Taiwan ABA

By Li-Tsun Wang

During the last year, The Taiwan Association for Behavior Analysis (TABA) kept on promoting behavior science to parents, special education teachers, private institution, and many others. The activities held during this year included workshops, lectures, practical training, the Annual TABA Conference, and institutional behavior intervention training workshops. Because of COVID-19, most of events were held by online video conference. This allowed more people in Taiwan to improve their professional knowledge and skills about behavior science.

The TABA annual conference was on April 26, 2020 and focused on practice and research based on new trends related to inclusion environment. The topic was “Implementation and Perspectives of Applied Behavior Analysis in Inclusive Environment”, which was presented by the invited speaker Dr. Ya-Ping Wu, who is an assistant professor in the department of Special Education at National Chiayi University (NCYU) in Taiwan. The presentation introduced the inclusion process by ABA for a child with Autism in elementary school, and how to use AAC to communicate with child with special needs in an inclusive environment, also in elementary school. Another speaker, Dr. Pei-Fang Rachel Wu, who is a full-time professor of the master’s Program of Early Therapy Education, Department of Early Childhood Education of National Taichung University of Education, shared NET implementation within the inclusion setting. A total of 46 people, including teachers, speech therapy workers, occupational therapy workers, special education staff, and behavior analysts, attended this event.

In March 2020, we accepted an invitation by Kaohsiung Nanzi Special Education School in Taiwan, to introduce problem skills training for 10 teachers. From March to May 2020, TABA held six lectures for parents about a range of issues—in all, 33 parents joined. Topics covered included:

behavior problem solving skills,
skills by ABA during home for parents,
peer interaction skills for preschool children,
social skill training for school-age children,
how to promote social interaction via games at home,
and the effectiveness for teaching at home.

From October to December 2020, TABA held six half-day, online workshops on the following topics:

special children toilet training,
eating training strategies,
teaching in natural situations,
application of reading skills for special kids,
the initiation of behavioral problem intervention starts with the evaluation of behavioral function,
and ABA strategies to reduce learners’ escape behavior and promoted enjoy learning.

There were 39 total members in attendance of these workshops, and those who attended commented that they were looking forward to more training.

Activities in 2021 included the Annual TABA Conference on June 26, 2021, which focused on “The Latest Development Trend of Applied Behavior Analysis and Clinical.” Drs. James King and Szu-Yin Chu, presented on ABA intervention application results in research and practical environments, catering their presentations to different areas of focus for workers and teachers, such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, special education, and more. We also held trainings and workshops in 2021 and continued to promote multiple programs for under special needs kids un 3-years old and their parents. Most of of these initiatives focused on individual and group parent skill training.

We remain dedicated to our mission to spread knowledge of behavior analysis to professionals and parents, to promote the science in Taiwan, and to invite more members and professionals join us.