Applied behaviour analysis

Applied Behaviour
Analysis
Shah Bakhsh
M.Phil Scholar
Roll No. M/Edu/2K16/42
Assigned By:
Professor Dr. Iftikhar Jaferi
Faculty of Education
University of Sindh
Applied Behaviour Analysis
Shah Bakhsh

Definition
Applied Behavior Analysis is the process of
systematically applying interventions based
upon the principles of learning theory to
improve socially significant behaviors to a
meaningful degree, and to demonstrate that
the interventions employed are responsible
for the improvement in behavior.
2Applied Behaviour AnalysisShah Bakhsh

History
 Beginning:
The beginnings of ABA can be traced to a group
of faculty and researcher of Washington and
University of Kansas at the University
including Donald Baer, Sidney W. Bijou, Bill
Hopkins, Jay Birnbrauer, Todd Risley, and
Montrose Wolf.

History Cont…
 Notable graduate students from the University of
Kansas include Ivar Lovass, who established the
UCLA Young Autism Project while teaching at
the University of California, Los Angeles and
devoted nearly half a century to groundbreaking
research and practice aimed at improving the
lives of children with autism and their families.
He even co-founded what is today the Autism
Society of America.

History Cont…
 In the 1960s, Baer, Hopkins, Risley, Birnbrauer,
and Wolf joined the Department of Human
Development and Family Life at the University of
Kansas, where they and their colleagues began
to apply the principles of behavior analysis to a
wide variety of human problems.
 In 1968, they founded the Journal of Applied
Behavior Analysis which publishes research in
behavior analysis to socially relevant behavior.

History Cont…
 In 1965, Lovaas published a series of articles that
outlined his system for coding observed behaviors,
described a pioneering investigation of the
antecedents and consequences that maintained a
problem behavior, and built upon these methods to
develop an effective way to teach nonverbal children
to speak. He also described how to use social
(secondary) reinforces, teach children to imitate, and
what interventions (including electric shocks) may
be used to reduce aggression and life-threatening
self-injury.

History Cont…
 In 1973, Lovaas published a long-term follow-up of
his interventions and was dismayed to find that
most of the subjects had reverted to their pre-
intervention behaviors. He and his colleagues
proposed several ways to improve outcomes, such
as starting intervention during the children's
preschool years instead of during late childhood or
adolescence, involving parents in the intervention,
and implementing the intervention in the family's
home rather than an institutional setting.

Main Concepts in ABA
 Positive Reinforcement
 Positive reinforcement is when a stimulus
immediately follows a person’s behavior and then
increases the occurrence of that behavior in the
future. The behavior happens more often when
positive reinforcement is at play.
 For example: Child whines for a cookie. Mom
gives in and gives a cookie. If whining for cookies
(or other desired items) happens more often in the
future (which it likely will), then positive
reinforcement has occurred.

Main Concepts in ABA Cont..
 When a stimulus is removed immediately
following a person’s behavior and that
behavior increases in the future.
 For example: In the previous example,
negative reinforcement occurs for Mom if she
gives in and gives the cookie to her child more
often in the future as a result of having the
whining “removed” when doing so. In other
words, the child is no longer bothering her
after she provides the cookie.

 DRA (Differential Reinforcement of
Alternative Behaviors)
 DRA is providing positive reinforcement to
behaviors that you would like to see in the
child/other person while also withholding the
reinforcement that was maintaining the
behavior that you no longer want to see.

DRA (Differential Reinforcement of
Alternative Behaviors)
 For example: In the cookie example, Mom could use DRA to
reduce or eliminate her child’s whining by no longer providing
a cookie in response to his whining (meaning to no longer
give in to his whining for a cookie). Additionally, she should
provide positive reinforcement for behaviors she would like to
see (alternative behaviors). She could provide a cookie to the
child if he uses his manners and talks with an appropriate
voice and says “May I please have a cookie?”. If she would
like her child to stop asking for a treat before dinner, she
could provide some other type of reinforce (such as tokens
that could earn him prizes or playing a game with him) if he
goes a certain amount of time playing with his toys while only
vocalizing about topics that do not include requests for food.

 Extinction
 Extinction is no longer providing the reinforcement
that was being provided to a particular behavior.
When using extinction, it is helpful to provide
reinforcement for a behavior you would rather see
instead. If needed, teach or shape the alternative
behavior if the child (or person) does not currently
perform that behavior.
 For example: Extinction is part of DRA, so in the
above example, Mom could put her child’s whining on
extinction by no longer giving the child what he wants
when he whines.

 Extinction Burst
 When using extinction, be prepared for the behavior you are
targeting to temporarily increase. When reinforcement is no
longer provided for a behavior that has previously resulted in
something that a person has learned to expect, they are
likely to perform that behavior even more when the
reinforcement stops. It’s like they are trying that behavior
more and more, because they are sure it should result in
what they have received in the past.
 For example: When Mom puts her child’s whining on
extinction, he will most likely whine even more for awhile to
see if she will give in. Mom should continue ignoring the
whining and the whining will decrease.

 Chaining
Chaining is breaking a task into very small steps. Using chaining
can help a child/person learn a more complex skill.
 For example: Teaching a child to brush his teeth can be broken
down into many, many steps from walking into the bathroom to
picking up the toothbrush to brushing the front bottom teeth to
spitting toothpaste out of the mouth to leaving the bathroom and
everything in between.
 Shaping
Shaping is reinforcing closer and closer approximations of the end
target behavior goal.
 For example: When a parent teaches a child to brush his teeth,
shaping can be used to teach the child to scrub his teeth more
thoroughly as he gets better at the skill.

 Function of Behavior
 It is very important to understand the function of a
person’s behavior. If this is not understood, the
intervention put in place could be ineffective or could
even increase the behavior.
 Four functions of behavior:
 Escape/Avoidance: a person’s behavior results in
getting out of a situation they do not want to
experience either by stopping it as it is happening
(escaping) or making it so that it will not happen in the
future (avoiding)

 Function of Behavior Cont…
 Attention: a person’s behavior results in receiving
attention from others.
 Access: a person’s behavior results in being able to
utilize a tangible item or participate in some activity
(such as getting a cookie or using electronics).
 Automatic Reinforcement: a person’s behavior is
not maintained by anything involving another person
or other items but is instead reinforcing to the
individual regardless of the actions of others.

Antecedents, Behavior, and
Consequences Data (ABC date)
 ABC data
 ABC data refers to Antecedents, Behavior,
and Consequences. Antecedents are the
things that happen before the behavior occurs
that also influence the behavior. Behavior is
anything that a person does. Consequences
are anything that occurs immediately following
the behavior. Both antecedents and
consequences are important in changing
behavior.

Thank You

Applied behaviour analysis

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