Teaching Precurrent Behaviors
The teaching of precurrent behaviors are from an operant perspective behaviors that increase the effectiveness of a subsequent (current) behavior in obtaining a reinforcer (Skinner, 1968). And applies to many areas in teaching children with autism, as well as other children and youths.
As many of the proposed curriculums (e.g. Lovaas, Leaf & McEachin and others) are built to teach precurrent behaviors before more complex skills are thaugt, the difference between a good designed treatment protocol and a not so good designed treatment protocol, may be due to a poor analysis of precurrent skills for the individual child.
Every child receiving ABA-treatment needs individually designed curriculum, and experience shows that there are a great variability in how much teaching each child needs in the precurrent behaviors for the more complex skills in a program. So a good analysis and efficient procedures is needed.
Levingston, Neef and Cihon has published a study in this volume of Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis on the effect of teaching precurrent behaviors on their solution of multiplication and division word problems. As the study shows good effect and efficiency it should be systematically tested out on other areas as well.
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