Journal Review and Clinical Q&A: Life Skills, Elopement, and Automatically Maintained Behavior - I reviewed a new study on a life skills program used in a self-contained kindergarten special education classroom at the University of Georgia. - The study found a functional relationship between the program and increased life skills, plus early evidence the skills generalized to other settings. - I questioned whether this "life skills program" is really new or just tier two of the original preschool life skills model that clinicians have used for years already. - Most skills got mastered through whole group instruction, not one-on-one, and that matters because a proactive intervention has to work at scale to be worth it. - Friendship skills were the hardest for the kids to master. Maintenance held up pretty well but wasn't perfect. - On elopement, I said clinics should not use one identical definition for every client. I define it by location and eyesight, not a flat five feet rule for everybody. - On a head banging case, I walked through why the soft version and the escalated version of the behavior might not share the same function, and why intensity matters more than raw frequency. - On nail biting, I explained the difference between a replacement behavior, which needs a known function, and a competing behavior, which is what you use for automatically maintained behavior where the function is unknown. Watch today's full video: https://www.skool.com/free-aba-ceus/classroom/bb197702?md=b2a576640f2b48c79cb91a9ed6b70865

Journal review: the augmented competing stimulus assessment for self-restraint - I broke down a new article on the Augmented Competing Stimulus Assessment (ACSA) for self-restraint and SIB. One of the researchers on it was actually my thesis advisor for my master's degree. - I pointed out the article took almost four years between submission and final acceptance, and talked through why that happens: slow review, a hard-to-find niche reviewer, or a paper that sits while the team decides whether to keep pushing it. - I explained how ACSA differs from a standard competing stimulus assessment. A regular assessment just swaps items in and out to see what competes with the behavior. ACSA adds repeated prompting and blocking during that process, which teaches engagement along the way. - The study found at least one high-competing item that cut self-restraint and SIB by 80% or more without hurting toy engagement, in four of the five participants who finished the assessment. - My take: ACSA is a strong tool for very niche, treatment-resistant self-restraint cases, but it's heavy to run day to day. For most kids, standard modeling and prompting gets you the same learning without the extra steps. - In Q&A, I walked through why you can't call the function of a punch just from knowing a classmate threw someone's backpack in the trash. You need the consequence that followed to know if it's attention, tangible access, or something else. - On the circle-time question, I said don't build a goal around a classroom expectation your client might face someday. Base goals on current quality-of-life gaps, assessment data, and what the caregiver actually needs right now. - On the telehealth-BCBA-fraud post, I said you need to know how many BCBAs were hired before six departures means anything, and that both telehealth as a modality and the company's own incentives can be driving fraud. Watch today's full video: https://www.skool.com/free-aba-ceus/classroom/bb197702?md=01f175bab0f640bb82d260a43c2e78aa