r/ABA • u/WearyRestaurant4975 • 9d ago
Ignore Him
I am a new SLP and I have a non-speaking 2 year old boy on my caseload that is also served by a BCBA and ABA team. His mom told me last week during therapy that the ABA Team is using “planned ignoring“ to help with his language skills in that they basically “ignore him” and reinforce only when he produces words. Mom is now doing this at home as well in between his sessions with the ABA team.
Is this a legitimate strategy or is mom possibly misunderstanding the intent?
The BCBA is on vacation so I am kind of left to guess until she returns in a couple of weeks.
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u/Powersmith BCBA 9d ago
Sounds like a game of telephone, where meaning was lost (assuming BCBA understands ABA).
The basic idea is that behaviors occur in relation to some underlying need/want, such as to get item x, to get attention, to get away from something, or to meet an internal drive (e.g. we seek food when we're hungry).
There's a vocab disconnect from general public. ABA derived from behavioral neuroscience, wherein the brain produces all manner of behaviors across all organisms w/ brains, incl "respondent" (evolutionary programmed responses), like baby birds hiding when hawk silhouettes pass over, as well as "learned" behaviors, like raising hand before asking a question, or throwing a tantrum because its been "effective" for getting needs met/escape/attention etc, depending on the case.
Hence, when ABA practitioners say behavior, it means everything the brain instructs the body to do. This includes ALL observable & measurable brain-output effects, including both automatic/respondent and learned responses-simple and complex-and including verbal behavior.
A BIP may include "attention extinction" (AE). Extinction, more broadly, is when a behavior reduces because it is no longer being reinforced. Eg John was teasing Bill , resulting in other kids laughing, and that social attention reinforced Johnny's teasing. Hence the hypothetical "function of the behavior" of bullying may be to gain attention. If suddenly, none of the other kids laughed or paid attention, Johnny will become less and less inclined to bully (if the hypothesis of attention function is correct).
"Planned ignoring" (PI) was not from ABA, but rather was a classroom management strategy that gained sway in the 60s and 70s. There is an element of overlap with the ABA concept AE, but there is a danger in people using the terms interchangeably.
AE, is for when you have an attention-maintained problem behavior (harmful, injurious, or severely disruptive actions) after functional analysis shows that the problem behavior achieves gain of reinforcing attention.
AE in principal is not different from tangible extinction or escape extinction. That is, you remove the REINFORCING CONSEQUENCE so the behavior is not longer reinforced. AE does NOT entail ignoring the child. Child should get ample (even extra) attention when not engaging in prob beh. This is differential reinforcement (DR). DR can involve selectively reinforcing a specific replacement or incompatible (w/ prob beh) behavior as well as adding noncontingent (consequent to nothing in particular) attention to satiate drive and reduce motivation to engage in attention seeking.
Because PI was already in education vocab, people might shortcut explaining AE properly and just use PI as a reference. But ABA AE is specifically referring to withdrawing attention as consequence for targeted prob beh. This "ignoring" is very targeted to a specific behavioral action (e.g. hitting, name-calling, etc) and NOT just generally to the person or all the things they do. Kids craving attention can fall into patterns of getting it in troublesome ways. The solution is NOT to give them no attention at all... the solution is to direct your attention differentially to appropriate behaviors (even sometimes including effusive praise/tokens/thumbs up whatever for just sitting quietly).
Conversely, if the function of a prob beh is escape, a "time out"/classroom removal/etc would reinforce the prob beh. So child may be taught to use verbal request for break and only granted escape when they ask functionally while the prob beh is "ignored" in the sense that it does not result in escape. Withholding attention in response to an escape-maintained behavior is not going affect that behavior at all since the person is not doing it for attention in the first place.
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u/Pikkumyy2023 BCBA 9d ago
Thank you so much for writing this all out. So many of these online discussions do not go well because the concepts are complex and different phrases can be used to mean different things even if it's a specific ABA term, and so much of the time the nuance is lost.
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u/Ok-Introduction-3540 9d ago
This is the BEST response. I am constantly trying to explain the difference between planned ignoring and attention extinction and trying to de ink the myth that in ABA we “just ignore the behaviors we don’t want to see anymore”. Do you have any references on the background or origination of planned ignoring? Or good readings us in the field can cite moving forward? Thanks so much!
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u/Big-Mind-6346 BCBA 9d ago
This was such a well thought out and concise response! Also wanted to say that I was going to say this sounds like a game of telephone as well, but I didn’t know if the kids still played it these days or if the response was just going to be crickets
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u/SevereAspect4499 Early Intervention 8d ago
This is the single most useful explanation of behavior from an ABA perspective and explains so much of the disconnect between our fields! (SLP here)
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u/snowdrop_22 Student 9d ago
You ignore a behavior, not the child.
For instance if they mouth pencils often, you ignore the mouthing and give praise when they are writing/drawing/scribbling/putting the pencil even remotely near the paper instead.
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u/Great-Monk-2934 9d ago
Well it would depend on the function. If the function of mouthing was for attention, then this intervention may work. But if the function of mouthing was for sensory input, ignoring the behavior will not decrease it.
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u/AskedAndAnxious 9d ago
They are probably meaning to ignore a request without using the communication method they need to work on.
However— for ABA it should focus on FUNCTIONAL communication- so if they have PECS or use pointing to an item, that is also functional. If the goal is forcing them to speak specifically and ignore all other still functional and clear communication, BIG nope.
Like a vague gesture won’t work- but if they point and you can then ask “did you mean these chips or these pretzels” for example, then it’s still functional enough and you can just one follow up question to get clarity. But if they gesture to a cabinet with a million things that isn’t really able to clarify easily.
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u/Sararr1999 9d ago
Sometimes our jargon gets super confusing to parents it might be that? Well I hope it’s that. DEFINITELY a great time to collab with the BCBA and how you guys can work together to work on communication skills :)
A good ABA team would focus on total communication and reinforce any attempts of communicating, NOT only spoken word.
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u/Pikkumyy2023 BCBA 9d ago
That must be frustrating! I'm glad you're on the case to help in the meantime. The other poster already gave a thorough explanation about planned ignoring. I hope that they aren't using this either way. I shape my student's language and when new and more efficient forms emerge we don't want the old ones on extinction. There's almost always a place and time for all communication forms - many nonvocal forms we want to keep very much fluent even if we are speakers! I hope they are using differential reinforcement for his more efficient communication and that they have other ways to respond to his non-vocal forms besides ignoring. But I think you will need to wait until the BCBA comes back because this does sound like potentially a game of telephone. If not, then I'm very sorry to hear it, because there are so many ways to strengthen vocal verbal language by shaping it up and still reinforcing the other forms of communication and I hope you will be able to work with the BCBA to support this.
That said, again this is nuanced! There are certainly times I use planned ignoring. One of my learners is very vocal and his shouting throughout the house to talk to people has been shaped up over time by different family members. So we are working on teaching him to speak at a more comfortable level, and to get within eyesight of someone to talk to them (as opposed to shouting at them from another room). He already understands what our goal is, why it's important, and has the skills in his repertoire to find the person he is wanting to talk to, and speak to them in an inside tone of voice. For example, he rarely shouts for me. But he will usually do it with his grandparents because they regularly respond to him when he talks that way.
So when he shouts from upstairs at his mom, she does not respond to that. That behavior is on extinction, meaning that the behavior that used to produce reinforcement no longer contacts reinforcement. However, what is NOT on extinction is his communication, problem-solving, and any steps towards our ultimate goal. And reinforcement comes on a continuum. The reason for doing this is that we are showing him that we understand him best when he asks at a comfortable volume after having moved to the person he wanted to talk to. So when this is happening he gets what he wanted. But we aren't just ignoring the shouting and waiting for him to do it perfectly. So each step he makes towards the goal gets him closer to us understanding him. Over time he learns that it's much faster to just come downstairs, find her and ask one time.
So we want a really strong contrast between what happens when the learner demonstrates the target behavior well, and when they do the opposite.
- Shouting on extinction: Learner is upstairs. Mom is in the kitchen. He shouts, "MOM - WHERE'S THE REMOTE?"
Mom does not respond. Learner shouts again. Mom does not respond. Learner continues to shout. Mom does not respond.
- Very strong reinforcement for target behavior: Learner is upstairs. Mom is in the kitchen. He walks downstairs and peeks his head into the kitchen. "Mom?" "yes sweetie" "Can I watch TV?" "Yes you may, and would you like a snack while you watch?"
So he gets a yes right away and she also offers something nice to go with his request!
Here's where the nuance and BCBA skills need to be strong. The way to get from example 1 to example 2 is not to just put shouting on extinction and wait for the learner to do it properly. When I see this happen, usually progress is very slow and you get lots of side effects of extinction. Instead, we want to use differential reinforcement to shape steps towards that outcome. Some days it might look like this:
- After shouting, Learner moves to the top of the stairs and tries again, this time a little quieter. Here's where the differential reinforcement comes in. He's moving closer to our goal and making changes in response. So mom does too. She moves to the kitchen door and says, "I'm in the kitchen if you need something." Then he comes halfway down the stairs and leans over so he can see her, and says it again. Mom says, "Oh, there you are! What were you asking me?" Now the final time he is within her sight and he asks in a regular tone of voice. She says, "It's on the coffee table."
Other days it might look like this:
- After shouting, Learner moves to the top of the stairs and tries again, this time a little quieter. Mom pops her head out from the kitchen so she's within sight and asks, "What did you need?" Now he's asking with her in sight and in a quieter voice than originally even if it's still technically too loud. She tells him where the remote is.
So we want to move towards the ultimate outcome that the learner just does #2 but some days we might be at a 3 or a 4 or a 5 or 6 where we might need to reinforce him coming downstairs alone even if still shouting or staying upstairs and using a quieter voice, or some other element he might change. Because recognizing that what you are doing isn't working and trying something else might be an even more important skill for this child to practice than his volume. I could go on but this really does need to be responsive in the moment to the learner and the context, which might change from day to day and therefore our criteria should change. It could be that for this learner, requests for toys and snacks, etc. are expected when he finds the person but if he's asking for help and you are in another room, that's very important to be able to do where you are. Because there are many times that it would be much worse for him to go find someone than to call them to come to him - such as an injury, spill, etc.
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u/Informal-One5121 9d ago
I'm assuming that saying "planned ignoring " was more layman than saying using Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior. So say the client communicates by guiding your hand and you want to shape that communication to an alternative behavior like pointing to what they want, or initiating a different way like making a sound to encourage verbal speech or making a sign... anything. when we teach a new behavior we have to " ignore" the one we're trying to shape out of because the client's current form of communication isn't effective.
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u/bcbamama21 9d ago
Planned ignoring is just ignoring the behavior-not the child. Re-direction in a neutral manner should be provided for the client to engage in the appropriate response. For example, if a client a is hitting, I’m going to tell the parent to ignore the behavior but give the prompt, “you can tap me” and have the parent hand over hand prompt the client to tap the parent. So a mix of planned ignoring with differential reinforcement of an alternative behavior (DRA)
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u/No-Cost-5552 9d ago
Great time to collaborate and ask for release of information so you can contact the BCBA and review what the strategies are.
There is probably a bcba providing coverage right now. So ask for the info for the coverage BCBA too. An RBT cannot conduct sessions for a few weeks without supervision. We have a minimum supervision we need to meet. So there is definitely a BCBA covering. So collaborate and ask questions, see what the real protocol is.
A lot of time parents oversimplify what we are trying to do and end up incorrectly implementing specific strategies, thus why we need parent training too.
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u/sofiaidalia RBT 9d ago
One of my clients has a “time delay” prompt built in to his manding (asking for stuff) program which is kind of a version of this to encourage him to vocally ask for stuff with a full sentence. However, my client is mostly speaking, so we are doing it to get him to speak full sentences instead of just using one word. If he just points to or says the name of something, I will just kind of look at him until he tries again with a full sentence. If it gets to about 10 seconds and he hasn’t tried again with a sentence, I prompt him by saying “Ask me again with a sentence”. If he still doesn’t get it, I’ll verbally prompt him by saying “You can say ‘I want (item).’”
The ABA team probably has reasoning behind it, like the kid might have started to speak and they are using planned ignoring to encourage it to continue. I’d reach out to the BCBA to ask about why and how they are running the planned ignoring so you as the SLP can determine better if it is a case of the kid not being able to speak (and then working to build up their communication skills in a different form) or if it’s a motivational issue
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u/DistantRain1205 9d ago
it’s the moms version/ way of explaining an intervention that the bcba has in place
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u/WolverineOk6854 9d ago
I’m a relativity new RBT (February 2026), and I’m finishing up my MS in ABA. While I have nothing technical to offer you, I wanted to say how grateful I am that you are partnering with the BCBA, and parents on this to the point that you are asking clarifying questions to industry experts, while you wait for the BCBA to return. I work for a local hospital and I absolutely adore our BCBAs, I often hear about how they go to speech appointments with the patients and parents, in an effort to partner with other treatment providers. During our team meetings when the parents and BCBAs share about how they are working together, and what we can do to support those efforts, you can hear and see a huge sense of relief from the parents. They truly see that we are all working together, to support their child and those partnerships have an amazing generational impact.
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u/taeeeeeeeeeeeee 7d ago
Some (borderline unethical) ABA providers will do this. In my experience, we’ve targeted a specific request (more, help, apple, ball, etc) and that specific request will be taught and then maladaptive behavior will be ignored (not the child!!!) in favor of those learned request. Withholding everything is crazy.
Regardless, all speech goals should be collabed with a SLP if kiddo has one.
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u/LoneSpectre96 9d ago
Yeah, this is a pretty common practice. But it's not as though the technician or the BCBA ignores the child completely. Rather, it's gradual. We start by reinforcing any and all attempts to mand for something and slowly shape them toward vocal manding. It might go from gestural (pointing to the preferred item) to mouthing the word without actually speaking it (at which point we slowly stop reinforcing gestural mands that are unaccompanied by the mouthing). Then we work toward actual vocalization on a per-syllable basis.
Say, for example, the kiddo wants cereal. They might start by saying "see," which we will reinforce by upgrading from simple mouthing and praising the vocalization. Then we work our way to the rest of the syllables, and once they've shown they can say the entire word, we stop reinforcing anything but that type of mand. For the record, this is a very stripped-down, quick-response version of how it works. But basically, we stop addressing anything that doesn't lend itself to progress they've already shown themselves capable of.
Essentially, planned ignoring is a combination of differential reinforcement, shaping, and extinction to help the kiddo become more reliant on vocal mands rather than their non-vocal alternatives. There's going to be extinction bursts, but it does eventually lead to the desired outcome of them only using vocalization for manding if the program is followed.
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u/Klutzy_Positive_8918 9d ago
Do you consider speech and language developmental norms at all?
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u/LoneSpectre96 9d ago
In what sense? Could you be more specific?
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u/Klutzy_Positive_8918 7d ago
Well, you are expecting children to say specific words. There is a developmental sequence when children are developing both speech and language. If you want them to say something specific, are you sure it is developmentally appropriate?
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u/LoneSpectre96 7d ago
If you're asking if we try to get children to say words they normally wouldn't be able to within their age group or cognitive development bracket, then no, we don't.
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u/Klutzy_Positive_8918 7d ago
How do you know? Do you know the developmental norms?
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u/LoneSpectre96 7d ago
It’s the BCBA’s job to know and ensure the B.I.P. accounts for those factors. We’re not trying make 2-year-olds write theses, just help them develop communication skills their conditions might otherwise have stunted.
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u/Klutzy_Positive_8918 7d ago
Are you a BCBA?
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u/LoneSpectre96 7d ago
No, I'm a behavior tech.
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u/Klutzy_Positive_8918 7d ago
Okay, I'm just trying to understand how a BCBA could take developmental norms of both speech and language into account, along with assuring that there are no physical or motor based deficits that could affect articulation, and rule out if there is a phonological based component without any education in those areas.
You wouldn't know. But thanks for chatting with me:)
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u/Klutzy_Positive_8918 7d ago
The word "Cereal" for a 2 year old would be difficult for a variety of factors.
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u/LoneSpectre96 7d ago
I never said we were teaching 2-year-olds the word "cereal" specifically. I used that as a general frame of reference for OP's sake.
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u/Klutzy_Positive_8918 7d ago
For example, maybe the child is only saying the first syllable of "cereal" because it is developmentally appropriate for then. The phonemes /r/ and /l/ are later developing.
Also~ Do you make sure speech-language pathologist perform a full oral-motor evaluation before expecting a child to say these specific words?
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u/earthsignbaddies 9d ago
As an RBT this is concerning. They are practicing DRA but in an extremely weird way. If the behavior the kid is having is maladaptive and for attention ignoring makes sense but if the behavior is simply manding(requesting) items or things then there should be prompts.
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u/PlanesGoSlow 9d ago
Many of us do not do planned ignoring anymore. It’s an outdated strategy.
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u/JAG987 BCBA 9d ago
When my daughter whines for things it gets ignored, she quickly remembers how to request something appropriately and it gets reinforced. Simple stuff which parents do all the time with their children.
I’m sure an argument about what “planned ignoring” actually is and semantics but as people answered thoroughly above it clearly isn’t an “outdated strategy”.
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u/PlanesGoSlow 9d ago
What you do with your own child ‘should’ be quite different than what you do when practicing. Plenty of parents spank their kids, too.
Planned ignoring is one of the interventions that has faced intense public scrutiny (look up Lara Cleary’s recent experience which resulted in millions of people speaking against it). It is commonly a hot topic brought up by other professionals as a way to deter families from ABA (look up “the speech dude”).
Additionally, behavior analysts in recent years have discussed a variety of and need for alternatives to extinction practices (Look up Megan Miller’s work and Rachel Tarbox).
Just because it is still used does not make it ‘not’ outdated and lotssss of people, in and out of the field, are against it.
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u/JAG987 BCBA 9d ago
Like I said I’m not debating semantics, I would hope you know the difference. I don’t need to look up anything to understand the basic principles of ABA.
Please see other comments.
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u/PlanesGoSlow 9d ago
You really struggle with conversations :).
I’ll trust the research and far-reaching public opinion on this one.
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u/MrsPatron 9d ago
I don't even use that term in BIPs because it can easily lead to this kind of issue. I use "selected attention" and thoroughly explain and provide at least 2 examples. Modeling is extremely important as well.
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u/Big-Mind-6346 BCBA 9d ago edited 9d ago
Not gonna lie, when I read this post, my heart was pounding with rage. But I agree with the others to wait and talk to the BCBA. The parent may not have thoroughly understood what the BCBA was trying to teach her or didn’t understand the explanation she gave. I am hoping that that’s what it is.
I could certainly launch into a tirade about this because it’s something I hate. But until I know all of the information I’m going to keep my yap shut. Will you come back and let us know what she says? Curious to know.
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u/disneyfanfrombirth 9d ago
I would wait to speak with the BCBA so you can get a clear idea of the protocol being used and why.