Glossary
The words behind the therapy, in plain language
Assessments and school meetings come with a vocabulary of their own. Here’s what the terms actually mean — no jargon defended with more jargon.
The three-term contingency
Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence
Behavior is read in context, never on its own. These three, together, are what explain why a behavior keeps happening — and which part to change.
- A
Antecedent
What happened right before
- B
Behavior
What the person did
- C
Consequence
What followed
Core concepts
- Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)
- The science of how behavior works and how learning happens, applied to teaching real-life skills. ABA breaks a skill into small steps, teaches each step deliberately, and uses measurement to check whether the teaching is working.
- Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence (ABC)
- A way of describing behavior in context: what happened right before (antecedent), what the person did (behavior), and what followed (consequence). Looking at all three helps explain why a behavior keeps happening and what to change.
- Reinforcement
- Anything that follows a behavior and makes that behavior more likely next time — praise, attention, a favorite activity, or simply succeeding at something. Reinforcement is how new skills get strong enough to last.
- Baseline
- A record of how a skill or behavior looks before teaching starts. Baseline is the comparison point that makes later progress measurable rather than a matter of impression.
- Data collection
- Recording what happens during sessions — how often a skill occurs, how much help was needed, how long something lasted. Charted over time, this data shows whether a plan is working and when to change it.
- Generalization
- Using a skill outside the situation where it was taught — with different people, in different places, with different materials. A skill that only appears in therapy sessions has not yet generalized.
- Maintenance
- Keeping a skill after formal teaching on it has stopped. Programs check maintenance periodically so mastered skills do not quietly fade.
Teaching methods
- Task analysis
- Breaking a complex skill — handwashing, getting dressed, solving a word problem — into the sequence of smaller steps it actually requires, so each step can be taught and measured on its own.
- Prompting
- Any help given so a learner can succeed at a step: a gesture, a model to copy, a spoken hint, or hand-over-hand guidance. Prompts make early success possible.
- Prompt fading
- Gradually reducing help as a learner becomes more capable, so the skill ends up belonging to them rather than depending on an adult. Fading is planned from the start, not improvised.
- Discrete trial teaching (DTT)
- A structured teaching format built from short, clear learning opportunities: an instruction, the learner's response, and immediate feedback. Useful for building precise skills that need many practice repetitions.
- Natural environment teaching (NET)
- Teaching during everyday activities and play, following the learner's interests rather than a table-top drill. Often used alongside structured teaching so skills show up in real situations.
- Multi-modal learning
- Teaching the same goal through more than one channel — movement, play, visuals, and conversation — so a learner gets several ways to practice it and instruction stays engaging. (A practice description rather than a formal behavior-analytic procedure.)
Assessment & language
- Functional behavior assessment (FBA)
- A structured process for working out what a challenging behavior accomplishes for a person — escape, attention, access to something, or sensory input. Knowing the function is what makes a support plan effective rather than merely restrictive.
- Mand
- A request — asking for something you want, by any means: speech, sign, a picture, or a device. Mands are often an early priority because they give a learner a reliable way to influence their world.
- Tact
- Naming or commenting on something in the environment — "dog," "that's cold" — rather than requesting it. Tacts build the vocabulary behind conversation.
People, school & services
- Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA)
- A graduate-level clinician certified by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board to assess behavior, design individualized programs, supervise their delivery, and evaluate progress with data.
- Registered Behavior Technician (RBT)
- A paraprofessional trained and certified to deliver behavior-analytic services under the ongoing supervision of a qualified behavior analyst — usually a BCBA. RBTs often provide much of the direct session time in an ABA program.
- Individualized Education Program (IEP)
- A written plan, developed with a US public school, setting out a student's educational goals and the services and accommodations the school will provide. An IEP is a school document, separate from a private therapy plan, though the two should align.
- Learning pod
- A small group of learners taught together, keeping individualized goals while adding the peer interaction a one-to-one setting cannot provide.
- Telehealth
- Delivering instruction, program supervision, or caregiver coaching over secure video instead of in person. Frequently used for parent training, because it reaches the home routines where skills matter most.
Have a term you’d like explained?
Ask us. Understanding your child’s program is part of the work, not an extra.