Catatonia in Autism Spectrum Disorder

My child with ASD has begun to engage in a few behaviors that concern me. For example, he no longer performs skills that he used to be able to do on his own, and he now moves very slowly! I’ve heard about catatonia, and worry that it might be affecting my son. Can you tell…

Expanding Interest

My child is doing well with many of his ABA programs, even the ones that focus on the development of play skills. Unfortunately, he doesn’t play with most of the toys that we give him, and he has worked for the same five things since our program began a year ago (marshmallow peeps, Thomas trains,…

How do you figure out what motivates your students?

Maximizing motivation is an essential component of effective teaching and behavior reduction; therefore, preference assessments can help identify those items and activities that will be most motivating for individuals with autism. In this issue of Clinical Corner, Niall Toner shares why preference assessments are so important and provides an excellent overview of the various types…

Reinforcement Systems

Description: Reinforcement systems are methods to provide consequences following particular behaviors. The purpose of these consequences is to make it more likely that these behaviors will occur again in the future. There are several examples of reinforcement systems: token economies, behavior contracts, and group-oriented contingencies. In a token economy, a person is taught that an…