Table Of Content
Inpatient settings were excluded because the focus of the current scoping review was on community offerings, not hospital services. A small number of studies were excluded when the methods did not align with typical ABA outcome measures, such as those training response hierarchies or attempting to condition new reinforcers. A library search was conducted for studies that could not be accessed in full online, and any that could not be found were subsequently excluded. The current scoping review was conducted to gather an understanding of the scope of available research regarding the use of ABA as an intervention for children and youth living with NDD/D, and in particular ASD. For the purposes of the current review, ABA will be defined as an intervention informed and developed from behavioral analytic approaches for the treatment of children and youth with ASD.
Where do I find ABA services?
Fig.1,1, the record selection process differed slightly between the two searches spanning 1997–2017 and 2018–2020. This is because the diagnostic criteria for the current manuscript were updated to exclude populations that only contained non-ASD diagnoses, and the removal of records satisfying the new criteria took place at different points for each search. Further details on general data coding, as well as outcome coding for ABA Impact, Comparisons of ABA Techniques, and Between-Groups Comparisons can be found in Appendix 2. Extractions for all three sections can be found in Tables S1, S2, and S3, respectively, in Appendix 3. It is advisable to seek a therapist who has had not just extensive training but experience using ABA to treat patients presenting with concerns such as your child’s.
Screen Process and Study Selection
The present scoping review likewise found no occurrences of subject QoL measures in the sample analyzed. Overall changes in QoL for children living with ASD is of the utmost importance, as QoL is “individuals’ perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns” (WHO, 1997, p. 1). The continued lack of research into long-term effectiveness of ABA treatments is an ongoing concern and should be a focus of future research to help measure QoL (Whitehouse et al., 2020) and also to investigate any possible adverse effects (Rodgers et al., 2020).
How does ABA therapy work?
[DIR/Floortime) is a framework that helps clinicians, parents and educators conduct a comprehensive assessment and develop an intervention program tailored to the unique challenges and strengths of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and other developmental challenges. The objectives of the DIR®/Floortime™ Model are to build healthy foundations for social, emotional, and intellectual capacities (Greenspan, 2022). A systematic review of the published literature on DIR/Floortime has been published by Boshoff and colleagues in 2020.
Identified Studies
In addition, only 41% of the records conducted some form of investigation into follow-up or maintenance of the given outcome measure(s). This may not be reflective of the long-term effects of the overall positive outcomes. Likewise, generalization was only investigated in 31% of the study records, again prompting the question of whether or not these task- or behavior-specific improvements resulted in overall changes in the child’s skills, function, or behaviors.
ABA therapy programs can help:
Nursery, portage, and DIR showed little to no improvement over ABA treatment groups. The CCD studies examined in this review were somewhat homogenous in that the majority used individual contingencies with FR schedules of reinforcement to increase the frequency of a behavior. Future research might benefit from examining or comparing the efficacy of the CCD with other interventions (e.g., self-monitoring) as it is an intervention in itself rather than solely a research tool. Also, future analyses exploring relationships of design components and successful behavior change may be beneficial.
Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence
When no measurable benefit has been discerned through accepted and validated measurement tools, the use of ABT is not warranted. Many of the treatments utilized in ABT are conducted by behavior analysts and technicians who may not be licensed, depending upon the laws and regulatory requirements of the area in which they are practicing. Supervision of behavior analysts and technicians by a licensed or certified professional is a requirement in the 2014 BACB guidelines, which states 2 hours of supervision for every 10 hours of direct treatment is the general standard of care. The learner receives an abundance of positive reinforcement for demonstrating useful skills and socially appropriate behaviors. This scoping review would not be possible without the help of the people who took the time to move this project forward.
Parallel Treatments Design: A Nested Single Subject Design for Comparing Instructional Procedures.
The results of the current scoping review are consistent with previous review articles and meta-analyses into the overall trend of positive effects of ABA. For example, there were overwhelming positive improvements in the majority of study records with respect to cognition, language development, social skills and communication, and adaptive behavior, along with reductions in problem behavior (Dawson & Bernier, 2013). In the ABA Impact section of the current review, 63%–88% of study records reported improvement across these same outcome measures, in addition to improvements in emotional and autism symptoms outcome measures (Fig. (Fig.2).2). The results of the current analysis into the demographics of these studies are also consistent with the existing literature, as the majority of the participants were male (48%) or there was a mix of females and males (45%) within multiparticipant studies (Kim et al., 2011; Lai et al., 2014; Miller et al., 2016). Further, the sole diagnosis of ASD was more common than mixed diagnoses, as 76% of study records recorded ASD without other diagnoses or comorbidities, again consistent with previous research into ABA (Dawson & Bernier, 2013).
Tips for Choosing a Provider for Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)
Ideally, the therapy is attuned to each patient’s specific developmental needs, and a course of therapy typically spans two or more years. Applied behavior analysis stems from a school of psychology known as behaviorism that originated in the early 20th century. Although ABA can be used for multiple purposes—to train and change behavior in athletes and affect consumer shopping patterns, for instance—in the mid-1960s, researchers started using ABA to teach language and other skills to children with autism. At this time, however, ABA involved long, intense hours of children sitting through multiple, repetitive drills to learn skills—an exhausting regimen that challenged even the most dedicated kids and families. The increasing prevalence of ASD in children and youth across the world has placed evidence-based interventions that treat these disabilities and disorders in high demand. ABA has been at the forefront of these interventions for decades and is recommended by many governments, including in the United States and Canada, as a well-established, scientifically proven therapy (Government of Canada, 2018; U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 1999).
Due to these prominent endorsements, existing and emerging interventions should be held to the same standard as established ABA interventions. That said, to our knowledge, a scoping review into all of the pertinent scientific evidence surrounding ABA has not yet been undertaken. This may result in knowledge gaps regarding this long-standing and widely used intervention and was the reasoning behind the current scoping review. In addition to having larger sample sizes and more frequent use of validated measurement scales, records in the Between-Groups Comparisons section more often incorporated statistical analyses, approximately 85% of the time compared with approximately 15% of the entire cohort. Although statistical significance was not considered when initially coding the results in order to align with the rest of the sample, an informal review was conducted based on the reported statistical significance of the improvement of one condition over another. Overall, it was found that not all improvements were significant or assessed for statistical significance (Dawson et al., 2010; Dugan, 2006; Howard et al., 2014; Kovshoff et al., 2011).
The technique can be used with children who do not have speech skills as a way for them to communicate their needs. But it is also used to expand the communication skills of those who can speak and teach them how to express their wants and needs in socially adaptive ways as they progress through increasingly sophisticated vocabulary and sentence structure. Modeling is a technique in which the therapist presents an example of the desired behavior, either personally demonstrating it or providing a video or audio recording of the desired behavior.
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