The characteristics that make up effective teaching strategies for retarded students - that tasks be broken down into small parts and taught in sequence; that learning be hands-on and visual by nature rather than delivered in lecture form (or better still, experiential); and that feedback on learning efforts be delivered immediately rather than after a delay - were not developed arbitrarily, but rather follow from an educational method known as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which is based on the many thousands of scientific animal and human learning studies that comprise the behavioral psychological literature.
ABA is one of the more effective teaching strategies devised for helping mentally retarded and autistic children to learn. The approach is based squarely on learning theory and classical and instrumental learning approaches, which work equally well for teaching people and animals alike. Students need not possess great intellect to benefit from ABA.
Applied Behavior Analysis takes complex tasks and breaks them down into their most fundamental parts. Skills are systematically introduced in small steps. As one small skill is mastered, the next is introduced. Students learn by making simple associations between causes and effects. They are presented with a stimulus (an object or a signal) and given an instruction. If they respond appropriately, they are immediately rewarded.
ABA's emphasis on providing immediate rewards for correct behavior is crucial to motivation. Not just any rewards will do, however. Students must define rewards for themselves; only rewards that are intrinsically rewarding have a rewarding quality to them. Rewards that are not gratifying will not properly reward or motivate behavior.
When the ABA instruction-behavior-reward cycle is initially introduced to students, rewards need to be immediate and concrete. Snacks and food rewards are often useful for this purpose, as are permission to watch a favorite TV show or to play an exciting game. As students become comfortable with the instruction and reward process, a more abstract "token" reward system can be introduced. Token reward systems use items like stickers, beads, or other visual representations placed on a chart to represent a student's progression towards an ultimate, concrete reward. For example, if the child earns five stickers he can play a game or watch a program. The token reward system is a little more complex and abstract than initial immediate and concrete rewards, but it is very effective in increasing on-task behavior and teaching students to delay their gratification.
ABA's modern emphasis is providing rewards for correct behavior, but this was not always so. In the early days of ABA, rewards were balanced with punishments for undesired behavior. Today, negative or undesired behavior is usually ignored or redirected, rather than punished, except in certain "non-negotiable" circumstances.
Certain behaviors that are "non-negotiable" may endanger children or their families and require immediate consequences so that they do not reoccur. Non-negotiable behaviors include any behaviors that threaten harm to the individual or others, and behaviors that could cause damage to property. Common consequences include time-outs, loss of preferred play items and activities, and the least intrusive physical restraints outlined by the safe crisis management plan. A customized safe crisis plan management plan is commonly developed as part of an at-risk individual's plan of care, and spells out what punishing consequences should be used for given situations in advance.
