What is Task Analysis?

Have you ever thought about how many little steps go into things you do every day? This morning I brushed my teeth, braided my hair, and made coffee. The amount of smaller steps that go into each of those tasks is astounding. If I had written down every single action I took to brush my teeth or braid my hair, I would have written a task analysis for myself that I could then use to teach someone else how to brush their teeth or braid their hair. For kids on the autism spectrum who may have difficulties with processing or executive function, tasks that seem simple to us like brushing teeth can be overwhelming. Breaking those tasks down into component steps, much like you might make a to-do list for a multi-part project, can be a huge help for kids struggling with both social and non-social situations.

Part of an example of task analysis for tooth brushing. As you can see, it breaks brushing teeth down into tiny, manageable parts

         A task analysis breaks a complex task like brushing teeth or greeting a peer down into its most basic steps. Task analyses are completed because there are a variety of steps that go into completing a complex task, and to teach that task you need to know that your learner can complete each step. Additionally, some tasks need to be completed in order; for example, brushing your teeth with a dry toothbrush then squeezing toothpaste onto that toothbrush doesn’t work. This is also valuable because you can reinforce each step as you teach it in a process called chaining, which can be done forward or backward. In forward chaining, you start by teaching the first of the steps you wrote down in your task analysis. This can be useful if your learner already has some or most of the requisite skills needed to complete the task. For instance, if tying shoes is your task and your learner can already put their feet in the shoes and grab the shoelaces, forward chaining might be the way to go. Backward chaining starts by teaching and reinforcing the very last step of a task, then the penultimate step, and so on. This can be good because you’re always reinforcing the final outcome of the task, so no matter what step you’re currently teaching, your learner is always completing the task independently. Breaking down your task and teaching through chaining allows for greater access to reinforcement throughout the teaching process, which can be especially useful in social situations, For more information on reinforcement in social situations, look out for our upcoming post. The degree to which you simplify the steps depends on your learner. For example, if the task is “washing hands” some learners will need “turn on water, put on soap, scrub, turn off water,” while others will need a more detailed list. Sometimes pictures can also be helpful in teaching each step, like adding a picture of your learner’s toothbrush and faucet handle to their list of steps. Knowing what will be most helpful to your learner is crucial to making a useful task analysis.

Task analyses can also be completed for social skills group. First, a social skills assessment needs to be done. Things like ABLLS and VBMAPP as administered by a professional behavior analyst can be used to assess the learner’s social skills. Once you’ve selected a goal, then you can break it down. For example, we find that during issues of dispute, one of our learners typically tantrums rather than selecting a compromise for a solution. Now we have our goal and it’s time to break it down. Refer back to the hand washing example-the component steps will be based on the learner’s needs. An example of component steps for compromise would be identifying functional compromise solutions when presented with a social dilemma with a peer. In order to identify those solutions and break that process down into steps, keep in your learner’s goals and program targets. For more information on setting goals for social group, refer back to our blog post here. One example of a situation where a social task analysis for compromise might be useful might be a social skills group science project. All of the learners in the group need to compromise on the topic of the science project, which means no one is going to get to do exactly what they want to do. Luckily, since this hypothetical science project takes place in a social skills group, each kid can have a task analysis done for compromise with adults helping to facilitate the interactions and prompt the different steps of the task analysis. Once the learners have practiced using their task analysis during a contrived situation like social skills group, they can generalize to natural situations like hanging out with friends or working on a project in class, fading out adult prompting to boost independent social interactions.

Task analysis is important because while some tasks might seem second nature to neurotypical people, they can be daunting for people on the autism spectrum. Interacting with other people, even before morning coffee, is simple for neurotypical people because we know the various steps that apply to each social situation, and it can be difficult to try to explain those steps to someone else. Task analyses break these social situations down into the steps we already go through and make them accessible to people on the autism spectrum instead of just expecting them to do the things their typical peers do. We all make task analyses for ourselves, we just usually call them to-do lists or have tasks mentally broken down in our heads. Task analyses are just versions of these lists, modified to best help our learners navigate the world.

Product Spotlight- Green Box Kids Book 1: Sharing

Sharing is one of the most important skills we try to teach our students, and it’s something they’re going to need to use every day for the rest of their lives. Even as adults, sharing is something we do all the time, so much so that it’s jarring when someone doesn’t share; how many times have you waited for a machine at the gym or an electrical outlet at a coffee shop and been absolutely bewildered when the other person using them failed to share? We know sharing is tough for all kids, and it can be even more difficult to help kids with behavioral and developmental disabilities understand all of the various social elements that comprise good sharing. We’ve created another social skills training curriculum book to address those very difficulties in a format that is both fun and engaging for both you and your learners. We’ve talked at length about another book in the Green Box Kids series, Compromise, and we’ve brought the same commitment to excellence and accessibility to Sharing, now available on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Sharing has the same format as Compromise: discussion questions before and after each of the three comics in the book to boost critical thinking about the topic, plus supplemental activities that expand upon those questions. In addition to fostering discussion about the basics of sharing, this book goes into situations when sharing may not be appropriate by asking learners questions like these:

Our focus here is not just to help learners understand what sharing is, but why sharing is important to their lives. What makes Green Box Kids: Sharing different from other curriculum books on Sharing is that it encourages learners to examine sharing from multiple perspectives. Additionally, although each social dilemma presented in the comics has an example of a resolution, the book also encourages the readers to think of their own solutions. For example, the first comic in the book sees Tito and Lucy playing an active game of soccer, but Tito has forgotten his water bottle. Before showing the readers what the Green Box Kids do to fix the problem, there’s an opportunity for the reader to draw what they think would be a good way to help Tito:

Instead of just telling readers what the best answer is, this book encourages them to think for themselves and consider the options their peers came up with.

Our social skills training curriculum books are more than just social group activities, they’re the building blocks of happy, sociable adults. When you buy our book on Sharing, you’re getting comics along with improved social skills and better, more productive social group sessions. As with all of our books, the material in Green Box Kids: Sharing are the product of years of working with kids who have autism spectrum disorders and other behavioral or developmental disorders, as well as years of training and education. More importantly, when you buy our books you’re buying the product of our sincere desire for kids on the spectrum to have a better quality of life and an easier time adjusting to social situations outside of supervised social group. Our kids love Green Box Kids, and we’re confident that yours will too.

Setting Goals for Social Skills Group

We’ve talked before about why individualizing goals for the kids in your group is important, but what exactly does it mean to set a goal?  Every goal should have a sheet with the current target, the purpose of the program, the procedures of implementing the program, how to collect data on the target, and what constitutes as mastery. Here’s a basic rundown of the elements that go into setting goals for autism spectrum kids in a social skills play group:

Purpose

n  Why are you setting this particular goal? Which behaviors are you looking to increase or decrease? When setting goals, think about whether or not those goals will improve the individual’s life. If the answer is no, it’s not a good goal to set. We’re always looking for social validity, so for example: your 5 year old student keeps making jokes about poop. You think poop jokes are gross, but you wouldn’t necessarily want to write a program to decrease the jokes, because that’s typical behavior for a 5 year old, and other typical students are also making similar jokes. We’re not looking for cookie-cutter perfect kids, we’re helping kids interact with other kids in socially acceptable ways. Knowing which skills your kids are working on and why they’re working on them is important for understanding how best to implement the program’s procedures. Often times the social skills group goals set for your kids will be related to goals set for one-on-one therapy sessions. For instance, let’s say a student’s home therapist is working on increasing wh- questions. The same program may be tweaked to fit social group by asking peers to ask the student wh- during group to track generalization.

Procedures for Implementation

n  What steps go into this goal? For instance, if you’re working on a tacting program (labelling objects and people based on visual cues) using picture cards, your procedure might look like this:

                                                                                                 i.    Take out picture card

                                                                                                ii.    Hold up picture card of preferred item

                                                                                              iii.    If child responds appropriately, put a correct trial mark in trial box. If child responds inappropriately or does not respond, give correct answer and return to step two.

That’s just one example, and procedures can (and almost always will) have many more steps than that. Knowing your procedure is important because following the same procedure across different environments and therapists, teachers, parents, and caregivers is the only way to get reliable and accurate data across the board. This is especially important to note when individualizing goals for social group, as we’ve discussed here. Here’s what an example procedure might look like:

As you can see, it’s specific and doesn’t leave room for too much interpretation, which is important. Everyone implementing the program should be able to quickly read and understand the procedures to keep them consistent.

Collecting Data

n  There’s an entire post on collecting data during social group here, but the basics of it are as follows. You’ll most likely have a few group-appropriate goals to focus on with a description of their procedures, and then a row of small square boxes in which to mark whether the target behavior was completed or not, with each box representing one trial. If a correct trial occurred, you would record a +. If a prompted trial occurred, you would mark a P. This is called trial-by-trial data collection, and it’s what’s most often used during social skills groups with anecdotal data (general notes) kept as well. Keeping accurate, consistent data is important for several reasons, but above all data will tell you when a target has been mastered so you can move on to the next target.

Mastery criteria

n  The idea behind mastery criteria is to set a level of performance that lets the instructor know the student is ready for the difficult of the target to increase. Mastery should be a certain percentage above the child’s current performance. Mastery criteria are set somewhere between 80% and 100% correct performance across multiple sessions or days. The high level of accuracy is included because the skill must be established before moving on to the next target. Including a time component or multiple session component to the mastery ensures that phenomenal performance on a given day is not a fluke.

Targets

n  Finally we have targets, which are different levels of program mastery. Many programs will have similar procedures for several targets. For example, let’s say that Barry’s target is 1 peer response (responding when a friend asks a question or says hello) with one prompt, with the program purpose being increased intraverbals. Once he’s mastered that target, his next target in this program might be 1 peer response with no prompts. Targets build off of each other to increase or decrease the target behavior. In the ABA world this is known as shaping, which we’ll talk about more in a later blog. All of these elements put together form a solid program that can be used to make social group a better, more efficient process!

4 Tips on Taking Data During Social Skills Group

 Taking data during social skills group can be a challenge. Generally, group sessions are more chaotic than one-on-one therapy sessions, and with more kids running around, it can be seriously hectic. Here are a few tips on how to get those data points in before the end of the day:

1. Be ready

n  Try to set out data sheets before kids start arriving, and review goals so you can address whatever questions you may have about a given goal or program. Getting your data sheets ready early prevents a little bit of the stress that comes with the start of the day, and knowing you’re already on top of data can help put you in a confident mindset that you might find yourself valuing when one of your kids has just thrown your glasses across the room for the 11^th time.

2. Narrow your goals

n  Any kid can have a ton of programs in their therapy binder, so pick the goals that are most appropriate for group and reinforce social skill building. You probably aren’t going to be able to fit math drills into the schedule in between art time and team relay race, but you can definitely practice intraverbal skills or manding. Narrow your goals to what fits best for social group, and make sure they’re appropriate for an environment where there’s going to be a lot of peer interaction. If one of the goals involves a kid being separated from the group for extended periods of time, it’s probably not the best goal to be working on during social group. Your social group goals should be ones that could naturally be accomplished during the normal course of group play. For more information on individualizing goals for social group, check out our post here.

3. Make sure you know your goals!

n  Make sure you know goals for each of the kids, and what counts as a correct versus a prompt in the data box. It is always a good idea to precisely define correct and incorrect responses so there is no confusion. Find ways to remember all the various goals that your kids have, whether you’re working with specifically one kid out of the group or several. I sometimes write abbreviated versions of my kid’s goals for the day on my hand in washable marker so that I can glance at it throughout the day and wash it off before I leave. Post-it-notes, symbols, or just plain memorization work just as well. While the goals are already written down, it’s a good idea for you to have some way to remember them easily.

4. Find time to take data!

n  Finding time to actually record data can feel impossible in the middle of activities. Correct trials or prompt marks are probably best recorded as they occur at the risk of forgetting exactly what happened, but written summaries of behavior, demeanor, and activities can be written during any semi-down time you have. Good times to get some of that writing in are during lunch or snack time, as most kids will probably be preoccupied with eating. Timed reinforcement periods, if you have any, when your kid will be busy playing with whatever preferred object serves as their reinforcement during social group are also a great time to hunker down with a pen and one ear out for commotion and get some of your writing done. Take some time to figure out the natural flow of the day-when do you need to be most actively involved? When are there a few minutes to jot down some notes? It’s going to be rushed no matter what, but the rush of social group is what makes it fun!