10/08/2026
Another Great Example of ABA in Action!
This month, ABA Results Supervisee Mariela Salgado completed her experimental design project as part of her BACB supervised fieldwork experience, and her project highlights an important distinction in medically necessary ABA treatment.
ABA is not being provided simply to teach basic hygiene or toilet training.
Instead, ABA can address the ASD related behavioral deficits and maladaptive behaviors that interfere with a child’s ability to participate in an age appropriate toileting routine, while caregivers receive training to continue and generalize those skills outside of treatment.
Mariela worked with a four year old child diagnosed with ASD who demonstrated aversion to the bathroom and high intensity maladaptive behavior during toileting procedures. Rather than forcing the child through the routine, she examined whether shaping could be used to gradually increase the child’s successful approach toward the bathroom while reducing the behavioral barriers associated with that transition.
Using a changing criterion design, Mariela established small, achievable steps toward the ultimate target. The child’s distance traveled toward the toilet served as the dependent variable, while the systematic shaping procedure served as the independent variable.
And the data are pretty exciting!
At baseline, the child remained at the starting location and did not approach the bathroom following the instruction. Treatment then progressed through increasingly challenging criteria. Across 36 trials, the data demonstrated an overall ascending trend, with the child progressing from zero feet during baseline to successfully meeting an eight foot criterion. Mariela’s analysis showed an average increase of approximately two feet every six trials, or about every two days.
That progress represents much more than moving eight feet across a room.
For a child whose ASD related behavioral response makes approaching a bathroom difficult, those eight feet can represent increased tolerance of transitions, reduced avoidance, greater cooperation with an essential daily living routine, and movement toward greater independence.
And this distinction matters.
ABA is not replacing the caregiver’s role in toilet training. ABA is treating the behavioral barriers that may prevent toilet training from being successful.
The BCBA identifies the clinically significant barriers, develops an individualized behavioral intervention, the RBT systematically implements that treatment, data are collected and analyzed, and caregivers are trained to support generalization of the child’s progress into everyday routines.
Mariela’s project also demonstrated why shaping can be such a valuable ABA procedure. Instead of expecting the child to tolerate the entire bathroom routine immediately, successive approximations allowed progress to occur through gradual, measurable changes, an especially important consideration when working with a child demonstrating significant avoidance or maladaptive behavior.
We are incredibly proud of the work our Supervisees are completing at ABA Results. BACB fieldwork should be more than accumulating hours. We want our future BCBAs learning how to select experimental designs, operationalize variables, graph and visually analyze data, evaluate treatment effects, recognize limitations, and use those findings to make thoughtful clinical decisions.
Great job, Mariela! Eight feet on a graph. A much bigger step toward independence in real life.
