VB-MAPP - Barriers Assessment (Part 6 of 8)
Part 6 of 8 in our VB-MAPP series, which covers each piece of the assessment in depth. For a broad overview, see our one-page guide to the VB-MAPP.
The VB-MAPP Barriers Assessment is a checklist of 24 common barriers to learning and language, each scored on a scale of 0 to 4, where 0 means the barrier is not a concern and 4 means it is a significant one. Most of it can be scored from what you already saw while running the Milestones Assessment, so it usually comes straight after.
Where the Milestones Assessment asks what a learner can do, the Barriers Assessment asks what may be getting in the way. That makes it one of the more useful places to look when progress on the milestones has slowed and it is not obvious why.
What are the 24 VB-MAPP barriers?
The barriers are listed in the protocol in this order. The short descriptions below are our plain-language summaries; the protocol itself carries the full scoring criteria for each one. A few barriers carry a shorter label on the scoring grid than on the criteria pages (Negative Behaviors appears on the grid as Behavior Problems, for example), so both names are worth recognizing.
- Negative behaviors. Challenging behavior, from crying and verbal refusal up to tantrums, aggression or self-injury.
- Instructional control. Escape and avoidance of instructional demands, from minor noncompliance to longer tantrums.
- Impaired mands. Few functional requests, requests limited to a small set of items, or challenging behavior doing the work that a mand could do.
- Impaired tacts. Difficulty labeling things in the environment. Our post on what tacting is in ABA covers this operant in more detail.
- Impaired motor imitation. Difficulty copying another person's actions.
- Impaired echoic. Difficulty repeating sounds and words on request, including echolalia or delayed echolalia.
- Impaired visual perception and matching-to-sample. Difficulty with matching and other visual discrimination tasks.
- Impaired listener skills. Difficulty responding to what others say, including listener discriminations and responding by feature, function and class.
- Impaired intraverbal. Difficulty answering questions, filling in phrases and holding a verbal exchange.
- Impaired social skills. Limited interaction with peers in particular, such as not initiating, taking turns or sharing.
- Prompt dependency. Skills that stay prompt bound, with prompts that are hard to fade.
- Scrolling. Running through a string of responses (for example, several signs or words in a row) until one is reinforced.
- Impaired scanning. Not looking across an array of items before choosing one.
- Failure to make conditional discriminations. Difficulty when the right response depends on a combination of cues, such as "Can you find a big animal?", even when the learner can respond to each part on its own.
- Failure to generalize. Skills that appear with one person, material or setting but not others.
- Weak or atypical motivating operations. A narrow range of age-appropriate motivators, or strong motivation for unusual things.
- Response requirement weakens the motivating operation. Interest in an item fades once effort is required to get it.
- Reinforcement dependency. Difficulty moving from frequent consumable or tangible reinforcers to intermittent or social ones.
- Self-stimulation. Repetitive self-stimulatory behavior that competes with learning.
- Articulation problems. Speech sounds that make words hard to understand.
- Obsessive-compulsive behavior. Obsessions that get in the way of learning, and negative behavior when they are not met.
- Hyperactive behavior. High activity levels that make it hard to stay with a task.
- Failure to make eye contact, or attend to people. Little eye contact, or attending more to objects than to people.
- Sensory defensiveness. Strong reactions to particular sounds, textures, lights or other sensory input.
Before you start
The Barriers Assessment is designed to follow the Milestones Assessment, because many of the barriers are easier to score once you have a clear picture of the learner's verbal behavior. If you have not run it yet, our guides start with administering Level 1 of the Milestones Assessment.
You should not need any extra materials. Most, if not all, of the items can be scored from observation and from the data you gathered during the milestones. If you are still putting a kit together for the milestones themselves, the VB-MAPP materials checklist lists what you will need, and our Language Learning Cards, with three different pictures for each word, can cover a good share of it.
How to score the VB-MAPP Barriers Assessment
Work through the barriers one at a time. For each, read the scoring criteria in the protocol and pick the description that best matches what you have seen from this learner, from 0 to 4. The examples at each level are a sample of what might qualify, not a checklist, so a learner does not need to show every behavior listed to earn that score. The protocol labels the levels 0 for no problem, 1 for an occasional problem, 2 for a moderate problem, 3 for a persistent problem and 4 for a severe problem. For example, a learner who shows no significant negative behaviors would score 0 on the first barrier, while a learner whose negative behaviors happen several times a day and are a danger to themselves or others, such as aggression or self-injury, would score 4.
The VB-MAPP Guide also gives each level a practical meaning. A 1 is worth monitoring but may not need a formal intervention. A 2 calls for a closer look and possibly an intervention before the problem grows. A 3 or 4 calls for a behavioral analysis and a formal intervention program.
Filling in the barriers grid
Scores go on the Barriers Scoring Form in the VB-MAPP protocol. Each barrier has its own small grid, with four columns (one for each assessment) and four rows (one for each point of the score). In the key at the top right, fill in the first test row with the date, the color you will use, and your name as the tester. Then, for each barrier, color the first column up to its score. If you scored a 4 for negative behaviors, you would color all four boxes in the first column under Behavior Problems. A 0 is left blank. When you are done, add up the colored boxes and record the total in the Score column of the key.
Reassessing
Reassessments follow the same procedure in the next column along, with a new color. Use the second test row of the key for the date, color and tester, color the second column of each grid, and record the new total. The form has room for four assessments. Because each assessment has its own color on the same grid, the change is visible at a glance, which can be handy when you are sharing results with a family or a team.
Scoring examples
Here are three fictional learners, scored against the protocol's criteria.
Barrier 3, impaired mands. Your learner can mand for "more" with a sign, but has no other functional mands, and screams and hits to get items and activities. That fits a score of 3. The Guide's level 3 covers mands that are prompt bound, rote or scrolled, mands that do not match the learner's motivation, and cases where negative behaviors function as mands. A learner with no functional mands at all would move to a 4.
Barrier 11, prompt dependency. Your learner picks up new skills quickly and you are able to fade prompts fast. That is a 0: the learner acquires new skills consistently and shows no sign of prompt dependency.
Barrier 24, sensory defensiveness. Your learner is predictably bothered by loud sounds like the fire alarm and the school bell, but shows no challenging behavior around them, recovers quickly, and gets back to the task. That is likely a 2, where certain sensory stimulation affects the child but the defensiveness is mild and does not usually interfere with learning. If he frequently covered his ears or tried to escape when those sounds came up, that would point to a 3.
How to read the results
It is tempting to treat the barriers total like the milestones total, but the VB-MAPP Guide cautions against it. New barriers can appear as a learner progresses (rote intraverbals, for example, may only show up once a learner moves into Level 2 skills), so the total can go up even when the learner has improved in many other areas. The Guide suggests using the scores mainly to set priorities for intervention, and tracking progress on a barrier through ongoing data on the target behavior itself.
The most useful reading usually comes from putting the two assessments side by side, and the protocol places the Milestones and Barriers scoring forms next to each other for that reason. The Guide gives the example of a learner who needs to learn more mands but is also prompt bound and scrolls: until those two barriers are addressed, new mands may be of little functional use, so freeing the existing mands comes first.
A few patterns are worth looking for. A high score on a barrier that sits next to a stalled milestone domain may explain the stall: impaired listener skills alongside slow progress on listener milestones, for example, or failure to generalize alongside skills that only show up with one therapist. Our post on what generalization is in ABA has strategies for that barrier in particular. High scores on the motivation barriers, weak motivators, response requirement and reinforcer dependency, often point back to the reinforcement plan, and our list of 101 reinforcement ideas can help widen the range of what you are offering.
A barrier score tells you that something is in the way, not why. The Guide is clear that once a barrier is identified, a more detailed descriptive or functional analysis is the next step before choosing an intervention, since the same barrier can have very different causes from one learner to the next. Our introduction to functional analysis covers one way of doing that.
Barriers that are scored high can also become targets in their own right. When you get to writing goals, Part 8 on creating IEP goals from the VB-MAPP covers how to turn assessment results into objectives.
What comes next
With the Barriers Assessment scored, the next step is usually the Transition Assessment, which gives the learner's team measurable information to draw on when considering a less restrictive educational setting. Your overall Barriers score carries forward into it as one of its 18 areas.
Frequently asked questions
What is the VB-MAPP Barriers Assessment?
It is the part of the VB-MAPP that identifies 24 common barriers to learning and language, such as behavior problems, prompt dependency and failure to generalize. Each barrier is scored from 0 to 4, and the results are used alongside the Milestones Assessment to plan intervention.
How is the VB-MAPP Barriers Assessment scored?
Each of the 24 barriers is rated from 0 to 4 using the criteria in the VB-MAPP protocol, where 0 means no problem, 1 an occasional problem, 2 a moderate problem, 3 a persistent problem and 4 a severe problem. Scores are colored onto the barriers grid, one box per point, and the boxes are added up for a total score.
Is there a free PDF of the VB-MAPP Barriers Assessment?
The scoring criteria and the barriers grid are part of the VB-MAPP protocol, which is published by AVB Press and sold as a copyrighted product, so we do not reproduce the form. This guide explains how the assessment works and how to score it, for use alongside your own copy of the protocol.
Do you need materials for the Barriers Assessment?
Usually not. Most barriers can be scored from direct observation and from the data collected while running the Milestones Assessment, which is one reason the Barriers Assessment is typically completed after the milestones.
What does a high Barriers Assessment score mean?
A score of 2 to 4 on any barrier suggests a problem that calls for further analysis, and a 3 or 4 usually calls for a formal intervention. The total is less useful on its own, since new barriers can appear as a learner progresses, so the individual scores are usually the better guide to what to prioritize.
References
Sundberg, M. L. (2014). The verbal behavior milestones assessment and placement program: The VB-MAPP guide (2nd ed.). Concord, CA: AVB Press.
Previous: Part 5, Level 3 Milestones · Next: Part 7, Transition Assessment
