Boxing with Shadows: ABA

The treatment that has been shown to be most effective for children with Autism is Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). You can get more information about the therapy here: What is ABA? The short explanation of this therapy is that it consists of a series of discreet trials which use rewards as an impetus to encourage children to speak or perform other desired behaviors. The trials, or prompts, are structured in such a way as to make it nearly impossible for the child to fail. When they succeed at the desired behavior, they are rewarded. If you are still not getting the picture, let me illustrate with a story.

One of Stovie’s favorite activities was to be pulled around the back yard on a boogie board. To indicate his desire to be pulled, he would go find the boogie board and sit on it. If I did not respond in a timely manner by pulling him, he would begin to wail until I walked over and pulled him around. Then he would laugh until I stopped. Once I stopped, the crying would begin again. What was going on was a sort of “conversation” between us. Only instead of consisting of verbal prompts, it consisted of actions and noises.

One day when this familiar ritual began, I thought to myself, “That’s it. You are GOING to talk. I am not responding to your whines anymore.” When Stovie began to cry, I walked over to the boogie board and said, “Go.” Immediately, I took off running around the yard. When we stopped, and before he could cry again, I said “Go.” This time I added the sign language sign for “go” along with my speech. I took off again around the yard with Stovie laughing behind me on the boogie board.

The third time I stopped, before he could cry (undesirable behavior), I took his hands in mine and manually made him perform the “go” sign, while saying “go” myself verbally. Immediately I took off around the yard again. We did this over and over until, within a few trials, Stovie began to sign on his own. Each time, I rewarded him with a trip around the yard. Within a few more trials, he had paired the verbal expression with the word. A few more trials, and he had dropped the sign altogether and was just using the word! He was talking! Not just sounds or random phrases, but communicating with me! We had experienced our first ever conversation.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was using the principles of ABA. The prompt (boogie board) was used as an impetus to encourage the desired behavior (speech), which was rewarded upon completion (the pull around the yard). It was a “discreet trial” in that it isolated one skill: saying “go.” I didn’t allow Stovie to fail by not allowing him time to cry between pulls. If I had allowed him to cry, there is a chance that he could have perceived the pull as a reward for the crying. (Actually, that is what I was doing before, each time I pulled him around the yard after he cried.) I paired the “go” sign with the speech because, while I could not force Stovie to verbalize, I could manually move his hands in the “go” sign, thus, making him “say” the word and setting him up to be rewarded. Once he associated the sign with the word, he naturally paired the two and dropped the sign – an ideal response.

This, in a nutshell, is what ABA is. The procedure can be used to teach children a wide range of desired behaviors. Stovie learned all of his speech through this method from years two to four. He differed substantially from the typical Autistic child in that he was quite emotionally empathetic, and had a desire to communicate. That served as a sort of internal motivation for response. Many professionals would say that this alone disproves that he was autistic. Regardless, he did respond quite well to this therapy, and we had him in ABA for ten hours a week for three years.