A Nice Dose of ABA!
By Suzanne Murphy, ASD and ABA Consultant

The reality of providing ABA services in educational settings is that, at times, one can feel like a lone soldier, standing among but apart from professionals from other disciplines. We try to ensure contact with other ABA professionals but the reality of fast-paced life in schools and other demands greatly affect our ability to do so. Attending ABA conferences and trainings is a wonderful way to immerse oneself in our field of choice and soak up the energy from a room filled with like-minded people.

In January 2015, the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) held its Ninth Annual Autism Conference: Innovative, Science-Based Approaches and pre-conference workshops in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. The pre-conference, conference and poster sessions offered a wealth of information relevant to the field of autism.

As different invited speakers shared their experiences and findings, a common theme weave its way through their presentations, apart from the concrete findings they were presenting. Behaviour analysis is not static. It is a dynamic approach to behaviour guided by seven dimensions* identified almost fifty years ago. What behaviour analysts strive to do is provide interventions based on the most current research available, research that can suggest doing things differently or as Dr. LeBlanc stated, opposite to what most people do. This is what sets Behaviour Analysis apart from other fields, the ability to learn and then take what is learned and apply it in a meaningful way to socially significant behaviour. To illustrate, two presentations will be shared, the first by Dr. Linda LeBlanc and the second by Dr. Robert Koegel.

In her pre-conference workshop Early Intervention for Young Children with Autism: Best Practices for Receptive Language Instruction, Linda LeBlanc, Ph.D., BCBA-D spoke to an article she co-authored with Laura Grow titled Teaching Receptive Language Skills: Recommendations for Instructors. The purpose of this article was to make literature more user friendly for everyday practitioners. Recommendations related to several decades of work in the area of early intensive behavioural intervention (EIBI), in particular receptive language programming. In addition, potential negative effects of deviating from recommended strategies were described. To read the entire article click here.

As Dr. LeBlanc shared her recommendations about receptive language instruction, several key messages were heard loud and clear.

• Endeavour to do more effective and efficient teaching. It is not enough to just do a good job, it is essential to do an amazing job by keeping up to date on research findings, designing and updating programs based on those findings and systematically tracking performance to ensure programs are effective. Very few children have the luxury of receiving 40 hours a week of intensive behavioural intervention. We need to be able to do more with less.
• More is not necessarily better and practice doesn’t make perfect…perfect practice makes perfect.
• Make sure children are not practicing errors. Ineffective teaching leads to more errors. More errors lead to dependence on adult support, which then leads to guessing, corrections, problem behaviour and escape behaviour, as the learner attempts to escape the teaching situation.
• The key to doing better in shorter amounts of time lies in the arena of stimulus control, which is a cue that readily evokes or alters some dimension of behaviour. For example, hearing “time for dinner” evokes the behaviour of coming to the table; the bell evokes the behaviour of coming into the school; the music teacher raising her hand while the children are singing leads the children to sign louder. An adult example would be seeing the Tim Hortons’ sign that triggers going in to buy a coffee. Stimulus control is established when a cue precedes a behaviour that is then reinforced, whether we meant for it to happen or not. With autism, failed or faulty stimulus control is the norm and once established can be very difficult to correct/reteach. Things that should readily evoke responding do not; therefore, instruction is needed to remediate the association that has been created.
• A phenomenal amount has been learned about stimulus control in the last 30 years. Leblanc prepared the audience for what she was about to say… that research suggested doing things a little differently from what was suggested in Lovaas’ The Me Book (1972) and its 2003 update, which included great advances however, protocols for receptive language remained unchanged.
• As it relates to teaching receptive language, “look at me” is only important for motor responses and is absolutely irrelevant when other stimuli are what the learner should be looking at.
• We must attend to prerequisite skills when identifying learning outcomes. Jumping into higher-order skills is likely to fail. For example, a child must be able to make simple discriminations based on one element (colour, size or shape) before we can expect them to make complex discriminations, which involve multiple elements (colour and size or colour and shape or colour and feature, etc.)

In his presentation titled ABA, Autism and Pivotal Response Training, Robert Koegel, Ph. D. spoke to research and procedures for implementing Pivotal Response Training (PRT), training which targets key pivotal areas (e.g. motivation, self-initiation, responding to multiple cues, self-management) cause changes in many other areas. PRT has been the subject of over two hundred single case designs and some replication studies. According to the National Standards Project, PRT is one of the two most scientifically documented treatments for autism.

Dr. Koegel shared the early days of PRT and comically shared the fear he felt when he first suggested to an audience which included Ivar Lovaas (he introduced Koegel) and B. F. Skinner, that motivation, a phenomenon impossible to directly observe and measure, was a key area of learning to examine. Much to his surprise, Skinner agreed, added that he had figured this out in 1954 and stated so in some earlier writings. Koegel admitted immediately looking for those earlier writings, which, of course, he found.

As was the case in Dr. LeBlanc’s presentations, Dr. Koegel spoke openly and honestly about then and now, the now being driven by current research findings. To highlight this point, Dr. Koegel exclaimed, “I can’t believe I used to do that. I don’t do that anymore!” again demonstrating that what we do changes based on what the research is telling us. Some key messages:

• Motivation is extremely important, perhaps the most important part of learning. What is the natural reinforcer? What is reinforcing about touching one’s nose? Pair learning to what occurs naturally, as much as possible.
• Lovaas’ original approach has evolved to include variables that greatly influence teaching effectiveness such as providing choice, interspersing teaching (i.e. new/mastered tasks, motor/verbal tasks, preferred/non-preferred tasks), natural reinforcers and reinforcing attempts rather than just the final result.
• Discrete Trial Training (DTT) has evolved from sitting for long periods of time at the table with an adult doing multiple (massed) trials to embedding discrete trials into the natural environment, into everyday activities. For example, it is much more meaningful (and motivating) to learn about pizza (stating preferred ingredients, labeling the pizza, requesting another piece) while preparing and eating pizza at home or enjoying it in a restaurant than sitting at a table in the therapy room labelling the pizza and its ingredients from pictures.
• Communication and behaviour are interrelated. Eighty percent of behaviour problems have a communicative function of escape, avoidance or attention.
• Targeting and effectively teaching core pivotal skills leads to better outcomes in other areas of development.
• Training parents in the basic principles of teaching and behaviour and how to incorporate these into the family’s lifestyle significantly increases the potential for learning. Dr. Koegel states that 25 hours of parent training translates to 60-90 hours of teaching as parents gain skills and the confidence to implement them.

To read more about Pivotal Response Training, visit Autism Ontario’s Knowledge-Base.

In summary, what stood out at this event were the messages that spoke to the field of ABA. One can read articles and research findings but to experience the telling by the authors, to hear the critical messages that weave their way into the stories and witness the ability to say, “We know more now. This changes what we do.” while remaining true to the core values of the field makes attendance at these events so enriching. The perfect little dose of ABA!

*Seven Dimensions of ABA: Applied, Behavioural, Analytic, Conceptually Systematic, Technological, Effective, Generality. (Baer, Wolf and Risley, 1968)


For more information on ABAI, visit https://www.abainternational.org

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