About ABA

Comprehensive Autism Center, Inc. bases its foundation and designs its services around the principles of ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis).

ABA Defined

ABA is a science which evaluates the relationship between environmental events and behavior. Essentially, it is the application of principles of behavior to produce socially significant behavioral changes. Even though these principles are often applied in a variety of settings, such as sports psychology, pediatric medicine, organizational management, and autism treatment, the common goals remain the same: to increase or decrease a particular behavior, to improve the quality of a behavior, and to eliminate or reduce maladaptive behaviors while teaching more appropriate replacement behaviors. For the last 30 years, ABA has been at the forefront of treatments for individuals with developmental disabilities including those on the autism spectrum.

ABA History

Behavior analysis was founded in the psychological movement called behaviorism initially brought to popularity in the early 1900′s. While many psychologists contributed to this field of study, B.F. Skinner is known as the founder of ABA. Skinner’s 1938 publication of “The Behavior of Organisms” outlined the process known as operant conditioning which states that learning occurs as the result of consequences that follow a behavior. Skinner and his contemporaries defined the principles (shaping, reinforcement, prompting, fading, chaining, etc.) which comprise the pure science of human behavior. Creating teaching methods or strategies to utilize this pure science of behavior analysis is the leap which takes us to applied behavior analysis.

In the 1960′s, Dr. Ivar Lovaas began developing what became the first program applying the principles of behavior analysis to individuals with autism and other developmental disorders. In 1981, fifteen years of research and experience by Lovaas and others culminated in the publishing of, “The ME Book”, which documented programs, procedures, and theories of these early intervention studies. While some of the concepts and ideas of that original study are no longer considered best practice, “The ME Book” documented a breakthrough approach to treating children with autism and other developmental disorders.

A subsequent Lovaas study published in 1987 reported that 47% of children who received intensive behavioral treatment significantly improved their social, self-help, play, and communication skills, including the development of functional speech. In addition, these children were able to successfully complete first grade in regular education classes and were indistinguishable from their peers on measures of IQ, adaptive skills, and emotional functioning. A 1993 follow-up study by McEachin, Smith, and Lovaas showed that treatment gains were maintained more than six years later, and eight of the nine children from the original 47% continued to progress in regular education classes without support.

Evolution of Teaching Strategies

Discrete Trial Training
Historically, most ABA programs provided to children with autism utilized a teaching strategy known as Discrete Trail Training (DTT). DTT is a single teaching cycle consisting of three components: antecedent stimulus, child’s response, and a teacher provided consequence.

DTT is an effective teaching tool for many reasons:

• Breaks down complex skills into more manageable steps
• Builds upon mastered skills
• A high number of trials is presented in a short period of time thereby increasing opportunities to learn
• Is easy for many different staff members to implement
• Intersperses teaching trials with mastered trials
• Utilizes materials found in the learner’s environment
• Provides frequent opportunities for reinforcement
• Encompasses errorless learning, an effective prompting procedure to ensure the child’s success
• Integrates multiple exemplars to increase generalization

Natural Environment Training
Natural Environment Training, developed by Mark Sundberg and James W. Partington, is an important part of any therapy regime. The natural environment refers to any environment where your child typically interacts on a daily basis, such as pre-school, grandma’s house, Sunday school, or a peer’s birthday party. NET’s ultimate goal is to facilitate learning and independent interaction within various environments.

NET is also an effective teaching tool for several reasons:

• Utilizes the child’s motivation
• Encompasses natural reinforcers
• Adult serves as a representative of reinforcement
• Presents best conditions to teach manding
• Skills are developed through capturing and contriving naturally occurring events
• Targets generalization skills from the onset of treatment
• The training conditions are similar to a traditional classroom setting and how child may be taught in the future