Speech and language therapy assessment based on applied behavior analysis: a scoping review

ABSTRACT Purpose To identify and describe language assessment protocols from the perspective of ABA used in speech-language therapy. Research strategies The question that guided the study was: What are the ABA-based language assessment protocols currently used in speech therapy? For the electronic search of articles, the databases used were Medline/PubMed, Lilacs, Web of Science and Scopus. The search strategy used indexed and free uniterms related to PCC. Selection criteria Studies with a cross-sectional design were included, considering individuals undergoing language assessment as the population; ABA-based assessment protocols in speech-language therapy were included. Studies that did not focus on language assessment and with a literature review design, letters to the editor, books, abstracts from proceedings, opinion articles and technical articles were excluded. Data analysis The data were analyzed descriptively, analyzing the studies' levels of evidence. Results A total of 6,859 articles were identified in all the databases. Of these, 17 articles were selected by title, after reading the abstract. 12 were excluded because they did not meet the inclusion criteria: 4 were review articles, 6 did not fit the objective of this research and 2 were repeated between the databases. Five were then selected for full text reading and subsequent data analysis. Conclusion Only two language assessment protocols from the perspective of ABA used in speech therapy were found in this review: VB-MAPP and ABLLS-R. Both do not have validation studies for Brazilian Portuguese