Ph.D.(Clinical Psychology), West Virginia University, 1999

Dr. Anderson's research interests fall into two areas: assessment and treatment of challenging behavior (e.g., self-injury, aggression, destructive behavior) exhibited by typically developing children and children with developmental disabilities, and assessment and treatment of food selectivity and food refusal. With regard to assessment and treatment of challenging behavior, recent research has developed along these lines: developing and evaluating the utility and validity of various methods of functional assessment, identifying variables related to sustainability and generality of interventions, and systems-change.

Recent work in this area has involved: (a) comparing the internal and external validity of different methods of functional assessment (e.g., the analog functional analysis, structured descriptive assessments), (b) evaluating the treatment utility of hypotheses derived from different methods of functional assessment when interventions are implemented in clinic settings by trained experimenters and in community-settings, and (c) evaluating the applicability of methods of functional assessment to school-wide discipline and behavior problems in classroom settings. Research in the area of pediatric feeding disorders has focused on (a) identifying antecedent variables that affect mealtime behavior, (b) evaluating the extent to which antecedent manipulations enhance the efficacy of escape-extinction, (c) developing and implementing strategies for teaching parents to effectively implement behavioral interventions such as escape extinction, (d) evaluating a community-based intervention for children with texture selectivity