Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI)

Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (or EIBI) is an intensive one-on-one treatment approach based upon ABA that typically involves 20-40 hours of instruction per week to teach individuals new behaviors and skills.

Early Intervention / Early Childhood Intervention

Early Intervention (sometimes called “Early Childhood Intervention” or “Early Intervention Services”) is a set of coordinated services and supports that are available to babies and young children with developmental delays and disabilities and their families. Early Intervention may include speech therapy, physical therapy, and other types of services based on the needs of the child and family. Early Intervention Programs are available in every U.S. state and territory (see each program’s contact information here). These publicly funded programs provide services for free or at reduced cost for any eligible child.

Echoic

An echoic (sometimes called echoic control) is a verbal operant and refers to the ability to vocally imitate upon request. An echoic is triggered by a verbal stimulus; each word is the exact same (point-to-point correspondence), and it takes the same form as the stimulus (i.e., formal similarity). In ABA, one of the ways in which an echoic can be used is to help expand an individual’s vocabulary.  

Echolalia

Echolalia is “echoing” or imitating what is heard. It can be immediate (imitated right after hearing a word, sound, or phrase) or delayed (repeating something heard earlier at a later point in time). Echolalia can involve an individual repeating portions of words (such as sounds) or entire words or phrases. Echolalia is common in individuals with ASD.

Eligibility Requirements

Eligibility requirements are a set of standards a child must meet to qualify for early

intervention services (such as ABA treatment). Qualifiers include age, disabilities, and developmental delays as compared to typical developmental milestones.

Elopement

Elopement is when an individual is wandering or running away, either alone or without caregiver knowledge, from a person or area (safe / supervised area) where they are supposed to stay. This could be an individual wandering away from the house, or an individual repeatedly running away from the table during a treatment session. This behavior can be dangerous for children, particularly for those who are nonverbal or find difficulty in communicating with others.

Emotional Dysregulation / Regulation

Emotion dysregulation (ED) is characterized by deficits in the ability to evaluate and modulate emotions, and can be expressed as meltdowns, shutdowns, tantrums, mood instability, irritability, aggression, self-harm, etc. ED can lead to a wide range of negative mental and physical health outcomes, such as impaired memory, disrupted communication and social bonds affecting relationship formation, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and insomnia, among others. ED is a typical struggle for children with ASD, and it can lead to the undesirable development of habitual maladaptive strategies for regulating emotions. This happens when children do not acquire constructive skills for regulating their emotions (i.e., emotional regulation (ER) strategies). ER is a complex process that encompasses controlling the intensity, duration, and types of emotions experienced. ER entails successful up-regulation of constructive/desirable emotions and down-regulation of destructive / undesirable emotions. ER encompasses a child’s ability to notice and respond to internal and external sensory input, and then adjust their emotions and behavior to the demands of their surroundings. ER includes the body’s involuntary reactions (heart rate, respiratory rate, etc.) to events or perceptions, as well as voluntary responses. Voluntary responses may be behaviors that the child does to soothe or excite themselves, such as spinning the wheel of a toy car, rubbing a smooth surface, rocking, or hand flapping. This may also include the use of communication to get help modulating emotion, such as reaching to request comfort when afraid. Successfully learning how to regulate emotions can lead to improved interpersonal relationships, and some research suggests that it may decrease the risk of depression and anxiety.

Empiricism / Empirical Thinking

Empiricism / Empirical Thinking is a school of thought that purports that knowledge originates in or is based on observation or sensory experience. Empirical thinking encompasses quantitative (numerical) and qualitative (non-numerical) data.

Errorless Learning / Teaching

Errorless learning / teaching is an ABA teaching procedure that utilizes prompts which are faded over time to minimize the errors a child makes while learning a skill. Errorless learning guides an individual to the correct answer using cues within prompts to avoid instances where the individual gives incorrect responses (failure can greatly frustrate individuals with ASD, thereby being detrimental to the learning process). As the individual learns to respond correctly, cues / prompts are eliminated. 

Escape Extinction

Escape extinction refers to the process of discontinuing a reinforcement that has unintentionally led to an individual being able to “escape” consequences of a behavior, situation, or outcome. For example, if a child wants to stay up late and throws a tantrum, their parents or caregivers may inadvertently reinforce the tantrum by allowing the child to stay up late, which shows the child that a tantrum can result in a desirable outcome. In this example, extinction would occur if, in response to a tantrum, parents or caregivers followed through with bedtime and did not allow the child to stay up late. This should ultimately demonstrate that the child can not “escape” bedtime with a tantrum.   

Establishing Operation (EO)

An establishing operation (EO) is a motivating operation that increases the value of a reinforcer and increases the frequency in behavior that provides access to the reinforcer. In other words, the EO makes it more likely for the child to want the reinforcer. An example of an EO is skipping a fun trip to the park and having to stay inside the house. Being indoors increases the value of outdoor fun and increases the behaviors that result in gaining access to the park. An EO is especially important in mand training (vocal requesting) for children with ASD. When there is a strong establishing operation in place, there is a greater likelihood that the behavior, the mand, will be emitted in order to access the reinforcing consequence.

Evidence-Based

Evidence-based refers to when a concept or procedure is supported by valid, systematic, and objective scientific evidence, which, in turn, leads to improved or best possible outcomes for individuals. In ABA, “evidence-based” refers to treatment tools, practices, or methods that are grounded in scientific evidence and have been demonstrated to lead to successful outcomes towards reaching goals. 

Expressive

Expressive refers to speaker behavior; more specifically, it refers to tasks that require a vocal response, such as singing or talking.

Extinction

Extinction is a procedure in ABA in which a reinforcement is withheld so that an undesirable behavior is no longer (inadvertently) encouraged / reinforced, which leads to reduction of the undesired behavior.

Extinction Burst

An extinction burst is the increase in frequency and / or intensity of behavior in the early stages of extinction. With an extinction burst, undesirable behavior temporarily occurs with greater intensity or more often as the result of a reinforcement being removed. The removal of the reinforcement causes the individual to have a “burst” of the problematic behavior to try to achieve what they formerly knew would be the outcome they were given by parents or caregivers, for example, in response to the reinforcement.