FALL 2022 FEEDING WEBINAR SERIES
In Fall 2022, we have a series of talks lined up! Laura and Elise will be presenting their Behavioral InTEgrated with Speech (BITES®) Approach to Feeding Therapy Part 1 and Part 2 events in September. We also will be hosting a number of guest speakers on various topics including an introductory talk on pediatric feeding problems, an overview of the book Broccoli Boot Camp, training caregivers to implement feeding interventions, the ethics of behavioral feeding interventions and more! For each event, BACB Learning CEUs will be available for live attendance and watching the recording. All registrants will have access to a recording of the event for five days following the live event. See the schedule and detailed descriptions of all upcoming events below!
PREVIOUS EVENTS
WEBINAR: An Introduction to Assessment and Treatment of Pediatric Feeding Problems
Speaker: Jennifer Felber, PhD, BCBA-D
Date: Thursday, August 11th, 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM EST
Description:
Feeding is a complex process involving multiple systems. As a result, there are often many factors that contribute to the development of pediatric feeding problems. When children are demonstrating feeding problems it is important to assess for medical, nutritional, skill-based, and psychosocial factors that could be contributing to this problem prior to the development of a treatment plan (Sharp et al., 2022). This introductory webinar will discuss various assessment tools and interventions used to assess and treat pediatric feeding problems. There are 3 BACB Learning CEUs available for this event!
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will be able to describe common pediatric feeding problems
- Participants will be able to identify common symptoms and underlying factors associated with pediatric feeding problems
- Participants will learn about the importance of a multidisciplinary team when assessing for pediatric feeding problems and the role of each professional
- Participants will become familiar with various tools used to assess for pediatric feeding problems
- Participants will become familiar with evidence-based strategies used to treat pediatric feeding problems
Speaker Bio: Dr. Jennifer Felber is the Director of the Pediatric Feeding Clinic at The Summit Center. Dr. Felber is a licensed psychologist and licensed behavior analyst in New York State with a Ph.D., in School Psychology from Central Michigan University. She completed a pre-doctoral internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Munroe-Meyer Institute. Dr. Felber joined The Summit Center in 2014 to assist in the development of the Pediatric Feeding Disorders Clinic.
UPCOMING AUGUST EVENTS
Overview of Broccoli Boot Camp: Basic Training for Parents of Selective Eaters
Speaker: Keith Williams, PhD, BCBA
Date: Thursday, August 25th, 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM EST
Description:
Selective eating involves the intake of an extremely limited diet, often excluding entire food groups. Selective eaters often make decisions about food choices based upon appearance rather than taste. A vast amount of research points to the need for repeated taste exposure to promote the development of food preferences. Behavioral interventions have been found to be successful for increasing the diet variety of a range of children with and without special needs. This workshop will explain some of these interventions and discuss how they can be utilized by caregivers in home settings. There are 3 BACB Learning CEUs available for this event! This event is free for Penn ABA members!
Learning Objectives:
- Attendees will learn about the role of repeated taste exposure.
- Attendees will learn five behavioral interventions for expanding a child’s diet variety.
- Attendees will learn how to collect data to track a child’s progress when using the interventions discussed.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Williams has been the Director of the Feeding Program at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center for 25 years. He is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Penn State College of Medicine and the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Association of Behavior Analysis. Dr. Williams was a Fulbright Specialist at the National University of Ireland. He is a licensed psychologist and a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst. In addition to providing clinical services, he teaches residents, medical students, and graduate students. Dr Williams has over 70 publications, including three books, in the area of childhood feeding problems and pediatric nutrition.
Caregivers can register for a discounted price here
The above event is free of charge for members of Penn ABA! If you are a member of Penn ABA, please contact us at bitesfeedingtherapy@gmail.com in order to register.
SEPTEMBER EVENTS
WEBINAR: BITES®: The Behavioral InTEgrated with Speech Approach to Feeding Therapy | Part 1
Speakers: Laura Seiverling, PhD, BCBA-D & Elise Jusko, MS, CCC-SLP
Date: Thursday, September 8th, 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM EST
Description:
Pediatric feeding problems are complex and often require a multi-disciplinary approach to assessment and treatment. The Behavioral InTEgrated with Speech approach, known as BITES®, focuses specifically on how Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) and speech-language pathologists (SLPS) can work together to assess feeding problems and develop interventions for them. With over 30 years of combined experience in the field of pediatric feeding disorders, Dr. Laura Seiverling, Psychologist and BCBA-D, and Elise Jusko, MS & CCC-SLP, will draw from their own experiences working on a multidisciplinary feeding team together and will provide an overview of how cross-discipline collaboration between SLPs and BCBAs can look when it comes to both assessment and treatment of various pediatric feeding disorders. Topics covered include an overview of typical feeding development, the mechanics of eating, the common roles of various disciplines during multidisciplinary feeding evaluations, and common medical and environmental factors that may lead to a pediatric feeding problem. Next, attendees will learn the roles of both SLPs and BCBAs in assessment and treatment of pediatric feeding disorders. There are 3 BACB Learning CEUs available for this event!
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will be able to describe typical feeding development.
- Participants will be able to identify the role of various disciplines involved in multidisciplinary feeding evaluations.
- Participants will be able to identify common medical and environmental factors that may lead to a feeding problem.
- Participants will learn the role of both SLPs and BCBAs in assessment and treatment of pediatric feeding disorders.
- Participants will learn how to collect baseline data and determine a starting point for feeding interventions. They will also learn how to collect data on various mealtime behaviors, graph child mealtime behavior, and how to write task-analyzed feeding protocols.
- Participants will learn how to use behavioral skills training to train caregivers to implement feeding interventions.
Speaker Bios: Dr. Laura Seiverling is a licensed psychologist and board certified behavior analyst. She has over 15 years of experience working on or with multidisciplinary teams in the field of pediatric feeding disorders. Elise Jusko, CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist with over 20 years of experience working in the field. Alongside each other, Dr. Seiverling and Ms. Jusko promote interdisciplinary collaboration among clinicians to address both oral motor and behavioral components of pediatric feeding disorders.
WEBINAR: BITES®: The Behavioral InTEgrated with Speech Approach to Feeding Therapy | Part 2
Speakers: Laura Seiverling, PhD, BCBA-D & Elise Jusko, MS, CCC-SLP
Date: Thursday, September 15th, 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM EST
Description: workshop will teach participants how SLPs and BCBAs can work together to assess and treat both oral motor skill deficits and inappropriate mealtime behavior across a range of pediatric feeding disorders. Interventions for the following problems will be described: food selectivity, packing, chewing, liquid avoidance, choking phobias, rapid eating, dysphagia, tongue thrusts, self-feeding, and tube weaning. Case studies for each feeding problem will be provided along with specific examples of how SLPs and BCBAs can collaborate to develop individualized interventions to address both skill deficits and inappropriate mealtime behavior exhibited by those with feeding problems. There are 3 BACB Learning CEUs available for this event!
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will learn how to take a number of factors into account when developing a behavioral feeding intervention. These factors include considering the client’s oral motor skills, medical status, pre-treatment diet variety, the severity of the client’s inappropriate mealtime behavior.
- Participants will learn how to develop food selectivity interventions with and without the use of escape extinction.
- Participants will be able to list the specific skills often needed to be taught when teaching a client to how to chew.
- Participants will be able to identify the interventions used to address packing (i.e., holding food in the mouth for protracted durations) related to avoidance/refusal behavior and packing related to inadequate oral motor skills.
- Participants will learn how various types of prompting procedures (i.e., least-to-most, most-to-least, and graduated guidance) can be implemented in a self-feeding intervention.
- Participants will learn how SLPs and BCBAs can work together to prepare a client for an instrumental swallow evaluation
Speaker Bios: Dr. Laura Seiverling is a licensed psychologist and board certified behavior analyst. She has over 15 years of experience working on or with multidisciplinary teams in the field of pediatric feeding disorders. Elise Jusko, CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist with over 20 years of experience working in the field. Alongside each other, Dr. Seiverling and Ms. Jusko promote interdisciplinary collaboration among clinicians to address both oral motor and behavioral components of pediatric feeding disorders.
OCTOBER EVENTS
WEBINAR: EAT-UPTM: Coaching Caregivers to Implement Intervention – A Better Mealtime for Everyone
Speaker: Deirdre Muldoon, PhD., CCC-SLP, BCBA-D
Date: Thursday, October 6th, 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM EST
Description:
This talk is based on an intervention model, called Easing Anxiety Together with Understanding and Perseverance (EAT-UPTM). Mealtimes promote family bonds, support health and nutrition, and are connected with parents’ feelings of success. Difficult mealtime behavior lead to family stress and lifestyle changes. Individualized intervention packages, where parents are a primary member of the team, work to improve the feeding, eating, and/or mealtime challenges of children with disabilities and their families. There are many evidence-based strategies that are effective for addressing food refusal behaviors. Researchers have identified behavioral strategies such as pairing preferred and less preferred foods, reinforcement for interaction with less preferred food (e.g., using preferred bites of food), are effective in expanding the number of foods a child will accept. Most of these strategies, however, have been implemented by professionals, not parents. This talk will include trans-disciplinary, evidence-based practices from the science of behavior analysis, that can be implemented during mealtimes and snack times to help children safely eat the same foods as the family, thereby reducing stress of parents while increasing food acceptance by children. The presenter will address four aspects of mealtimes (food characteristics, communication, the physical environment, and the social environment) and will discuss the implementation of these practices through caregiver coaching. There are 3 BACB Learning CEUs available for this event!
Learning Objectives:
- Discuss four primary areas to address to promote mealtime participation of children with pediatric feeding disorder (i.e., food characteristics, social environment, physical environment, and communication).
- Describe facilitation of caregiver implementation through coaching and modelling using behavioral feedback, to help parents to identify occasions for functional communication, and possible maintaining consequences for a behavior.
- Describe how to promote improved mealtime participation of children using evidence-based strategies.
Speaker Bio: Deirdre is an assistant professor in speech and language pathology at The College of St Rose in Albany, NY. She has worked in the area of autism and developmental disability for 25 years. She specializes in behavioral feeding disorders and language disorders in children with autism and other developmental disabilities and her current publications and research are in the area of pediatric feeding disorders. In addition to holding certification as an SLP, Deirdre is a board-certified behavior analyst-doctoral level, and she teaches and uses behavior management skills in graduate classrooms and clinic settings.
WEBINAR: Partnering with Other Disciplines to Treat Pediatric Feeding Problems When Not Part of an Interdisciplinary Team
Speaker: Jennifer Felber, PhD, BCBA-D
Date: Thursday, October 13th, 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM EST
Description:
Feeding is a process that involves multiple systems. When children are demonstrating feeding problems it is important to assess for medical, nutritional, skill-based, and psychosocial factors that could be contributing to this problem (Sharp et al., 2022). Oftentimes, more than one factor is contributing and maintaining a pediatric feeding problem (Greer et al., 2008). Due to the complex nature of these problems, it is important to work with other disciplines when assessing and treating children with pediatric feeding problems (Praveen et al., 2019). If not a part of an interdisciplinary team, it is important to develop relationships with other disciplines to effectively assess and treat children with pediatric feeding problems. This webinar will discuss strategies for developing relationships and collaborating with other disciplines, and provide examples based on personal experience. There are 2 BACB Learning CEUs for this event!
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will be able to describe pediatric feeding problems
- Participants will learn about the importance of an interdisciplinary team when assessing for pediatric feeding problems and the role of each professional
- Participants will become familiar with strategies for collaborating with other disciplines when treating pediatric feeding problems
Speaker Bio: Dr. Jennifer Felber is the Director of the Pediatric Feeding Clinic at The Summit Center. Dr. Felber is a licensed psychologist and licensed behavior analyst in New York State with a Ph.D., in School Psychology from Central Michigan University. She completed a pre-doctoral internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Munroe-Meyer Institute. Dr. Felber joined The Summit Center in 2014 to assist in the development of the Pediatric Feeding Disorders Clinic.
NOVEMBER EVENTS
WEBINAR: Alternatives to Escape Extinction in the Treatment of Food Selectivity
Speaker: Christina Alaimo, PhD, BCBA-D
Date: Thursday, November 10th, 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM EST
Description:
While there is an extensive evidence-base supporting escape extinction as an effective intervention component in the treatment of food selectivity, previous research has also documented caregiver concerns regarding its use. Escape extinction typically involves feeders continuing to present bites/drinks until they are consumed rather than removing bites/drinks contingent on inappropriate mealtime responses. Caregivers may view escape extinction as unacceptable (Gentry & Luselli, 2008; McCartney et al., 2005). Vazquez et al. (2019) found that parents rated escape extinction as the least acceptable and least preferred intervention strategy to address their children’s challenging behavior and identified that parents rated another common component of intervention, differential reinforcement of alternative behavior, as the most preferred and most acceptable strategy. To address these concerns and ensure caregivers can safely and feasibly implement interventions, researchers have shifted to evaluations of interventions using alternatives to escape extinction.
These alternatives to escape extinction interventions have been successful for some populations of children with feeding disorders (Tereshko et al., 2021). Trejo and Fryling (2017) implemented two variations of a high-probability response sequence and successfully increased food consumption and reduced inappropriate mealtime behaviors in the absence of escape extinction. The researchers did indicate inappropriate mealtime behaviors rarely occurred, suggesting these types of interventions may be effective for children with mild inappropriate mealtimes behaviors. Researchers have also demonstrated positive outcomes using: shaping (Cosbey & Muldoon, 2017), shaping combined with differential reinforcement (Hodges et al., 2017), simultaneous presentation (Whipple et al., 2019), simultaneous presentation combined with stimulus fading (Cho & Sonoyama, 2020), and modeling (Hillman, 2019; O’Connor et al., 2020).
This event will focus on summarizing the recent research literature examining the efficacy of interventions using alternatives to escape extinction to treat food selectivity in children. Dr. Alaimo will also highlight some of her own recent research examining a caregiver-implemented telehealth intervention using reinforcement alone for accepting bites of target foods within a short time-window. At the end of this event, attendees will learn a range of both antecedent and consequence-based intervention strategies without being combined with escape extinction that can be used to increase diet variety without the use of escape extinction. There are 3 BACB Learning CEUs for this event!
Learning Objectives:
- Attendees will become become updated on the recent applied behavior analytic feeding literature on both escape extinction and alternatives to escape extinction interventions.
- Attendees will also become familiar with caregiver-implemented interventions and caregiver treatment acceptability ratings of various intervention components.
- Attendees will understand which populations of children with food selectivity may be successfully treated using alternatives to escape extinction interventions.
- Attendees will learn when to consider making changes to treatment, specifically, when to include additional antecedent strategies and when to consider the use of escape extinction.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Christina Alaimo is a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA-D) and NYS Licensed Behavior Analyst with a NYS limited permit to practice psychology. She received her doctorate in behavior analysis from The Graduate Center, City University of New York in 2021. She has extensive experience assessing and treating a range of pediatric feeding disorders. Her research has primarily focused on staff and caregiver training in interventions to treat children’s food refusal and food selectivity.
DECEMBER EVENTS
WEBINAR: Ethical Considerations When Providing Behavior Analytic Feeding Interventions
Speaker: Keith Williams, PhD, BCBA
Date: Thursday, December 1st, 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM EST
Description:
Despite their effectiveness, the use of behavioral interventions in addressing feeding problems is not without controversy. This webinar will explain some of these controversies and explain how to address them with parents, teachers, or other consumers. While there are no ethical issues unique to feeding therapy, the treatment of feeding problems often requires a biobehavioral approach as many children have medical or biological conditions that impact their feeding. Providers need to make numerous decisions regarding assessment and treatment, this webinar will provide examples of some of these decisions factors related to making them. There are 3 Ethics BACB Learning CEUs for this event! This event is also free for Penn ABA members!
Learning Objectives:
- Attendees will learn current controversies in the use of behavioral interventions for feeding problems.
- Attendees will explain two ethical issues related to the delivery of feeding therapy.
- Attendees will explain methods to aid decision-making concerning assessment and treatment
Speaker Bio: Dr. Williams has been the Director of the Feeding Program at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center for 25 years. He is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Penn State College of Medicine and the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Association of Behavior Analysis. Dr. Williams was a Fulbright Specialist at the National University of Ireland. He is a licensed psychologist and a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst. In addition to providing clinical services, he teaches residents, medical students, and graduate students. Dr Williams has over 70 publications, including three books, in the area of childhood feeding problems and pediatric nutrition.