The parents of children diagnosed with autism are challenged with maintaining various roles in their child's life, be it loving caregiver, advocate, or therapist. This book assists parents in achieving a larger role as their child's therapist through the use of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). The author, Shira Richman, has created a series of chapters meant to enhance a parent's ability to promote their child's adaptive functioning, play, and social/communicative skills.
This book begins by reviewing what is currently known about autism and the fundamentals of learning theory and ABA. In the first chapter, "What Is Autism?" the behavioral manifestations of autism, prognosis, history, suspected ideologies, and current behaviorally based treatment methods are discussed. The section of this first chapter reviewing prognosis unfortunately lacks any meaningful discussion of the topic. The author chooses to use this segment as a means to highlight an early study by Ivar Lovaas, who utilized intense one-on-one behavioral intervention to effect significant and stable IQ increases in autistic children. More unfortunate is that mention of this early study does not generate a specific reference in the References and Resources chapter of the book. Suspiciously absent in the section on current treatments is mention of Stanley Greenspan's "Floor Time" approach. Other misrepresentations include describing TEACCH (Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication Handicapped Children) as not "hands-on," and lacking the ability to assess individual progress.
Chapter Two, entitled "Learning Theory and Applied Behavior Analysis" presents fundamental principals of learning theory using specialized terminology and associated methods that comprise ABA. In this chapter various terms and behavioral concepts such as discrete trials, incidental teaching, reinforcement, prompting, generalization, shaping and chaining are defined and explained using real-world examples. The examples provided assist the reader in making sense of, and applying these difficult to understand terms and concepts.
"Structuring Your Child's Free Time" is the title of the third chapter, which offers a wellrounded discussion on the importance of play for the developing child, and how play develops from simple object manipulation to imaginative play. The author then discusses the specific requisite skills that are necessary to achieve these levels of play. Most helpful in this chapter is the section on adapting educational materials to facilitate the instruction of autistic children.
The fourth chapter, "Reducing Maladaptive Behaviors," is a well-written review of the impact of antecedent events and consequences on behavior. The benefits of reinforcement over punishment, and the etiology of maladaptive behaviors are explained in the first half of this chapter. The second half of the chapter focuses on how a functional analysis of a maladaptive behavior can be conducted, as well as strategies that can be utilized to reduce or eliminate