Teaching Children with Autism: An Aba Primer

By Reg Reynolds Ph.D. C.Psych.

Of the myriad of approaches to the treatment of autism spectrum disorders, Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) has the most research support. It is not perfect, and its imperfection is highlighted by the inadequate training of many, if not most of its practitioners. Autism is a burgeoning conditionin some locations, it is estimated to affect one in every seventy-five childrenand the numbers of instructor-therapists required to meet their need for treatment is ensuring that many enter the field with inadequate training. Of course, lack of training is not unique to practitioners of ABA; the entire field is struggling to keep up to the demand for services.

A related and perhaps as serious a problem is the narrowness of vision that most practitioners bring to the enterprise. ABA has been defined as the process of systematically applying interventions based upon the principles of learning theory to improve socially significant behaviors to a meaningful degree, and to demonstrate that the interventions employed are responsible for the improvement in behavior (Baer, Wolf, and Risley, 1968). Being based on the past hundred years of research into how learning works, ABA has universal applicationit can be applied to any developmental issue.

Unfortunately, while any concept can be defined in behavioral terms, you only have to ask yourself, What will I use as an indicator of _______? It tends to get applied primarily to those developmental issues that are easiest to define in behavioral terms. On the other hand, most nonABA approaches have relatively little scientific support.

This brief introduction to teaching children with autism is intended to serve as a primer for both instructor-therapists and parents alike. Hopefully, it will also move the field beyond the narrow focus that it has enjoyed for the past few decades.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524549435

Reg Reynolds Ph.D. C.Psych.

Reg Reynolds, PhD, C.Psych, is a graduate of the clinical psychology program at the University of Waterloo. He has been a psychologist for more than fifty-five years. During his career, he has functioned as a counselor and a psychotherapist for individuals, couples, and groups; as the director of Vocational and Recreational Services at Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital; as the chief psychologist at the Ontario Correctional Institute, the Vanier Centre for Women, and the Oakville Reception and Assessment Centre (for juveniles admitted to training school); as a consultant regarding the assessment and treatment of sex offenders; as a consultant regarding ethical issues; as a coordinating psychologist for the central region of the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services; as a researcher; as a college lecturer; as an intern in, a clinical member of, and a board member of the Halton Centre for Childhood Sexual Abuse; as an intern, cotherapist, and therapist in the treatment of spousal abuse; as a member of the council of the College of Psychologists of Ontario; as a developer of biofeedback equipment and as a provider of biofeedback; as a student of education and special education; as a student of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) and its application in the treatment of children with autism; as a psychologist and supervising clinician in the Ontario government’s Intensive Behavioral Intervention program for children with autism; as an educator of parents of children with autism; and, more recently, as a clinical supervisor of ABA-based programs for children with autism. His most enduring work interests have been providing psychotherapy, trying to learn and apply the new energy therapies, traumatization, trying to understand and treat criminality, and most recently, the treatment of autism-spectrum disorders. Some of these interests are reflected on his website at www.RegReynolds.ca.

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COPYRIGHT © 2016 BY REG REYNOLDS, PH.D., C.PSYCH.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER:   2016916646

   ISBN:   HARDCOVER   978-1-5245-4945-9

                SOFTCOVER     978-1-5245-4944-2

                EBOOK               978-1-5245-4943-5

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Rev. date: 11/23/2016

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders (from DSM-5)

So What Is Autism?

Myths about Autism

But This One Is Not a Myth

Autism and the Role of Education in Its Treatment

Classical (or Pavlovian) Conditioning

Operant Conditioning

Social Learning Theory

ABA and the Science of Teaching Children with Autism

Reinforcement

Establishing the Reinforcement Value of Social Approval

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

Prerequisites to Formal Instruction: Beginning Social Relationships

Giggle Time - Establishing the Social Connection

Beginning Social Relationships: Joint Attention

Beginning Social Relationships: Referencing

Playing with Your Child

Pairing

Playdates and Playgroups

More Precursors to ABA: 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 You May Want to Examine When You Have Time

A Word of Caution Regarding Recommended Resources

Beginning Formal Instruction

Principles of Remedial Education

Principles of Applied Behaviour Analysis (in the context of teaching children with autism)

ABA and the Teaching of Observable Behaviours: A Brief Review

Teaching Models/Venues: ITT and NET

Reinforcement and Shaping

Now for Another Brief Review of ABA Principles

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

Generalization

Skinner’s Analysis of Language from a Functional Perspective

Preschool Curricula

The ABLLS-R

The VB-MAPP

Social/Emotional Relating Skills

Gutstein’s Relationship Development Intervention (RDI)

Reinforcement: A Brief Review

The Reinforcement Value of Consequences Changes from Time to Time: The Role of Motivating Operations (Establishing Operations)

Which Brings Us Back to Shaping

Now, Let’s Talk a Bit More about Undesirable Behaviours

Functional Analysis of Behaviour

Arbitrary and Natural Consequences

Reinforcement: Continuous and Intermittent (a bit of a review)

A Few More General Teaching Procedure Reminders

Teaching to the Child’s Preferred Sensory Modality

Augmentative Communication Systems

Chaining

Scrolling

A Few More Correction Tips

Data Recording Procedures: Probe Data

Data Recording Procedures: Graphing/Charting

Celeration and Celeration Charting

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

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 Things That I Have Learned since the first edition of this book was published

Beyond ABA

Appendix A

Common Aba Errors

Appendix B

Tagteach Using Clicker Training with Humans

References

Miscellaneous Websites

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

This brief introduction to teaching children with autism was originally written as a white paper expressing my opinion regarding the use of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) in the teaching of children with autism, and updated over a period of years for the direction of the Senior Therapists with whom I was working at that time. It is intended to serve as a primer for both instructor-therapists and parents alike; since it is both comprehensive and relatively simple, it is where I think both parents and 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.

Autism is a burgeoning condition – it is currently estimated to affect 1 in every 42 boys and 1 in every 189 girls – and the numbers of therapists required to meet their need for treatment are ensuring that many enter the field with relatively little training and experience. Of the myriad of approaches to the treatment of autism spectrum disorders, ABA has the most research support and some of the best-trained therapists. Nevertheless, it is not perfect, and its imperfection is highlighted by the less-than-ideal level of training of many of its practitioners (see Appendix A for a list of Common ABA Errors). Of course, lack of training is not unique to practitioners of ABA; the entire field is struggling to keep up to the demand for services.

ABA has been defined as the process of systematically applying interventions based upon the principles of learning theory to improve socially significant behaviors to a meaningful degree, and to demonstrate that the interventions employed are responsible for the improvement in behavior. (Baer, Wolf, & Risley. 1968). Based on the past hundred years of research into how learning works, it has universal application; it can be applied to any issue in which learning is involved. Unfortunately, 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 issues that are easiest to define in behavioural terms.

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 wish to acknowledge the generosity of Drs. Vincent Carbone and Richard Solomon in freely sharing with me from their own oh-so-valuable areas of expertise.

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

Introduction

I am not an 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 have only returned to working with that population within the past twenty or so years, after many years of working with adults. The opinions expressed in this manuscript represent my take on teaching children with autism; they are only that – my thoughts on the subject, nothing more.

On the other hand, this is an area of particular interest to me. From 2001 to 2009, I was employed as Supervising Clinician with ErinoakKids, the agency responsible for administering the Ontario Government’s Intensive Behavioural Intervention program for children with autism in the Central West Region of the province. From 2009 until the present, I have been directly supervising ABA-based programs for children with autism. Both my former and present jobs have provided me with the opportunity to observe many excellent, and some not-so-excellent, ABA service providers in action.

I would like to acknowledge the inspiration that I have received from Vince Carbone (charismatic proponent of what has come to be known as the Verbal Behaviour approach to ABA), Marcie Norton (who first showed me that ABA could be both intense and fun), Diane Sardi and Jennifer Harper (my guides to good, standard ABA practices), Robert Schramm (who has written what I consider to be the best available book on the Verbal Behaviour approach to ABA), Sandy Palombo (for thinking outside the traditional ABA box), John DeMarco (who is certified in both ABA and RDI), and 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.

I would strongly urge parents of children with autism to learn the teaching strategies discussed in the following pages and apply them in all their interactions with their child, for a number of reasons: First, experience has shown that a child’s progress in ABA is directly related to the extent to which his or her parents are involved in his or her teaching/training. If the parents happen to be fortunate enough to be able to hire an experienced BCBA – someone with Behavior Analyst Certification Board credentials – to supervise their child’s program, they should insist that they be taught to use the same effective teaching procedures that are used by ABA Instructor Therapists, and that they be as involved in their child’s ABA program as they are able to be. Sources of training, in addition to those provided directly by the Service Provider / Clinical Supervisor and the Senior Therapist, include:

• The Verbal Behavior Approach by Mary Lynch Barbera (2007)

• Motivation and Reinforcement by Robert Schramm (2011)

• Training Videos and CDs (such as Vince Carbone’s seven-CD set of videos, The Verbal Behavior Approach to Teaching Children with Autism) and the ABA Course, Volumes 1–8, from Maximum Potential Kids

• The Training Manual (and Program Manager’s Guide) from Kathy Lear’s Help Us Learn books

• Christina Burk’s website (www.ChristinaBurkABA.com), particularly for the section on Effective Teaching Procedures

• The Certified Behavior Analyst Learning Module series (from Behavior Development Solutions)

• www.verbalbehaviornetwork.com

• Various university and community college ABA courses

• The material presented in many available workshops

Second, there are many opportunities for teaching/learning outside of any formal instruction program that may be set up for a child, and most of that teaching has to be done by the parents. Some years ago there was a book about psychotherapy called The Other Twenty-Three Hours. Its point was that what goes on during the rest of the day is just as important, and possibly even more important, as what goes on during the psychotherapy hour. The same principle applies to a child’s ABA program. Regardless of how intensive it may be, there is going to be a lot of dead time unless the parents can learn how to apply ABA principles throughout the child’s waking hours.

Third, because ABA for children with autism is most often provided within the context of early intensive behavioural intervention (EIBI), and because this is expensive and outside funding is usually limited, parents should learn how to provide the instruction that their child is likely to need on an ongoing basis for many years to come. One way to begin this learning process is for each of the parents to provide some of the formal instruction under the guidance of a Senior Therapist, being trained in ABA procedures just as if they were intending to be Instructor Therapists, and have their application of the procedures that they are learning generalized to the child’s natural environment under the supervision of the Senior Therapist and/or one of the more experienced Instructor Therapists.

Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders (from DSM-5)

With the most recent revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-5), the former diagnoses of Autism, Asperger’s Disorder, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) have been replaced by a single diagnostic category, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); and where the former separate diagnosis of Autism was based on three factors – Communication, Socialization, and Repetitive Behaviors – the new diagnostic category is based on only two: Social Communication and Repetitive Stereotyped Behavior. That is, a social communication criterion has been created to replace the separate communication and socialization criteria used in DSM-IV. In what follows, I have tended to use the term autism as shorthand for the longer Autism Spectrum Disorder.

According to DSM-5, for a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), all the following diagnostic criteria must be present:

A. Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across contexts, not accounted for by general developmental delays, and manifest by all three of the following:

1. Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity – ranging from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back-and-forth conversation through reduced sharing of interests, emotions, and affect to failure to initiate or respond to social interaction

2. Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction – ranging from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication, through abnormalities in eye contact and body language, or deficits in understanding and use of nonverbal communication, to total lack of facial expression or gestures

3. Deficits in developing and maintaining relationships appropriate to developmental level (beyond those with caregivers) – ranging from difficulties adjusting behavior to suit different social contexts, through difficulties in sharing imaginative play and in making friends, to an apparent absence of interest in people

B. Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities as manifested by at least two of the following:

1. Stereotyped or repetitive speech, motor movements, or use of objects (such as simple motor stereotypies, echolalia, repetitive use of objects, or idiosyncratic phrases)

2. Excessive adherence to routines, ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior, or excessive resistance to change (such as motoric rituals, insistence on same route or food, repetitive questioning, or extreme distress at small changes)

3. Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (such as strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interests)

4. Hyper or

Reviews for Teaching Children with Autism

[Cassia Campos · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

EU AMO TRABALHAR COM CRIANÇAS AUTISTAS, E VÊ-LAS DESENVOLVER HABILIDADES COMPORTAMENTAIS E GOGNITIVAS.