NJACE Speaker Series - Relapse and Treatment Adherence during Treatment of Pediatric Feeding Disorders
Speaker Series - Dr. Sarah Haney McDevitt
Examining Treatment Relapse and Caregiver Treatment Adherence during Treatment of Pediatric Feeding Disorder
When? February 28th, 2025 @ 4:00pm
Where? RUCARES (888 Easton Ave, Somerset NJ 08873) or Online
Dr. Sarah Haney McDevitt is a doctoral-level Board Certified Behavior Analyst and Senior Behavior Analyst in the Pediatric Feeding Disorders Program at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. McDevitt is a member of the Association for Behavior Analysis, International and a co-director of the Maryland Association for Behavior Analysis. Dr. McDevitt has conducted research on the assessment and treatment of pediatric feeding disorders and has authored book chapters in addition to publications in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. She has served as a guest reviewer for various peer-reviewed journals and currently serves on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. Her current research interests include the assessment and treatment of pediatric feeding disorders with an emphasis on caregiver training, social validity of feeding interventions, and factors that influence the generalization and maintenance of intervention outcomes.
Abstract
Applied behavior analytic interventions have shown to be the most empirically supported interventions to treat pediatric feeding disorder. Caregivers play a crucial role in the maintenance of feeding gains achieved with a behavioral intervention in the child’s natural environment (e.g., home). Therefore, clinicians should train caregivers such that they can implement feeding interventions with high integrity across settings (e.g., clinic and home). However, despite caregivers implementing interventions with high integrity, the child’s inappropriate mealtime behavior may return when caregivers implement the intervention in the clinic or home; a phenomenon referred to as renewal (Ibañez et al., 2019; Kelley et al., 2018). Research is growing on how to prevent renewal of inappropriate mealtime behavior and how clinicians can improve the generality of behavioral interventions to the natural environment (Haney et al., 2021; Kelley et al., 2018). To further improve the likelihood that treatment gains will maintain in the natural environment, clinicians must also consider variables contributing to caregiver treatment adherence given that caregiver behavior, such as reinforcing problem behavior, may also return in the home setting (Mitteer et al., 2018). This talk will review considerations for preventing relapse of inappropriate mealtime behavior and improving caregiver treatment adherence during treatment of pediatric feeding disorder.