Applied Behavior Analysis: The Big Picture and Ultimate Goals

Over the past 50 years, one treatment approach, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), has steadily grown in prominence by contributing thousands of studies to the scientific literature, thereby establishing itself as a model of evidence-based practice for treating autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This issue of the Autism Advocate is dedicated to exploring ABA in a way that highlights its utility for people with ASD as well as for parents, teachers and other professionals. As co-editors, we have chosen to emphasize the big-picture accomplishments of ABA and how they relate to the ultimate goals most cherished by those with ASD and their families.

ABA is an applied science based on the principles of behavior, especially those related to operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is a process, best known through the work of Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner, which focuses on how people learn. In operant conditioning, behavior is influenced by its consequences; specifically, the delivery of positive consequences (reinforcers) that make behavior more likely to occur and the removal of positive consequences that make behavior less likely to occur. The future probability of a behavior is determined by its past consequences. That is how we learn. In addition, behavior is influenced by its antecedents. Thus, stimuli that have been closely associated with reinforcers for certain behaviors (technically, “discriminative stimuli”) are very likely to trigger those behaviors in the future. Putting it all together, we have what is called a three-term contingency (i.e., antecedents-behaviors-consequences). This concept helps us to understand how people learn and, more importantly, how we can teach them new behaviors and encourage them to display behaviors they have already learned. Space limitations do not allow us to do full justice to the wide array of concepts, procedures and strategies that constitute operant conditioning in particular and ABA in general. However, excellent texts are available that describe the approach in detail (e.g., Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007) and its application to ASD (e.g., Lovaas, 1981, 2003). These references and some relevant websites and journals are provided, for informational purposes, at the end of this article. In this special issue of the Advocate, we wish to focus on ways to achieve two of the ultimate goals of ABA: validity and quality of life.

Validity refers to whether the procedures we develop can be successfully applied—not in the controlled world of laboratories, clinics and segregated facilities—but rather in the real world of home, school, community and workplace. Valid procedures are ones that can be used by parents, teachers, job coaches and, whenever possible, by people who have ASD. The ultimate goal of valid intervention is to make a positive and pervasive difference in the lives of people with ASD and their families— a difference captured by the term quality of life (QOL). Every article in this special issue not only elucidates varied aspects of ABA, but also reflects high validity and breakthroughs in establishing good QOL.