· Autism Spectrum Disorder Basics

• Define Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and common characteristics and deficits.
• Identify historical definitions of ASD, such as PDD-NOS or Asperger’s Syndrome.
• Identify the differences between DSM IV and V.
• Identify the severity levels of ASD in the DSM V.
• Identify the triad of primary impairments.
• Identify the ‘red flags’ to early diagnosis.
• Identify deficits associated with ASD, such as social-emotional reciprocity, nonverbal communication, stereotyped motor movements, and restrictive or ritualized behaviors, pragmatic language, etc.
• Identify risk factors to ASD.
• Identify current CDC statistics and rates for the prevalence of ASD.
• Identify common co-morbid diagnoses.
• Identify terminology related assessments and differential diagnoses, such as pragmatic language, receptive language, expressive language, sensory-motor skills, social skills, joint attention, restrictive or repetitive behaviors, learning disabilities, and processing disorders.
• Demonstrate and be able to identify descriptions of social (pragmatic) communication disorder, ASD, social emotion reciprocity, expressive language, sensory-motor disorder, receptive language, non-verbal vs verbal communication, executive functioning, restricted interests, joint attention.
• Identify methods of diagnosis.
• Identify typical and atypical milestones.

· Legal, Ethical, and Professional Considerations

• Demonstrate understanding of the role and scope of practice of a QBA and responsibility to professional standards, evidence-based practices and knowledge of updates on new diagnostic, assessment, and intervention strategies.
• Demonstrate understanding of the role and scope of practice for other QABA certificants (ABAT, QASP-S) and limits to their scope of practice.
• Demonstrate thorough understanding of the QABA policies, procedures, and Code of Ethics.
• Define and understand the use, benefits, and limitations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
• Identify guidelines for management or records, such as retention, storage, transportation, security, etc.
• Summarize the legal and ethical requirements regarding client confidentiality and its exceptions.
• Identify the limits to consent for treatment.
• Define privileged information.
• Demonstrate an understanding of unethical relationships and how those relationships may occur, including dual relationships.
• Identify duty to warn vs. duty to protect.
• Identify the steps in mandated reporting.
• Define and identify the use of IDEA, LRE, IEP, ADA, 504 Plan, and the Rehabilitation Act.
• Demonstrate understanding of compliance with IDEA, IEP, and LRE’s.
• Demonstrate the role and scope the QBA, QASP-S, and ABAT in the IEP and LRE’s and meetings, design, and development of goals and objectives one them.
• Identify the purpose and components of effective positive behavior supports (PBS).
• Identify the purpose, key elements, and fundamentals of person-centered planning (PCP).
• Identify the need for a risk and benefits analysis to determine treatment, such as punishment, aggressions, SIB, etc.
• Demonstrate a thorough understanding of ensuring safety in extinction procedures, especially related to dangerous and self-injurious behavior.
• Identify the need for collaboration in treatment planning and implementation, such as behavior contracts, referral methods, multi-team communication and assessment, treatment adherence, etc.
• Identify ethical and legal responsibility in reduction and termination of services.
• Define advocacy.
• Define self-determination.
• Define Best Practice.
• Define evidence-based treatment.

· Core Principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)

• Identify 3 levels of scientific understanding as description, prediction, and control.
• Identify 7 dimensions of ABA.
• Identify 6 attitudes of science.
• Identify phylogenic history vs. ontogenic history.
• Identify the goals of ABA.
• Identify classical conditioning and operating conditioning and how they may identify in elements of Verbal behavior operants.
• Define and understand the controlling operations and basis of motivation operation (MO) and how it is used in skill acquisition and behavior reduction intervention.
• Identify and demonstrate examples of motivation operations, such as abolishing operation, establishing operation, abative, evocative, conditioned and unconditioned MO.
• Describe the relationship between motivating operations, antecedent, behavior, and consequence (four-term contingency).
• Manipulate variables to leverage MO based on assessment, data, and schedules of reinforcement.
• Utilize advanced MO’s, such as CMO-R, CMO-S, CMO-T.
• Identify and implement goals on all components of Applied Verbal Behavior (AVB).
• Identify goals based on advanced verbal operants and extensions, such as autocratic, metaphorical tact, etc.
• Define and demonstrate examples of pairing
• Identify respondent vs. operant behavior.
• Manipulate the components of contingency.
• Integrate respondent conditioning into programming.
• Define stimulus, response, stimulus class, response class, stimulus control, s
• *Define matching law and utilize it to choose behavior intervention options.
• Identify types of reinforcers, such as tangible, edible, sensory, social, etc.
• Identify principles of reinforcement: rate, value, magnitude.
• Differentiate between negative and positive reinforcement and punishment.
• Define natural reinforcement.
• Identify conditioned and unconditioned reinforcement.
• Identify primary and secondary reinforcement.
• Identify contingent reinforcement and punishment.
• Identify differential reinforcement and punishment.
• Identify and program for potential effects of different schedules of reinforcement, (ratio: fixed and variable; Interval: fixed and variable) Integrate matching law to concurrent schedules.
• Define and demonstrate extinction, deprivation, and satiation; identify conditions of reinforcement and punishment that affect these conditions.
• Define and anticipate for the effects of extinction, extinction burst, spontaneous recovery, and resurgence.
• Identify and contrive discriminative stimulus, stimulus control, stimulus delta, and SD-p.
• Define behavioral momentum and how it is used in skill acquisition and behavior reduction intervention.
• Define and demonstrate behavioral contrast.
• Define the ‘dead man’s test’.
• Develop programming considering behavioral cusps and pivotal behaviors.
• Identify terms in measurement, such as dimensional qualities, derivative measures, and definition measures.

· Antecedent Interventions

• Identify the purpose, function and benefits of commonly used supports, such as visual supports, visual schedules, social stories, choice boards, video modeling, functional communication training (FCT), PECS, TEACCH, skill-streaming, priming, and utilizing environmental modifications.
• Develop and identify strategies to maintain antecedent interventions.
• Identify advantages and disadvantages of antecedent strategies.
• Design functional communication training programs.
• Develop and identify strategies to maintain non-contingent reinforcement interventions.
• Identify strategies, advantages, and disadvantages of non-contingent reinforcement.
• Identity and design interventions utilizing MO.
• Evaluate ecological variables that impact treatments goals.
• Identify and define setting events
• Demonstrate strategies for antecedent interventions when given case study

· Skill Acquisition Programming

• Define target behavior and mastery criteria.
• Identify the key elements of goals and objectives that are clear, observable, and measurable.
• Identify the ‘behavior rule’.
• Determine educational methods and teaching protocols for target behaviors, such as errorless learning, shaping, modeling, backward or forward chaining, etc.
• Define and identify effective uses for types of prompts.
• Define and identify prompt dependence, prompt fading, demand and demand fading, stimulus fading. Develop prompt hierarchies and prompt fading hierarchies.
• Identify DTT and its benefits and limitations.
• Identify terminology and types of trials associated with DTT, such as mass trials, block trials, random rotation, point-to point correspondence, etc.
• Identify treatment plan protocol, such as goal writing, mastery criteria measures, targets, maintenance, generalization, skill acquisition domains, etc.
• Identify procedures to promote stimulus response, generalization, and maintenance.
• Identify ways to mitigate threats to instructional control and stimulus control.
• Identify ways to mitigate extraneous variables affecting treatment efficacy, such as biological, medical, etc.
• Define different types of prompts: modeling, most-to-least, least-to-most and components in their hierarchy.
• Identify discrimination training.
• Identify imitation training.
• Identify errorless learning, stimuli usage, and correction procedures.
• Identify natural and contrived discriminate stimuli.
• Identify ways to utilize natural environment teaching (NET).
• Identify Pivotal Response Training (PRT), its key components, and when/how it is used.
• Identify and develop plans based on socially significant behaviors that increase quality of life and improve independence.
• Define skill acquisition domains, such as language, social, motor, adaptive, cognitive and play.
• Differential between skill and performance deficits.
• Identify a treatment plan protocol: goal writing, mastery, criteria measures, targets, maintenance, generalization, skill acquisition domains, etc.
• Identify topography vs. function.
• Identify self-management procedures.
• Identify types and advantages of task analysis’.

· Behavior Reduction Interventions

• Develop a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP).
• Identify the functions of behavior.
• Utilize information from an FBA to design a plan.
• Define Functional Analysis and interpret conditions.
• Identify types of Functional Behavior Assessments (FBA) and efficacy of each type.
• Utilize information from the FBA to design a plan.
• Identify functionally equivalent behaviors.
• Identify the components of a token economy, such as back up reinforcers, generalized reinforcers, ratio strain, etc.
• Define and demonstrate response cost.
• Define and demonstrate overcorrection.
• Define and demonstrate positive practice.
• Define and demonstrate exclusionary and non-exclusionary time-out.
• Identify extinction procedures, such as block and ignore.
• Identify ways to manage reinforcement procedures, schedules, multiple-schedules of reinforcement, and punishment procedures.
• Identify elements of effective use of the premack principle.
• Define precursor behavior.
• Identify behavior chains
• Identify types of differential reinforcement, such as DRA, DRO, DRI, DRL, DRH; identify and demonstrate when, how, and why each would be utilized.
• Define and identify ways to control for behavior contrast.
• Define habit reversal.
• Identify components of contingency contracts.
• Identify 3 types of group contingencies and benefits/limitations to different types.

· Data Collection and Analysis

• Define operational definition.
• Define reliability and validity.
• Identify 3 indicators of measurement.
• Define observable and measurable and the importance of defining an onset and offset of a behavior in reliability.
• Identify measurement procedures, such as frequency count/event recording, duration, time sampling, interval, partial interval recording, latency, and planned activity checks. Identify benefits and limitations to each.
• Define continuous and discontinuous methods of measurement.
• Identify and select types of graphs, such as line, bar, cumulative, scatterplots, and single subject design to display data.
• Identify and analyze types of data for trends, level, stability, and variability.
• Define inter-rater reliability and possible threats.
• Identify design types of inter-observer agreement (IOA)/Inter-rater reliability, such as trial by trial or total count.
• How to calculate IOA based on various data including unscored intervals, multiple observers, etc.
• Identify treatment drift in analysis of data.

· Assessment

• Identify types of assessments and when/how they are used, such as preference, direct vs. indirect, standardized, functional behavior, ABC, environmental evaluation, self-monitoring, functional skills assessment.
• Identify trends and methods to assess ABC data, scatterplots, bar graphs, etc.
• Identify different types of schedules of preference/ reinforcer assessments.
• Identify all components of the FBA process, such as interviews, rating scales, adaptive rating scales, etc.
• Identify the components of a functional analysis.
• Analyze behavioral data using conditional probability.
• Identify functional operational definition and topographical operational definitions of behaviors.
• Identify types of observation preference assessments: free operant, paired stimulus, single stimulus, multiple stimulus with and without replacement.
• Identify different types of experimental design: single subject, alternative treatment, multi-baseline, changing criterion and how to evaluate efficacy in each.
• Identify elements of experimental designs, such as baseline, treatment phase, phase line, and what each phase serves to the assessment process.
• Identify how to interpret trends and phase lines.
• Demonstrate understanding of different types of methods of measuring phases of each experimental design, such as high variability data etc.

· Training and Supervision

• Identify the elements to Behavior Skills Training (BST), Competency Based Training, and Systematic Performance Monitoring.
• Identify systems for monitoring treatment and program integrity.
• Identify systems for evaluating staff performance.
• Identify ways to mitigate observer drift and reactivity.
• Identify effective strategies for providing support for staff and family.
• Identify effective parent training strategies.
• Identify effective feedback that is clear, concise, and timely. Identify sequential steps to providing feedback. And how staff motivation may be related.
• Identify elements of effective supervision.
• Identify types of staff reinforcement systems.
• Identify the need for cultural values awareness.
• Identify coordination of care.