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Improving quality of life (QOL) is often provided as a rationale for the provision of behavioral interventions designed to reduce a person with disabilities' dependence on others (e.g., teach daily-living skills) and improve their autonomy (e.g., increase communication and choicemaking). Although QOL can be conceptualized in myriad ways, a person's emotional state (e.g., happiness), can also influences their QOL. The current review provides an original examination of the literature involving mood as a dependent variable in behavioral interventions for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). specify SSRD?. Twenty-nine SSED* studies were identified through systematic searches and evaluated in relation to the following variables: (a) participant and setting characteristics; (b) experimental design; (c) approach to mood assessment; (d) intervention procedures, and; (e) intervention effects on mood. Included studies were also evaluated on the National Autism Center's Scientific Merit Rating Scale (2009), which to determined the experimental rigor of the procedures. ?????. Results suggest that behavioral interventions can be successfully used to improve the mood of individuals with ASD, and that observable indices of mood should be more often measured in behavioral intervention research, particularly when improved QOL is a stated goal of intervention. Limitations of the current research base are discussed and suggestions for future studies incorporating measures of mood in ASD populations are offered.

Improving quality of life (QoL) is the goal of behavior analytic services, but there can be barriers to assessing the QoL of autistic children due to characteristics inherent in the condition. Given that happiness is a fundamental element of QoL, previous research has relied on behavioral indicators of mood (e.g., smiling, crying) to evaluate the overall QoL of disabled individuals. However, the use of these traditional indices may not accurately reflect the emotional well-being of autistic individuals, who are known to engage in idiosyncratic mood indicators. The current study replicated selected procedures from Parsons et al. (2012) to identify and validate the unique mood indicators of young autistic children. The study showed that individualized indices of happiness and unhappiness could be operationally defined and reliably measured among these children. Key findings and limitations of this study are discussed, and the implications of these findings are presented.