The effectiveness of applied behavior analysis program training on enhancing autistic children's emotional-social skills.
Eight short individual ABA sessions twice a week improved social-communicative skills for institutionalized boys with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Du et al. (2024) tested eight one-hour ABA sessions given twice a week. The kids were boys living in a care center who had autism.
Staff ran the sessions one-on-one. A second group of boys got no extra teaching so the team could compare results.
What they found
The boys who got the short ABA package showed clear gains in talking, playing, and daily-life tasks. The no-treatment group stayed about the same.
The study says the brief program worked even inside an institution.
How this fits with other research
Wang et al. (2013) pooled 115 single-case studies and saw big social-skills jumps, backing the idea that ABA helps. Du et al. now show the same trend with a simple quasi-experiment, so the two pieces fit like puzzle pieces.
Bailey et al. (2000) warned that social gains often fade once the teaching stops. Du’s paper did not track long-term maintenance, so we still need to watch for that fade-out risk.
Chan et al. (2021) and Koh (2024) both found social boosts from exercise, not ABA. Their results look similar on paper, but the method was gym games, not tabletop drills. The shared plus: kids moved more, talked more. The difference: you can stack both tools—drills and exercise—without conflict.
Why it matters
You do not need a 20-hour-a-week clinic to move the needle. Eight focused hours, split into bite-size chunks, can lift social and daily skills for kids in residential care. If you run a group home, school, or day program, try slipping two brisk individual sessions into the weekly schedule and track simple social targets like ‘initiates play’ or ‘asks for help.’ The low dose may still pay off.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study focuses on the potential of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to improve emotional and social skills in children with autism spectrum disorder. ABA is a well-established therapeutic approach that uses behavior modification techniques to encourage positive behaviors and reduce challenging ones. Despite its widespread use, further research is needed to better understand its specific impact on emotional and social development in autistic children. This research aims to investigate an effective method for improving and enhancing institutionalized children’s social, communicative, and daily life skills. The study also examines the impact of behavioral analysis on these children’s social and emotional skills. The research is categorized as applied in terms of objectives and quasi-experimental in data collection. It involves a control group, an experimental group, and a covariance analysis model. The research population consists of 100 volunteer boys aged 4 to 11 residing in institutional care in Wuhan during the year 2023. Among them, 60 individuals were selected and divided into control and experimental groups, each comprising 30 participants. Data for the study were collected using the kindergarten inventory of social/ emotional tendencies (KIST. The applied behavioral analysis program was implemented individually for the experimental group in eight one-hour sessions twice a week. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS-24 software and a multivariate analysis of the covariance method. The results indicated that the behavioral analysis program significantly impacts institutionalized children’s social and communicative skills, improving their daily lives (p < .05). The findings of this study demonstrate that the applied behavior analysis program significantly improves the social, communicative, and daily life skills of institutionalized children with autism spectrum disorder. ABA interventions, delivered through structured sessions, effectively enhance emotional and social development, confirming its value as a therapeutic approach in institutional care settings.
BMC Psychology, 2024 · doi:10.1186/s40359-024-02045-5