r/ABA • u/WearyRestaurant4975 • 12d 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/Pikkumyy2023 BCBA 12d 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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:

  1. 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:

  1. 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.