"social skills" as taught in special ed and via ABA

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This is a thread for discussion about "social skills" as taught in special ed and via ABA, and some of the ways that common teaching methods may be counterproductive.

Earlier I wrote here, in the thread Why Do People Refuse To Practice Social Skills?:

Some more background from the other thread Why Do People Refuse To Practice Social Skills?:

I wrote here, in reply to a post by uncommondenominator:

The problem with most ABA and most "behaviorists", is that they're actually just psychologists who read a book on classical conditioning, and called themselves a "behaviorist", on the grounds that they work with and "modify" behavior. In that regard, I very much dislike the way social skills are taught in what get's labeled as ABA, as it's ineffective rubbish, and not how ABA is meant to be implemented.

In actuality, behaviorism is not a subdivision of psychology, but an entirely different field altogether. The field of psychology doesn't like this, and sees it as behaviorism muscling in on psychology's territory. Psychology keeps trying to "absorb" or "assimilate" behaviorism and claim it as it's own - but the two fields have few fundamental difference that are somewhat mutually exclusive.

The easiest way to tell the difference between an actual behaviorist, and a psychologist who dabbles in behaviorism, is if they use or rely on the word "normal". Psychology is obsessed with the concepts of "normal" and "abnormal", and seeks to make the one into the other, because it sees "normal" and "abnormal" as synonyms for "functional" or "non-functional". A psychologist wants to make you "normal", and so when a psych reads a book on classical conditioning, they see it as a way to "train" you to be "normal". Which is why so much ABA takes the form described above - forcing you to comply with lists of rules with no explanation.

However, behaviorism, REAL behaviorism - not psychology with a dash of pavlov - doesn't deal in "normal" or "abnormal". What behaviorism focuses on, is functionalism - does it work (for you), or not? Is it a problem (for you), or not?

Take "stimming" as an example. A psychologist would simply call it "abnormal", and decide that you should stop doing it, so you can be "normal". A behaviorist would ask, is the stimming causing you problems? If not, it would not be addressed. It's not a problem for you. If you were to say "my stims are interfering with tasks", rather than expecting you to stop, they might help you find ways to still stim, but in ways that are less disruptive to the task. If you were to say "I feel embarrassed when I stim", they would help you find way to feel less embarrassed about stimming, but not make you stop stimming.

Another example would be eye-contact. A psychologist would simply decide that eye contact is "normal" and avoiding eye contact is "abnormal" and simply force you to make eye contact. In behaviorism, what one would do is suggest other ways you could indicate that you're listening, other than using eye contact - while also possible working on at least momentary eye contact. But still no zapping you until you can stare people in the eye.

I'm sure a lot of readers may be thinking "Hey now, that wasn't my experience with behaviorism at all! They just wanted to zap me into obedience!", and for that I am truly sorry. As mentioned, most "behaviorists" are in fact psychologists with a dash of pavlov, and most "ABA" is actually just psychotherapy enforced with classical conditioning. Even though behaviorism has been around for some time, it's till relatively new compared to psychoanalysis, and both are extremely new compared to physical medicine, or mathematics.

In the grand scheme of things, behaviorism is still relatively new, and there really aren't a lot of pure behaviorists who aren't still heavily steeped in traditional psychoanalysis and it's obsession with "normal / abnormal", from which to select for assistance. It also requires a person who can think of behaviors in terms of "functional" vs "non-functional" rather than "normal" vs "abnormal". People are human, and can be biased, whether they realize it or not.

The same would apply to a lot of special ed classes - they're going to be heavily rooted in traditional psychology, and the expectations that go along with that. Things like "milestones" and "normal" behavior. Special education classes are also often rooted in traditional american education standards, which are also based on "milestones", in the manner of "learn the following skills to proceed" - as well as being very rigid in structure. There's a right answer, and there's wrong answers, and there's nothing in between.

I don't know if elementary schools still have "gifted" programs, or if they're even still called that - it's what they were called in the 80s and 90s when I knew of them - but I think a lot of autistic kids get mis-categorized into the more "learning disabled" special education classes, rather than a "gifted" class, which, in my experience were much more autistic- and adhd-friendly than the rest of school.

I've also found Montessori style teaching to be more Au-dhd-friendly than traditional american public school. It is much more receptive to explaining why things are, and entertaining questions, than the american public school's method of "trust me bro, that's just how it is, now repeat after me..."

Behaviorism often gets treated like a sub-category of psychology. Like, there's the umbrella of all "psychology", and then there's the forms of psychology that fall under that umbrella - psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, etc - and behaviorism get's mis-labeld and mis-filed as simply "behavioral psychology". But behaviorism is a completely different field - not a sub-category of psychology, but a whole other category, sitting next to psychology, not existing as a part of it.

The two have several mutually exclusive ideologies, and trying to reconcile the two into one is rather problematic. Psychology often simply takes what it can use, and ignores the rest. Classical conditioning is a good example. In the study of behaviorism, recognizing the operation of classical conditioning is merely an introductory primer to help explain even more complex concepts later - it's a beginning, not an end. But psychology simply sees it as a way to achieve the objective of "make them normal", and doesn't go any further than that.

The sense in which I use the expression "true behaviorism", I mean it in the sense of "adhering to the philosophies of behaviorism as they stand today", not necessarily who came up with it first. Science as a whole isn't usually built on the work of one single person, but upon the collective works of many people. Similar to how Freud may have gotten credit for pioneering psychotherapy, but many other people have added to it since then. My use of the word "true" has less to do with adhering to a person, and more to do with adhering to the ideology.

Case in point - The concept of "normal", or "normal vs abnormal", is not really used in behaviorism. Behaviorism focuses more in "functional vs non-functional" - either it works, or it doesn't. Doesn't matter if it's the "normal" way or not, so long as it works. Psychology wants to make you "normal" and assumes that if you're "normal", you're also "functional" as a result. Behaviorism tries to help you be functional, without overly worrying about adhering to "normalcy" for normalcy's sake.

If one starts trying to apply the principles of behaviorism, but uses the notions of "normal" or "conformity" as tools to measure success, it's already off-track from how behaviorism is meant to operate, which is why I say it's not "true behaviorism".

I'll have to see what sources I can provide as far as references. The above is a sort of cliffs-notes overview of a small portion of 10 years of education and experience. Some of the sources I'm drawing from would be undergraduate and graduate level textbooks, which I'm not sure are readily available to read online, nor are they terribly approachable from a reader's point of view - as well as the lectures themselves, and conversations with my professors, which I really have no way of providing.

Having said that, off the top of my head, we did spend a lot of time discussing B.F. Skinner.

As far as Ole Ivar Lovaas, I'd not heard his name invoked before - after a little skimming, it seems like although he does have a reasonable understanding of cause and effect when it comes to behavior, it falls apart where he assumes that learning to accurately copy behavior made them more "functional". Supposedly, Lovaas himself was highly extroverted and personable, and possibly projected some of his own bias onto his conclusions. His research and conclusions also have some flaws and shortcomings with respect to the therapeutic value of his strategies.

As such, thus far, I'd still consider him one of the first dabblers in behaviorism, rather than an actual behaviorist, in particular since he seems to have borrowed Skinner's theories of behavioral analysis, and applied them in his own way. It's worth mention that the psychology community didn't like Skinner, and often tried to discredit him, while still borrowing his ideas when it suited them.

One example I can give as to how modern behaviorism can be a positive influence, is how it's taught and applied currently in the field of Organizational Behavior. Organizational Behavior is how behavior is approached in the business world - a place where many autistic individuals struggle. The traditional approach was to have every team member be exactly the same. However, OB recognizes that different people are different, and rather than expecting you to train your introverted employee to be an extrovert, it recommends placing them in positions where they don't have to be an extrovert - for example.

The reason that this isn't seen more often in the business world is, its very new stuff, and the people currently learning it are not yet in the positions of authority to then implement these strategies. However, any time I manage a team, that's how I approach it. One place I worked, one of my staff had a good personality, but wasn't very good at math or money. Rather than forcing him to learn the register, I encouraged his personality and taught him to handle the customers on the floor, while I took care of register. I had another staff member who was very shy, but extremely well organized, so I had them work inventory and product setup, and taught them simple polite ways to direct customers towards myself or someone else, so they could politely avoid people and focus on their task.

Most schools have a "department of psychology" but not a "department of behaviorism", because they incorrectly lump behaviorism in with psychology out of convenience, even though they're different - a fact which annoys more than a few behaviorists. Creating a whole new department takes a lot of time and money and manpower, and if a new field can be shoe-horned into an existing department, schools will usually do that - that's assuming the people making those decisions are even familiar with the fields, and know the difference.

As you've noted though, some schools ARE starting to recognize the differences, and name things accordingly, because people are starting to actually recognize that they're different. Behaviorism is distinct from psychology, not cos schools decided to give them their own department, but because the two sciences operate distinctly from each other, and flatly reject the assumptions of the other. They both insist the other is wrong, over several fundamental principles of their respective fields. They are, by their nature, distinct and separate sciences from each other.

It's not so different from how we have a forum called "Bipolar, tourettes, and other psychological conditions" - even though tourette isn't psychological, it's neurological. It just fit there better than other places, and made more sense than giving it it's own space, even though it is in fact not part of that label.

Much like how psychology has sub-categories, behaviorism also has sub-categories. Psychology is no more a sub-category of behaviorism than behaviorism is a sub-category of psychology. Two distinct entities that get mistaken as connected. While they do have some outward similarities, people have historically created more problems than they've solved by trying to merge the two fields. At best, they've been able to cherry-pick from each other.

Additionally, as stated before, these are relatively new sciences, and are still growing and evolving. Similar to how psychology has advanced well beyond Freud, even if we still use bits of stuff he came up with, behaviorism has gone through many phases as well, and continues to grow and evolve. Neuroscience is also starting to sneak in, and it's possible that at some point, psychology and behaviorism may both get left behind in favor of something like cognitive behavioral neuroscience.

Think of the history of science, where before we really had things figured out, we had competing theories on different ways to get to the same result. Sometimes there are multiple competing theories. Sometimes there's a favorite among the theories, or two main theories among the group. We're sorta living that "figuring-it-out" uncertainty in real-time insofar as mental health and human cognition goes.

Regarding the 3 articles you've posted - "Behavioralism" is one of the intermediary forms mentioned above, of behaviorism. It was a proposed version of behaviorism that caught on, then fell out of favor when better explanations came along. Behaviorism has gone through many forms as it has grown, not unlike psychology. "Behavioral sciences" sounds fairly accurate - I would say that psychology and behaviorism both fall under the umbrella of "behavioral sciences", as two separate and competing fields. The article on "Behaviorism" seems fairly accurate, and explains some of the evolution of behaviorism, and where it is at odds with psychology.

Organizational Behavior would be part of organizational studies, and organizational studies would be a part of behavioral sciences.

The Stanford Encyclopedia article makes many assertions without offering much evidence for it's conclusions. It sounds more like an opinion piece than a scientific study.

Regarding the focus of normality and conformity in psychology, not all social sciences have that adherence to normality built in as a necessity. Sociology recognizes the existence and merits of several forms of social "deviance", and takes a very "normal is subjective and fluid" stance. Behaviorism also does not focus on "normalcy". Org Behavior doesn't use the words normal or abnormal either. Not every system has "conformity" built into it.

As for bureaucratic institutions, that is another rabbit hole to delve down, and systems like that follow very different rules than simple social conventions.

Yes, there are forms of ABA that are consistent with what I consider to be behaviorism. I have given examples of them earlier, relating to stimming and eye contact.

Psychology is still a business, and businesses will always say that their way is the best way, just like how every toothpaste is somehow recommended by 9 out of 10 dentists...

Psychology already has enough trouble getting people to believe them - just look at all the posters on this very forum who think that psychologists are all dumb. Also, psychologist would simply claim that they ARE based on behaviorism, and then wave around some pavlov and classical conditioning literature, and ignore the rest. Scientists are still human, and can still be petty - people can be protective over their work. Nobody wants to entertain the idea that maybe what they've been studying for 20 years might be wrong.