What is ABA Anyway?

ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) is an evidence-based practice for children with Autism. ABA targets building on skills specifically related to the 3 core deficits of autism being communication, social and daily living domains. Alongside skill building is targeting the reduction of challenging behavior that create barriers for the child in the home, and community environments. Comprehensive treatment which ranges from 25-40 hours per week indicates there are deficits across multiple domains that need to be addressed in therapy. Focused treatment which is typically 20 hours or less per week indicates there is primarily one main domain that will be addressed in therapy but the skillsets in the other domains are fairly strong.

ABA is primarily conducted in a 1:1 setting meaning that sessions consistent of one behavior technician working with one child to implement the child’s specific treatment goals. The child may interact with other children throughout the session depending on the environment it takes place, but each child would have his/her own behavior technician. There are some exceptions to this where a behavior technician may have 1 or 2 other children as well, but this is typically when group skills are being targeted, and/or if your child is primarily working on social skills goals. ABA also differs from speech and OT in the sense that instead of working with one therapist each session, your child will work with a team of behavior technicians throughout treatment under the direction of 1 BCBA. This is done for multiple reasons; however, the main reason is for generalization. This means that when your child is learning new skills, he is learning it with multiple people so he can complete it across multiple people. Though multiple technicians are working with your child, the BCBA oversees treatment to ensure that the behavior technicians are appropriately carrying out the plan for treatment and that the goals are progressing and having the intended results.

You might be wondering what specific skills ABA might include. Here’s some common ones you might see. Note these are all individualized to your learner and what is developmentally appropriate for your child, so this is only a brief overview, not an exhaustive list. For specific questions on whether a skill can be targeted through ABA for your child, talk with the BCBA working with your child. Also please note you will not see all of these goals targeted, as it will be subject to the individual needs of the child and the necessary prerequisite skills.

Communcation: This category can be split into two main subcategories of expressive and receptive language. Expressive language is the child’s communication to another person. Receptive language is the child’s comprehension and responding to an instruction or information that is being communicate to them.

Common Expressive Targets: A way for the child to appropriately access his needs and wants. We call this Functional Communication Training. This may be vocally, or another method will be utilized if it is determined to be the best fit for the child at this time (more on this later). You may also see goals tied to vocal imitation of words or sounds, fill in the blanks, answering questions and labeling or describing items.

Common Receptive Targets: responding to instructions, responding to name, identifying common objects, and identifying items by function, feature or class, matching, sorting etc.

Daily Living Skills: This category can be split into two main subcategories of toleration skills and increasing independence.

Common Toleration Skills: increasing tolerance for kids who engage in restrictive eating behaviors, increasing tolerance of daily living routines such as brushing teeth, brushing hair, getting dressed, transitions to the toilet, tolerating drinking water, tolerance for functional toy play, tolerating waiting, tolerating no, tolerating changes in routines. Again, these examples only make-up a small list of potential skills that may be targeted and each skill is customized to the individual learner and what is most socially significant to the child and family.

Common Independence Skills: increasing independence during toileting routines, washing hands, other daily living routines, tying shoes, attending to and following multi-step instructions

Social Skills: This covers a wide range of skills depending on the stage the learner is at with social skills at the time. It can start with skills as simple as tolerating playing next to peers or being in rooms with other peers, imitation skills, to sharing and cooperative play all the way up through practicing maintaining multi exchange conversations, engaging in turn-taking activities, tolerating winning and losing games and again, the list goes on.

Behavior Reduction: This can be a wide variety of disruptive, dangerous or very dangerous behaviors where we are identifying why the child is engaging in the behavior and developing strategies to decrease future likelihood of the behavior occurring. We utilize strategies such as identifying an appropriate replacement behavior for them to engage in or helping them request what they are wanting as an alternative for engaging in the behavior. Again, our responses are going to be tied to the level of severity of the behavior, and the function the behavior is serving for the child.