What Is Incidental Teaching in ABA Therapy?
Incidental teaching is a naturalistic teaching procedure used in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to build language, communication, and other skills through learner-initiated interactions in everyday settings. Instead of running teaching trials in a structured format with prearranged materials, the behavior technician arranges the environment so the learner is likely to initiate a request or interaction, and then uses that initiation as a teaching moment. The learner reaches for a toy that’s just out of reach; the technician waits for a vocalization or sign, prompts the appropriate language if needed, and delivers the toy contingent on the response.
Incidental teaching was developed by Betty Hart and Todd Risley in the late 1960s and early 1970s and is now considered one of the foundational naturalistic procedures in behavior analysis. According to the original 1975 paper by Hart and Risley, available through PubMed Central at the National Institutes of Health, incidental teaching denotes “a process whereby language skills of labelling and describing are learned in naturally occurring adult-child interactions.” The original research demonstrated significant increases in spontaneous compound-sentence use across all eleven preschool participants over an eight-month period.
Although Hart and Risley first developed incidental teaching for preschoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds, the procedure was later adapted for children with autism and is now one of the most established naturalistic interventions in the field. It sits within a broader category of approaches sometimes called Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs), which also includes Pivotal Response Training, the Early Start Denver Model, and Enhanced Milieu Teaching. What unites these approaches is the use of the learner’s natural interests as the starting point for teaching, rather than predetermined drill sequences.
Four components define classic incidental teaching. First, the environment is arranged to make initiations likely (preferred items in sight but out of reach). Second, the adult waits for the learner to initiate. Third, the adult responds to the initiation with a prompt that elaborates the language target (for example, asking the learner to expand a one-word request into a fuller utterance). Fourth, the adult delivers the requested item contingent on the appropriate response. Each component is designed to keep the learner in control of when teaching happens and what gets taught.
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Examples of Incidental Teaching in ABA Therapy
Example 1: Expanding a one-word request into a sentence
A behavior technician is working with a four-year-old client who consistently uses single-word requests (“Juice”). The technician sets up the room with the juice container visible but out of reach. When the learner says “Juice,” the technician makes eye contact and prompts a fuller utterance: “Say, ‘I want juice please.’” The learner echoes the longer phrase, and the technician delivers the juice immediately. Over many such moments across daily sessions, the learner’s spontaneous utterances expand from single words to two- and three-word phrases. The procedure builds expressive communication by leveraging moments the learner already cares about, rather than introducing new artificial contexts.
Example 2: Teaching descriptive language through play
A behavior technician working with a six-year-old client uses incidental teaching during free play. The room is set up with a variety of preferred toys, some accessible and some requiring the learner’s request. When the learner reaches for a specific toy car, the technician prompts a descriptive request: “Which car? The red one or the blue one?” The learner says “Blue car,” and the technician hands it over. Across play sessions, the learner builds a habit of using descriptive language (color, size, location) in requesting, which generalizes beyond the play context to mealtime, getting dressed, and other daily routines.
Example 3: Family-implemented incidental teaching at home
A behavior analyst coaches a parent on how to use incidental teaching with their three-year-old client at home. The parent learns to arrange the kitchen so the learner has to request preferred snacks rather than helping themselves, to wait briefly for the learner’s initiation, and to prompt an expanded request when an initiation occurs. The behavior analyst and the team’s therapist observe initial sessions in person and via video review, providing feedback and adjusting the procedure. Within a few weeks, the parent is implementing incidental teaching naturally across the day, and the learner’s spontaneous language has increased in both frequency and complexity.
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Why Is Incidental Teaching Important in ABA?
Incidental teaching matters because it solves one of the persistent problems with structured behavioral teaching: generalization. A learner who masters a skill in a tightly controlled teaching setting may not use that skill in everyday contexts where it actually matters. Skills learned through incidental teaching, by contrast, are built in the natural environment from the start, with reinforcers the learner cares about in real moments of motivation. The skill and the context are intertwined, which makes the skill more likely to show up across settings and people.
The procedure also respects the learner’s autonomy in a way that structured drill approaches often don’t. The learner initiates; the adult responds. This places the locus of control in the learner’s hands, which tends to produce higher engagement and lower rates of escape-motivated interfering behavior. For learners who find structured teaching aversive or who have built up avoidance of demand-heavy contexts, incidental teaching can be a more sustainable way to build language and communication skills.
Incidental teaching is closely related to natural environment teaching (NET), which uses similar principles across a broader range of skill domains. Many practitioners use the two terms somewhat interchangeably, while others reserve “incidental teaching” for the more specific Hart and Risley procedure focused on language. Both fall within the broader NDBI category and share core features: teaching in natural contexts, following learner initiations, and using naturally occurring reinforcers.
For families, incidental teaching is particularly valuable because it can be implemented at home with relatively little additional training. The behavior analyst coaches parents on how to arrange the environment, wait for initiations, and provide prompts, and the family then uses the procedure across daily routines. This kind of carryover into the home is one of the things that makes early intervention so impactful. For more on why early intervention matters, read our blog on 5 benefits of early intervention.
Contemporary ABA emphasizes flexible, naturalistic teaching approaches alongside more structured methods like discrete trial training. The right balance depends on the learner, the skill, and the context. For more on how LEARN approaches this balance, see our Q&A about ABA therapy for children with autism.
FAQs About Incidental Teaching
What’s the difference between incidental teaching and discrete trial training (DTT)?
The two procedures differ in who initiates the teaching moment and how structured the context is. In DTT, the behavior technician presents a discriminative stimulus (a question, instruction, or material) and the learner responds; the trial is initiated by the adult and occurs in a relatively structured teaching format. In incidental teaching, the learner initiates by reaching for something, looking at something, or attempting a request, and the adult uses that moment to deliver a teaching trial. Both procedures have research support, and many ABA programs use both, choosing based on the skill being taught and what fits the learner best.
Is incidental teaching the same as natural environment teaching (NET)?
They overlap heavily and many practitioners use the terms interchangeably. Strictly speaking, incidental teaching refers to the specific Hart and Risley procedure originally developed for language teaching in preschool settings. NET is a broader umbrella that includes incidental teaching along with other naturalistic teaching approaches across a wider range of skill domains. In practice, the distinction often comes down to terminology preference rather than meaningful procedural differences.
What kinds of skills can be taught through incidental teaching?
Hart and Risley originally developed the procedure for language skills, particularly the use of descriptive adjectives and compound sentences. The approach has since been extended to a wide range of communication and social skills: requesting (manding), labeling (tacting), conversational exchanges, peer interaction, joint attention, play skills, and more. Incidental teaching is best suited for skills that occur naturally in everyday contexts and benefit from being practiced in those same contexts.
How do behavior technicians know what to teach if the learner is initiating?
The behavior analyst sets specific language and communication targets for each learner based on assessment. The technician then watches for natural opportunities to address those targets within the learner’s initiations. If the target is two-word requests, the technician arranges the environment so the learner is likely to initiate single-word requests and prompts the expansion. If the target is descriptive language, the environment includes choices that pull for descriptive distinctions. The structure is in the planning, not in the moment-to-moment delivery.
Can incidental teaching work for learners who don’t initiate much?
This is one of the procedure’s real limitations and the team plans for it. Learners who rarely initiate may not generate enough teaching opportunities for incidental teaching to drive meaningful skill growth on its own. The team has options: pair incidental teaching with environmental arrangements that increase the likelihood of initiations (preferred items in sight, novel materials, deliberate pauses in routines), combine incidental teaching with more structured approaches like discrete trial training, or first build initiation skills through other procedures before relying heavily on incidental teaching. The behavior analyst calibrates the mix based on what the learner currently does.
Key Takeaways About Incidental Teaching
- Incidental teaching is a naturalistic ABA procedure that uses learner-initiated moments in everyday settings as teaching opportunities, particularly for language and communication skills.
- It was developed by Hart and Risley in the late 1960s and 1970s and is one of the foundational naturalistic interventions in behavior analysis.
- Four core components define the procedure: environmental arrangement, waiting for learner initiation, prompting an elaborated response, and delivering the requested item contingent on the response.
- Incidental teaching tends to produce better generalization than highly structured teaching, since skills are built in the natural contexts where they’ll be used.
- It sits within the broader Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBI) category and overlaps substantially with Natural Environment Teaching.
- Incidental teaching works well for learners who initiate frequently and can be supplemented with more structured approaches for learners who don’t.
