ABA Techniques -Autism Question?

Question

Hello. My son was evulated recentely and thought that it would be wise that we look into the ABA techniques they use with kids in the autism spectrum. Does anyone have any helpful information on how to learn the techniques?

Answer 1

ABA stands for Applied Behavior Analysis... And it is based on Skinner's practice of operant conditioning (reinforcement/punishment). Basically, this science analyzes behavior in its environment, and changes antecedents or consequences to behaviors in order to decrease or increase a particular behavior/s.

The focus of ABA is to first find out "why" behaviors are occurring, in other words what is maintaining them or already reinforcing them. That is the first step... Finding the "function" of behavior, then applying treatment accordingly.

If you are trying to teach behaviors, a lot of times, principles such as shaping, prompts, mands, tacts, chaining, modelling, etc are used... again, these are usually techniques which involve manipulating the environment and using reinforcement or punishment.

A good website in abainternational.org.

The term ABA is thrown around in the field a lot, and many people running your programs do not really know what it is or consists of. It's not just discrete trial... And, it's not just giving out stickers for good behavior and timeouts for bad. It is a science, and the "stickers" have to have meaning behind them... there is usually training involved so that the student knows what is expected, and what the tokens represent. And, tokens are only good if that student likes the reinforcer...

Like I said, start at the website above for information. But, ask questions of the people running your program. There should be a consultant involved who is developing the program for you kid. And, if it is an ABA program, that consultant should have the credentials in the field which are BCBA or BCABA. Ask if they have that. The therapists, or the actual people implementing the program with your kid won't have those credentials, but the person overseeing the program should... or have a background in Applied Behavior Analysis (BA or Masters in the field).

There are tons of techniques and principals, but you have to first analyze or determine the cause of behavior or the problem first. A great text book is called Applied Behavior Analysis by Cooper, Heron, etc.... I would recommend that book, definately.

_________________________

Comment**- Just so you know, that person below is describing Discrete trial, and her description does not really incorporate ABA, persay. That's what most people think it is. Discrete trial can incorporate reinforcement techniques... but, again, just giving someone praise or food does not define your program as ABA based. Remember ABA suggests that there is an analyzation piece, where you observe and determine function or reinforcer first. DT is really  an invasive and laborious process. Don't get me wrong, it can be fine...but know your subject and your task.

Answer 2

you must get in touth with the lovaas centre the address is ''www.lovaas.com. to find a centre near you.good luck

Answer 3

I will try to make this as clear as possible for you.  I do ABA therapy/DT.  

every command is called a trial.  You either get a correct, incorrect or no response.  Depending on which one of these you get from the child determines the feed back they get and the reinforcement.

trial...give me blue card.

1st trial..."give me blue"  Wait for response.  No response.  Feed back..."nope, you need to listen."  

2nd trial.."give me blue"  wait for response.  again no response.  Feed back.."lets try again".  

3rd trial..this is a Prompted trial.  You can do a physical prompt where you take his hand and help him grab the blue card and put it in your hand.  You can do a positional prompt where you put it closer to him, if using other colors it would be the only color close to him.  gestral prompt, where you point at the color as you ask for it.  After prompting your feed back would be "good job! you gave me the blue card".  

4th trial..."give me blue"  This trial is to test the child to see if he learned from the prompt..  He hands you the blue card.  "great Job!!"  Then he gets favorite toy, skittle, tickle, hug. ext.  What ever is reinforcing to this child.

   We never punish a child.  If they just don't get the command,,we end it by issueing something that we know he will get right in order to get a positive result with the child.  We break up the trials into steps.  for example,,the child has to know blue in order to understand you want blue.  So the first phase we would only have a blue card on the table.  Once is he getting all corrects of handing the blue card to you, we add a distracter.  A color he won't be learning for a while, like gray.  We then ask only for the blue.  If he knows blue, he will discriminate between the blue and the gray and hand me the blue.  Then you would add a 2nd distractor.  If he can get blue out of 3 different colors, we then use different blue objects, so he learns that there are other blue things.  the car is blue, the block is blue ext.  Each time we use a new object we start out with phase one.

We use this technique with every kind of trial they have.  They need to learn to sit.  We start out by telling them to sit.  reinforsment just for sitting down.  They might pop right up, but they got the command of "sit down" right.  We then will have them sit for longer periods of time.  The trial might be sits for 1 minute.  After one minute of sitting, he gets the positive feed back of great sitting, and givin a reinforcement.

I hope this makes alittle bit of sense to you.  Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Answer 4

There are lots of good information out there.

http://www.behavior.org/

Here is the consumer guidelines for evaluating ABA services. Like mentioned above there is a lot diversity in the field and quality varies so do your research

http://www.abainternational.org/Special_...

This is the website for the national certification board of Behavior Analysts. They also have a searchable data base so you can search for credentialed individuals in your area

http://www.bacb.com/consum_frame.html