The Early Intervention and Preschool Program at The Joshua School is built on principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), a science with over thirty years of research known to increase communication, learning, and appropriate social behaviors. The goal of behavioral intervention is to reinforce and teach desirable behaviors and reduce undesirable ones. An effective treatment program is built on the child’s interests, offers a predictable schedule, teaches tasks in a series of simplified steps and provides regular reinforcement of behavior.

Common targets/skills taught include the following:

• Learning readiness skills
• Pre-Academics
• Communication (receptive and expressive)
• Imitation
• Attention
• Independence
• Compliance
• Gross and fine motor skills
• Daily living skills
• Initiation
• Social Interaction

Within the science of Applied Behavior Analysis, we use the following strategies:

• Naturalistic Teaching Strategies
• Pivotal Response Treatments (PRT)
• Verbal Behavior (VB)
• Incidental Teaching
• Natural Environment Teaching (NET)
• Fluency Training
• Discrete Trial Training (DTT)