Copyright © 2019 by Reg M. Reynolds.

ISBN:                    Softcover                 978-1-7960-1233-0

                              eBook                       978-1-7960-1234-7

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Rev. date: 01/28/2019

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

The Role of Learning Theory in Treatment

Classical (or Pavlovian) Conditioning

Operant Conditioning

Social Learning Theory

ABA and the Science of Teaching

Reinforcement

Reinforcement: Primary and Secondary

Reinforcement: Continuous and Intermittent

Reinforcement: Arbitrary and Natural Consequences

Establishing the Reinforcement Value of Your Presence and Approval

Narrative and Declarative Language

Beginning Formal Instruction

Reinforcement: Choosing Potential Reinforcers

More General Teaching Procedure Reminders

Generalization

Chaining

Scrolling

A Few More Correction Tips

Shaping

Teaching with Acoustical Guidance (TAGteach)

Data Recording Procedures: Probe Data

Data Recording Procedures: Graphing/Charting

Celeration and Celeration Charting

Teaching Children with Autism

Beginning Social Relationships: Joint Attention

Beginning Social Relationships: Referencing

Now Let’s Return to What Is Autism?

Myths About Autism

But This One is Not a Myth

ABA and the Science of Teaching Children with Autism

Principles of Remedial Education

Teaching Models/Venues: ITT and NET

Play: The Natural Environment of the Child

Stages of Play: Melinda Smith

Stages of Play: Westby

Stages of Play: McAlpine

Stages of Play: Interactive and Cooperative Play

Stages of Play: the ABLLS-R

Stages of Play: Greenspan

The Play Project

A Few Playskills References

Giggle Time – Establishing the Social Connection

Playing With Your Child

Playdates and Playgroups

Let’s Talk a Bit About Undesirable Behaviours

Functional Analysis of Behaviour

What To Do Even Before You Try To Get A Formal Instructional Program Started

A Few Autism Lists that You Might Wish to Join

A Few Other Books and Resources That I Have Found Interesting

A Word of Caution Regarding Recommended Resources

Variation Among ABA Programs

Applied Verbal Behaviour and Its Associated Effective Teaching Procedures

Teaching Procedures Associated with ABA/VB

More Effective Teaching Techniques That You Should Know

Knowing What To Teach: Curricula

The ABLLS-R

Knowing What To Teach: Social/Emotional Relating Skills

Gutstein’s Relationship Development Intervention (RDI)

Teaching to the Child’s Preferred Sensory Modality

Augmentative Communication Systems

Transition to School

Preschool and Kindergarten

When Your Child is Ready to Start School: Developing an Individual Education Program

How to Organize and Manage an ABA Program

Steps in Getting an ABA Program Up and Running

Individual Service Plan (ISP) Checklist¹

Your Role in Teaching Your Child

And how, specifically, do you teach these small, observable steps?

Setting the Stage for Success

A Few Effective Teaching Procedures: A Review

Now, Here Are a Few Tips for Surviving the Process

A Few Important Things That I Have Learned About Teaching Children With Autism Since I First Started Writing About It

Beyond ABA

Appendix A

Appendix B

References

To Joyce, the love of my life,

who has put up with my obsessions for more than sixty years; to my daughter, Alison, who got me interested in teaching children with autism; and with appreciation to Dr. Janis Williams, C.Psych., who was kind enough to encourage my interest in this field.

Preface

I am not an Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) person per sē. Although originally trained as a teacher, my background is primarily in clinical psychology and, although I began my psychology career by working with children, I only returned to working with that population, from 1992 until my retirement in 2017, after many years of working with adults. The opinions expressed in this manuscript represent my take on ABA; they are only that – my thoughts on the subject, nothing more. On the other hand, this has been an area of particular interest to me for the past twenty years.

That was when my daughter, who was working in daycare, had responsibility for several children who were autistic, with the result that her job evolved into that of instructor/therapist. At that point, I had been working as a psychologist for almost forty years without having had any significant amount of contact with autism. Since I thought that I should at least have some idea about what she was doing, I started to self-educate and eventually reached the point where I thought I might be able to talk with other psychologists in the field. Most were not willing to give me the time of day – in fact, one prominent psychologist said, Why would I help someone who might eventually become competition for me? However, Dr. Janis Williams, Clinical Director for the Central West Region of the Ontario government’s newly-established Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI) program for children with autism was not only willing to talk with me, she offered me a job.

For the next nine years, I worked for ErinoakKids, helping to develop their IBI program. The information about ABA contained in this book was assembled within that context as my attempt to clarify my own thinking about Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) in the context of teaching children with autism. Updated over a period of years for the direction of the Senior Therapists with whom I was working at the time, it is intended as a primer for both parents and instructor-therapists alike.

In my opinion, it contains most of the information that parents need if they have a child with autism, and it is relatively simple. Experienced instructor-therapists will also benefit, since it is more comprehensive than anything else that they are likely to have been exposed to. It is where I think parents and most instructor-therapists should start. It contains a fair amount of built-in intentional redundancy, as important points are repeated over and over in case they don’t register the first time they are presented.

In this manuscript, I have tried to incorporate the wisdom of all with whom I have come in contact, hopefully giving credit to the many sources from which the ideas in this book have been drawn. I particularly want to acknowledge the generosity of Dr. Vincent Carbone (charismatic proponent of what has come to be known as the Verbal Behaviour approach to ABA) and Dr. Robert Schramm (who has written what I consider to be the best available book on the Verbal Behaviour approach to ABA), both of whom have freely shared with me from their own oh-so-valuable areas of expertise.

I would also like to acknowledge Marcie Norton (for showing me how much fun good ABA-based instruction can be), Diane Sardi and Jennifer Harper (my guides to good, standard ABA practices), Sandy Palombo (for thinking outside the traditional ABA box), John DeMarco (who is certified in both ABA and RDI), Am Badwall (teacher/principal/administrator) and her colleague and vice principal, Mike Daniels (for showing me what a good school for children with autism can look like), and Joan Orr (for introducing me to TAGteach, Teaching with Acoustical Guidance).

Finally, if I have inadvertently failed to acknowledge the source of any of the ideas in this publication, I sincerely apologize.

Introduction

ABA has been defined as the science in which procedures derived from the principles of behavior are systematically applied to improve socially significant behavior to a meaningful degree and to demonstrate experimentally that the procedures employed were responsible for the improvement in behavior (Cooper, Heron, and Heward, Applied Behavior Analysis, 1989). Based on the past hundred years of research into how learning works, ABA has universal application – it can be applied to any situation in which learning is involved. Nevertheless, while any concept can be defined in behavioural terms – you only have to ask yourself, What will I use as an indicator of whatever it is that I wish to change? – ABA tends to be applied primarily to those situations that are easiest to define in behavioural terms.

The Role of Learning Theory in Treatment

You should know that there are many different approaches to almost any kind of treatment. However, if learning occurs as a result of any of these different approaches, it will occur in keeping with the laws of learning, as established by research carried out during the past century or so. There are several lines of research into learning, but the three kinds of learning that have been most fully researched are:

Classical conditioning (which was extensively studied by Pavlov and his colleagues and students)

Operant conditioning (which was extensively studied by Skinner and his colleagues and students)

Social Learning Theory (which was extensively studied by Walters and Bandura and their colleagues and students)

Classical (or Pavlovian) Conditioning

In classical conditioning, a stimulus becomes able to elicit a particular response by virtue of having been paired with a stimulus that already elicits that response. This kind of learning through association – which occurs within the context of pairing – has a very important part to play in everyone’s development. For example, suppose a child likes milk, i.e., finds milk rewarding. The child will associate that reward with the person who provides the milk, and will come to find the presence of that person rewarding, simply by virtue of that person having been paired with the milk (unless, of course, that person is also associated with a preponderance of experiences that the child finds unpleasant).

Operant Conditioning

If some particular behaviour is followed immediately and consistently by a particular consequence, the learner¹ will learn to associate that particular consequence with that particular behaviour.

Certain consequences – most often, consequences that the learner experiences as rewarding – reinforce or strengthen the likelihood of occurrence of the behavior that they follow.

If a learned behavior is preceded by some observable antecedent – in operant conditioning jargon, known as a discriminative stimulus – the learner will learn to associate that antecedent with that particular behavior and its associated consequence.

ABA makes a lot of use of Operant principles, in which learning is said to be as easy as A-B-C (Antecedent, Behaviour, Consequence).

• Antecedent Conditions (also called the Discriminative Stimulus or SD) – something that happens just before (and serves as a cue for) the behaviour that you want your student to learn to do as a response to that cue/antecedent conditions.

• Behaviour – something that the learner does in response to that cue/antecedent conditions.

• Consequences – which increase the likelihood of occurrence of that behaviour when the learner is presented with those antecedent conditions. Such consequences are said to reinforce, or to be a reinforcer for, the behaviour that they follow.

Summarizing the above, if a learner learns to give a particular response to some particular antecedent cue, it is usually safe to assume that, from that learner’s point of view, the consequence of producing that particular response was desirable or rewarding – although, technically speaking, whether or not the consequence was perceived by the learner as rewarding is immaterial; all that matters is that the consequence was reinforcing, i.e., that the probability of the person (or animal) exhibiting that behaviour in response to that particular antecedent stimulus increased as a result of having been followed by that particular consequence.

ABA defines punishment, in contrast to reinforcement, as a consequence that decreases the likelihood that the particular behaviour that it follows will be exhibited. As a general rule, consequences that the learner finds aversive are likely to function as punishers. However, this is not always the case, and the only sure way to determine what consequences will function as punishment is to present the consequence after the behaviour and see whether it decreases the likelihood of that particular behaviour being exhibited – remember, that is how punishment is defined in Applied Behaviour Analysis. You should know, however, that there are lots of problems with the whole idea of punishment, and it is almost never advocated by anyone knowledgeable about the principles underlying successful teaching.

To reiterate, the learner learns to behave in a particular way because those behaviours are followed by certain kinds of (reinforcing) consequences. This is known as operant conditioning – the learner’s learning of the behavioural response is conditional upon its having being followed immediately by a consequence which we may presume is, from the learner’s point of view, desirable or rewarding.

It bears repeating: As a general rule, consequences that the learner finds rewarding are likely to be good reinforcers, although this is not always the case; and the only sure way to determine what will be reinforcing for the learner is to present the consequence after the behaviour and see whether the behaviour is strengthened – because that is how reinforcement is