Ferster and Skinner’s 1957 Book Charted the Schedules ABA Uses to Thin Reinforcement
In one inpatient study, problem behavior returned during schedule thinning in 22 of 24 treatment applications involving 20 patients.
Clinical Practice
Felony Counts for Action Behavior Centers Tech Accused of Assaulting Two Children
Khamara Holmes faces two felony counts for alleged assaults on children. She denies the allegations through her attorney, and the company says she no longer works there.
Five Intake Mistakes That Undermine Your Process And Keep ABA Families Waiting
One operator cut the gap between a family’s first call and the first day of services from about 60 days to under 30 by redesigning the process, not working harder. This article…
B.F. Skinner Series: Reinforcement, Punishment, Extinction, and Shaping in ABA
B.F. Skinner helped explain how consequences change behavior and how reinforcement builds new skills. His concerns about punishment remain relevant, but later research and current ethics standards complicate a simple ranking of…
ABA Therapist Charged With Battery After Video Shows 5-Year-Old Client Thrown Into Shelf
A Johns Creek, Georgia, autism center called a client’s forehead laceration an accident and, the family says, twice declined to show them the surveillance video. The mother insisted, and when the center…
Aveanna Occupational Therapist Charged in Abuse of Autistic Patient
An arrest affidavit reported by KSAT alleges the San Antonio occupational therapist abused a child he had treated since she was four. Twenty-three months passed between her disclosure to a doctor and…
Marcus Autism Center Study Finds 91% Drop in Severe Behavior
Forty children and teens at immediate risk of harming themselves or others took part in Atlanta’s intensive outpatient program, attending five hours a day, five days a week. The study’s results come…
Autistic People Are at Risk in Police Encounters, BCBAs Offer Solutions to Avert Tragedies
Few first responders are trained to recognize autism. (Herbert et al., 2022, pp. 466-480) Behavior analysts are increasingly writing safety plans and training police.
Skinner’s Cumulative Recorder and How ABA Learned to Measure
A pen ticking upward with each response turned the response rate into a picture. That picture, not the group average, shows whether one client’s treatment is working.
The Skinner Box and the Birth of Operant Conditioning
In a Harvard laboratory in the 1930s, Skinner reduced behavior to a lever, a food tray, and a line on a moving drum. The method he built there, behavior measured by its…
NDBIs Are Becoming Best Practice in Early Autism Care
Play-based models like the Early Start Denver Model, JASPER, and Pivotal Response Treatment hold the strongest randomized-trial record in the field. This shift pulls clinician training, caregiver coaching, and payer expectations along.
B.F. Skinner’s Dark Year and the Turn to Behaviorism
Robert Frost told him he had the touch of art. Two years of failed fiction later, Skinner traded the novel for a laboratory, on a conviction that still anchors how behavior analysts…
B.F. Skinner’s Boyhood of Building and Tinkering in Susquehanna
Long before he built the operant chamber, Skinner was a small-town boy rigging carts, berry sorters, and homemade machines. The instinct behind those gadgets, fix the problem by changing the conditions, became…
How the Work of B.F. Skinner Still Shapes Every Modern ABA Therapy Practice
He never treated a child or ran a clinic. Yet the reinforcement on every behavior plan, the graphs on every data sheet, the language programs in autism care, and the foundations of…
ABA Team Collaboration is Ideal but Billing and Regulatory Structures Undermine its Achievement
The industry says collaboration is the backbone of effective therapy. The billing codes do not reimburse it, the turnover data suggest it barely exists, and payers are now auditing whether it happens…
Tim Vollmer’s Lab Revolutionizes ABA Clinics Nationwide
The University of Florida professor's research underpins essential ABA practices, shaping the future of behavior analysis across the country.
Hopebridge Showcases Innovations at CASP 2026 Conference
The provider's CCO led key workshops on outcomes measurement and treatment intensity, while teams addressed ethics and cultural humility in leadership.
New Meta-Analysis Reveals ABA’s Strong Impact on Language Skills
A comprehensive review of 25 studies highlights significant gains in receptive language for children with autism through intensive ABA interventions.
ABA Clinics Shift Away from 40-Hour Treatment Model
New research challenges long-held beliefs about therapy hours, prompting a reevaluation of treatment efficacy and insurance practices.
ABA’s Documentation Crisis: Why Session Notes Are the Number One Audit Failure Point—and What Payers Are Doing About It
Across all four completed HHS-OIG state audits of Medicaid ABA payments, documentation deficiencies were the single most common error category. Session notes that lacked specificity, missed signatures, failed to link interventions to…
The Sleep-Autism Connection: Why BCBAs Are Becoming the Default Sleep Therapists for Autistic Children
Research consistently finds that 50 to 80 percent of autistic children experience significant sleep disturbances - a rate far exceeding the general pediatric population. Behavioral sleep interventions are the most evidence-supported treatment…
The BCBA Ethics Code Revision: What Changed, What Didn’t, and What It Means for Practice
The BACB’s 2022 Ethics Code replaced an eight-year-old compliance framework with a principles-driven document that restructured clinician obligations, strengthened supervisee protections, and introduced explicit dignity language for the first time. This is…
Direct ABA Diagnosis: Why Some States Allow BCBAs to Diagnose – and What Happens When They Do
A small but growing number of states have expanded BCBA scope of practice to include autism diagnostic evaluations, a move that expands access in diagnosis-starved regions but draws sharp objections from psychology…
The ABC Academy Model: Can School-Age Bridge Programs Solve the Graduation Cliff?
The ABA industry has built a massive infrastructure for early intervention - but what happens when a child turns five and enters school? For most families, the answer has been a abrupt…
Assent-Based ABA: The Practice Reform That’s Becoming Standard
For decades, ABA therapy operated on parent consent alone. A child’s willingness to participate was treated as secondary. That is changing fast, and assent is becoming one of the clearest fault lines…
Early Diagnosis at 14 Months: What New Research on Infant ASD Screening Means for Early Intervention
The nationwide average age at autism diagnosis is still 47 months. New research shows reliable identification is possible by 14 to 20 months - if pediatricians screen the right way.
How Lorri Unumb Turned Her Son’s Diagnosis Into the Law That Changed Autism Insurance Forever
A DOJ litigator-turned-law-professor wrote a bill at her kitchen table in 2005 because insurance wouldn't cover her son's therapy. Her husband took the laws she passed and made insurers comply with them.…
Linda LeBlanc Came to Action Behavior Centers to Prove What ABA Can Do. Payers Are Starting to Listen
With 130 publications, a former editorship of the field's top journal, and two peer-reviewed studies completed in her first year at Action Behavior Centers, Dr. Linda LeBlanc is constructing something the autism…