Replying Discussions

Original questions:

• Provide a general overview of the article you selected.
• What were the main points of the article (e.g., for a research article, summarize research questions, population, findings, limitations, and recommendations for future study)?
• What type of scholarly article did you select (research article, review article, theoretical article, or meta-analysis)?
• What keywords or indicators in the title, abstract, or article helped you identify the type of scholarly article?
• Use proper APA formatting, including in-text citations

Peer 1:

The article I chose is called The effect of adding Coping Power Program-Sweden to Parent Management Training-effects and moderators in randomized controlled trial. Within this research article a study was done on children between the ages of 8-12 years old who were diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) (Helander et al., 2018). The purpose of the study was to determine whether children who were diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder would benefit from a combination of therapeutic treatments compared to a single therapeutic treatment (Helander et al., 2018). The therapeutic treatment combination which was tested in this study was Parent Management Training (PMT) in addition to child Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (child-CBT) (Helander et al., 2018). Through using the combination of Parent Management Training and child Cognitive Behavioral Therapy hopefully the children would have less child behavioral problems and an increase in reference to prosocial behavior (Helander et al., 2018).

One of the research questions which was investigated in this study was how effective the therapeutic combination of group based parent management training plus child Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is in reducing child behavioral issues as opposed to only using Parent Management Training (Helander et al., 2018). Another one of the research questions which was investigated in this study was whether the therapeutic combination of PMT and child-CBT was effective in reducing parental stress compared to using only PMT (Helander et al., 2018). The last research question which was investigated within this study was whether the therapeutic combination of PMT and child-CBT lowered the severity of disruptive behavior, presence of Callous/Unemotional traits (CU traits), comorbid ADHD, and the risk levels associated with the outcome of children effected by antisocial developmental issues (Helander et al., 2018). The population of this study was 120 children between the age of 8-12 that were diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder in Sweden (Helander et al., 2018). A finding of this study was that children who were in the combined treatment groups with both PMT and child-CBT showed improvement of their prosocial behaviors though not significantly more than the children who were in the control group that only received PMT (Helander et al., 2018). One limitation of this study was that the study was only done on young children and there is a possibility that the results might have been different if this same study had been done on older children. This is a significant limitation because the PMT plus child-CBT treatment might not have had a significant impact on older children if the study was done on older children. Another limitation of this study was that there was a lack of teacher reported data (Helander et al., 2018). This is significant because the children might have behaved differently in a teaching environment compared to their home setting. One recommendation for future study within this research article was whether the increase of prosocial behavior the children exhibited from the combined PMT and child-CBT would remain over a long period of time (Helander et al., 2018). This is important because the researchers could do a longitudinal study in the future on the same participants to determine whether the improvement the children made during the study would continue without needing further treatment.

The type of scholarly article that I selected was a research article from the peer reviewed journal Behavior Research and Therapy.

Some keywords within the title which helped me to identify the type of scholarly article I had selected included the words randomized controlled trial which was within the title (Helander et al., 2018). One set of keywords which were included within the abstract of the scholarly article which helped me to determine the article was a research article included the abstract mentioning there were one hundred and twenty children who participated in the research study (Helander et al., 2018).

Work Referenced

Helander, M., Lochman, J., Högström, J., Ljótsson, B., Hellner, C., & Enebrink, P. (2018). The effect of adding Coping Power Program-Sweden to Parent Management Training-effects and moderators in a randomized controlled trial. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 103. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/2065253972/

Peer 2:

The article I researched was “Is long-term ABA therapy abusive: A response to Sandoval-Norton and Shkedy.” After searching the term, ABA therapy, then limiting the results to peer-reviewed and academic journal within the last ten years. This article discusses the criticisms of ABA therapy and the response. According to Goycki, “A primary goal of ABA treatment is to protect the well-being of individuals and in doing so, the treatment focus is individualized, allowing individuals to learn the necessary skills to develop the most independence (2020).” The criticisms outlined within the article include, ABA is unethical and abusive, promotes prompt dependency, only works for children with particular characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), includes methodologies and are considered out of date and ineffective, and shows no data showing its effectiveness over the long-term.

The article discusses the ways in which ABA therapy is tailored to client’s specific needs and the potential benefits for students who have been served by intensive ABA therapy – IQ scores, language scores, etc. Goycki discusses the ways in which prompts are faded to dispute the claims of prompt dependency. The article then discusses the results of two meta-analyses discussing the effectiveness of ABA-based interventions by Peters-Scheffer in 2011 and Virues-Ortega 2010. Goycki states, “Interestingly, results from the meta-analysis still demonstrated that long-term ABA interventions were effective for both verbal and non-verbal participants. Virués-Ortega found no indication that individuals with an IQ under 70 experienced unfavorable outcomes. Rather, Virués-Ortega stated results suggest long-term, comprehensive ABA intervention leads to (positive) medium to large effects in terms of intellectual functioning, language development, and adaptive behavior of individuals with ASD (2020).”

Goycki continues to state “Criticisms of ABA (and other treatment strategies) are welcome and needed, so as to increase confidence amongst consumers that the quality of ABA treatment remains high (2020).” Overall the research points to benefits and ethical treatment in ABA therapy.

Thank,

– Sara

Gorycki, K. A., Ruppel, P. R., & Zane, T. (2020). Is long-term ABA therapy abusive: A response to Sandoval-Norton and Shkedy. Cogent Psychology, 7(1), 1823615. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2020.1823615