Welcome
Welcome to Rhegnumi Consulting LLC!
The mission of Rhegnumi Consulting LLC is to create a positive difference and improve the quality of life for individuals with disabilities and their families/caregivers. Rhegnumi Consulting approaches ABA therapy with a Biblical perspective. They provide affordable in-home ABA therapy based on the individual needs of each client. Our commitment is to establish a cooperative partnership through trust, respect, and communication with your family.
What is Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)?
Applied Behavior Analysis is a scientific approach to understand how behavior is affected by the environment in which it occurs. Behavior is defined as any action that an individual engages in which can be observed and measured. Environments are settings in which the behavior occurs or does not occur that have an impact on the individual’s behavior.
ABA therapy has been utilized since the early 1960s to help understand why an individual engages in a behavior and then determine appropriate interventions to help decrease behaviors of concern and increase engagement in more socially appropriate behavior. Interventions are generally adult directed initially and then move to client directed as their behavior begins to get more manageable.
In ABA we are focused on the theory that all behavior occurs to either gain access to something or escape something. We call this the “function” of a behavior. When behavior is effective in gaining the identified function, we would say that the behavior has been reinforced. Behaviors that are being reinforced are more likely to occur again because it is meeting the needs of the individual. The environment is essential in determining the function of a behavior. How others are responding to an individual’s behaviors can tell us a lot about the hypothesized function of that individual’s behavior.
Let me give you an example to help explain this concept.
Joey is 5 years old. His mom just made a batch of fresh chocolate chip cookies. Joey asks his mom if he can have a cookie. She tells him he cannot have a cookie now but that they are for after dinner. Joey begins to cry and scream and hit his mom. She tells him if he stops crying and hitting, he can have one cookie, but the rest of the cookies are for after dinner. Joey immediately stops hitting her and crying. Mom gives him the cookie and he smiles and eats his cookie then goes and plays with his toys.
In this scenario, Joey did not receive access to the cookie when he asked for it therefore, he engaged in crying and hitting. He was then given a cookie. We can predict that the next time he is told he cannot have a cookie he will begin crying and hitting so he can get a cookie. We would say his behavior served the function of gaining access to the cookie.
On the other side of things, Mom’s behavior can also be analyzed. When Joey began crying and hitting her, she wanted to get away from that situation and therefore she gave Joey a cookie. In giving Joey a cookie, she was able to escape this challenging situation. We could predict that the next time Joey begins crying and hitting her when told he can’t have something, she will likely give him the item to get him to stop crying and hitting her.
Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy intervention should focus on the principles of reinforcement. Interventions should focus on reinforcing appropriate behaviors to help teach replacement behaviors for the behaviors identified for reduction. The goal of all programs should be to decrease the need for additional external reinforcement. At times programs may need to directly address decreasing behaviors of concern. In the field of ABA, we use the term “punishment” to describe what happens when a behavior demonstrates a decrease. Punishment procedures should only be utilized after all reinforcement-based interventions have been tried. All interventions are defined as reinforcement or punishment based on the effect, they have on the behavior rather than on how they are typically viewed by society. For instance, “time-out” is typically viewed by society as a “punishment” for engaging in “bad” behavior. In ABA we will ask, “what effect does time out have on the behavior?”. In some cases, time out may be increasing or reinforcing the behavior because the individual is attempting to escape a task or situation. In other cases, time-out may be effective in decreasing that individual’s likelihood to engage in that behavior again because they don’t want to have to leave the activity or item they were engaged in.