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1) Teaching the Child to Answer Questions

Many children with Autism have difficulty answering questions. Parents often report that their child "knows the answers but doesn't understand the questions!" For example, the child may (more)

2) Building Emerging Social Skills

For many parents, it's very important that their children learn to play with and enjoy being with other children. Especially if parents are very social themselves, it may be very painful for them to (more)

3) Behavioral Classification of Language (Skinner)

Mand- requesting -Asking for something. A "pure mand" occurs purely as a result of the EO or desire to have the item rather than having to be asked, "What do you want?".
Ex: (more)

4) Building Sentences

When should we start working on sentences?
The answer to this depends on the individual child but in general, two word combinations should be targeted as soon as the child has at least 50 (more)

5) Correction Procedures and Prompting

Introducing new targets:
Whenever introducing a new target or if you think it is likely the child will miss a target, an instructor has a choice to either 1) transfer from a previously mastered (more)

6) Choosing First Words and Response Forms

1. First words should be chosen based on the individual child's interests and motivation.
2. Select words the child will use frequently.
3. For children who are just beginning to speak, select (more)

7) "Do's" and "Don'ts" for Teaching Children with Autism

1. Don't try to teach before you have an EO (establishing operation). Do begin teaching when you have something (or are something!) the child wants. If you can't "capture" an EO, (more)

8) Evaluating the Child's Response to the Environment

Many children respond differently to a variety of sensory input (stimuli). Understanding the patterns of each child's response to the environment can assist parents and instructors in determining (more)

9) Dealing With Behaviors Before They Happen

When we talk about manipulating the conditions before a behavior occurs (antecedent) we're talking about ways to avoid negative behaviors from happening in the first place. This should not be (more)

10) Therapy/Therapist Pairing

Session
1. Follow the child around and join in his/her activities making them even more enjoyable. Give a lot of reinforcement. Have all his/her favorite things to give and give them for free. (more)

11) New Tutor Training

1. What is ABAVBA?
ABA is the science of Applied Behavior Analysis. It provides a structure for looking at human behaviors, what causes them and how to make them increase or decrease. It also (more)

12) Probe Data

1. Data is an important part of running a home program but should never interfere with teaching. The data taken must be correct and valuable or it will just be a waste of valuable teaching (more)

13) Rules of Reinforcement

1. Reinforcers should be reinforcing- What is reinforcing to one child may be aversive to another! Things that a child finds reinforcing at one time may not be later!
2. Reinforcement should be (more)

14) Teaching Reversals

Since the reversal targets require so much more discrimination on the part of the child, it is important to teach the responses slowly and make sure they are mastered to fluency. In addition, we (more)

15) Teaching Signing as a Request (Mand)

If it has been determined that sign language is the response form to be used with a specific child, it is helpful if all those working with the child follow the same procedures to teach the child to (more)

16) Teaching Social Skills to

Parents often wonder why it appears to be so effortless for typically developing children to learn to enjoy playing together and interacting while it appears so difficult for their child with Autism. (more)

17) Teaching the Child to Ask Questions

Pre-requisite Skills
The child should be requesting (manding) a large number of objects actions. Some people prefer to wait until the child is also able to label (tact) adjectives and (more)

18) Teaching the Child to Request (Mand)

Once you have established a variety of things the child is interested in (reinforcers) and have paired yourself with these reinforcers (become a conditioned reinforcer), teach him to ask for the item (more)

19) Teaching the Child to Understand and Use Abstract Language

Some children with Autism are able to learn to ask for (mand), identify (receptive) and label (tact) concrete objects and actions with relative ease but show a great deal more difficulty learning (more)

20) Teaching the Child To Use "Words" Instead of "Tantrums"

Many children with Autism use inappropriate behaviors in order to get their needs met. This can be very frustrating for parents and instructors to deal with because these behaviors can interfere (more)

21) Teaching the Vocal Child to Request (Mand)

Relevant Behavioral Terms
Reinforcement: Something that happens after a behavior occurs and increases the likelihood that the same behavior will occur in the future.
Positive Reinforcement: (more)

22) Terms and Definitions

**These definitions are intended to assist those without an extensive behavioral background to be able to acquire a functional use of the terms defined. As a result, they may not be (more)

23) Transfer Procedures

Our goal is to teach the child in a way that he will consistently be successful. One way to do this is to provide full prompts and gradually fade the prompts. Another way to do this is to use (more)

24) Verbal Modules

Verbal modules are a very important part of teaching. They allow one to assess and teach the child to discriminate between multiple verbal SDs about a single item. Many children on the Autism (more)

25) Teaching the Child to Play

When I tell parents that the first thing we want to do is teach their child to ask for things they want, I frequently hear, "But he doesn't want anything!". All children want something and (more)

26) Choosing Programs and Teaching Techniques

It's very difficult for any parent to hear that their child has a serious disability. Often parents go through specific stages of grief when coming to terms with this knowledge. On top to dealing (more)

27) Choosing Targets and Tracking Progress

Given the nature of a typical verbal behavior program, the choosing of targets goes hand in hand with the way you keep data. As one skill is mastered, it is often used to transfer to another verbal (more)

28) Teaching FFCs In the Natural Environment

FFCs refers to "features, functions, and classes". Once the child is able to mand a great many items as well as receptively identify them and label them, we can start FFC training. (more)

29) Increasing Vocal Productions- Teaching the Child to Talk

Note: The author chose not to use phonetic symbols to designate sounds because the intended audience consists primarily of parents and/or professionals from other fields. An attempt was made to (more)

30) Common Questions/Answers Regarding Verbal Behavior

1. Is Verbal Behavior ABA?

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a science based on the philosophy of behaviorism. Behaviorism focuses on the scientific examination of both observable behavior (more)

31) Teaching Object/Picture Exchange to Request (Mand)

If it has been determined that an exchange system is the best response form to use at this time, it must be determined whether to use objects or pictures (or both). Again this decision should be (more)

32) Favorite Toys

This list includes "first toys" that have been found to be favorites of the children in our clinic. Please note that each child is different so choose those that appear to be similar to other (more)

33) Teaching Social Skills to