ABAT Competency Standards
Domains
A. Autism Core Knowledge
1. ASD and common characteristics and deficits
2. Autism as a spectrum disorder with a triad of primary impairments
3. ‘Red flags’ used in early diagnosis
4. Risk factors to autism spectrum disorder
5. Terminology associated with diagnosis, such as pragmatic language, receptive and
expressive language, sensory-motor, social skills, joint attention, sterotypy.
6. How and when diagnosis disorders commonly associated in differential diagnosis, such as
learning disabilities, processing disorders, etc.
7. Identify co-morbid disorders associated with ASD
B. Legal, Ethical, and Professional Considerations
1. Scope and role of practice for the ABAT
2. QABA code of ethics, policies and procedures
3. Limitations of confidentiality
4. HIPAA
5. Advocacy and collaborative approach to intervention
6. Identify the following acronyms: IEP, IDEA
C. Core Principles of ABA
1. Basic assumptions in behaviorism and behavior modification
2. Classical and operant conditioning, conditioned and unconditioned reinforcement and
punishment
3. Three-part contingency; antecedents, behaviors, consequences
4. Foundational behavioral terminology including, extinction, extinction burst, spontaneous
recovery, deprivation, satiation, stimulus, discriminative stimulus, stimulus control, responses,
motivation operations, establishing operations, setting events
5. Principles and types of schedules of reinforcement and punishment
6. Contingent and non-contingent; primary and secondary reinforcement and punishment
7. Terms and definitions of Applied Verbal Behavior (AVB)
D. Antecedent Interventions
1. Define and identify positive behavior support systems
2. Premack principle, behavioral momentum, priming, forced choice
3. Identify common environment and visual supports and benefits of each such as, functional
communication training, PECS, TEACCH, social stories, video modeling, visual schedules
QBA Competency Standards 3/20
E. Skill Acquisition Programming
1. Elements of effective goals and objectives
2. Task analysis
3. Types of prompts
4. Prompt dependence and fading
5. Demands and demand fading
6. Pairing
7. Modeling
8. Imitation
9. Verbal operants
10. Memetic behavior
11. Motor behavior
12. Errorless learning
13. Error correction procedures
14. Stimulus control and transfer
15. Transfer trials
16. Discrete trial teaching (DTT)
17. Discrimination training
18. Shaping
19. Backward and forward chaining
20. Natural environment teaching (NET)
21. Generalization and maintenance
22. Pivotal behavior
23. Pivotal response training (PRT)
F. Behavior Reduction Interventions
1. Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP)
2. Name 4 functions of behavior and define FBA
3. Contingency interventions, such as token economy, positive practice, over-correction, response
cost, time out
4. Differential reinforcement procedures: DRO, SRA, DRI, DRL, DRH
G. Data Collection and Analysis
1. Reliability and validity
QBA Competency Standards 3/20
2. Operational definitions
3. Types of assessments: preference, self-monitoring, ABC, environmental evaluation
4. Types of measurement, such as frequency/event recording, duration, time sampling, interval,
partial interval, and latency
5. Continuous and discontinuous; direct and indirect data recording
6. Basic graphs; line, scatterplot, bar
7. Define and identify the benefits of IOA
QBA Competency Standards 3/20
