Characteristics of ABA
In our previous lesson, we learned that ABA involves applying the laws and principles derived from EAB to practical problems. In this lesson, we?ll look a little closer at the characteristics of ABA.
In 1969, Baer, Wolf and Risley published a discussion that it is often taken to mark the foundation of ABA. In this article, they described ABA on the basis of 7 Dimensions. We will now look at each of these 7 Dimensions. The acronym GETACAB is sometimes uses to help people remember them.
1. Generalisation (Generality) ? An ABA intervention seeks to generalise the findings from the teacher or therapist and the intervention environment to other environments and other people.
2. Effective ? The intervention should make a real, positive difference in a client?s life. It can only be said to have been effective if it has reduces a problem to a level that is reasonable to expect a client to live with.
3. Technological ? Procedures to be used are describe in a clear, concise and complete manner.
4. Analytic – ABA attempts to identify cause and effect relationships between the environment and the rate of a particular behaviour. It does this through data-based decision making.
5. Conceptually Systematic ? This means that the behaviour and intervention are described with reference to the principles of behaviour.
6. Applied – You should be familiar with this dimension from previous lessons. It means that ABA focuses on changing behaviors that improve a person?s life.
7. Behavioral ? You already know how behaviour analysts define behaviour. It is anything a person does. In ABA, we tend to focus on observable behaviours. This is because observable behaviours are measurable.