How Did I Get Into ABA Therapy?

By Joshua Ginsburg, a BCBA at Triangle ABA.

08/11/2023 I didn’t originally plan to go into applied behavior analysis or become a board certified behavior analyst. I’ve been told that when I was three I loudly announced to everyone inside a Burger King that I wanted to be a game show host, but the first real concept I had about wanting a job was wanting to play video games as an adult. As I got older I eventually realized that my choice of career wasn’t very realistic and switched my plans to make video games instead. I graduated high school, enrolled in college to learn programming, and then almost immediately realized that programming was not something that I found enjoyable or even a feasible choice for me due to difficulties with learning the skill.

Too proud to admit defeat, I switched my major over to graphical design, and I was okay at it. I graduated, floated around without a job while trying to build a portfolio, and eventually ended up working at a retail store in the backroom. This was not where I wanted to be, and so I decided to start re-evaluating my options. One of the things I did enjoy was working at a summer camp focused on teaching children and teenagers how to design video games, programing, etc, so I started looking at state schools to see if I could get a masters and become a teacher. Bad news for Josh though: in order to become a teacher in the state I was in I’d have to get another complete undergraduate degree!

But the contact at the school said there was this one weird program I could try. “There’s this thing called being a BCBA that would let you do something like teaching and all you would need to do is get a 2 year masters degree while also participating in an accelerated practicum.” And let me tell you all, I was not originally sold on the idea. I wanted to be a teacher! Not someone who is LIKE a teacher! But I decided I had nothing to lose by trying it out and enrolled in an introduction to verbal behavior class.

And I immediately fell in love with ABA, just at learning about one of the first concepts: the functions of behavior. And that’s what I wanted to write and share with you all here, what they are, and how they can help, no exaggeration, revolutionize how you see the actions of the world around you.

The Function Junction: What’s a function?

To start with, what is a function? It’s the purpose of a behavior. What’s a behavior though? To put it very simply, it’s how anything alive reacts to a situation or stimuli. Not just people, anything.

But back to functions, what does it mean it’s the purpose of a behavior? A function is literally the driving force behind a behavior. It’s why the behavior happened in the first place or is likely to happen again. But it’s not necessarily a conscious why. It’s not a thought or goal or principle that someone believes in that drives them to do things, it’s way simpler than that. ABA as a field tries to stick to only discussing the observable, and so thoughts aren’t even a consideration at this point. And like I said earlier, without exaggeration, as of August 2023, there are four functions that any living organism’s behaviors can be explained by. Literally. Everything that you, your children, your parents, your dogs, cats, guinea pigs, even plants, does is due to one of four reasons: Access to tangibles, Attention, Escape, and Sensory/self-stimulation.

Sensory/Self-Stimulation

So let’s start with the easy one. Sometimes behaviors occur because of a physical sensation, simple as that. We drink water when we’re hot. When something itches we scratch it. When I stub my toe, I do this thing where I suck in air through my teeth while hopping around because it helps get through the pain without yelling.

Sometimes it’s not so obvious though. There are a lot of sensory stimuli that can be observed, but many that can’t be as well. For example, if I’m thirsty I might go get something to drink, but how do you know if I’m thirsty without me telling you? Or if we have a headache we might dim the lights, but we also might do that if our eyes hurt and to an outside observer it looks exactly the same. Well good news though: ABA does have ways of eliminating variables and narrowing down in scope, but even without doing that all you have to keep in mind is that sometimes behaviors happen because of sensory stimuli.

Escape

This one is the point where I started getting very interested in the concept of functions. Because let’s be honest, while you may never have thought about it before, the idea that “people do things because of their senses” isn’t exactly groundbreaking or an illogical concept. But escape is one that doesn’t always immediately cross people’s mind when talking about why behaviors happen. But again, at it’s core, escape is a very simple function: “Thing bad! Get rid of thing!”

Well, that might be simplifying it a little too much: the function of escape refers to behaviors that occur to either remove or avoid something aversive. Why do we open an umbrella? We don’t want to get wet. Why do some children get upset when it’s bedtime? They don’t want to go to bed! Why do we tell people no, or cancel plans, or let the phone go to voicemail when we don’t recognize the number? Because we don’t want to.

It’s not a thing that we have to recognize while it’s happening either. Do you ever agree with someone who you know is wrong just to get them to stop talking with you and leave you alone? That’s a behavior with escape as the function as well. When we get out of the car to check if our door is locked even after locking it, that’s us performing a behavior to escape the anxiety/doubt/concern that exists in our head.

“Okay Josh” I hear you say, “how is this different from saying that behaviors happen because of physical sensation when it comes to anything? How is it even relevant?”. And this is where it gets really interesting, in my opinion. Let’s say you know a child, and anytime they’re asked to do something they don’t want to do they start crying, but when that demand is removed they stop. “Yes, Josh, sometimes children get sad when asked to do things they don’t want to do” you reply. Hold on one second! Who said anything about them being sad? Could they be sad? Of course! But even if they are, their crying gets them out of whatever they were asked to do, meaning it’s a behavior functioning with the purpose of escape.

Access (to tangible or edible items)

The third function of behavior is to access tangible items. Food, toys, electronics, money (yes sometimes money isn’t physical but that gets into topics I’m not talking about yet), pretty much anything you could touch or interact with. This often includes edible items, not even in an ABA way, just in the sense that organisms engage in behaviors to get food frequently and humans are a type of organism.

But let’s unpack this a little more because a lot more behaviors than you’d expect occur with access as their function. There are the obvious things like saying “I want X” or physically picking up items, but there are also things that are indirect, like talking about how much you like X so that someone you’re talking to realizes you want that for dinner. And some applicable examples, sometimes children engage in behaviors that we would typically call “annoying” to gain access to items as well. “Can I have it please please please please?” is a common example. Another is screaming or crying, continuing to escalate to such a level that if in public the parent has to risk interference from onlookers if they don’t either give in or leave. And that specific behavior is sometimes connected with our last function as well.

DISCOVERING THE MISSION AT TRIANGLE ABA

I noticed a similar type of accession whenever I was assigned to other RBTs and BTs to observe how they interact with a client during their sessions. Therapists always prioritized the wellness and personal expression of their clients—this could mean that, while a demand could be placed for the client to wait for a consecutive period of time, they could occupy themselves with any kind of stimming behavior. There is never a form of judgment expressed towards the client or procedure written by the BCBA to reduce those behaviors because of how they do not interfere with the client’s ability to comply with the task. In fact, giving clients a space where they are able to express themselves freely is an ongoing conversation that happens everyday at the clinic—if BCBAs and RBTs do not have to reduce those behaviors, then they won’t, because there is no harm in what the client finds comforting or enjoyable.

Additionally, there are several sections during training that prepare future BTs and RBTs—like myself—to maintain client dignity. Most of this is outlined in an Ethics Code that is updated every year by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board, otherwise known as the BACB. They are a nonprofit organization that was created in 1998 “[…] to meet professional certification needs identified by behavior analysts, governments, and consumers of behavior-analytic services” as detailed under the about page of their website. Their primary goal “[…] is to protect consumers of behavior-analytic services by systematically establishing […] professional standards of practice[,]” which include treating clients with respect and dignity as outlined in their Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts. Much of the information provided in the Ethics Code is heavily tested in the exam for RBTs and BCBAs to obtain their official certification. If at any point an RBT or BCBA is suspected of violating these core principles that ensure the ethical treatment of a client, they are liable for their practices to be shut down while also having their license revoked.

While such core principles are written in technicality, the reality is that the members of the community at Triangle ABA are always considering the overall wellness of their clients because of how much they are concerned about providing a positive experience so that they may leave the clinic not only having developed new skills, but also feeling assured in their own self-expression.

“It’s not about reducing quirks,” Amber emphasized during one of our meetings when discussing her own mission and purpose for starting the company. “It’s about developing skills to help them be as independent as they can while also embracing their beautiful qualities.”

Attention

Behaviors with the function of attention occur because the individual wants to get attention. Thank you for coming to my blog post everyone!

No but seriously, you know the phrase “all attention is good attention”? Well I’m not here to debate that but I will instead say that “All attention is attention”. Behaviors with the function of attention are those seeking attention, not just good attention. Frequently positive attention is the goal, of course, but it’s not always the goal, and sometimes either negative attention is the reason for a behavior, or even just attention in general regardless of the type.

You can see these behaviors play out quite frequently both in person and in the world at large. Think of your favorite media personality and I’m sure you can come up with some examples of things they did to get some type of attention, positive or not. By contrast, if you think of the public figure you despise the most and I’m positive you can think of at least one thing they’ve said or done that you think they did just to get eyes on them, and probably not something they were praised for in that fashion. Why do people make, or used to make, prank phone calls even? Attention!

With children, these behaviors occur in both behaviors we generally like and behaviors we might not. In a classroom setting, for example, raising your hand is one way to get the teacher’s attention but just yelling the answer out loud is another and sometimes much faster way. Yelling in general is an effective way to get attention, but yelling is an effective way to obtain most functions, unfortunately. And tying back to that concept that the type of attention doesn’t always matter, sometimes children make mistakes or act “incorrectly” because that gets them attention in a way that doing the right thing doesn’t.

So why am I still here?

Like I said earlier, when I learned about these concepts I was immediately captivated. The more I learned about ABA the more interested I became, even in things as simple as reinforcement or the operants of behavior, things I’ll write about at a later time. I do recognize that the field itself has its dark past and there is still a lot of work to be done. But I’m here because I think the concepts are sound, could be useful to everyone, and at the end of the day, really fun to use to make people’s lives better! I hope you found this interesting and if you have any questions at all please feel free to reach out to me, I love talking about this stuff!

Thank you so much for reading!`

Joshua Ginsburg, M.ED, BCBA, Blog author, guy who makes jokes.

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