What is ABA?

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is the science of human behavior that began with the work of B.F. Skinner over 70 years ago.  Skinner identified causes of behavior to be related more to the environment, instead of always within us.  He found that the social and physical environment changes our behavior.  When applying this thinking to teaching children (adolescents and adults), the behavior analyst is guided by principles that explain behavior as an effect of the environment.  Behavior analysis does not limit the learning process solely to the individual's capabilities, but instead on learning new skills as a product of the teacher’s capabilities of modifying the environment. 

ABA as a program which we are concerned with involves: 

• Breaking down skills to their smallest manageable units and expanded into more meaningful and complex units.
• Using procedures such as reinforcement, extinction, shaping, prompting, fading, chaining, discrimination, generalization etc. to teach skills.  
• Skills taught include, but are not limited to: receptive language, expressive language (mands, tacts, intraverbals, etc.), social skills, motor imitation, self-help skills, etc.

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) over the past 15 years or so has erroneously been referred to as a distinct program for teaching kids with autism with Discrete Trial Training or Lovaas programming.  With the increased interest in Verbal Behavior as a component in ABA programs, it is necessary to explain how ABA, Discrete Trial Training, Lovaas programming, and Verbal Behavior differ and relate.

As the science of Applied Behavior Analysis evolves, improvements to the application of its principles are carefully researched and published in peer reviewed journals.  In the past, most ABA programs implemented for children with autism were based on the work published by O. Ivar Lovaas in the 1980’s.  

However, during those years Jack Michael, PhD., Mark Sundberg, PhD., and James Partington, PhD., among others in the field, focused on researching Skinner's Analysis of Verbal Behavior and its effectiveness of teaching language skills to person's with developmental delays, among other disabilities. These research has enhanced ABA programs by emphasizing the critical elements in language acquisition previously ignored by traditional Lovaas-based programs. That is, capturing a child’s motivation (known as mand training) to develop a connection between the value of the word from the child’s perspective and the word itself.  That is, an emphasis is placed on the function, not the form of the word taught.

Applying that knowledge to an understanding of children, adolescents and adults with autism who can’t communicate or other individuals learning to communicate, it is possible to use the tools developed though behavior analysis (referred to as behavior modification) to teaching children, adolescents and adults how to communicate. 

How is the Verbal Behavior approach different from a Lovaas/Traditional approach?

The reader should keep in mind that both approaches utilize the science of ABA.  

While the Lovaas-based approach uses ABA to teach language skills based on the premise that receptive language should be developed prior to expressive language;

The Verbal Behavior approach focuses on teaching specific components of expressive language (mands, tacts, intraverbals, among others) first. Specifically mand training is a large part of the initial stages of teaching language skills. Mand training  teaches the child to request items, activities, information in relation to his environment. Therefore teaching the child that "words" are valuable and lead to getting their wants and needs met.

Another difference lies within the emphasis in the "function" (Verbal Behavior) of language, instead of "form" (Lovaas-based)  For example, in a VB program, a child is first taught to ask for a "cookie," whether it's vocal or with sign language, when the child wants the "cookie."  In a Lovaas-based program, the child may be taught to say the word "cookie," while other words are also repeatedly shaped for articulation/prosody, but the child does not necessarily want a "cookie" at that moment.

One of the primary premises of the verbal behavior approach is that the meaning of a word is found in its function- not in the word itself, or its form.   

By not taking the function of language into account you often end up with a child who may be able to receptively identify or label hundreds of objects and pictures but never uses them in a functional way or demonstrates the concept of the object or picture.  You can also find yourself with a learner who may imitate hundreds of words but never spontaneously requests them in the natural environment.

Therefore, it is more important that initial training include teaching a child use and react to the object in a functional way, than to label or point to an item when asked. 

Utilizing a Verbal Behavior approach, we teach each word/object across all functional relations. 

Mand: Requesting wants and needs

Tact: Labeling or describing properties of the physical environment

Receptive repertoire: Non verbally following directions, discriminating between pictures and objects

Imitation: Repeating, copying what was observed

Echoic:  Vocal imitation

Intraverbal: Verbally responding to the verbal behavior of others (verbal in this case being sign, symbol, writing etc).

Textural:  Reading

Transcriptive:  Writing

Obviously we cannot teach these all at once, but with some requesting, simple labels and receptive responses in a child’s repertoire, it is possible to build these various language components earlier than we once thought. 

That is, in a traditional-Lovaas approach the concept of cookie  may be considered mastered when a child can point to a cookie and say cookie when shown a cookie,  but with a Verbal Behavior approach the concept of cookie  is not considered mastered until the child can:

  - Ask for the cookie when he/she wants it (mand)

  -Find the cookie when asked (receptive)

  - Select the cookie when asked:

What do you eat?  (function)

What has chocolate chips? (feature)

Find the food (class)

  - Answer questions about the cookie when it is not present:

            Tell me what you eat?  (Intraverbal)

What has chocolate chips?  (Intraverbal)

What's crunchy? (Intraverbal)

Elements of an ABA program with an Emphasis in Verbal Behavior

VB focuses on mand-training (requesting needs/wants) as the top priority!

• Supports a developmental approach to learning language
• Similar to a typical child’s language acquisition, first words taught are related to motivations in the child’s environment; typically ma-ma, da-da, ba-ba, all motivating to a typical child.
• Staff are trained to respond from moment to moment in a dynamic fashion to the changing motivation of the student based upon the principles of the science of ABA and not a predetermined reinforcer, which may likely lose its value/effectives quickly across trials.

VB relies heavily on positive reinforcement and always considers the child’s motivation

• Resistance to learning is significantly minimized when motivation of the learner is considered. 
• With a motivated learner, skills are taught without many negative/task-avoidant behaviors impeding learning.
• A learner who is not enjoying the learning process is not blamed or made to comply through direct interventions. Instead the teacher uses the student’s motivation to establish instructional control.

VB uses errorless learning

• Increases the number of trials that can completed, therefore increasing the number of opportunities to learn
• Keeps success rates high, making reinforcement available at higher rates, duration, etc.
• Uses most-to-least prompting- increasing the number of correct trials therefore, decreases the number of trials needed to acquire the skill

VB mixes and varies tasks

• Mass-trials are not used as in traditional Lovaas-based programs. Instead of repetitively presenting trials to the learner regardless of his/her success in responding, sufficient trials are delivered and freed of its prompts as the learner demonstrates his/her individual success with the targeted response.

Responses are mixed across skill domains and varied across response forms.

• This aids in maintaining a student’s attention. With the environment changing and unpredictable, attention is maintained for longer amounts of time
• This also helps to closer replicate natural language, making generalization embedded within teaching sequences. A speaker and listener in the natural environment will cross various operants throughout a conversation. For example, a listener is not exposed to a speaker asking to receptively identify 10 objects in a row during a conversation, but instead is asked various types of questions evoking different responses are components of all conversational skills.

VB teaches in the natural environment

• Natural Environment Training (NET) makes up 80% (sometimes more) of all teaching during the initial stages of the program. 
• Encourages generalization into the natural environment without the need for extensive and exhaustive generalization training at a later time.
• Increases the number of opportunities for trials with family members and caretakers- supporting further generalization.

VB typically uses a quicker more natural pace

• Keeps stimulus presentation at a rate that supports generalization since it closely resembles the rate of stimuli presentations found in the natural environment
• Keeps the opportunity to demonstrate inappropriate/negative behaviors to a minimum

VB relies on probe data rather than recording every response

• Provides sufficient information to make sound, educational decisions relative to task acquisition
• Keeps note-taking time from consuming teaching time