What is skill acquisition in aba?

Skill acquisition is the process of teaching new skills or building on skills that already exist. Skills can be taught across many categories including communication, daily living and self-help, school readiness, social, play and leisure, vocational, and self-regulation. In therapy, a skill can be taught in many different ways depending on what is going to be successful for the child. The skill is often broken down into smaller steps to make early learning of the skill easy. Over time, relationships are built between the small steps that result in the ability to perform the whole skill. These steps may be taught through the following types of teaching: discrete trial teaching (DTT) and natural environment teaching (NET).