I'm Speaking to a Group of ABA Therapists

Post Reply New Topic

I am a person with classical autism (299.00) who was recently invited to speak to a group of A.B.A. graduate students. I will be giving a lecture on life from our perspective. Since these students will be entering practice pretty soon, are there any questions or concerns anyone would like to see answered? Any one here been through A.B.A.?

I've never been through ABA, but I've seen it used plenty of times- I worked at a school whose classroom teaching was mainly ABA programs. I worked as a speech therapist there, and I used some techniques from ABA to teach certain concepts, as some kids really benefited from the repeated practice/drilling. I don't agree with inundating a kid with just ABA however, as the kid may learn certain responses/routines without really understanding them or their purpose, and ABA also doesn't do as much to teach children the intrinsic *value* of communication as techniques more based on promoting social interaction.

Feeling forced to do something, especially by a much-desired reward, makes you feel very.... desperate. It is like you have to choose between giving up something you love, and having your free will taken from you. Either way, you feel horrible.

The end effect is conditioning, but not the sort you are supposed to be getting. You are being conditioned to associate learning with coercion, with deciding between loss of what you love and loss of what you are. It ends with hating learning.

ABA works better, psychologically, when the reward used is trivial--no more than a confirmation that you are on the right track. If you understand "Good", then that's enough. You don't need candy or time on the computer or any really desirable rewards--you would think that repeated drill would work better with really desirable rewards; but it doesn't. It just makes you feel like you are being boxed in and forced. People should learn for the joy of learning and the knowledge that they are learning. That's why we give children report cards--so that they'll know they're learning--and that's why a bad report card is so devastating, at least until the child has become used to them and pretends not to care.

ABA also doesn't work to do anything more than teach something that can be applied in any situation and is always done the same way: Putting on socks; connecting a seat belt; taking a shower. Otherwise the two huge weaknesses of the process make it useless: When you learn by rote like that, it's hard to generalize to other situations, even slightly different; and when you learn just the physical procedure, you don't know the reason why you are doing it, and that makes it nearly useless and much less flexible than if the "why" were taught, too. Knowing "why" is absolutely important for social skills; or else you will end up reciting bits of scripted conversation without any real communication. Complex things are better taught through simulation, role-play, storytelling, and the transmission of facts from one mind to another.

If you like, yes. I don't know whether they will like it much because they probably think ABA is the best thing since sliced bread!

Maybe it will make them think, though. I have heard a lot about "if you remove aversives, ABA is fine"; but... I never saw it that way. My own parents tried a crude form of ABA (my mom's an OT, if you'll remember), and it always felt like they were trying to squeeze me into not-me.