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Appendix 4: Glossary

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ABA - Applied Behavioral Analysis - Applied behavioral analysis employs methods based on the scientific principles of learning theory to build socially useful skills and reduce behavioral excesses and deficiencies. Various treatment approaches under the ABA umbrella include, discrete trial teaching, pivotal response training, and incidental teaching. The term ABA does not automatically imply an intense program. ABA uses behavioral methods to teach targeted behaviors and records data regarding the effectiveness of those methods. ABA is not synonymous with Discrete Trial Teaching.

Direct instruction (DI) - The teacher does follow a "script" to guarantee that the teacher is communicating to the student clearly and without ambiguity (the reason for doing discrete trials). The script, however, is secondary to other teaching procedures such as explain, model, guide, practice that are used to ensure that each student responds according to a predetermined criteria. Throughout each of these procedures one can identify elements of a discrete trial. For example, cueing is used in Direct Instruction to ensure that all students in a group respond as one (this is referred to as choral responding). The teacher must establish this cue by explaining why it is needed, showing the students what the cue is, Showing the students what the cue isn't (that is, when not to "jump the gun"), modeling how they are to respond when they see the cue, and having them practice responding to the cue until all students respond as one. When properly used choral responding is a fantastic teaching tool that allows allstudents in a class to overtly practice a skill. Gym teachers, choir teachers, band instructors, etc., etc. are typically (but not always) masters at cueing choral responding. Direct instruction curriculum is also an important part of the system. These materials are always organized in a way to promote component/composite learning (just like the precision teaching materials and curriculum and like most intensive early intervention curriculums). They are also developed so as to maximize a child's ability to discriminate and differentiate what is and what is not an example of a teaching concept of topic (this idea was borrowed by and is known in the special ed field as "general case programming").

DTT - Discrete Trial Teaching - The UCLA or Lovaas approach incorporates DTT, especially in the beginning stages, as a primary technique within a hierarchical teaching program. The child is presented with tasks broken into very easy steps. For example, the instructor may say "Do this" and the child is to imitate a gross motor movement. If the child does it correctly, he is immediately rewarded. If he is not correct, he is prompted with the correct answer and then given an independent trial to determine if he has learned the task. Although the tasks increase in difficulty and complexity over the course of time, the program is designed to maintain a high success ratio and thus high rates of reward for the child. For most children to be successful in a DTT program it must be intense: a minimum of 30-40 hours a week of one-on-one instruction.

EI - Early Intervention - the public program that provides services from birth to 3 years.

EIBI - Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention. An ABA approach to teaching young children.

ECSE - Early Childhood Special Education - the public program that provides services to 3-5 year olds.

FAPE - Free and Appropriate Public Education - One of the rights your child is entitled to under the federal law, known as IDEA. Technically, the FAPE entitlement begins at age 3. However, due to the nature of autism, there have been some due process cases involving autism where the FAPE standard began immediately following diagnosis. (Mayerson)

IFSP - Individualized Family Service Plan - The federal government has mandated under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) that each state provide children with a free and appropriate public education (FAPE). For Oregon children from 0-5 years of age the family works with their local (EI/ECSE Program ) to develop an appropriate IFSP for their child. This is a legal document and will include an evaluation, annual goals and objectives for the child, as well as the services provided by the EI or ECSE program to help the child meet those goals and objectives. Social services such as family counseling may also be included in this document.

IEP - Individualized Education Plan - The federal government has mandated under IDEA that each state provide children with a free and appropriate public education. In Oregon, when children turn 5 they transition from services provided by the local EI/ECSE program to services provided by their school district. Sometimes this is the same agency but sometimes it is not. The IEP will be very similar to an IFSP except that it will not include a "family outcomes" page.

Occupational Therapy (OT) - therapist who specializes in improving the development of fine motor and adaptive skills.

PECS - Picture Exchange Communication System - A picture system sometimes used to help a child develop requesting behavior when a child is unable to speak.

PLOP - Present Level Of Performance - This is discussed at the beginning of an IFSP or IEP to aid in the development of educational goals. It is a list of the child's current skills including any evaluation information that is pertinent. The PLOP serves as a benchmark for the difference between what the child is doing and needs to learn to do.

PRT - Pivotal Response Training - This technique is under the ABA umbrella but it is significantly different from DTT. PRT is child directed and the motivation to give a response is "built-in" to the task. There is social praise for correct responses; however in pure PRT no external rewards are used. Thus, the technique is considered more "naturalistic" than DTT.

Precision Teaching - The goal of precision teaching is to establish responding that is fluent (i.e., performed without hesitation). Fluency is and of itself is not the goal but becomes the outcome of being able to perform skills fluently.

Sensory Integration - Sensory integration focuses primarily on three basic senses—tactile, vestibular, and proprioceptive. Their interconnections start forming before birth and continue to develop as the person matures and interacts with his/her environment. The inter-relationship among these three senses allow us to experience, interpret, and respond to different stimuli in our environment. Sensory integrative dysfunction is a disorder in which sensory input is not integrated or organized appropriately in the brain and may produce varying degrees of problems in development, information processing, and behavior.

SLP - Speech Language Pathologist - This person is trained to work with children with speech and language impairments. They may or may not have behavioral training.

UCLA PROGRAM (Lovaas) - This is a reference to a landmark study done in 1987 at UCLA by Dr. O. Ivar Lovaas. His 1987 study demonstrated that, provided with intensive, primarily discrete trial, one-on-one behavioral intervention, approx. 47% of the autistic children in his study group "recovered" from autism. The definition for "recovered" in this particular study included at least 3 criteria:

1. The children were mainstreamed into first grade without instructional aides.

2. The IQ's rose from the mentally retarded range to normal ranges.

3. On multiple tests measuring a variety of social skills, adaptive behaviors, and language skills, the children were indistinguishable from normal peers, as assessed by independent evaluators who had no knowledge of the study.

Verbal Behavior (Skinner) - Based on B.F. Skinner's 1957 book titled Verbal Behavior, outlining his analysis of verbal behavior, which describes a group of verbal operants, or functional units of language. Skinner's thinking was that language can be analyzed into a set of functional units, with each type of operant serving a different function. He came up with terms that didn't exist (to separate these operants from anything described by traditional linguistics) for these operants. The three that are most often discussed in popular discussion are mands (to request, or to obtain what is wanted), tacts(label of something in the environment), and intraverbals(a response to the language of another person).