the topic?

This guidebook explains different procedures on how to supervise staff, particularly staff in the human service field. 

Some of the procedures they discuss are  BST (Behavioural Skills Training) and TEMP (Task Enjoyment Motivation Protocol).

Who should read this book?

Having a basic knowledge of ABA would help before reading this book – even if it’s just the concepts of Reinforcement and Shaping. But this book and their procedures can be used by people who supervise members of staff. Even people who are supervised could read this, as it gives them a bit of insight into how and why supervision occurs. 

Content

This book covers 5 areas: Introduction to supervision, critical supervisory skills, resolving common performance problems,  supervising from a distance (Telehealth) and selected reading.

Each section will have a certain number of chapters and each of them will have examples and a summary of the topics discussed at the end.

We do discuss the contents in more detail in the podcast episode, if you’re curious, you can always listen here.

Where can you get the book?

Disclaimer: the prices might have changed since the time this post was published or the podcast episode recorded.

Physical book

Creator’s website: http://www.dennishreidau.com/

Ebay: £ 75.59 (not including postage)
Amazon £38.56
AbeBooks: s £ 75.98
Not found in: Blackwell, Book Depository, Waterstones nor World of books.

Online version
Google books: £34.28
Not found in: Apple Books nor Audible.

We would love to have more books in audio format – even in different languages! Any ABA authors interested, feel free to drop us a message!

We hope you’ve found this helpful, we will try our best to publish blog posts as the podcast episodes come out.

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

The Hoot Chronicles XIV – Needle Phobia

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Hello everyone,

This episode of The Hoot Chronicles came out on 18th April and you can listen to it on our podcast Chirping with ABA Owls. This should take you to our podcast page or you can listen on iTunes, Podbean and other podcasting apps. 

Every month, we discuss a book or article(s) that we find interesting – For this episode, we delve into a study done on needle phobia. Most specifically: Stimulus Fading And Differential Reinforcement For The Treatment Of Needle Phobia In A Youth With Autism. 

This study is from 2006 and we will add the link at the end of this post. 

About the authors

This article was written by Daniel B. Shabani and Wayne W. Fisher. 

Shabani works for the Institute Center for Behavior Analysis & Language Development and Fisher is the Henry Rutgers Endowed Professor of Pediatrics, among other appointments, at Rutgers University. 

What is the topic?

This article focuses on desensitizing an 18-year-old to needles as he displayed problem behaviour when they were presented. This young person had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and does require frequent contact with needles (e.g. testing sugar levels).

Who should read this article?

For this particular topic and area, we feel that this will be more relevant for people working and studying in the field of ABA and people who have to support clients who are required to have contact with needles.

Contents

This article explains how the contact levels with the needle were gradually increased – tolerating proximity and contact – how they used reinforcement to increase the target behaviour, and how they generalized this to other settings.

Where can you get the article?

There are various online platforms, such as google scholar, wiley library, research gate, etc. We found this particular article in the research gate website. Click here to be directed to the article.

Shabani, B. D. & Fisher, W. W. (2006). Stimulus Fading And Differential Reinforcement For The Treatment Of Needle Phobia In A Youth With Autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 39, 449-452. doi:10.1901/jaba.2006.30-05

We hope you’ve found this helpful, we will try our best to publish blog posts as the podcast episodes come out.

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren