3 Underrated Clinical Super Skills for BCBAs to Develop
I’ve been reflecting on information that I wish I knew when I started as a clinician in ABA, and it’s actually been a lot of fun. In doing so, I also realized that there is a TON of clinical information a BCBA needs to process and integrate so that they can be successful. However, some things do put them a little further ahead of their peers.
I want to talk about three “underrated” clinical areas that BCBAs could improve on. I found myself in a conundrum though. The term “underrated” implies that these skill areas have been overlooked, forgotten about, or cast away by our field in general.
This is certainly not the case with what I’m going to talk about. Sometimes “underrated” means “not talked about enough.” In fact, these “underrated” clinical areas are given some or even a lot of attention in our coursework.
For our purposes today, “underrated” will refer to three clinical skill areas that I think can’t be revisited enough when considering our needs as ABA clinicians.
What are they?
The ability for a BCBA comprehend and recognize motivators on a variety of levels. See what I mean? I’m not blowing your mind with cutting edge information here. But, take a minute to really appreciate this skill area. Reinforcement is what drives our programming—it’s what motivates our learners. The ability to understand and recognize when a client is motivated is incredibly important. I’ve seen this countless times. A learner’s program isn’t seeing progress so the BCBA jumps the gun and changes the program or discontinues it. In reality, however, the errors that the learner was experiencing may have been related to them not attending/being motivated to perform the task in the first place. Understanding when attention and motivation are lacking is imperative when making clinical decisions.
BCBAs should gain fluency in more areas than just conducting preference assessments. There are a variety of deeper questions we should be able to answer about each of our learners, as well. Can we recognize the exact behaviors that indicate when our learners are (or are about to be) motivated and/or distracted? What about on a deeper level? Do we know that a tummy ache and a poor night’s sleep might change the value of their favorite things to them? Do we understand that the trauma that a child experienced in the past probably means that structure, predictability, and safety might be highly reinforcing to them? And, do we use this information to educate ourselves on what to teach going forward?
If you know their reinforcers, you know the child. If there were ever a skill that a BCBA needed to learn—and needed to get really good at—it’s the ability to understand that reinforcement exists beyond iPads and Goldfish crackers…and on levels that are far deeper that we may presently imagine.
Do yourself a favor. Start thinking about how a reinforcer isn’t simply a thing in the immediate environment. Instead, it can be a person, a place, a conversation, a game or activity, a schedule, a timeline, a major event, and much more.
The ability to comprehend and select skills that are most valuable to the learner. I’ve spoken about this frequently. In ABA, we have a lot of great assessments. Some of them measure a learner’s progress by verbal operant. Others look at basic daily living skills to measure progress. Neither are unimportant—in fact they are both necessary. But they aren’t everything.
Every learner is different, which means every treatment plan needs to be, as well. Developing your ability to recognize which skills are the most important for that learner will take you (and them) places. Two big ways you can do this is through assessing the quality of life of your learner and their immediate environment. Build skills that the learner can use—right away—once they’re mastered that makes their life better. The Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale is a great resource.
Another (that could be feasibly be a #4 in this article—thank you Dr. Kristen Byra) is to develop your ability to recognize which skills are behavioral cusps. Remember going over that in your exam prep? These are skills that function as a first of many dominoes to topple over in terms of important skills. These are the skills that make a lot of other skills possible. For example, sidewalk safety, toileting, and the ability to charge and make calls on a smartphone can drastically change the trajectory of an individual’s life. But, if you want to spend all of your time teaching them to label the critical features of a tarantula, that’s cool too, I guess. *Sarcasm*
The ability to run a component-composite analysis. Yeah, man. Here I am again talking about component-composite analysis. But, I’m not clowning when I say that a firm grasp on component and composite skills in regard to instructional design will take your clinical decision making to new heights. If your learner is struggling with a program, it allows you to quickly scale a program back to work on a skill that is at their level. If they’re making rapid progress, it allows you to move on to the next steps quickly. The best BCBAs generally know that every skill consists of a lot of smaller skills. They also know that the skill they are targeting is part of a larger skill set for more advanced behavior (and they know what those behaviors are). Go here and here for more.
These three underrated clinical skills deserve our attention and should be discussed more frequently. Recognizing motivators, selecting the most valuable skills, and running component composite analysis are what I believe to be the some of the most important skills a BCBA can master and incorporate into their daily practice with kids. What skills do you think are underrated? I try to introduce information that will help you get “unstuck”. What are your stucks? And what other areas do you want to hear about?
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