ABA WHAT?

So many times I get asked... "What do you DO in your classroom??" I typically answer with "Well I use Applied Behavior Analysis in my classroom to develop programs for my students to develop their communication skills."... and I get a blank stare... no one seems to know what I'm talking about, but to be honest if I were given that answer 5 years ago my response would have been the same.
Since I entered the Chambersburg Area School District, about 4 years ago, I have had the incredible opportunity to be a part of the Pennsylvania Department of Education's Autism Initiative.  Through this initiative we are bringing Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy to our students with Autism in public schools! I have experienced so much success with this program and have seen my students grow into confident, expressive individuals that enjoy coming to school each day and are engaged in meaningful, individualized instruction. 
But still we have the overarching questions of What is ABA? and What do you do all day?!?! In this post I am going to try my very best to explain a little bit about what we do in our classroom and the principals that guide our instruction… this will most likely leave people with more questions than we began with, but we have to start somewhere so first let's just use this visual to clear up a few misconceptions of what ABA is NOT...

Here is a link to the PaTTAN Autism Initiative's handbook to Applied Behavior Analysis to also help with this explanation. 

http://pattan.net-website.s3.amazonaws.com/images/2015/05/11/ABA_Intro_booklet0415.pdf

Ok... so now that we have that we have cleared that up... lets talk about what ABA IS... ABA is a science developed by B.F. Skinner in his book Verbal Behavior (1957). ABA is a systematic process of studying and modifying observable behavior through a manipulation of the environment.  The theory characterizes the components of any behavior by an A-B-C model.  The ‘A’ in this ABC model represents an antecedent, or what occurs before behavior, ‘B’ represents the behavior or action that occurs, and ‘C’ represents the consequence, what happens directly after the behavior occurs, or the response to the behavior. Analysis of these components can allow us to create a functional picture of a student’s behavior and then develop a behavior modification program for the student. 

The ABA verbal behavior approach is best used with the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP).  Mark Sundberg’s  (2008) VB-MAPP brings together the procedures and teaching methodology of ABA and Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior in an effort to provide a behaviorally based language assessment program for all children with language delays. In our classroom we assess students with the VB-MAPP assessment twice each school year.  In this assessment we look at a broad picture of a students abilities related to the verbal operants.  We then develop specific and idividualaized programs for each student based on their deficits within each operant.   The main verbal operants we typically target are  the mand, tact, intra-verbal, listener, echoic, and imitation.  
And now for the explanation of the verbal operants: 

A mand is a request.  Mark Sunberg describes the mand as “asking for reinforcers that you want.  Asking for shoes because you want your shoes to go outside”.  A mand can be a request for an item, action, information and even attention. Requests do not need to be vocal; students can also request items by using sign language and even pictures.  The mand is the most critical of all verbal operants.  The mand is most important because it involves some level of motivation on the part of the requestor. Mands are important since the item, attention or information usually given after a mand serves as a direct reinforcer.  If a child is unable to ask for the things he or she wants, this most often causes problem behavior.  For all of these reasons, teaching children to mand needs to be the highest priority.  Mands are also important to teach initially because this helps the student understand that communicating produces positive results! 

The tact is essentially labeling.  Usually, a tact is a label of a picture, but it can also be an action, sound, smell, taste, or even attributes of an item. We will always teach Tacts of items with multiple exemplars (ex. many pictures of a car) because we want students to see any car and be able to label it as a car. 

 Intraverbal responding is the answering of questions.  Initially students will develop fun fill in responses such where the stimulus will be “Peek a...” and the student responds with “boo”. Later, more advanced responses are taught, including answering what, where, who, and when questions. 

 Echoics are repeating what is heard.  Saying “shoes” after someone else says “shoes”.  Imitation is the copying of motor movements.  Echoics and imitation are a critical skill, and we often see that once we can get vocal children to echo or nonvocal children to imitate sign language, the floodgates sometimes open and language and learning skills improve dramatically. 

Listener, or Listener Responding, is following instructions or complying with the mands of others.  For examples getting one’s shoes when told, “Get your shoes”.   

           Once the VB-MAPP is completed, a program is developed for a student, and intensive teaching trial (ITT) sessions are conducted.  During these ITT sessions we always intersperse easy and hard demands.  Typically the rule is 80% easy, or known skills, and 20% target, or new skills.  ABA also uses errorless teaching procedures. We provide immediate and frequent prompts to help improve the student’s communication.  These prompts become less intrusive as quickly as possible, until the student no longer needs prompting. 

           Another key component to our instruction is Natural Environment Teaching or NET.  During NET we help our students transfer all of the skills they have learned in their ITT sessions to the Natural Environment, or everyday situations and settings. I will elaborate on our NET sessions in another post. 

Here is the video from the PaTTAN Autism Initiative Website that helps to explain all of these opperants and teaching procedures with video examples. If your head is spinning after everything I have just said I suggest you find the time to watch this awesome resource! http://www.pattan.net/Videos/Browse/Single/?code_name=teaching_procedures_assembly. 

WHEW! That was a lot of information to digest…. Check back later for a post on our program organization (I’m pretty proud of my binders, so I’m a little excited for that one), and as always feel free to contact me at Alison.huber@casdonline.org with ANY and ALL questions you have! Thanks for reading friends!