If you’re looking at working in ABA or interested in working with children with autism, but have no idea what to expect, we’ve got you covered. This video briefly explains what working in the field of ABA looks like when working with children with autism and the basics of how ABA works (or the science part) So let’s get into it.
In general, individuals with autism and those with autism referred to ABA services, typically have some behaviors that we may want to work to decrease. Definitely not an exhaustive list, but this can include potentially aggressive behaviors like hitting or biting, maybe self-injurious behavior, possibly tantrum behaviors, like crying, screaming, and possibly self-stimulatory behaviors like hand flapping.
Individuals referred to ABA therapy may also have some skill deficits, which are usually closely tied to those more challenging behaviors. Communication is a biggie here. Let’s say I am unable to communicate my needs. Maybe I can’t vocalize or haven’t learned sign language to ask for what I need. It seems very reasonable that I would then engage in challenging behaviors like screaming. I may not have any other way to get that need met. This is exactly what we often work on in ABA sessions. As a BCBA, I would have a plan to decrease that screaming behavior if that was interfering with a client’s life and that plan would likely also include a plan to increase their communication skills.
There are a variety of skill areas where an individual with autism may have deficits. Potentially motor skills, imitation skills, daily living skills (like grooming or toileting), turn taking, social skills, executive functioning, etc. Now, in ABA, we start with a list of goals that are determined from an assessment and a Behavior Plan. We don’t just start asking the clients questions or telling them to do things and hope for the best. We are often dealing with individuals who just don’t learn the same way a lot of neurotypical children do. In short, we break things down into small pieces, we set our clients up for success, we practice repeatedly, and we provide reinforcement for behaviors that we want to see more of.
Most ABA agencies work the same where you will have a supervisor who writes the goals and the plans to achieve them. You will be given very specific instructions about how to work on those goals and how to record data. Your supervisor will then use the data to make decisions about progress and intervention changes.
In addition to working on increasing whatever skills are being targeted within those goals, you will also be given a behavior plan. The behavior plan is aimed at reducing those challenging behaviors. There will and should be overlap with the skills you are teaching and the behavior plan. It will tell you what to do to prevent the behavior from occurring, what to do if it does occur, and what to teach as a replacement (or what the child can do instead of engaging in the challenging behavior). In the example where I am screaming to get access to my favorite toy, you are likely going to be teaching me a more appropriate way to get that toy, such as asking.
Throughout your sessions, you should be working on these goals and implementing your behavior plan, but you should also be having fun. There are so many fun activities and ways to weave fun and excitement throughout your sessions. So how does this all work?
Applied Behavior Analysis is a science studying behavior change. The center of ABA is obviously behavior. Let’s think of this as simply anything one says or does. Surrounding behavior are the antecedent and the consequence. The antecedent is what comes immediately before the behavior and the consequence is what immediately follows the behavior. We talk about this contingency (Antecedent, behavior, and consequence) as the ABCs. Let’s look at some ABC examples.
A super simple example would be drinking water when I’m thirsty. My thirst would be the antecedent. The behavior is that I take a drink of water. And the consequence is I’m no longer thirsty. Let’s say I see a text message from my friend, I quickly respond back with a funny meme, she sends me a laughing emoji. The antecedent here is the text from my friend. The behavior is that I text her back.And the consequence is that she laughs, putting us both in a better mood. Maybe you’re like me and cannot handle a messy house. Walking into a living room with toys all over the floor gives me anxiety. That could be the antecedent for you to clean up, and the consequence would be that you no longer have to feel anxious or distracted by the mess.
Hopefully, you can see that ABCs are everywhere in our daily lives. So what about for the children we work with? Let’s look at an example. Joey and his mom are at Target. As they walk down the toy aisle, Joey sees a toy that he simply must have. His mom says no, you have too many toys at home already. Joey is not a fan of this answer, so he throws himself on the floor screaming. Mom can feel all the eyes on her and is completely embarrassed. Of course she wants it to stop, so she says “fine” and throws the toy in the cart. So the ABC might look like this
Joey wants a toy at Target and mom says no. He throws himself on the floor screaming. Mom says fine and gets him the toy. No judgment here. Most people who have been involved in a child’s tantrum can relate. But, let’s look at this more simply of how this plays out for Joey:
I have no toy- I scream and throw myself on the floor- I now have the toy.
In another example, Dominic is playing with legos and the blocks are spread all over the floor. Dominic’s dad asks him to clean up and Dominic refuses. He ignores dad and runs away. His dad needs the legos cleaned up, because guests are coming over, so he puts them away himself. Again, looking at this from Dominic’s point of view: Dad asked me to clean up- I ran away- I no longer have to clean up.
It’s important to be able to break behavior down into these ABCs, because we use that information to determine why a child may be engaging in those more challenging behaviors. We also then use that “why” to know what to do about it.
So we talked a little bit about the more challenging behaviors you might see in a child with autism, as well as the skills we may want to teach. So how do we change these behaviors and teach these skills? We do this by changing the antecedents and consequences. Before we get into these strategies, we need to understand how consequences affect a child’s behavior. So, let’s talk more about those consequences.
In order to understand how we change behavior, you must first understand a core principle in ABA, which is: the consequence following a behavior determines whether that behavior will increase or decrease in the future. What do we mean by that? Let’s look at some examples.
Let’s say I want a cookie and dad says no. So I throw a tantrum, and dad gives me the cookie.
What do you think is likely to happen the next time I want something and Dad says no? I’m probably going to throw another tantrum. It worked last time, didn’t it? In this case, we say that the consequence of getting the cookie following my behavior of throwing the tantrum increases the likelihood that I will throw a tantrum again the next time I am told no. So, What if I didn’t get the cookie? What do you think is likely to happen the next time I want something and Dad says no? I am less likely to throw a tantrum, because it didn’t work in the past.
Hopefully you can see how the different consequences affect the likelihood of that behavior increasing or decreasing in the future. For now we’re going to focus on what happened in the first example where I got the cookie following my tantrum. This concept is called reinforcement. It involves the delivery of something someone wants or removal of something someone does not want. Because reinforcement results in an increase of the behavior the reinforcer follows, we use this consequence when teaching new skills.
Behavior goes where reinforcement flows. In other words, whatever behavior you’re providing reinforcement for is what you’re likely to get more of.
What is ABA Anyway?
Let’s talk about how we use ABA to reduce or manage challenging behaviors. In the ABA Basics video, we discussed how all behavior can be broken into a 3 term contingency which we call the ABCs, or antecedent, behavior, and consequence. We also talked about a core principle of ABA, which is that the consequence following a behavior will determine whether that behavior will increase or decrease in the future under similar circumstances.
When talking about those more challenging behaviors, the concept of consequences affecting the future frequency of behavior is tied to something called function. Before we can figure out what to do to change the behavior, we need to know what the function of the behavior is. In other words, we need to know why an individual is doing what they are doing, or what purpose the behavior is serving for them.
Why is it important to determine the function of a behavior? Let’s look at an example. In the middle of Math class, Maddy throws her pencil hitting her teacher and rips her paper. Her teacher, of course, is not happy about this and sends Maddy outside. Now, this is pretty standard practice in a lot of classrooms. A student acts up, they get sent away at some point. This continues to happen during Math and Maddy’s teacher doesn’t understand why she keeps doing it. He’s sending her outside, but it doesn’t seem to be working. What if I told you that Maddy hates Math because it is difficult for her? The consequence of sending her outside after throwing her pencil and ripping her paper allowed Maddy to get out of Math.
Knowing what we now know about consequences, what is likely to happen the next time Maddy is given a Math assignment? Her behavior of throwing her pencil and ripping her paper is likely to increase. In this case, the function is probably escape since Maddy was able to escape Math, but there are 4 main functions of behavior: Access, Escape/ Avoidance, Attention, and Automatic. We’ll talk about each one more in depth.
When we talk about access as a function of behavior, we are talking about engaging in a behavior to gain access to something. Remember that example from our ABA Basics video with Joey at Target? He wanted a toy and his mom said no. So he threw himself on the floor, and mom ended up getting him the toy. This is an example where access is likely the function maintaining the tantrum behavior. He wants access to the toy.
When talking about escape as the function of a behavior, we mean that engaging in that behavior results in being able to escape or avoid something. Remember our example of Maddy during Math class? Her behavior of throwing her pencil resulted in escape from a non-preferred activity (the Math assignment).
When we say behaviors are maintained by attention, it is exactly as it sounds. Engaging in those behaviors results in attention from others. Often what happens is we inadvertently give attention to those more negative behaviors by reacting. Unfortunately, if the negative behaviors are what is getting more attention or a bigger reaction, that is likely what you will get more of. An attention maintained behavior might look like this: Marcus is playing by himself in the family room (his mother is in the kitchen). Marcus screams and his mother runs in the room and tells him to stop screaming. Pretty normal reaction for a parent. If we look at this from Marcus’ point of view, however, he had no attention- he screamed- he got mom’s attention. Marcus’ example was a fairly common one in which parents or other adults see or hear a child doing something inappropriate and provide attention by telling them to cut it out.
The last main function of behavior is Automatic. When we talk about behaviors as having an automatic function, we mean that they are not socially mediated and are the kinds of behaviors that you may hear talked about as having a sensory component. They are those behaviors that one does not need anyone else in order to engage in. For instance, things like hand flapping, visual tracking, body rocking, etc. tend to be the kinds of behaviors with an automatic function. For example, if Emmy didn’t have enough visual stimulation, she flaps her hands in front of her eyes, and she now has more visual stimulation.
Hopefully, you can see how different behaviors may be occurring for different reasons and why it’s important to figure out what those reasons are. All of these functions work through the concept of reinforcement. In our last video, remember how we talked about the consequences following a behavior determining whether that behavior will increase or decrease in the future? Well, reinforcement is the type of consequence that results in the increase. For instance, let’s say my boss gives me compliments on my work after I work really hard on preparing a presentation. I am likely to work really hard again the next time I have a presentation due. Another example, my use of a navigation app got me out of traffic, so next time I am likely to use the app again. Both instances resulted in an increase of my behavior in the future. In the first example, something good was added (my boss’ compliments), while in the second example, something aversive was removed (traffic). This is the difference between positive and negative reinforcement. The positive is when something is added and the negative is when something is removed.
Back to our functions. Let's briefly look at how reinforcement is operating within a couple of our functions. When access is the function of the behavior, the behavior has been reinforced with that addition of something good. Remember our Joey example- following the behavior of throwing himself on the floor, Joey got the toy that he wanted. If his behavior of throwing himself on the floor increases in the future, we can say that giving him the toy reinforced this behavior. When escape is the function maintaining the behavior, it is actually negative reinforcement at work. In the example of Maddy throwing her pencil to get out of Math class, it is the removal from Math class (something aversive), following her throwing and ripping behavior, which likely results in an increase of this behavior in the future. If it does, we would say that it has been reinforced.
Now that we see how reinforcement is at work in the functions of the behavior, hopefully you see that those consequences we usually resort to, such as giving in or sending a child outside, are causing that behavior to keep happening. So, what do we do about it? The first step to determining this is to figure out the function.
Your BCBA or Supervisor will provide you with a detailed behavior plan with strategies to implement to reduce challenging behavior. These strategies are based on the behavior’s function. A behavior plan covers what to do if the behavior occurs (we call these consequence based strategies), what we teach the client to do instead (we call these replacement behaviors), and how to prevent the behavior from occurring in the first place (we call these antecedent strategies). It’s really important that all 3 pieces (the antecedent strategies, replacement behaviors, and consequence strategies) go together.
These are all really simple examples. Things can get a bit more complex, but it’s important to remember that you can break it all down into simpler concepts. Hopefully you now have a better understanding of how we work with ABA.
How Do We Use ABA to Reduce Challenging Behaviors?
Grab my favorite social reinforcement ideas!
Looking to make session more fun? Psst- I’ve got a secret. You don’t need to lug more toys around in your bag. What you need is some ideas to inspire your creativity. I created this guide to inspire you with activities with built in reinforcement, more fun ways to deliver the reinforcer, and ways to just bring the fun in general.
