Increase IQ by 27 ??? Professor Richard Hastings

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I recently attended a lecture by Professor Richard Hastings on ABA (applied behaviour analysis)
Professor Hastings showed graphs indicating that autistic children had benefited trom ABA, and some of them had their IQ increased by up to 27 points. (some of the children in the control group also had increased IQ to an extent)
I can't understand how that would be possible, to actually increase someone's IQ by 27.

http://www.ambitiousaboutautism.org.uk/ ... N=42050044

edit - I have just checked, and the maximum increase was over 40 points, and an average 23 points.

Besides that it is possible that the testing did not show the person's potential before (which they are supposed to in normal people) but reflected their insufficient communication abilities and lacking knowledge (compared to peers) caused by previously inadequate teaching styles (such as teaching on kindergarten-level when the autistic person's learning abilities go far beyond that), more changes that show up instantly on an IQ test would be:

- grown understanding of language (with age and/or due to therapy and/or due to that the right kind of communication channel is discovered)
- (slightly) reduced sensory dysfunction (supposedly usually only possible in children, due to therapy and/or age and/or reduction of sensory triggers/sensory causes)

- increased amount of time spend on the autistic person's communication channel (that needs to be discovered first) instead of engaging them on a communication channel that hardly works for them

As for ABA, not sure what they teach there depending on who does it.

For some forms of it, if they taught or even forced "adequate" responses onto the autistic child or autistic adult, then these would also increase IQ level as measured by some "IQ tests" that attempt to derive an IQ estimate from self-help skills and the ability to follow instructions.

Redacted

Because autism is a communication dysfunction, not an intelligence dysfunction. Teaching kids to communicate [by which I mean do whatever the tester tells you to and not just make castles with the blocks (like my brother)] will increase their score.

I agree with the above posters.