Dr.Mary Barbera: I didn't create the Verbal Behavior Approach, I followed other professionals
in the field.
Namely, Mark Sundberg, Dr. Jack Michael, Dr. Vincent Carbone and many others who've influenced
my ideas about ABA and the Verbal Behavior Approach.
So this will be about the differences between a traditional ABA approach like the [Lovaas
Approach] versus the Verbal Behavior Approach to ABA.
Hi I'm Dr. Mary Barbera, autism mom, Board Certified Behavior Analyst, and best selling
author of the Verbal Behavior Approach, How to Teach Children with Autism and Related
Disorders.
I'm not sure if you know this yet but I recently started a Podcast called, Turn Autism Around
with Dr. Mary Barbera.
I'm going to try something a little bit different, I'm going to keep going with these video blogs
but sometimes I'm going to pull out something from my Podcast and cover it right here on
video for you.
So today I'm going to show you a segment, short segment, but this, these video blogs
will continue on YouTube and if you haven't subscribed to my YouTube channel, you can
do that now, but right now I'm just going to chunk it down and give you a short little
snippet about those differences between ABA and Verbal Behavior.
The addition of the Verbal Behavior Approach is not a different approach, it's an addition,
an extension of Dr. Lovaas' research and it was kind of a parallel, almost pre-dated if
we think about Dr. Michael and his graduate students doing the work in the Verbal Behavior
world in the 1970s.
This didn't just, Verbal Behavior Approach didn't just happen in the last few years,
I mean this has been extensively studied as a parallel but very complementary and a very
much of an extension of Lovaas' work.
I think I had the great advantage of working with both methodologies, with the Lovaas strict
replication site ABA and then moving to a Verbal Behavior ABA approach.
In the beginning it was, it was rough.
Going from something that systematized, that together, that formalized to kind of winging
it and now I think with my book and the work of the Verbal Behavior Project and the extensive
research in the analysis of Verbal Behavior Journal and other journals extending all the
research, I think we're in a much better place to be providing more systematized delivery.
You know, one funny question I get, it's not really funny but, a common question I used
to get more is, "Which is better, ABA or Verbal Behavior?"
That's like saying "Which is better, soda or Sprite, or which is better, religion or
Catholicism?
You see religion or soda are the umbrella terms and then underneath it are the types
of soda.
So I consider the Verbal Behavior Approach as a type of ABA but a really necessary part
of ABA, just like you would add the precision teaching ABA procedure, you know we, I use
precision teaching all the time too, so it doesn't have to be a competition, we just
want to make sure our ABA procedures are as good as possible, are resulting in increasing
language and learning skills and decreasing problem behaviors.
Being stuck with old protocols, not individualized enough, is not going to help kids reach their
fullest potential.
My goal for every client, or even for my typical son or any typical kids out there, is that
they each be as safe as possible, as independent as possible, and as happy as possible.
I think we can do that by implementing Verbal Behavior Procedures and collaborating and
training and working with parents to make home, school, community, everything merge
so that children are making gains in all areas and are reaching their fullest potential in
all areas.
I don't see that when people stick to a certain methodology at school only that's pretty secretive
about what you're doing and how it's working, and so I think the Verbal Behavior Approach
that enables being commercially available, and now the VB mapping commercially available,
I think is, has done a real service to helping kids because its gotten procedures and techniques
available to parents who are a huge stakeholder in this and are usually the biggest advocates.
Overall, in summary, there are key differences between a Lovaas ABA Approach and a Verbal
Behavior Approach.
With the Verbal Behavior Approach we focus right away on expressive language and we do
it based on the verbal [inaudible], with an assessment, careful programming.
There's a heavy focus on pairing and manding and wanting kids to want to be with us, to
want to run to the table, not to get away from us.
We use errorless teaching, not a no, no prompt procedure, which used to be, I'm not sure
if that's still what the Lovaas Institute uses but we use an errorless teaching approach
so there is less stress because there is less errors and we use individualized Verbal Behavior
Assessments so each assessment is, we take a look at strengths and needs and we really
analyze language to the fullest extent possible.
There's also, usually with a VB Approach we use cold probe data instead of trial by trial
data so there's usually a lot less data collection and more time for teaching.
Those are some of the key differences, I'm sure I missed some and I wholeheartedly agree
that we need more research and on the use of the Verbal Behavior Approach.
I would encourage researchers who might be listening to collaborate with both practitioners
and parents who are reporting good transformations because like myself and other practitioners
may not have the time and the resources to do controlled research and we need to build
a village to help get the research done so that everyone's ABA treatment can be as good
as possible.
I hope you enjoyed that short little clip about the differences between traditional
ABA and the Verbal Behavior Approach and I hope that you'll check out my Podcast at marybarbera.com/podcast
where you can listen to all the episodes that have been recorded so far.
If you like what you hear, I would love it if you would subscribe to my Podcast, leave
me a rating and review and share the Podcasts so other parents and professionals of toddlers
through young adults can benefit.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you right here next week.