Incorporating Mealtime Barriers During Caregiver Training of Behavior‐Analytic Feeding Interventions

Abstract

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that behavioral skills training is effective for training caregivers to implement behavior‐analytic feeding interventions with high integrity. However, less is known about the generality of caregiver treatment integrity outside of the training context. Caregivers may experience challenges with generalizing their skills to the home as the training context (e.g., clinic) may not include stimuli necessary for caregiver skill generalization. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to evaluate caregiver integrity in the presence of mealtime barriers relevant to the home mealtime setting (e.g., eating while implementing treatment, attending to siblings during meals) and train caregivers to implement interventions with high integrity in the presence of these barriers. We trained three caregivers to implement behavior‐analytic feeding interventions in the absence and presence of caregiver‐identified mealtime barriers relevant to their home mealtime setting. Although treatment integrity decreased across caregivers in the presence of the mealtime barriers, all caregivers implemented interventions with high integrity with the mealtime barriers present by the end of the study. We discuss these results in terms of considerations for improving the generality of caregiver treatment integrity outside of the clinical setting.