Applied behavior analysis is a perfect fit to reinforce the challenges of autism. Maybe due to its ability to address tailored teaching strategies that revolve around one’s interests, needs, and strengths. Natural Environment Teaching has become a part of this approach.
Natural Environment Teaching (NET), a crucial part of ABA therapy, is a personalized training method. It works on the notion that a child can be best nurtured and taught in their natural environment. It uses the built-in learning opportunities one can find throughout common life scenarios. Unlike in traditional formats, here, Behavior Analysts use familiar environments and play as the point of action.
This opens numerous possibilities for a child’s behavioral development. Read this blog to gain deeper insight into the insides of Natural Environment Teaching.
Natural Environment Teaching: An Overview
NET aims to intervene in real-life situations and settings relevant to your little one’s life. When incorporating it, the behavior analyst needs to focus on certain principles. These approaches focus on skill independence and generalization.
NET can affect the way a child grows and learns. A study has shown a notable difference in the behavior of the children receiving it with other learning approaches.
At BehaviorSpan, we cater to NET as a part of ABA for autism in Denver, Colorado. We center on creating a nurturing space for children with autism spectrum disorder. In the coming section, let us walk you through the key principles upon which we offer NET at our learning center.
Principles of Natural Environment Teaching
Natural Setting
Just as the term describes, Natural Environment Teaching focuses on a natural setting as the base for training. This approach helps develop and retain the additional skills due to their connection with daily routine. For example, if the child can correctly ask for the child, their reward is to be able to play with it.
Child-Driven Approach
When offering autism therapy services, we implement a child-led approach. This lets us create learning opportunities for the child while keeping up with the child’s preferences and interests. The role of a behavior analyst is to leverage the child’s curiosity in the learning process so that the learning can be more motivating and rewarding.
Generalization
The training focuses on letting the child enhance their skill in real-life scenarios. It enables the child to practice these skills in different settings and situations. Generalization is a crucial part of Applied Behavior Analysis. It also aims to bring long-term retention of the therapy and behavior changes brought through it.
Prompting and Prompt Fading
In NET, the trainer uses prompts to guide the child or to modify their behavior initially. However, as the child learns, the prompts are used less and less. As an outcome, the child becomes more independent and self-reliant. This also helps them master these skills better regularly and without constant intervention.
Incidental Learning
Incidental learning refers to training without any intention or objective. It can be put into use for children from 2-9 years of age. Its objective is to help children generalize their skills and use them in different situations. It can include processes like observation, repetition, problem-solving, learning from situations, etc.
Functional Skills
The NET focuses on teaching functional communication skills. These can include expressing needs, requesting, commenting, etc. This is a practical approach, which ensures that whatever the child learns during the training can be used further in the processes of life.
Recognizing and Overcoming Barriers
The child’s natural learning environment may have several areas that can hinder it. It’s essential to identify and work on those areas. Many children might face challenges with communication, and the behavior therapist aims at leveraging, maybe, visual aids, hand gestures, and other possible ways to communicate.
Data Collection and Analysis
Regardless of how streamlined natural environment setting is one which the NET works on, the training process keeps data collection as a part of it. Behavior analysts keep a record of the child’s progress. This keeps up a constant assessment, which lets the analyst alter the training strategies accordingly.
Implementing Natural Environment Teaching
Bringing notable behavior changes is a goal that centers on autism therapy services. Here is how we work to implement NET to ensure that:
Creating Learning Opportunities
A major part of NET is creating learning opportunities. Since it follows a natural setting, everything must be centered around that. The situations to take advantage of can include everyday instances. The therapists focus on the child’s interaction with peers or let them participate in group activities.
Collaboration with Family
We ensure to successfully implement NET by coordinating and collaborating with the child’s family. This focuses on the child’s interests, daily activities, and routines. So that all of these can be used for learning and therapy stays aligned with what’s planned.
Supervision
We have trained and certified behavior therapist analysts to create training opportunities. This includes everything from creating the ideal naturalistic learning to leveraging appropriate prompting and strategies. After all, a team of experienced professionals following an ongoing training approach is crucial.
Individualized Approach
We believe that every child is different, and so are their learning abilities and styles. That’s why we follow an individualized approach with strategies altered for every child. As a result, we get the maximum outcome from an effective intervention for your little one.
Final Thoughts
Natural Environment Teaching is one of the many teaching approaches making up the autism therapy services. It is centered around letting the children learn new skills without stepping into a new learning environment. The activities needed can be anything they enjoy. Along with the behavior analyst, parents and caregivers can also participate in delivering the NET to the children with autism spectrum disorder.
In this post, we have given a glimpse of what comes with NET. The other areas covered also included the principles surrounding the learning methodology. It includes providing children with a natural setting, a child-driven approach, and generalization. The child receives appropriate prompts at the beginning of the learning, which are withdrawn after being learned. Other principles include incidental learning, functional skills, and data collection.
Additionally, the post walked the reader through the process through which we implement NET. This includes creating appropriate learning opportunities (in addition to the space), collaborating with family and caretakers, and supervising the entire process.
At BehaviorSpan, we have been providing NET with other learning methods in applied behavior analysis. Our team of experienced and certified behavior analysts stays updated with the most recent ways of training and reinforcement. We believe every child is different. That’s why we follow an individualized approach to training each of them.
Above all, we have created our training centers for ABA therapy in Denver to provide the child with the appropriate learning space. From indoors to the playgrounds, this includes everything. We aim to create a nurturing space for children with autism spectrum disorder to thrive. You can reach us today if you, too, aim to create and reinforce the learning space for your child. Get in touch with us today.
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