If you are completing this course, then you have probably been assessed at some point in your life. Teachers, doctors and psychologists all use assessment as part of their work. Assessment are often used to grade our performance or to diagnose medical conditions.
Behavioral Assessments differ from these types of assessment. Behavioral Assessment involves is part of a problem-solving process. It specifies a client?s targets and controlling antecedents and consequences of relevant behaviors.
Earlier in this course, you learned about Functional Assessments. Functional Assessments are on example of a behavioural assessment. Functional assessments are designed to help us identify the functions of behaviors that challenge. However, ABA is not just something that is used to address challenging behaviour. As an RBT, your supervising BCBA may ask you to collect data on a client?s skills using a behavioural assessment.
Your supervisor will always provide you with instructions regarding how to assess a skill. One common tactic is baseline probing.
Baseline Probing
Within the context of skill acquisition, a baseline probe is something you carry out before instruction begins for a target skill. You present the target instruction without a prompt and record the learner?s response as correct or incorrect. In some circumstances, you may record the level of prompting required for the client to carry out the target behaviour. While instructions will differ depending on the client, the skill and the context, responses are, generally, not reinforced during a baseline probe.
For example, if conducting a probe to identify a client?s current writing skill level, you might ask them to write a series of letters, then record which were carried out at the target level. You would not correct the learner if they made an error and you would not provide reinforcement specific to the assessed behaviour.
Observation
While some behavioural assessment procedures will require you to give specific instruction or make certain environmental observations, others may require that you simply observe the client in their typical circumstances. For example, you might be asked to observe someone for 30 minutes and record the number of mands they made during that period.
Common Characteristics of ABA Skills Assessment
The overall goal of the ABA Skills Assessment is to provide a representative sample of a client?s existing verbal and non-verbal skills. It should tell you what a client can and cannot do and the circumstances under which behaviors of interest occur and do not occur. Commonly assessed skill areas include mands (requests), tacts (labels), echoics, non-verbal imitation, intraverbals, listener responding, play, social and leisure skills, visual perceptual and matching-to-sample, linguistic structure, self-help, group and classroom skills, and academics.
An ABA Skills assessment examines skills in a quantifiable and measurable way. They allow a professional refine the level of examination of skills so that teaching can occur in increments that are manageable and likely to result in meaningful, and permanent, gains for the client. ABA assessments typically provide a sequential guide for developing skills from most foundational to most complex. This is often developmentally sequenced. This structure helps to outline a logical progression for a personalised curriculum to follow and new targets can be added as skills are mastered. In addition, they provide the behaviour analyst with information about what types of intervention are likely to be successful for that individual client.
Examples of ABA Assessments
Below, we provide brief descriptions of some commonly used skills assessments within ABA. These include: the Assessment of Basic Language and Learning Skills- Revised (ABLLS-R), the Verbal Behavior- Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP), Promoting Emergence of Advanced Knowledge (PEAK), Assessment of Functional Living Skills (AFLS), Essential For Living (EFL), and the Early Learner Curriculum and Achievement Record (ELCAR).
Assessment of Basic Language and Learning Skills- Revised
The ABLLS-R assessment is a criterion referenced assessment. This means that the tests compare a person?s knowledge or skills against a predetermined standard, learning goal, performance level, or other criterion. The ABLLS-R is designed to assessed the skills that most typically developing children acquire by kindergarten.? The ABLLS-R incorporates verbal behaviour analysis and assessed 544 skills from 25 categories including language, social interaction, academic functioning and motor skills. Your supervisor will is most likely to use the ABLLS-R assessment if your clients include young children who demonstrate delays in language or social skills.
Verbal Behavior- Milestones Assessment and Placement Program
The VBMAPP consists of a developmental milestones assessment, a barriers assessment and a transition assessment. When using the milestones assessment, you test for the presence or absence of up to 170 different measureable developmental milestones. The Barriers Assessment involves assessing the presence or absence of certain challenging behaviors, dependencies and impaired skill sets. The Transition Assessment examines factors relates to transitions to less restrictive environments by looking at a client?s adaptability, their ability to care for themselves and ability to learn in the natural environment without explicit instruction.
Like the ABLLS-R, the VBMAPP is a criterion-referenced assessment and curriculum planning tool that focuses on assessing language, communication and skills that most typically developing children acquire by age 5. It also incorporates verbal behaviour analysis. Unlike the ABLLS-R, the VBMAPP assessment is developmentally sequenced.
Assessment of Functional Living Skills
The AFLS consisted of 6 different assessment protocols that address Basic Living Skills, Home Skills, Community Participation Skills, School Skills, Independent Living Skills, and Vocational Skills. The focus of the AFLS is on practical, every-day skills and routines that are required to live independently such as skills related to shopping, dressing, cooking, laundry, grooming, computer skills and job interviews. Across all of the protocols, the assessment allows for the assessment of more than 1900 daily living skills across 66 functional skill areas. Each assessment protocol can be used alone or they can be used together as a comprehensive assessment.
Like the ABLLS-R and the VBMAPP, the AFLS is a criterion referenced assessment. Unlike the VB-MAPP it is not developmentally sequenced. The AFLS was developed with older learners in mind. While the VB-MAPP and ABLLS-R often focus on the acquisition of certain concepts, the AFLS focuses on practical skills.
Essentials for Living
The Essentials for Living Assessment is an assessment for addressing communication, challenging behaviour and functional skills. Like some of the other instruments we?ve looked at, it incorporates verbal behaviour analysis. Like the AFLS, the EFL assessment is not developmentally sequenced. Also like the AFLS, it focuses on practical skills but its scope is wider and particular attention is given towards behaviours that challenge and their remediation.
For those who are new to the EFL, the quick ?Essential 8? assessment is particularly useful as it allows for the quick assessment of eight ?must have? skills that are necessary for a happy, fulfilling and productive life and whose absence often results in challenging behaviour.
Promoting Emergence of Advanced Knowledge (PEAK)
PEAK functions as both an assessment and curriculum. It is based on verbal behaviour analysis but also incorporates more recent research into derived relational responding. It focuses on the assessment and teaching of skills of skills that allow for learning relationships without needing direct instruction.
PEAK consists of four modules. The Direct Training module addresses many of the same skills assessed in the VBMAPP and ABLLS-R (e.g. mands, tacts, echoics and intraverbals). The Generalization module, as the name suggests, focuses on generalising these skills across people, stimuli and contexts. The Equivalence and Transformation modules address subjects such as concept formation, perspective taking and abstract logical reasoning.
PEAK is often used with children who have already acquired the skills addressed by the VB-MAPP or ABLLS-R though it can be used with those who have not already mastered those skills or adult learners.
Early Learner Curriculum and Achievement Record
The ELCAR is an assessment and curriculum planning tool that is most often used in specialist schools for students with autism. The ELCAR incorporates 4 screening sections including: assessments for preference/reinforcer, observing responses, speaker verbal operants and instructional readiness. The ELCAR has a further seven sections that focus on developing knowledge, understanding and skills that are necessary to succeed in the early stages of education. The seven areas include:
Verbal Behaviour Foundation – which addresses pre-verbal communication skills
Listener Skills – which focuses on the development of early receptive language and observing behaviours (e.g. following a one-step direction)
Speaker Skills ? which focuses on the development of expressive language (e.g. manding for items or using conversational skills)
Academic Literacy ? This section is divided into seven sub-sections which include matching, general
knowledge, concepts, pre-reading, reading, writing and mathematics.
Community of Reinforcers – This repertoire focuses on developing a wider range of activities with regard to how pupils fill their leisure time.
Self-Management repertoire: This repertoire focuses on appropriate social skills related to education. Specific examples include giving directions to peers, using social reinforcement with others and defending property appropriately.
Physical Development repertoire: This repertoire relates to fine and gross motor skills.
Selecting an Assessment
Your supervisor will select an appropriate assessment based on a number of factors including the chronological age of your client, their developmental age, the reasons for referral and your client?s interests and preferences. For example, a VB-MAPP may be useful for a young child with a developmental condition who is approaching school age, but might be too narrow in scope for a young adult. While some aspects of an EFL or AFLS assessment might be applicable for younger children, many of the criteria in these assessments would not be applicable until teenage years or adulthood. In many cases, more than one assessment may be used.