STE Consultants | Early Intervention Services

EARLY INTERVENTION SERVICES

What is early intervention?

Early intervention applies to children of school age or younger who have been diagnosed with autism or other related disabilities that impact their ability to communicate, develop social relationships, learn, and interact with their families and community. The purpose of early intervention is to minimize the impact the diagnosed disability has on a child. Early intervention can be remedial or preventive in nature – meaning it can either remediate existing developmental problems or preventing their occurrence.

Early intervention individualizes plans to teach functional communication, basic academics, social skills, self-help skills, and independent play using a variety of teaching methods including but not limited to the analysis of Verbal Behavior, Discrete Trial Training, Incidental Teaching and Pivotal Response Training. All STE programs will use principles of Applied Behavior Analysis to capture each child’s motivation and maximize success.

Why is early intervention important?

Research in the area of child development has shown that human learning is the most rapid in the preschool years. It is important to capitalize on this stage of growth to maximize success for children with disabilities. Early intervention services also have a significant impact on the parents and siblings of children with disabilities. Many of the families STE works with often feel disappointment, social isolation, stress, frustration, and are unsure what they should do to help their child. Our goal is to help empower the families we work with to have a better understanding of their child, to be trained in best practice methodologies that should be used to teach their child, and to increase the quality of life of their entire family.

Services

Based on assessment using the VB-MAPP (Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program, written by Mark Sundberg, PhD, BCBA), interview and observation, functional assessment (when appropriate), and a comprehensive records review children will be streamed into one of three types of program designs. The basic components of each of these programs are listed below as well as what the baseline or skill level of the child should be for each. Regardless of the program selected as the most appropriate for a given child, each would include community outings to promote generalization of learned skills. All STE early intervention programs will be individualized for each child.

STE Consultants has three levels of staffing in our programs – Clinical Director, Lead Therapists and 1:1 Therapists. All STE staff are trained in the methodologies we support, attend monthly trainings and are supervised by Board Certified Behavior Analysts ©. For rate information call our office at 510.665.9700.

STE Consultants requires that each child’s parent(s) attend initial training on Early Intervention before services commence and weekly clinical meetings for the duration of services. We believe parents are an integral and essential part of their child’s learning and want to support their acquisition of skills using a trainer-to-trainer approach. STE has created our own parent training manual about applied behavior analysis (ABA) that we use with our families to help increase their skills and confidence in working with their child.

The following summaries are the foundation of the basics STE covers in our Early Intervention programs.

The term “ABA” has been frequently used to describe any early intervention programs that are heavily based in discrete trial. It has been inaccurately separated from other program types such as pivotal response training and verbal behavior. Any good teaching program whether it be in a 1:1, group or regular education system will use Applied Behavior Analysis to capture motivation and maximize engagement and learning. The term “ABA” does not mean that the student will be sitting at a table, working 1:1 doing discrete trials.

The specific curriculum for an intensive intervention program can vary dramatically depending on the functioning level and current skill set of the student. One student can may be working on things such as matching and object identification in a discrete trial format and another may be working on social skills in a group setting yet both students programs likely will have components of applied behavior analysis imbedded in them.

A discrete trial refers to a controlled event, where a single stimulus (such as a color) is isolated for teaching. It consists of a stimulus or instruction presented to a learner/student, a response by the learner and then immediate feedback given by the instructor related specifically to the response. A discrete trial does not have to occur at a table or in a 1:1 setting. The most important thing to note is that a discrete trial is a teaching methodology under the umbrella of Applied Behavior Analysis. It in no way defines ABA or is a necessary component in the application of the principles.

Discrete trials are an effective form of teaching early learners because it isolates concepts that a student has not been able to learn or pick out from the natural environment. For example, many typically developing children will incidentally learn their colors from books, play or television program. For children who are unable to do this, the discrete trial isolates each color from other environmental stimuli or variables that increases the likelihood that they will learn the concept. Feedback is provided with immediate feedback for a specific and single response. The idea with discrete trial is that by having a behavior follow a specific antecedent/instruction/SD repeatedly with reinforcement given for a correct response, overtime that behavior will be “learned” and occur independently.
To teach new behaviors/responses/skills, prompting is provided WITH THE SD OR INSTRUCTION not with the student’s response or as part of the consequence in reaction to a lack of or incorrect response (see diagram below).

Learning occurs when there is a clean relationship between the SD/Antecedent and the Response/Behavior. A clean relationship means that when the SD or Antecedent is present the student independently responds. It is essential when teaching new skills whether it be language, academics or social, prompts are faded out over a series of trials to ensure that the student is independently responding to the SD/Antecedent.

The chart below illustrates how the antecedents, behaviors and consequences relate to the discrete trial format used to teach your children.