Dr. Andresa De Souza is an Assistant Professor of Special Education and the ABA Graduate Program Director. She worked under the supervision of Dr. Ruth Anne Rehfeldt during her Master's and participated in various projects involving Skinner's verbal behavior and the emergence of verbal operants. During her Doctoral degree, she conducted a study to evaluate the emergence of complex intraverbals for children with autism under the guidance of Dr. Wayne Fisher. During the course of her studies, Dr. De Souza gained valuable experience in early-intervention applications for children with autism, the assessment and treatment of severe problem behavior, and autism diagnosis. She has provided supervision for behavior analysts and worked as a consultant for international sites. 

Dr. De Souza has presented in conferences both in the USA and internationally. Currently, she specializes in early intervention for children with autism and parent training. She is also interested in the international dissemination of applied behavior analysis. Dr. De Souza is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst at the doctoral level (BCBA-D) and a Licensed Behavior Analyst at the State of Missouri.

Education and Training

Fellowship 2017-2018, Marcus Autism Center & Emory University, Atlanta-GA     

Ph.D. 2016, Munroe-Meyer Institute, UNMC, Omaha-NE (Applied Behavior Analysis) 

M.S. 2011, Southern Illinois University Carbondale-IL (Behavior Analysis & Therapy) 

B.S. 2002, State University of Londrina, Brazil (Psychology)

Areas of Research Interest                   

Strategies to teach verbal behavior to children with autism   The emergence of verbal operants   Restrict stimulus control and conditional discriminationParent training

Representative Publication

DeSouza, A., Fisher, W. W., & Rodriguez, N. (2019). Facilitating the emergence of convergent intraverbals in children with autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 52, 28-49.

Hansen, B., DeSouza, A., Stevens, A. L., & Shillingsburg, M. A. (2018). Clinical application of a high-probability sequence to promote compliance with vocal imitation in a child with autism spectrum disorder. Behavior Analysis in Practice. Advance online publication.

Fisher, W. W., Retzlaff, B. J., Akers, J. S., DeSouza, A., Kaminski, A. J., & Machado, M. A. (2018). Establishing initial auditory-visual conditional discriminations in young children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. Manuscript accepted.

DeSouza, A., & Miguel, C. (2018).  Ensino de comportamento verbal [Teaching verbal behavior]. In A. C. Sella & D. M. Ribeiro (Eds.), Analise do comportamento aplicada ao transtorno do espectro do autismo [Applied behavior analysis of autism spectrum disorder]. Maceio, AL: Appris

DeSouza, A., Akers, J., & Fisher, W. W. (2017). Empirical Application of Skinner's Verbal Behavior to Interventions for Children with Autism: A Review. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 33, 212-228.