Applied Behavior Therapy
Occupational therapy is the use of purposeful activity to maximize the independence of a child who is limited by a physical injury or illness, neurological or cognitive impairment, a developmental or learning disability, or sensory integration dysfunction. For a child, purposeful activities swinging, climbing, jumping, buttoning, drawing, and writing are considered their “occupation.” Occupational Therapist use their unique expertise to help children prepare for and perform important learning and developmental activities by facilitating social skills development, motor development, emergent literacy, and the development of adaptive and self care skills.
Who Needs Applied Behavior Therapy (ABA) ?
Although ABA is best known for the treatment of symptoms of autism it has much broader applications. Applied behavior analysis is used in animal training, general and special education, healthcare/clinical settings and in business operations. ABA treatment is applied to numerous disorders in both children and adults including
· Autism
· Depression
· ADD/ADHD
· Phobias
· Anxiety
· Obsessive-compulsive disorder
· Traumatic Brain Injury
Examples of areas of specialization:
Activities of daily living
Speech/language and communication skills
Core knowledge/academics
Play/recreational and leisure skills
Social skills
Pre-vocational/vocational skills
Behavior reduction
ABA and Evaluation
ABA uses evaluations that carefully prioritize the skills that are deficit. These evaluations lead to goals and objectives that are critical for the individual to learn. A sequential, data driven and systematic approach to increase these skills is applied using positive reinforcement and errorless teaching. The use of such direct intervention allows for high frequency and deliberate positive reinforcement, repetition, and practice of these critical skills. When behavior is interfering with the learning process or is undesirable (such as aggression or self-injury) a functional behavior assessment is conducted to understand the relationship between the behavior and motivation. Behavior intervention plans are carefully designed and developed based on data from the analysis