Using ABA to Teach Social Skills in Early Years

 Some social skills that are important in early years and that often may be in deficit in SEN students may be following instructions, asking and using names, greeting others, sharing and turn taking, asking others to play, joining ongoing games, transitioning, dealing with losing, asking and giving help, maintaining good body boundaries, making friends, dealing with feelings, alternatives to aggression, and coping with stress, just to name a few.

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is the science of learning and behavior. The principles of ABA can be used in approaching social skills by 1) breaking the skills down into smaller, achievable teaching steps, until they cannot be broken down any further. We want to see achievements and create success and focus on the right level of skill for a child, 2) using Incidental Teaching strategies to provide structured learning opportunities in the natural environment by using the child’s interests and natural motivation, 3) using systematic, instructorled teaching through Social Stories, and 4) using an evidence-based social skills curriculum that includes elements such as modeling, role playing, feedback, and generalization. The use of positive reinforcement, specific prompting strategies, visuals, and practice and repetition is also hugely beneficial throughout all of the aforementioned strategies. A big goal is to make the abstract targets often seen in social skills more concrete for a child.

Again, Incidental Teaching is type of Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention (NDBI) that uses the principles of ABA to provide instruction within ongoing typical activities based on interest and motivation. It is taught in the natural environment, and the individual should not even realize they are being taught. A myriad of skills can be taught through incidental teaching, such as losing in games appropriately, saying hi and bye to others, playing games appropriately, and conversation skills. Systematic teaching involves more direct instruction that includes verbally going through a skill, role playing the skill, modelling the skill, and then generalization and feedback on performance of the skill in a natural setting. A social story is a type of direct instruction for social skills and is an individualized short story that describes social relevant cues in any given situation. It breaks down a challenging social situation into understandable steps by omitting irrelevant information and by being highly descriptive to help an individual understand the entirety of a situation. Social stories include answers to questions such as who, what, when, where, and why in social situations through the use of visuals and written text and would also involve a role-playing component.