Naturalistic Interventions:Implementing in Real Life

A Personal Connection

What’s the difference?

Naturalistic Behavioral Interventions

vs

Developmental Social-Pragmatic Approaches

Naturalistic Behavioral Interventions

Core assumptions:

• Voluntary behaviors are learned

• Behaviors are developed and maintained• Antecedents• Consequences

• Prompting, chaining, fading

Naturalistic Behavioral Interventions

Because of concerns with generalization, naturalistic practices have emerged:

• Incidental teaching

• Mand-model

• Time delay

• Milieu teaching

• Interrupted behavior chains

• Pivotal response training (PRT)

Developmental Social-Pragmatic Interventions

Core assumptions:

• Social-communication skills learned in a similar developmental sequence by all children

• Children learn through interactions with responsive caregivers

• Follow the child’s lead, respond to all communicative attempts, emotional affect is shared, adjust language and social input

• DIR/Floortime

• Denver Model

• Responsive Teaching

• Hanen

• SCERTS

Developmental Social-Pragmatic Interventions

Ingersoll, 2010

NPDC: Naturalistic Interventions

A collection of practices, including:

• Environmental arrangement

• Interaction techniques

• Strategies based on the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis

• Designed to encourage specific target behaviors based on interests by building on skills that are naturally reinforcing and appropriate.

NPDC: Naturalistic Interventions

In the context of daily routines throughout the day

Name some routines!

Step 1: Identify a target act

• Prelinguistic communication

• Linguistic communication

• Social skills

General Goal vs. Target Act

General Goal:Connor will increase his use of language during play.

Target Act:Connor will use the pronouns he, she, and it correctly

We’re going to pull the target act out!

Step 2: Collecting Baseline Data:What’s happening now?

Step 3: Training Team Members

Identify the team: Who will teach the skill?

Provide adequate training to team members.

(http://autismpdc.fpg.unc.edu/content/parent-implemented-intervention)

Step 4: Identifying Contexts for Intervention

• Learner-directed activities Free choice time

• Routine activities Snack time Daily jobs

• Planned activities Lesson plans: Science experiment example

Choice making should be built into all activities!

Step 5: Arranging the Environment to Elicit the Target Act

• Motivating materials

• Keeper of the goods

•Arrange the context to

•Encourage use of target act•Maintain interest

Video: Keeper of the Goods

Step 6: Eliciting the Target Act

Provide both

(6A) the foundation of the interaction, AND

(6B) the specifics on how the communicative partner interacts with the learner

Use principles of ABA to elicit the target act.

Step 6A:Engaging the learner

in an interaction Follow the learner’s lead Be at the learner’s level Respond to verbal and nonverbal initiations Provide meaningful verbal feedback Expand on the learner’s utterances

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjCHG7qvYEc

Video: Language-rich, learner-directed,

reciprocal interaction

Step 6B: Using strategies derived from ABA to elicit target acts

ModelingMand-modelingModified time delayIncidental teaching

Video: Modeling

Video: Mand-Modeling

Video: Incidental Teaching

Step 7: Use data collection to monitor progress and determine

next steps

Case Study: Marco

Case Study: Aidan

Aidan’s activity matrix:

1.Review at tables

2.Discuss: • Pros of writing out a plan like this• How is this similar to things you already do?• What stands out as being very different?• What parts of this type of plan might be

useful in your work?

Team work

Complete an activity matrix for one of your target students, designed to elicit a target act from one of your priority goals.

Include at least three school routines, and at least one routine from home or the community.