What is ABA?

Applied Behavior Analysis helps teach autistic children what normal children automatically learn from their environment. Typically developing children learn without intervention--the world around them provides the right conditions to learn language, play, and social skills. Children with autism learn much, much less easily from the environment. They have the potential to learn, but it takes a very structured environment, one where conditions are optimized for acquiring the same skills that typical children learn "naturally." ABA is all about how to set up the environment to enable our son to learn.

Any new behavior that a person may try, but is never rewarded, is likely to die out after a while (how often will you dial that busy number?). And, as common sense would have it, a behavior that results in something unpleasant (an aversive) is even less likely to be repeated. These are the basics of behavioral learning theory. ABA uses these principles to set up an environment in which our son will learn as much as he can as quickly as possible, with a constant emphasis on the use of positive rewards. It is a science, not a 'philosophy.' Even the "as quickly as possible" part is based on science, since there is some--not conclusive--evidence that the developmentally disordered brain "learns how to learn" best if the basic skills are taught in early childhood.

Behavioral learning is not the only type of learning. Most learning in schools is from an explanation or from a model, what people call natural learning. Typically developing children learn from their environment (other people) at an astounding rate, usually completely unassisted. The whole point of ABA is to teach the prerequisites to make it possible for a child to learn naturally.