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. (

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. Language- rich, learner- directed, reciprocal interaction Use principles of ABA to elicit 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

Video: Language-rich, learner-directed, reciprocal interaction

Step 6B: Using strategies derived from ABA to elicit target acts  Modeling  Mand-modeling  Modified time delay  Incidental 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.