Strategies to Promote Positive Mealtime Behavior in Early Childhood

Picky eating and problem behavior during meals are commonly reported issues among young children, particularly toddlers (Manikam & Perman, 2000). It is estimated that up to 50% of children under the age of 5 experience difficulties during mealtimes (Benjasuwantep et al., 2013). These difficulties may include tantrums when nonpreferred foods are presented, turning their head away from bites, pushing food away, crying, spitting out bites of nonpreferred food, and holding bites in the mouth. Over time, these behaviors can lead to significant limitations in the variety and amount of foods that children consume, thus compromising their growth and development. While there are a variety of reasons a child may engage in these problem behaviors, the food refusal or selectivity often persists after other contributing factors have been resolved (Dobbelsteyn et al., 2005). A behavior analytic approach can be used to address mealtime problem behavior. These interventions are focused on changing aspects of the child’s environment and caregiver response in order to change the child’s behavior during meals. This approach has been well-evaluated in the literature, and many regard it to be the most effective intervention for treating children’s problem behavior during meals (Kerwin, 1999). The scope of this paper was to provide evidence-based behavior analytic recommendations to caregivers, teachers, and other early childhood therapeutic providers. Recommendations provided in this article are applicable to a variety of feeding difficulties that may present in early childhood. While recommendations discussed in this paper have been supported in the literature, research lacks a comprehensive instructional guide of best practices that can be used by providers with limited expertise or experience in feeding concerns

An Alternating Treatment Design Comparing Small Group Reading Interventions Across Early Elementary Readers

Learning how to read accurately and fluently is a critical component for a student’s future academic success. Reading fluency is a skill that many students struggle to master. In addition, many students missed out on key skill development due to the loss of instruction from COVID-19. As schools begin to recover from these educational losses, small group reading interventions offer an efficient solution to service multiple students at once. Small group reading interventions such as Repeated Readings (RR), Listening Passage Preview (LPP) and LPP with RR (LPP+RR) have all been demonstrated to be effective methods for increasing reading fluency. Yet few studies have specifically examined the effectiveness of these interventions in comparison to each other in a group setting. The current study compared reading RR, LPP, and LPP+RR in a small group setting to determine which intervention yielded the largest gains in reading fluency

Reciprocal Effects Among Parental Homework Support, Effort, and Achievement? An Empirical Investigation

The present study investigates reciprocal influences of parental homework support, effort, and math achievement, using two waves of data from 336 9th-graders. Results revealed that higher prior autonomy-oriented support and homework effort resulted in higher subsequent achievement. Higher prior content-oriented support led to higher subsequent effort, but lower subsequent achievement. Additionally, higher prior effort led to higher subsequent autonomy-oriented support. Furthermore, our results supported the structural path invariance over gender. The current investigation advances extant research, by differentiating two forms of parental homework support (autonomy- and content-oriented support), and by showing their respective influences on subsequent homework effort and math achievement

Exploring the utility of brief functional analyses procedures for individuals with CHARGE syndrome

A critical step in addressing problem behavior is identifying the function of problem behavior, or reason for engaging in the problem behavior, using functional analysis (FA). Individuals with CHARGE Syndrome engage in problem behaviors that vary across topographies and etiology (e.g., pain, anxiety, sensory concerns; Hartshorne et al., 2017). The literature has illustrated time and time again the effectiveness of these procedures across populations, settings, age groups, and topographies of behavior; however, no studies have been documented exploring the utility of FA procedures with individuals with CHARGE Syndrome. The current study completed brief functional analyses (Northup et al., 1991) with individuals diagnosed with CHARGE Syndrome who presented with problem behavior. Participants included individuals between the ages of 8 to 22 years old diagnosed with CHARGE Syndrome and presenting with problem behaviors. Results indicated that BFA procedures were successful in identifying the function of problem behavior with 4 out of 5 participants