Applied Behavior Analysis Tutor Training: Module 1 & 2

1. Applied Behavior AnalysisTutor Training:Module 1 & 2 Tracy Vail, MS,CCC/SLP & Gabrielle Trapenberg, MA, BCBA Let’s Talk Speech & Language Services Inc. www.letstalksls.com

2. Ethics of ABA Practitioners • Professionalism: Maintain professional boundaries, be respectful of your families, and coworkers. • Confidentiality: You are required to comply with HIPAA regulations. • Social Validity: Behaviors should be targeted that are socially relevant, so when working with a client and his/her family you should always take their needs into consideration. • Responsible conduct: a. Keep accurate and consistent documentation. b. Only handle situations you are trained to handle.

3. What is Applied Behavior Analysis? Module 1 • Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is the science of behavior • Looks at human behaviors, what causes them and how to make them increase or decrease. • Analyze the function of behavior by looking at the contingencies (what happens before and after)

4. What is Behavior? Module 1 • Anything that can be seen, felt and counted by either an individual or others in their environment. • Which of these are behaviors? • Saying cookie • Thinking about cookie • Touching cookie • Dreaming about a cookie • Baking a cookie • Looking at a cookie • Reaching toward a cookie

5. Teaching Techniques Module 1 • Discrete Trial: • Breaking skills down and teaching it one sub-skill at a time, providing prompts and reinforcement. • Natural Environment Teaching: • Helps promote generalization of skills in the natural environment • Intensive Teaching at the Table • Teaching in a one-on-one setting presenting skills in discrete trials around and average VR.

6. Discrete Trial:How we manipulate these contingencies determines whether a behavior will increase or decrease. Antecedent Behavior Consequence • Reinforcement • Positive (soc med) • Negative (soc med) • Automatic (+ or -) • (Increases) • Punishment • Positive • Negative • (Decreases) MO/EO & Stimulus (S-d or S-delta) Response *Refer to Handout: “Terms & Definitions” and “Advanced Terminology”

7. Antecedent: Establishing Operation • Temporarily increases the value of the reinforcer • Temporarily increases the behaviors that have been consequated by that reinforcer in the past • Example: If in the past, when I wanted juice, I said “juice” and got it, then I’m more likely to say juice again, when I want it.

8. Antecedent:Establishing Operation • Without motivation, you have no reinforcer. Without a reinforcer, you cannot increase behaviors. • Things that affect EO are: • Satiation: if you’ve had constant access to the reinforcer, then your EO decreases • Deprivation: if you haven’t had access to the reinforcer in a while, then your EO increases

9. Consequences: Reinforcement • Increases the likelihood that a behavior will occur again in the future • 4 categories or “buckets” of behavior based on the reinforcement history • Must be contingent! • Is not a “thing” but an effect on behavior • If a behavior is increasing, something is reinforcing it.

10. Socially Mediated Reinforcement • Socially mediated positive reinforcement: behaviors that have a history of being reinforced by getting things/attention from people • Socially mediated negative reinforcement: behaviors that been reinforced by escape or delay of demands involving people

11. Automatic Reinforcement • Automatic positive reinforcement (Stims): behaviors that are reinforced because they feel good • Automatic negative reinforcement: behaviors I do because they remove a “bad” or uncomfortable feeling

12. Expanding A Child’sCommunity of Reinforcers • How do you create new reinforcers? • Pair or associate the new activity/item/person with something the child already finds reinforcing. • The new activity/item/person becomes a “conditioned” reinforcer • Choose activities based on current targets, the child’s MO or the child’s other interests, age-appropriateness.

13. Expanding Interests

14. Pairing • Learn what the child likes and be the provider of “all good things.” • Build Motivation (MO) • Establish reinforcers • Play without requiring responding • Don’t remove the child from an enjoyable activity, rather join him in the activity • Be animated and fun • Pair yourself and talking with reinforcement.

15. BE the Reinforcer!

16. Pair Sounds/Talking with Fun!

17. Pairing with Favorite Activities

18. Developing Play Patterns • Build anticipation • Do the unexpected • Be animated • Be playful – play as children play • Pair words/sounds with what the child is doing • Create verbal routines • Gradually change the routines and expand the play patterns

19. Requiring Responses:DoDon’t • Teach errorlessly • Fade in demands • Teach to Fluency • Prompt Quickly • Fade prompts • Make sure all questions have answers • Find numerous reinforcers • Reinforcer appropriate behaviors • Correct errors • Have fun! • Follow negative behavior with reinforcement • Remove a child from a reinforcing activity to begin teaching • Give directions to do things you can’t prompt • Give directions without getting compliance • Kill reinforcers by placing too many demands

20. Requiring Responses:Teaching Procedures • Shaping – Gradually modify behavior into what we want it to be. • Prompting – Given assistance to provide correct responding. Includes visual cues, phsyical prompts, hand-over-hand, modeling, pointing • Fading – Critical in teaching children not to become prompt dependent. • Chaining – Breaking skills down into units and teaching in small units that are “chained” together (forward or backward) • Differential Reinforcement – Reinforcing hard tasks more heavily than easy tasks.

21. Shaping

22. Requiring Responses:Transfer Procedures/Prompting • Teach a new behavior by starting with a behavior that you know the child can already do. • The child is more likely to repeat the same behavior under a different condition • Once the behavior is taught under the new condition, gradually fade the prompt • New learning is build on old learning • The learning remains “errorless”

23. Transfer Procedures

24. Correction Procedures • Use whenever the child responds incorrectly • Give the SD + the response • Wait for the echoic • Repeat the SD • Wait for the response • Run a distractor trial (something the child can do easily) • Repeat the SD

25. Challenging Behaviors • Behaviors are maintained by reinforcement! • A new behavior (talking) won’t be used if the old behavior (hitting) still works. • Negative behaviors must never be reinforced. Consistency is important, because intermittent reinforcement actually makes a behavior stronger! • Expect to see an extinction burst when you first begin denying access to a reinforcer.

26. Challenging Behaviors: ABC Data • You must determine the function of a behavior before determining how to respond • Look at what happened right before (antecedent) and right after (consequence) the behavior occurred • Once you have figured out the function of the behavior choose a replacement behavior. • Put time between negative behavior and prompting appropriate communication • Again, the negative behavior should never be reinforced. It will get worse before it gets better (extinction burst).

27. Verbal Behavior • Verbal behavior (VB) focuses specifically on behavior whose reinforcement is mediated by a listener. It includes vocal-verbal behavior, i.e. saying “water” to get water) and non vocal-verbal behavior, i.e. pointing to water to get water

28. Verbal Operants • Mands- Asking for something. “I ask, I get.” • Receptives- I can follow directions, do what others tell me to do • Tacts- I can label things in the environment under a variety of conditions. • Imitation/Echoics- I can do/say what others do/say. • Intraverbal- What I say is dependent upon what others say but is not the same

29. Verbal Operants Antecedent/Stimulus Behavior Consequence Mand Motivation Says “car” gets car Echoic “Say car” Says “car” social/secondary Tact Car present Says “car” social/secondary Intraverbal “We ride in the ..”Says “car” social/sec.

30. Manding • Basis of all other verbal behavior • Teach by transferring from echoic or “fill-ins” • With and without items present • With and without someone asking “What do you want?” • Single word, then variety of sentence forms • Manding for information • Manding for attention

31. Choosing Response Forms • If child is non-vocal, must use an alternative/augmentative system • Augmentative communication encourages rather than discourages vocal productions • Experiment to determine how the child responds to various forms • Picture/object exchange • Signs • Communication Boards • Vocal • Voice output devices

32. Manding with PECS

33. Manding with Signs

34. Imitation and Receptive • Imitation: • teach through physical prompting or anticipating actions • Sd: Do this, try this, watch and try etc. • Gradually increase difficulty and complexity • Receptive: • Teach by transfering from imitation or w/physical prompts • Sd: varies (touch, find, show, where’s?) • Start with simple instructions, then increase complexity

35. Tact and Intraverbal • Tact: • Teach by transfering from receptive, mand, fill-in, intraverbal or echoic • Label objects, actions, parts, features, functions, classes • Sd can be just the items, “what’s this?” and must be varied • Verbal modules: teach the child to discriminate between question forms • Intraverbal: • Talking about things that are not present • Transfer from fill-in, tact or echoic • Begin with songs, rhymes, daily activities • Teach reversals • The start of conversation

36. Identifying Operants

37. Review of Verbal Operants

38. Expanding NET Techniques • While many of your targets may be taught at the table, it is important to always continue working on targets in the NET as natural environment teaching has shown to increase generalization of skills. • Always be careful when placing demands in the NET that you do “kill the reinforcer” by allowing too much access to the reinforcer (satiation) or placing too many demands (aversive).

39. Expanding NET Techniques • Teaching FFCs: • FFC refers to feature, function and class. • Once a child has tacts and receptives in his repertoire you can start teaching FFCs. • One of the best ways to teach FFCs is within the context of the child’s daily activities. • More advanced skills also include adjectives, prepositions and WH questions

40. NET Manding/Mands for Info

41. Teaching Social Skills • When we consider who we choose to spend time and socialize with, it’s generally people who are reinforcing to us. • One important part of teaching social skills is pairing people with reinforcement. It is also important to consider that unsuccessful socialization attempts may make other people aversive and increase self stimulatory behaviors. • So what can we do? • Modify: Make some modifications to avoid situations that may cause problem behaviors. • Desensitize: Desensitization is used to teach a child to tolerate his environment with as few modifications as possible. • Pair: Pairing with other children is often best done starting with one child and then adding more children. • Request: Provide opportunities for the child to mand for his reinforcers from peers. • Social Cues: By paying attention to the social-emotional basis of communication we can teach the child to share their experiences with others and learn about others experiences, i.e. sharing affect, requesting and gaining (personal) information, perspective taking and discriminating between fact and opinion.

42. Intensive Teaching • Teaching in a one-on-one setting presenting skills in discrete trials around and average VR. • ITT (intensive table teaching) is used to practice skills taught in the natural environment and allows responses to become fluent. • During NET manding is one of the top priorities, during ITT the focus is primarily on other skills.

43. Intensive Teaching • Targets should be mixed and varied to make sure the child is responding to the correct SD • Ratio: Always use a ratio of approximately 80% mastered and 20% new. • Schedule of Reinforcement: initially when pairing at the table or introducing a new target you may use a fixed ratio (set number of responses), however a variable ratio (variable number of responses set around an average) is recommended because it produces a steady rate of responding.

44. Intensive Teaching:Transfer Procedures • Transfer trial- Use the mastered skill to evoke the desired behavior then present the new SD to get the same behavior. • Disractor trial(s)- Present a mastered task or two • Independent trial- Re-present the new SD to evoke the behavior and reinforce correct response heavily

45. Intensive Teaching:Correction Procedures • Use whenever the child responds incorrectly • Give the SD + the response • Wait for the echoic • Repeat the SD • Wait for the response • Run a distractor trial (something the child can do easily) • Repeat the SD • In general if you do not get an independent response after 3 attempts, accept the prompted response and move on. We will most likely have to re-asses the target or teaching procedure.

46. Intensive Teaching

47. Data Collection • It is important to keep data of targeted and mastered skills, so: • We can accurately and effectively track progress • We can build on and expand to new skills using mastered skills • We can always have a record of what we are working on • ALL decisions made in programs based on ABA are data-driven and objective

48. Data Collection • Program Board: Used to document targeted skills. • For NET: record targets taught within the child’s activities. Transfer between operants, i.e. from mand to tact, from receptive to tact, from tact to intraverbal. • For ITT: It is recommended to choose 2-3 targets for each skill at a time. Targets should be probed and taught following the specified teaching procedures. • Probe data should be recorded with a + or – (I or P). • If necessary teaching data can be collected with tallies or a T or N (if taught at the table or in the NET)

49. Data Collection • Probe: An easy way to collect data is through probes. A probe is collected the first time the target is presented that day. The probe shows us whether or not the child can accurately and fluently provide the required response without prompts. • Teaching: We may occasionally also keep track of how often an item is taught throughout a session to ensure that the item is being targeted frequently enough • Mastery criteria: is typically based on the child’s learning history and often ranges between 2-4 consecutive independent responses.