ABA &
Autism
at ABI
Applying
ABA to the treatment of autism, our primary goal is to teach each child
the language, play, social, motor, daily living, perspective taking,
problem solving, and academic skills he or she needs to lead a happy and
productive life. As we
teach these new skills, they serve as appropriate alternatives to
challenging behaviors such as tantrums, aggression, and non-compliance.
We
teach new skills and reduce challenging behaviors by manipulating
antecedents, what immediately precedes a behavior, and consequences,
what immediately follows a behavior.
Let’s look at one example of how we manipulate antecedents and
consequences to replace an inappropriate behavior, crying, with a new
functional skill, vocally requesting.
- Before
Treatment: When Julie’s favorite video ends (the antecedent),
Julie cries (the behavior), leading her babysitter to re-start the
video (the consequence). This
consequence will cause Julie’s future crying in similar situations
to increase.
- Treatment:
We train Julie’s
babysitter to prompt or help Julie when her favorite video ends (the
antecedent) to say, “more video,” or whatever approximation of,
“more video,” Julie can say (the behavior), and then re-start
the video (the consequence). This
consequence will cause Julie’s future requesting to increase in
similar situations.
- This
is just one example of what we do everyday with our clients.
The specific behaviors that we teach depend entirely on the
individual child.
We teach each child the skills that he or she needs using
a combination of two teaching techniques – Discrete Trial Training (DTT)
and Natural Environment Training (NET).
Both of these methods involve breaking skills down into simple
pieces ensuring the child’s success and then re-combining these pieces
into more complex skills. DTT
is the more structured teaching approach, where the teacher selects the
specific skill to be worked on based on the individual child’s areas
of weakness and practices this skill with the child within a structured
teaching environment with minimal distractions.
The stimuli or teaching materials are typically not functional
within this interaction and the reinforcers that follow correct
responses or attempts to respond are also unrelated to the interaction. Finally, the specific skill being worked on with the child is
typically repeated (this is called mass trialing) until the child can
respond correctly and independently.
NET is a less structured
approach, where the child selects the skill to be worked on within a
play-based setting. The
teacher follows the child’s interests and structures teaching
opportunities around whatever the child is interested in on a moment to
moment basis. As such, the teaching materials are functional within the
interaction as are the reinforcers given to the child for responding /
attempting to respond correctly.
And, rather than mass trialing, the specific skill being worked
is interspersed with other skills.
At ABI, we use a combination of DTT and NET,
along with many other teaching techniques based on the science of ABA,
such as fluency training, incidental teaching, shaping, and chaining to
teach skills from basic language, play, and attending to advanced
pragmatic language, social perspective taking, planning, problem
solving, and academics. We
do not adhere rigidly to one method, but rather use whatever combination
of scientifically based techniques works best for each child.
