The Effectiveness of ABI: A Review of the Research

A considerable body of research supports the effectiveness of naturalistic teaching strategies for children with disabilities (see, for example, McLean, & Woods-Cripe, 1997; Rule, Losardo, Dinnebeil, Kaiser, & Rowland, 1998; Santos & Lignugaris/Kraft, 1997; Warren & Yoder, 1997; Wolery & Wilbers, 1994. A review of the empirical research specifically related to issues and effects associated with ABI yields a much smaller pool of studies.

Pretti-Frontczak and colleagues (2003) recently provided an annotated bibliography of 16 studies investigating ABI published in peer reviewed journals since 1993. The review reportedly does not include all of the literature related to naturalistic teaching, only studies that address activity-based interventions, embedded instruction, routines-based instruction, or integrated therapy. The outcomes of these studies suggest that ABI is effective in targeting a wide variety of skills such as social skills (Brigman, Lane, Switzer, Lane, & Lawrence, 1999; Kohler, Anthony, Steighner, & Hoyson, 1998), language (Losardo, & Bricker, 1994; Schwartz, Carta, & Grant, 1996), self-help skills (Sewell, Collins, Hemmeter, & Schuster, 1998), group instruction and transition skills (Wolery, Anthony, Caldwell, Snyder, & Morgante, 2002), imitation (Venn, Wolery, Werts, Morris, DeCesare, & Cuffs, 1993), counting (Daugherty, Grisham-Brown, & Hemmeter,), play and academic engagement (Fox & Hanline, 1993; Malmskog, & McDonnell, 1999), and attending, listening, and behavior ratings (Brigman, Lane, Switzer, Lane, & Lawrence, 1999).

Additionally, at least one study suggests that embedded instruction resulted in fewer errors in learning for target children (Chiara, Schuster, Bell, & Wolery, 1995 Further, Horn and her colleagues (Horn, Lieber, Li, Sandall, & Schwartz, 2000) reported that teacher embedded learning opportunities resulted in increased use of target skills for five children. Pretti-Frontczak and Bricker (2001) were interested in identifying how and when teachers were using embedding strategies in ABI settings. They found that teachers were more likely to use embedded instruction during 1:1 teaching episodes, when working on language or preacademics with the aid of instructional materials or manipulatives. In an alternating-treatment design, Losardo and Bricker (1994) compared the effectiveness of ABI and direct instruction on acquisition and generalization of verbal labels. Results suggest that while children learned the target labels with both approaches, acquisition appeared to be enhanced by direct instruction while spontaneous occurrences (generalization) was greater for the words learned during the ABI treatment phase.

Pretti-Frontczak and her colleagues (2003) also provide an annotated bibliography of recent literature intended to “bridge the gap between research to practice” (p. 1), consisting of 14 journal articles, 3 books, 4 book chapters, 2 research monographs, and 7 federal research projects related to ABI. A review of the literature suggests that activity-based intervention is gaining support as an effective instructional approach for young children with and without disabilities.