Very Early Intervention therapy said to be “breakthrough”

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You omit some important facts:

1. The new therapy “cures or prevents” autism in a significant number which is why it made headlines around the world, ignore the BS about “remaining neurodiverse”, since autism is a CARS score, if a child scores below the threshold as they are claiming then they are not autistic, simple as that.

2. This therapy is for babies only and under the label early intervention, it’s the first-time early intervention has been shown to scientifically cure or prevent autism, before ND advocates would claim autism is fixed at birth now that has been shown not to be true.

3. Those that will be “cured or autism prevented” will grow up NT, it’s unlikely they will receive much more therapy in this area.

4. Those remaining autistic will go straight into ABA, who will cite the importance of early intervention. I made the analogy of elementary school to middle school; the new therapy will be the elementary school which had failed and the middle school is the ABA. There is no equivalent to this new therapy for older kids


5. ABA is still the main autism therapy for older kids & teenagers, there is little else out there apart from floor time which is aimed at younger kids, there are some others like occupational therapy which tends to target different things.

This new therapy or ABA doesnt effect me much but it does open a debate about treating autism which is a good thing

No only one in the autism politics forum, the other although related to the new therapy was about the deception of NT scientists in saying the children were still Neurodiverse but were no longer autistic.

I basically I said that’s BS, since autism diagnosis is a CARS score if they fall below they are no longer autistic.

So two threads plus comments on this one by AsPartOfMe.

I basically I said that’s BS, since autism diagnosis is a CARS score if they fall below they are no longer autistic.

Wow, so much wrong.

Firstly, early intervention =|= ABA. There are many different treatments that have been used, for many different diagnoses (and for undiagnosed kids who seem delayed), to do early intervention. Speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, all are frequently used as early intervention.

Secondly, the description of this therapy is pretty much the opposite of ABA. It seems more in line with parental sensitivity training - an intervention that has already been used to prevent attachment insecurity in at-risk families. It's all about listening to the child, not bossing them around.

Now, imagine you're a parent of a disabled child, and you've been taught to do a treatment and it seems to have had good effects. And then your kid ages out of that therapy, and they get offered a new therapist with a different approach that's basically the exact opposite of what you've already been doing and getting success with. My guess is that most parents won't be happy to do a total 180° switch in their parenting style, when they've already gotten good results from the original strategy, just because some new therapist says they need to change things up. These parents are going to be the ones who drop out of ABA because they don't think it's a good fit for their children. (This is backed up by the subjective impression I've gotten that parents I've known who back out of ABA treatment for their kids tend to be high in parental sensitivity, even if they haven't been trained in it.)

And then you seem to be convinced that this is the only time anyone has ever studied any early intervention for autism and found results that are interpreted as evidence of effectiveness of the treatment. You're almost 40 years out of date. In 1987, Ivar Lovaas published the first major study of early intensive ABA, in which he claimed that 47% of preschool-aged autistic children who got intensive ABA treatment grew to be "indistinguishable from their peers" by the age of 6. Since then, there's been a ton of studies into ABA as an early intervention for autism, and while none of them have found almost half of the kids were cured, most have found significant "improvement". And meanwhile, before and after Lovaas, other early interventions have been studied in a wide variety of populations for a wide variety of purposes and found to be effective.

The ND movement would've been killed before it even started if a single study about early intervention with positive results was enough to do it. But no, studies saying ABA works hasn't really slowed us down. We've just focused on questioning whether the effects hold after the ages studied (no one has looked at adults who received early childhood ABA and found positive results), whether their measures really reflect improvement (eg if a child stims less, that's not necessarily better), whether the marketing overstates the studies' data (it absolutely does - ABA proponents are constantly claiming Ivar Lovaas' 47% cured as if that's a replicable finding) and whether the studies can be trusted altogether (87% of studies into the effectiveness of ABA are authored by people who failed to mention their financial ties to the ABA industry in the study's conflict of interest declaration).

So, no, we haven't lost. In fact, this study is a victory against ABA, because it's a study we can point to for a better alternative for desperate parents.

Firstly, early intervention =|= ABA. There are many different treatments that have been used, for many different diagnoses (and for undiagnosed kids who seem delayed), to do early intervention. Speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, all are frequently used as early intervention.

Secondly, the description of this therapy is pretty much the opposite of ABA. It seems more in line with parental sensitivity training - an intervention that has already been used to prevent attachment insecurity in at-risk families. It's all about listening to the child, not bossing them around.

Now, imagine you're a parent of a disabled child, and you've been taught to do a treatment and it seems to have had good effects. And then your kid ages out of that therapy, and they get offered a new therapist with a different approach that's basically the exact opposite of what you've already been doing and getting success with. My guess is that most parents won't be happy to do a total 180° switch in their parenting style, when they've already gotten good results from the original strategy, just because some new therapist says they need to change things up. These parents are going to be the ones who drop out of ABA because they don't think it's a good fit for their children. (This is backed up by the subjective impression I've gotten that parents I've known who back out of ABA treatment for their kids tend to be high in parental sensitivity, even if they haven't been trained in it.)

his therapy is for babies only and under the label early intervention, it’s the first-time early intervention has been shown to scientifically cure or prevent autism, before ND advocates would claim autism is fixed at birth now that has been shown not to be true.

3. Those that will be “cured or autism prevented” will grow up NT, it’s unlikely they will receive much more therapy in this area.

4. Those remaining autistic will go straight into ABA, who will cite the importance of early intervention. I made the analogy of elementary school to middle school; the new therapy will be the elementary school which had failed and the middle school is the ABA. There is no equivalent to this new therapy for older kids


5. ABA is still the main autism therapy for older kids & teenagers, there is little else out there apart from floor time which is aimed at younger kids, there are some others like occupational therapy which tends to target different things.

And then you seem to be convinced that this is the only time anyone has ever studied any early intervention for autism and found results that are interpreted as evidence of effectiveness of the treatment. You're almost 40 years out of date. In 1987, Ivar Lovaas published the first major study of early intensive ABA, in which he claimed that 47% of preschool-aged autistic children who got intensive ABA treatment grew to be "indistinguishable from their peers" by the age of 6. Since then, there's been a ton of studies into ABA as an early intervention for autism, and while none of them have found almost half of the kids were cured, most have found significant "improvement". And meanwhile, before and after Lovaas, other early interventions have been studied in a wide variety of populations for a wide variety of purposes and found to be effective.

The ND movement would've been killed before it even started if a single study about early intervention with positive results was enough to do it. But no, studies saying ABA works hasn't really slowed us down. We've just focused on questioning whether the effects hold after the ages studied (no one has looked at adults who received early childhood ABA and found positive results), whether their measures really reflect improvement (eg if a child stims less, that's not necessarily better), whether the marketing overstates the studies' data (it absolutely does - ABA proponents are constantly claiming Ivar Lovaas' 47% cured as if that's a replicable finding) and whether the studies can be trusted altogether (87% of studies into the effectiveness of ABA are authored by people who failed to mention their financial ties to the ABA industry in the study's conflict of interest declaration).

So, no, we haven't lost. In fact, this study is a victory against ABA, because it's a study we can point to for a better alternative for desperate parents.

. In fact, this study is a victory against ABA, because it's a study we can point to for a better alternative for desperate parents.

I believe I answered this previously :



But I’ll add and repeat this is for babies only so no equivalent for older children. Maybe I’m wrong about the first time of scientific proof of early intervention.

I further answered this point with:

If only as it’s for babies only

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellne ... t-3-679902

Why do you think absence of other offered therapies automatically means parents will sign up for a therapy that's the exact opposite of what they've already had success with? I think it's far more likely that they'll decide on no therapy than ABA therapy.

Besides, in most cases, ABA isn't the only available therapy for autistic kids - just the only one that's aimed specifically at them. Any person of any age with language impairment, regardless of diagnosis, qualifies for speech therapy, and the same for impaired activities of daily living and occupational therapy. And it's much more likely they'll find therapy in line with what they've already found to work if they go for ST and OT.

The iBASIS-VIPP therapy was so effective in supporting children to learn social communication skills that only 6.7% of the children met diagnostic criteria for autism at age three years, compared to 20.5% of children who did not receive the therapy. That’s a reduction of two-thirds.

Why do you think absence of other offered therapies automatically means parents will sign up for a therapy that's the exact opposite of what they've already had success with? I think it's far more likely that they'll decide on no therapy than ABA therapy.