Early symptoms may include grossly delayed language or motor development; atypical play; such as spinning, lining up, staring at or feeling toys; lack of peer play or friendships; pronounced fears, crying fits, sleeplessness, or noise sensitivity. (www.autismresources.com) Some autistic children may develop some skills early, such as the ability to recognize letters and signs. People think that children with autism are withdrawn; this is a misconception some autistic children are withdrawn but some children are perfectly friendly wi

Lovaas notes very clearly that a behavioral program is a comprehensive intervention, carried out in every setting and every possible waking moment. (www.patientcenters.com/autism) The skills that are taught so efficiently in discrete trial drills must be practiced and generalized in "natural" settings. A child who does know the difference between "ask" and "tell" may slowly get a higher percentage of right answers during an exercise until the child is considered to have "mastered" the skill; but the child will not go on to use "ask" and "tell" appropriately without additional support in natural situations. It takes trained and supportive people such as parents, teachers, relatives, even peers to help reinforce a wide range of appropriate behavior is in a variety of settings, until the level of reinforcement fades to a typical level.

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a science, which seeks to use empirically validated behavior change procedures for assisting individuals in developing skills with social value. "Applied," means practice and "Behavior Analysis" may be read as "learning therapy" that, understands what leads to new skills. The procedures used in intensive behavioral intervention programs for children with autism are primarily from research generated by practitioners of ABA.

It has been rumored that ABA produces "robots" who are unable to think for themselves but that conclusion, says Dr.McEachin, is sometimes based upon the "flat affect" that children with autism inherently have, and should be attributed to the intervention, but to the disorder is self. In fact, he says, ABA can improve the lack of the motion in the voice by teaching a greater range of emotional behavior. You can "train spontaneous behavior sounds like an oxymoron," but Dr. McEachin says that the spontaneity is something that occurs in the absence of obvious outward stimulus. (www.autismtoday.com) Conversation skills can be taught by cueing, then transferring the cue to a stimulus that would occur naturally and then they will be better able to do it on their own. As an example, during a conversation children are taught not just to say, "I don't like pizza." They are taught to follow it up with "I like chicken", then to follow it up with a question "do you like chicken?" This!

When behaviors are followed by consequences that the individual fines desirable, those behaviors are more likely to be repeated in the future. This is called reinforcement. When consequences are negative, behavior is less likely to be repeated. In discrimination training, which is a core component of an ABA program, and discrete trial teaching, they learn which response to make in the presence of specific words and environmental stimuli. The teacher arranges consequences that lead to the increase of correct responses and a decrease of incorrect responses. The negative consequences may consist simply of a "no" said naturally.

A behavior can be either acceptable or a problem but a behavior doesn't happen by itself. The setting, social context, and the lead up to the behavior as well as a result must be examined to determine a behaviors acceptability. There are three basic components for a behavior pattern, which is called "ABC". "A", stands for Antecedent, which is the setting of what took place before an event. "B", stands for Behavior, which is for the "event" itself. "C", stands for Consequence, which is what occurred after the event, or result all of "event." (www.abachildren.com)

ABA programs contain many if not all of the components of effective treatment approaches found to be most successful in treating children with autism, it consists of individualized instruction tailor made to address the specific needs of the child; behaviorally based on methodology; low student teacher ratio; early treatment; and family involvement.

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