If your child has autism or developmental disabilities, you will do everything to help them reach their full potential. Applied behavioral analysis, abbreviated as aba, is one of the early intervention therapies for autism. Luckily, it is constantly evolving to accommodate new effective strategies to help kids with autism thrive in every environment. Let’s look at some effective aba strategies.
Behavior chain
One of the challenges kids with autism face every day is learning a new behavior or skill. Thankfully the behavior chain approach in autism therapy makes everything effortless by breaking down the tasks into smaller steps. That way, the child repeats the steps until the skill. The therapist uses prompts to make the task easier for the child, and they are free to start with the first step or the last one depending on what is easier for them.
Positive and negative reinforcement
Another approach used in aba is positive and negative reinforcement. Many parents are aware that rewarding kids for positive behavior and punishing them for negative behavior works well in ensuring their behavior is appropriate. Aba therapists also apply the approach, but they do it consistently so that the child adopts positive action.
That means the child always gets a reward whenever they display positive behavior or accomplish a task, and the consequences should also be consistent if they display negative behavior. This is because you don’t want to confuse the child about whether they can repeat the behavior in some situations or not. Positive reinforcements can be rewards like extra screen time or stickers, and negative reinforcement can be taking away a toy or verbal warning.
Video modeling
Since kids learn through observation and imitating, video modeling involves showing kids some skills like interacting with peers or expressing themselves when they feel sad or angry. The kid learns how they are supposed to behave by watching the video and mimicking what they have seen when they are in a similar situation.
Natural environment teaching
This approach encourages the kids to learn from real-life situations. For instance, instead of teaching a child how to behave around their peers, you take them to an environment with other children and teach them from there. Natural environment teaching can be challenging, but it is effective when done by an aba professional.
Prompting
Prompting uses physical or verbal cues to teach a child a new skill or how to complete a specific task. Physical prompts include using a hand gesture to show a child how to do the task or guiding their hands as they complete the task. Verbal cues are words that encourage a child to do a certain task—for instance, reminding them to say hi when they meet a new peer. Fading the prompts is also necessary, which involves providing less obvious prompts to allow the child to remind themselves of a particular skill.
Generalization
This involves teaching the child a particular skill and how to apply it in various situations. For instance, if they are thirsty at home and learn to ask for a cup of water, they can do the same when they are thirsty at school or in a different environment.
