 AIM
provides educational, behavioral and
psychological services for individuals with
Autism Spectrum Disorders and other
Developmental Disabilities. We work with
children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum
Disorders and other Developmental Disabilities.
We work with our clients across a variety of
settings, including home, school and the
community. We work with high functioning adults
in individual and group psychotherapy.
AIM is a vendor for the San Diego Regional
Center (SDRC) and a Nonpublic Agency so that we
can offer services for children and adolescents
with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other
Developmental Disabilities referred to us by
SDRC and school districts across the San Diego
County.
 We
adopt an integrative treatment approach in
working with children with ASD and DD. We take
into account that each of these treatment
modalities has strengths and weaknesses and each
of our clients has unique needs. We combine
these treatment modalities in ways that best
meet individual client’s learning and behavioral
needs.
AIM provides a wide range of services including
home, school, and community-based intensive
behavioral treatment, applied behavior analysis
(ABA), social skills groups, parent training,
community in-services, assessments and
psychotherapy. We work hard to provide
comprehensive training for our staff to ensure
that they are knowledgeable and well versed in
working with children with Autism Spectrum
Disorders and other Developmental Disabilities.
The AIM staff members, the Behavioral
Specialists and the Behavioral Tutors are
trained on a wide range of behavioral and
educational treatment modalities, including:
Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)
AIM utilizes Applied Behavior Analysis
(ABA) in treating our clients with Autism
Spectrum Disorder. All treatment modalities
focusing on changing behaviors by analyzing
behavioral output and causal and maintaining
factors fall under the umbrella of ABA. ABA
is used to determine why, how, when, how
long, and where best to increase or decrease
behaviors to improve an individual’s
functioning.
ABA is based on the principles of
Operant Conditioning. Operant Conditioning
postulates the theory that consequences have
an affect on future behaviors. That is, we
modify, eliminate, or decrease maladaptive
or problematic behaviors by changing the
causal and maintaining factors surrounding
the occurrence of the behaviors. We also
modify, increase and improve skill deficits
in the same way.
Behavior
Modification
In everyday life, people modify each
other’s behaviors all the time whether they
are conscious of that or not. In the
clinical setting, when the act of modifying
behaviors becomes systematic and methodical,
it is called behavior modification. Behavior
modification is an effective treatment
modality to address problematic behaviors in
humans and animals. It is used to reduce
maladaptive and problematic behaviors and to
increase skill deficits.
In order to modify behaviors effectively, we
conduct a functional analysis to identify
the why, what, how, when, where, how
frequent and who factors surround the target
behaviors. It is an integral part of
behavior modification that analyzes causal
and maintaining factors relating to the
target behaviors. Additionally, the target
behaviors change over time as the individual
matures and develops therefore functional
analysis helps us to understand the target
behaviors initially and over time.
Once a functional analysis has been
conducted, a behavior intervention plan is
then developed. The behavior intervention
plan incorporates the use of reactive
behavioral techniques to reduce behavior
excesses and proactive behavioral techniques
to improve behavioral and skill deficits.
All good behavior intervention plans have
both a reactive and a proactive component.
We cannot take away behaviors without
teaching appropriate replacement behaviors.
Discrete Trial Training (DTT)
Discrete Trial Training (DTT) is the
first behavioral training modality created
specifically for young children with Autism
Spectrum Disorder. This is a very structured
and repetitive teacher/trainer directed
teaching modality that is based on operant
conditioning. Specifically, DTT breaks down
the target skills into discrete behaviors
and we train each discrete behavior
individually and separately. As each
discrete behavior reaches mastery, they are
chained, shaped, blended or combined into
more complex skills.
DTT is a teacher directed behavioral
treatment modality, so that a wide range of
skills can be taught, such as speech and
language skills, communication skills, play
skills, social/emotional skills, self-help
skills, and motor skills while focusing on
decreasing behavioral excesses, which are
the problematic behaviors.
Pivotal Response Training (PRT)
Pivotal Response Training (PRT) is a
child-centered, play-based behavioral
treatment modality. PRT addresses behavioral
excesses based on operant conditioning and
behavior modification. PRT utilizes ABA
concepts as well to address the target
behaviors and skills. As the name implies,
PRT focuses on teaching pivotal responses
(i.e., core and foundation skills) that will
assist the generalization and development of
other skills and behaviors. The two pivotal
behaviors that PRT targets are:
- Motivation (to learn)
- Responsivity to Multiple Cues
PRT is based on the theory that once the
individual with ASD becomes motivated to
learn and develops attention to multiple
cues in the environment “there will be a
wide spread positive effect on many other
behaviors”. This becomes “an efficient way
to produce generalized improvements in the
behavior” of the individual with Autism
Spectrum Disorder (Koegel et. al., 1989).
Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)
Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)
is a visual system that helps individuals to
communicate their wants and needs. The
primary focus of PECS is to provide
nonverbal and pre-verbal individuals with a
nonverbal communication system. The
secondary focus of PECS is to assist verbal
individuals who have pragmatic difficulties
and help them to create longer, more complex
and appropriate sentence structure.
For nonverbal individuals, PECS helps them
to clearly communicate their wants and
needs. PECS requires the individuals to
physically take an object or a picture
symbol (i.e., photographs or picture
symbols) and give it to another person in
exchange for what they want. For preverbal
individuals (i.e., babbles, makes consistent
speech sounds, but not consistently
utilizing speech for appropriate
communication purposes), PECS helps them to
consistently communicate their wants and
needs as well as provide opportunities to
stimulate verbal language with the use of
the visual cues.
TEACCH
The TEACCH methodology was created
specifically for individuals with ASD.
TEACCH focuses on using visual and
environmental structures to help individuals
with Autism Spectrum Disorder to become
increasingly more independent in their daily
functioning. The TEACCH methodology is
successfully implemented in work training
sites, actual work sites, at schools, and in
the homes of people with Autism Spectrum
Disorder.
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder
experience difficulty interpreting and
predicting their environment so that
transitions and changes within familiar
environments can be extremely stressful for
them. Thus, the use of visual structures,
such as picture/word schedules can help
these individuals transition across
activities, tasks, and locations without
becoming distressed. The environmental
structures include the use of “left to
right” and “top to bottom” visual systems
that help these individuals follow a work
routine to create independence and
self-reliance. The visual system also
decreases the need for them to depend on
another person to help them make transitions
and function in life. TEACCH creates fluid
and visually structured living spaces and
learning and work environments that helps
these individuals become increasingly
independent in their daily functioning.
Social Stories & Comic Strip Conversations
Carol Gray developed the Social Stories
and Comic Strip Conversations to provide
individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder
individualize social skills training to meet
their specific social needs and deficits.
The Social Story and Comic Strip
Conversations are effective way to teach
individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders
social awareness, to problem solve
interpersonal conflicts and to understand
social rules through a story format. These
methods are to write a story or draw a comic
strip that is specific to the client and
his/her problem, dilemma, and the confusing
situation. The individualized stories help
the clients attend to the stories and help
them generalize the information provided in
the stories to their lives.
Intensive Behavioral Speech and Language
Training
There is a natural progression in
children’s speech development that goes from
babbling, to babbling in strings (i.e.,
babbling a slew of different sounds with our
without intent to communicate) with some
recognizable words, to saying single words,
then to two to three word phrases to
sentences. Our goal is to assist the clients
to gradually progress from one phase of
speech development to the next. In order to
so, there are a number of different
behavioral methods and strategies that we
utilize to facilitate speech and language
development, such as through verbal
imitation and pairing movements and visual
cues to promote independent and spontaneous
verbal output.
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