The current study evaluated a toilet-training treatment package described by Greer et al. (2016) with children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Most of the current research on toilet-training interventions for children with ASD are replications and modifications of Azrin and Foxx (1971) or (more recently) LeBlanc et al. (2005). However, these procedures are composed of components that are not included in studies with typically developing (TD) children. For example, Greer et al. evaluated the effectiveness of three typical components within a toilettraining package, mostly with TD participants: a 30-min sit schedule, placing participants in underwear, and differential reinforcement. The primary purpose of the current study was to replicate and extend the treatment package described by Greer et al. to children with ASD. A secondary purpose was to evaluate modifications necessary for individualized toilet training when the commonly used components were ineffective. The results of Greer et al. were replicated for 11 participants with ASD in the current study, suggesting that intensive toileting interventions (e.g., interventions requiring overcorrection, reprimands, and dense sit schedules) may only be necessary for a subset of individuals with ASD.

The present study extended functional analysis (FA) methodology to human-directed resource guarding in a dog in an in-home setting. The subject underwent four conditions including control, attention, escape, and tangible, arranged in a modified FA. The results indicated multiply controlled resource guarding (i.e., escape, attention, and tangible functions). The experimenter then conducted a treatment evaluation involving three function-based treatments in a concurrent multiple baseline design. Resource guarding decreased to zero levels in treatments for each maintaining contingency. Treatment effects were maintained when the subject was tested with an owner, with an untrained handler, a highly preferred treat, in an untrained setting, as well as after 2 weeks in the absence of training. Behavior analytic techniques may hold promise for lasting behavior change for resource guarding in domestic dogs, and should be examined in other populations and with other canine problem behavior.

Much of the research evaluating toilet training interventions for children with ASD has focused on urinations as the primary dependent variable. As a result, the effects that toilet training interventions targeting urinations may have on other related dependent variables remains unclear. We conducted a retrospective analysis of data obtained by Perez et al. ( 2020), who evaluated the effects of a treatment package on urinary continence in children with ASD. We examined the relation between the emergence of urinary continence and multiple nontargeted dependent variables: bowel movements, self-initiation correspondence, percentage of appropriate urinations that were self-initiated, self-initiation rate, and problem behavior. Results showed that improvements in urinary continence were strongly correlated with improvements in all nontargeted dependent variables. Implications for future research and clinical practice are discussed.

Momentary time sampling has been used to evaluate quality of care in several settings, including residential facilities and nursing homes. Given the growing number of behavior analysts providing center-based applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy to children with autism spectrum disorders, ABA centers are a new area in which assessing environmental indicators that might be correlated with the quality of care could be very important. Therefore, we extended these procedures to an ABA center, where we used momentary time sampling to assess staff behavior, client behavior, client condition, and environmental condition. The results demonstrated that this descriptive assessment can be a useful tool to obtain direct measures of variables that might affect quality of care. The general utility of this assessment, intervention plans for targets identified by this assessment, limitations of the assessment, and directions for future research in this area are discussed. K E Y W O R D S assessment, autism, quality of care, staff behavior, time sampling