1 Quick Discussion on Maximizing your learning experience:

In my opinion, to learn ABA well enough to fluently apply it in the real world, it is not enough for a
student to simply watch and listen to others talk about ABA in videos or classrooms, etc.  At some
point the student must also talk about ABA themselves.  I’ll call this the “aba-talking” response (this
includes typing/writing!).   Being able to TALK about ABA goes beyond mere recognition on a
multiple-choice test. 

Question: Do you have a community or supervisor(s) that you can talk ABA with on a regular basis,
and can you trust this community to give you good differential feedback regarding your talk? If not,
then it would be to your immense benefit to find one as soon as you can.

Most of our students currently have students of their own.  They know that a child with autism cannot
progress very far if the child only watches and listens to the therapist model the correct response. 
And though it is good to ask a supervisor to model a correct response, a student should not stop
there, because that is merely a mand for the teacher to do the ABA-talking (for which most teachers
are happy to comply).  But at some point the student should also practice doing the talking.

 When shaping responses, often the therapist is initially not primarily concerned with the correctness
of their student’s responses; rather the primary concern is that the student first emits a response! 
Once a response is emitted, that gives the therapist (or teacher/supervisor) the chance to provide
prompts and differential reinforcement, and shape more and more correct responding. A student
should allow themselves to make as many errors/mistakes as they need to get the response right!

So, when students are confused about a particular concept, I would encourage students to not only
mand for their supervisor(s) to model correct aba-talking, but to also follow up with emitting their own
responses that allow the teacher/supervisor to shape those responses.  E.g., In your own words,
type out a definition of a concept you struggle with.  Attempt to analyze, in behavioral terms,
an example already given.  Best of all, try to create your own scenario and analyze it in
behavioral terms—break it down into A-B-C.  Note: if you can’t find the exact behavioral term
you’re looking for, then just use every day plain English to communicate your concept! You
can worry about putting it in behavioral terms later!  :)

Chad Kinney