Autism News

Welcome visitors!  This page is dedicated to raising the level of awareness of school practitioners working with students with autism regarding modern strategies that may have come too late for many in the field to have have experienced in their initial education.  Each item on this page relates to an activity that Project ACCESS is working on or otherwise is worthy of dissemination. 

1. Practical Functional Assessment

Behavior Analysts that work with students with autism and who have traditional training may not yet be up to speed with Practical Functional Assessment.  Created by Gregory Hanley, Ph.D., BCBA-D, Practical Functional Assessment was developted to be a "safe and efficient functional assessment procedures that inform highly effective and humane treatments for problem behavior of persons with autism or intellectual disabilities."

From the website: 

"This website is dedicated to disseminating a practical means of determining the occasioning contexts and outcomes responsible for problem behaviors like self-injurious behavior and aggression often associated with autism or intellectual disabilities. The process is generally referred to as a functional assessment. The specific functional assessment process that will be the focus of this website relies on open-ended interviewing and a subsequent functional analysis referred to as an interview-informed, synthesized contingency analysis or IISCA.

Peer-reviewed research has shown IISCAs to be a quick, safe, and reliable means to understand enough about why problem behavior is occurring to design individualized treatments capable of eliminating problem behavior while promoting essential skills such as functional communication, delay and denial toleration, and contextually appropriate behaviors (e.g., accuracy with academics, vocational skills, independent leisure activity)."

2. Updates to the list of research supported autism evidence-based Interventions and AFIRM Modules

This information comes from the folks at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  They maintain the AFIRM online learning modules.  AFIRM stands for Autism Focused Intervention  Resources and Modules.  AFIRM developed 28 evidence-based practice modules based on the 2020 Evidence Based Practice NCAEP (National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice) report. Of special interest is the Matrix to Link EBPs with Target Outcomes and Ages: Table 3.7 Matrix of Evidence-Based Practices, Outcomes, and Age Categories. Based on this report that came out in 2020, AFIRM updated the learning modules available.  Some new interventions have been added to the list of research supported autism evidence-based practices.  Some were folded into other existing interventions but remain avaiallbe as supplemental modules. 

These modules were added

These modules were removed from the list of 28 and combined with other existing EBPs:

  • Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)
  • Pivotal Response Training (PRT)
  • Scripting (SC)
  • Structured Play Groups (SPG) 

AFIRM maintains these as "supplemental modules" and you can read more about this on their website.