ABA is a common form of therapy that is used when treating children with a number of disabilities and particularly those who fall onto the autism spectrum. These therapy techniques use the patients’ understanding of behaviors in real-life situations to give them the tools to move through the world with ease. This branch of psychotherapy can help children with learning or cognitive disabilities reign in harmful behavior before it becomes too entrenched in their usual routines. Behaviour ABA therapy is an essential cog in the machinery that equips children with everything they need to have fulfilling lives. The dedicated professionals who spend their days, weeks, and years working with these children utilize a number of core techniques under the umbrella of ABA therapy. We are going to take a look at six of these core techniques to provide you with a better understanding of the therapy across the board and set your mind at ease regarding its application.
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1. Positive Reinforcement
This is easily the most well-known technique used in ABA therapy. Any child who has social disabilities of any kind might not be sure of what response is expected of them in any given situation. Using positive reinforcement to strengthen their understanding of what responses are appropriate at what time and in what situation. Positive reinforcement will encourage them to use the reinforced behavior more often rather than causing the child pain or distress by responding negatively to an inappropriate moment. This can go from being a therapeutic approach to being a lifestyle choice that parents make when engaging with their children.
2. Naturalistic Teaching
This is a collective term that covers a range of strategies, all personalized on a case-by-case basis, that therapists come up with as they work with their patients. It takes a really intuitive and connected therapist and a trusting patient for this technique to work well, and when it does work well, it works WELL. This approach is based on the idea that no two patients are the same, and thus the same approach cannot be used to equal effect on different patients. This kind of therapy is set to fall in line with the child’s existing routine and relies on the therapist learning everything about this routine.
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3. Pivotal Response Treatment
Similar to naturalistic teaching, pivotal response treatment is a therapy in which the child leads the way. This is a play-based therapy that focuses on pivotal areas rather than specific behaviors. Problematic responses are nipped in the bud. This therapy is more often than not adopted by the entire family to keep it as consistent a part of the child’s routines as possible for the best possible level of effect. The treatment most often focuses on the following areas:
- Social skills
- Language
- Response
- Self-management
- Motivations
4. Behavior Contracts
As the name implies, this aspect of ABA requires that therapists and children enter into “contracts” stating which behaviors are acceptable and expected and which are not. First, the positive behaviors that the therapist wishes to see are listed. Second, the contract states how the therapist will reward this behavior. The third part of the contract is reaching a long-term goal by accumulating rewards. Therapies like this are easy for parents to take over once the child’s time with their therapist comes to an end.
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5. Prompting and Fading
This is a gentle approach to be used in the moment when trying to correct or reward behavior. Prompts come in the form of visual or verbal cues that are used to encourage the child: they might be a gesture or a look. This could apply to taking shoes off when the child enters the house or washing their hands before eating. Eventually, when the behavior is reinforced enough to stick, the prompts fade out.
6. Task Analysis
This aspect of ABA is used to learn more about a child, which enables the therapist to enact a lot of the other therapies on the list. The therapist will give their little patient a task to do and carefully note how they undertake said task. The therapist analyzes the task using the following categories:
- Cognitive actions
- Physical actions
- Allocation
- Repetition
- Environment
Once this analysis is complete, the information is used to make tasks simpler for the child to carry out.
Wrap Up
Together with a few other core techniques, these six techniques allow therapists to work with children in a way that helps them form good behaviors and reliable habits. These behaviors and habits will help them navigate life a little more easily than they did before.
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