somebody300 wrote:
Could anybody explain the setbacks of ABA? As far as I know, it's one of the only effective autism therapies, and it had been consistenly shown to improve functioning in those with an ASD.
I'm not an expert in the topic though - is there a reason why the benefits of ABA don't outweigh the costs (emotional or others)?
Granted, ABA isn't perfect, but are there any better alternatives? It still seems to benefit those with autism, even when accounting for the emotional and other costs.
Edenthiel wrote:
You won't find any instances of ABA being used on people who are now say, mid-life adults because it didn't exist *by that name* when they were children. However, they - we - were children in the era when Psychology and Psychiatry fully bought into what is known as the Blank Slate theory. The idea is that in a very B.F. Skinner wordview, every human is born with an identical brain, one that is purely plastic. All abilities, strengths, weaknesses and failures can be attributed to learned behaviors. Keep in mind that there never was any actual science behind this, it was just a pet theory that seemed "common sense" enough that everyone bought into it. The result was that many if not most autistic children of that era were brought up in an environment that very much resembled ABA in practice.
I actually think ABA has some merit, but having been raised in that era can see that ABA is mostly targeted toward parents who want to "fix" their children's autism and make it go away. If the actual end goal was to bring each autistic person up to the highest level of functioning they can reliably maintain without damage, their methods and the underlying assumptions would be very different.
While Skinner's ideas weren't perfect, modern behavioral psychology and neuroscience have been shown to be highly predictive and consistent with the evidence up to date. In fact, it's the most empirically and scientifically supported school of psychology (with psychoanalysis being the least supported by science and present day empirical data).
Behavior modification can work wonders for changing learned behaviors. But, except for the special case of learned phobias, it does not alleviate the reason or motivation for the unwanted behaviors. This is where ABA fails; it has an underlying assumption that all behaviors - and the motivation for them - is learned and so can be unlearned. That's not the case with stimming, or sensory sensitivities, or auditory processing disorders or spacial issues or [insert other Autism symptom here].
Behavior modification can be used to force some autistics to conform to acceptable standards of public behavior*. But at the price of damaging them by trying to bluntly repress both the behavior and the motivation beneath it. The frustrating thing is that it should be possible to design a school of therapy that teaches autistics how to conform as much as we want to or feel we need to, including alternate expressions, knowing that we are postponing the expression of the motivation. Not blocking them completely or eradicating them. It would also ideally include lessons teaching each autistic how to identify our personal internal 'danger' signals leading up to meltdowns, as well as levels of environmental stimulus that we can handle (and the signs that we need to leave, NOW).
It would also teach that the price to pay for conforming when needed can sometimes be steep both physically and emotionally, and the recovery period quite time consuming.
*Please consider the ethical and moral implications of that statement.
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“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
―Carl Sagan
Last edited by Edenthiel on 12 May 2016, 12:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
12 May 2016, 12:16 am
