Date of Graduation

Summer 2024

Degree

Master of Science in Psychology

Department

Mental Health & Behavioral Science

Committee Chair

Jordan Belisle

Abstract

The Life Functional Module (Dixon, 2020) is an all-encompassing assessment and curriculum designed to promote learner’s independence and well-being by teaching daily living, social, leisure, and other functional or meaningful skills. There is a wide variety of curricula that is currently used in applied-behavior analysis services and programming, including the Essentials for Living, Assessment of Functional Living Skills (AFLS), and the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP). However, there is a lack of research in empirical evidence in regards to the efficacy of these curricula (Ackley et. al, 2019; Padilla et. al, 2023). The first manuscript of this thesis develops a normative sample for the Life Functional Module and compares this sample to a sample of learners with a diagnosis of autism or a related disability. Results from de-identified data that were collected (see IRB in Appendix A), show that there was a positive correlation between age and total Life score for the normative sample, but that there was no relationship between age and total Life score for the autism sample. These results fully support selecting developmentally appropriate targets for learners, regardless of their age. The second manuscript of this thesis evaluated the usage of adapted Life skills programs in order to instruct learners on the sequence of toilet training. The de-identified data collected were from multi-step chains, which were utilized to bring together these various programs, which were selected not only because of the learner’s age, but due to the appropriateness in development of targets (see IRB in Appendix B). These programs were brought together by using direct card training, then with the fading out of a discriminative stimulus.

Keywords

toilet training, normative sample, applied behavior analysis services, adaptive programming, Life curriculum

Subject Categories

Applied Behavior Analysis

Copyright

© Kaitlyn A. Hui

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Open Access

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