Behaviorism is a theory of learning that focuses on observable behaviors and environmental stimuli.
Behaviorism: Definition, History, Concepts, and Impact
ABA manifests systematic violations of the fundamental tenets of bioethics.
We argue that a dominant form of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which is widely taken to be far-and-away the best “treatment” for ASD, manifests systematic violations of the fundamental tenets of bioethics. Moreover, the supposed benefits of the treatment not only fail to mitigate these violations, but often exacerbate them. Warnings of the perils of ABA are not original to us-autism advocates have been ringing this bell for some years. However, their pleas have been largely unheeded, and ABA continues to be offered to and quite frequently pushed upon parents as the appropriate treatment for autistic children. Our contribution is to argue that, from a bioethical perspective, autism advocates are fully justified in their concerns-the rights of autistic children and their parents are being regularly infringed upon. Specifically, we will argue that employing ABA violates the principles of justice and nonmaleficence and, most critically, infringes on the autonomy of children and (when pushed aggressively) of parents as well.
Ethical Concerns with Applied Behavior Analysis for Autism Spectrum “Disorder” – PubMed
The behaviorist strategies caused a fracturing of identity and mental health problems.
CW: suicide
I felt hopeless because I knew that I could never change. I knew I could never be what they wanted me to be, and every time I failed, every time they tried to extinguish a behavior which I just couldn’t get rid of, I felt as though I’d failed. And so I became anxious. I became depressed. And I tried to take my life by suicide.
Rightful Live Investigates Behavioural Analysis and Support – YouTube
Do autistic people have the status of being ‘human’?
Do autistic people have the status of being ‘human’? It is my view that Behaviourists think I have to ‘do’ something to be human, or that I am not intrinsically ‘okay’. The idea of ‘human’ that they hold has been toxic and limiting to me and my inner spirit, to the ‘me-ness’ of me. It dumbs down all my gifts and renders me disabled. It cannot be otherwise: that which makes me the gifted, sensitive, perceptive, creative, original and intelligent being that I am, is, by their processes of trying to turn me into something I am not, yanked and wrenched as though my guts are being pulled out of me: and thus suitably disabled, enables the breaking of my spirit, just as surely as one would do with breaking-in horses. I became a frightened passive prisoner in a world I was alienated from by their violent attempts to avoid seeing who I really was and what I may contribute to humankind. A lifetime spent aping a socialised ‘human’ in a despairing attempt to substitute for my lost autonomy and spirit, but now with little available ability to express my experience of the world and the gifts of my own ‘humanity’.
The normalisation agenda and the psycho-emotional disablement of autistic people – Kent Academic Repository
Table of Contents
- Behaviorism is dead. Despite that, behaviorism won.
- Behaviorism Is Everywhere
- Behaviorism measures the surface, badly.
- Behaviorism is an erasure of identity through “correction.”
- We are not pigeons.
- When you’re autistic, it’s not abuse. It’s therapy.
- Our non-compliance is not intended to be rebellious. We simply do not comply with things that harm us.
- Behaviorism is a repudiation, an almost willful dismissal, of subjective experience.
- ABA is loathed by autistic adults.
- The primary legacy of ABA is trauma. Adults and children both have increased chances of meeting the PTSD criteria if they are exposed to ABA.
- ABA manifests systematic violations of the fundamental tenets of bioethics.
- I would never treat a dog that way.
- Everything an autistic child does, says, doesn’t do or doesn’t say is pathologised.
- Many families don’t realize they’re putting their loved ones through a costly and traumatic program.
- Behaviorism is harmful for vulnerable children.
- Results suggest lack of clinical effectiveness for PBS.
- ABA therapy is badly out of date. Behaviorism was old news by the 1960s.
- The evidence for Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention is weak.
- This is a therapy of terror. We cannot replace agency with response to stimuli.
- The receipts are endless.
- ABA cannot be considered to be a safe, effective, or ethical field.
- I don’t need a cure for me.
- Spare me from the mold. Let us be our real autistic selves, loud and proud, and show the world what we truly are.
- Oh Behaviorism, Up Yours!
- Further Reading
Behaviorism is dead. Despite that, behaviorism won.
Behaviorism can’t die.
It doesn’t matter how often it’s refuted and how fully it’s refuted, it comes right back to life.
It’s been refuted so overwhelmingly.
Noam Chomsky on Behaviorism
“The Case Against B.F. Skinner” by Noam Chomsky
In “The Case Against B.F. Skinner”, Noam Chomsky famously debunked behaviorism as pseudoscientific nonsense before ABA even existed.
Selected quotes:
- Whatever function “behaviorism” may have served in the past, it has become nothing more than a set of arbitrary restrictions on “legitimate” theory construction, and there is no reason why someone who investigates man and society should accept the kind of intellectual shackles that physical scientists would surely not tolerate and that condemn any intellectual pursuit to insignificance.
- the claims are becoming more extreme and more strident as the inability to support them and the reasons for this failure become increasingly obvious.
- In fact, Skinnerian translation, which is easily employed by anyone, leads to a significant loss of precision, for the simple reason that the full range of terms for the description and evaluation of behavior, attitude, opinion, and so on, must be “translated” into the impoverished system of terminology borrowed from the laboratory (and deprived of its meaning in transition).
- In fact, there is nothing in Skinner’s approach that is incompatible with a police state in which rigid laws are enforced by people who are themselves subject to them and the threat of dire punishment hangs over all.
- Such a conclusion overlooks a fundamental property of Skinner’s science, namely, its vacuity.
- Skinner’s book contains no clearly formulated substantive hypotheses or proposals.
- Sanctions backed by force restrict freedom, as does differential reward.
- Skinner confuses “science” with terminology.
- He appears to be attacking fundamental human values, demanding control in place of the defense of freedom and dignity.
- His speculations are devoid of scientific content and do not even hint at general outlines of a possible science of human behavior.
- Furthermore, Skinner imposes certain arbitrary limitations on scientific research which virtually guarantee continued failure.
- As to its social implications, Skinner’s science of human behavior, being quite vacuous, is as congenial to the libertarian as to the fascist.
- There is little doubt that a theory of human malleability might be put to the service of totalitarian doctrine.
- In general, Skinner’s conception of science is very odd. Not only do his a priori methodological assumptions rule out all but the most trivial scientific theories; he is, furthermore, given to strange pronouncements such as the assertion that “the laws of science are descriptions of contingencies of reinforcement” (p. 189) — which I happily leave to others to decode.
- Worse, we discover that Skinner’s a priori limitations on “scientific” inquiry make it impossible for him even to formulate the relevant concepts, let alone investigate them.
- Skinner does not attempt to meet this criticism by presenting some relevant results that are not a monumental triviality. He is unable to perceive that objection to his “scientific picture of man” derives not from “extinction” of certain behavior or opposition to science, but from an ability to distinguish science from triviality and obvious error.
- Skinner does not comprehend the basic criticism: when his formulations are interpreted literally, they are clearly false, and when these assertions are interpreted in his characteristic vague and metaphorical way, they are merely a poor substitute for ordinary usage.
- At this point an annoying, though obvious, question intrudes. If Skinner’s thesis is false, then there is no point in his having written the book or our reading it. But if his thesis is true, then there is also no point in his having written the book or our reading it. For the only point could be to modify behavior, and behavior, according to the thesis, is entirely controlled by arrangement of reinforcers. Therefore reading the book can modify behavior only if it is a reinforcer, that is, if reading the book will increase the probability of the behavior that led to reading the book (assuming an appropriate state of deprivation). At this point, we seem to be reduced to gibberish.
- In every possible respect, then, Skinner’s account is simply incoherent.
- Skinner’s “science of behavior” is irrelevant: the thesis of the book is either false (if we use terminology in its technical sense) or empty (if we do not).
- But the thesis, in so far as it is at all clear, is without empirical support, and in fact may even be empty, as we have seen in discussing “probability of response” and persuasion. Skinner is left with no coherent criticism of the “literature of freedom and dignity.”
Despite that,
And neurodivergent and disabled people lost.
CW: ABA, behaviorism, operant conditioning
This construct was built and can be dismantled.
This construct
Was built by petty tyrants
This was important because it meant that Darwinists and policy makers, deprived of widespread support for Galtonian eugenics, now saw a new method for normalising populations. But this time it sought to mimic evolutionary pressures in childhood development rather than through control of hereditary traits across generations. In this context, as Harvard historian Rebecca Lemov has detailed, large American philanthropic organisations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, which had previously funded Nazi eugenics, began lavishly funding new behaviouralist research. Most notably, this included the work of Elton Mayo, who sought to ‘adapt industrial workers to their tasks by deradicalizing them through psychological counselling’. This would formalise and update the kinds of scientific management that had been pioneered on slave plantations to manage the psyches of modern workers.
Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman
…mass neurodivergent disablement and constant, widespread anxiety, panic, depression, and mental illness, combined with systemic discrimination of neurodivergent people, is a problem specific to the current historical era. Hegemonic neuronormative domination, in other words, is a key problem of our time.
Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman
This construct
Was built and can be dismantled
Behaviorism Is Everywhere
Behaviorism is everywhere. The All Means All of public education is made meaningless by the bipartisanship of behaviorism.
Behaviorism is deeply-rooted into our political, educational, and parental expectations.
Authors Alfie Kohn and Jonathan Mooney dig deeper into the issues facing neurodivergent students when met with the bipartisanship of behaviorism.
Notable Quote(s) from Alfie Kohn’s “The Myth of the Spoiled Child”
Alfie Kohn on the politics of education and child-rearing:
There’s just one problem with Lakoff’s theory. An awful lot of people who are politically liberal begin to sound like right-wing talk-show hosts as soon as the conversation turns to children and parenting. It was this curious discrepancy, in fact, that inspired the book you are now reading.
I first noticed an inconsistency of this kind in the context of education. Have a look at the unsigned editorials in left-of-center newspapers, or essays by columnists whose politics are mostly progressive. Listen to speeches by liberal public officials. On any of the controversial issues of our day, from tax policy to civil rights, you’ll find approximately what you’d expect. But when it comes to education, almost all of them take a hard-line position very much like what we hear from conservatives. They endorse a top-down, corporate-style version of school reform that includes prescriptive, one-size-fits-all teaching standards and curriculum mandates; weakened job protection for teachers; frequent standardized testing; and a reliance on rewards and punishments to raise scores on those tests and compel compliance on the part of teachers and students.
The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting
Alfie Kohn on the culture war of childrearing:
This widespread adoption of a traditionalist perspective helps us to make sense of the fact that, on topics related to children, even liberals tend to hold positions whose premises are deeply conservative. Perhaps it works the other way around as well: The fact that people on the left and center find themselves largely in agreement with those on the right explains how the traditionalist viewpoint has become the conventional wisdom. Child rearing might be described as a hidden front in the culture wars, except that no one is fighting on the other side.
The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting
Notable Quote(s) from Jonathan Mooney’s “Normal Sucks”
Jonathan Mooney on the problem with “No Child Left Behind”:
No Child Left Behind was perhaps the most damaging form of public policy as it pertained to public education and learning diversity that has happened in our history of education policy, and that was a bill that was sponsored by Senator Edward Kennedy. It was a set of practices that was doubled down upon by the Obama administration.
Normal Sucks: Author Jonathan Mooney on How Schools Fail Kids with Learning Differences
The neurodiversity and disability rights movements well-understand the ubiquity of behaviorism, and its tremendous costs.
Behaviorist education is ableist education.
In a masquerade to create a pedagogy that is entirely objective, the “objectiveness” of it is entirely inequitable.
The techniques of Uncommon Schools and Teach Like a Champion are heavily based off the work of radical behaviorism founder, B.F. Skinner. Most well known for the “Skinner Box”, a lever that animals would pull to be positively rewarded for simple tasks, Skinner spent much of his life devoted to creating a school system which was entirely rote. Vocal TLAC advocates connect his philosophy to much of what they do, and some followers even make more, bluntly dehumanizing, connections
Skinner firmly believed that a society entirely based on positive reinforcement and rote tasks would lead to a utopian life, free of politics. He literally wrote a utopian sci-fi book on it, Walden Two. As Audrey Watters expertly chronicles in Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning, Skinner is a fan favorite of ed-tech companies and school reformers working to make school more “productive.”
Of course, this is the obvious truth that underlies the whole movement toward behaviorism: it is political. In a masquerade to create a pedagogy that is entirely objective, the “objectiveness” of it is entirely inequitable. In the same way that remaining neutral is a political act, remaining neutral and objective toward rote teaching materials is a political act.
Empty Pedagogy, Behaviorism, and the Rejection of Equity
When your kid is DXed as autistic, almost all of the professional advice you get from education and healthcare is steeped in deficit ideology and the pathology paradigm.
The message to parents of the neurodiverse kid is that their child is deficient, and that their job is to fix their child. We are in a sort of remediation industrial complex, where there’s all sorts of services and treatments and interventions to make the square peg fit the round hole. Parents are relentlessly told that that’s their job.
Normal Sucks: Author Jonathan Mooney on How Schools Fail Kids with Learning Differences
Skinner won, and generations of autistic people lost.
THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: ON HANS ASPERGER, THE NAZIS, AND AUTISM: A CONVERSATION ACROSS NEUROLOGIES
Behaviorism measures the surface, badly.
ABA and behaviorism pointedly don’t understand sensory overload, or anything else about autism.
Plenty of policies and programs limit our ability to do right by children. But perhaps the most restrictive virtual straitjacket that educators face is behaviorism — a psychological theory that would have us focus exclusively on what can be seen and measured, that ignores or dismisses inner experience and reduces wholes to parts. It also suggests that everything people do can be explained as a quest for reinforcement — and, by implication, that we can control others by rewarding them selectively.
It’s Not About Behavior – Alfie Kohn
It’s been decades since academic psychology took seriously the orthodox behaviorism of John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner, which by now has shrunk to a cult-like clan of “behavior analysts.” But, alas, its reductionist influence lives on — in classroom (and schoolwide) management programs like PBIS and Class Dojo, in scripted curricula and the reduction of children’s learning to “data,” in grades and rubrics, in “competency”- and “proficiency”-based approaches to instruction, in standardized assessments, in reading incentives and merit pay for teachers.
It’s Not About Behavior – Alfie Kohn
It’s time we outgrew this limited and limiting psychological theory. That means attending less to students’ behaviors and more to the students themselves.
It’s Not About Behavior – Alfie Kohn
ABA Lacks ‘Face Validity’
Most of the supposed evidence for these theories lacks what’s called ‘face validity‘, in the eyes of many of the people being studied – that is, it doesn’t look like it’s measuring what it’s supposed to be measuring at all. Too much autism research has been done without autistic input, which could have prevented data being misinterpreted, flagged up when studies’ goals bore no relation to autistic wellbeing, and prevented major errors of omission.
The failures of autism science are not random: they reflect systematic power imbalances.
Autism and Scientism
The history of autism research and practice has been beset by controversy and expensive ‘dead-ends’….a lack of participation, poor ethics or a lack of informed consent, as well as how research priorities are often a poor match with community priorities… Essentially, what is often being critiqued is the very lack of power that participants have within the research process. With greater power-sharing from the outset, wrong turns and mishaps could be diverted away before vast sums of money are fritted away through researchers not checking the ‘face validity’ of their research aims and objectives.
Theorising autism – Damian EM Milton, Jonathan Green, 2024
But the enduring lesson for educators isn’t just that “positive reinforcement” turns out to be anything but positive. It also concerns the conceptual dead-end of behaviorism more generally. Every day, and with every child, we need to keep in mind that behaviors are just the protruding tip of the proverbial iceberg. What matters more than “What?” or “How much?” is “How come?”
It’s Not About Behavior – Alfie Kohn
The underpinnings of that ideology include: a focus only on observable behaviors that can be quantified, a reduction of wholes to parts, the assumption that everything people do can be explained as a quest for reinforcement, and the creation of methods for selectively reinforcing whichever behaviors are preferred by the person with the power. Behaviorists ignore, or actively dismiss, subjective experience – the perceptions, needs, values, and complex motives of the human beings who engage in behaviors.
The late Herb Lovett used to say that there are only two problems with “special education” in America: It’s not special and it sure as hell isn’t education. The field continues to be marinated in behaviorist assumptions and practices despite the fact that numerous resources for teachers, therapists, and parents offer alternatives to behavior control. These alternatives are based on a commitment to care and to understand. By “care,” I mean that our relationship with the child is what matters most. He or she is not a passive object to be manipulated but a subject, a center of experience, a person with agency, with needs and rights. And by “understand,” I mean that we have an obligation to look beneath the behavior, in part by imaginatively trying to adopt that person’s point of view, attempting to understand the whys rather than just tabulating the frequency of the whats. As Norm Kunc and Emma Van der Klift urged us in their Credo for Support: “Be still and listen. What you define as inappropriate may be my attempt to communicate with you in the only way I can….[or] the only way I can exert some control over my life….Do not work on me. Work with me.”
Autism and Behaviorism – Alfie Kohn
Behaviorism is an erasure of identity through “correction.”
We are not pigeons.
“Once we have arranged the particular type of consequence called a reinforcement,“ Skinner wrote in ”The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching“ (1954), ”our techniques permit us to shape the behavior of an organism almost at will. It has become a routine exercise to demonstrate this in classes in elementary psychology by conditioning such an organism as a pigeon.”
“…Such an organism as a pigeon.”
We often speak of “lab rats” as shorthand for the animals used in scientific experiments. We use the phrase too to describe people who work in labs, who are completely absorbed in performing their tasks again and again and again.
In education and in education technology, students are also the subjects of experimentation and conditioning. But in Skinner’s framework, they are not rats; they are pigeons.
The Pigeons of Ed-Tech
The pigeon. The object of technological experimentation, manipulation, and control, weaponized.
The pigeon. The child. The object of ed-tech.
The pigeon. The history of the future of education technology.
The Pigeons of Ed-Tech
When you’re autistic, it’s not abuse. It’s therapy.
“Quiet hands!”
I’ve yet to meet a student who didn’t instinctively know to pull back and put their hands in their lap at this order. Thanks to applied behavioral analysis, each student learned this phrase in preschool at the latest, hands slapped down and held to a table or at their sides for a count of three until they learned to restrain themselves at the words.
The literal meaning of the words is irrelevant when you’re being abused.
Quiet Hands | Just Stimming…
They actually teach, in applied behavioral analysis, in special education teacher training, that the most important, the most basic, the most foundational thing is behavioral control. A kid’s education can’t begin until they’re “table ready.”
I know.
I need to silence my most reliable way of gathering, processing, and expressing information, I need to put more effort into controlling and deadening and reducing and removing myself second-by-second than you could ever even conceive, I need to have quiet hands, because until I move 97% of the way in your direction you can’t even see that’s there’s a 3% for you to move towards me.
I know.
I need to have quiet hands.
I know. I know.
Quiet Hands | Just Stimming…
These situations are why ABA is a breeding ground for meltdowns. The only way ABA knows how to “train” a child, to “motivate” them (as if they were lacking in motivation before this), is to negate their needs or take away their joy.
Autism Acceptance Week and Applied Behavior Analysis – Autistic Science Person
Our non-compliance is not intended to be rebellious. We simply do not comply with things that harm us.
Behaviorism is a repudiation, an almost willful dismissal, of subjective experience.
Behaviorism is a repudiation, an almost willful dismissal, of subjective experience.
Alfie Kohn
This is a child’s heart in fight or flight mode, constantly, that is being bombarded with all these instructions and prompting.
Professor Elizabeth Torres
ABA is loathed by autistic adults.
But even more compelling is the testimony of young people who understand the reality of this approach better than anyone because they’ve been on the receiving end of it. It is nothing short of stunning to learn just how widely and intensely ABA is loathed by autistic adults who are able to describe their experience with it. Frankly, I’m embarrassed that, until about a year ago, I was completely unaware of all the websites, articles, scholarly essays, blog posts, Facebook pages, and Twitter groups featuring the voices of autistic men and women, all overwhelmingly critical of ABA and eloquent in describing the trauma that is its primary legacy.
How is it possible that their voices have not transformed the entire discussion? Suppose you participated in implementing a widely used strategy for dealing with homelessness, only to learn that the most outspoken critics of that intervention were homeless people. Would that not stop you in your tracks? What would it say about you if it didn’t? And yet the consistent, emphatic objections of autistic people don’t seem to trouble ABA practitioners at all. Indeed, one critical analysis of ethics in this field notes that “autistics have been excluded from all committees, panels, boards, etc., charged with developing, directing, and assessing ABA research and treatment programs.”
Autism and Behaviorism
The primary legacy of ABA is trauma. Adults and children both have increased chances of meeting the PTSD criteria if they are exposed to ABA.
Nearly half (46 percent) of the ABA-exposed respondents met the diagnostic threshold for PTSD, and extreme levels of severity were recorded in 47 percent of the affected subgroup. Respondents of all ages who were exposed to ABA were 86 percent more likely to meet the PTSD criteria than respondents who were not exposed to ABA. Adults and children both had increased chances (41 and 130 percent, respectively) of meeting the PTSD criteria if they were exposed to ABA. Both adults and children without ABA exposure had a 72 percent chance of reporting no PTSS (see Figure 1). At the time of the study, 41 percent of the caregivers reported using ABA-based interventions.
Evidence of increased PTSD symptoms in autistics exposed to applied behavior analysis
While some may perceive ABA as misinterpreted (Morris, 2009), argument stems from experiences of intervention and the impact of forced behavioural intervention has upon the processes and development of self-perception. Adapting autistic behaviour and identity to meet those of typically developing (TD) peers is at the core of ABA opposition. Indeed, current research has suggested ABA as causing a severe level of trauma from childhood participation (Kupferstein, 2018). Autistic individuals continue to highlight the suffering felt through ABA’s inability to acknowledge the negativity inflicted through forceful coercion (see, for example, Kedar, 2011; “My experiences with ABA”, 2017). Such a conclusion raises further doubt as to both the efficacy of early intervention as well as the long-term implications and impact on participants. While arguments put to those who oppose ABA claim methods and approaches have changed (“The Controversy Around ABA”, 2019), opposition to ‘current’ ABA mirrors autistic attitudes to intervention (Klein, 2002) and ‘cures’ (Harmon, 2004) from nearly two decades ago. So many coming forward and indicating the harms for autistic children, which they themselves have experienced, to improve for the next generation is indicative of a disparity. Yet, with many being ignored or dismissed as ‘radicals’, ‘too autistic’ or ‘not autistic enough’ to speak for their own community, the bridge between academia and community is further fractured. To begin re-building these bridges, we seek to work alongside autistic reflections of ABA in order to bring voice into empirical constructs. Translating voice into academic comprehension of ABA in terms reflected by the autistic community addresses a vitally unaddressed gap in current research knowledge.
“Recalling hidden harms”: autistic experiences of childhood applied behavioural analysis (ABA)
ABA manifests systematic violations of the fundamental tenets of bioethics.
This paper has both theoretical and practical ambitions. The theoretical ambitions are to explore what would constitute both effective and ethical treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the practical ambition is perhaps more important: we argue that a dominant form of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which is widely taken to be far-and-away the best “treatment” for ASD, manifests systematic violations of the fundamental tenets of bioethics. Moreover, the supposed benefits of the treatment not only fail to mitigate these violations, but often exacerbate them. Warnings of the perils of ABA are not original to us—autism advocates have been ringing this bell for some years. However, their pleas have been largely unheeded, and ABA continues to be offered to and quite frequently pushed upon parents as the appropriate treatment for autistic children. Our contribution is to argue that, from a bioethical perspective, autism advocates are fully justified in their concerns—the rights of autistic children and their parents are being regularly infringed upon. Specifically, we will argue that employing ABA violates the principles of justice and nonmaleficence and, most critically, infringes on the autonomy of children and (when pushed aggressively) of parents as well.
Ethical Concerns with Applied Behavior Analysis for Autism Spectrum “Disorder” – Project MUSE
Assuming for the sake of argument that ABA is effective at changing people’s behavior, it either does so via changing their underlying thought structures or values (“deep change”), or it does not (“superficial change”). If ABA is “successful” by way of deep change, then ABA violates autonomy insofar as it coercively closes off certain paths of identity formation. If ABA is “successful” by way of superficial change, then ABA violates autonomy by coercively modifying children’s patterns of behavior to be misaligned with their preferences, passions, and pursuits. Such superficial change is a pervasive form of interference that compromises children’s present and future autonomy.
Project MUSE – Ethical Concerns with Applied Behavior Analysis for Autism Spectrum “Disorder”
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a harsher abstract. Genuinely spectacular. “The research utilized in the response does not pertain to the population discussed, does not present any neuroscientific research, and does not address intrinsic motivation, elevated levels of anxiety” etc
Also: love how their earlier paper was titled “How much compliance is too much compliance: Is long-term ABA therapy abuse?” Their response to the ABA researchers’ response settles the question. Yes: “Long-term ABA Therapy Is Abusive”. Having evaluated the counterarguments: YES.
@MxOolong
Despite decades of usage as the primary method for this population worldwide, ABA has never been shown to be even slightly efficacious for the nonverbal Autism population.
The research utilized in the response does not pertain to the population discussed, does not present any neuroscientific research, and does not address intrinsic motivation, elevated levels of anxiety, or various other pertinent issues associated with the nonverbal autism population.
Research in ABA continues to neglect the structure of the autistic brain, the overstimulation of the autistic brain, the trajectory of child development, or the complex nature of human psychology, as all of these factors were ignored in the response and are ignored in ABA practice itself. Providing a treatment that causes pain in exchange for no benefit, even if unknowingly, is tantamount to torture and violates the most basic requirement of any therapy: to do no harm. Lastly, there is also no discussion in the response on internal motivation and how the conditions created by ABA foster psychological ill-being. If paraprofessionals and professionals refuse to engage in critical thinking, refuse to become experts at the thing they treat, continue to practice outside of scope, and continue to ignore pertinent research, the future of Autism and other conditions ABA professes to treat is very bleak.
Long-term ABA Therapy Is Abusive: A Response to Gorycki, Ruppel, and Zane | SpringerLink
I would never treat a dog that way.
While parents whose children have received ABA sing its praises and describe it as the therapy that saved their child, the adult autistic community seems to feel differently.
I discovered that autistic adults consider it abusive, and many who were subjected to it as children claim to have been emotionally damaged.
Some preliminary studies even suggest that adults who received ABA as children are at an increased risk of suicide and PTSD.
And quite commonly on Twitter, I’ve seen people call ABA “dog training for children.”
When I see that, I tend to go on Twitter rants in reply to it, because from everything I have read and seen of ABA, it is NOT “dog training” for children.
…I would never treat a dog that way.
Is ABA Really “Dog Training for Children”? A Professional Dog Trainer Weighs In. » NeuroClastic
Everything an autistic child does, says, doesn’t do or doesn’t say is pathologised.
Pretty much everything an autistic child does, says, doesn’t do or doesn’t say is pathologised and made into a way to invent a ‘therapy’ for it.
It’s actually hell to experience.
We should stop doing this and start learning about autism.
Ann Memmott PGC
Many families don’t realize they’re putting their loved ones through a costly and traumatic program.
Meanwhile, the autistic adults I saw who were ABA recipients–as well as several families I encountered in community advocacy whose autistic adult children had been in ABA programs–fared only marginally better in functioning, and presented with one or more of anxiety, depression, OCD, insomnia, and Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
However, with so many independent personal accounts from autistic individuals and families, as well as a new scientific movement, any reasonable observer cannot confidently deny that ABA is negatively affecting the autistic population.
So, many families don’t realize they’re putting their loved ones through a costly and traumatic program because they feel this is the best care they can get and the outcomes they hope for are the closest to an idealized normal.
The autistic community is having a reckoning with ABA therapy. We should listen | Fortune
All I’m asking for is a SINGLE study that provides any evidence that ABA is any more effective than kids spending equivalent time with someone who knows nothing about ABA.
If they can’t show that, how on Earth do they think they can justify a multi-billion dollar industry? What?
@MxOolong
ABA’s monopoly is maintained by the scientific community’s lack of research into and investment in alternative techniques that address autism as both a cognitive and existential experience rather than just a behavioral one–an approach adult autistics who have undergone ABA have described as violating the fundamental tenets of bioethics, as well as the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The autistic community is having a reckoning with ABA therapy. We should listen | Fortune
Behaviorism is harmful for vulnerable children.
Behaviorism is harmful for vulnerable children, including those with developmental delays, neuro-diversities (ADHD, Autism, etc.), mental health concerns (anxiety, depression, etc.).
The concept of Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports is not the issue. The promotion of behaviorism is the issue. PBIS.org focuses only on surface behavior, what one can observe. Whether this is due to lack of understanding of the complexity or an intentional omission is unknown. The focus on surface behavior, without seeming to understand or be concerned about the complexity, or even the simple dichotomy of volitional versus autonomic (stress response) and the use of outdated, compliance based, animal based behaviorism (which has no record of long term benefits) continues to fail our country’s students.
The documents on PBIS.org imply that all behavior is willful. There is no acknowledgement in the PBIS.org literature that behaviors can be stress responses (fight-flight-freeze responses). This is a profound omission that does great harm to children whose brains and bodies have highly sensitive neuroception of danger. To be punished for a stress response is harmful and traumatic.
The second concern about teaching replacement behaviors goes back to the lack of distinction between willful behaviors and stress behaviors. Teaching replacement behaviors is not possible for stress responses since they are automatic responses that occur beneath the level of conscious thought.
Rewards and consequences, even for children who have the capacity to meet the expectations, are short-term solutions that do not solve the root causes for behaviors and create additional problems, including decreased internal motivation, loss of interest in activities that had been interesting, competition between students, shame for students unable to meet the expectations, and more.
Rather than determining whether the behavior is volitional or a stress response, or even if the behavior could be a result of an expectation that is beyond the child’s capacity to meet, there is simply a decision between managing the behavior in the classroom or sending the child to the office. This is a false choice which misses the point of helping a vulnerable child who is having difficulty meeting an expectation.
There is no question that behavior is a form of communication. It does serve a function. However, the range of possible functions is much wider than simply trying to get out of something or trying to get something. This reduction of the function to a simple either/or option negates all the other equally possible explanations, including nonvolitional behavior and behaviors that were beyond the child’s skill level, trauma flashbacks, and more. The FBA involves analyzing the antecedent – what happened immediately before the behavior in question and what happened after the behavior and drawing conclusions based on what function the behavior was like to have served. The people participating in the analysis include the teacher, the behavioral specialist and any other adults working with the child. **There are several problems with this approach. It does not include the child’s perspective. It does not consider that many factors that are unseen, including sensitivity to light, sound, movement; or internal pain; or trauma flashbacks, worry about a grandparent who had a stroke last night, fear because he doesn’t know how to do the assignment he was just given, or a myriad of other potential factors not visible to the evaluators. **The FBA and indeed the entire positive behavior intervention and supports framework focuses on behavior, not on root causes.
The information from the national Behavior Technical Assistance Center (PBIS.org) is contributing to the misunderstanding school leaders, teachers, and support staff have about behavior. Specifically, the repeated assertion that students use their behavior to get something or to get out of something, along with the lack of information about autonomic reactions (stress responses) is incorrect and results in children being misunderstood and punished for behaviors that are not within their volitional control.
Another major concern is the heavy reliance on rewards and punishment. Though the name, Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports, sounds nice, the children with or without IEPs who need support to help with their behavioral struggles are not getting those supports, and instead are being blamed for their behavior. Children are being punished (and shamed) through dojos and color charts, and by being left out of class celebrations and school activities, by being secluded and restrained, by being moved to more restrictive schools, or by being suspended, expelled, or referred to juvenile justice. Some are being handcuffed at school by police.
The problem with behaviorism – Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint
Results suggest lack of clinical effectiveness for PBS.
Staff training in PBS, as applied in this study, did not reduce challenging behaviour. Further research should tackle implementation issues and endeavour to identify other interventions that can reduce challenging behaviour.
The cluster RCT evaluated the clinical outcomes of training health professionals – who are specialists in working with adults with intellectual disability – in PBS to reduce challenging behaviour. It did not detect significant reductions in carer-reported challenging behaviour in the intervention plus TAU (Treatment As Usual) arm compared with the TAU arm alone over 12 months. Secondary outcomes were also similar between the two arms over 12 months, including the proportion of participants on psychotropic medication. Given the high statistical power, the findings suggest that training the community intellectual disability services staff in PBS, as delivered in this study, was no more effective than TAU in reducing challenging behaviour.
Clinical outcomes of staff training in positive behaviour support to reduce challenging behaviour in adults with intellectual disability: cluster randomised controlled trial | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core
Results suggest lack of clinical effectiveness for PBS delivered by specialist ID clinical teams. Further evidence is needed from larger trials, and development of improved interventions.
The present analysis using data from a cluster randomised trial of staff training in delivering PBS suggests that the intervention did not reduce challenging behaviour in ASD+ participants.
These findings are in keeping with the main trial findings, which showed no effect of staff training in PBS on reducing challenging behaviour.
Clinical and cost effectiveness of staff training in the delivery of Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) for adults with intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum disorder and challenging behaviour – randomised trial
PBS is being widely promoted as an approach to be used on people who are disabled and/or neurodivergent and display behaviours others do not wish to see. Often the disabled person has significant sensory, communication, trauma or medical needs and rights that are not met. Despite a broad buy-in, PBS is not actually supported by Disabled People’s Organisations and allies. This is because PBS does not meet human rights, has a poor quality evidence base and its risks and harms are not understood.
On ‘Positive Behaviour Support’ – AMASE
ABA therapy is badly out of date. Behaviorism was old news by the 1960s.
The bigger problem is using mummified science to treat a complex neurological condition.
Behaviorism as a science predates penicillin and the light bulb. Psychology moved beyond it and into the realm of neuroscience and cognition before we even landed on the moon.
ABA therapy is badly out of date, scientifically speaking.
Psychology just doesn’t consider behaviorism relevant in contemporary practice and research.
If the entirety of human knowledge on the mind and its workings were represented as a tree, behaviorism wouldn’t even be a branch. It would be a root at best, or maybe an acorn.
Behaviorism was old news by the 1960s.
Behaviorism is Dead. How Do We Tell The (Autism) Parents? » NeuroClastic
Throughout all of this, Applied Behavior Analysis has stuck with their babyish ABCs of behavior, teaching the psychology equivalent of preschool to an ever-increasing number of people… and making a lot of money while doing it.
Unfortunately, treating autism makes big money. For all I’ve been talking about how real Psychology considers behaviorism to be a museum piece, there are plenty of colleges ready to rake in the cash and resurrect it.
Behaviorism is Dead. How Do We Tell The (Autism) Parents? » NeuroClastic
The evidence for Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention is weak.
There is weak evidence that EIBI (Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention) may be an effective behavioral treatment for some children with ASD; the strength of the evidence in this review is limited because it mostly comes from small studies that are not of the optimum design. Due to the inclusion of non-randomized studies, there is a high risk of bias and we rated the overall quality of evidence as ‘low’ or ‘very low’ using the GRADE system, meaning further research is very likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate of effect and is likely to change the estimate.
When effect size estimation was limited to studies with randomized controlled trial (RCT) designs, evidence of positive summary effects existed only for developmental and NDBI intervention types. This was also the case when outcomes measured by parent report were excluded. Finally, when effect estimation was limited to RCT designs and to outcomes for which there was no risk of detection bias, no intervention types showed significant effects on any outcome. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Project AIM: Autism intervention meta-analysis for studies of young children – PubMed
Based on outcome measures data for this reporting quarter, 76 percent of TRICARE beneficiaries in the ACD had little to no change in symptom presentation over the course of 12 months of applied behavior analysis (ABA) services, with an additional 9 percent demonstrating worsening symptoms.
Quarterly Report on the Effectiveness of the Autism Care Demonstration (ACD) — Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
An additional continued concern with this program is the ongoing fraud, waste, and abuse by ABA providers and the improper billing and payments for ABA services. Government offices continue to identify improper activities by TRICARE ABA providers and practices that has resulted in millions of dollars of restitution, settlements, and recoupments.
The Department of Defense Comprehensive Autism Care Demonstration Annual Report 2020
This review found limited evidence that early intensive applied behaviour analysis-based interventions improve cognitive ability and adaptive behaviour in autistic children, but the long-term impact of the interventions remains unknown.
Interventions based on early intensive applied behaviour analysis for autistic children: a systematic review and cost-effectiveness analysis
This is a therapy of terror. We cannot replace agency with response to stimuli.
We cannot replace agency with response to stimuli.
MMCP: Critical Digital Pedagogy; or, the Magic of Gears | Hybrid Pedagogy
The receipts are endless.
- Stop ABA, Support Autistics – Advocating for Better Treatment of Autistic Individuals
- Why I Left ABA | Socially Anxious Advocate
- why professional behavior analysts are leaving the field – Stop ABA, Support Autistics
- Invisible Abuse: ABA and the things only autistic people can see
- MSU Must Remove Autistic Conversion Therapy from its Curriculums
- Is ABA Really “Dog Training for Children”? A Professional Dog Trainer Weighs In. » NeuroClastic
- Long-term ABA Therapy Is Abusive: A Response to Gorycki, Ruppel, and Zane | SpringerLink
- The autistic community is having a reckoning with ABA therapy. We should listen | Fortune
- Distorting Psychology and Science at the Expense of Joy: Human Rights Violations Against Human Beings With Autism via Applied Behavioral Analysis
- Full article: How much compliance is too much compliance: Is long-term ABA therapy abuse?
- Project AIM: Autism intervention meta-analysis for studies of young children. – PsycNET
- Alfie Kohn: Autism and Behaviorism: New Research Adds to an Already Compelling Case Against ABA | National Education Policy Center
- Project MUSE – Ethical Concerns with Applied Behavior Analysis for Autism Spectrum “Disorder”
- Interventions based on early intensive applied behaviour analysis for autistic children: a systematic review and cost-effectiveness analysis – NCBI Bookshelf
- Training by Repetition Actually Prevents Learning for Those With Autism
- Treatment for whom? Towards a phenomenological resolution of controversy within autism treatment – ScienceDirect
ABA cannot be considered to be a safe, effective, or ethical field.
I don’t need a cure for me.
But I don't need a cure for me I don't need it No, I don't need a cure for me I don't need it No, I don't need a cure for me I don't need it I don't need it Please, no cure for me Please, no cure for me --Cure for Me by AURORA
“Cure for Me” is very much inspired by conversion therapy.
I just wanted to make an anthem for people to sing along with that they know they don’t need a cure.
It doesn’t take much before the world tells you that you’re different, and that you should change yourself to be the same as everybody else, which is very sad.
AURORA “Cure For Me” Official Lyrics & Meaning | Verified
It’s a double rainbow all the way.
A brief thread about why the fates of LGBTQ+ and #ActuallyAutistic people are intertwined (to say nothing of LGBTQ+ autistic people). This right here is Ole Ivar Lovaas, the father of modern-day Applied Behavioral Analysis.
For the first week of #Pride2022: a brief thread about why the fates of LGBTQ+ and #ActuallyAutistic people are intertwined (to say nothing of LGBTQ+ autistic people). This right here is Ole Ivar Lovaas, the father of modern-day Applied Behavioral Analysis. 1/
Lovaas ran a clinic at UCLA, where autistic children were slapped, administered shock therapy. LIFE Magazine profiled his practices in 1965, showing how one girl was taken to a “shock room” when she made little progress.
When children behaved well, they were given food and affection. Children were initially not given regular meals and only spoonfuls of food at first.
Lovaas had an extremely low opinion of his autistic patients. In a 1974 interview, he demeaned autistic people stimming (which we now know is a means of soothing). He also called them “little monsters.”
But Lovaas’s practice did not just end when it came to autistic children. As @stevesilberman wrote in his book #NeuroTribes, he also assisted with UCLA’s Feminine Boy Project, which sought to cure boys of atypical sexuality, including homosexuality.
Lovaas and Rekers’ practices bore stunning similarities to Lovaas’s practices on autistic children. Poor Kirk’s parents were instructed to use poker chips. Blue poker chips were used as a reward to get candy while red chips meant he would be spanked.
CW suicide:
The red poker chips were given when he displayed feminine behavior. The whippings were so unbearable that Kirk’s brother would hide the red chips. Kirk later joined the US Armed forced before he later died from suicide.All the while, Rekers and Lovaas’s research was used to show that conversion therapy worked. Rekers would co-found the Family Research Council, which opposes LGBTQ+ rights. More on Kirk’s tragic end here.
People might wonder why I, a cisgender heterosexual from the suburbs of Southern California, included queer history in a book about autism. THIS is why. The same people who want to stop queer kids from being themselves are the same ones who want to stop me from flapping my hands
Conversely, when I first moved to Washington, the gay community openly embraced me and getting to know gay people helped me shed my own homophobia AND my internalized ableism. It’s why transphobia also bugs me so much.
Eric Michael Garcia on Twitter
Spare me from the mold. Let us be our real autistic selves, loud and proud, and show the world what we truly are.
I make the right mistakes And I say what I mean Spare Me From The Mold --Spare Me From The Mold by Gossip
Oh Behaviorism, Up Yours!
Oh Behaviorism, Up Yours!
Oh Behaviorism, No More!