ABA Therapy
Incidental teaching in ABA is a naturalistic teaching strategy that turns a child’s interests and everyday activities into meaningful learning opportunities. Instead of starting with a formal lesson, the interaction usually begins when the child shows interest in an object, activity, person, or event. The adult then uses that moment to support a communication, social, play, or functional skill.
For example, a child might hand an adult a closed container holding a favorite toy. Rather than opening it immediately, the therapist can pause and give the child an opportunity to request help. If support is needed, the therapist may prompt a word, gesture, sign, or communication-device response. Opening the container then becomes a natural consequence connected to the child’s communication.
Incidental teaching is child-initiated, but it is not completely child-directed. The therapist still identifies appropriate goals, observes motivation, decides when a teaching moment is useful, provides prompts when needed, and responds in a way that supports learning. It may be used alongside Natural Environment Teaching, Discrete Trial Training, and other ABA therapy techniques for autism according to the child’s individual needs.
Key Takeaways
- Incidental teaching uses a child’s natural interest or initiation to begin a purposeful learning opportunity during play, routines, and everyday situations.
- The therapist remains actively involved, choosing relevant target skills, providing appropriate prompts, and connecting the child’s response to a natural consequence.
- Incidental teaching is especially useful for practicing functional communication, language, social interaction, play, independence, and skills that need to carry into everyday life.
What Is Incidental Teaching in ABA?
Incidental teaching is a naturalistic ABA procedure in which a child’s interest or communication initiates the teaching interaction. The adult recognizes that opportunity, encourages or expands a target response, provides support when needed, and gives the child access to an outcome naturally connected to the original motivation.
A major review from Schreibman and colleagues helps clarify what makes this procedure distinctive. Their review of naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions explains that incidental teaching requires the child to initiate an interaction or communication bid before the adult prompts an expanded response. The child’s goal then serves as the natural consequence for using the target skill. Readers can review the Schreibman et al. review through the National Library of Medicine.
This makes incidental teaching different from a formal lesson where the adult decides exactly when every trial begins.
Suppose a child notices a favorite book and brings it to a parent. That initiation can create a teaching opportunity related to requesting, commenting, labeling, answering a question, or another current goal. The adult builds on a moment that already has meaning for the child.
How Does Incidental Teaching Work?
Incidental teaching takes place during naturally occurring activities, but the adult still uses a purposeful teaching process. The exact interaction depends on the child’s skills and treatment goals.
A practical sequence often looks like this.
1. Observe or Arrange the Environment
The therapist first looks at what the child is interested in and what opportunities already exist.
A preferred item might be visible on a shelf. A favorite toy might require help to operate. A container might need opening. A play activity might naturally require another person’s participation.
Therapists can also arrange materials in ways that make communication useful. This should not involve unnecessarily withholding essential needs or deliberately creating prolonged distress. The goal is to create a reasonable opportunity for the child to initiate.
2. Wait for the Child to Initiate
The therapist gives the child an opportunity to begin the interaction.
Initiation can take many forms, including:
- Reaching toward an item
- Pointing
- Looking between an adult and an object
- Giving an item to another person
- Using a gesture or sign
- Speaking
- Using an AAC device
- Asking a question
- Approaching another person to begin play
The adult does not need to require spoken language for an initiation to count.
3. Identify a Relevant Teaching Moment
Once the child initiates, the therapist decides whether that interaction connects to a current treatment goal.
A child handing over a closed container might create an opportunity to practice requesting help. A child pointing to a favorite animal in a book might create a chance to practice commenting or expanding language.
Not every interaction needs to become a lesson. Selecting meaningful opportunities helps keep everyday activities natural and enjoyable.
4. Prompt or Expand the Response When Needed
The therapist may provide a prompt if the child needs support.
For example, a child who reaches for bubbles might already communicate clearly through a gesture. If the current goal involves a more specific functional response, the therapist could model the appropriate sign, AAC selection, word, or phrase.
The level of support should match the learner. As independence develops, prompts can be reduced.
5. Provide the Natural Consequence
The outcome follows logically from what the child originally wanted.
If the child requests help, the adult helps.
If the child requests the bubbles, the bubbles become available.
If the child initiates a game, the adult joins the game.
If the child asks where an item is, the adult provides useful information.
This connection between the response and the outcome is central to incidental teaching.
What Is an Example of Incidental Teaching?
Imagine a child who wants to use a wind-up toy but cannot operate it independently.
The child brings the toy to the therapist. That action shows interest and begins the interaction.
The therapist pauses rather than winding it immediately. If the child’s treatment goal includes requesting assistance, the therapist might wait for a request or provide an appropriate prompt for “help,” “help me,” a sign, or an AAC response.
When the child responds, the therapist winds the toy and gives it back.
The sequence looks like this:
Child wants the toy to work → child initiates → therapist supports a target response → child responds → the toy works.
The learning opportunity grows naturally from something the child already wanted.
Other examples include:
- Snack time: A child brings over a closed snack package and practices requesting help opening it.
- Free play: A child looks for a missing puzzle piece and practices asking where it is.
- Reading: A child points to an animal and the adult expands the moment into labeling or commenting.
- Playground: A child approaches a swing and practices requesting a push.
- Getting dressed: A child has difficulty with a zipper and practices asking for assistance.
- Social play: A child approaches another person with a preferred game and practices initiating interaction.
These are examples of using motivation that already exists rather than creating an unrelated formal lesson.
Families can also encounter similar naturally occurring opportunities during applied behavior analysis at home, where communication and daily living skills can be practiced within familiar routines.
Why Is Child Initiation Important?
Child initiation separates incidental teaching from several other teaching formats.
The child first demonstrates interest, motivation, or a desire to interact. This creates a meaningful reason to use the target skill.
Consider the difference between these two situations.
In a structured lesson, an adult might hold up a toy and ask the child to name it because naming objects is the assigned task.
In incidental teaching, the child approaches the toy because they actually want it. Communication about that toy now serves a functional purpose.
Schreibman and colleagues specifically identify this requirement for a child communication bid as a feature that distinguishes incidental teaching from other naturalistic interventions where the adult may initiate the learning opportunity more directly.
However, child-initiated does not mean completely child-led.
The therapist is still responsible for clinical decisions. They may arrange materials, identify target skills, select prompting strategies, respond to the child’s communication, monitor progress, and decide when increasing the expected response is appropriate.
The child’s interest starts the interaction. The therapist shapes that opportunity into useful instruction.
What Skills Can Incidental Teaching Support?
Incidental teaching has particularly strong roots in language, communication, spontaneous responding, and generalization.
Depending on the child’s goals, therapists may use it to support:
- Requesting items or activities
- Requesting help
- Asking questions
- Functional communication
- Expanding words or phrases
- Using AAC in everyday situations
- Initiating interactions
- Turn-taking
- Social communication
- Play skills
- Making choices
- Following naturally occurring directions
- Daily living skills
- Greater independence with familiar routines
- Using previously learned skills in new situations
The method does not need to teach every skill.
Some skills may benefit from more structured learning opportunities first. The therapist can later create natural situations where the child practices those skills functionally.
For example, a child might first learn to identify specific objects during structured instruction. Incidental teaching can later help the child use those words while requesting, playing, or talking with another person.
How Can Incidental Teaching Support Communication and Language?
Communication is particularly well suited to incidental teaching because daily life constantly creates reasons to interact with other people.
A child may want an item, need help, want an activity to continue, notice something interesting, or need information. Each situation creates a functional reason to communicate.
The therapist can build gradually from the child’s current abilities.
For one learner, progress might look like:
Reaching → gesture → AAC selection
For another:
Single word → short phrase → more detailed request
These are examples rather than required developmental sequences. The appropriate communication response depends on the individual.
Speech should not automatically be treated as the only acceptable form of communication. Incidental teaching can include:
- Spoken language
- Gestures
- Signs
- Picture-based communication
- Augmentative and alternative communication devices
This keeps the focus on functional communication, meaning the child has an effective way to express needs, preferences, questions, and ideas.
Why Is Natural Reinforcement Important?
Natural reinforcement keeps the outcome closely connected to the child’s reason for communicating or acting.
For example:
The child requests a ball → receives the ball.
The child asks for help → receives help.
The child asks for another turn → the activity continues.
The child asks where something is → receives the information needed to find it.
The consequence fits the situation.
This is especially useful in incidental teaching because the child’s motivation is already present. The adult does not need to introduce an unrelated reward every time a teaching moment occurs.
Verbal praise can still be appropriate, but the main outcome often comes directly from the activity itself.
Natural consequences also help clarify why a communication skill matters. Asking for help is useful because it gives the child a way to access assistance. Requesting a turn matters because it helps the child participate in play.
How Does Incidental Teaching Help Skills Carry Into Everyday Life?
Teaching a skill is only part of the goal. Children also need opportunities to use that skill with different people, objects, activities, and settings.
This is known as generalization.
Incidental teaching can support generalization because learning takes place across naturally changing situations rather than only one fixed teaching arrangement.
For example, a child might practice asking for help:
- With a therapist opening a toy
- With a parent opening a snack
- With a teacher during an activity
- With another adult during a community outing
The function remains similar even though the people, materials, and settings change.
Small historical studies provide useful context, although their limited sample sizes mean the findings should not be treated as proof that one teaching method is universally better.
In a 1985 study of three children, McGee, Krantz, and McClannahan compared incidental teaching with traditional structured instruction for expressive use of prepositions. They reported greater generalization and more spontaneous preposition use under incidental teaching. The McGee, Krantz, and McClannahan study is available through PubMed.
In 1992, Miranda-Linné and Melin compared incidental teaching with traditional discrete-trial procedures in two children learning color adjectives. Discrete-trial instruction produced faster acquisition, while later follow-up showed stronger generalization and equal or greater spontaneous use following incidental teaching. The Miranda-Linné and Melin study is indexed by PubMed.
These small studies illustrate an important practical point: acquisition speed and spontaneous real-world use are not necessarily the same outcome.
What Is the Difference Between Incidental Teaching and Natural Environment Teaching?
Incidental teaching is a type of naturalistic teaching, while Natural Environment Teaching, or NET, is a broader way of embedding ABA learning opportunities into everyday activities, interests, and settings.
The approaches overlap because both may use preferred activities, natural settings, functional goals, meaningful consequences, flexible learning opportunities, and real-life practice.
The main difference is the role of child initiation.
Incidental teaching specifically waits for the learner to initiate or show an interest that begins the teaching interaction.
A broader NET interaction does not always require the child to start the teaching opportunity. A therapist might join the child’s preferred activity and introduce a relevant instruction while play is already occurring.
For example, during NET, a therapist playing with toy animals might ask the child to find the horse.
During incidental teaching, the child might first reach for the horse or ask about it, and the therapist would then expand that initiation into a learning opportunity.
The distinction matters because the terms describe overlapping but not identical teaching strategies.
What Is the Difference Between Incidental Teaching and Discrete Trial Training?
Incidental teaching and Discrete Trial Training both use principles of ABA, but the learning opportunities are organized differently.
Discrete Trial Training
DTT is generally:
- Adult-initiated
- More structured
- Built around planned trials
- Focused on clearly defined responses
- Well suited to repeated practice
A therapist presents a cue or instruction, supports the learner when necessary, observes the response, and provides a planned consequence.
Incidental Teaching
Incidental teaching is generally:
- Initiated through the learner’s interest or communication
- Embedded in natural activities
- Less repetitive in format
- Connected to naturally occurring motivation
- Useful for functional and spontaneous practice
Neither is automatically better.
The right choice depends on what the child is learning.
A child might benefit from structured practice while first acquiring a skill and later benefit from incidental teaching when learning to use that skill spontaneously.
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia overview of ABA identifies both Discrete Trial Training and Incidental Teaching among teaching approaches that can appear within individualized ABA programs.
Nurturing Nests also discusses the role of structured and naturalistic strategies in its overview of ABA therapy methods.
How Is Incidental Teaching Different From Pivotal Response Training?
Incidental teaching and Pivotal Response Training, or PRT, are both naturalistic behavioral approaches, but they describe different intervention procedures.
Incidental teaching centers on a teaching interaction that begins after the child initiates. The adult then expands or prompts a target response and provides the naturally related outcome.
PRT focuses on broader pivotal areas such as motivation, initiation, and responding to multiple cues that may influence other behaviors and learning opportunities.
The Schreibman and colleagues review discusses both approaches within the broader development of naturalistic behavioral interventions and explains differences in how learning opportunities are initiated and organized.
This distinction helps avoid treating every naturalistic ABA strategy as interchangeable.
How Can Parents Use Incidental Teaching During Daily Routines?
Parents and caregivers can support skills during everyday activities when those strategies connect to goals established with the child’s clinical team.
The purpose is not to turn meals, play, and family time into continuous therapy.
Instead, caregivers can notice useful moments where the child is already motivated to interact.
A simple sequence might be:
- Notice what the child wants or is interested in.
- Give the child an opportunity to initiate.
- Pause long enough for a response.
- Use a familiar prompt if the child needs help.
- Respond naturally when the target skill occurs.
Caregivers should use prompting and reinforcement procedures they understand and that align with the child’s individualized goals.
Hsieh, Wilder, and Abellon studied caregiver implementation of incidental teaching with three children with autism. Their caregiver-training package used modeling, rehearsal, and feedback and improved correct implementation among the participating caregivers. The full Hsieh, Wilder, and Abellon study is available through the National Library of Medicine.
This study shows that caregivers can learn to implement incidental teaching through structured training that includes modeling, rehearsal, and feedback.
For families receiving in-home ABA therapy, clinicians can observe routines directly and help caregivers identify appropriate opportunities that fit naturally into home life.
Where Can Incidental Teaching Take Place?
Incidental teaching can occur anywhere a relevant interest or natural interaction appears.
Common settings include:
- Home
- ABA sessions
- Classrooms
- Playgrounds
- Community settings
- Meals
- Play activities
- Family routines
- Recreational activities
The environment should fit the skill.
A child practicing requests might encounter opportunities during meals, play, and outings. A child working on social initiation may have useful opportunities around siblings, peers, therapists, or teachers.
School-based ABA therapy can provide opportunities to practice communication and social skills within the educational environment where those behaviors naturally matter.
The important feature is not a particular location. It is the presence of a meaningful child initiation that can become a useful teaching moment.
When Is Incidental Teaching Used in ABA Therapy?
Incidental teaching may be especially appropriate when a treatment goal involves spontaneous communication, social initiation, functional language, play, independence, or transferring an existing skill into everyday situations.
It may not be the only method used when a child needs frequent, carefully structured opportunities to acquire a new response.
A therapist might therefore combine incidental teaching with:
- Natural Environment Teaching
- Discrete Trial Training
- Positive reinforcement
- Prompting and fading
- Functional communication strategies
- Pivotal Response Training
- Other individualized ABA procedures
The choice should depend on the learner, target skill, context, and treatment data.
A method should not be selected simply because it is described as more natural or more structured. Different teaching formats can serve different purposes within the same ABA program.
Conclusion
Incidental teaching in ABA turns a child’s naturally occurring interests and initiations into purposeful opportunities to practice communication, social interaction, play, daily routines, and greater independence. The child begins the interaction, while the adult identifies a meaningful target, provides appropriate support, and connects the response to a natural outcome. Its value is especially clear when children need opportunities to use skills spontaneously across different people, activities, and settings rather than only during structured instruction.
At Nurturing Nests Therapy Center, Inc., we believe every child deserves support that builds on their interests, strengths, and individual way of learning. Our experienced therapists in Los Angeles create personalized ABA programs that combine structured teaching with meaningful opportunities during play and everyday routines. If you are exploring ABA therapy for your child, our team is here to help. Contact us today to learn more about individualized autism therapy and early intervention services designed around your family’s needs.
FAQs
What is incidental teaching in ABA therapy?
Incidental teaching in ABA therapy is a naturalistic procedure where the child’s interest or initiation begins a learning opportunity. The adult then uses that interaction to support or expand a targeted skill and provides a natural consequence connected to what motivated the child. It is commonly used for functional communication, language, social interaction, play, and real-life skill use.
What are examples of incidental learning?
Examples in ABA include a child asking for help opening a snack, requesting a favorite toy during play, asking where a missing item is, initiating a game with another person, or communicating that they want a swing pushed. In incidental teaching, the adult intentionally uses one of these naturally occurring initiations to support a targeted skill.
What are the differences between incidental and naturalistic teaching?
Incidental teaching is itself a naturalistic teaching procedure. Naturalistic teaching is a broader category that places learning inside everyday activities and meaningful contexts, while incidental teaching more specifically requires the learner’s initiation or demonstrated interest to begin the teaching interaction. Other naturalistic methods can allow the adult to initiate teaching more directly.
Which is an example of incidental teaching?
A child brings a closed container holding a favorite toy to a therapist because they want help opening it. The therapist pauses and, if necessary, prompts a functional request such as “help,” a sign, or an AAC response. Once the child communicates, the therapist opens the container, so the natural result of the request is receiving the help the child wanted.
