Can Someone Explain ABA To Me?

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Thanks Danielsmyname.

I can understand you haven't seen my post, I had it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have found this website at all.

My therapist was mainly my dear mum, but also a "tutor" who we still know.

I'm glad ABA went well for you; sadly, this is rarely the case.

Oh dear, I'm sorry. What happened? Do you absolutely despise the idea or did it just not work?

http://www.wrongplanet.net/asperger.htm ... ic&t=42974

I think anbuend knows what she is saying.

I'll refrain from discussing the moral issues in all this, all the more so that maybe with some people ABA does work. But I'll say one thing: I have an idea about what it is like to be constantly afraid of being screamed at, blamed or emotionally blackmailed for doing something "wrong", without really knowing what that "wrong" might be, and it's NOT NICE.

If I ever have children, I'll be damned if I allow someone to treat them that way.

I would have loved to have had ABA, though I wouldn't appreciate being treated like an idiot. If there wasn't any verbal/physical abuse, I could have spared myself a lot of heartache.

The only way I've ever learned is through "reward and consequence"...just in real life. Painful.

-Ozzy

hmmm. i am not familiar with ABA specifically, but this post is interesting... my mom was a fan of reward systems and sticker chart type things. i never felt this was a bad thing. i liked it, liked filling charts up with stickers. i did not feel "coerced." i had a sticker chart for reading. i can remember throwing a book across the room and screaming. i would always have to start over when reading out loud if i missed a word (this drove my mom crazy) and it made me pretty frustrated sometimes, but i could read, and read well before i was four. and i like that about myself.

but i have many later writings that explore how i had a huge struggle with good/bad, right/wrong, me-want/mommy-wants... and am i bad? am i stupid? are things i get stuck on. by high school i was sure depressed and emotionally and psychologically isolated, and later, psychs said i had symptoms of PTSD but no apparent cause. but i think i would have had the same confusion WITHOUT rewards because i would have still not been any more clear on the WHYS of everything.

ABA only exists because NT people have these arbitrary social standards... if certain responses weren't "incorrect", there would be no need for ABA...

I have no experience with it actually. Just saying what people have told me. I knew autistic kids in high school much lower functioning than me. They all went through ABA.

Well, part of the reason you're hearing such vehement opposition to it is that, in this community, there is a lot of angst over the idea that something must be inherently wrong with being anything but NT.

To tell you the truth, I completely agree with the inner sentiment behind that. I consider it repulsive that some people are so profoundly determined to cram every single person on the planet into some "norm" that they're medicating the brains out of kids just because they're a little different. It's not just stupid: it's wrong.

I'll be honest with you: ABA essentially involves the same training techniques that are used to teach a bear to ride a motorcycle. What may be more familiar is the process of teaching new tricks to your pet dog. ABA as applied to humans is hopefully a bit more sophisticated, but it works similarly in principle. Done properly, however, it shouldn't hurt or frustrate the child. As with training an animal, the most important part of any such training is building trust, which cannot properly be done by using physical restraints. I'm not sure what asinine individual came up with that idea, but it's wrong.

What the people around here aren't going to tell you, though, is that ABA has been shown to be very effective in giving autistic patients a fair chance at living an independent life. We're not talking about high functioning or mid-functioning autists here, and we're most assuredly not talking about Aspies. When we talk about ABA, we're talking about extremely low functioning individuals who, without therapy, could find themselves doomed to spend their lives in adult diapers. This isn't something that is being applied to people just because they're different. It's being used to treat children whose prognosis is extremely low, who are unlikely to have any level of functioning, who can't even brush their own teeth or bathe themselves. If it's being used on higher functioning autists who don't really have any problem taking care of themselves, well, it's wrong.

In really extreme cases, ABA isn't just useful: it's necessary. I guess you could say it's a necessary evil because it really does put these children under a degree of stress. It can also be highly beneficial, though. Don't sell it short just because some therapists don't really have the faintest clue what they're doing. I mean, a person can get through medschool just by having the ability to take notes and cram with flashcards. Getting licensed to perform therapy doesn't require one to really care about and internalize what one learns in grad school. A person can just shrug it off as a means to an end and graduate having truly learned nothing. This is why you have to be a bit picky about where you go for any kind of therapy, particularly for the treatment of serious disorders like low-functioning autism. Sadly, it's actually a fact that a person can get a license to perform therapy without really internalizing anything that they were taught, and it's just plain wrong.

Last edited by Griff on 06 Dec 2007, 11:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of ABA. As most of you know I have a profoundly autistic son. When he was first diagnosed at 28 months I researched many therapies. ABA seemed to be prominent, even necessary according to many. I was so afraid of doing the wrong thing.

Early Intervention came to our home to start therapy after they did initial tests. I told the teacher that I didn't like the idea of ABA, as it seemed to resemble dog training. She made me a deal. She'd do one session for me, and I could modify the program as I felt needed. As she started in I could see that she was trying so hard to do everything by the book, as I had already kicked one one the EI teachers out of my house. lol I watched the whole session in discomfort. Discomfort for my son. I told her that she could do discreet trials under a few conditions. 1.) My son's personal space will be respected at all times. No getting into his face, or forcing eye contact. She's be allowed to bring a favored reward to her mouth so that he could see the way she pronounced words, as that's a necessary part of learning language, but not eye contact. 2.) He would be allowed to stim. (most ABA therapists make them keep their hands on the table)

He received this therapy twice a week for about 30 minutes a session. This was okay with me. I feircly disagree with the parents that put their child through 40 (and sometimes more) hrs a week of ABA.

He is now in preschool, and doing mostly the TEACHH method. There still are discreet trials involved. It's just a different format then ABA. He has work baskets that allow him to physically see what work, and how long. It's also very short periods of time, vs ABA where they expect a small child to sit forever. The environment is accomadated to him, not the other way around. He does have to have food rewards, because that's the only thing that motivates him at this time. They also do a lot of teaching while he swings on a platform swing. His vestibular system craves that input, so he's at his best when swinging. With ABA, there would be none of that. He'd be at a blank table in a blank room forced to sit, and learn language, and motions by command.

Learning by rote can produce results, but for how long? I have heard ASD adults claim that they learned to "talk" to others by rote, but they had no idea of what they were actually saying. They just knew what had been drilled into their heads after 100s of discrete trials. When someone says hello, they say hello back, ect.. I believe that many times, ABA forces an autistic to learn to do things in a very inefficient way. A way in which their brain is not wired to do, but NT brains are. NTs will then call this a success, but who knows how long a child will use this inefficient method before a mental breakdown ensues. Behavior therapists call this regression, BTW.

Nowadays, ABA isn't supposed to have any physical, or verbal threats. I still think it can be incredibly tortuous, and dehumanizing without those things, though.

If anyone doesn't know what ABA is do a simple search on youtube of ABA, and Ivar Lovaas. There's tons of videos.

I'm going to avoid this discussion forever on now, because I can't STAND the fact that loads of people are saying that ABA is wrong and rude just because it doesn't work for everyone. So that's me off then. Just packing up my bags and leaving the door. But I'm not leaving on a jet plane.

Bye people who do not realise what a miracle ABA can be..!

I did and was sick at the stomach. I didn't actually start to research it on purpose - I knew it would be disturbing, and I didn't feel like exposing myself to it. But then I happened to stumble across this video about some of Lovaas' first patients, and it surpassed all my expectations where shock was concerned. After that, I felt I had to know more about this and about *why* one would subject a child to anything like that.

Lovaas himself comes across as nothing short of a sadist. He felt perfectly fine about using electric shocks (and apparently painful ones) on autistic children - which under any other circumstances would have qualified as child torture. His aides apparently also hit children and screamed at them if they didn't comply, and again he found nothing wrong about this. Elsewhere, in an excerpt from a magazine from those times, I found a decsription of him holding a struggling autistic boy, who apparently had severe sensory issues, and grinning and saying something like, "oh, never mind this, he actually likes being touched, he is just acting out to attract attention".

Also, at that time, autistic people were regarded as being in a type of vegetative state - that is, having no real reason or personhood, not in the straightforward sense of those words. So it was thought that the only way to teach them anything was to mechanically train them to do certain things, similarly to how animals are trained. This was how ABA came into being. Dr Lovaas himself also believed the above mentioned things.

It's natural that one would reservations about applying a therapy designed by such a person, and under such an assumption. I'd say that one even ought to.

(I didn't want to mention this at first, because there seem to be people to whom it was beneficial or they believed it was, but now that it has been brought up I can't help it)

Wow, I sure hope you don't get this upset every time someone has an opinion that differs from yours. The world becomes a hostile place really quickly when you can be moved to such emotion over different thoughts and ideas being expressed. Understand that not everyone shares your experience.

Anyhow, I personally haven't tried ABA yet with my children. I've heard and read a lot about it and I have to admit I'm quite skeptical. I'm really glad that people have had positive experiences with it. Seeing a positive experience through someone who has actually received ABA (not just for their child) certainly does offer a different perspective. For my children, I work with them as much as I can at home, and where they need further assistance I will try and get it for them. My son will be receiving speech (as soon as our county HAS a speech therapist - which currently they do not) and my daughter will probably be receiving occupational therapy. My goal is not to turn them into little NTs, but to help them function comfortably in school and society. Their well-being and happiness is number one on my list.