Hello, TDLC family! I know that many of you read and enjoyed our 4-part blog series on the basics of ABA, found here. Over the course of the next few blogs, we’re going to take those basic ideas and expand on them, giving you insight into some of the more difficult concepts in ABA! n order to do …
How Super Mario Brothers may actually help your child. When I was a kid, the coolest house on the block was the one that had a Nintendo system. When it was too cold to play outside, all the neighborhood kids would gather in someone’s living room and take turns trying to beat Super Mario Brothers. …
Family vacations when I was a child meant fitting two adults, three children, a 130 lb Rottweiler and a whole lot of camping gear into a Jeep. Once everyone was crammed in, there was the drive into the mountains or to the beach, which was inevitably punctuated by the dog getting carsick, copious bickering over …
First blog of the year, and I start with this? No it’s not a typo, and I haven’t fallen off my rocker just yet. We’ll get to the subject quickly, but here are some behaviors that little kids are able to perform: Why behavior may not be the worst thing. First blog of the year, …
When meeting with therapists or reading progress notes from sessions, you may see or hear something like “He needed prompting to match pictures” or “She initiated to a peer with only gestural prompts.” You may wonder what that means, and what are the different prompts that are used? Prompting is a way to show your …
As part of this 4-part blog series, we are going to explore the basic tenets of Behavior Analysis: Reinforcement (Positive and Negative) and Punishment (Positive and Negative). As behavior analysts, we want to understand why certain behaviors may occur, and what consequences either maintain them or prevent them from occurring again. Understanding these principles gives …
In our last blog installment, we explored positive reinforcement, which is when something is given or added as a consequence in order to increase a response. Today we’re going to take a look at negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement has the same effect that positive reinforcement does – it increases a certain behavior (reinforcement, whether positive or negative, …
How did your parents teach you to tie your shoes? Bunny rabbit? Loop, swoop and curl? There are songs, poems, and rhymes dedicated to teaching this task. They are cute, but they may not be helpful for a child with autism. While it may seem like a simple task, tying your shoes is made up …
In the last two parts of this blog series we looked at reinforcement, which increases a certain behavior. Today we are going to explore positive punishment, which has the effect of decreasing a behavior. As I mentioned in the first blog, we as behavior analysts want to understand why certain behaviors may occur, and what …
The time has come to wrap up our 4-part blog series! As I mentioned in our first blog, the goal of this series is to explain the basic tenets of Behavior Analysis: Reinforcement (Positive and Negative) and Punishment (Positive and Negative). In last week’s post, we looked at positive punishment, which is a means of …
ABA Basics, Part 4: Negative Punishment and Extinction Read More »