BAAM Behavior Movies ABA in Natural Setting

The use of scientific established principles of learning to create effective and humane outcome-based therapies with the primary goal of establishing and enhancing socially important functional independent living skills.

In practice, ABA uses techniques based on learning theory to shape important new behaviors in individuals with specific behavioral excesses and deficits. ABA interventions typically include the following components:

• A data-based functional analysis or assessment of the conditions responsible for the problem behavior.
• Specific and verifiable treatment goals and objectives.
• A well-defined intervention plan using reinforcement theory principles to meet the goals and objectives.
• Ongoing data collection and analysis to show that the intervention was actually responsible for the treatment gains.
• A plan to ensure the generalization and maintenance of treatment gains.
• Measures to ensure the social validity of the treatment goals and objectives, and to ensure that all those affected by the treatment can contribute substantially and constructively to all its elements.

Eliminating self-injury and teaching academic skills to children with autism, re-establishing independent living skills in people with brain injuries, training appropriate toileting in children with enuresis, improving medical compliance in people with illnesses, establishing effective study habits in at-risk school children, reducing repetitive habits such as nail biting and trichtotillamania, and reinforcing appropriate social behavior in people with social skills deficits are illustrative of, but do not exhaust, the range of behavior issues addressed by applied behavior analysts.

An excellent technical introduction to the basic philosophy of applied behavior analysis interventions can be found here.

A standard teaching and functional analysis format that consists of a discriminative stimulus (including prompts), a response, and a consequence.

The ABC format is a simplified version of the three-term-contingency and resembles a discrete-trial frame.

Any activity of any organism. The term "behavior" encompasses both externally observable responses such as running or speaking as well as private behavior such as thinking, feeling, and dreaming.

A predefined relationship between events.

Verbal reinforcement which incorporates a specific description of the desirable or targeted elements of the reinforced response.

Descriptive praise should be given positive form (e.g., “Thank you Jeff. Putting the plate in the sink was very helpful!) rather than in negative form (e.g., Thank you Jeff. I like the way you didn’t leave your plate on the table).

A type of ABA intervention most often associated with Ivar Lovaas in which teaching is structured into a series of discrete-trial frames consisting of four or five specific parts based on the three-term-contingency:

• Discriminative stimulus (S^D): the event that should prompt the response
• Prompting stimulus or prompt (S^P)--the instruction or cue given by the teacher to encourage the response. This prompt will be faded.
• Response (R)--the specifically defined target response.
• Reinforcing stimulus or reinforcer (S^R)--the event which teaches and maintains the response.
• Intertrial-interval (ITI)--a specific period of time between discrete trial frames.

Thus, a discrete trial frame would look like this:

The S^D and S^P would likely occur at the same time, and the S^P would eventually be faded.

Behavior of any complexity may be taught by this method if individual responses are chained into longer responses, or if the learner is capable of following complex instructions

Echoic

An instance of verbal behavior that matches the form of other verbal behavior. Echoics are often used in ABA training to teach new verbal behavior. Apparently non-functional echoic behavior in children with autism is called "echolalia."

Extinction

The reduction in a response due to a lack of reinforcement.

Extinction Burst:

A temporary increase in the probability of an operant response during extinction.

Extinguish

To reduce a behavior by using extinction.

Functional Analysis

A systematic, experiment examination of the conditions that support a target behavior. A functional analysis will identify the reinforcers, prompts, and other motivating conditions for a target response.

Functional Assessment

A systematic, non-experimental survey of the conditions that are likely support a target behavior. A functional analysis will attempt to identify the reinforcers, prompts, and other motivating conditions for a target response.

Generalization

The spread of the effects of teaching to new and different settings. If the child learns to say "please" and "thank-you" at home, but then does it at school, we say that the "please" and "thank you" have generalized.

Intraverbal

A piece of verbal behavior that is controlled by other verbal behavior. A common example is rhyming in poems where the word choices in later lines are governed by choices in earlier lines.

Maintenance

The persistence of teaching across time. Teaching is said to have maintained if is exhibited indefinitely into the future.

Mand

A piece of verbal behavior that is caused by a need for something and often specifies what will reinforce it. "Please get me a drink" is a mand. Most requests and questions are mands. A mand need not be vocal. Pointing to an object in order to get it would also be a mand.

Operant Conditioning

Learning that is based on reinforcement. Applied behavior analysis teaching is based primarily on operant learning.

Pavlovian Conditioning (Classical Conditioning)

Learning that is based on pairings of events. For instance, if a dog barks loudly enough to scare a child, the child might become afraid of the dog.

Pavlovian conditioning is not typically emphasized in applied behavior analysis. Its primary role is creating new reinforcers by pairing. Verbal praise is made reinforcing by pairing it with established non-verbal reinforcers.

Pavlovian techniques are commonly used to eliminate phobias and unnecessary anxiety, usually by repeatedly presenting the anxiety-producing object until the anxiety extinguishes.

Prompt

Any instruction, action, or other event that sets the occasion for a response to occur.

• Gestural Prompts: Physical motions such a pointing or waving.
• Manual or Physical Prompts: Touching or otherwise physically guiding the organism through all or part of the response.
• Verbal Prompts: Verbal responses, such as instructions, designed to increase the probability of a target response:

A problem in which the learner's behavior is insufficiently independent and requires frequent, specific prompting.

Reducing frequency or specificity of prompts in order to reduce prompt-dependency and increase generalization.

Any behavior that produces a "punisher" will happen less often. Punishment is rarely employed in ABA interventions for a variety of ethical and practical reasons.

A punisher is any event, which when it occurs during or shortly after a response, increases the future likelihood of the response. Common punishers are pain and social disapproval. Anything can be a punisher, even what might seem to be to be positive. For instance, cheerful approval might be punishing to someone who is in a "bad mood."

• Positive punisher ("punisher"): Punishes by presentation.
• Negative reinforcer ("response cost" or "penalty"): Reinforces by removal.
• Primary punisher: Punishes without previous conditioning.
• Conditioned Punisher: Punishes due to previous conditioning. A new "conditioned punisher" or "conditioned aversive stimulus" can be created by reliably presenting the new punisher with an established punisher. A parent who punishes can become a conditioned punisher.

Any behavior that produces a "reinforcer" will happen more often. Most behavioral interventions for developmental disabilities try to build new, functional behaviors by using reinforcement. ABA even tries to get rid of troublesome behaviors by reinforcing behavior that will be more useful or appropriate.

A reinforcer is any event, which when it occurs during or shortly after a response, increases the future likelihood of the response. Common reinforcers are food, affection, and attention. But anything can be a reinforcer, even what might seem to be negative attention.

• Positive reinforcer: Reinforces by presentation.
• Negative reinforcer: Reinforces by removal.
• Primary Reinforcer: Reinforces without previous conditioning.
• Conditioned Reinforcer: Reinforces due to previous conditioning. A new "conditioned reinforcer" can be created by reliably presenting the new reinforcer with an established reinforcer.

Affecting the probability of a response by the presentation of discriminative stimuli and prompts. For instance, a written direction on a door, "knob sticks, turn hard," would be an example of a stimulus control.

To say that "stimulus control is lacking" means that discriminative stimuli or prompts are not setting the occasion for the response.

The specific goal response in an ABA teaching program. The target response should be defined specifically and be expressed in measurable terms.

A period of non-reinforcement in which the subject’s contact with the ongoing activity temporarily interrupted.

The time out procedure combines extinction, mild punishment, stimulus control, and reinforcement.

• Extinction occurs when the inappropriate behavior is no longer functional
• Punishment is effected by the loss of social contact and contact with other conditioned reinforcers present in the teaching situation
• Stimulus control is manifested in the abrupt change in stimulus conditions which previously set the occasion for inappropriate responding to conditions which do not support the unwanted responding
• Reinforcement occurs when the subject is allowed to return to the situation after exhibiting socially appropriate behavior (or at least none of the inappropriate behavior).

In effective ABA programs, the use of time-out and punishment is rare.

A description of the basic unit of operant behavior. the three-term contingency is used to teach and analyze behavior.

Behavior which is reinforced by other people. Verbal behavior generally consists of vocal communication, but can have any form.

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