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Skill Acquisition
What is it: Skill acquisition refers to teaching new skills. It is sometimes referred to as a program,
treatment plan, or skill acquisition plan. The essential components of a skill acquisition plan include a
description of the target skill being taught, materials needed for teaching, prompting strategies to be
used, the consequences for correct or incorrect responding, mastery criteria, reinforcement strategies,
and plan for generalization and maintenance. If you are working with an ABA professional, you may
already be familiar with many of these terms.
Why is this important: Even if you are working with an ABA team or other therapists/professionals to
help teach your child a variety of skills, parents still can benefit from an understanding of effective
teaching methods. The Speech Therapist, BCBA, or even your child’s teacher can’t possibly teach your
child everything they need to know about life. As a parent, learning about skill acquisition can be a
lifelong source of help across all your children, not just your child with Autism.
Will this be an easy or simple process: No. It takes professionals many years to learn how to effectively
teach based on how the learner learns best. Much of the information available about teaching,
instruction, Autism learning profiles, etc. may be aimed at professionals and not at parents. For this
reason, the typical parent may find the information difficult to access or understand. This is why
consultation from a BCBA that includes intensive parent training is recommended. Also keep in mind
that hitting certain “trouble spots” during instruction is not unusual, and professional assistance will be
needed for troubleshooting issues such as lack of progress, progress is rapid but suddenly halts, lack of
generalization, etc.
Can I print this handout and then be knowledgeable enough to teach my child with Autism any new skill:
No. This handout is a brief overview of how skill acquisition could possibly occur. The best learning is
always individualized; therefore, it is impossible to create a document that will apply perfectly to every
child. The information in this handout is a great starting point but should not be viewed as a
comprehensive teaching tool.
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Skill Acquisition Steps:
1. Decide on skill to teach (aka the terminal goal). ABA focuses on behaviors, which means the skill
is observable and/or measurable in some way.
2. Collect baseline data on the skill. Baseline data just means “what does the skill look like right
now, before intervention begins”.
3. Select the teaching methodology based on the specific skill selected. ABA is vast science that
encompasses many evidence -based teaching strategies, such as NATs, DTT, PRT, etc. Each one
will have pros and cons depending on the skill being taught and the learner.
4. Gather reinforcers. If the reinforcer is not valuable to the learner, powerful to change behavior,
and able to be provided immediately after correct responding, then choose a different
reinforcer.
5. Have a solid understanding of prompting, prompt fading, capturing motivation, data collection,
generalization, and skill maintenance. If you do not know these terms, further study and/or
professional assistance will be necessary.
6. Write a program sheet, or skill acquisition plan. The plan should include the SD, Response,
Prompting Hierarchy, materials list, Generalization steps, Mastery criteria, and the terminal goal
must be broken down into small, manageable steps. No terminal goal is completely taught in one
huge bite. Break that terminal goal down into small, discrete, bites.
7. Begin teaching the skill.
8. If issues pop up, seek out troubleshooting assistance.
*Important: Understand that many “simple skills” we perform every day are actually built upon levels of
foundational skills, or pre-requisite skills. No one tries to climb a ladder by placing a foot on the 3rd or
5th rung. We start at the 1st rung and proceed upward one rung at a time. In this same manner, it is
important to teach skills in order, not to skip steps, and to follow a developmentally appropriate teaching
sequence. Failure to do so can cause multiple skill acquisition issues or problems and will likely
confuse/frustrate the learner and irritate/anger the one teaching.
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Here is a sample of a skill acquisition plan:
Program Name: Receptive Common Actions
Objective (The terminal goal combined with mastery criteria): When presented with an action picture
card in a field of 3 cards and given the verbal demand “Give me the one who is ___?”, the child will receptively
identify the correct action card with 80% accuracy for 3 out of 5 consecutive sessions.
Reinforcement (Identify valuable reinforcers to be used): Pair smiles with energetic praise, applause, Dora
DVD’s, bubbles, or chicken nuggets.
Materials Needed: Action cards with no word labels (What materials/items are needed to teach the
program)
Teaching Format: (This is how each active target will be taught) Present the target action card in a field
of 3 cards. State the Sd. If the child receptively labels the correct action card within 1-3 seconds, score a (+) on
the data sheet. If the child does not receptively label the correct action, score a (-) on the data sheet and use least-
to-most prompting to end the trial. Deliver differential reinforcement based on responding.
SD: (The SD is the instruction/demand or situation that will evoke the correct response) “Give me
the one who is _____.”
Response: The child will scan the array of cards, to pick up the correct action card and place it in the teacher’s
hand/hand it to the teacher. Do not accept card throwing or tossing as a correct response.
*Optional to include – Baseline teaching procedure, correction procedure.
Target/Step Date Date Mastered Post Check 1 Post Check 2
Introduced (A post check is
(This is the active going back over
targets list) previously
mastered skills,
for maintenance
purposes. I
recommend at
least 2 post
checks)
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1- Taking a bath
2- Brushing hair
3- Blowing nose
4- Catching ball
5- Brushing teeth
6- Carrying bag
7- Jumping
8- Knocking
9- Reading
10- Riding a bike
11- Sleeping
12- Swimming
13- Drinking
14- Drying hands
15- Eating
16- Flushing toilet
17- Hugging
18- Holding
19- Vacuuming
20- Clapping
Here is a sample teaching drill for the above skill acquisition plan:
Teacher: “Jane, come sit with me”
Child: (child comes to adult and sits down)
Teacher: “Awesome listening, here’s a tickle. Do you want the teddy bear or the bubbles?”
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Child: “Bubbles”
Teacher: “Nice choice, here’s the bubbles”
Child: (child plays with bubbles as the teacher gets materials ready and in place for the teaching trial)
Teacher: (holds out hand) “Teacher’s turn with bubbles”
Child: (child hands over bubbles)
Teacher: “Thank you. (teacher gestures towards action cards) Look here”
Child: (child scans array)
Teacher: “I like your looking. Give me the one who is clapping”
Child: (picks up the action card depicting clapping and hands it to the teacher)
Teacher: “Beautiful! (teacher holds up the correct action card) This one is clapping. Jane’s turn with
bubbles (teacher gives bubbles back to child).”
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