Introduction to Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) Online Tutorial
	Module 7: DTT and Naturalistic Teaching Incidental Teaching An intro video from Emory University As described in the video, incidental teaching involves embedding learning opportunities into activities that the child is interested in. McGee and Daly (2007) describe incidental teaching as involving “contingent access to highly preferred rewards.” In the case of incidental teaching, this means that the reinforcers we use are toys, games, or activities that the child likes. We can use these toys/games to facilitate language and academic skills. If we are trying to teach the child to use language to ask for things (as we do in Functional Communication Training), we prompt the child to say the name of the item before we give it to him or her. Of course, this requires some practice, and we can use shaping to make the process easier for the child. We can also use incidental teaching to teach other skills, such as counting. As an example, when a child enjoys playing with cars or trucks, you can prompt the child to count the wheels before being given the car to play with. This might also work for teaching colors: the child is prompted to say, "red car" or "blue car" before being given each car to play with. Here are a couple of video examples. Some of these examples use complex language. If your child or student isn't using sentences yet, you can use these same techniques, just shorten the amount of words you prompt your child to say. If your child is just learning colors, you may also want to speak slower and offer fewer color choices than shown in the first video. As with everything in this tutorial, it should be customized to your child's needs with the help of a BCBA. Charlop-Christy and Carpenter (2000) describe this as a child-initiated method. The child essentially initiates the learning opportunity by showing interest in the toy or activity. The adult uses this interest as a teachable moment to work on skills. Another primary feature of incidental teaching is that it is incorporated into a child’s natural routines, and the environment is arranged to facilitate language and initiations. We’ll describe this more in an upcoming section (on PRT). Next --> Incidental Teaching, continued