Running an Intensive ABA Program
ABA intervention is a complex and multi-faceted endeavor. A good ABA program is intensive, individualized, and comprehensive. Intensive A good ABA program provides intensive teaching. Intensity usually means a low teacher to student ratio (one teacher for one or two students), a large number of instructional hours, and many learning opportunities. People often ask, “How many hours?” Most experts recommend 30 to 40 hours. (Recall that naturalistic teaching done throughout activities can be counted as hours if there is a systematic focus on the development of skills at these times.) Individualized A good ABA program will be highly individualized. It will not be a cookbook or one-size-fits-all approach. The
foundation of individualization is the assessment process. Initially, a thorough and comprehensive assessment is done to help understand the learner’s areas of strengths and deficits. The assessment itself will be individualized in terms of the types of instruments used and tested skills. A good assessment offers critical information to answer the question: Where should we start teaching? During the course of an intervention, a learner’s progress is analyzed in order to support him/her in the most positive and effective ways possible. Children with autism are quite different from one another; their programs should reflect this diversity. Comprehensive A good ABA program will incorporate several of the instructional methods that comprise ABA. For example, a program that only utilizes DTI will not allow enough
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