The Effects of Pyramidal Training on Staff Acquisition of Five Behavior Analytic Procedures

Direct care staff members serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are often required to implement several behavior analytic procedures with only limited training soon after being hired. Pyramidal training is an effective model for disseminating applied behavior analytic skills to employees that treat individuals with developmental disabilities. This study used a multiple probes design across teachers and a delayed multiple baseline design across teaching assistants to evaluate the effects of video models, role play and feedback on teachers’ accuracy in implementing behavioral skills training and on teaching assistants’ accuracy in implementing five applied behavior analytic procedures (i.e. stimulus-stimulus pairing, multiple stimulus without replacement preference assessment, mand training, discrete trial teaching, and graphing discrete trial data). Pyramidal training was effective in increasing first tier participants’ procedural integrity of behavioral skills training steps and in increasing second tier participants’ procedural integrity of implementing the target procedures. First tier participants required feedback to maintain training skills over time, to train procedures other than the procedure implemented during their own training and to train novel staff members. Thus, pyramidal BST required ongoing supervision by a behavior analyst to effectively disseminate multiple ABA skills to a variety of staff members over time