Essential Reading
The below article from Baer et al. represents the first attempt to define Applied Behavior Analysis. For many, it is still regarded as the best attempt to define the applied science. It is an academic article and intended for a postgraduate-level audience, so you may find some of the content challenging. Please note that you are not expected to understand everything in the article, you can reflect on how comprehensible you find it in your reflection exercise submission.
Essential Viewing
In the below video, Ryan O’Donnell of the Daily BA, attempts to describe the experimental analysis of behavior in under one minute.
Follow the link below to the UK Society for Behaviour Analysis website and watch the “This is ABA” video. This video gives multiple examples of areas in which ABA is utilized:
Conversation Exercise
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Reflection Exercise
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Example Reflection:
Before this lesson, I didn’t really think about where ABA came from—I just thought of it as something people use to help teach new skills or change behavior. Learning about EAB made me realize that everything used in ABA is based on research, not just trial and error. It reminded me of how medicine works—you wouldn’t just guess at what treatment to give someone, you’d use something that’s been developed from biology and chemistry and then tested and proven to work. It also made me think about how careful ABA professionals have to be. If we’re working with people and trying to help them learn skills or reduce behaviors that challenge, we have to be confident that what we’re doing is based on real science, not just opinions or intutition. This makes me wonder how many things people do in education or therapy that aren’t backed by research. It also helped me understand why ABA is so structured—because it comes from experiments that show what actually works. I think this will help me be more confident in using ABA strategies because I know they’re not random; they come from years of studying behavior in a scientific way. But I wonder if that can sometimes lead to implementing interventions in a way that’s “too structured” for some learners.
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