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ABA through Telehealth
Summary
Applied Behavior Analysis Therapy (ABA) is widely recognized and evidence-based
intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This type of therapy is used to
help families as well as ASD individuals with daily living tasks, communication, social skills,
and challenging behaviors. ABA therapy is ever-changing to help meet the need of individuals
with ASD recently researchers have done experiments that will hopefully help more ASD people
and their families by providing services via telehealth (Gerow & al, 2023 ). This program
would provide ABA coaching through a program fully over the phone basically teaching the
family members how to incorporate the skills themselves instead of them coming to the home
and working with the ASD individual (Gerow & al, 2023 ). The study showed that telehealth
services provided a more accurate display of ABA interventions because they were being taught
directly to the caregiver so they can apply them in different situations that needed them to help
lessen self-injuries because of the lack of communication, social skills and over all behaviors
(Gerow & al, 2023 ). The study used things like Vmaping, vineland testing, and FBA’s to see
the results and help come up with different ways to better help these individuals with ASD
function better(Gerow & al, 2023 ).
Communication
This training helps families grow to help the behaviors around communication
with ASD individuals. ABA therapy helps to figure out how to decrease the behaviors so that
individuals with ASD are able to commutate more efferently (Gerow & al, 2023 ). This study
used FBA’s to figure out how best to provide the families with how to work through the
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behaviors (Gerow & al, 2023 ). by decreasing the behaviors, caregivers are more effectively
able to work with ASD individual allowing them to reach full potential and it also allows then to
be able to communicate their needs better. using the Vineland testing here allowed for a baseline
and progressing data to monitor how ASD individuals communicate and what they understand
allowing Therapies to have more of an individual plan to help with communication. All in all, the
study demonstrated the efficacy of caregiver-implemented ABA interventions delivered via
telehealth in improving communication, daily living skills, socialization, and challenging
behavior in children with ASD.
Social Skills
Social skills would be in the same category as daily living as people we need to be
able to talk and interact with people to be able to do things like drive a car, buy groceries, and
even mail a letter Etc. ABA allows parents to work on some of these skills with their ASD child
so that they may be able to buy something at a store or carry a conversation with a doctor
without their help one day. This study teaches parents how to imponent these skills that will
follow them throughout their life (Gerow & al, 2023 )). Some of these skills can be following
directions all the way to how to cross a street safely. The idea is to teach ASD families how to
teach ASD Individuals how to function with or without help. Therapies did this by providing the
caregiver with what to say and how to show it to the ASD child and then the therapist took data
whether it was don’t correctly or not (Gerow & al, 2023 )). they did this to be able to show the
caregiver how to properly imponent the therapy to ensure the effectiveness of the daily skill, so
that the skill can be remember just as one remembers to ride a bike (Gerow & al, 2023 )). All
in all, this study showed how effect teaching caregivers to teach the ASD child.
Behaviors
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Behaviors seem to be one of the root causes of why families seek help with ASD
individuals. Behaviors happen usually because of the lack of communication ASD individuals
have, by being able to figure out why a behavior occurs therapist can try and stop or change the
behavior so that it is more functional. ABA therapists use what is can an FBA to figure out why a
behavior occurs, the frequency of the behavior and how to stop the behavior it starts (Boutot,
2016). These plans are individually done as not all ASD individuals will get upset over the same
things or have the same level of communication. In this study, Therapists complete an FBA and
then explain it to the caregiver with different examples and techniques to stop the behavior, and
or change the behavior into one that is more appropriate (Gerow & al, 2023 )). They do this
by removing a tiger or adding in a reward to use positive reinforcement to help change or stop
behaviors (Gerow & al, 2023 ).
Conclusion
All in all, I believe this style of ABA therapy can be very successful as the
therapist are actually showing the parents how to provide the skills to teach their ASD Child
instead of waiting twice a week for someone else to come in and teach them and then that skill is
only used until that person leaves. This study showed how ABA still can be used to help ASD
individuals through telehealth using vineland, Vmaping, and FBA’s to skillfully create a plan to
increase communication, social skills, behaviors and more while still teaching caregivers to be
the main person imponenting the plan.
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Reference:
Boutot, E. A. (2016). Autism Spectrum Disorders (2nd ed.). Pearson Education (US).
https://libertyonline.vitalsource.com/books/9780133521573
Gerow, S., Kirkpatrick, M., McGinnis, K., Sulak, T. N., Davis, T. N., & Fritz, S.
(2023). Evaluation of a Telehealth ABA Program for Caregivers of Children
with ASD.,Behavior Modification.,,47(2), 349–379.
https://doi.org/10.1177/01454455221130001
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