Outcomes of Adults on ABA-Based Therapies?

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I have heard someone claim before that apparently, the adult outcomes of autistic kids who were on any kind of ABA-based therapy in childhood are worse than the outcomes of kids who were raised naturally without any kind of intervention.

Is there any scientific evidence to this out there that you know of? Are there any adult cases on this forum who have been treated with ABA-based therapies during their childhood?

I've tried doing some research of my university's online database but couldn't find any longitudinal studies of ABA-treated vs. non-treated children-to-adults.

Please help me with this... I really need solid proof to back this up. Thanks.

Last edited by MathGirl on 20 Dec 2011, 11:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

I never heard of anything. The only thing I can think of is when doctor's said that autistic children with pathological demand disorder don't learn well with ABA. I always wondered why autistic kids gave in so easily to ABA on videos when I would have been really stubborn.

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Alright. Thanks. I thought this was, like, a commonly known fact among the autistic community because once it was voiced, no one objected.

I am not entirely certain why you can't find the studies you're looking for, other than it is likely that the points of view are likely to be very different. ABA seems to work in reducing autistic behaviors from the point of view of an observer, but from the point of view of the autistic person behaviors that are vital to their self-regulation have been reduced to their detriment. Scientific studies are not likely to take such "anecdotal" evidence into account. It is also likely that longitudinal studies would be difficult since there has been a great deal of change in the approach of ABA. I think, but I'm not sure of this. It's an interesting question.

Applied behaviour analysis can suppress innate abilities that few Asperger syndrome people have. When I was a kid my family put me through their own ideas based on the Lovaas method which has suppressed my natural emotion-colour synaesthesia which has affected my social skills until I tried cannabis which allowed me to see a person's aura or open eye visuals' colours for the first time since 1978. One can BS with body language/eye contact but coloured visuals or an aura never lies. I used synaesthesia and picture thinking to form a relationship with my new girlfriend starting in June. Also analysis of our feelings to each other using our picture thinking and Asperger syndrome over facebook. By rejecting the ABA it has allowed me to communcate more effectively. I think that Asperger syndrome people if they have it should be allowed to use picture thinking and synaesthesia in social skills training which means side to side job interview techniques as well as side to side dating as well. Much better that way

I wasn't on ABA, per se....but my mother used similar methods on me.

I have the feeling that I came out better as a result of being "made aware" of the world, through this methodology, than if it everything was allowed to happen "naturally."

It's an anecdotal impression, and is not meant to prove any theory.

I don't believe in ABA's premise of suppressing, totally, "autistic"-type behaviors. I do believe in providing autistic people with the ability to relate to the world around them.

From what I understand about ABA, they give you rewards for doing the right behavior and when you don't do the right behavior you don't earn anything. That sounds like the system I got when I was a kid. My speech therapist used speech bucks and she handed them out as rewards and you would lose a speech buck for doing a wrong behavior and I also remember poker chips in group therapy in sixth grade, we never lost any but we earned them through participation. I also got treats with making sounds from my mother when she was doing speech therapy with me. I don't think this is only used on autistic kids, it's also used on kids for behavior according to wikipedia.

But not every kid will respond to rewards because they can see right through it and for me I enjoyed it. You got prizes is why. I used to think anyone was weird if they hated therapy and I remember being confused as an adult when I would see people on the spectrum calling it abuse. I didn't realize then that there were abusive therapies out there and I came from a different background and those aspies cam from a different background too so of course I would be confused about the whole abuse thing. It's like how I was confused about racism when I first found out about it because I was never taught to hate blacks or Jews, etc.

The difference I didn't receive therapy 8 hours a day.

I might have benefited from parts of ABA. It may still help me.

Yikes! I have not actually ever watched such a video, because I know it would make me sick. Actually I hardly ever watch videos, but I'm not even able to read much about the details of ABA.

But my wild guess as to why they gave in easy: Avoidance? To get the ABA trainer (or however you call them) to lay off? To be left alone?

Or do they not get that reward. No, don't tell me.

I was not able to find any peer-reviewed research on the outcome in adulthood. (It's odd, really. Given how extensively ABA has been researched, it's really odd no one has done that follow-up.)

However, I have heard autistic adults talk about receiving ABA as children, and they were mostly not complimentary.