Intervention Based on ABA

What is Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA)?

Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) is an empirically-based method of teaching individuals with autism. Using one-on-one instruction and programs tailored to each child’s strengths and needs, ABA therapists teach communication, socialization, self-care, academics, safety, leisure and social/play skills.

ABA techniques break down complicated learning sequences into smaller steps that are taught one at a time to the child. Reinforcement and prompting are coupled to the teaching techniques in order to help the child master and maintain the newly acquired skills. The key to this type of intervention is the precise analysis of progress and accurate records made possible by continuous data recording and summary procedures.

At Shining Through, this tracked data is interpreted and shared with the child’s parents on a regular meeting schedule, to ensure that all involved parties are fully informed of the complications and successes of that particular child’s progress.

Why we use ABA methods:

At Shining Through, our program has a consistent and successful track record of fostering improvement and development in our children. To achieve these goals, we use ABA methods to help our children improve all presenting behaviors:

• We use reinforcement to help the child positively practice on-task behaviour as well as constructive social interactions.
• teach new and useful skills. Our systematic instruction and reinforcement procedures teach functional, life, communication and social skills to each child, in the exact way he/she requires to learn it.
• reduce self-injurious behaviour and instances of stereotypy (fixed and repetitive language and/or behaviours).
• maintain positive and learned/encouraged behaviors. We teach self-control and self-monitoring skills in order to build social skills and over-arching life skills.
• generalize or to transfer behavior from one situation (or response) to another. Our program helps children transition from completing assignments in our Centres to performing such behaviours in the mainstream classroom, as well as in the world at large.
• reduce behaviors that interfere with learning and constructive progress.

Skinner’s Analysis of Verbal Behaviour

B. F. Skinner, or Burrhus Frederic Skinner, (1904 – 1990) was an American psychologist who studied human behaviour intensively and developed many influential theories and inventions. Approximately 30 years before his death, he published Verbal Behaviour, the culmination of his human behaviour analysis.

“Verbal behaviour” is a term Skinner created to include what we call speech, language and linguistics. Skinner felt that verbal behaviour – like other types of behaviours – was subject to many controlling variables.

Over the last 10 years, interest in Skinner’s theory of verbal behaviour has been on the rise and we’ve seen enormous growth in the body of research that supports it.

More on Verbal Behaviour

Skinner outlined a group of “verbal operants”: functional units of language. Each verbal operant serves a different behavioural function.

Using Skinner’s analysis of the function of words allows us to talk about and analyze language in new ways. We can look at language as behaviour, and therefore we can shape language – as we do other behaviours – using the principles of ABA.

Students respond positively to ABA instruction and the amount of positive reinforcement that is used. Instructors must be creative and flexible in order to keep students interested and motivated. Maintaining a high level of flexibility while continuing to target necessary curriculum skills demands a skilled Instructor.