Toward Durability and Generalization in Support of Autistic Individuals

This book describes methods for improving the maintenance and generalization of behavior analytic treatment outcomes for individuals with autism. It introduces the concept of durability--not just treatments that maintain across days or weeks, or that generalize to a few new settings, but those that remain successful under increasingly challenging situations (e.g., over years, during changing reinforcement conditions, across service providers). Chapters address key topics, such as preventive care, early behavioral intervention, treatment of severe destructive behavior, teaching skills across the lifespan, and medication management. In addition, the book addresses ethical and cultural considerations as they relate to treatment maintenance and concludes with perspectives from autistic voices and caregivers. Chapters include case examples highlighting durable outcomes as well as schematics and materials (e.g., data sheets) to assess and maintain treatment gains.

Key areas of coverage include:

Behavioral persistence, durability of treatment effects, and relapse across the following domains. Early learner and academic skills. Toileting and self-care skills, feeding behavior, and verbal behavior. Social skills and socially reinforced destructive behavior. Automatically reinforced destructive behavior. Medical compliance, implementer behavior, and geriatric behavior.

Toward Durability and Generalization in Support of Autistic Individuals is a must-have resource for clinicians, therapists, and professionals as well as researchers, professors, and graduate students in clinical child and school psychology, child and adolescent psychiatry, social work, developmental psychology, behavioral therapy/rehabilitation, pediatrics, physical therapy, occupational therapy, neurology, special education, and all related disciplines.

Daniel Mitteer, Ph.D., BCBA-D, is a faculty member at the Marcus Autism Center, where he oversees cases involving the assessment and treatment of severe destructive behavior (e.g., aggression, self-injurious behavior). Dr. Mitteer is an assistant professor at the Emory University School of Medicine and BCBA-D at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Prior to his time in Atlanta, Dr. Mitteer completed his M.A., Ph.D., and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Munroe-Meyer Institute under the mentorship of Drs. Brian Greer and Wayne Fisher. He then served as a faculty member with Drs. Greer and Fisher at the Children’s Special Hospital-Rutgers University Center for Autism Research, Education, and Services in New Jersey from 2020-2024. He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and collaborated on numerous grants, with the bulk of his papers and grant collaboration examining ways of addressing behavioral durability and treatment relapse.