Providing the foundations which enable the child to learn « naturally » is what ABA is all about…

Environmental contingencies

All behaviour has an impact on the environment in which it appears. These environmental events also influence the appearance of behaviour, either in an apparent, or in a more subtle, covert way. Thus, in ABA the environment is considered as highly important as the individual’s behaviour itself. Both the environment and the individual are key factors in analysing, explaining and changing behaviour. Intervening on the environment is implicit to changing the behaviours in which it appears, and it is in this way that a person is able to develop in the best possible conditions.

The relationship between environment and conduct, otherwise called ‘environmental contingencies of conduct’, can be observed in the slightest facets of life: This is the case with a child making his first steps under the encouragement and positive reactions of his environment (the family providing attention, applause, oral encouragements etc). Or of a person pressing on a keyboard, which leads to a symbol emerging on a screen.

Certain contingencies are less obvious than others but can nonetheless be observed. Amongst individuals who cannot communicate with words, the environmental contingencies of a tantrum, for example, may concern the presentation of a difficult task to be undertaken and the environmental consequence of escaping from this task.

Interventions in ABA focus on environmental antecedents and consequences that can be employed to modify behaviour. Although cognitive processes such as beliefs and perceptions may be quite important and often do serve as antecedents/consequences in contributing to human conduct, behavioural interventions usually concentrate on overt behaviour that can be observed and quantified in everyday settings – It concentrates on events before, after and during the behaviour that can be used to alter responses.

For children benefiting from ABA programs, interventions may consist in either exacerbating or fading the natural contingencies of behaviour. They can be rendered salient in order to promote, develop and maintain the specific behaviours targeted for learning. Natural environmental events contingent upon negative or disruptive behaviours can also be controlled and faded.

It is important to point out that programs do not just depend on the manipulation of consequences in order to modify behaviour: Both antecedents and consequences are examined in order to develop effective treatments and the inter-relation of environmental contingencies (or ABCs) are usually more complex that one antecedant, one behaviour and one consequence.

Fig 1. showing behavioural contingencies in action

Positive reinforcement

Even when the aim of an intervention is to decrease behaviours (such as tantrums or antisocial conduct), ABA focuses on developing other pro-social behaviours at the same time. When we aim at fading the environmental consequence(s) of a problematic conduct (so that the latter can diminish), we intend, at the same time to provide the conditions for positive learning and we usually teach an alternative to the negative behaviour. In the example of a disruptive child who usually screams to get attention, we would teach him to say/sign the word “look”, which would lead him to get attention in a socially acceptable way. Saying “look” serves the same function as the negative behaviour – getting attention – and this is the reason why it is said to be a positive alternative of the behaviour.

In order to increase the likelihood of a response, it is frequent to exacerbate the positive consequences of the environment which follow that response. The control that rewarding consequences can exert on behaviour is not a new insight identified by behaviour analysis. Research has extensively demonstrated that positive consequences that follow behaviour helps learning.1 This phenomenon is referred to as the “positive reinforcement of behaviour”.

Autistic children with deficits in language and behaviour are often unresponsive to events that are normally reinforcing for most children (a smile, for example.)2 Similarly, children with conduct problems are often unresponsive to praise 3. At first, it is often necessary to associate these natural stimuli with others that are more tangible and fit to each individual’s tastes (a miniature train, marbles, sweets, music, etc….that are associated to the smile). Natural events are therefore paired with positive, tangible consequences.

As the child develops competences, the natural stimuli which were once associated to artificial agents, become encouragement factors in themselves: It is no longer necessary to present artificial stimuli in order to provoke and change the behaviour’s frequency of appearance. For example, after several pairings of food with praise, the praise alone serves as a reinforcer and can be used to increase the frequency of other responses4.

At the beginning of new learning trials, the presentation of positive consequences after a behaviour may be systematic (its presentation rate being “artificial”). This sheds light on the behaviour we want the child to emit and promotes its occurrence (we also increase our requirements very gradually in order to render the child able to emit the target responses.) The aim here again is that behaviours are maintained naturally as the rate of stimuli presentation is progressively decreased.

Please note however that a misguided and somewhat superficial conception of ABA is that it focuses on consequences alone. Merely providing consequences for conduct in a causal way is generally not sufficient to properly modify behaviour and maintain the changes effectively. ABA also acts upon antecedent relations and contexts to modify behaviour.

Prompting & Shaping

In general, every time a new concept is taught two procedures are used to help the child learn: “Prompting” and ”Shaping”. They are always progressive and individually adapted to the child.

“Prompts” refer to specific antecedent events that help generate or initiate the response. They are designed to facilitate the performance of a targeted response, just as typical children are provided with instructions or a model to help them assimilate new information. Prompts can be visual (ie. certain words are underlined in colour), physical (ie. the tutor accompanies the child’s movements/gestures to help the latter accomplish a task), gestural (ie. the teacher points out to a certain element of reference), oral (ie. detailed instructions are provided), etc.

At first, the tutor might prompt the child many times, in a systematic manner. When a prompt results in the correct response, congratulations or reinforcing consequences are generally provided to increase the likelihood of repeating the response. As the child evolves, the frequency of the prompts, as well as their level of intrusiveness or intensity, are progressively faded.

In some instances, merely providing antecedents and consequences may not be sufficient to increase or extend the behaviour. This is the case for individuals for whom the desired behaviour is so complex that the elements making up the response are not in their repertoire. For them, learning can be achieved through “shaping”, a process that consists of reinforcing by small steps (or approximations) toward a final response.

When shaping is used, the requirements toward a target behaviour are progressively increased according to the child’s pace. If a child is going to be taught the word “mama” but can only emit the syllable “ma” 20% of the time, a first criterion for success will be placed on the emission of the syllable “ma”. Then, once success is observed and maintained for this step, the requirements are slowly increased (the child is congratulated when he says the whole word “ma-ma”.)

Although responses are at first generated and maintained through the extraneous presentation of antecedents and consequences, their rate or intensity is slowly diminished until it matches the natural contingencies of the environment. For example, a child who has learned to say “mama” during training is able to maintain this competence thanks to the function that this skill naturally serves. Generally, a child who emits the word ‘mama’ upon the vision of the mother (antecedent) will get attention or another type of positive consequence (natural reinforcer). 

Maintenance & generalisation

ABA aims at diminishing, step by step, the artificial contingencies of the environment, (guidance, motivating agents, other stimuli that precede or follow a behaviour…), so that the child maintains and develops his skills naturally. As competences multiply, higher becomes the child’s faculty of developing other skills by himself, and to maintain them on the long-term.

Finally, those competences learned during ‘structured’ sessions, at the desk, need to be repeated later in the natural frame of life: they must become ‘generalised’. Let’s recall that ABA is not restricted to exercises at the desk and that a behavioural intervention is global, taking place anywhere and at any time5.

Footnotes

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The INSERM’s (French National Institut of Health and Medical Research¹) collective experise on psychotherapies cites international studies on behavioural and intensive interventions.

Lovaas² lead a study amongst 59 children aged 2 to 4 years old, diagnosed with Autism. He split the children into two groups: one group benefited from a behavioural, 40 hours per week treatment, and the other « control group » took part into a non intensive behavioural treatment, completed with other various community treatments.

Three years after the beginning of the study, 47% of the children who received an intensive, behavioural intervention successfully completed their first year in public school and presented normal-range IQ scores. Concerning the control group, 2% of them showed normal-range intellectual performance and successfully integrated public school.

Since this study, a number of other researchers have provided at least partial replication of the Lovaas model (3 & 4).

Howard et al.(5) had the efficacy of intensive behavioural interventions compared to other broadly used methods, also applied in an intensive manner to Autistic children and adolescents.

The results obtained from the 61 Autistic children of the study revealed a statistically significant difference between the two groups: after only 14 months, the behavioural intervention group presented superior standard mean scores of their performance for all areas of development, excepted for motor competences, which did not reveal any particular difference.

Smith, Groen and Wynn (6) conducted a study to address the efficacy of ABA amongst a wide range of children with a variety of abilities, and when ABA is applied in a less intensive and restrictive manner. Descrete trial teaching using ABA with children with autism demonstrated a strong effect on IQ.

The results speak for themselves. As reports the Public Health Service of America (7):

  “Thirty years of research demonstrated the efficacy of applied behavioral methods in reducing inappropriate behavior and in increasing communication, learning, and appropriate social behavior.” 

Footnotes:
1. The INSERM produced a report on psychotherapies in 2004. The first study it cites dates from 1987 (UCLA, University of California).
2.  Lovaas, 1987
3.  Lovaas, 1987; McEachin, Smith & Lovaas, 1993
4.  Cf. Rogers, 1998
5.  Howard, Sparkman, Cohen, Green et Stanislaw, 2005
6. Smith, Groen & Wynn, 2000
7. Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (1999). Chapter 3 , section 6: http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/chapter3/sec6.html

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