ABC's Approach

Applied Behavior Analysis, also known as ABA, is the theoretical foundation that underlies all of ABC’s clinical practices and educational development. Each child receives a comprehensive functional assessment that identifies core deficits and excesses interfering with the child’s ability to learn and participate in daily life at home, school and in the community. To play and to be social are crucial aspects of the human experience and are repertoires that many children with Autism have extreme difficulty in learning. Thus, deficits in these skills require attention and remediation. To this end, ABC’s intervention includes ways to measure and impact this particularly important facet of a child’s life.

“Every child deserves to flourish and learn in his or her environment”

Working within the parameters of applied behavior analysis, ABC’s evaluation includes an assessment of the child’s standing on standardized developmental milestones including play and social repertoires. This provides a more accurate depiction of where to direct therapy. These milestones are assessed throughout and at the end of intervention. This gives a clearer picture of the effectiveness of the intervention; and in our experience results in greater generalization of the acquired skills needed. Because play and social skills are such an integral part of each child’s program, the same assessment and outcome measures are used to evaluate these types of deficits found in children with Autism/ASD to develop appropriate programming curriculum.

ABC'S Autism Programs

Language Based:

The acquisition of language is our primary goal. In this process we are informed by B.F. Skinner's book VERBAL BEHAVIOR and those current researchers (Michael, Sundberg, Bondy, et. al.) who have added to that work. Every child’s language repertoire is assessed using the VBMAPP (Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program, Sundberg 2005) or ABLLS (Assessment of Basic Language and Leaning Skills, Sundberg; and Partington, 1994) when appropriate.

Communication is a critical aspect to every child’s educational program and is emphasized at the beginning and throughout the child’s language intervention. Each child, minimally, learns to communicate at a level that will allow him/her to appropriately and effectively request his or her wants/needs throughout the day and across environments. Building on that, each child is taught to comment about the world around them, the skill of answering questions about the world and themselves, to imitate the language of others, to read, to write and finally to learn to qualify and respond to their own words. The rate at which these repertoires are learned or mastered are determined by the child’s overall deficits and competing excesses.

Generalization:

To address the difficulties commonly faced in children with Autism when generalizing new skills learned, ABC’s 5 level generalization program was developed in 1996 by Co-founder Brenda Terzich, referred to as R.E.A.L (Recreating Environment to Accelerate Learning; Terzich, 1996). Each child’s assessment and educational program is guided by R.E.A.L. to more successfully generalize learned skills from a highly structured environment to the natural environment. In particular, mands (requests), play and social skills are taught at the beginning and continue to be built upon throughout the child’s intervention and transition into the public school. R.E.A.L. involves moving away from the table to novel situations, rewording requests, adding natural environmental distracters, requiring the skills in daily life routines, and responding to social contingencies while still maintaining the learned behavior. Therapy is guided by ABC's R.E.A.L. program during assessment, treatment development and lesson progression. R.E.A.L. is also used to program the eventual integration of learned skills into the daily life requirements of the child, including relations with the social community.

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS ):

While all children diagnosed on the autism spectrum have language deficits, many of them have significant deficits in vocalizing. Our experience has been that PECS facilitates, rather than hinders, vocalization thus, our intervention programs include PECS in these situations. We teach students to initiate communication via the exchange of picture icons that represent items or events in the environment. We use PECS to build a functional communication repertoire where the child can request/reject, comment about the environment and even socially interact with others. And we concurrently teach vocalization lessons by imitation to give the child the foundational skills for language development.

ABC has certified PECS Supervisors and Implementers and has a professional relationship with the founders of Pyramid Educational Consultants, Inc. and developers of PECS, Andrew Bondy & Lori Frost. Our collaborative work have included joint presentations of PECS workshops and fund raising for the B.F. Skinner Foundation founded by Julie and Ernie Vargas.

Positive Programming:

To address serious behavior problems that often prevent children from leaning new skills or maintain existing appropriate behaviors, ABC uses Positive Programming Procedures (also written into the Hughes Bill, AB2526). With this technology, a descriptive analysis is performed and a functional analysis is made of the behavior. In other words, we analyze the environmental antecedents and consequences to see what is evoking the problem behavior or what the student gets out of the behavior. Intervention plans are developed based on the outcome of the functional analysis and continues throughout the intervention to determine the effectiveness of the procedure in reducing the problem behavior. Many problem behaviors are prevented by extinction and/or redirection and can suffice to solve the situation. Others are easily decreased by teaching alternative functional behaviors to replace those that serve to get attention or escape. Overall, we believe problem behavior is a result of poor environmental contingencies, and it is these contingencies we change rather than try to suppress behavior with punishment.

All assessments and development of treatment procedures are performed by qualified staff in Behavior Intervention.

Outcomes:

Consistent with over 40 years of scientific data from the field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), ABC finds that all of our clients make progress with ABA technology. 100% of our classroom students are effectively communicating their wants and needs within one year, either vocally and/or by PECS, and sometimes ASL(American Sign Language) or other types of language assisted devices. We have succeeded in transitioning most of our students to a less restrictive environment within their neighborhood school.

Some results can only be described as spectacular. Consistent with the findings of Ivar Lovaas, Patricia Krantz, Lynn McClannahan and others, we find that some of our students can attend regular education classrooms with same age peers. "In the first four years of providing school services ABC had nine students who came to us before the age of four years and one month who reached this criterion and were placed in regular education programs without supports. They continue to succeed in those placements." Our in-home programs show similar outcomes.

While several of our intensive in-home clients have become indistinguishable from same age peers, we are currently analyzing these datum for a more objective analysis.

Infant Toddler Programs

Core Components of ABC’s IT (Infant Toddler) Program:

• Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is the philosophy by which the program is informed and used to analyze what is taught and how to teach it.
• Every child’s program is individualized to his/her needs, learning style and guided by what is developmentally expected.
• Teaching occurs in naturalistic environments.
• Communication, pre-language skills and reciprocity are taught within a social context and interactive play situations.
• “Staying and Playing” (Hart and Risley) is emphasized; where the child is an active participant of his/her own learning social factors that influence learning are incorporated.
• Imitation is the cornerstone for which all skills are built upon.

For the amount of gain that a child makes from the age the child starts the program, until they reach age 3. See Outcome Research Posters on the right.