#1 PFA & SBT Overview and Educational Resources

What’s a PFA or SBT anyways? This introductory guide is a perfect Basic Overview of PFA and SBT to get started learning all about it!

Our Guides are designed to get you started with the many resources we have to offer! Have more specific questions? You can always make a post in our FaceBook Community!

What’s a “PFA” or “SBT” anyways?

In the field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), Skill-Based Treatment (SBT) is a comprehensive and adaptable approach that can be used to treat severe challenging behavior. With a trauma-informed perspective, SBT recognizes the impact of trauma on individuals and integrates this understanding into the treatment process. Additionally, SBT incorporates variable schedules of reinforcement, enhancing the effectiveness and generalization of learned skills.

SBT recognizes the prevalence and impact of trauma on individuals with disabilities and acknowledges that trauma can influence behavior, emotions, and overall well-being. A trauma-informed approach within SBT involves creating a safe and supportive environment that promotes healing, empowerment, and resilience. ABA professionals employing SBT take into account the potential triggers and sensitivities, adapting interventions to ensure that individuals feel safe, validated, and respected throughout the treatment process. This trauma-informed lens allows for a more holistic and individualized approach to skill development and behavior change.

SBT emphasizes the use of variable schedules of reinforcement. This reinforcement schedule is particularly effective in promoting durable behavior change and generalization across various settings. By using variable schedules of reinforcement, SBT helps individuals develop resilience and adaptability in the face of unpredictable real-life situations. The incorporation of variable schedules ensures that learned skills are reinforced consistently over time, preventing over-reliance on predictable reinforcement and enhancing the transfer of skills to natural environments.

Skill-Based Treatment (SBT) in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) stands out as a trauma-informed approach that integrates the understanding of trauma’s impact on individuals. By creating a safe and supportive environment, SBT promotes healing and empowers individuals to achieve positive behavior change and skill development. Moreover, SBT incorporates variable schedules of reinforcement, enhancing the generalization and durability of learned skills across various contexts. This comprehensive approach to SBT ensures a holistic and individualized treatment process, fostering growth, resilience, and long-term success for individuals facing behavioral and learning challenges.

What is “Today’s ABA”?

We recommend you read “A Perspective on Today’s ABA from Dr. Hanley”. You can also watch the ASL version below from Signs of Communication, LLC.

I am feeling overwhelmed, what do I do next?

Everyone learns differently, so you can use this as a model, but obviously there are tons of other paths to take! To be warned, I was very reading heavy at the beginning because I did not want to pay for a course unless I was ready to implement.

STEP 1- Read: https://practicalfunctionalassessment.com/…/a-perspect…/

In order to gain a little bit about the values that the process is built on. Values over procedures!

STEP 2- Read: https://practicalfunctionalassessment.files.wordpress.com…

Seminal article, the basics of what will later be called PFA & SBT. Note the information about synthesized reinforcement & shaping

STEP 3- Read: https://practicalfunctionalassessment.files.wordpress.com…

Understanding, with a specific example, the role of shaping during SBT (note, this paper talks specifically about shaping the FCR but overall is demonstrates micro shaping, something that we do throughout SBT.

STEP 4- Read: https://practicalfunctionalassessment.files.wordpress.com…

Understanding the ways in which we can actively move away from inflicting trauma, note the ways in which 2014 paper did and DID NOT meet these criteria

Formal training: choose your own adventure here, these are both great resources, and have a lot of valuable content.

STEP 5- Select a formal training to take. More information on available options below and in our Training Guide!

STEP 6- At this point you may move into implementation. When you run into a hiccup (which you will) come back here and brainstorm with us! You can post in the group or even DM mods and we are happy to chat back and forth, as well as even consult if needed.

STEP 7- A literal metric TON of info is in the free guides on our website. Use the website to clarify things in the readings or the course you are confused about, as well as searching in the group. 

STEP 8- infinity- There are other expansion courses on the PFA SBT community website, FTF website, and just generally around some of the online CEU providers you can check out too. If you ever are curious about the legitimacy of a course, I recommend checking out who is teaching and asking others in the group if they have taken the course and ask for feedback!

Help, which initial PFA / SBT training should I take?

A few different options include:

• FTF’s Practical Functional Assessment and Skill Based Treatment (10 CEUs) by Dr. Hanley
• FTF’s A Training on the PFA/SBT for Implementors (10 CEUs) by Drs. Hanley, Ruppel, and Cammilleri
• Sendan Center’s Practical Functional Assessment and Skills-Based Treatment Workshop (14 CEUs) by Hillary Laney & Liisa Podosek

The FTF Practical Functional Assessment and Skill Based Treatment course:

• Focuses heavily on WHY we do PFA/SBT and the history of the field that has led us to this point.
• Uses more terminology in explaining the mechanics of PFA/SBT
• Discusses research that shows how effective this process is
• Discusses the IISCA and PFA in depth
• Presents multiple successful case studies
• Goes over the CABs and branch planning (not a deep dive)

The Sendan Center’s Practical Functional Assessment and Skills-Based Treatment Workshop:

• Focuses heavily on HOW to do SBT. There is a lot of time spent practicing decision making, problem solving and data collection within each step of the process.
• Spends enough time on the PFA to understand it, and moves into SBT and CABs
• Uses Hillary’s data sheets which are flexible and rely on clinician decision making as opposed to the FTF pre-planned sheets, and includes many opportunities to practice collecting data and how to decide how to count each trial.
• Talks about different ways to plan branches and different idiosyncratic skills that can be taught

Where can I keep learning??

Our PFA & SBT Community has affordable Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for you! These are updated with new content after events take place. Browse some of our offerings below!

More places to continue your education!

• FTF Behavioral Consulting offers a variety of courses including the full SBT training, Universal Protocols, sleep, feeding, journal article reviews, and many more!
• Sendan Center has a full SBT training, in addition to shorter trainings on values and ethics ,or a deep dive!
• PBS has free courses on the PFA/SBT process – scroll down to find the nine part series!
• We have a directory of mentors who can provide consultation in the SBT process/

What FREE resources do you have for me?

We have loads of free resources for you on our website and FaceBook Community!

Check out our other guides or our free videos!

You can also find more resources and information on the Practical Functional Assessment website here, which includes this page with every published article on the PFA/SBT process.

There are also a lot of great podcast episodes discussing this process:

• The Behavioral Observations Podcast: “Greg Hanley on Functional Behavioral Assessment”
• The Behavioral Observations Podcast: “Greg Hanley on Function Based Treatment”
• The Behavioral Observations Podcast: “Practical Functional Assessment: Session 94 with Greg Hanley”
• The Behavior Observations Podcast: “Greg Hanley Answers YOUR Questions!”
• The Behavior Observations Podcast: “What is Today’s ABA? Session 160: A Q and A with Greg Hanley”
• The Behavior Observations Podcast: “Catching up with Greg Hanley”
• ABA Inside Track: “IISCA w/ Dr. Adithyan Rajaraman”
• ABA Ultimate Showdown: Round 1 and Round 14

Additionally, here are some YouTube presentations from 2019 of Hanley presenting the rationale behind the IISCA and PFA.

You can also watch outcome videos after the process here and here.

But what about research? Does it support this process?

Here you can find almost every article published about the PFA and SBT process!

How do I become credentialed in SBT?

Check out FTF Behavioral Consulting’s overview on which credentials are available, how to become credentialed, and what perks are available for becoming credentialed.

You can also visit the FTF Credentialing Directory.

Terminology Overview

Acronym/Term	Defined	What it means
PFA process	Practical functional assessment process	This is the new (and improved #notsorry) name for the IISCA. It includes an open-ended interview and a functional analysis to demonstrate functional control over problem behavior. Just so happens to be way more practical than the traditional FA.
IISCA	Interview-informed synthesized contingency analysis	This is the old acronym for the functional analysis explained in the process above. Some people like this acronym more than the PFA.
Open-ended interview	This is a set of open-ended questions that were published by Dr. Hanley in 2012. Check out the PFA website for access to it	This is where the magic starts. The interview is designed to get qualitatively rich information to design your functional analysis with. We are done with those generic conditions and moving on toward the good idiosyncratic stuff.
SBT	Skill-based treatment	The PFA gives you a good understanding of the problem behavior… now what? There are a million different approaches you can take. The SBT process boils down the most commonly used and effective interventions (e.g. FCT & schedule thinning) and puts it together in a nice package that will reliability get great socially valid results.
Synthesized Reinforcement (SR)	Combining reinforcers as a whole reinforcement context instead of looking at individual reinforcement contingencies	It is not worth it to go to the movies just to watch a movie. I have to have a large tub of popcorn, large coke, and my wife for me to actually make the trip. People usually do not just want to escape to nothing, this term just helps us focus on the big picture with all of the fine details instead of only the fine details.
HRE	Happy, relaxed, and engaged	This describes client behavior and affect when you have the right SR condition. Producing HRE in the SR condition is the goal because we want to be teaching from a place of joy instead of suckiness.
Eng	Engaged	You will see this on the SBT data sheet. Circle this if the learner was engaged (or HRE) for over half of the SR condition. This measure is important because it helps us know that the reinforcers are still valuable to the client, and its absence prompts us to re-examine SR.
EO	Establishing Operation	Uh oh. Feels like you are back in school again eh? EOs are the things that create a motivating context for behavior to occur. The teacher saying “it is time to clean up” makes behaviors that avoid cleaning up and extend play more probable. If the teacher didn’t say anything, those behaviors would never occur.
Progressing the EO	Continuing to “poke the bear” because the SBT chain is not evoked yet and no PB has occurred.	This is what we do when targeted behavior is not occurring when it is supposed to. You might tell your learner to pick up… but they just keep on playing without saying the FCR or emitting PB until you progress to the EO to the point that you block play while repeating the instruction.
PB	Problem behavior	This might not be your favorite terminology to describe behaviors that are targeted to decrease but it is what is currently being used regularly by the FTF team and in the literature. These are the behaviors that interfere with one’s daily functioning, and they are concerning to important people in the client’s life.
SPB	Severe problem behavior	It’s like PB but severe. It is usually distinguished by its capacity to harm people and/or property.
R1	Dangerous behavior	This is the reason why we are doing the full blown PFA/SBT process in the first place. These are the behaviors we ideally never want to see because it’s all about Safety, Televisability (Dignity), and Rapport.
R2	Non-dangerous behavior (often precursors)	These are the behaviors that are reported or observed to reliably precede or co-occur with the problem behavior. Sounds crazy that we can target these behaviors instead of the R1 bxs but research has backed this up (e.g. Heath & Smith, 2019)
R3, Precursors	Precursor behavior	These are generally the R2s being targeted but sometimes you can talk about precursors to the precursors  (R3s if you will).
FCR	Functional communicative response	The thing we teach in functional communication training (FCT). This is an alternative behavior to the PB that will get the learner back into the SR condition.
TR	Tolerance response	This moves past FCT and teaches the leaner an appropriate response to denials and being told no.
CAB(s)	Contextually appropriate behavior	This is what we want the learner to do when it is teacher-led time (EO condition) rather than learner-led time (SR condition). Essentially, this is teaching the learner how to cooperate with the expectations of others when they are not in charge in a context that is super worth it for them.
CAB 1	First step of CAB	This is teaching the learner to relinquish positive reinforcers.
CAB 2	Second step of CAB	This is teaching the learner to transition to a “table of high expectations” (or equivalent) and to get ready to learn without distraction.
CAB 3	Third step of CAB	This is teaching the learner to do a short amount of easy work while at the table of high expectations.
CAB 4-6	Fourth, fifth and sixth step of CAB	This is progressively making the work harder while keeping expectations high.
Branch(es)	Different target areas to work on during SBT	CAB(a) can be manding skills, CAB(b) can be daily living skills, etc. The branches are usually distinguished by the transition from the SR to the CAB expectation to allow for different chains to be shaped. For example, a transition to the gym may require different shaping than a transition to academic work
CBPD	Contingency-based progressive delay	A fancy acronym (with some great research to back it up) that means we need to do some work before we get back to playing instead of just waiting for a certain amount of time.
Idiosyncratic variables	Individualized things that matter to the specific individual, so much so that they may contribute to PB.	This a big thing that separates the PFA from the traditional FA. From the start we identify the specifics, such as a learner wanting his mother to speak in a high tone of voice, side-eyeing him, and giving him a bite of pizza with a dab of ranch on each bite instead of just saying the kid wants attention and/or access.
Keeping a lid on it	Making it super unlikely that SPB will occur outside of practice by reinforcing PB right away, lowering motivation to emit the PB (NCR), and/or removing super evocative stimuli if you can	The PFA/SBT is a process. We want to make sure the learner remains safe while in the early stages of the process. It might be a weird thing to recommend to parents and teachers but they were probably doing a lot of this stuff in the first place because people learn how to adapt pretty well.
Acquiesce	Accept something reluctantly but without protest	Fancy word for giving in. This is another way to describe “keeping a lid on it”. Don’t give that demand right now because you know it will lead to SPB. Go ahead and give that candy bar over because you know the R2s will lead to R1s in that moment.
Too hot to handle	Progressing the EO too quickly	Turning off the video game without a warning might be something we want our learner to be able to tolerate in the future, but right now is it probably too hot to handle when you are working on him just looking away for a split second.
Low & loose	Describes the teacher’s demeanor. We should be low to the ground if possible and body language is relaxed.	This indicates that it is the SR condition. We are going along for the ride with whatever the learner wants (within reason).
High & tight	Describes the teacher’s demeanor. We should be standing up straight and body language is saying we mean business.	This indicates that it is the EO condition. The learner is going to be held to high expectations and should be following the teacher’s lead.
Motivational distance travelled (MDT)	Hints at the notion that we may be more motivated to behave (and learn) when there is greater discrepancy between the EO and SR conditions	Imagine that I want to teach a learner to say “Water” and attempt to do so by putting a 1-oz cup of water in front of them, prompting “Water,” and reinforcing the utterance by giving water. This may be an effective teaching arrangement, but the learner may not be super motivated to learn the new word. Now imagine that I turn up the heat to 120 degrees and have the learner eat 3 biscuits from Popeye’s and do 50 burpees before presenting a large glass of water…the learner is more likely to learn “water” under these conditions, right? This is MDT: a useful consideration in designing motivating teaching contexts and a reminder to synthesize EOs and SRs. Note: do not turn the heat up to 120 degrees in order to teach FCRs

You’ve made it to the end of this guide, but this is only the beginning! These tools and resources are a great starting point, but you can also utilize our other guides, resources, mentors, and partners to help you along your PFA & SBT journey. Didn’t see your question answered? Want to connect with others? Come join us on our FaceBook community by clicking here. (And don’t forget to answer the membership questions when you join! 😉)