Children’s Autism Center offers 1:1 intensive early intervention ABA services in both the clinic and home setting for children ages 18 months to 5 years old. Recommendation of services is done based on medical necessity and developmental needs. Our Program is designed with a strong emphasis in Verbal Behavior and Language development with focuses in areas such as play skills, social skills and behavior reduction/adaptive skills.

Behavioral Therapy (also known as Applied Behavior Analysis) is the application of principals based on human behavior to help individuals form adaptive behaviors, meaningful relationships and effectively communicate. Based on the American Psychological Association, ABA is the best form of treatment for individuals with ASD. While children learn from their natural environment, without the use of interventions, progression and maintenance of skills for children with ASD is considered to occur at slower rates than compared to typical developing children. ABA allows for the creation of an optimal learning environment for skill acquisition to occur at a faster rate.

Typical ABA procedures at Children’s Autism Center include:

Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI)

20-35 hours a week of individualized interventions for kids with ASD between the ages for 18 months- 5 years old and continuing for at least 2-3 years. EIBI uses evidence-based ABA practices to teach needed communication, adaptive, social, and behavioral skills.

Discrete Trial Training (DTT)

1:1 instructional approach to teach skills in a planned, controlled, and systematic manner. Each trial or teaching opportunity has a definite beginning and end and is done using antecedent and consequence strategies along with reinforcement strategies to teach desired skills and behaviors. Data collection is an important part of DTT and is used to support to make decisions about progress, rate of skill acquisitions, maintenance, and generalization of learned skills.

DTT has been shown to increase skills such as communication, attending, imitation and play.

Natural Environment Teaching (NET)

Teaching is done in the child’s environment to promote generalization of learned skills previously taught via DTT. For example, a NET situation to work on communication may be arranged with the play kitchen set. In this situation, the therapist notices the child is motivated for the pretend coffee pot. By using that motivation, the therapist would require the child to request of the item to gain access to it (requests are done based on the child’s mode of communication). When the child see’s the item and reaches for it, the therapist prompts the request by saying “coffee pot”. When the child echoes the therapist, the item is given to him/her. After multiple trials, prompts are faded until the child can request for the item independently.

Social Skills Training

Teaching of social skills occurs with both the adult/therapist and peers either in a group or individual setting. Teaching of developmentally appropriate social skills target areas such as eye contact, back and forth conversation, problem solving, attending, turn taking, requesting for help, greetings, functional and sustained social or physical play, perspective taking and imitation. These skills are taught directly using 1:1 interaction with an adult/peer and in a group setting (with multiple peers).

To learn more about one-on-one (1:1) therapy at Children’s Autism Center, please contact us.