Applied Behavior Analysis

Applied behavior analysis is the discipline of systematically applying principles of operant conditioning, drawn from B. F. Skinner's experimental analysis of behavior, to bring about socially significant, measurable improvement in specific behaviors. The field was formally established with the 1968 founding article Some Current Dimensions of Applied Behavior Analysis, written by Donald Baer, Montrose Wolf and Todd Risley in the first issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, which they founded the same year. Baer, Wolf and Risley set out seven defining dimensions that a study or intervention must meet to count as applied behavior analysis: it must be applied to socially important behavior, genuinely behavioral and directly measurable, analytic in demonstrating a reliable functional relationship between the intervention and the behavior change, technological in describing procedures precisely enough to be replicated, conceptually systematic in relating techniques to basic behavioral principles, effective in producing a large enough change to matter practically, and general in producing effects that last over time, across settings, or across related behaviors. In education, applied behavior analysis underlies many specific classroom techniques, including discrete trial training, token economies, functional behavioral assessment and shaping, and it is especially prominent in special education services for students with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities, where systematic reinforcement, prompting and data-based decision making are used to teach new skills and reduce interfering behavior.