We want to highlight the importance of Functional Communication Training, or FCT for short. This is such a necessary aspect of quality ABA Therapy but also day to day life in general.
Do you remember when your mom told you to “ask nicely” instead of screaming when you wanted the piece of candy? She was implementing a version of FCT without even knowing it.
When it comes to ABA Therapy, FCT will play out in the following fashion: Your BCBA will help you identify areas of interfering behaviors that are due to a lack of ability to communicate one’s want/need in an appropriate manner (i.e., saying “I want candy” instead of screaming, stomping and pointing at the candy). Then the BCBA will work with you as the caregiver and the client to find a feasible and appropriate way to communicate the want/need instead of using the interfering behavior. Your ABA Therapy Team will then target this in session to help provide reinforcement each time your kiddo uses the desired method of communication, while withholding reinforcement each time your kiddos uses the undesired method of communication, thus increasing the desired communication and decreasing the undesired.
Functional Communication Training - “an antecedent intervention in which an appropriate communicative behavior is taught as a replacement behavior for problem behavior usually evoked by an establishing operation (EO); involves differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA)” (Cooper et al. 2020)
Differential Reinforcement - “Reinforcing only those responses within a response class that meet a specific criterion along some dimension(s) and placing all other responses in the class on exctinction” The variations of this are: Differential Reinforcement of Alternative Behavior, Differential Reinforcement of Incompatible Behavior, Differential Reinforcement of Other Behavior, Differential Reinforcement of High Rates, Differential Reinforcement of Low Rates, Stimulus Discrimination Training and Shaping. (Cooper et al. 2020)
Differential Reinforcement of Alternative Behavior - This is the process of implementing differential reinforcement by teaching an appropriate alternative behavior/skill/form of communication and rewarding the usage of that alternative behavior, while simultaneously withholding rewards for the undesired behavior typically displayed. (Cooper et al. 2020)
Stimulus Discrimination Training - This is a process of presenting the individual with two different antecedent stimulus conditions and reinforcing when the individual responds to one of the antecedents but not the other. For example, presenting the stimulus of a green light and a red light. Reinforcement would be provided when the individual goes forward on the green light but not when they go forward on the red light. This teaches discrimination between what the green light means/that not every light means go but only the green one. (Cooper et al. 2020)
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