Definition
Activity-based intervention (ABI) refers to instruction that is embedded within children’s and families’ daily activities and routines. The instructional strategies vary according to child goals and needs, but the approach emphasizes child-directed contexts for instruction and the use of naturally occurring antecedents and consequences to develop functional skills.
Historical Background
Diane Bricker and Juliann Woods-Cripe (1992) distinguished activity-based intervention from more traditional approaches to early intervention in the early 1990s. Procedurally, ABI is similar to intervention practices that came earlier, such as incidental language teaching (Hart & Risley, 1968), environmental language intervention (MacDonald, Blott, Gordon, Spiegel, & Hartmann, 1974), embedded instruction (Neef, Walters, & Egel, 1984), and routine-based intervention (Dunst et al., 1987). ABI emphasizes the role of parents as teachers and how to capitalize on the potential advantages of...
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References and Readings
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Goldstein, H. (2013). Activity-Based Instruction. In: Volkmar, F.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1698-3_1881
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