About ABA PDF Print E-mail
For a more extensive description of behavior analysis please visit www.behavior.org

Parents seek effective teaching for their children. In order to access effective teaching they must have access to accurate information about ABA and other methodologies they are considering. ABA is widely misrepresented to consumers. This is illustrated by the following questions, which we receive frequently from parents interested in our program:

"What type of ABA do you do?"
"Do you do the Verbal Behavior method?"
"Do you do hte Carbone method?"
"Do you do DTT?"
"Do you do Lovaas?"
"Do you use 'no no' prompting?"
"Do you do CABAS?"
"How many hours of ABA do students receive each day?"

Summary of our position:

I suppose there are persuasive aspects to both sides, but I have always come down on the side of people. People, not procedures, can be held accountable. People, not procedures can testify under oath. People, not procedures by themselves, are the fundamental vehicles for delivering ABA services. So, while practitioners should be held accountable for using procedures that have a sound basis, it is the people who must apply the procedures to any given situation. It is also the people involved who select among approaches and who can be asked about alternatives available, the relative effects of alternatives, and the expected results of recommendations.

I sincerely believe that programs are telling the consumer something very important when they characterize themselves as a "Lovaas or 'Carbone' or a CABAS or a what-have-you approach, but I suspect it is really not much more than that the person telling you either works for a certain agency or really doesn't know why they are doing beyond the fact that someone, sometime told them that it was the right thing to do. In contrast, behavior analysis is the method whereby the behavior of the child informs the teacher what should be done next to achieve a particular learning objective, consistent with the scientific principles of learning."

This quote is from Professor James A. Mulick of the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Psychology, The Ohio State University. It is a response to a Q & A between a parent and a "consulting behavior analyst". Professor Mulick makes the point that people, not procedures, should be certified. In fact, this is precisely what is happening. The Behavior Analyst Certification Board certifies professionals as Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBA). If you are a parent looking for an effect school, home program, or behavioral consultant, we recommend looking for this credential. For a list of Board Certified Behavior Analysts in your state, visit the BACB web site: www.bacb.com

Cooper, Heron, and Heward (1987) define ABA as follows:

"Applied behavior analysis is the science in which procedures derived from the principles of behavior are systematically applied to improve socially significant behavior to a meaningful degree and to demonstrate experimentally that the procedures employed were responsible for the improvement in behavior." (p. 14)

The Cooper, Heron, and Heward textbook from which this quote is taken (Applied Behavior Analysis) provides an excellent introduction to the field, and is standard reading in graduate and undergraduate programs in behavior analysis.

We recommend that anyone interested in learning more about ABA read this book. The first chapter, "Definition and Characteristics of Applied Behavior Analysis" (pp. 2-15), is essential reading for parents and consumers of ABA services. In addition, the article, "Current dimensions of applied behavior analysis", by Baer, Wolf, and Risley (1968) is a seminal piece in the development of applied behavior analysis. Please don't be put off by the date: the article is old but not outdated.

Baer, Wolf, and Risley described six dimensions of ABA in their article and (based on a reading of that article) Cooper, Heron, and Heward added a seventh:
  1. Applied- the behavior targeted for change is socially significant. In behavioral application, the behavior, stimuli, and/or organism under study are chosen because of their importance to society, rather than their importance to theory. The non-applied researcher may study eating behavior, for example, because it relates directly to metabolism, and there are hypotheses about the interaction between behavior and metabolism. The non-applied researcher also may study bar-pressing because it is a convenient response for study, easy for the subject, and simple to record and integrate with theoretically significant environmental events. By contrast, the applied researcher is likely to study eating because there are children who eat too little and adults who eat too much, and he will study eating in exactly those individuals rather than in more convenient ones.
  2. Behavioral- unlike most models of psychology and education, which rely on statistical artifacts and other indirect representations of behavior (such as verbal reports), ABA is concerned with and directly measures actual behavior of social importance: "Applied research is eminently pragmatic; it asks how it is possible to get an individual to do something effectively. Thus it usually studies what subjects can be brought to do rather than what they can be brought to say; unless, of course, a verbal response is the behavior of interest."
  3. Analytic- in order for results to be credible, the experimenter must demonstrate control of the behavior of interest. Cooper, Heron, and Heward put it succinctly when they say, "the experimenter must be able to control the occurrence and nonoccurrence of the behavior (functional analysis), to the greatest extent possible given the setting." (p.5)
  4. Technological- procedural description, and study techniques must be thoroughly identified and well described.
  5. Conceptually Systematic- it is important to relate the results of successful analyses back to basic principles of behavior. This is how a system of well-related concepts is built and refined. Without such a conceptual system, ABA would be, as Cooper, Heron, and Heward put it, "a collection of tricks": "Conceptual systems are needed if a technology is to become an integrated discipline instead of a collection of tricks. A collection of tricks do not lend themselves to systematic expansion and they are difficult to learn and to teach in great number."(p.6)
  6. Effective- the change in behavior attributed to ABA must be perceived as significant by the stakeholders: the student, family, teachers, etc. In addition to these 6 components, Cooper, Heron, and Heward have drawn a seventh component of ABA from the Baer, Wolf, and Risley article."
  7. Generality- a behavior is said to have generalized when the behavior change is long lasting, when the behavior appears in new settings and in new ways either without teaching or with very little teaching, or when the behavior change is associated with the subsequent acquisition of other related and unrelated behaviors.