The field of early intervention for young children
with disabilities has evolved since the 1970s as a synthesis of the
principles of early childhood education, special education, applied
behavior analysis (ABA), developmental psychology, and speech-language
pathology (Bricker & Cripe, 1992). The past decade has witnessed
a number of challenges to early intervention practitioners and family
members as they attempt to identify the most effective instructional
approach for young children with disabilities, including children with
autism, given the mandate for placement “in the least restrictive
environment” (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 1997).
Debate among researchers in the early 1990s (Carta, Atwater, Schwartz,
& McConnell, 1991; Johnson & Johnson, 1992) threatened to divide
the fields of early childhood education and early childhood special
education because of perceived differences in how to interpret the principles
of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) (Bredekamp, 1987) as they
applied to children with disabilities in inclusive settings. DAP is
a set of guiding principles for assessment and curriculum development
for children birth to eight years of age based on a child-centered philosophy.
Special education researchers have challenged DAP as a necessary but
insufficient framework for many of the children with special needs who
now belonged in inclusive settings. It soon became clear that preschool
teachers skilled in child-centered practices would need training in
the use of adult-mediated instructional strategies to address the individual
needs of children with disabilities in their classrooms.
One attempt at integrating
the methodologies of these diverse fields into a cohesive intervention
approach resulted in a transdisciplinary model known
as Activity-Based Intervention (ABI). Historically, ABI originated with
Diane Bricker and her colleagues at the University of Oregon. It was
defined in the first edition of An Activity-Based Approach to Early
Intervention (Bricker & Cripe, 1992) as a “child-directed,
transactional approach that embeds intervention on children’s
individual goals and objectives in routine, planned, or child-initiated
activities, and uses logically occurring antecedents and consequences
to develop functional and generative skills” (p. 40). A visualization
of the key elements of ABI appears below.
ABI has been described as a “combination of selected
strategies found in early childhood and behavior analytic approaches
and shares many theoretical and philosophical underpinnings with DAP”
(Novick, 1993, p. 405).
The purpose of this lesson is to (a) describe the elements
of ABI and its potential benefit for young children who are at risk
or who have disabilities, (b) review the existing literature regarding
the use of ABI with young children with autism, and (c) provide resources
for practitioners and family members who want to learn more about using
an ABI approach to early intervention.
