ABA on Tap

Send us Fan Mail Private equity has entered the ABA services game with great fervor, making a tremendous impact on the field as a whole. In this episode, Mike and Dan take a close look at some 'crisis' elements created by the infusion of private equity and an aim to generate revenue, at times at the expense of the quality of services and client outcomes. At the same time, it can be disce...

Send us Fan Mail From vertically-oriented wall schedules to PECS to token and choice boards--ABA practitioners love their so-called 'visuals'. In this brewing session, Mike and Dan dissect the idea of these strange technologies to understand what is meant by 'visual,' especially if all parties involved are 'sighted' individuals. Taking the ideas of joint attention and...

Send us Fan Mail In observation of Autism Acceptance and Awareness Month, Mike and Dan examine a very poignant and sharp criticism of ABA intervention strategies (link is below). Reviewed exactly as published on the website ' autisticscienceperson.com ,' the current brew integrates several points of disapproval, as written by an author that identifies as autistic. While ABA on Tap welcom...

Send us Fan Mail Beginning with one of the most foundational ingredients available for this brew, Mike and Dan lean on hearty handfuls of Diana Baumrind's nominal research on parenting styles from back in the 1960s. Fresh off a healthy pour on 'Parent Education,' it makes perfect sense for the behavioral brew to examine styles of parenting. Many new flavors and 'hints' of...

Send us Fan Mail ABA on Tap is proud to introduce Jennifer Stephens, a BCBA and clinical counselor, in this latest installment of our behavioral brew. Jennifer is owner/operator of the Stephens Consulting Group in Kentucky and also a long time listener of ABA on Tap. She took inspiration from our inaugural episode 'Why 40-hours?' and has graciously agreed to join as a guest and continue...

Send us Fan Mail In considering traditional approaches to ABA intervention and the importance of imitation as a key building block in learning, you have probably heard the directive (discriminative stimulus) 'Do This' as an essential part of so-called non-verbal imitation programs. In this episode, Mike and Dan take some time to examine the premise of non-verbal imitation, its role in mo...

Send us Fan Mail For this brew, Dan and Mike take time to incorporate some recent events with policing and the challenges faced by said institutions in providing training and support. Given current discussions and criticism of ABA methods and treatment, your hosts draw comparisons and parallels between the ideas of ABA intervention and policing as it relates to behavior management to  preserve an...

Send us Fan Mail Parents are an integral part of any successful ABA-based intervention protocol. The simple fact is, given a least restrictive level of services, parents should be enjoying a much greater amount of time with their children than the ABA provider is spending. Historically, this has seen a very necessary and natural evolution, moving from the idea of parent 'training' in ABA...

Send us Fan Mail ABA has essentially become synonymous with treatment of ASD, and medically speaking, nothing else despite a wide-array of possibilities. Insurance mandates have now existed in many states across the United States for 10 or more years, but are specific to ABA as a recommended treatment for ASD. In this episode, Mike and Dan guide us through the idea of 're-specialization'...

Send us Fan Mail What goes up must come down--after a two-part series on the idea of an 'escalation cycle,,' Dan and Mike could only follow up with a discussion on de-escalation. In this follow-up episode, Dan and Mike continue to utilize the notion of 'crisis' or 'assaultive' behavior and its management as a means to better understand and elucidate strategies for add...

Send us Fan Mail As promised, a continuation of the discussion on the escalation cycle as filtered through the idea of crisis and so-called 'assaultive' behavior, and further how this model can be aptly utilized in considering challenging behaviors from day to day. While we often consider the child or person emitting the undesired behavior, Dan and Mike take time to include the responder...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Dan and Mike tackle a very important and dense topic--the idea of a cycle of escalation as it pertains to behavior management. Starting from the perspective of crisis management, the premise is to consider not just the outward behavior itself, but perhaps more importantly, the internal antecedents and correlates from a brain and behavior perspective. In this first...

Send us Fan Mail As ABA professionals, we are often called upon to reduce the occurrence of so-called 'maladaptive' behaviors. Terms like protest, tantrum, elopement or escape are all too common though they don't provide clean description of the behavior or its function. Often times, what we mean is that a child or client spent a certain amount of time crying, for example, and sudde...

Send us Fan Mail Following the two part series on Joint Attention, Dan and Mike extend the discussion to include verbal behavior. Dan takes a lead to expand and make an important distinction between verbal and vocal behavior. Herein comes a strong connection with joint attention given that eye gaze and pointing for example, are both fundamentally sound verbal behaviors. While at times we focus on...

Send us Fan Mail The brew continues in Joint Attention Part II. Mike and Dan review research on the correlation between joint attention, imitation, language development (verbal/vocal behavior) and play. From this, they focus on a specific research-based method designed to promote joint attention--namely following a point (both proximal and distal) as well as gaze shift, then leading others with po...

Send us Fan Mail Better late than never,  Mike and Dan kick off the 3rd season of ABA on Tap. Thank you all out there for your continued support and listenership. In an effort to advance the 'lab to living room' approach, Mike and Dan give a historical account of their current practices in early intervention. Given that these particular programs take a 'preventative' edge in th...

Send us Fan Mail Mike and Dan discussed collaboration with SLP and OT. Now they explore current and prospective efforts with psychiatric care, use of medication from said psychiatric care, as well as future efforts in primary medical care, an 'off-label' use of ABA, per the current treatment model. ABA provision and related data could easily provide a wealth of information to treatment w...

Send us Fan Mail Behavior encompasses a wide range of activity from talking, to moving around to just about anything that makes us animate as human animals. Yet ABA is often quickly boiled down to the 'bad behavior' science, addressing the tantrums, excessive crying, dropping to the ground, self-injurious behavior, etc. This general overview can be so pervasive that we can easily forget...

Send us Fan Mail "Let's make some visuals" or "that child would benefit from sensory" are two commonly heard phrases in ABA intervention yet they sound strange and overall lack meaning. In this episode, Mike and Dan take time to explore technologies like 'sensory,' 'visuals', social stories, tangible/edible reinforcement and more. These technologies wer...

Send us Fan Mail Ready to learn more and engage in philosophic doubt, Mike and Dan take on a recent opinion published by the well-known education writer, Alfie Kohn. Kohn lends an eloquent criticism of ABA, pointing to recent meta-analyses that aim to question, if not eliminate, any socially significant effects and benefits of ABA-based interventions, as used with individuals with Autism Spectrum...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Season 2 of ABA on Tap--Happy New Year! Mike and Dan jump right back in where they left off. Following the natural progression and discussion thus far, they happen upon differential reinforcement in order to promote a more multivariate application of ABA than seems the norm. Given the perpetuation of 3-part contingencies, the so-called ABCs of behavior, ABA in practice...

Send us Fan Mail The brew continues to mature as Mike and Dan evolve the discussion naturally into the next flavor, antecedent based strategies. Given ABA has been driven largely by a consequence base, the discussion leads into how to prepare for certain behaviors ahead of time, knowing they are actively being emitted. The idea becomes not to preempt or avoid the behavior, but to prepare for it in...

Send us Fan Mail After entertaining Chloe's criticisms and doing so seriously, Dan and Mike take a chance to explore ABA clichés--all those little overused misconceptions and stereotypes we hear out in our daily work about why ABA doesn't work. All the while, ABA touts empirical validation. How do we reconcile  between what is proven and the possibility of user-error--how does ABA work f...

Send us Fan Mail Dan and Mike take time to reflect further on criticisms of ABA as lent by Chloe Everett in her TedTalk, The Problem with Applied Behavior Analysis (https://youtu.be/pCqEb0aG7tg). More importantly, in part II of this episode, they respond on said criticisms. Lastly, future directions and changes to ABA practice are discussed, from the lab to the living room. Sit back, relax, enjoy...

Send us Fan Mail While ABA rightfully touts empirical validation, social validity may not always reflect as strongly. One need not go further than Google to find a plethora of harsh criticism against ABA. Such a vocal critic is found in Chloe Everett and her TEDTalk entitled "The Problem with Applied Behavior Analysis" (https://youtu.be/pCqEb0aG7tg). Chloe is a well-spoken young woman wh...