Category: Events

Cal ABA 2018

by: Allison Bickelman, M.S., BCBA

This past weekend, our executive team and the majority of ABI’s masters students in ABA attended the California Association for Behavior Analysis’ (CalABA’) 36^th Annual Western Regional Conference in Santa Clara. This conference provides behavior analysts, allied professionals, parents, and students with a myriad of presentations, panel discussions, and events related to behavior analysis, provided by prominent researchers, clinicians, and faculty in the field.

ABI was proud to participate in this year’s conference! Our Quality Assurance Manager, Allison Bickelman, presented findings from her research examining the use of behavioral skills training and group contingencies to teach social skills to school-aged children with ASD. During her talk, Allison presented outcome data from a social skills group run last summer with six boys, who all learned multiple new social skills such as greeting friends, having a conversation, and personal space, by having these skills orally explained to them, modeled by adults, and having opportunities to practice these skills peers while receiving feedback.

Associate program supervisor, Azizull Dhadwal, presented preliminary findings from her master’s thesis research examining teaching perspective taking skills to children with autism spectrum disorder. Specifically, her study focused on teaching children how to identify what others know and believe. For example, when a child is presented with a Skittles box but then is shown that the box actually contains paper clips, the child is asked what another person will believe is in the box (the correct answer being skittles, as the other person did not see the paper clips inside). She successfully taught two boys how to identify the false beliefs of others, and will be running this study with one more participant in the coming months. These procedures are used at ABI to teach perspective taking and complex language skill to our clients.

Lead skills trainer and masters student Carissa Basile, along with her professor Dr. Tara Fahmie, and co-authors Elizabeth Hernandez, Sean Christensen, Allison Bickelman, and Roxanna Diaz, presented her research in collaboration with ABI as a poster. Her study focused on teaching social skills to boys with ASD using competitive and cooperative group contingencies (i.e., the kids either worked together as a team, or in opposition to each other while playing games and learning new social skills such as how to ask a peer for an item). Both types of contingencies were effective in helping establish new social skills, and the children and parents all enjoyed being a part of the group and making new friends.

A main highlight of the weekend was the opening address by Dr. Bill Heward, one of the authors of the infamous “White Book” which all masters students in ABA read early on in their career, in which he discussed the importance of choosing critical target behaviors that will help our clients, not only now, but in the future.

It’s April which means it’s officially Autism Awareness Month! This cause is near and dear to our hearts, but we believe it should be for everyone else too. Lucky for us, there are ample opportunities to get involved and help raise awareness.

We will be taking part in Walk Now for Autism Speaks on April 18. Our team has already met its fundraising goal, but there is still plenty of time to donate and go above and beyond to support funding for research and advocacy. If you can’t donate money, think about donating your time as a volunteer or joining a team.

On April 2^nd we helped support World Autism Awareness Day by decking ourselves out in our blue attire. Want more ideas? Join the ranks of Matt Lauer, Lena Dunham and Regis Philbin by taking the Twizzler challenge and nominate your friends and family.

Chances are, you know someone affected by Autism, so take a stand and be active in helping to spread knowledge and assist in finding treatments that can make a world of difference.

The California Association for Behavior Analysis (CalABA) held their 33^rd annual Western Regional Conference in San Diego on February 19-21, 2015. Our Clinical Director, Marla Saltzman, and Managing Director, Maureen Moore, attended the conference along with our Associate Program Supervisors, Allison Bickelman and Kirstie Waring. Allison presented a poster for California State University, Los Angeles, reviewing her thesis work, titled, “An Evaluation of Bonus Points for Paced Study Habits,” finding that providing bonus points increased submission of quiz preparation questions when students knew bonus points were available. In addition, one of our skills trainers, Vahe Esmaeili, presented a poster reviewing work with colleagues at California State University Northridge titled, “A Review of the Types of Simulations and their Effectiveness for Training.” We are proud to have our clinical staff participating in ongoing research in the field.

Our team attended a wide variety of presentations from leaders in our field, including Mark Sundberg’s keynote address on motivation and its importance in teaching children with autism and Pat Friman’s invited address on the application of ABA to pediatrics. Dr. Friman noted the utility of having Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) work with pediatricians to implement early interventions to address common childhood behavioral issues such as bed wetting, defiance and anxiety.

The conference proved to be an excellent reminder of the effectiveness of ABA in the treatment of individuals with autism and developmental disabilities, as well its benefit in a wide variety of additional applications such as pediatrics, gerontology, and organizational management.

We at ABI take pride in our ability to continue changing and learning with our clients. And that is exactly what a couple of our associate supervisors set out to do this past January. Stefanie Briones and Jessica Parr flew to Las Vegas in order to attend the Association for Behavior Analysis International’s Autism Conference.

The annual conference presented the latest ongoing research in the assessment and treatment of autism spectrum disorder through a series of guest speakers, seminars and presentations.

One of the many presentations attended was Linda LeBlanc’s workshop, Early Intervention for Young Children with Autism: Best Practices for Receptive Language Instruction, where she shared her research on how to prevent prompt dependence and rote responding when teaching receptive language skills to children with autism. Jessica and Stefanie were excited to return to ABI and share this information with our clinical team.