As you start your journey into the world of autism, you may find the words ‘ABA’ or ‘Applied Behavior Analysis’ popping up everywhere.  You may be wondering what ABA even is or how your child can benefit from it.  

ABA is an evidence based practice for working with individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).  There is a lot of research that supports its effectiveness in teaching skills to individuals with autism.  ABA takes the science and research of behavior and individualizes programs for each person by focusing on goals that are important for them.  While these goals can span a variety of areas, here are four common domains where ABA can help.

1) Challenging Behavior

Oftentimes people believe that ABA is only for dealing with challenging behaviors. While this characterization as a general point is  untrue, challenging behavior is an area of expertise for those working in the ABA field.  

Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) have a background in analyzing the function of behavior.  This means they analyze why a challenging behavior is occurring.  They use multiple analytical methods to determine what an individual is trying to communicate when they are engaging in challenging behavior.

Once they are able to hypothesize the why, they can assist in decreasing the behavior in a variety of ways.  Typically, they develop a program to decrease the effectiveness of the challenging behavior while increasing the effectiveness of a replacement behavior.  These goals are often put into a behavior intervention plan to ensure treatment is systematic and effective.

2) Social Skills

What we consider social skills can vary greatly based on age and functioning level.  This may be as specific as looking towards an adult to see if they are watching the cool thing I just did or as broad as spending an evening hanging out with friends.

One of the biggest challenges many individuals on the autism spectrum face with social skills is the nuance of context.  Social rules and expectations change from one person or setting to another.  BCBAs recognize this and try to help individuals both learn the black and white social rules as well as seeing the grey areas.  Additionally, they provide them with opportunities to practice and receive positive reinforcement for engaging in appropriate social skills in a less intimidating setting before helping them generalize these skills.  

ABA has a long history of working on increasing social skills that are important to each individual and their situation.  The exact skills and methodology will vary from person to person, but social skills as a whole are often included into an ABA treatment plan. 

3) Communication

It can be extremely confusing to understand why your child needs both Speech Therapy and ABA when their major challenges are in communication.  While they are separate therapies, when done right, they very much work hand in hand.  

Speech therapists often focus on the mechanics of language, where behavior analysts focus on what they call verbal behavior.  The term “verbal behavior” can be confusing as it does not necessarily mean vocal.  It instead is based on the function, or why, of communication.  Similar to challenging behavior, a BCBA will analyze variables of a child’s communication to determine the social value of how they are communicating.  With that, they will work on increasing their communication skills by ensuring they learn the value of communication through positive reinforcement.  These goals then are focused on communicating more effectively instead of more clearly, as is often the case with Speech Therapy goals.

4) Daily Living Skills

You may be thinking all of this is great, but can you teach my child to brush their teeth?  The answer is yes.  ABA often focuses on teaching independence for many daily activities including hygiene, work tasks, etc. When we think of these skills, we often do not realize how complex they really are.  BCBAs tend to break down daily living skills into smaller, digestible pieces in order to assist individuals in learning each individual step to build up to a full independent repertoire.   While the specific skills and methodologies will again be individualized for each person, the overarching goal is self-sufficiency.

Since ABA is so individualized, your child may have goals that fall outside of these domains.  The important thing to know is that ABA can be an effective therapy for a wide variety of developmental areas!