Date of Award
5-2019
Culminating Project Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Applied Behavior Analysis: M.S.
Department
Community Psychology, Counseling and Family Therapy
College
School of Health and Human Services
First Advisor
Michele R. Traub
Second Advisor
Kimberly Schulze
Third Advisor
Benjamin Witts
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Keywords and Subject Headings
Pyramidal Training, Behavior Skills Training
Abstract
Pyramidal Training of an In-Home Skill Acquisition Program
Parental involvement in their child’s behavior programming is a key element to how successfully a newly acquired skill will be generalized and maintained in a variety of settings. Generalization and maintenance require the frequent practice of skills across multiple environments and people (Dogan et al., 2017). Parents have the most opportunities to practice skills and engage in teaching with their child, and training parents how to implement behavior change programs can positively impact the overall durability of the acquired skill (Dogan et al. 2017). A well-researched training model is behavior skills training (BST). BST involves four steps: providing instructions on how to complete a skill, modeling the skill, allowing the individual to rehearse the skill, and providing praise or corrective feedback on each step of the skill rehearsed. These steps are used to help teach an individual to perform certain behaviors under specific conditions (Miltenberger, 2008). BST has proven to be an effective approach when teaching parents, a variety of skills (Miltenberger, Knudson, Bosch, & Brower-Breitwieser, 2007) and has been shown to teach novel skills in a short period of time (Nigro-Bruzzi & Sturmey, 2010).
Although an effective teaching model, BST often is implemented to teach a single caregiver in the home. In many home environments, there may be multiple caregivers as well as in-home workers who support the child. This could pose a strain on time and resources if the clinician involved is needed to train each individual in the child’s immediate environment. Pyramidal training (or “train-the-trainer”), which refers to training one person to implement a behavior program and then teaching them to train others (Kuhn, Lerman, & Vorndran, 2003), may be an effective approach in decreasing training time required by a clinician.
Recommended Citation
Cutone, Alessandra, "Pyramidal Training of an In-Home Skill Acquisition Program" (2019). Culminating Projects in Community Psychology, Counseling and Family Therapy. 62.
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/cpcf_etds/62
