Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)

What is A.B.A.?

Applied Behavior Analysis, or ABA, is a program determined to assist in specific behavioral patterns in order to correct them into acceptable habits. Through a planned course of time (typically many hours dispersed over long periods of months), interventions are applied to certain behavioral issues of a child. Depending on the issue, our procedures change to fit your child’s needs. Over this extended period of time, the analysis proves through its tests that the child’s behavior has significantly improved and in what areas. This way, the child can continue to grow in all of the best facets of his or her life.

The most common and distinguishing type of intervention based on Applied Behavior Analysis is discrete trial teaching (DTT). It is what people most often think of when you say “ABA”. This is partly because there are so many hundreds of hours of DTT. It is what works for the certain children on the autism spectrum. Every aspect has been refined (and is still being refined) to result in maximum learning efficiency.

A Comprehensive Plan To Help Your Child

Here at Bergen Pediatric Therapy Center we think of ABA program not only as DTT but a comprehensive plan to help our children. Lovaas (among others) notes very clearly that a behavioral program is a comprehensive intervention, carried out in every setting, every available moment. The skills that are taught so efficiently in discrete trial drills must be practiced and generalized in ‘natural’ settings.

The staff of certified ABA Coordinators and Therapists at Bergen Pediatric Therapy Center of NJ are skilled in:

• Attention
• Motivation
• Stimulus control Cause-effect learning and observational learning
• Communication
• Understanding of social and behavioral expectations