Behavior Modification35(1) 78 –94

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DOI: 10.1177/0145445510391242http://bmo.sagepub.com

391242 BMO35110.1177/0145445510391242Baranek et al.Behavior Modification

1The May Center for Education and Neurorehabilitation, Brockton, MA, USA2City University of New York, Flushing, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:Daniel M. Fienup, Department of Psychology, Queens College, 65-30 Kissena Blvd., Flushing, NY 11367 Email: daniel.fienup@qc.cuny.edu

Brief Experimental Analysis of Sight Word Interventions: A Comparison of Acquisition and Maintenance of Detected Interventions

Amy Baranek1, Daniel M. Fienup2, and Gary Pace1

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine utility of a brief experimental analysis (BEA) in determining effective sight word interventions for a student with a history of difficulty with acquiring sight word recognition. Ten interven-tions were compared in a BEA. Following the BEA, an extended analysis was conducted that compared the two most effective interventions (from the BEA) with a control condition. Even though the BEA found two interventions to be relatively equal, one of the two interventions resulted in acquisition in half the sessions as the other intervention and this was replicated in a second extended analysis. Implications for BEA and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Keywords

acquisition, brain injury, brief experimental analysis, sight words

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Brief experimental analysis (BEA) is a process in which multiple interven-tions for academic instruction can be compared to determine which inter-vention is best suited for an individual student (Burns & Wagner, 2008; Daly, Martens, Hamler, Dool, & Eckert, 1999). Across interventions, instructional variables are manipulated to examine the effects on student learning. From a cost-benefit perspective, this is an advantageous assessment. A BEA takes approximately the same amount of time as a standardized test once it has been administered and scored. Unlike a norm-referenced standardized test, the BEA process gathers information about which interventions are likely to benefit a student’s academic acquisition, which is in line with best practices for aca-demic assessment (Burns & Wagner, 2008; Shinn, 2002). This assessment also decreases the chance that practitioners will invest time implementing an intervention that is ineffective.

The instructional hierarchy is a model that has been employed to determine interventions for targeting skill deficits (Daly, Lentz, & Boyer, 1996). This model conceptualizes a learner as falling in one of four phases (acquisition, fluency, generalization, or adaptation). Different interventions are implemented to target different levels of the hierarchy (Burns & Wagner, 2008; Eckert, Ardoin, Daisey, & Scarola, 2000; VanAuken, Chafouleas, Bradley, & Martens, 2002; Wilber & Cushman, 2006). Typically, students referred for BEAs are learning to acquire a skill (i.e., become accurate) or become fluent (i.e., quicker) with that skill (Eckert et al., 2000). BEA provides an effective application of a data-based, decision-making approach to compare interventions to find the best intervention for implementation before time is invested in one particu-lar intervention (Burns & Wagner, 2008; Eckert et al., 2000).

BEA has been introduced to the field within the last 10 years and has had limited application reported in the literature, mainly focusing on oral reading fluency (Burns & Wagner, 2008; Daly, Bonfiglio, Mattson, Persampieri, & Forman-Yates, 2006; Daly et al., 1999; Gortmaker, Daly, McCurdy, Persampieri, & Hergenrader, 2007; VanAuken et al., 2002; Welsch, 2007). In addition, BEAs have been utilized to examine interventions for improving oral read-ing comprehension (McComas et al., 1996), mathematics (Codding et al., 2009), letter formation (Burns, Ganuza, & London, 2009), and spelling (McComas et al., 1996). It seems logical that this type of assessment could be used to determine effective interventions for an even broader array of academic skills.

The BEA is used to determine which intervention(s) produce the largest immediate gains in performance. Typically, an extended analysis is conducted after the BEA to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention chosen from the

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BEA (VanAuken et al., 2002; Wilber & Cushman, 2006). During the extended analysis, most research in this area compared the most promising intervention from the BEA with a baseline, or no intervention, condition (e.g., Burns et al., 2009; Daly et al., 2006; Eckert et al., 2000; Gortmaker et al., 2007; McComas et al., 1996). These studies found that the interventions found to be effective during the BEA produce responding above and beyond baseline responding. Going a step further, VanAuken et al. (2002) examined the utility of this assessment by comparing the effects of the highest and lowest performing interventions (from the BEA) in an extended analysis. Although marginally better performance was found using the most promising intervention, the study produced mixed results about the utility of BEA. Welsch (2007) also tested the utility of a BEA. Four children were exposed to a BEA, followed by an extended analysis, and a continued demonstration of the best treatment. In two of the four cases, the highest performing intervention during the BEA produced the highest performance during the extended analysis, but in two cases, a lower performing intervention from the BEA produced the highest performance during the extended analysis. In three of these cases there was considerable overlap between the two interventions during the extended anal-ysis and in only one case the results of the BEA replicated during the extended analysis with no overlapping data points during the extended analysis. Although it is well known that BEA can identify effective academic interventions that will produce better-than-baseline performance, more research is needed to find whether a BEA is sensitive enough to detect the differential effectiveness of academic interventions.

A BEA is most useful when there are several known empirically supported interventions for a particular academic subject. When this is the case, the BEA can be used to distinguish which interventions are effective and not effective for the target learner. Functional skills are the academic focus for many indi-viduals with developmental disabilities (Collins, Evans, Creech-Galloway, Karl, & Miller, 2007). One such functional skill is the recognition of sight words. Sight words are any words that are read through word recognition. In a meta-analysis that examined the teaching of sight words for individuals with an intellectual disability, Browder and Xin (1998) found that there were a wide variety of effective sight word interventions. These authors came to this conclusion by comparing the overall percentage of nonoverlapping data (PND) points for different intervention effects. Some of the effective inter-ventions included performance feedback, modeling reading, pairing pictures with words and fading the pictures, and providing incentives for correct sight word reading.

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Browder and Xin’s (1998) findings suggest that many of the interventions for sight word acquisition are adequate for teaching the skill. To best determine the appropriate intervention for a particular student, based on the many options available, other methods are needed. The purpose of this study was to examine effectiveness of using a BEA to determine effective sight word interventions for a student with difficulties acquiring sight words. A secondary goal of this research is to conduct an extended analysis comparing multiple promising interventions to examine the ability of BEA to identify differentially effective interventions.

MethodParticipant and Setting

Huey was an 11-year-old male who attended a private school for students with brain injury and other neurological disorders. He was a new student who had attended the school for 1 month prior to the start of this study. A record review revealed he had diagnoses of diffused cortical dysgenesis, mild mental retardation, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Huey was assessed on admission, and it was found he had a limited ability to com-prehend presented language and formulate responses. In addition, Huey was found to have lower word reading than predicted from his cognitive potential. It was found that Huey needed multiple opportunities for review of material to show learning.

Huey was referred to the first author by his classroom teacher because of a difficulty in acquiring accurate sight word recognition. Prior to the study, Huey’s teacher had used errorless teaching procedures to teach sight word recognition. On referral, academic data for sight word acquisition were reviewed, and it was confirmed that with the use of an errorless learning technique, Huey had failed to acquire any sight words during his daily one-to-one sight words instruction during the first month at this school. Huey was being instructed on preprimer and primer dolch list words based on the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) he was being served under on admis-sion to the school. Huey was assessed on all dolch list words to identify known and unknown words before intervention began. Dolch words are words that occur at a high frequency in readings. They are broken into dif-ferent levels: preprimer, primer, first grade, second grade, third grade, and a list of nouns. These levels are ordered by difficulty.

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All sessions were conducted in a quiet conference room in the school. The room had six smaller tables and Huey was allowed to choose the table where he and the instructors sat. The instructor sat across the table from Huey.

MaterialsThe bulk of the materials for this study involved sight words that were printed on paper. All words were between three and five letters long and typed in Comic Sans MS 24-size font. All words were pretested using flashcards and test lists. Flashcards were 12.7 cm by 7.6 cm with the text centered on the flashcard. Appendix A provides an exemplar of a test list, with the words pre-sented in rows and columns. Training lists varied in format, but the majority of lists were identical to test lists. Variations of the lists will be described in the respective descriptions of the training conditions.

In between training and testing, the experimenter played games with Huey. This included card games and tic-tac-toe. These games were identified by Huey’s classroom teacher and vocally verified as preferred activities by Huey.

Response Definition and Dependent VariablesThe target behavior was the correct reading of a sight word. A correctly read word was defined as a word pronounced accurately and in the right tense. Each individual sound of a word needed to be enunciated with no additional sounds to be marked as correct. If Huey corrected himself, that is, he incor-rectly labeled a sight word but then started over with that word and labeled it correctly immediately, that response was recorded as correct. Errors were words read incorrectly or if there was no response within 3 s. Words were clustered into lists of 10 words. Percentage correct was calculated following each test of a word list. The dependent variable was the percentage of words read correctly.

ProcedureSessions were conducted four to five times a week. The length of the ses-sions varied based on the student’s behavior but generally lasted around 20 min. For each intervention conditions, Huey was exposed to the interven-tion strategy three times consecutively, unless otherwise specified. Then the experimenter played a nonrelated game with Huey for 5 min (e.g., card game).

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Last, the experimenter presented Huey with a test list (see Appendix A for an example), during which no accuracy feedback was provided.

Sight word selection. Huey’s sight word recognition was assessed across two formats: flash cards and word lists of dolch word that were mixed level (preprimer, primer, etc.). Words were randomly assigned to groups of 10 words. Each of these word sets was consistent across the two formats. All words were assessed using both formats. If Huey was unable to accurately read words across both formats, the word was eligible for inclusion into words lists for the BEA and extended analysis.

The process of eliminating known words and retaining unknown words produced a large pool of unknown words. From this pool, words were ran-domly assigned to new word sets of 10 words each. The only caveat was that if two words were chosen for a list that had the same first letter, the last word chosen was placed back into the pool and a new word was drawn for assign-ment to the list. This resulted in many novel 10 word sight word lists. During the BEA, each intervention condition was assigned a novel word list. This was also the same during the extended analysis with the exception of the control condition. The control conditions (described in more detail below) used the incentive condition word lists from the BEA because no instruction was pro-vided on these words.

BEA. The goal of the BEA was to determine which interventions had the most immediate positive impact on Huey’s accuracy of site reading. Evidence-based reading interventions were selected for evaluation in the BEA (VanAuken et al., 2002). Some of these strategies were designed for reading fluency but were easy to adapt to reading sight words. Using novel word lists for each intervention, Huey was exposed to each intervention one time. The order in which the interventions were conducted was determined randomly, with the exception of the last incentive condition. The last condition was added to evaluate an incentive with a higher criterion.

Eight different types of interventions were evaluated in this study. Each intervention began with instructions that articulated the behavior of the exper-imenter (e.g., “I will begin by reading the list of words to you” for passage preview) and Huey (e.g., “When you come to a word you do not know, sound it out” for phonics). During an intervention, correctly read words were praised by the experimenter. An error, or no response within 3 s, resulted in the experi-menter supplying the correct answer, unless otherwise specified.

A wide variety of strategies were tested in the BEA. All but one strategy involved practicing the list with the particular strategy three times. The strategies

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involved different approaches to reading a sight word (e.g., phonics) and dif-ferent prompting strategies (e.g., pairing picture with word, within stimulus prompt). The conditions are described in the order in which they were con-ducted (even though the order was randomly determined). The first condition, Repeated Readings and Passage Preview, involved having Huey read along a word list while the instructor read the words aloud followed by Huey independently reading the list three times (VanAuken et al., 2002). The second condition, Increased Trials, involved practicing each word on the list 10 times with instructor providing feedback (Ferkis, Belfiore, & Skinner, 1997). The third condition, Within Stimulus Prompt, involved changing the stimuli so that the first letter of each word was larger and red (Belfiore, Grskovic, Murphy, & Zentall, 1996). The Flashcards With Pictures involved inserting Boardmaker® pictures that represented the word to the right of each word as in Appendix B (Didden, de Graaff, Nelemans, Vooren, & Lancioni, 2006; Fossett & Mirenda, 2006). To make sure the relationship between a pic-ture and a word was clear, these stimuli were presented as flashcards. The fifth condition, Phonics, involved prompting Huey to sound out words and model sounding out words when he made an error (Daly, Johnson, & LeClair, 2009). The sixth condition, Incentive (Eckert et al., 2000), involved making a highly preferred activity contingent on a particular outcome: two words read correctly. This condition did not involve any formal teaching. Huey was told the contingency and the test began. The criterion for the incentive was determined based on the median pretest performance on the word lists. The seventh condition was a Folding-in condition (Shapiro, 2004). In this condition, the ratio of 70:30 (known:unknown) words was used. Known words were those words identified from the pretests as words Huey read correctly on word lists and flash cards. The eighth intervention, Repeated Readings, involved practicing the list of words three times with instructor feedback (Ferkis et al., 1997; VanAuken et al., 2002). The last condition was another Incentive condition where the criterion was set at four or more words read correctly.

Extended analysis. Following completion of the BEA, an extended analysis was conducted that examined the acquisition and maintenance of sight word reading using interventions that were found to produce the greatest increases in Huey’s sight word reading during the BEA (Wilber & Cushman, 2006).The two sight word interventions found to produce the greatest immediate effect during the BEA were then implemented for the student using an alternating treatments design (VanAuken et al., 2002) until mastery of word lists was

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attained. Mastery of a list was defined a three consecutive sessions with 90% accuracy or above. Follow-up data were collected at 1-week intervals following mastery of a word list. Maintenance sessions did not involve any instruction, only the respective test was administered. Following the mastery of two word lists using intervention selected from the BEA, the extended analysis was replicated with novel word lists.

A control condition was also implemented to ensure that the effects of the interventions were in fact caused by the interventions and not from educa-tional activities occurring in Huey’s classroom or other extraexperimental variables. The control condition involved no intervention, only testing. Data were gathered on the two interventions and control condition during each session. The order of conditions was randomized for each session.

Experimental DesignAn alternating treatments design was used to evaluate sight word acquisition and maintenance (Hayes, Barlow, & Nelson-Gray, 1999) during both the BEA and extended analyses. During the BEA, Huey was exposed to each interven-tion one time. Thus, these data were evaluated for differences in level as a change in neither trend nor variability was possible (Martens, Eckert, Bradley, & Ardoin, 1999).

Interobserver Agreement (IOA) and Treatment IntegrityIOA was collected for 44% of the BEA sessions and 23% of the extended analysis conditions. IOA was calculated by dividing the number of agree-ments by the number of agreements plus disagreements and multiplying the resulting number by 100 (Martin & Pear, 1996). During the BEA, IOA aver-aged 99.5% (range = 98-100). During the extended analysis, IOA averaged 96% (range = 90-100). Cohen’s kappa was also calculated as an additional measure of agreement. Kappa was calculated by subtracting the probability of chance agreement by the observed agreement and dividing that number by one minus the probability of chance agreement. The probability of chance agreement was 0.5 because a word was scored as read correctly or incor-rectly. During the BEA, kappa was 0.99. Kappa during the extended analy-sis was 0.92.

Treatment integrity data were collected for 44% of the BEA sessions and 23% of the extended analysis sessions. Treatment integrity was collected by creating a task analysis of the steps to be performed for administering a test

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or training. An independent observer checked off boxes of steps that were completed and the percentage of correctly completed steps was calculated. Integrity was 100% for the BEA and the extended analysis.

ResultsFigure 1 displays results of the BEA. Accuracy ranged from 0% to 40% correct. The Flashcards With Pictures and Phonics intervention procedures were most effective in producing accurate responding during testing. Both interventions resulted in 40% accuracy on tests. These interventions were used in the extended analysis and compared to a control condition. Figure 2 displays the results of the extended analysis. During the first comparison (top panel, Figure 1), Huey mastered a word list in six sessions using the Flashcards With Pictures intervention and averaged 80% accuracy during the three 1-week interval maintenance tests. Using the Phonics intervention,

Figure 1. Data from the Brief Experimental Analysis.Note: Each condition represents data obtained after conducting the specified intervention. Each condition was assigned a novel word list, all of which were composed of words that were read incorrectly during sight word selection phase.

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Huey mastered a word list in 12 sessions and averaged 63% on the mainte-nance tests. For the control condition, Huey averaged 13% correct respond-ing (range = 0-20). The extended analysis was replicated using a second set of word lists (bottom panel, Figure 2). Huey mastered the Flashcards With

Figure 2. Results of the Extended Analysis for Both Sets of Words.Note: Open shapes represent maintenance data, which were collected in 1-week intervals following mastery of a list.

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Pictures list in 12 sessions and averaged 90% correct on the maintenance tests. With the Phonics intervention, Huey mastered the list of words in 23 sessions and averaged 100% correct on the maintenance tests. Across the two extended analyses, Huey required about twice as many sessions to mas-ter word lists using the Phonics intervention as compared to lists using the Flashcards With Pictures intervention. During the first extended analysis, the Flashcards With Pictures resulted in 80% accurate maintenance responding while there was a substantial drop in accuracy for the Phonics list; however, during the second extended analysis, both word lists were maintained at mas-tery level accuracy during the maintenance tests. During both extended analy-ses, the control condition list did not increase, meaning that the interventions, and not extraneous factors, led to increases in sight word reading accuracy.

DiscussionBEA is a useful tool for determining which interventions are likely to help a student who is demonstrating academic difficulties. The general utility of BEA has been demonstrated for oral reading fluency (e.g., Daly et al., 1999; Gortmaker et al., 2007; Welsch, 2007), reading comprehension (McComas et al., 1996), mathematics (Codding et al., 2009), handwriting (Burns et al., 2009), and spelling (McComas et al., 1996). This study extends the previous research by demonstrating the utility of BEA in identifying effective sight word reading interventions. Prior to this investigation, Huey had failed to acquire a single sight word in the 2 months while at his private school. The BEA identified two teaching procedures that were then demonstrated to be effective in increasing sight word acquisition for this student.

Utility of BEA has been analyzed on different levels. The majority of this research selects a high-performing intervention from a BEA and compares the effects of that intervention with baseline performance (e.g., Burns et al., 2009; Daly et al., 2006; Eckert et al., 2000; Gortmaker et al., 2007; McComas, et al., 1996). The utility of a BEA can be further tested by comparing two relatively unequal interventions (VanAuken et al., 2002) or two relatively equal interventions (Welsch, 2007) in an extended analysis. In the current study, the two interventions that were compared in the extended analysis were the two highest performing interventions during the BEA. These inter-ventions produced the same results during the BEA. On the basis of the results of the BEA, one would predict that the two interventions should pro-duce relatively equal results in an extended analysis. This was not the case. In terms of acquisition, the Phonics interventions produced mastery in twice as

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many sessions as the Flashcards With Pictures interventions. The maintenance data were mixed. For the first set of word lists, the Flashcard With Picture intervention produced 80% accurate maintenance responding while the Phonics intervention produced lower results (M = 66%). For the second set of word lists, both interventions produced mastery-level maintenance responding with a slight advantage for Phonics (100% vs. 90%). Overall, the Flashcard With Pictures intervention produced quicker acquisition and more robust mainte-nance than did the Phonics intervention, even though the BEA identified the two interventions as equivalent.

The nature of the target skill in this study (sight word acquisition) allowed for a different analysis of the utility of a BEA than previous studies. Previous studies have examined oral reading fluency (VanAuken et al., 2002; Welsch, 2007), which is at a higher level on the instructional hierarchy (Daly et al., 1996). Acquisition of a skill involves accuracy, whereas fluency involves accuracy and rapid responding. By examining the utility of a BEA with a skill in the acquisition phase, we were able to clearly demonstrate the number of expo-sures to each intervention that were required for the student to master specific sight words.

The results of the current study confirm that the BEA is effective in identify-ing interventions that are likely to produce above-baseline academic perfor-mance but calls into question whether this assessment can identify differentially effective interventions. This is not to argue that the BEA is not useful, but the strengths and limitations of any system should be fully acknowledged. From a cost-benefit perspective, the benefit of conducting a BEA is that many interven-tions can be tested in a short amount of time and there is ample evidence that selecting the highest performing intervention will lead to higher academic per-formance as compared with baseline (e.g., Burns et al., 2009; Daly et al., 2006; Eckert et al., 2000; Gortmaker et al., 2007; McComas, 1996). The cost is that the brief nature of the assessment may mask the true effects of interventions. Based on the BEA from the current study, the data indicated that selecting either Flashcards With Pictures or Phonics would lead to effective acquisition, which was demonstrated as true. However, as the extended analysis reveals, selecting the Flashcards With Pictures intervention will produce twice as many acquired sight words in any given time period. This is an issue of efficiency. A BEA may best be suited for identifying effective interventions as opposed to identifying efficient interventions. However, by supplementing a BEA with an extended analysis, information on effectiveness and efficiency can be gathered.

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Future research could address the potential limitations of a BEA. Studies could be conducted that examine the comparative effectiveness of the hierar-chy of interventions produced from this assessment. The design of a BEA could also be examined. Brief does not necessarily mean one observation of each intervention effect. Perhaps a BEA that involves two or more samples of each intervention would produce a more robust intervention hierarchy. If one considered the first data point for each intervention of the two extended anal-yses (in this study) as part of the BEA, then Flashcards With Pictures would have scores of 40%, 60%, and 20%, whereas Phonics would have scores of 40%, 40%, and 10%. The additional data points would indicate that the Flashcards With Pictures intervention was slightly more effective than the Phonics intervention. This lends some evidence to the argument that more data points could potentially produce more robust intervention hierarchies. More research on the number of BEA samples would be useful for practitio-ners who can then weigh the amount of time an assessment requires with the benefits that are likely to occur from one way of conducting a BEA to another way.

A limitation of this intervention was the fact that only one student partici-pated in this study and only one academic area was targeted. This limits the generalization of these results. These findings could be unique to this student, unique to sight word acquisition, or unique to this combination. Therefore, this type of research should be conducted with a variety of students and aca-demic content to truly assess the utility of BEA to differentially identify effective academic interventions.

With increased use of BEA in applied setting, researchers should continue research on the appropriateness of a BEA to identify effective interventions for academic deficits. Research on the utility and the limits of this type of assess-ment are needed so that practitioners can weigh the strengths and weaknesses of this type of assessment. The assumption of this body of research is that this is an effective tool for intervention identification. However, this assessment really gauges the immediate impact of intervention strategies. Some strategies may have impacts that only emerge over time. For instance, one could argue that, while in the short run, Flashcards With Pictures is a more efficient strategy than Phonics for this child, Phonics would be a better strategy in the long run because Phonics is a broader skill that is more likely to generalize to new words. Flashcards and Pictures, however, is a strategy that is not likely to teach anything beyond the immediate words. Continued research is needed to better articulate the strengths and limitations of BEA.

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Appendix ASample Test Word List

but can did forhow old pull shethen where

Appendix BFlashcards With Pictures Words

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Acknowledgment

The authors thank Sara Whitcomb for her helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

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Bios

Amy Baranek is currently a clinical director at the May Center for Education and Neurorehabilitation. She received her MA in clinical psychology from Minnesota State University and is completing her PhD in school psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi. Her research interests include skill acquisition and habit reversal in the developmentally delayed population.

Daniel M. Fienup is currently an assistant professor at Queens College of the City University of New York. He received an MS in behavior analysis and therapy from Southern Illinois University, a PhD in school psychology from Illinois State University, and is a board certified behavior analyst-doctoral. His research interests include the assessment of academic skills difficulties, and effective and efficient academic instruction.

Gary Pace is currently a supervising psychologist at the May Center for Education and Neurorehabilitation. He received his PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Kentucky and is a board certified behavior analyst-doctoral. His research interests include the assessment and treatment of severe behavior problems.