Hi I'm Dr. Mary Barbera, autism mom, BCB A-D and author of the Verbal Behavior
Approach: How to Teach Children With Autism and Related Disorders which was
published in 2007 so it's more than a decade old now. In my 2007 book I talk,
which actually I wrote the book in 2006 it was published in 2007, so when I wrote
the book in 2006 I talked exclusively about the assessment of basic language
and learning skills, otherwise known as the ABBL's which was written by Dr.
James Partington and after Mark Steinberg
in 1998. The ABBL's was not written as a standalone book but instead one of three
books that were written to go together. For many people including me credit the
publication of Dr. Sundberg and Partington's three book collection
including the ABBL's with the creation of the Verbal Behavior Approach. And I
can say that without the ABBL's my son with autism who is now young adult would
not have progressed to the point he is now. And I most likely wouldn't have
become a BCBA either or ever written my book.
I'm therefore eternally grateful to Dr. Sundberg and Partington for publishing
the ABBL's. I used the ABBL's starting in 1999 when my autism friend flew down to
Florida to hear Dr. Vincent Carbone speak and when she came back she told me
about the ABBL's and convinced me that we needed to switch from a Lovaas type
ABA program to a verbal behavior ABA program. As a BCBA
I continued to use the ABBL's until 2008 through my work with the Pennsylvania
Verbal Behavior Project which is now known as the PATTAN Autism ABA Supports
Initiative. In 2006 I had the great opportunity with the VB project to
field-test the verbal behavior milestones assessment and placement
program otherwise known as the VB-MAPP which was
written by Dr. Mark Sundberg and was published in 2008. We began switching
over from the ABBL's to the VB-MAPP actually in 2006 when we were field
testing it and officially switched over to the VB-MAPP only in 2008. This awesome
assessment and curriculum guide was published by avbpress.com and for
several years there's also been a wonderful electronic version of the VB-MAPP
which is available at vbmapapp.com Here's a few reasons why I love
using the VB-MAPP; not only for toddlers and very young children but also for
older children and teens with severe language impairment. First of all Dr.
Mark Sternberg created the VB map first starting with milestones of where
typically developing infants and toddlers gain language, social and play
skills. So was crafted based on typical development. The assessment was also
field tested with more than a 150 infants and toddlers typically
developing and dozens of kids with autism. I love how it's set out so that
the VB-MAPP has three distinct levels. VB-MAPP level one is typical development of
a zero to 18 month old child. Level two is that of an eighteen month to thirty
month child and level three is 30 months to 48 months. So some people say:
"Oh well that's great for little kids but you know when a child becomes a teenager,
no matter where their language is at, we need to get more functional." I
disagree with. I think the most functional thing you can do for an older
child or a teen with little to no language is to complete a VB-MAPP
assessment and I use it all the time. The second reason I like the assessment
and use it every day, is that unlike most other assessments
that I'm familiar with, the VB-MAPP looks at not only good pro-social behaviors like
language and play skills that we want to encourage, but it also looks at the
"bad problem behaviors" or barriers with a whole separate barrier
assessment. I find especially when we used to use the ABBL's, we were just
trying to fill up the boxes as hard as we could and meanwhile the child's
behavior was becoming more and more problematic. With the VB-MAPP we can look
at where the barriers and problem behaviors are happening, look at where
the milestones, get those problem behaviors down while we build the
milestones up. So the barriers assessment is definitely one of the reasons I love
the VB-MAPP. Once the VB-MAPP is completed, the boxes can be added up so the child
can get a score both in the milestones as well as the barriers and the
electronic version of the VB-MAPP automatically fills in the boxes and
creates the score. This is great for objective use for pre and post scoring
of the child's progress and is appealing to researchers as well. I find that the
practitioners who use the VB-MAPP are more likely to develop balanced programs
with an emphasis on pairing amending and improving a child's deficits without
further splintering skills or creating new and more severe problem behaviors.
The VB-MAPP contains a transition assessment too - which is helpful when it's
time to decide what level of inclusion in school is most appropriate. The final
reason I love the VB-MAPP is that I find it's relatively easy to administer every
4 to 12 months to measure progress. My early learner and intermediate learner
online courses walk parents and professionals through the VB-MAPP
assessment and programming, and all the procedures within my online courses
focus on measuring language and learning skills measured by the VB-MAPP milestones,
while reducing problem behavior measured by that barrier assessment. For more
information about this awesome tool including research studies utilizing the
VB-MAPP - check out a avbpress.com, marksundberg.com and vbmapapp.com
Thank you very much and I'll see you next week.