Supporting Parents for in-Home Capture of Problem Behaviors of Children with Developmental Disabilities

Ubiquitous computing has shown promise in applications for healthcare in the home. In this paper, we focus on a study of how a particular ubicomp capability, selective archiving, can be used to support behavioral health research and practice. Selective archiving technology, which allows the capture of a window of data prior to and after an event, can enable parents of children with autism and related disabilities to record video clips of events leading up to and following an instance of problem behavior. Behavior analysts later view these video clips to perform a functional assessment. In contrast to the current practice of direct observation, a powerful method to gather data about child problem behaviors but costly in terms of human resources and liable to alter behavior in the subjects, selective archiving is cost effective and has the potential to provide rich data with minimal instructions to the natural environment. To assess the effectiveness of parent data collection through selective archiving in the home, we developed a research tool, CRAFT (Continuous Recording And Flagging Technology) and conducted a study by installing CRAFT in eight households of children with developmental disabilities and severe behavior concerns. The results of this study show the promise and remaining challenges for this technology. We have also shown that careful attention to the design of a ubicomp system for use by other domain specialist

DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT WITH AND WITHOUT BLOCKING AS TREATMENT FOR ELOPEMENT

Blocking is a frequent component of treatments for elopement. Unfortunately, blocking may not always be feasible because elopement often occurs when supervision is low or the behavior cannot be prevented. The present study evaluated the use of blocking in the treatment of elopement by using differential reinforcement of other behavior with and without blocking. In this case, results suggested that blocking may be an essential component for differential reinforcement–based treatments of elopement