Post your comments on The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists

I am a behaviour analyst and I work as a behaviour consultant for children with autism. I love this article. It is thought provoking and a very important statement we (professionals and service providers) need to hear. Thank you for this.

ABA equals the autistic as a "clockwork orange"

ABA is the opiate of parents of autistic children (with apologies to Karl Marx)

Right on Michelle! Behaviorists want to have it both ways. They want to disassociate themselves from aversives and claim in court hearings in the USA as well as in Canada. and claim without aversives that ABA can make the autistic completely normal. Can ABA make the autistic completely normal? Just ask Noah Greenfeld, Sean Lappin and Dov Shestack. They won't be able to answer you. After intensive ABA they still can't speak

It is time for some people with apparent Asperger's to stop dishonestly misrepresenting themselves as typical examples of people with autism. Michelle Dawson's apparent high functioning autism looks nothing like my son's low functioning autism. These two forms of autism present themselves quite differently. What may be appropriate treatment and care for someone with one kind of autism just may be a form of abuse to another. There is a major difference between these two kinds of autism and it is about time people with Asperger's stop painting themselves as representative autistics. There is a valid reason for there being a separate name of Aspergers to distinquish it from the rest of autism. Let's be honest about it, please, and use the appropriate terms. Revere, sanctify and worship the wonders and differences of those with Aspergers, if you must. But profoundly disabling autism requires nothing less than a cure. And yes, it is your right to disagree, but don't get in the way of those parents seeking treatments for their severely autistic children.

Hello again, Mr Schafer

Perhaps if you could be clearer about in which ways I am being dishonest, I could usefully respond to your concerns.

Also, if you could indicate in exactly which ways you believe my work will harm autistic persons, I believe I could also answer those concerns.

Further, if you have arguments against the accuracy of the present article, I would be happy to answer to them.

I'm not sure what the scientific rationale or validity is of diagnosing persons via the internet, but, Mr Schafer, it is an interesting experience.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Well, Michelle, I couldn't actually see any relevance of Schafer's message to anything you had been saying in your article (which on first reading looks bloody excellent!!!!!!). It's almost entirely the same message as on the other thread. I think that maybe HE needs some ABA to teach him about relevance conditions and so on; but then... we know, don't we....?! ABA isn't really the thing that works.... if ABA has ever worked, it is very likely that the main factor in the success of it is the way that the therapist has been with the kid in question. Results like this are coming out of a number of meta-studies. A good source is Dr G E Jones at the University of Birmingham UK: she just finished her PhD on interventions.

As for behaviourism per se.... well, it sucks, to say it bluntly. The thing started out as a physiological investigation into salivation conditioning in dogs (Pavlov), and went through cats (Thorndyke) and into rats and pigeons (Skinner). The idea that one can then make a seriously huge leap of (il)logic and generalise the results of animal studies to humans.... I get queasy thinking about it! There is no reason to suspect that, just because one cannot assess directly a person's cognitions, one does not have to account for them in that person's behaviours! And this is probably the main reason why behaviourism as a "theory" is very largely unsound... besides.... in the early-mid 1970s, there is a paper somewhere that contains a rather obvious "oops, we fucked up" sort of statement from Skinner himself.

Maybe Schafer and Lovaas and that other idiot should have read that before making such claims about the power of behaviourism. Even John Watson had problems proving HIS idea of being able to guide very accurately the development of any child put before him. As far as I can tell from the Little Albert thing, it was probably best NOT to put a child before him!


Mr Schafer, to you I have to say: Grow Up! Be relevant!! Or be bloody quiet!!!

David,

You wrote: "ABA isn't really the thing that works.... if ABA has ever worked, it is very likely that the main factor in the success of it is the way that the therapist has been with the kid in question."

Absolutely! I believe [on the basis of my own clinical practice with autistics for 28 years] that the systematic provision of structure and routine to autistic children allows them to learn systematically. [Note the word "allows" as distinct from "causes".] How does this relate to ABA and other "methods"? Simple, parents embarking on an ABA program are part of the setting in which their child operates - in many case the autistic child is unable to distinguish his parents from any other part of the stimulus setting. The required application of systematic ABA treatments to the child automatically requires that the child's parents organise themselves as part of the process. Thus the autistic child is suddenly presented with a consistent set of interactions by the parents - their behaviour necessarily becomes ordered - and can then learn the operating rules of the presenting persons. Ever noticed how quickly autistic children, even severely intellectually impaired children, learn to use mechanical devices, computers, video players which have a discrete and constant set of operational rules? [Learning is not the problem from the perspective of the autistic child; he knows how to learn.] When NT people are required to operate rather than behave with autistic children, progress, including the development of sets of appropriate reciprocal interaction/communication, is very quick, but there is no change in the nature of the autism. Autism is permanent. Meaningful learned function is simply enabled and allowed.

Edited by author 03-01-2004 03:14 AM
Hi Jim....

"Learning is not the problem from the perspective of the autistic child; he knows how to learn."

Damn, you are good! This is EXACTLY what I think also! Moreover, this is essentially what my dad (who is what my wife calls a "basic Aspie grandad" - to my daughter!) seemed to think... in that he showed me things in situ, as ways of learning about the environment, and so on... technology and such... The availability of countryside areas near us helped, and that we had things like castles and air displays and such happening within a few hours' travel from us.... I was able to learn about things such that it was less the abstraction that the educational psychologist I was examined by was convinced it was! I could absorb the information.... but I could not really express my understanding of it. Many years later, of course, I got a diagnosis - Asperger syndrome, with concomitant problems of dyslexia and dyspraxia! And even the pathogenesis of these so-called neurological learning difficulties has something to do with the construction of the environment around the person so diagnosed!

Anyway.... I'm about to listen to Bonnie Raitt's version of R&L Thompson's Dimming Of The Day.... so, talk to you soon. And, yes, I _do_ regard you as a colleague!

Michelle, your article was thought provoking. I am an undergraduate student of behavior analysis and consider myself a radical behaviorist. I think you raised issues that should be considered and hopefully addressed. I don’t have a PhD or 27 years of clinical experience but I do have a fair amount of discrete-trial and ABA work with children with autism. I think I would like to try to make a reply to some of the concepts you proposed. In that spirit I offer the following. And I apologize for the length.

I think back to some of the very young children I worked on some level with (over forty children), some of whom are now in first and second grade. They are still very much themselves. I would say that their nature has never changed. And how can I change their nature, I am a behaviorist not a geneticist or biologist. But I can affect behavior (including cognition). I do specialize in that portion of behavior that is influenced by the environment (this exists in all behavior). Lovaas showed the efficacy of this, as did 5 replications I can think of off the top of my head. As did many sub-research projects. Incidentally, the best results ever achieved and documented were 63% not 47%. Even if you disagree with the term “recovered” (and I do), this research is useful in that it shows change in behavior patterns. I think of the children I personally know who began by being rated “Severally Impaired”, to being in general 2nd grade. I have volunteered my time in enough non-behavioral autism classrooms to know that this also occurs with students who never spend a day in an ABA program. But I don’t see it as often and when I do, usually not to the same extent. Coincidence? Maybe. Puppetry? If so what maintains the “puppeted behaviors when the students get into a non-behavioral school setting? Has the nature of these children suffered a forced change? Or is behavior a dynamic process that is related to learning as well as physiology. I would say that it is an error of circular logic and a reification to infer that the behavior of any organism is infinitely bound to only genetics and cognition. I understand and appreciate that there is a genetic and physiological portion to Autism. However I am up enough on the research to know that you can not currently tell me what gene(s) or physiological process(es) are solely or conjointly responsible the variation we see in Autism. You and I can both cite examples of several genes and processes being researched, but not completion, nor sometimes even general agreement.

As far as eye contact goes, “if it isn’t needed, then it doesn’t matter”. If we NT’s don’t like that, I say “tough”. But when I’ve taught eye contact in the past I’ve noticed some things. For some of my students it came very quickly, are they less Autistic? One example comes to mind. I taught him eye contact when he was 3 years old. Now at 6, he uses it all the time. Maybe, he found it useful. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that as eye contact improves so do other concurrent skills. I think it possible that the eye contact enabled the children to attend to what their therapist was doing with them. So is eye contact necessary? No. Is some sort of attending? Yes.

On the same token you more or less said that children throw such a fuss in the early discrete-trial period because they are forced to give up their strengths. To be honest, I don’t see that so much. In fact some of our kids don’t cry at all and are happy and very interactive right from the start, yet they still have Autism. When one of our kids is tantruming it is generally because they have not received some toy, or when they leave the play room. This is especially bad for the brand new kids. Their tantruming serves as communication, specifically as a request. A good number of studies show that as communication ability goes up, tantrums and even self injury go down. Another truth is that our kids tantrum because of the new and probably frightening environment. Typically developing pre-school children do this all the time. There are things we can do to ease this and I think that we are getting better at it. As for the self-stim, I think we as behaviorist should consider “if it doesn’t matter, then it doesn’t matter”. This is especially true when the behavior may fulfill a function for the child (anxiety reducement) and also when you consider that NT’s stim all the time. Can you just hear a geometry student’s foot tap-tap-tapping in class? But self stim can also occur so often it does interfere with learning tasks. I have personally seen examples of lower scores one day for a child who is just stiming up a storm when compared to other days. And in general, scores increase as stiming goes down. And once again, empirical research shows that as social interaction goes up self stim goes down. So, if self stim is functional and it goes down when social activity level goes up, I think it likely that the child found a behavior that fulfilled the same function for him or her. And if they still stim at home, who cares? You go flap your hands and I’ll sing in my shower. Different? Yes, but also alike.

In perhaps the heart of your article you called into question the ethics of behaviorists reporting success, based on the Lovaas experiment. This was particularly due to the fact that we no longer use aversives. And also that aversives where the “active ingredient” in that study. This may be true if Lovaas was the only researcher. As I said earlier his study has been replicated several times both in large and small scale. Discrete-trial has not been a static procedure. Its techniques have changed over the years and research shows them to be better. I do not deny the importance of aversives in the Lovaas experiment, but our reinforcement and teaching practices are superior to what they were formerly. So, rather than a single homogenous package discrete-trial has varieties and subtypes. The Lovaas subtype is simply the most well know. Does this mean we can’t quote Lovaas anymore? I think we still can, we may not use aversives but more effective practices have led us to success, Lovaas is historically a part of that. I would also cite the hour’s used and better diagnostic procedures as important in the scores discrepancy. But those are just my personal feelings. Lovaas himself said that we may not always have to use aversives if more effective techniques become available. I would argue they have. So, far from unethical I think that our abandonment of physical aversives was the right choice and also the responsible one. Our own attitudes have changed. I, like most other undergrads grew up without being hit in school. We would not be the future behaviorists we are today if that practice was still in place. But while I may not like the practice, I refuse to insult the parents and therapists who used aversives under the older cultural perceptions. Maybe, I should more simply say “that was then, this is now.” Lovaas took a gamble when he first used aversives. They had been shown effective previously and Lovaas was after the most powerful techniques he could get. He was state of the art for his time. To get his results with his more antiquated techniques he probably required those aversives. As our techniques are better we don’t need them to produce similar results. But time will tell and I frankly don’t envision a singular study proving it or blowing it apart. As of yet, there is no formal study, empirically comparing the Lovaas results to the more contemporary replications. But all of the research provided examples of efficacy.

As far as ABA being unethical in general (A view advocated by some of the other participants in this board), I find that to be a rather amusing position. I like many other behaviorists do practice a form of ABA on myself, performance-management. Most of us have an area of our lives we would like to improve. In my case I have to run for thirty minutes every day or I lose a few dollars. As a college kid the loss of money is highly aversive because I don’t have much of it. Is this aversive control? You better believe it. Yet is my not running infinitely tied to my physiology? Get real, of course its not, but it is related. So what does this mean? Simply this, I am better equipped to deal with my not running because of my management system. In time I hope that I will experience enough of a “runner’s high”, when I do run, so that it will serve as my motivating reinforcer.

Finally, and most definitely, I am certain that you are incorrect when you say all persons with Autism are similar when they are very young. I have worked with a fair number now and there are always more differences than similarities. Furthermore, I am sometimes able to predict how they will do based on what skills they have when they come in. As you elsewhere correctly implied “they are themselves”. I would add that they follow “their own”, developmental pattern, sometimes quite different from other children with Autism. In conclusion my friends (mostly undergrads) and I do not view Autism as a plague, epidemic, medical liability, or even in and of itself, a disability. We do assert that some behaviors may harm others and self. We also assert that some behaviors allow for additional learning and other behaviors do not. Discrete-trial like all ABA is useful in teaching basic skills. Discrete-trial is a beginning, not an end or completion. To end, I would say that you are correct. Persons with Autism should be a part of the review of all aspects of ABA and advocacy. Their input has already proved valuable and necessary. Sorry for writing a book here. And thank you for your analyses, they made me consider carefully. I will be happy to listen and respond to any comments the other participants or you might make.

Edited by author 03-24-2004 10:24 PM
Hello, John

I'm familiar with radical behaviourists/behaviourism and as you see I use Dr Malott as a source. I guess I can't talk about your beliefs, since you can't believe in beliefs. I imagine you have one of Dr Malott's T shirts. Thank you for reading my article.

My article covers scientific, popular, ethical and legal spheres. I have a broader view than you do, in that I've observed and lived the consequences of the way ABA has been promoted as an autism treatment.

You may have noted I acknowledge the presence of the principles of ABA in teaching. I have no problem with some principles of ABA existing in the teaching of autistics in some circumstances, to the extent these techniques are used on non-autistic children.

I'm glad you use ABA to make yourself behave, but you would not be pleased if I used it intensively to turn you into an autistic. The principles of ABA allow for this transformation. Just a matter of effort and time (perhaps a lifetime), then you would be--like me? Would you mind? I am not the only autistic to point this out. The exercise makes it clear that there are value judgments involved, into which, in the absence of ethical scrutiny, intolerance may creep.

You are clearly getting the results you're seeking. The children you teach can only learn from the methods you use, and if your teaching methods require of your students that they look at you and to your standards are attending, then those students who learn in different ways will fail by your standards. You have removed the possibility of them learning in ways of which you don't approve. You've made a nice circle of logic which guarantees your own success. Indeed, you are a radical behaviourist, and a successful one.

If there were a credible replication of Lovaas, it would show up and displace Lovaas. That has not happened. I've been patient and I'm still waiting. Which study do you want to use? And justify the methodology of? Why did Smith et al (2000) get such poor results, in spite of having large numbers of PDD-NOS study subjects? Why couldn't these scientists accurately report their own data? But my article was not about methodology except in that it reveals ethical lapses.

I did not attack all the ethical problems in Lovaas' study. For instance, one of the Control Group One children had Rett syndrome. Lovaas and Smith and many others surely knew about this (surely by the 1993 follow-up, at which point she was deteriorating in an institution); it was not disclosed until Boyd wrote about it. I wonder which other study subjects were recycled (maybe the other two Rett's girls?). Yet in all writing about this subject, the methodology is described as excellent. Perhaps, so long as excellent encompasses incompetent, or perhaps dishonest.

Lovaas himself writes eloquently (Maurice et al eds, 1996)about the fuss autistics make at the start of ABA. He recommends the therapist wear a bathing cap (protection against hair pulling) and padding on their arms (biting, punching, kicking). This is one of many, many accounts. I have no doubt a few autistics go, in comparison, quietly. Again, your observations are from the point of view of what you believe (there's that word, I apologize for mentalizing for you) is good and right and necessary to achieve goals--your goals. You seem to have found a great deal of positive reinforcement for your behaviour, but then so did the clinicians in the Rutgers study.

My observations about inability to determine outcome from very early diagnosis come from the work of a clinic which evaluates more than one hundred autistics year in year out. Again, you seem to be observing what you need to. Lovaas' gaffe (remember his kids were evaluated X number of times by very credentialed experts) in confusing autism with Rett's shows that in early or not-so-early diagnosis not only can the outcome not be predicted, even highly praised diagnosticians can make gross mistakes in diagnosis. There are 750 varieties of neurodevelopmental disorders; some of them look like autism.

I think the responses to the rest of your remarks are within the original article and its notes, sources, and references.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this article and respond to it.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Hi Michelle,

Thank you for your response to my post. I understand that you are more experienced and knowledgeable in both your personal and professional life. Therefore I am grateful that you gave a response. I also agree that your paper has a “broader view”. I do not disagree with the majority of the issues you discussed or even perhaps the “spirit”, of your paper. I was concerned with specific issues and remain so. And yes after re-reading your original paper and response, I have a slightly different opinion on a few specific issues.

I am willing to concede in this discussion, the failures of the Lovaas study mentioned specifically in your response and clinical diagnostics being a poor predictor of future outcomes (Although this was not exactly what I was speaking of). I will not re-argue discrete-trial’s contemporary efficacy until I have time to pour through the articles.

I found the “Use ABA to give John an Autistic behavior pattern”, to be an interesting exercise. This is also interesting when you try to carry this exercise on to completion. I sat down and considered as many behaviors that would have to go up or down, as I could think of. The problem I encountered was in generalization and maintenance. Namely, what will maintain the behavior when therapy ends? Behaviors do not stay at the high level they were at under therapy conditions unless we enter into a “behavior trap”. The behavior must contact natural reinforcer or aversives once the therapy ends or the behavior will revert to previous levels. What natural consequences will maintain my behavior? When we flip this around we can likewise ask “Are there natural reinforcers that occur and maintain Attending?” I believe I addressed this in my original post. Does this always happen? I doubt it, but I think it has. I appreciate that the behavior trap is theoretical but it likewise gives a good exercise.

Of course all this begs the question “Why don’t the children with Autistic repertoires just learn those behaviors in the first place”. For this, I don’t have a good enough explanation. Maybe with more experience and learning I will gain a greater understanding of this. I would suspect inherent values and establishing operations come into it at some level. And almost certainly there will be aspects that behaviorism is not equipped to answer.

Now we come to a major sticking point. Neurotypicals and persons with Autism. Judging by your comment “but you would not be pleased if I used it intensively to turn you into an autistic”, I feel relatively safe stating that you believe differences in persons with Neurotypicallity and persons with Autism are not limited to behavior. Perhaps some genetic divide that establishes deep inherent differences. A simple extension of this may well be “The behavior is a product of inherent factors.” This is of course the difference of your statement “turn you into an autistic”, and being a person with Autistic behavior. I do not agree with such an explanation, too much is unaccounted for. Although I would also agree that only citing the environment would likewise be a simplistic error. Like you, I am waiting for the data.

I admit there is a danger in my subjective experiences of only seeing what I want to see or as you say “your observations are from the point of view of what you believe” But in the context of an ethical, subjective article that is a rather two edged sword, isn’t it. You mentioned this both in reference to my paragraphs on attending and the behavior of children with Autism in the early weeks. I am aware of Maurice’s writings. Yet you also don’t agree with everything you’ve read. I have been bitten or scratched under ten times in the totality of my work or volunteering. Perhaps seven of these occurred when I put myself between one student about to attack another student (usually over a toy). Notice I don’t say restrain, but get in the way. I say this because no part of my body grabbed or wrapped around any part of theirs and they had freedom to move in any direction but towards the other child. The other times did not include a new child. Of course from a strained standpoint this could also be dealt with as “finding what I need to find.”

Your comment “You are clearly getting the results you're seeking”, was interesting for me. I have had the experience of working in both ABA and non ABA locations for very young children. Attending was of less concern in the non ABA rooms for children with HFA and Aspergers. They focused quite well on specific academic tasks without it. For some of the other children it was a challenge. Repeated efforts had to be made by myself or others to get them to look at certain activities. This made group lessons an interesting experience. We could hope (and did hope) that those children might take in the information by having it in the general environment. Or we sometimes presented the info in the context of the students’ interest (count the dinosaurs instead of numbers on a sheet) but this begins to resemble respondent conditioning now that I look back.

I was not aware that radical behaviorists cannot believe in believing. Are you perhaps referring to Empirical Behaviorists/Behaviorism? Skinner (Radical Behaviorist) provides a framework much along these lines in his book “Science and Human Behavior”. To close I would to say that a little private wish of mine is to meet my students when they are grown up and have them still consider me with the same warm feelings I have for them and that they seem to have for me. I see no reason this won’t be the case. And if I am to be, as you say “a radical behaviorist, and a successful one’, it will have to be shown through this aspect as well.

Thank you for the chance to post and also for the concepts you’ve proposed.

Hello John,

My reference to your beliefs have to do with the rejection by behariourists (I actually was shouted at--the behaviourist "NO!") that behaviour may arise from beliefs and desires. For clarity, this view (re beliefs and desires) is not necessarily one I share.

The person who shouted at me, a very noted behaviourist, described me as a human emitting autistic behaviours.

You share this view of what autism is and I don't.

So your conjecture about how autistic behaviours may be maintained in someone, yourself, who is not autistic, is not relevant to me. If you want to make the exercise more absurd, imagine developing an intensive ABA program to turn a behaviourist (Dr Malott? Dr Lovaas? Dr Green?) into a savant. Do you think this would succeed? Why not? You only need to reinforce the proper behaviours, don't you? Are behaviourists allowed to say "savant"? I'm curious about this. Have savant abilities ever emerged from an autistic who spent his childhood in an ABA program?

While Dr Sallows did not succeed in totally eliminating the special interests of one of his "successes", this boy was trained never to bother his peers with his interests. He was taught, in effect, that his strengths are not valued and must be hidden should they regrettably continue to exist.

I don't anywhere use the word "neurotypicals". That is your construction.

I don't share the view, which has been proposed by radical behaviourists, that if autistic behaviours were not reinforced, they would disappear, or not develop at all.

Were this view defensible, the Rett's girls would have shown the same pattern of outcomes as autistics when their "autistic" (according to the behaviourists) behaviours were treated. Also, one could treat "autistic" behaviours, as I described them emitted by a blind person, behaviourally. Even radical behaviourists would notice this is unethical. Or would they? Did you think the treatment of the Rett's girls was ethical? Or the treatment of the feminine boys?

While I did reference Dr Maurice's work in the article, I referred in my comment to what Dr Lovaas himself wrote in the book edited by Maurice, Luce and Green (1996).

Re attention, if you are genuinely interested in the differences between autistic and non-autistic attention and perception, I can refer you to studies.

We're still waiting for accounts from adults who were treated with ABA as children. It's odd that we have many written, published (as books) accounts by autistics who were not treated with ABA, including accounts written by very young autistics (adolescents and young adults) but we have no such accounts from autistics who've "successfully" been through ABA programs.

I find your wish that your students would as adults greet you with gratitude frankly disturbing. I suggest you read the highly disturbing follow-up interview with one of the boys in Lovaas' FBP. Unlike the autistics in the YAP, this boy, and to a lesser degree the other Lovaas FBP case study (who at age six said, "I'm not queer any more") were allowed to have their own words recorded and reported.

Thanks for your further comments. You didn't say whether you have one of Dr Malott's T-shirts.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Edited by author 03-27-2004 11:00 PM
Hi Michelle,

Thank you for your response. I again, had to think carefully and critically.

There are different sorts of behaviorists. Even radical behaviorists will not always agree. I would also have difficulty with the statement “behaviour may arise from beliefs and desires.” But I “believe”, I understand the general idea of what you mean. My concern lies in the specific process. Again, see Skinner’s “Science and Human Behavior”

I was sorry to hear that my analysis of the exercise you proposed was not relevant to you. I would have thought as a person more experienced clinically and in life in general than myself (I mean that sincerely) you would have more appreciation of the absurd. So, let’s go out on a limb and do the savant version as well. Why should we analyze this differently than any other behavior? Because, it develops so quickly? Or maybe, because we don’t clearly perceive what reinforcers it? Or because it occurs at such a rare and profound level? I think to infer the cause only to intelligence without further explanation is to cease causal inquiry. Hs it ever happened that a person gained exceptional talent quickly through extensive practice. It would be less impressive for me to teach Dr. Green 512 facts about astronomy then it would if I sat an 8 year old down and did the same thing. Not because either is incapable but because it is less common for 8 year olds to have extensive knowledge. Or maybe Pokemon is a better example. I sat with my jaw open as a teacher went around a room and had her 7 year olds each name a different Pokemon (they got near a 100). But these were not children with autism, they had ADHD. This did seem a little like a splinter-skill. But as they each child had this skill what do you suppose was reinforcing the behavior?

I have heard behaviorists address splinter skills in the past. Usually as a descriptive feature and in one case and rather ironically as “A development pattern”. You are correct, it is not usually touched on. It seems to me (Subjectivity again) that most of the kids if they develop a splinter skill, do so after leaving discrete-trial (two cases I know), although in one case it happened previous to DT and in one case during DT. Incidentally, I was not happy to hear about Dr. Sallows research. I am not surprised either though; I remember sitting through a non ABA training session and hearing the educational specialist describe how sometimes, students if all they do is discuss their interests with their peers end up alienating them. Once again her words, her opinion, not mine.

I have no problem dispensing with the term Neurotypical. I also realize that you don’t follow the reinforcement theory of autism behaviors. I am not sure how I should respond to that, except that we both agree that it is a theory. Perhaps on that issue we might have to agree to disagree.

On attention and perception I would be pleased and happy to read anything you might recommend. I am of course, an undergraduate and only a wannabe behaviorist. And I recognize the irony when I say “I will keep and open mind”.

I also have ethical concerns with the FBP. I am likewise concerned about the Rett’s example you cited. And if I were to only read your take on it then, I would agree with you. I will wait until I have a chance to review other commentary.

(I intend this next comment in a lighthearted, non-mean spirited fashion). Compared to the other behaviorist you have discussed, if my hope that my students will still be able to be friendly with me as adults is what you label as “disturbing”, about me, then I am in great shape.

I don’t believe I said the word “gratitude anywhere”, except in appreciation for our dialog. Perhaps I worded my private hope poorly. Allow me to reword it from a very pessimistic point of view. I hope that my students if and when we should meet as adults will not feel as if they were mistreated, slighted, incorrectly taught, or angry towards me. I see absolutely no reason that would be the case. There were three students I served a primary therapist for, out of the forty-something I have worked with. When I visit them in their new classrooms they still remember my name and come bounding over. They come over and ask to sit with me during music or free-time. Is this cheap social reinforcement? Yep, but I am glad I get it. Without that I would not consider myself as having been as much use to them. And yes, getting a smile and a hug is a subjective experience.

Yes, as you have guessed, I own the non-obscene version of the t-shirt. I am afraid I can’t claim noble reasons for its purchase. This was solely to annoy my non-behavioral professors and my Philosophy major roommate. Since you seem interested, the t-shirt which is comfortable (although not flattering on anyone) can be purchased at a reasonable price at the behavioral conferences which Dr. Malott attends.

Thanks again

Hello again John,

I'm aware that behaviourists don't all agree. This is true within autism, where the Lovaas/ABA gang are not necessarily delighted with the AVB gang using Lovaas' stats to sell their program. This is a small ethics problem I didn't get around to.

So *this* is the behaviourist version of savant abilities. You have taught me something. I had no idea previously how behaviourists coped with the existence of savants. You simply diminish and demean them, which means you misrepresent them. Problem solved.

Re perception and attention, start with Mottron, Burack, Belleville, Plaisted, Foxton (for the global interference study), Belmonte, Ristic, Enns. Various degrees of critical thinking are required.

Could you tell me re the kids you teach, do you do intake and outcome measures? Do you teach proper "affective display" in your program?

I don't consider Skinner to be gospel, by the way. I'm a big fan of freedom and dignity.

What disturbed me, and still does, is your obliviousness to consequences, which is why I suggested you read the words of a young man who emerged from a "successful" ABA-based Lovaas-supervised intensive intervention.

"The issue is not whether we can change behaviour, but at what cost." By cost, this writer doesn't mean $50K/yr. Of course this same writer, Steven Pinker, denies autistics are fully human and lumps us in with robots and chimpanzees. I don't mind the chimpanzees, but this demonstrates that nativists are as prone to intolerance and obliviousness towards autistics as behaviourists.

Given you're wearing his shirt, do you agree with Dr Malott that autistics (oh, sorry, autistic behaviours) are horrifying, etc, as he has recently written? Doesn't sound like a comfortable shirt to me.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Hi,

Good old AVB. That’s true sadly. I am actually helping out on a review of empirical AVB literature right now that we hope will get published. We have 34 peer reviewed empirical studies in the totality of the field (With all populations). This is still a developing field. Although I can’t resist mentioning that some behaviorists who deviated from Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior are finding through research that Skinner got it right in a few regards (I won’t go into detail here).

*That* is only one behaviorist version of savant abilities. I have no doubt other behaviorists would disagree with that. To make a misrepresentation, is a danger all analysis/analysts must make regardless of paradigm. And I am confused with how my analysis may diminish and demean savants. You will have to guide me through that thought process a bit.

No, we do not ourselves do intake or outtake measures. But this is part of a larger program so other folks not directly involved in our sub program do diagnostics. We do keep cumulative records of progress for all procedures. My own position at the moment is to record and keep overall data across students. We have to hear indirectly through the parents or the diagnosticians what changes are seen on the standardized measures.

To my understanding no, we do not teach proper affective display. The possible exception to this is attending. However I suspect that “proper affective display”, does get taught through happenstance to some limited degree. For a real life example: I was sitting with a 4 year old who had a very limited verbal repertoire at the time. He was tossing some blocks in the air and catching them. One accidentally smashed me on my nose. “Oww..” I said. He looked up at me with an embarrassed expression on his face. “Sorry”, he said. I nearly fell over; this was very appropriate by nearly everyone’s standards and also his first independent word to my knowledge. I recovered myself and said “That’s okay, and I like how you said sorry.” I saw him bump a little girl by accident a few weeks later. He again said “sorry.” I made sure I mentioned to him what a great job he was doing.

No, I do not agree that autistic behaviors are horrifying. I have seen (Beware, subjectivity ahead) that most of my friends who work in our practicum do not taker this view also. I have personally trained over a dozen technicians. They are sometimes very shy when they start. When I ask them why, it is not the different behaviors we see that bugs them so much as the fact that our kids are very young. They walk on egg shells with them. Technicians who were only children or never babysat have an especially interesting time the first couple of days. Incidentally, if you really want to see some “naughty”, behaviors. Don’t give someone a brand new kid. Give an energetic, older, high functioning kid to a brand new tech who is especially quiet and young. And some techs are quite young (18-19). I was 17 when I started helping out. My answer then and now if you were to ask “do I find autistic behaviors horrifying” is no. If I were to propose that idea to a tech tomorrow when I am at the center (that autistic behaviors are horrifying) I would get dirty looks for sure.

Thanks for the articles. I will start to look over them.

John,

I have read your learned discussion with Michelle with interest. [Takes me back to my graduate study of B. Mod. in Chicago in the late seventies!] While I acknowledge your understanding of the current technology of behaviour practice, I have yet to read any statement by you attempting to explain/define a functional hypothesis detailing "being autistic" in relation to "being NT". As I have said elsewhere on this site, I have no difficulty facilitating the adaptive behaviour of autistics in the world of people because I teach NTs to communicate in terms that autistics understand and explain the presenting behaviour as adaptive from the autistics' perspective. I insist that NTs leave out the "baggage" of their emotions and multi-layered meanings which, of course, BF Skinner labelled mental constructs. Precise behaviour communication is very easy for us to "read". [Our pedantic language and focus on fine detail should be considered just one indicator of how we would prefer you engage with us.] We only become disordered in relation to that which we are not "wired" to read/understand, save at a cognitive level. Far from autistics being disordered, we are very ordered. It is the unpredictable behaviour of NTs that is disordered to us and much, if not most of our apparently responding is symptomatic of our logical confusion in relation/reference to perceived disordered NT behaviour.

In concentrating on your elegant and complex method you fail to address our essential difference as autistic people. You end up focusing on the parts of our presentation as the problem [for you] leading to an effective return to the old medical/sickness model in which symptoms become the perceived reality of the so-called patient.

I define the behavioural process as a subtle process that occurs between people, not what one person does to another person, i.e. not as a treatment. You need to consider that my function as an HFA adult in the world of emotional people such as you is a very conscious behavioural process. That is, as I engage with NT people I make very practised, but still conscious, decisions to respond or not respond that meet the critera of good behaviour management. For instance, while I prefer to look at the mouth of an NT person as I speak to him, I will consciously make brief direct eye contact because I know that NTs need the social reinforcement of the eye gaze of others during communication. [I do not make eye contact with NT people with whom I feel safe. They know and accept me as an autistic and are not offended or perturbed.] I was first taught the basic patterns of social interaction by my parents and teachers, but later, as a young teacher made a conscious effort to study NT communication patterns and analysed them. Over several years I consciously copied the patterns of social communication and control of good teachers I observed and then practised postural and gestural responses in front of a mirror. I also recorded my own speech giving instructions in private and then reviewed it via replay. Later I recorded myself while teaching and at home reviewed my spoken communication in relation to the responses of my students to that instruction. All this is a behavioural process and goes back to my early teenage years, when, being violently bullied at school, I would withdraw to my pigeon loft to be alone. Sitting in the loft I observed and manipulated the birds using food reinforcers. [Remember pattern recognition is a strength in us - especially when one's performance IQ is above the 99th Percentile!] Within a couple of years I had worked out all the rules of classical and operant conditioning [though I would not learn the formal theoretical models until I entered university.]

Everything I do in relation to NTs is according to a set of learned rules, but I do not try to cure or modify the normal patterns of social intercourse of NTs. [You may be an effective NT behavioural technologist, but you cannot and will never be able to match my behavioural skill, because it is the process by and through which I live and work in relation to all other people. For me and other functional HFA/AS people our behavioural ability is at the level of an art - we are beyond simple technological method or practice.]

I do not understand [or cope with] NT emotionalism, but I wish NTs would seek to adapt to me as I have respectfully adapted behaviourally to them.

Hello John,

Are you saying you're an AVB guy? So who's any good, by your standards? Is AVB what you're actually doing? Do you use sign, Partington-style? Why do a bunch of Lovaas/ABA people really dislike this approach (beyond resenting the misappropriation of their studies)?

Only 34 studies? If you read the ABA literature, and the court cases, you'll find figures approaching gazillions of "peer-reviewed empirical studies" proving that ABA is wonderful. I'm kidding about the gazillions, and I can't actually remember the highest number I've seen or where, but it would be circa a thousand. You have some catching up to do.

I'll just assume you're being wilfully myopic re savants. Or are you? Maybe you need to read some legal cases. To make the case for ABA, one of the essentials is to deny there's anything worth anything in the autistic as an autistic (see the article please). As soon as you acknowledge there is worth, then you're into messy ethical problems, or you should be.

Your analysis of savant abilities has lots of defects, including being wrong. And I wonder what motivates people to deny autistic abilities without, obviously, even studying them. Did you know that Dr Green warns against being fooled by the great abilities of autistics? Much, much more important that we dedicate our lives to learning to behave like non-autistics.

How old are the oldest kids you work with? Are they all pre-school? What's a smart, old, energetic HFA doing in there? Have you ever met an autistic adult? How do you think your 4yr old learned to say "sorry"?

Re autistics being horrifying, I'm just telling you the state of the art in your field, and that no one, yourself included, is objecting to it. That is, you claim to disagree with it, but you feel no obligation to denounce views that totally discredit and shame your chosen ideology.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Thanks Jim,

I agree or have come to agree with much of what you discussed. You gave both a very helpful and a very challenging post. I will have to consider long hard before I attempt a real answer to what you said. I wonder though, in your concern about the medical model whether you haven’t fallen into it yourself. Is behavior always a part of an underlying psychological condition (or perception, or wiring)? Or if an exception occurs, how do we really know?

You said “I have yet to read any statement by you attempting to explain/define a functional hypothesis detailing "being autistic" in relation to "being NT”, I would not be comfortable offering such a hypothesis. This is due to my level of training and that I believe that there are aspects I am ill equipped or trained to address. I am already pushing the envelope in some regards with my discussion with Michelle. This is yet another reason I appreciate my discussion with Michelle. I’ve learned some things I didn’t know.

Thanks for the help Jim,

Edited by author 03-30-2004 05:27 PM
Hi Michelle,

Most of my experience has been discrete-trial (Lovaas). I have been recently interested in AVB. So I also have some limited experience in that. I like Sundberg particularly at the moment. I think his intraverbals and “Reception by Function, Feature, and Class”, programs fill in a lot of the verbal behavior training that was less touched on by Lovaas and others. I think the concern of the “Lovaas”, folks is primarily due to the AVB folks using Lovaas data as you said. I also suspect that the “Lovaas”, folks are less than pleased about the relatively limited amount of formal study in the AVB world. As you observed, we gave some catching up to do. Notice though, that AVB is a subpart, not the totality of ABA. That base is rather vast. Also in comparisons to some general methods in other paradigms, 34 empirical studies is a whopping amount.

You said “I'll just assume you're being wilfully myopic re savants”. Come on Michelle, you used to apologize before offering mentalizations. I thought we were agreed on that. On a serious note though, I did have a chance to read the follow up interview of the FBP. I can not say I liked it for many reasons.

You said “As soon as you acknowledge there is worth, then you're into messy ethical problems, or you should be”. I think we’ve hit a fundamental difference in our analyses. Far from sweeping skills or areas of strength under the rug, I think understanding of strengths is crucial. I know of no method (yes DT included) that dispenses with strengths that way. In fact I would go on to say the best planners and technicians make careful use of strengths in their work. And as we know strengths may change (from what I can tell) the tech has to be able to keep up. Even in a high structure program like DT, a creative tech will find ways of integrating this so that the student likewise has a chance to be creative with their own skills. (And the most creative tech supervisors will have to find a way to motivate the techs too) If this is all so, our effort should be placed on best integrating the above aspects into it. I would say that, is the great challenge of our field.

I will be the first (well, maybe the second) to say that my analysis may be wrong. However I have read no other analysis that I have thought was particularly correct. Most of the commentary on splinter-skills has consisted of description rather than causation.
I would be pleased to hear an alternative explanation.

The majority of my experience has been with persons aged six and under. I that group I have worked with kids with Autism, Aspergers, PDD-NOS, and other related disorders. One student was a person with Hyperlexia. I have no experience with Rett’s Syndrome or Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. In the older child category 7-11, I have worked in a non-behavioral way with students with the same three categories. This included several students who had splinter-skills. In the teen and young adult category 13-21, I have worked in a non-behavioral setting with students with Aspergers. I have worked with or been around adults over 25 with Autism and Aspergers, in non-behavioral settings. I currently mentor a teenager with very high functioning Aspergers.

When we get a referral, generally speaking, it means the referred student has some real deficits. I have never seen one come in potty trained, with language beyond one word requests, simple labeling ability, and “yes”, and “no”. More often, not even that. Initially higher functioning kids go into other programs or leave us after a few months.

Many our high functioning kids do not necessarily start that way. When a kid has really made some progress, we make plans to transition him or her out. I saw an argument a while ago between two of our more recent graduates. One of these only used the word “no”, and “Thomas the Train”, a year ago. He also insisted on calling me daddy until he learned my name. The other had no language when he first came in. One was humming and the other said “Be quite please”, the first student said “No you be quiet”. This went back and forth for a few minutes. The head of the program saw this and said “Time for them to move on John, when our kids start having conversations you know it means they are ready for something harder. I visit them both. They seem happy and have even more language.

I think my student learned to say sorry because of increased attending to his environment in general and also because we had worked very hard on some imitation procedures. It is a bit of a stretch to say this imitation generalized but I don’t have a more plausible explanation. His words in general had been very limited at that point. We began to see a more general difference after that.

You said “That is, you claim to disagree with it, but you feel no obligation to denounce views that totally discredit and shame your chosen ideology.” I suppose that’s a fair criticism. A fair response might be, so far most of my effort had been channeled into teaching rather than advocacy. I also do not agree with many of the opinions expressed on this site on the origin and maintenance of behaviors. If and when I do advocate it will very likely be different from how other participants on this site would do so. That is a cop-out on my part and it bugs me. Maybe I’ll have a better answer in time. If it’s possible, can you send me the full citation of those articles? I did a search and found the primary authors but not the specific articles.

Thanks again,

Edited by author 03-30-2004 10:37 PM
Hello John,

You wrote: "I wonder though, in your concern about the medical model whether you haven’t fallen into it yourself. Is behavior always a part of an underlying psychological condition (or perception, or wiring)?"

The failure to take into consideration the complete presentation of any client is potentially unethical, even dangerous. The old medical model functioned on the basis that being different was tantamount to being sick, ill or diseased. That is why the staffing in residential institutions world-wide was derived from the nursing profession. From 1982 to 1986 I was a senior staff member in a 750 bed institution in Melbourne [Victoria, Australia] and involved in the introduction of a developmental and enabling model. There was a deliberate and absolute change in paradigm from medical to behavioural, but so extreme was the paradigm shift [revolution] that necessary and proper medical considerations about real medical conditions were rejected as a return to the old ways. [Literally the baby was thrown out with the bathwater!] This led to frequent incredibly bad and improper treatment of the resident clients.

For instance: a behaviourist tried to train a person with severe intellectual disability and quadraplaegic cerebral palsy-spasticity to use a spoon to self feed. [Food was the reinforcer.] As the individual displayed an extant Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex [ATNR or "Archer's" Reflex] due to permanent damage to the upper motor neurons, it was impossible for her, with all the reinforcement and shaping in the world, to overcome the fact that every time she turned her head to look at the spoon in her hand an extensor response was elicited according to the S - R model. She could not volitionally overcome this response any more than could you if you had the same neuro-motor condition, but intact intellect. The result was that her hand [with the spoon] moved away from her mouth/face. In spite of advice fromr the physical therapist and a senior physician the behavioural intervention was implemented and failed, but I consider the treatment, as trialled, an aversive and unethical treatment.

I witnessed many other examples of behaviourists ignoring the basic presenting condition of the client in the belief that they could change virtually all behaviour. This included clients with presenting cardiac defects or structual deformities, e.g. skeletal, being put on behaviour programs to exercise more or learn certain skills that actually required a sound skeletal structure and ligamentous integrity. In some cases the clients could learn the skills, but the practise of certain skills was actually endangering to the client, e.g. teaching people with Downs Syndrome and malformed cervical vertebrae gymnastic events which placed stress on their very weak necks with potentially lethal results. One young ID man with quaraplaegia, barely able to manage bi-pedal locomotion, was labelled as disobedient/non-compliant because he would not go far on the walks in the grounds with staff. I strapped a radio pulse meter to his chest and took him for a walk. His pulse after about 400 yards on gently rolling terrain was 192 beats per minute. The reason he dropped was that he was in oxygen debt and suffering discomfort - the actions of so-called care staff in trying to bully him into walking further were aversive. The "behavioural" solution was for me to change the behaviour of the staff and insist they took him on several short walks each day. Such practice with, or treatment of members of the "normal" population would have earned professional opprobrium, even charges of negligence and legal action, if instigated by occupational or physical therapists or myself as an adaptive physical educator.

Taking into account the presenting medical, physical and psychological state of one's client before embarking blithely on a behavioural intervention is a necessary part of meeting one's duty-of-care. It does not mean one is hearking back to the "helpless", "hopeless" sickness model that pertained for most of last century and resulted in people being institutionalised from childhood.

I was asked recently to develop a program to train a 38 YO moderately intellectually impaired autistic man who is totally echolalic to tolerate the presence of balloons. On investigation it was found that he does tolerate balloons - as long as they are mounted up on the wall of the program room. He does not tolerate them when other people are handling them. He runs in a panic straight out of the room at the sight of a person holding a balloon. He is highly auditorily defensive and has learned to associate the sight of a person holding a balloon with the sound of a balloon being popped. I refused to develop a behavioural program to train him to cope with the sight/sound of balloons, because such a program would have exposed him over a prolonged period to an aversive stimulus: the explosive sound of the balloon bursting. As his hyper-sensitivity is neurologically determined [and I have not found a non-aversive therapeutic intervention to reduce such auditory hyper-sensitivity], I refused to develop a behavioural intervention. It would be unethical. The program staff need to adapt to this man's presenting condition.

One starts with the presenting reality of the individual and then developes an eclectic behavioural "treatment" model or intervention that is respectful and enabling. [The model must consider abilities and disabilities.] Clearly the shape or topography of behaviour can be changed significantly through use of the technology of behavioural treatments, but if you only have the method, but no explanatory model, then you are being unprofessional and can do great harm to clients. With regard to being autistic, there are underlying traits common to all autistics the expression of which can be shaped to become adaptive or, in the absence of appropriate intervention or, worse, the use of aversive treatments as were frequently used in the old institutions, to become totally maladaptive and very dangerous.

Do understand this: I was exposed from early childhood to normative social experiences and settings, e.g. dances and parties. I was made to attend, and trained to behave in a correct manner in such settings in the presence of my parents. However such settings are aversive in the extreme to me and I cannot and will not enter them of my own volition. I quickly disintegrate and have to flee. However I can stand in front of an audience and lecture on autism/behaviour management, I have taught countless hours of demonstration lessons in a university campus school in Virginia, performed music in public recitals, chaired regular meetings of the senior staff committee of the old institution or can teach a high-school class of difficult and hostile teenage boys without any problem. No amount of training/conditioning has had any effect on my inability to attend any gathering of people which has a primary social purpose not directly related to my obsessional interests [work, music and sport] or some necessary daily task, e.g. eating lunch. I can tell you [from an intellectual perspective] that my behaviour is not logical, yet I cannot over-ride the complete breakdown in social settings of my ability to process sensory input so that everything blurs together and I panic. I can attend a work lunch to farewell a fellow professional, but the moment the activity of eating lunch is over and the focus becomes social, I must leave. It is a virtually instantaneous change. This is a matter of fundamental innate autistic difference. [I think Temple Grandin and Wendy Lawson say the same thing.]

My question to you remains: can and do you define the nature and meaning of being autistic [plus any other factors] as the necessary ethical starting point for any behavioural intervention?

Hi Jim

“One starts with the presenting reality of the individual and then developes an eclectic behavioural "treatment" model or intervention that is respectful and enabling. [The model must consider abilities and disabilities.]”

Amen

I am not sure about the nature of being autistic but I would answer “yes”, to your last question. Although I would not use that terminology. When I see a brand new kid the first thing I want to know is the diagnosis? The second thing (and the more important perhaps to me) is what can he/she do? What are the student’s strengths and weaknesses? How do they react if their schedule is altered? We picked up a 4 year old a number of years ago who seemed very high functioning. He had better than average eye contact and said “Hi”, to people. When people asked him to go play with them he said “Okay.” One of the supervisors said “He won’t be here very long at all.” One of the techs said “That little boy isn’t Autistic.” A couple of nearby techs agreed. Another undergrad level supervisor said “He probably just cried during the evaluation so they assumed he was AI and put him with us.” I myself had him pegged for an aspie. Turns out we all wrong. He did have good eye contact but he did have some self-stim as well. His play with action figures that at first appeared so age typical seemed repetitive on second glance. He would make sounds we initially assumed to be action figure noises, but the sounds never changed. He would squint his eyes the whole time and even the motions he made the figures were repetitive. The dead give away for me was when he would spin this wheel on one action figure over and over. He gave a hellacious tantrum on his first day when his tech brought him past a ball pit on the way to another activity and he was told he could not go in the pit. Even his “okay”, that seemed so adaptive was not. He would answer it to almost any question. Even when “okay”, was not a possible answer e.g. “What color do you see.” I learned later he was diagnosed PDD-NOS. That info was helpful in that it told me he was higher functioning initially than many of our other students. It also told me a general list of behaviors I would or would not see. It also told me that he likely had good visual skills.

But his diagnosis did not tell me the precise level of functioning. It did not tell me specifically what strengths I could build on and use. Or what kind of tech he wanted to work with. We assumed female because he seemed small and shy. Truth was, he would actually run to a male tech and work with them if given the choice (Lots of our kids have preferences in this regard). But I wouldn’t know that just by diagnosis. These are things I had to learn by watching and measuring behavior. They were unique to him. Only then could I make suggestions to his tech. Most of his problems occurred when he had difficulty requesting something. My suggestion to his tech was to teach him mands (requests) every free chance they got and to let him sit with males if he wanted to during music and less structured activity. His tantrums decreased in the next few weeks.

Another case in point. I got asked to help with a kid who was smacking his tutor. Some other students made a functional assessment of the behavior. But even after they implemented a behavior plan the kid smacked his tutor. The previous folks concluded he got aggressive during the unstructured time between one procedure and another. I noticed that seemed to be true. But when I asked the tech to do various things between trials to see what was going on I saw a spike when the tech moved or rearranged the stimuli pattern. Jim, you may have been able to see that coming or recognize it right away, but we did not………………. Lessons learned along the way.

My suggestion to the tech was simple. Give him a toy between trials and make sure he is engaged with it before you move the stimuli. The next day the behavior went down to zero and base-lined a zero for the next two weeks. A short term antecedent procedure eased the problem while the tutor and tech worked on long term goals including non-aggression. This may have been implied by traits we see in persons with autism but was not in and of itself a guarantee of causation. Only manipulation of variables could show that.

So why I answered “yes”, to your question, I am wary of the term “nature”. I also believe as shown above that diagnoses and the inferences we make based on general patterns of a group are a important starting point (and something we should reference back to) but not an end or completion in developing treatment.

Thanks again Jim,

Edited by author 03-31-2004 01:17 AM
Hi John,

With regard to eye contact: are you aware that there is a learned form of eye contact that is essentially a-social and controlling, even defensive? Donna Williams calls that "retaliatory" eye contact I think. I disagree with the use of "retaliatory", because it has the connotation of pay-back or revenge. Frankly I know of no autistics who are vengeful or malicious per se. We do not care to hurt others with malicious intent simply because we cannot care. Being malicious with intent is purely an NT trait. I do demand full restitution if I am attacked, but nothing more. That is not to say that I have not been hurt very often by my out-of-control autistic clients who have been incidentally taught inappropriate or socially unsafe escape/avoidance behaviour. Your use of the term "aggressive" in describing the lad "smacking" the instructor is unfortunate and puts the causation and a moral-social meaning in the ASD child, but I suspect and hope you understand that.

Your observation that many autistic people work well with males is easily explained. To understand this you must understand that the need for direct eye contact is an NT trait, though I have very low functioning autistic children who have learned to watch and track the eye pointing of careless NT instructors so as to give the correct answer to a problem - but this is not social eye contact.

In western societies males tend to be more direct in their verbal and physical engagement with others: there is less ambiguity in the instructional style of men than many women. Women tend to ask or negotiate from a forward leaning or "supplicant" posture. Males tend to stand upright and direct. [I saw this a lot when I was supervising student teachers: the males would give orders to children, the females took a long time to learn to be directive; they would use the question form or turn an order into a qwuestion by adding "...OK?" and even ordinary children would be confused or simply take advantage of the ambiguity. I see this all the time in the special classes I visit.] It is not a primary gender discrimination per se by the autistic clients I see - in fact many are unable to define their own gender let alone truly know or comprehend the notion of an opposite gender. It is a consequence of the different communication presentation typical of each gender, hence in all my programs I require all staff to adopt a gender neutral presentation from an upright posture, common across all staff so the autistic person can begin to see a common pattern of responding [operating] by the NTs. Only then can they begin to learn the operational/communication rules of those NT staff. Otherwise they actually have to "learn" each different person. When all staff use a standard pattern we often find the autistic clients naming all the staff after the strongest [meaning most consistent and clearest] communicator. We also find that some autistic clients actually do not know the name "labels" of their parents and cannot act on the verbal cue of a name without a supporting visual cue indicating "Come here!" [Remember we are primarily visiles, not audiles.]

With regard to communication the focus by NTs on eye contact distracts from how autistics view NT and other people. [I think somewhere you note that it does not matter how they attend, but that they do attend.] Even so it is necessary to know how autistic people "read" others. You may be aware that Simon Baron-Cohen has a screening test in which an emotional label hs to be fitted with one of four facial expressions. I scored 28 on that test which is in the normal range. How I arrived at my responses is this: I would look at the emotional label, e.g. frustrated. In the majority of cases I could not identify the facial expression that was correct out of the four faces given. I would close my eyes and imagine the total, i.e. whole body presentation, of a person "being frustrated". In my mind I would scan from feet to face and then open my eyes to find a match with the face I had imaged with the display in Baron-Cohen's test. My ability to judge facial expressions is through learned association with the supporting posture of the person's body.

When I train staff to work with my autistic clients I first train them to control their body language and ensure it is congruent with the gestural-verbal cue given [or at worst] not conflicting with that cue. Always I insist that formal instruction is given from a still-standing posture - I have video of autistic people becoming very upset due to staff moving their feet during instruction simply because the introduction of peripheral movement changes the meaning of the instruction from the autistic person's perspective. [Remember we are pedantic in speech and behaviour because we need exact structure and you NTs are part of the structure, hence the form of your communication IS very inportant.] In encountering any person I observe them from feet to mouth in that order. In safe day-to-day interaction at work I generally watch the mouths of NT people as the movement of the lips gives physical "form" to verbal communication. [Many years ago a speech therapist, after watching me during a work meeting, told me that I lip read. Without the visual cues underlying verbal communication I miss a large amount of auditory information.]

John, my E-mail address is: Jim.Crawford@dhs.vic.gov.au - send me an E-mail and I will send you a paper that may help you understand being autistic.

Edited by author 04-01-2004 03:15 PM
Hello, John

I've become a bit too busy properly to answer to your most recent communication, which does merit lots of concentration. And thanks to Jim for helping me with my workload, so to speak (yes, I'm smiling when I write that).

I'm pleased to point you in certain directions, John, and I'm happy and impressed you're willing to expand your repertoire. Re specific cites, though, can you spell "Medline"? From there, it's a matter of recognizing which studies are relevant. I can't believe I'm writing these instructions for a university student (I've never been one myself--and but recently taught myself to use computers). Do you need shaping, modelling, a prompt? Seriously, I realize autistics have a totally unfair advantage in our ability to locate and assess information. I just figured that your training would have helped you overcome this non-autistic deficit.

I'm not sure how to be more specific. Most of the studies by most of the researchers listed are important; in the case where there was one specific autism-relevant study (Foxton), I gave you a clue. Actually, I should have done that with Enns and Ristic, but you can just use proper search terms. There's lots of overlap in what these researchers write about, though Belmonte, Enns, and Ristic are pretty much in attention. Some work equally in perception and attention (Burack) and some have concentrated on perception (Mottron, Plaisted), while still working in other areas.

Also, had you carefully looked, you would have found in Mottron's and Belleville's work some excellent empirical examinations of perception in autistic savants (work which is ongoing). What's fascinating is that these studies led to excellent empirical examinations of perception in non-savant autistics. This should make any behaviourist pause (time out) for thought.

I propose "causal" factors in savant and splinter abilities in the ABA article. This also should make you pause, since there is a lot of evidence for what I write. It can, so far (there is no contradiction), be proposed that all autistics have the potential to become savants. Non-autistics do not have this potential. But for abilities to develop, there are requirements. One is to have available the right kind and quantities of materials. The other is overtraining on a peak of ablity. Peaks of ability are evident in testing even to behaviourists who are reasonably good diagnosticians. Dr Mulick noticed peaks in his kids, and noticed the peaks are different in Asperger's. Not bad for a behaviourist, but of course this information is considered by him to be irrelevant.

So let's put this together with your claim that you recognize and exploit autistic strengths in your program. I've been disturbed from the outset at your descriptions of your "clients". They're acting just like autistics do in environments that are, by our standards, impoverished. Also, there's your description of what constitutes strengths. In order to have strengths, your clients have to show behaviours that you consider to be strengths. Their own strengths are reported by you as weaknesses, or as wrong. I have many of the supposed defects you report in your clients. They are in fact strengths, when you are autistic. They represent the way a person whose perception is measurably different (and there's not much more basic than perception) learns.

So now you can tell me why the way autistics play is wrong. I can't easily judge the behaviour of your clients because I identify them immediately as not having what they need in order to learn how autistics most easily learn. You are then entitled to teach them your way and take credit for this, but you're discarding the strengths directly under your nose, because they don't look like strengths to you.

If, without the necessary materials being available, and without overtraining in peak areas of ability, autistic savant abilities do not develop--one can propose that the development of abilities in non-savant autistics are dependent on these factors.

I've never quite understood why it's so hard for non-autistics to locate autistic strengths, but if you read Dr Maurice's book, one problem is that there is a kind of horror of us. You can see this in her horrified response to her daughter having discovered, and enjoying, right angles.

Since our strengths represent a kind of autonomy unavailable to non-autistics (yes, there's science), maybe this willful blindness (sorry, did it again) is envy?

This may not be too useful. I'll try to be more useful later. And while I think of it, another reason the ABA people resent the AVB people is, possibly, AVB's army of travelling salesmen.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Edited by author 04-01-2004 08:18 PM
Hi Michelle,

You wrote: "Since our strengths represent a kind of autonomy unavailable to non-autistics ..., maybe this willful blindness ... is envy?"

This is my experience working within the bureacracy of a state government disability service and also working with case management professionals from non-government service agencies. Many professionals are frightened and confronted by the directness of my behaviour and my ability to make instantaneous and independent judgements about behavioural issues in programs with my clients.

I am also amused by the need of NTs, especially psychologists, to collect extreme amounts of statistical data about behaviour, because I can "see" what is happening and define the behavioural intervention model within a few minutes. [I do not know whether this meets the criteria for a savant ability and really do not care. I suspect this ability is a bit like Temple Grandin picturing the behaviour of cattle in relation to cattle yards she designs - on my farm I build all sort of structures from my mind without any plan on paper just as I develop behaviour programs for my clients instantly.]

This ability to function at a high level and independently seems to be incredibly confronting, in part because NTs need to work within a colleagial model and be affirmed or reassured by each other before they act. [Again Jane Meyerding's notion of "Hollow core people" comes to mind.] One of my long-term NT supervisors, a woman of considerable intellect and independent style, has told me that for many years she ran a daily active defence of me, though I was totally unaware of it, because so-called fellow professionals continually complained that I did not do my clinical work the "right" way. Never mind that I was always successful with the very complex clients with whom the NT professionals had tried and failed. Another senior manager told me she was happy with the work I did, though she did not understand what "magic" I used. She seemed not to want to know how I operated.

It seems to get down to this: NTs abhor difference amongst people. They crave conformity over ability. I doubt it is envy - I do not think NTs really want to have any kind of superior ability, let alone savant ability, they would be too scared of being different.

Hi,

Michelle, I have begun to review your articles. My comment so far……interesting.

Thank you for your help in this regard. Incidentally, I will always listen, review and seriously consider whatever info you care to share with me. Although, as you have no doubt already figured out, I may not agree. And thank you for the extra “prompts”, to help me find the papers. I was using “Psychinfo 1887”, which has been so reliable for me in the past in finding articles.


So, I’ll do the easy stuff first. Michelle, I think we have more or less exhausted the possible reasons “Lovaas”, folks may dislike AVB folks.

You said “Non-autistics do not have this potential” in regard to development of savant skills. Interesting. For this to be so, there must indeed be a fundamental difference in not just what is called perception, intelligence and learning style. There must be a difference in fundamental learning as well. Or we must begin to discount, displace, or modify our knowledge of principles of learning.

Has it ever happened that a person not with autism has demonstrated a savant like skill.
In the interesting, cognitve book “Super Learning”, a man learns to instantaneously count hundreds of circles drawn on a blackboard. Definitely savant like and he was not described as autistic in any way. What does this mean if a non autistic person develops savant like skills? Does this example truly displace the general theory you are backing? Or does it just modify it and your understanding of it. I have not truly proposed a theory of explaining savant skills. I have so far, mostly proposed questions. Of course there is an easy and somewhat slippery way out of all this. Perhaps you have already seen it. You can always state that the “circle counting man”, was really …………. Do that and your explination as stated remains intact.

You said “Also, there's your description of what constitutes strengths. In order to have strengths, your clients have to show behaviours that you consider to be strengths.”

I don’t think I’ve made a good effort to present my student’s “strengths”, at all. I have focused mostly on descriptions, learning tasks, or deficits. In fact you were more correct than Jim in this regard. Jim more or less said I was working from a medical model perspective (not so). You were closer to the truth when you said I was deficit driven (Not that I am truly but you could not ascertain that from the examples I gave).

For that reason I have decided to list all the strengths I could think of for one high functioning 5 year old, who did not start that way. I understand and appreciate that your list would likely be different, although I would expect this to be true whenever two people analyze something as subjective as strengths (or deficits for that matter).

This student is visually gifted (he recognizes and duplicates patterns very well), he is very good at counting (same story), he is interested in the world around him (sometimes he is engrossed in reading a picture book, or having it read to him. This also included the things he draws, or the fastidious way he does his work and many, many other examples), he is concerned for others (I had a blood shot eye one day and he asked me if I was okay and gave me a hug) He seems to take some happiness or joy in what goes on around him (he loves certain activities, yes even social ones). Those are only a few of his strengths.

Thanks again

Hi Jim,

Thank you and thank you for the articles. I almost have them done. The theory offered is engaging and sometimes provocative in a positive way.

 I was not aware of the retaliatory eye contact concept. Interesting….

I don’t think we can reduce student’s preference to work with males quite that easily. I have known many students who prefer to work with females. This doesn’t seem to matter if the student themself is male or female. I know one brand new little boy who cries in the presence of any male except his father. But no male has ever worked with him. He works fine with girls. Another little boy also prefers to work with females even though he is more of a rough and tumble kid. Still another little boy only this year has begun to enjoy working with male tutors. I suspect this is because he enjoys so much rough-and-tumble play, and the male tutors (typically, but not always) do more of this.

In your response to Michelle you said “I can "see" what is happening and define the behavioural intervention model within a few minutes” I am willing to admit this as probable. But allow me to switch shoes. Today I was working with a non-autistic, behaviorally disordered student about 10 years old. His intelligence and general development is typical. He repeatedly made insulting remarks to other students and in one case almost escalated into a fight. I had to physically get between him and the other student.

I am willing to admit that some persons, sometimes act “malicious with intent”, more often then not the behavior fulfills some function for them beyond just reinforcement. This is true with this behaviorally disordered but otherwise typical student as it is for other more diverse groups. We can mentalize why he aggressed “low self esteem, envy, etc.) And that may be true. But it does not tell us much about the behavior. Frankly I have no idea what maintains it. All I know what precedes it… another kid being insulting or doing something he doesn’t tolerate. I could guess………. and I might be wrong. Better to take the data, do the functional assessment find out what are the factors involved in the behavior so I can make a plan that fulfills a similar function.

Thanks again,

My son is autistic, non-verbal, without any means of communication. He gets frustrated, head bangs and screams. How would Michelle Dawson propose to help him? Without a lot of help, and perhaps even with it, he faces a future in institutional care. And please don't bother posting to say how do I know? - believe me, I know and love him.

Edited by author 04-02-2004 07:08 PM
For Ms Collins:

I don't know how old your son is.

Non verbal does not mean that he has no means of communicating. All (can't think of an exception right now) non-verbal people communicate. Language isn't the same as speech.

One way to ensure a person can't communicate is to assume he is not communicating. I've never encountered an autistic in my life and my reading who did not communicate, and I can't think off-hand of one who did not communicate accurately. A person could help your son by noticing that he is communicating and establishing the nature of this communication. Also, he could be helped by being observed accurately as to the way he learns, and the materials he learns from.

Of course I can't help your son, Ms Collins, since I'm unlikely to have the privilege of meeting him. But he should not be written off at any level because his communication and learning are not typical. He is not going to be like you. He needs to be observed as an autistic. What does he know? I've never encountered an autistic (even those many people would write off, ie, profoundly retarded children) who did not clearly display interest, learning, and knowledge in decipherable ways, which constitute communication.

You have to place yourself in his position. Imagine you communicate with great effort over and over and very precisely and honestly. But the people around you decide you aren't communicating. So, all your effort and honesty and precision are for nothing. After a while, you would get frustrated. And if you are communicating absolute necessity you will call attention to this by screaming and banging your head. (This is typically the way-too-late point at which a behaviour analyst is recruited and a functional analysis of behaviour is sought.)

I just don't understand people who see no possibility for their child when that child is autistic. Maybe I never will.

And no autistic, child or adult, belongs in an institution. Many of us have occupied them. And most of us started non-verbal, and some of us still are; and many of us did, or still do, bang our heads and otherwise behave in ways that seem to entitle non-autistics to incarcerate us. Self-care is not an issue on a planet where quadriplegics live independently, that is, outside of institutions.

All children need help no matter their diagnosis. Assuming any kind of child is not communicating is not helpful, whatever the intention.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Hi John,

I won't be doing you justice, again, but a difference in "fundamental" learning may or may not be necessary. You may consider (uh oh, I'm mentalizing again) that implicit learning is a fundamental difference and, as compared to explicit learning, I guess it is. Implicit learning is how your very cool 4yr old ended up saying "sorry". He had the information available without being aware of this until there was the equivalent of a forced recognition task (which tasks are used rather unimaginatively to discern implicit learning in non-autistics).

Of course I'm totally guessing since no one has officially studied implicit learning and autism. I can cheat in that I can check my own learning, and my own rather spectacular objections to being taught in explicit ways.

I believe Jim easily about his ability to analyze behaviours instantly. This may or may not be savant-level; you can't judge that over the internet. But I'm impressed and this seems credible and consistent with how autistics go about accumulating and processing information.

Back to savants. I have to break all your rules by saying that autistics accomplish things in ways that are different from non-autistics. So sometimes there are peaks of ability in non-autistics. However, they are not the result of the same processes that produce autistic peaks and they have different consequences. In the article, I also touch on the differences between expertise and savant abilities (there is science here). If savant-like abilities happen in non-autistics (if you provide me with evidence, in a journal not a book, I promise I'll take it seriously) then these abilities have been achieved by means different from those exploited by autistics.

The idea that anyone can be a savant was popularized through a physicist called Snyder. It turned out he was wrong.

Being able to know the number of anything without counting is called subitizing. I know an autistic kid who's subitized since he was very young. I honestly don't know if subitizing is considered a savant ability. Maybe you can help me with this one.

I'm glad to hear a bit about strengths. Did these strengths come from you, or from him? Could you tell me if behaviourists these days acknowledge progress through the natural course of autism?

Thanks. Sorry for the rather thin response. Pressed for time. How's your reading?

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

For the record, message sent to the Association for Science in Autism Treatment on 2 April 2004:

To those responsible at ASAT:
 
I have been made aware of a response ASAT has posted on its website http://asatonline.org/resources/library/moms_perspective.html , re the article "The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists". In this article, I accurately describe some of ASAT's positions, as well as ASAT's stated dedication to science-based research and treatments in autism.
 
The article includes no personal attacks, except perhaps the reported and sourced attacks against autistics that I use as illustrations.
 
I am very open to criticism. I am not, however, open to personal attacks that falsely represent me and constitute defamation of my character.
 
If ASAT has problems with this article, ASAT should respect its own values and attack the weaknesses and errors in the article on the basis of the science. This is possible and would be welcome. For instance, I didn't know until after I wrote the article that one of the Rett syndrome girls was in Lovaas' Control Group One. This was sloppy research on my part, as was my failing to notice that the Rett syndrome study was not conducted in the early nineties, as evidenced by the previous sentence.
 
If you find my article misleading and harmful, you have the perfect right (even the obligation, if you are taking me seriously) to contest the article on the facts. That is, read the studies, read the court records, read the media reports. I did use personal communications as sources, but as little as possible. Personal communications are used by people on the ASAT Advisory Board in peer reviewed science (eg, James Mulick).
 
If you are claiming that this article is full of animosity, you should justify this. If you are claiming that I am accusing parents of not loving their children, you must justify this. If you are claiming that I am accusing parents of abusing their children then you must justify this serious claim. If you believe that my diagnosis, whatever it is, automatically invalidates my work, you must justify this position.
 
Instead, you have published a personal attack on me and my work that is unrelated entirely to the work in question, and therefore is demonstrably gratuitous and in violation of your own stated principles.
 
My article is not a personal memoir or anecdote. In some articles I've written, and some work I've done, my diagnosis is an important element. In the ABA article, it is not mentioned until later in the article and has little bearing on the contents. You assume I'm dishonest and irresponsible because, among other things, you don't believe my diagnosis. Now you can tell me when exactly it became good science to diagnose a person via the Internet.
 
While it is none of ASAT's business, I have been diagnosed as autistic by some impressive diagnosticians, including one on ASAT's Advisory Board.
 
My work has been accepted in many places, including IMFAR, and must survive the scrutiny of a research group known for its precision. It has been accepted, so far, by the Supreme Court of Canada, which would be unlikely to allow the individual intervention (they are not often granted) of a person hurling strident and malicious accusations.
 
ASAT's decision to attack me personally is a disgrace to ASAT and its values. I expected a serious argument on the facts. You have disappointed me and you have done your own members a great disservice.
 
I fail to understand the motivation for ASAT's decision to attack my character and not my science. Perhaps my article really is dangerous to those who have nothing but invective with which to address a scientific and legal argument based on the ethical consideration of autistics.
 
Now I will find out if ASAT is rigorous and scrupulous enough, and honest enough about your own stated ideals, to add this letter to your own website.
 
Sincerely,
 
Michelle Dawson
Clinique spécialisée de l'autisme, Hôpital Rivière des Prairies, Université de Montréal

Hi Michelle,

And big thanks for everything you are doing! I must say, your response to Weintrab's hissy-fit was extraordinarily polite. Appropriately so, of course, but I know I could not have been so tactful, were I in your shoes. Weintraub's "perspective" was a nauseatingly formulaic Machiavellian diatribe, consisting of little more than straw man arguments and a running ad hominem character assassination. Ironically, by endorsing it, ASAT has only undermined their own credibility.

I had a few minor editorial beefs with "Misbehaviour", but it was still more than enough to make me stand up and cheer! It's a brilliant piece, with built-in longevity in the form of something that Weintraub could never hope to contend with -- namely, accountability!

Kudos,

Dave March
Springfield, MO, USA

Hi Michelle,

Sorry for the delayed response, I wanted to give you a little time to sort through all the recent posts.

I have the Mottron article done but I am still considering it.

You said “I honestly don't know if subitizing is considered a savant ability. Maybe you can help me with this one.” I have never heard of a formal criteria for savant skills. I did a basic search and couldn’t find one in the literature. The criteria seems somewhat subjective. The DSM-IV-TR speaks of it as “special skills” and only mentions two versions (Hyperlexia and Calendar Calculation). Though I have to believe that there is some formal diagnostic somewhere (maybe for speech paths) for Hyperlexia which is practically treated as a separate diagnostic category on some web sites I’ve been to.

You said “Did these strengths come from you, or from him”

Depends on your analysis. If we take a developmental model view than he probably would have developed (notice I don’t say learn) those behaviors in any generally educational environment. If we take an implicit learning view than my involvement was more facilitative and the results came from him. If we take a radical behavioral view, then initially the learning stemmed from cause and effect sequences (and my explicit teaching), and perhaps later from facilitative sequences.

You said “Could you tell me if behaviourists these days acknowledge progress through the natural course of autism?”

Well, recent commentary relating to this site may indicate no. But I suspect that it depends on the behaviorist. It also depends on what studies you want to discuss and extrapolate from. AGRE? Or paired studies of various early interventions e.g. (Murdock, UC San Francisco, and some TEACCH studies) Different conclusions can be made based on these data.

(This is John’s analysis) Behavior must change. The contingencies a 4 year old and a 10 year old experience do not seem point by point comparable to me. Repertoires must necessarily change as do the establishing operations and biology that affect them. No matter the level or method, development must occur.

Biology and learning are not static. In terms of a natural or “inclusive environment”, development will still occur. I have in some ways been fortunate in that I have had a (relative to my age) rich experience in the Autism field. I know several persons with Asperger’s and HFA who are quite verbal. This includes a teenager I mentor. So, I am aware of different possible outcomes and development sequences. The real questions seem to me “What level, are our students going to achieve, what is actually necessary (and ethical), and how do we best facilitate that.

Let me provide an example. I am assisting in a play study right now. We are looking for what kind of toys best facilitate children with autism playing with their siblings. Of course this means more mutual play rather “isolated play”. Now my logic is slightly different than the study’s first author on why this study is important. I think that we know that children with autism may do a fair amount of isolated play. Depending on who you talk to this play is “analytic”, or “self-stimulatory”. Let’s call it “analytic”, for the moment. In a circumstance where a child engages in “analytic play”, and has already evidenced other examples of effective interaction patterns and learning with siblings/others, and can effectively receive reinforcement through these (and can also request through some means precisely what they want/need) I don’t see the point of teaching this skill. The child is already on their way to success, albeit through a non typical route.

But when a child has not evidenced those patterns and can not request what they need, I think it is time to consider methods of facilitating that. This is more functional for the individual. And will probably contact natural reinforcers that maintain those behaviors, (I suspect this may also address on some level, your question over my student’s strengths)
This doesn’t necessarily mean we should decrease or replace existing play as much as we should teach simultaneous options. I would disagree with any statement that concluded “we are teaching the student that their method of play is worthless and unimportant”. This is because our efforts are not on decreasing isolated play but on increasing mutual play. They are not exclusive to one another. So, rather we are teaching the value of additional kinds of play. And even typically developing children will instance isolated play (although the sub-style may be different).

Of course a worthwhile response to all this is “how do we know who will develop these skills through non typical paths”. For this I don’t have a good enough answer. My best guiding question is “is the child able to effectively and specifically communicate what she/he wants or needs?” And yes, I know of examples where the child is low functioning then seems to develop more advanced communicative abilities in time, in a more natural environment.

We can both insert AGRE data here. Those data are relatively solid. That’s not what engages my curiosity about the AGRE. My question is “what teaching programs have those children gone through and how does that compare with past studies.” My other concern lies in the operational definition of “spontaneous functional speech”.

Thanks,

Dear Michelle,
Thankyou for your reply. May I ask, do you have some experience of caring for a strong, active, non-verbal autistic person with severe learning difficulties and very little awareness of danger, who head bangs, bites himself, runs out in the road in front of traffic and tries to climb out of upstairs windows?

Ms Collins:

Yes, I have "some experience" in this area. You're just describing autism (your take) to an autistic. Now tell me if and how I can be helpful. Thank you.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Margaret,

The first step is to stop making implicit ad hominem attacks against people who make a contribution to society by fighting for human rights.

One possible second step could be to read what hundreds of adult autistics have written about the debilitating and agonizing effects of sensory overload, and about learning how to cope with it.

But then, if you regard what we have to say as irrelevant, then...no, I don't think anyone's experience can possibly be of any use to you.

Edited by author 04-04-2004 08:57 PM
Hello Margaret,

I do not know if Michelle has clinical experience assessing and developing management/developmental programs for children such as your lad, but I have been doing so successfully for a very long time. Amongst other cases, I am currently three years into supervising [in conjunction with a speech therapist] the behaviour of a non-verbal 14 YO boy who presents all the features you describe - plus he has put his head through 27 window panes! By teaching him a concrete daily activity routine using extremely structured and directive communication that is referenced to the specific activities he is taught to perform, he has been, in turn, able to see a pattern in the behaviour of his teachers and family and then learn the rules of communicating to them in return with very basic gestures and actions.

He was initially very dangerous in his learned and panic driven behaviour, but after about 18 months or so we were through the worst of the problem behaviour and he has not bitten, kicked or hit anyone for well over a year now. The scars on his mother's arms from his scratching and biting are healed and the scars on his arms from his self-biting are also gone. He has now graduated to a communication board using symbols in a manner similar to PECS, but our own variation. In our programs we focus entirely on the process of behaviour, not teaching product.

If you want to hear about this boy in his mother's own words, you can do so over the internet; she was interviewed for a national radio program in Australia and the program was played last week on 29 March. The internet site is: ABC Radio National - Life Matters Home Page, then "More Stories and Audio", Monday 29 March, "Tom's Story".

I have developed and managed scores of successful intervention programs for autistics, old and young, low functioning and high functioning and the core issue is to provide stable and predictable structure. The hardest part is to get all NTs involved to present to the confused autistic child/adult in a standard manner that allows the autistic to see a common style and pattern of communication behaviour and that includes the total body language presentation of the NTs. In the absence of sytematic responding from all NTs in the life of an autistic person, he is forced to learn the individual patterns and characterisitics of each NT he meets, but that takes great "brain power" and is hard for even those of us who are highly intelligent. For a lad with very low intellectual capacity, such analysis and assessment is almost impossible, so he becomes confused and anxious and his behaviour reflects directly the confusion he perceives in the differing patterns of behaviour of each of the NTs around him. The NTs perceive themselves to be stable and organised, but forget that they do not ever present behaviour without an emotional layer, plus the subtle variations of body language that they do not see because, as Wendy Lawson explains, NTs view the world in a general way as though in the light of a flashlight set on broad beam. They "summarise" what the see. We autistics see the world as in the beam of a narrow spotlight or even a microscope in incredible fine detail. Until NTs accept the fact that their very complex, multi-layered behaviour is confusing, they will never be able to help their autistic children function in a manner that is safe.

Hi John,

You said: "I suspect this is because he enjoys so much rough-and-tumble play, and the male tutors (typically, but not always) do more of this."

That is a good point and I certainly find that. The male staff member becomes paired/associated with the unconditioned primary sensory reinforcement gained through therapeutic rough and tumble physical contact. However I hold to my point that the tendency of males [in all levels of educational services] to be directive in instructional style [as distinct from "supplicant"] is an ongoing issue in coaching people how to teach and run programs.

Hi Jim,

"However I hold to my point that the tendency of males [in all levels of educational services] to be directive in instructional style [as distinct from "supplicant"] is an ongoing issue in coaching people how to teach and run programs."

I do see that also and the more I think of it the more it makes sense.

Jim, John,

In case it's not obvious, I'm not a behaviourist. I don't look at situations behaviourally. I care about cognition, which is not always, or in autism even often, apparent in behaviour.

So I disagree with both of you in many respects. On the other hand, I've always said that ABA, should it be done at all, should be done by an autistic. I've read Jim's stuff and retain my admiration for his work, but disagree with him significantly. By Jim's observational methods, I would be doomed, for instance. And I can't do eye contact. I don't see and hear at the same time. This is true of many autistics.

I'm aware of how differences in perception which are acceptable (I have non-standard vision and spent some time being legally blind) alter behaviour in acceptable ways. I never put myself in danger explaining that I couldn't see, but often put myself in danger when I identify myself as autistic. Then you have to think of how well deaf or blind people (just differences in perception, after all) would do were they prevented from identifying themselves as such. In fact, we bestow on blind people instantaneous identification in the form of white canes and dogs, since it is not courteous (and sometimed unsafe)not to accommodate the blind person's differences. That is, the blind person's behaviour is not entirely guided or treatable by the principles of behaviourism.

Studying cognition means understanding that the behaviour might not be related to the environment, but to perception, attention, memory, etc, as they function on and in the environment. And a lot of cognition is invisible. Were that not true, there would be no covert attention, for instance.

I disagree very strongly, therefore, with the motives and abilities Jim gives to some of his clients, while not minding too much, in some cases, how he solves the problems. I wouldn't use the same approach though, or even close. I'd be asking, of the "client", what does he know, what does he see, what's he really interested in, what's he communicating? This is not so hard for me, since I share the kind of neurology that by appearances produces "low-functioning", unacceptable, dangerous behaviours. I'm aware this neurology is not faulty or broken, and I'm aware that altering the apparent behaviour, however "successfully", without respecting the adaptive differences in autistic cognition, is destructive to that cognition. That cognition includes intelligence.

Just to say, John, that development should not be seen rigidly. You don't know what we're responding to when, eg, we respond to a toy. You can't see what we're really after,ie, what information does this give me? And you're limiting yourself to toys and developmental levels. Autistic kids need to be exposed to reliable, complicated materials. There should always be a piano somewhere, maps, calendars, textbooks. And there always need to be very simple information, letters, numbers, blocks. Autistics with good results (yes, no one's studied this, I'm unscientifically working from anecdote) work with materials from vastly different levels of development simultaneously. I'm old and I still do this, though I have to keep it quiet.

John would see this disrespect for order of progress as wrong, I think. I'm not sure about Jim. Might help to remember that autistics develop, often enough, language at ages over 10, and always have. We don't develop in the proper order, and given our differences in cognition, probably we shouldn't. And we won't develop at all, or will develop poorly, in the absence of materials which attract and challenge and teach us.

This leaves as the only "choice" the 40hr(or whatever)/wk attempt to change our behaviour without respecting what we know and how we know it.

Well, end of lecture. I have to go back to work.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

I couldn't even bring myself to read the entire essay, Ms. Dawson, because I was so disgusted. My 5-year-old son is autistic, and it would be unethical to refuse to help him. Your perception of ethics is lost on this population. The ecclectic therapy he receives, largely based on all-positive ABA, has him acquiring skills at twice the rate he was prior to intervention. Shame on you for discouraging practitioners and disheartening families.

Ms Budde,

I have never written that autistic children, or any other kind of children, should be refused help. I wrote about false oppositions though.

You've decided that proposing that autistics are human beings who have rights and interests, and merit ethical consideration just like other people, is discouraging and disheartening to practitioners and families. Ms Budde, I can absolutely assure you that you are wrong.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Edited by author 04-05-2004 10:22 PM
Hi Michelle,

I use the behavioural model to establish a stable frame of reference between NTs and autistics so that both parties can function according to their individual perspectives and abilities in a mutually respectful manner. Unfortunately, because of unacceptable treatment there are autistics who develop behaviour [through no fault of their own] who come to be perceived as dysfunctional, even innately dangerous. Now you and I know that their presenting learned behaviour may be dangerous, but that behaviour is likely the logical of the mis-tretment, mis-management, mis-communication they experince in the world of NT people. It is my job to develop reactive management programs to bring that logical, but often dangerous behaviour under control. "Reactive" programs are not developmental/educatonal programs. Reactive programming or intervention is done to stabilise the situation to allow the safe implementation of developmental programs.

I once described myself to a parent as a "behavioural mechanic" meaning that I could show her how to organise herself so she and her autistic son could function together. The meaning she attributed to him and the meaning he attributed to her was not my business. How she and her son developed together thereafter was not my primary professional interest, though I am delighted when a mother tells me she can now accept the normality of her autistic son's autism.

I have learned to rely on the behavioural model to function with some safety in NT society. It clearly says nothing about my inner meaning [which is mine], nor can it really tell me about the inner meaning of being for NTs but it it grants me some superficial ability to predict the possible meaning [and thus likely intent] of NTs as they behave toward me in specific settings. ["In specific settings" is the critical issue - I only function safely in settings I have learned and can control and that do not present strong sensory stimulation - in the presence of the latter, everything blurs together and I disintegrate with often severe social consequences to me.]

You said: "I care about cognition, which is not always, or in autism even often, apparent in behaviour." Absolutely! However I cannot even start to consider the cognitive abilities of the clients who are referred to me until I have controlled for all the learned dysfunction and given them a safe frame of reference. Only then can we establish who they are and how they learn, dispelling all the myths about them. As I said elswhere on your site, to David Andrews, I find my apparently low functioning and dysfunctional autistic clients learn very effectively when given a structure in which to operate. Single trial learning is quite common once they are enabled by a supporting setting. They do not need the technology of the Behavioural Technologists with all their DROs, DRIs, etc.

My eye contact with NTs is entirely a learned and almost emotionally "detached" conscious trait: I realised as a young teacher that to survive I had to be able to use eye contact as a control tool with students. Without that capacity I would not have survived. I do not make eye contact with people with whom I feel safe. I cannot make eye contact with my brother for instance.

Your point about the obvious "markers" diplayed by the blind is valid. There is clearly more to being blind than not having sight. Similarly there is more to being autistic than the traits defined in DSM-IV or a bit of hand-flapping. The principles of behavioural intervention provide the frame-work in which I "hang" other necessary supports, interventions and so on: all the therapies, work, play, public and private opportunities to live, etc. I bring into my work both as primary therapies and as part of the behavioural process OT-sensory integration and functional communication. Clearly the meaning of a sensory experience to an autistic person is real and valid and must be respected, but associated "social" learning around that ssensory experience must also be considered. [I do present all the sensory issues, but not at such an extreme level as some and have learned "control" or hold-back the expression of those issues when required.] Consequently all my programs emphasise the control and provision of a suitable client-specific sensory environment.

You said: "By Jim's observational methods, I would be doomed, for instance. And I can't do eye contact. I don't see and hear at the same time. This is true of many autistics." I also cannot take in anything by auditory processing alone. As I listen to lectures, etc. I must write down and then rehearse by writing and re-writing the information. If I do not make myself write, I drift off and lose focus. I accept that how I perceive the world is not how you do, but, in my clinical work I allow, in communicating with my clients that they may need long periods to process information on specific "channels". Thus I coach support staff in the exact manner of verbal-gestural communication in total, even to the point of writing complete "scripts" for each activity through the day to ensure that variation is kept to a minimum. Staff are coached and critiqued personally [and reviewed by video if necessary] in the exact posture, speed of movement, tonality, inflection, exact word use, etc. They are trained to maintain exact posture and gesture to allow for the visual processing of the visual part or cue of any given communication. [With the boy Tom I mentioned in another post we would sometimes stand waiting for two hours or more until he had completely responded to a single, maintained visual cue, e.g. stand in front of me. Time was no issue.] Program rooms are closed and darkened if necessary. Every effort is made to adapt to the personal style of the individual, but people, NT or autistic, do not behave in a vacuum, they behave in relation to objects and people-objects who also have their own rules of action, therefore the framework in which all other considerations and or treatments, or models must "hang" will always be that of learning theory.


As I said privately to John, consider that nowadays I only work with clients who have been completely damaged by the ommission of acceptable/respectful treatment in society or by the commission of aversive or other nefarious acts. The resolution of the initial or presenting problems is just the beginning of the process of allowing a quality of life to autistic clients who are referred to me. That some of the interventions I have described in my own papers are startling to say the least is not a reflection on my intent or attitude to them as fellow autistics, but the severity of the behavioral damage done to these people long before I met them. In a sense I have to "scrape" away the layers of totally dysfunctional learned behaviour to find the real autistic person underneath. If I was still teaching ordinary "undamaged" autistic children and adults, the emphasis in my work would be completely different. I would be working with a primary enabling focus instead of investigative and often intrusive methods because I would be able to see the "pure" autistic person in front of me.

I am greatly angered by the ongoing damage done to my autistic clients, even more so when I may have spent as much as 14 years working to develope programs and support positive educational/vocational programming with some, only to have ignorant or lazy NT people come along and destabilise them by treating them as though they were just being deliberately uncooperative or "difficult".
 
While we autistics live in the dominant culture of NT society we will have to learn to adapt. Some individual NTs will shift their behahviour to accomodate us, but most will not. Even for me, working in a so-called disability specialist service with clinicians of every sort who know that I am autistic and require structure and clear communication, it is a frequent experience that decisions are made without consideration about all sorts of issues, processes, procedures, even physical structural changes, resulting in me experiencing severe anxiety attacks, the latest being in November last when a politically correct young psychologist-manager decided to pull down a whole lot of humourous posters around my office work space without telling me that he considered them against office "policy". [There is no "policy", but he was worried that visitors from head-office would be offended and that it would reflect on his career chances!] My apparent [learned] competence likely leads people to over-estimate my ability to cope. I too continue to be hyper-vigilant and trust very few people.

Edited by author 04-05-2004 10:55 PM
"Chelsea Budde"

Hello.

"I couldn't even bring myself to read the entire essay, Ms. Dawson, because I was so disgusted."

I didn't write the essay, but I am going to reply to your message because every time you decide that an autistic cannot know/do/understand/whatever, you do it to all of us. Why were you disgusted if you read Michelle's essay? Or maybe your disgust is there because you failed to read the essay entirely. That would be your fault, Ms Budde, not Michelle's.

"My 5-year-old son is autistic, and it would be unethical to refuse to help him."

Yes it would be unethical. But there's help, and there's help.

"Your perception of ethics is lost on this population."

Which population? Whose intellectual capacities are you hoping to "diss" here?

"The ecclectic therapy he receives, largely based on all-positive ABA, has him acquiring skills at twice the rate he was prior to intervention."

Interesting you mention this, because a Vygotskian paradigm (as opposed to, say, a Skinnerian/Lovaasian one) might actually help him not only to pick up the skills, but also to learn the contexts in which certain skills are more useful than others!

"Shame on you for discouraging practitioners and disheartening families."

Why? Because she disagrees with the bog-standard behaviourist crap that the ABA lot traipse up and down the country with? Why is it that behaviourists rarely understand what people say? Is it because their training prevents them from learning to understand things properly? Just points to consider when defending a very ineffective way of enabling understanding to people who know that understanding isn't something that can be brought about by reinforcement schedules!

David N. Andrews BA-status, AEPiT (Univ B'ham, UK)
Applied Educational Psychologist (b.v.o. BPS Graduate Membership eligibility in points assessment scheme)
Kotka
Finland

Associate Editor: Good Autism Practice journal
Chair: Autistic People Against Neuroleptic Abuse pressure group
Private practitioner in applied educational psychology (psycho-educational consultancy)
Autistic person, with autistic wife, and autistic daughter... we dealt with Tuula's development in a Vygotskian paradigm; Tuula is all the better for it. And so are we!

Hi Michelle,

You said “On the other hand, I've always said that ABA, should it be done at all, should be done by an autistic.”

That’s possible. In fact I know of many other young behaviorists who are not exactly typical. It may not be Autism, but certainly there are many with dyslexia, ADHD, or specific learning disabilities. Not Autism, but exactly typical either. Of course only having Autistics work with other Autistics would go rather hard on some of us whose interest in the field of behaviorism lies in Autism. Not because Autism is all I can get a job in, but because it is all I am interested in. You don’t have to be on a power-trip, or be under the impression that you are “saving people”, or that you are working with a population of “little geniuses”, to like working in the field. Of course these points are a non-consideration, and rightfully so.

You said “And a lot of cognition is invisible.”
 
Exactly…..The real trick for me (a radical behaviorist) is not dismissing that cognition, but finding a way to study it and make use of it in a way that is scientific. This is why I do not dismiss mentalistic research off hand, but consider it and find the applications that are possible from it. The real trick for you, is to investigate your perceptions in a way that reflects the scientific method (can proven or disproven). Nothing else is acceptable in the long run.

You said “development should not be seen rigidly.

Nor should development be, nor does it have to be. We are in agreement on that.

You said “You don't know what we're responding to when, eg, we respond to a toy. You can't see what we're really after.”

But I recognize someone is responding to the toy in some basic way, as well as perhaps a more perceptual way. I may not perceive what they are really after, but I do recognize when someone is after a toy. And I may perceive a general stimuli class of toys that someone either enjoys or can’t stand.

You said “And you're limiting yourself to toys and developmental levels”

Not so. But I do consider both of those in an assessment.

You said “There should always be a piano somewhere, maps, calendars, textbooks. And there always need to be very simple information, letters, numbers, blocks”.

And of course computers. I agree with this, but I suspect for different reasons. Is it the objects themselves or the interactions with them that determines behavior and perception? I suspect our answers would seem different because of our terminology but actually be very similar. The difference is like to be I believe a child will not automatically learn the guiding principles or rules that govern interactions with those objects. I confess, that some case-studies seem to prove me wrong but not solid empirical research. And some case studies show me as right. Neither you nor I have seen any such data. And in many of those objects the rules of operation are deeply embedded in the object (many tacts, mands, reinforcers, and aversives). Computers leap to mind very quickly and are positively crawling with aversive control i.e. (don’t press that x…… too late, I lost the screen.

I think I would end up quoting your whole last paragraph. But as long as you know what I am referring to.

I wouldn’t say “you had disrespect for order of progress.” I would call it an alternative perspective and appreciation brought on by a persons insight into her own development. Be that as it may, why do you think those children develop language at age 10? What, if anything changed?

I also think discrete-trial may prove a method that “attracts and challenges”, certain students with Autism.

You said “This leaves as the only "choice" the 40hr(or whatever)/wk attempt to change our behaviour without respecting what we know and how we know it.”

Depends on how we employ those techniques and what behaviors we are referring to. Not considering the “specific methodology”, and its measurable efficacy, is as grave a concern as discounting the possible purpose/function of a behavior. Of course, all this is arguable, and I welcome that.

Edited by author 04-06-2004 02:28 AM
Jim, John

Thanks Jim, I really appreciate what you wrote. I like your explanations here much better than those you sent, where I honestly worry about the attribution of motives. Particularly, as you point out yourself, when your clients are those who've been entirely abused and need somehow to get back to square one. I've seen myself the abusive and coercive use of supposed motivations in medical and psychological files as well as in practice. I'm sure you know how to "read" your own work, Jim. I'm not sure I'd trust a lot of others to.

Jim, you also reminded me (I'm a hard case, you see) that I once told a specialist in "difficult/dangerous" behaviour, to whom I was assigned as a client, how he should communicate with me and how he should receive my communication. I practically drew a diagram. He both understood completely and flat-out refused. So I was stuck fulfilling his needs, which at the time seemed less pressing than mine. Amazing, isn't it.

I was kidding a bit about autistics doing ABA, John, but you see my point. Jim gets the hard cases becauses no one can work at his level. And autistics don't exist to satisfy the interests of behaviourists. Surely there's some rules here? Maybe you can tell me the source of your interest, and its nature. You notice, I don't throw accusations around, which means you don't have to invent some so as to answer them. I've been very careful. It would be good to respect that.

There are first rate studies about perception and lousy studies about perception in autism. I just ripped apart a whole set of (well-known) studies in a presentation. But there is truly excellent work, and it is consistent, and these studies go in a direction, and this direction has been sustained for a decade. If you don't read this stuff, then you're not interested. It's not hard to find.

For Jim, because of this work, and my own observations, I dispute the theory and usefulness of "sensory integration", all the while acknowledging and of course living sensory differences. I just don't think big changes have to be made. I like cheap solutions like earplugs, old clothes, and physically blocking vision, as well as the whole run of supposedly "repetitive" et ceteras. Also, the sensory stuff is profoundly linked to other aspects of cognition. So why mess with it? What's important is to know that one's perception is different from the perception of most people one will encounter; and that this difference sometimes will be a disadvantage, and sometimes an advantage.

John, do you tell any of your clients any of this? As you would have to explain to a congenitally blind/deaf kid that other people see/hear, so there are these differences in behaviour, learning, adaptation, strengths, so on? I found it fascinating that when researchers wanted to do brain imagery of braille reading that they could not find a single sighted person who could read braille by touch. They all read braille by sight. Amazed again.

If autistics couldn't (a)perceive and (b)implicitly learn from the basic characteristics of materials, there would be no savants. Also, I would never have learned to read. You don't have to believe me; I refer you again to the science. My problem with non-autistics messing with the behaviour of autistics is partly the problem of the non-autistic lacking the cognition to perceive what the autistic perceives, or even to imagine it. Discrete trials epitomize the problem, since they're an excercise in eliminating autistic perception in favour of whatever the instructor/technician holds important. If an autistic finds a way to learn from this anyway, ie, in spite of you, he'll do well. If not, it will take 1,000 trials (which I can't easily report unemotionally) to teach an association between one object and one word. The 1,000 trials were recently reported in a Canadian national newspaper.

There was a funny discussion somewhere in the Novartis Symposium where all these big name experts mused briefly about the oldest autistic they knew of who developed language (answer circa 13). In Rutter's study, two kids developed language at 11. At this point, you must instantly figure out, since you've been paying attention, that language here means "speech"; figuring out when an autistic gets language might be tougher. Those of us who spoke oddly or late can report many reasons, including not being given a direct reason to speak (my problem). This might go back to implicit learning, which I mentioned sits around and does nothing until necessity is imposed. We often have no reason to speak. This also is hard to explain; but one of the hardest moments in the life of some autistics is, having taken the effort to produce speech, finding out that no one listens: ie, we find out we are still the wrong kind of person.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Hi Michelle,

Everything you said in the third paragraph was true. As I value our dialog, it was not my intent to create accusations. Instead I was trying to indirectly hint at, where my reinforcers of working with this population were. I think I can answer some of your questions by describing my own experience.

I became interested in the field because I was assigned as a High School student (against my wishes) as a Teacher’s Aid with young Elementary students with Autism and severe ADHD. I resented the placement at the time; I felt there would be little for me to do beyond repetitive child care. Of course I was wrong, and it didn’t take me long to realize that. The students quickly showed me that they were bright and active. Their strengths and sometime unusual learning methods interested and impressed me (this included two savants). As did their deficits. For some students we were never able to resolve concerns either be explicit or implicit learning.

So at age 17, I was hooked. The reinforcers for me were interacting with someone who seemed (non-standard issue). I quickly learned that the students’ abilities (yes, perception too), modes of interaction, and sometimes even their caring were things that also caused me to enjoy the working with these students. This was all done by a non behavioral method. Much of the strategy involved using techniques somewhat similar to what you have described and advocated. Sometimes they worked and sometimes not.

When I came to my University, learning to work with this population was my primary interest. Later I began to work with Preschool aged children also in a non behavioral way. Again I thought I would dislike it. Again, I was wrong. I actually liked it more than any other population and more than typically developing children. It was still later I began to work with this age group from a behavioral perspective. My first impression of DT was “they might learn some academic and behavioral skills from that but it will be of minimum benefit later.” I was wrong yet again.

I became a behaviorist because I saw the efficacy of this method in comparison to others I participated in (including TEACCH, Sensory Integration, Full Inclusion, and certain Cognitive implicit learning Methodologies). I have since learned a technology that allows for (measurable) learning. It is flexible enough to allow for sub paradigms and methodologies. I have said this before, but to dismiss off hand, quantified efficacy because it runs in another track than a certain paradigm’s theorized optimal learning is as big a mistake as discounting that paradigms perceptual research.

Rather than dismiss perceptual differences, I see a need to identify the relevant parts in such perceptual research and build a strong supportive system that works on teaching a child relevant skills in a relevant way. To not clearly see how that integration will be achieved is not the same as saying “we will never achieve that integration”. So, now we must rely on the ability of creative persons to make that connection. If this happens within a behavioral paradigm context you can be certain it will be a slow process, with all the bases covered.
 
Thanks again,

Edited by author 04-06-2004 09:44 PM
Hi Michelle,

Your said: "I'm sure you know how to "read" your own work, Jim. I'm not sure I'd trust a lot of others to." Yes, that is why those articles are not generally sent out as they require a total shift of perspective and, as you demonstrated, meaning can be in the eye of the beholder, even for a fellow autistic. I am glad my follow-up post helped. I am much more comfortable demonstrating my intervention model or, at least, discussing it, face-to-face where I can support my "words" with diagrams and flow charts. I have managed to bring about considerable shifts in attitude and treatment models in a number of agencies and the behaviour team with whom I work by demonstrating and directly coaching NT staff to interpret autistic behaviour from an autistic perspective.

I was asked by a couple of special-school principals to give the key-note speech at a state-wide conference of special educators. I was asked to write a preamble:

"The commmon perception of autism is one of defect, difference, dis- or in-ability, deviance and disorder, yet quite a number of autistics of various levels of intellect become adaptable, functional, able, compliant and ordered to varying degrees in the world of people. From a diagnostic perspective autism has been considered a variant of mental illness [childhood schizophrenia], or confused with severe intellectual disability or mental retardation, and is now known as Autistic Spectrum "Disorder". Diagnostic manuals define autism entirely in relation to the “normal” population in negative terms. Some observers, mystified by the obvious specific talents or skills in specific settings, including savant abilities, of autistics, turn to mystical or almost magical explanations of these abilities, yet are confounded, frustrated, even angered, by the obvious inabilities in normative social settings. All sorts of methods have been proposed and tried: deep sleep therapy, pyramid power, kinesiology, patterning, injections of foetal cells, aversive treatments, intrusive behavioural techniques claiming cures or “recovery”, and so on. A number of autistics have been considered to be “possessed” and have experienced exorcism at the hands of advocates of formal religions. However no one has bothered to define autism and being autistic as the normal state of living and understanding for autistics. Teaching/management approaches have always been applied from a normative or “neuro-typical” [NT] perspective based on negative perception/understanding. Is education that claims to be “special”, but has never considered the reality of being autistic and effectively denies that reality as the normal state of being for autistics to be considered as “special” in application?"

I expect a fairly hostile reception from some teachers. I have already been banned from one special school because I told them they had no autistic-centred method in spite of my frequent and extended presence in the school over a 14 year span showing them how to manage their autistic students who were not functioning. They would not change their culture.

You also wrote: "I once told a specialist in "difficult/dangerous" behaviour, to whom I was assigned as a client, how he should communicate with me and how he should receive my communication." Yes!! I have short piece of video footage [of the boy Tom at age 12 +] in which the instructor [who happened to be his step-father] had a "brain fade" as he gave instruction to "Sit down!" the instruction should have been from a completely static, i.e. still-standing, posture underpinning the verbal cue with a visual prompt of a completely outstretched arm pointing to the chair until the lad was actually seated. Instead, the instructor took two steps as he spoke and gestured, whereupon Tom banged his forehead on the table several times, screamed, jumped up and down and finally ran off to lie on a couch and write imaginary letters and numbers to calm himself. [The instructor knew immediately he was at fault.] In other words this very low functioning young man was being pedantic by action and telling the instructor that his communication was all wrong. It was only after several minutes that the lad happened to look up and saw the instructor giving the correct cue, whereupon he immediately and contentedly complied. You and I know that if that behaviour had occurred in a so-called special classroom, the lad would have been punished for his notional disobedience.

You wrote also: "My problem with non-autistics messing with the behaviour of autistics is partly the problem of the non-autistic lacking the cognition to perceive what the autistic perceives, or even to imagine it." Yes - that is why I must always lead the intervention with my autistic clients so as to show the NT staff the very logical, but very subtle, delicate process of interaction and explain the meaning of that social interaction. Social interaction is the key phrase as I have said elsewhere: behaviour management is not what is done to someone [NT or autistic]. It is the subtle process of communication behaviour that occurs between people in settings. In that sense, I am a complete behaviourist as virtually all my interactions with other people are essentially no different from what I do with those people who are, formally, my clients.

Edited by author 04-07-2004 07:30 PM
Michelle,

A couple of other thoughts:

With regard to sensory integration I have seen changes in behaviour in settings controlled by me that I cannot explain behaviourally. However [and I suspect this is an underlying theme for you] the forced application of such treatments is counter-productive - tended to provide open, self directed opportunities in my therapy gym and follow [emphasise follow] the lead of my clients. Not being formally SI trained I encorporated these "treatments" in a general way as part of a total activity-based program. [I upset a few OTs along the way though.] Without using sensory treatments within my behavioural programs I would not have achieved some of the very significant changes in responding with concomitant increases in trust and calmness, especially when I was working in institutional settings where sensory-deprivation was an ongoing issue and the sight of people "stimming" brought out the worst in the old-fashioned behaviourists. [I also remember the school Principal at the school for the blind in 1976 trying to stop totally blind kids from rocking and using their hands for exploration]! If nothing else sensory-based activities are effective reinforcers. [By the way one of my close colleagues, an occupational therapist, is an Aspie.]

The other issue that you raise is interpretation of meaning of client behaviour. Unless an honest, objective and informed attempt is made to determine the functional reason for a specific presenting behaviour, then any intervention will lack rigour and integrity. It will be a shot in the dark. [This is especially the case with the very severely intellectually impaired people with whom I work - they only communicate by and throught their behaviour in very unusual ways. Someone has to "translate" their behaviour lest NTs misread and then mistreat them.] I suspect that your experience, like mine and my OT colleague, is that your meaning has often been ignored, denied, twisted or over-riddden, but that does not mean that I, you or my Aspie colleague [or John for that matter] must not attempt to understand the functional purpose of specific behaviour of our respective clients, albeit with caution and respect. To refrain from doing so is then to act blindly or, one could simply not intervene - but I think that is a non-issue.

Edited by author 04-08-2004 12:47 AM
Hello John, hello Jim,

I'm very pressed for time again and will be for the next few weeks. For Jim, I should make it clear again that I work in the realm of observation and experimentation. One of my areas is to ensure autistics are observed and described accurately. This can mean ensuring that autistic strengths evident in findings survive interpretation.

My experience in "treatment" has been haphazard but has accumulated anyway. I'm sure my experience as a "client" also exceeds John's (for sure!...) and Jim's. I've learned to be conscious of all possible ramifications of how autistics are described and treated through my legal work which, as above, has through necessity accumulated over the years. This makes me more cautious than both of you.

Re sensory stuff, I mostly agree with you, Jim, adding only that physical competence for autistics should be a priority. The possibility of learning physical competence in some area should for sure be available, along with someone able to spot and exploit whatever interest is shown. Many, many of us would have given up all else in order to have structured instruction (which can be done non-verbally--a great relief) in an area of physical competence that can be pursued forever (gymnastics, dance, martial arts, just a few examples). For some of us, our understanding of movement exceeds our understanding of any other human phenomena. Yes, we can have motor problems, which just ups the importance of having some possible physical competency available to rely on, as well as stamina, endurance, etc. If I'm not making sense to John, sorry, you can just ask Jim.

My caution about behaviour as behaviour in autism remains. I haven't seen or read about lots of cases where the behaviour didn't come down to, in whole or in part, a search (that is, a neurological need) for accurate, unarbitrary, reliable information. My own experience tells me that change in itself is less a factor in determining behaviour than the nature of what information the change brings. I don't know if you'd agree with that, either of you. I could maybe propose (flapping in the wind here) that behaviour in autism *is* cognition, which I guess makes me a radical cognitive whatever. I retain the privilege of withdrawing that statement, which I thought of five seconds ago.

Okay John, thanks for explaining. I need to know which "concerns" you couldn't resolve. And I wasn't aware I was describing "techniques". So I also need to know about these "implicit" teaching methods; implicit learning, as I've mentioned, has not been studied in autism. I'm guessing that you're telling me those in charge of this program were winging it. What kinds of savants did you have?

There seems to be a disconnect between the situation you describe, and what attracted you to these non-standard kids, and your conclusion that you could get better "efficacy" behaviourally. I would have thought with your experience/background, you would have figured out that gains aren't cost-free; ie, that your clients have lots, in fact tons, to lose. Mostly this gets missed in behavioural programs (always being aware that someone like Jim sees autistics who may have, by force, lost everything), where immediate gains (that data; that lovely curve) in DT's or whatever are all that's recorded. The losses just aren't your problem; they will be for your clients, though, eventually. I need to know what you mean by "efficacy", exactly. Toward what goal? Good data? I'm mystified.

While I remember, and I apologize for my totally scattered thoughts, I'm going to ask about EO's. Because I've never met one that didn't give me the creeps (I confess the reductionist/impoverished "tacts" and "mands" also make me a bit queasy). You seem to like them. I think they're dishonest unless totally overt, and autistics will notice this (implicit learning strikes again). Feel free to convert me.

Thanks both of you; again I have to go back to work.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Edited by author 04-08-2004 01:25 AM
Hi Michelle,

1. I am sure I would not have become functional without the extreme emphasis on participation in meaningful physical tasks with my father on a daily basis. Such participation gave functional meaning to language, aiding my comprehension and supporting my father's own pedantic style.

2. You wrote: "I haven't seen or read about lots of cases where the behaviour didn't come down to, in whole or in part, a search (that is, a neurological need) for accurate, unarbitrary, reliable information." I agree entirely. In the beginning: one word, one action, one meaning which is why I script all my programs to the finest detail and allow my autistic clients the chance to use their ability to learn.

Did you ever read the work of physical educator/perceptual motor specialist Newell Kephart and colleagues from Purdue University? "Information is gathered through movement. For information to be of any use, it must be stored systematically, but systematic storage only occurs when exploration, i.e. movement is sytematic. systematic exploration requires uninterrupted exploratory activities ... the [person's] attention must be given to the information which is being generated." such systematic gathering and processing of information is necessary to lay down basic sructures of information upon which later "more complex information systems will be built." I am certain that todays open unstructured social and educational settings are absolutely damaging to autistics, as is the tendency of autistic kids to sit in front of TVs and computer screens all day long - and that is not just my physical education bias showing. I know, as I have written previously, I only learn by action and seeing which involves muscular action.

3. You wrote: "My own experience tells me that change in itself is less a factor in determining behaviour than the nature of what information the change brings." I agree - if the fresh information is similar [as distinct from "new" meaning foreign or unknown] then change is not hard. We have to fit new [foreign or different] information [including new people] into existing structures by conscious "research" or study.

4. "...behaviour in autism *is* cognition ..." I suspect that behaviour may be the external manifestation which is why I can better display/demonstrate to my staff the communication behaviour models I develop than write or talk about them and why I look so closely at the movement [behaviour] of others to make sense of the learned meanings [social-emotional] of what they do. As I wrote previously I can just "see" the actions and their meanings.

For reference, those of us at autistics.org (all of us) have collectively written our response to Kit Weintraub's response to this article, and to similar letters (to Kit Weintraub's) in general. It's viewable here, as "In Support of Michelle Dawson and Her Work":

http://www.autistics.org/library/dawson.html

We've written it as both a show of support and as a standard answer to the tiresome old refrain of "You Just Don't Understand Real Autism..." and similar unconvincing ways of arguing with people with our views.

Michelle - following on from my last post - I forgot to say that, for all the reasons given, I consider the the sense of knowledge of one's Self in autistics is always referenced to or by activity in relation to objects and people-objects. HFA/AS people with cognition in the normal range or higher can develop a layer of learned social-moral understanding a cognitive, rule based morality and social understanding, but at the core is a highly fragile Self easily destabilised, even disintegrated by unpredicted/unexpected change, sensory overload, etc.

I am what I do!

This is disturbing:

http://www.autismtoday.com/articles/A_Boy_A_Mother.htm

"Soma first taught Tito to recognize letters and sounds on an
alphabet board, choosing English over more difficult Indian dialects. Then she tied
a pencil in his hand and showed him how to make each letter, often refusing
to let him eat until he could do so."

To refuse to let a child eat is definitely child abuse, under the laws in force in the vast majority of so-called civilised coutries.

I wonder what Kit Weintraub would say about this: Kit, would you not yourself class that as child abuse? Or does the end justify the means in your worldview of autism? Or if ASAT would be quite happy to allow this as "scientific management/treatment of autism".

As far as I am concerned, Tito's mother abused him. Why has nobody prosecuted her for this?

David (who would NEVER do that to his child, and who would take physical sanctions if necessary to prevent any other person from do it to her.)

Edited by author 04-08-2004 04:29 PM
Hi Michelle,

Your post made me think pretty hard.

Just to start; we couldn’t resolve toilet training for 2 students in the non behavioral room. We tried a picture board with the various sub parts on it. We also tried a social story. In general with those students we used environmental enrichment, we had access to many of the things you suggested (no piano in class though). The teacher described these as implicit strategies, but you can confirm or deny that officially for me. We also had opportunities for the students to have a great deal of access to them. The staff would also model their use. The staff was indeed winging it (based on consultant opinions). I am very aware that there is no research on this subject with kids with Autism.

You are right, you did not suggest techniques. You have me there. We had 1 student with Hyperlexia and one with calendar calculation (he could calculate in days the amount of time between one date and another, within one year’s time.)

I am not certain by what you mean by “disconnect”, in this case. If you find time explain that for me.

As far as efficacy, in DT, I clearly can see treatment effectivness, not just by my perception (although that is true as well) but by graphing the data, point by point. In the end I got that “that lovely curve.” I could measure increase in skills day by day by day.

You said “your clients have lots, in fact tons, to lose.”

Shades of Pinker. I might say behaviorally “that”, is the point in some cases (DRA, DRO, etc.). In a real case, one of our students was pinching his classmates. It seemed to be for their attention. We taught him to say “hi”, to his classmates to get their attention. Whenever we saw him initiate with “hi” we praised him through the roof. This was an incompatible behavior with pinching but fulfilled a similar function. That pinching behavior is something he did indeed lose. I don’t know the sensory reason/cognitive reason that he may have pinched, but I do know the general stimuli set he was after. I know the operant side. Jim hit the nail on the head when he said “but that does not mean that I, you or my Aspie colleague [or John for that matter] must not attempt to understand the functional purpose of specific behaviour of our respective clients, albeit with caution and respect.”

How much do those students lose? I have never seen a loss of skills (whether our kids had them before or after they started DT) during training except when a kid has been out sick for a while (and then only on recent skills). I fact one of the points of DT is to increase certain skills that allow for the acquisition of additional skills. I think DT allows us to build more choices, not less. So the cost seems to me, to be one of time and energy, rather than opportunities.

What I mean when I say efficacy is the successful attempt to teach new skills and reduce problem behaviors. For example my students can ask for food if hungry, can answer “what is your name”. We also teach them to use a toilet and other strategies to not fight over a toy. And not a few studies have shown functional skills to be important in reducing/eliminating behavior like hitting, biting, and self-injury.

Verbal behavior is one of my special interests. I can only hope you have seen examples of EO’s used poorly (same with tacts and mands). Which would explain your queasiness. I can likewise appreciate that sentiment. Citing a recent post, refusing to let a child eat is a form of an establishing operation (though I doubt the mother could tell you that). In any case I am not by any means, cool with that.

Establishing Operations are an additional factor that makes reinforcement temporarily more effective. This may be due to unconditioned reinforcers or the learned variety. As a side note, I think that EO’s are critical to learning that seems spontaneous. My example is this “a fire truck goes flashing down a street. A boy is watching from a window. The fire truck moves out of site of the boy. A door on the side of the house could allow for a view of the fire truck if opened. The boy runs to the door but is not strong enough open it. His “mand”, to his Mother that the door be opened is influenced by the establishing operation of the truck formerly being in sight and now being out of sight.

A real life example. I thought one of my students was asleep so I turned off a highly preferred Whinnie the Pooh tape. Actually he was watching it the whole time with his eyes partially open. He immediately requested it be turned back on. My turning off the tape was an establishing operation for his “mand” that I turn it back on. It temporarily increased the likelihood that he would ask for tape to be turned on. And if I had refused, he would have likely asked a few more times (increased frequency).

I like mands more than tacts because they are so functional. I have seen children with Autism come into a program sometimes with a few tacts (object labels) developed. They typically have fewer mands (or none). And that is where some of the problem behavior comes from like tantruming, which is often a inappropriate form of a mand.

We assume that tacts and mands are functionally related. So if a child can label and apple if asked “what’s that”, we assume that he/she can ask for an apple in a mand form i.e. “I want an apple” What we are finding in research is (to quote Porgy and Bess) “It Ain’t Necessarily So. We have found in research that tacts and mands are separate operants as predicted by Skinner in 1957. And the real interesting part is this has been shown not only for children with Autism (4 studies) but for typically developing children as well (2 studies).For a side note, Lovaas deviated from this theory in several ways.

And mands are very useful no matter what paradigm you believe in e.g. (what’s that, how does this work, what should I do, what do you want, can I have some more). They allow for an acquisition of more advanced language and ability. I feel that mands should be the first language taught because they are the only language that directly and immediately benefit the child in terms of physical needs.

Michelle,

Thanks for your brilliantly written article, The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists. You have my full support. I am on the spectrum as well as my son. I have an honours degree in psychology and am well studied in behavioural approaches. I have never and will never introduce my son to ABA; I too believe it is unethical and damaging.

I commend your continuing dedication to confronting those who promote ABA; we are more than rats in a maze. I feel supported in knowing that there others out there who feel as I do.

Thank you

Edited by author 04-09-2004 07:52 PM
Thanks A.M. Baggs and the people at autistics.org, for addressing the issues as they should be addressed, and for saving the rest of us from having to explain constantly about who we are and what we are saying and what we aren't saying. Amazing that those who claim we can't understand don't themselves know how to read; and that those who claim to know how we should behave behave so badly, and set so poor an example, themselves.

Thanks also, Marian. I've always thought there should be a study which entirely ignores all confounding factors and just looks for differences in outcomes in autistics raised by autistics versus autistics raised by non-autistics, never mind all other possible factors.

Edited by author 04-09-2004 08:50 PM
Hi Jim, Hi John

I'm going to disagree with you, Jim. When I attempted to say that behaviour is cognition in autism I was in no way limiting cognition to behaviour. Cognition is, as I've written already, mostly invisible. I was awkwardly proposing that in autism, behaviour is much more subordinate to cognition than in non-autistics; this also would mean a greater autonomy in autism with respect to the relationship between what we do and what we know. I didn't express it very well, but I'll add that in autistics, cognition is even less evident in behaviour, maybe even exponentially less evident in behaviour, than in non-autistics. Unless of course, you ask the right question (pls see the Shah/Frith study about catatonia, for the autistic boy who leaps out of his wheelchair).

I spent some time a few decades ago proposing that "I am what I do", and the idea just flunked as a way to explain reality. The only place I've been able to use the idea is with very thick people who think I'm fooling them. I then suggest they look at my actions.

Also I disagree with you in your division of autism by "levels" of intelligence, for reasons I sketched in the article. Intelligence has not yet been studied (we've started, but nothing published yet, though inadvertant results of other studies are informative) in autism, so all you can do is guess. My sense of ethics is obviously not learned from those around me, or I couldn't have written the ABA article.

I do agree that you have to make things very simple and clear for autistics who have been so abused and/or terrified that human peculiarities cause actual pain in them. I have been one of these autistics, even quite recently, and in order to avoid confusion (which is felt like pain) I could only deal with very, very simple commmunications. I think non-autistics could be reduced to this state if sufficiently hurt, but doing so to non-autistics would obviously be illegal.

In the absence of terror, etc, most autistics, I would guess, can handle change all right. I'm good in emergencies, eg, since people act reliably (unarbitrarily) in emergencies; and I improvise well. The problem with change doesn't have much to do with the change itself. It has to do with sometimes having to ask non-autistics for information, something ordinarily I can avoid. Last observation: one way to get things done when you're autistic is not to make plans. Plans fall apart whenever you're stuck with a non-autistic who treats your simple, essential requests behaviourally. Better not make plans.

Which brings me to John. Where it looks like we're back to square one. I should make it clear that implicit learning is pretty specific; you can't just assume it's going to happen. In autism, you have to be able to notice the property of whatever it is the autistic is interested in. If you "model" the "correct" use of materials, forget it. And implicit learning is useless to the *teacher* unless the teacher can pose "questions" competently as to content, necessity, etc.

Self care is hands down the hardest thing for an autistic to learn. It is always taught explicitly and one is expected to demonstrate one's learning on the spot, so to speak. It is very hard to learn implicitly, since we surely notice it is rude to watch other people while they carry out self-care. I still have trouble with it and always will.

I've grown to detest functional analyses of behaviour, never mind the alphabet soup of DRI, DRO, etc. I did take an on-line course (and exam) on the subject. I hate it. The idea that there are a total of three (yes, there's a slight-variation-on-the-theme fourth, if I remember properly) reasons for a behaviour might, for all I know, cover the gamut for non-autistics. It is a disaster for autistics.

So I dislike your descriptions intensely. I want to know what happened *before*, and how many ways the autistic communicated accurately, and was ignored, before some non-autistic decided to pay attention and do an analysis on this one behaviour that they have finally decided to see.

I've had the privilege of having, at this advanced age, my behaviour addressed in a behavioural way by people advocating this approach in autism. So I was reduced to the three choices: I want attention, I want to avoid the task, or I just wanna have fun (positive, negative, and sensory reinforcement respectively). In the several weeks before I wrote the open letter re ASC, I was subject to many, many attempts to alter my behaviour, since of course my behaviour was the problem and must be rectified. Most memorable was a response to my concerns which was in the form of a social story designed to correct my improper thoughts and actions. I don't like to use myself as a specimen, but I've seen the concerns of too many autistic kids addressed this way.

Yes, we have lots to lose while we're cranking out lovely data for you, John. Because while we're doing that, we're not doing anything else, and we're forced to narrow our focus to the one thing you are interested in (I know, you think it's what we're interested in; but you don't see what we see). Autistic abilities require not just having the right kinds and quantities of information/materials, but overtraining with this stuff, which of course is bad behaviour.

Re EO's, my favourite is the feeding of pretzels to ensure great thirst. That one is current. Both Lovaas and Skinner used forced hunger. An EO may also have the effect of forcing the autistic (who does not want a person distracting from the information he needs) to get what he needs somehow else. This might explain why autistics who are inevitably described in the most pejorative and demeaning ways re our intelligence are remarkably good at running away and escaping (elopement, my very favourite abusive behavioural term).

I'm playing hooky from real life and have to return.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

What's happened to Autistics.org??????

I can't get the page!

>Re EO's, my favourite is the feeding of pretzels to ensure great thirst. That one is current.

*This was once done to my mother, because of an accident she had in a children's home in Edinburgh many years ago: she'd dropped something, and was made to eat this stuff (mustard power, I believe) and was not allowed a drink. To me, it seemed then (and still does) that this was a barbaric thing to do. Totally unethical, whoever does it.

> Both Lovaas and Skinner used forced hunger.

*For which reason I cannot ever accept either as an ethical psychologist.

> An EO may also have the effect of forcing the autistic (who does not want a person distracting from the information he needs) to get what he needs somehow else.

*In what way?

> This might explain why autistics who are inevitably described in the most pejorative and demeaning ways re our intelligence are remarkably good at running away and escaping (elopement, my very favourite abusive behavioural term).

*Ah well, this sounds a bit like that crap that psychiatrists came up with in the 1800s about slaves running away: drapatomania.... the propensity of slaves to run away! Seen as a mental illness, would you believe?! How the hell can I possibly believe in anything that appears in DSM IV TR?

Hi Michelle,

I detest when behaviorism is used inconsiderately. It drags down a science I much appreciate.

I have no love for certain establishing operations. Including some used by Lovaas.

As for Skinner. He would deprive rats of water or food for 24 hours increments to produce higher response levels on experimenting days. This is still the norm. Is this unethical? Perhaps not, considering that rats like most animals are only supposed to be fed once per day according to veterinarians. The rats are not in continuous deprivation. After they finish with the experiment that day, they have access to water and food. Experimenting is not done, to my knowledge on a day to day basis. Usually, once or twice a week.

I maintain what I said about EO’s being important in seemingly natural learning. Let me put a different spin on your thirst example. Let’s say a young boy is at the movies with his mother. He ordered sour gummy candy. He gets thirsty. He tugs at his mother’s shirt and points at her soda. She says “say, I want soda”. The boy does indeed say “I want soda”. Then she gives it to him. This is an ethical example of the thirst EO used in a natural learning situation.

You say that you have no love for differential reinforcement and functional analyses.

I am a little perplexed why you don’t like DR. As soon as we assign a behavior or set of behaviors to be reinforced we are already into DR. So DR is bread and butter in all of behavior analysis (and other paradigms as well). If you thank someone, if you buy a loaf of bread, if you type a message, you have already given or received DR. Most modern behaviorists gear towards positive interactions, so do I. Come to think of it, most people I know do. Why the dislike of DR beyond the implicit/explicit debate?

Good functional analysis will also consider the additional causation called “other”, where we are unable to determine the reinforcers of certain behaviors. Incidentally, not only can I not know what someone is really after, or what they are thinking, but I can not even know if a functional analysis is able to reveal the operant that maintains the behavior (or if there even is one) 100 % of the time. This is by no means a perfected technique. But rather than discard it, I would work on improving it. I have seen them be used in a useful way and also in a not so useful way. But I’ve seen that that they can be useful for autistic children, in terms of designing a feasible plan. I think the point is that functional analyses provide a better (and scientific) indication of why a person may act a certain way than inferences (even probable ones) furthermore they are measurable and are therefore more useful in comparisons than subjective ratings of behavior, in terms of an analysis tool.

I recall my own functional assessment of a student’s hitting behavior (which I previously mentioned). We made some simple environmental changes, and the “hitting”, went down to zero the next day and stayed there. There is an impressive amount of literature on the utility of this technique in designing behavior plans. In fact, the sub-behavior paradigm of Positive Behavioral Supports is based on this. And the folks who are into this have their own journal just for this topic. I would agree that more work needs to be done and that there are plenty of examples where it is used incorrectly, but I will not reject it on a scientific basis in favor of subjective ratings, at this time. Rather I am interested in improving its usefulness and accuracy for autistic children, while keeping its scientific validity.

You said “Yes, we have lots to lose while we're cranking out lovely data for you, John”.

I have always thought that I was fairly alert for changes of behavior. I have been able to pick out inappropriate or atypical examples as well as some strengths. If we increase a behavior adaptive for more learning while decreasing another, non-adaptive behavior, I would be very pleased. Of course if we increase one adaptive behavior while decreasing another adaptive behavior, you would be correct to ask “what has this child gained.”

 I appreciate that our perspectives will deviate due to biology, history, and method. But frankly, I have never seen an example of a noticeable decrease of adaptive learning behavior due to discrete-trial. Nor have I ever heard of this. The three cases of loss of adaptive skills that I personally know of, coincided with the onset of seizure activity. Of course I acknowledge that once you have a fair amount of learning done, similar behaviors are less likely (but this is true with all organisms). Even Freud saw this, he called it “Pre-School fatalism”. I think a better analogy is “entrenchment”, used by developmental biologists.

One more thought. You said “we're forced to narrow our focus.” Why? Because of aversives or reinforcement? Let me add a theoretical concept.

Draw a plausible positive reinforcement contingency based on overtraining. Or tell me the deadlines that are inherent even in activities like implicit learning opportunities. Do that, and I can draw an equally plausible contingency that demonstrates where aversive control has slipped in. The minute there is a deadline or some reinforcement, there is simultaneously aversive control. According to that analysis, aversives are crawling in implicit learning activities. Based on that would you say “we are forced to narrow our focus do to implicit activities?” And if so, is it comparable?

Edited by author 04-12-2004 12:23 AM
Hi David,

What was done to your mother is called "overcorrection". I think overcorrection comes in more than one flavour. If I remember properly, this one is called "restitutional". I don't know much about overcorrection though, except there was a terrible case in Quebec about a year ago which came to light. A man was left in his excrement for six days to try to teach him hygiene. Some people were suspended and one or two were fired.

If you force an autistic always to go through an adult (instructor/parent) to get the information she needs, she is going to take the important stuff underground, because to learn properly, she can't have the distraction of the noisy, demanding non-autistic. She may get up in the middle of the night to explore materials or experiment, for example.

>Hi David,

*Hi Michelle,

>What was done to your mother is called "overcorrection".

*I figured there'd be a name for it; this sort of thing has names, and - true to form - it's made to sound as nonabusive as possible.

>I think overcorrection comes in more than one flavour.

*Again, why am I not surprised?

>If I remember properly, this one is called "restitutional".

*Eh? That makes no sense at all! Doesn't sound like a restitutional thing to me, but I know that the "scientists" tend to use inappropriate terminology for these ideas....

>I don't know much about overcorrection though, except there was a terrible case in Quebec about a year ago which came to light. A man was left in his excrement for six days to try to teach him hygiene. Some people were suspended and one or two were fired.

*That is absolutely unacceptable practice. I'm acting as consultant in a case with a child just now: because of his reactions to being bullied (he's autistic... Aspie), he is being held in social segregation - to teach him how to behave more appropriately. His therapist, his parents, the Finnish Aspie Message Board contributors and I (and my supervisor) think that this is abuse. As a means of teaeching, it has no value whatsoever. Even a behaviourist psychologist (i.e., Skinner and anyone adhering to his ideas) should know that.

>If you force an autistic always to go through an adult (instructor/parent) to get the information she needs, she is going to take the important stuff underground, because to learn properly, she can't have the distraction of the noisy, demanding non-autistic. She may get up in the middle of the night to explore materials or experiment, for example.

*I can see how that might happen. Our daughter has a great freedom in our house to explore things - as long as it's not dangerous. We supervise by looking in on her, and she gets to do things most five year olds don't: like make pancakes, or make daddy a cup of tea (which she does really well, if only ever rarely...). But she gets to do things, in a sort of guided discovery way... very Vygotskian framework, and she does better than an ABA kid does. She can built up so-called ToM this way.

David:

Re remarks by McIntire:

David, I submit that you have mistaken this organization for someone else. FEAT does not have a Kit Weintraub on it's board.

Maybe ASAT (see first paragraph of article) is responsible for:

In the future, please take greater care to refrain from slandering an organization in this manner.

Hi Ralph,

Maybe.

But it seems odd that either one organisation or the other (and it may well have been both!) doesn't have a problem with a slanderous article against Michelle Dawson.

ASAT, incidentally, has some very skewed ideas about the other sorts of interventions used to help autistic people develop (e.g., Floortime, or TEACCH)...

"There have been no peer-reviewed, published studies of Greenspan's DIR/Floor Time's effectiveness for children with autism. Researchers should consider investigation using research protocols. Professionals considering Greenspan's Floor Time should portray the method as without peer-reviewed scientific evaluation, and should disclose this status to key decision makers influencing the child's intervention." *Apart from Greenspan's own published review of more than 200 autistic children, which - despite being a conclusive "proof" - certainly represents a larger outcome study group that anything that the ABA lot have been able to muster, and which may actually have more evidence of efficacy in it (and may be much more scientific) than anything the ABA lot can get together.

My beef with them is that they (certainly ASAT, and possibly the FEAT organisations) seem to exist to promote Lovaas-style ABA as the "one True Way" in autistm "treatment", despite the fact that at least TWO lengthy literature reviews of which I am aware (one being my supervisor's PhD, which was the basis for her book "Educational Provisions for Children with Autism and Asperger syndrome: meeting their needs") come back with clear verdicts that no one method of working with autistic children is better or worse than the other, and that even the ABA lot need to watch their methodologies (since the early Lovaas studies, for example, were very flawed).

I feel still feel that there is something sinister about ASAT publishing a slanderous/libelous attack on Michelle Dawson (and something petty when they suggest that a text article in reply to that would be slanderous: slander is verbal, libel is printed or text-based). Maybe McIntire knows this and is aware that he could not call it libel. SO he uses the word "slander" to - essentially - try to make his e-mail more like a threat.

Whatever, I am uncomfortable with their conduct (ASAT and the FEAT organisations): any organisation claiming to be scientific can publish something it touts as "a response from the front line" but is in fact a personal attack on someone doing far more research than the writer of the "response" is. It also looks very awkward since, if the Kit Weintraub who wrote that nasty attack on Michelle is the nurse Kit Weintraub that I see mentioned in another article, then I can't say I can accept the validity of nurse training at the school she went to, and nor can I accept the idea that ASAT is committed to a scientific approach to helping autistic people (as opposed to, say, enforcing a superficial normality that - if the kid could adopt without the ABA - s/he would do without the ABA).

Edited by author 04-12-2004 03:53 PM
And here's a point:

"Hundreds of families across the state, many in southeastern Wisconsin, are scrambling to maintain treatment for their autistic children after a provider suddenly dropped out of the Medicaid-funded program in December."

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jan04/199722.asp

Why did this provider suddenly drop out of the programme?

From http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/sare...0040119/000166.html :

[TREATMENT

Proper Therapy Can Do So Much For Children With Autism

      [By Kit Weintraub from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.]
http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/jan04/200608.asp)

> There are more than 1,000 children in Wisconsin with autism. The rate
of autism was thought to be about 1 in 10,000 to 10 in 10,000. More recent
studies place the rate at somewhere between 1 in 250 and 1 in 150, <snip> It is a severely disabling condition that
renders even the more highly functioning children impaired for life.

*Given that just about everybody is "impaired for life", this statement makes no sense to me. Everybody has some sort of special needs, although most develop coping strategies without any interventions; as you get further away from "clinical normality", you get into the region of ability where more help is needed to develop coping strategies.

> One unique thing about children with autism is that with early
intensive intervention, they can make astonishing strides to the point where
they are far less affected by the disorder. This is not typical for most
developmental disorders, and it saves taxpayers tens of millions of dollars
per child over the child's life span. These types of gains are never seen in
autistic children who do not receive early intensive behavioral
intervention.

*As if only behavioural intervention works? I don't think so. One interesting study in the UK found that educating the parents about their expectations of, desires regarding and communication with their autistic children had a far better outcome than just that of surface "clinical normality". (NAS Early Bird Scheme) This intervention focusses on parents, as opposed to the children. So far the anecdotal evidence has been encouraging (empirical evidence is only anecdotal evidence collected in a structured manner).

> Autism is a neurological disorder, and it should be treated with
scientifically accepted research based methods, just like any illness or
condition.

*Actually, this is not proven to be so, although the research is intent to seeing it as such. Even if one finds some correlates with behaviour in neurological terms, that does not automatically mean that the behaviour makes the neurological correlate "an abnormality": there is such a thing as a normal distribution assumed in just about all biological attributes.

> All too often, school and government officials try to treat the
disorder as if it is merely an educational issue, which is like trying to
treat a stroke victim as if his or her only needs are educational.

*This I most strongly object to, especially coming from someone trained as a nurse. A stroke and being autistic are two entirely different things. As I have reason to know, since I am autistic and my mother recently had a stroke... or three. Again, I should be able to expect a better informed comparision from a nurse.

> The treatment that is most effective according to accepted scientific
standards is applied behavioral analysis.

*According to SOME accepted scientific standards: Lovaas' original study was flawed. The results have not been so well confirmed as one would require for them to be fully scientific.

> It is the only treatment
recommended by the state of New York and the National Institutes of Health.

*So?

> It is the treatment that Wisconsin has funded for more than nine years,
because the state knows that it works and saves taxpayers money in the long
run.

*That would depend on how it is done... the personal qualities of the therapist.

> <snip> It has been cut because the growth was too great and was
"red-flagged" by the state Department of Health and Family Services to be
eliminated because of the cost. This despite the fact that 47% of the
children able to get this therapy for 40 hours a week for several years
become indistinguishable from their peers.

*Applying Lovaas' 47% statistic as a guaranteed outcome? How silly! It is not fact: it was a result seemingly supported by evidence until the methodology for obtaining the evidence was found faulty.

> Those children who do not reach
the best outcome group improve significantly and as a result can be
maintained in their home instead of being institutionalized.

*Improvements in functioning have been found to occur in many cases quite sponteaneously (I did): Rutter's studies and those by some others súggest that the ABA lot are capitalising on a fear the parents have about their children's welbeing. In my training as a psychologist, that is unethical.

> My daughter Emily is not a "best outcome" child, but at age 8 she
learned to talk with this therapy.

*She may have got there on her own with other methods of helping, or even - although later - on her own; I did.

> She now can read, identify hundreds of
words and follow multiple directions. She interacts well with other children
and is mainstreamed for a good portion of her day at school.

*I was mainstreamed all my school life.

> All because of
this therapy.

*Not necessarily. Weintraub, you have lost your science.

> Prior to the therapy, her IQ was 35, she was self-injurious and had
tantrums all day long.

*The tantrums and self-injurious behaviour MAY well have been comminication attempts that were not being treated as such. Had they been, they may have been susceptible to decline by giving her other means of communicating (even non-verbal ones). The IQ thing: an IQ score means nothing. If Emily had reasonable scores in the non-verbal tasks of the test conducted on her, their may have been lower scores on the verbal tasks which - inevitably - bring the score down somewhat. It would have been more useful to Weintraub to know about the VIQ and how it related to the PIQ (if the test was a Wechsler). Moreover, there is (and has been for some time) a method of testing known autistic children such that potential IQ is obtained... this of course comes from the Vygotskian paradigm, and behaviouristically oriented psychologists will not use it. The neuropsychologist at the local paediatric neurological clinic in the central hospital here in Finland (a country KNOWN to be far behind in developments relating to autism) uses this Vygotskian paradigm when assessing special needs kids. Such kids were not included in the norming samples for the tests so, without appropriate modification, the tests are inappropriate for such kids, as per the instructions given in the manuals. This would certainly account for a low IQ which could be "improved" by ABA... by focussing on verbal skills and giving and reinforcing answers to the types of things asked on the VIQ parts of the Wechslers.

> She did not understand a word people said.

*How does Weintraub know this? That would be merely an assumption.

> She is
continuing to make huge gains with ABA, but the state has arbitrarily
decided to cut her treatment to six hours a week, which is clinically
useless, based on a supposed lack of funds.

*Not according to Edward Ritvo (an outspoken critic of Lovaas'), another California psychologist who has a better opinion of where ABA techniques would fit into an assistance package.

> <snip> Attempts by
parents to discuss this with the Department of Health and Family Services
and the governor are met with either no response or a form letter thanking
us for our concern.

*This is nasty behaviour by the people involved at DHFS.

> I know of one family who will be placing a child in an institution,
which will cost the taxpayers 10 times the amount of this therapy due to his
deterioration since the therapy was abruptly cut short.

*They don't actually have to do that. Again, see the NAS site (http://www.nas.org.uk/) about the Early Bird Scheme. But that statement by Weintraub smacks more of people capitalising on fear than on good common sense approaches. Personally, I think that Weintraub has been "had".

> We have money for 4-year-old kindergarten and money to give to
teachers for added insurance benefits and seniors for prescription drug
coverage. I am not saying these programs are bad or wrong, but it always
seems that the disabled are the ones who get the shaft.

*Major fact of life, that is.

> The tragedy of all of this is that this ridiculous new program crafted
by the state will not save the taxpayers a penny and may wind up costing a
lot more.

*Not necessarily. ABA is NOT the only way to help autistic people to make progress, and it is certainly not the best.

> Autism is on the rise, it is an expensive disorder and it is highly
treatable.

Weintraub, cut the scare-tactics you learned.

> Let's deal with it instead of hiding our heads in the sand,
because our kids are not going away. I hope the governor reconsiders his
decision to allow the Department of Health and Family Services to destroy
this program that was working so well.

*Have they offered anything other than this programme, one wonders.

> <snip> I hope you will begin to understand the frustration and heartbreak that
parents experience when told that there is a treatment for their child's
condition but that their children are just not important enough to pay for
this treatment. May it never happen to you.

*Oh My God!!!!!! This tragedy model again. No wonder the ABA lot get away with this crap.

[ Kit Weintraub, mother of Emily, 9, and Nicholas, 7, lives in Monroe.
She is secretary of Families for Effective Autism Treatment.]

Sorry so long: I'm on a roll after being ill all day.

Dave and Michelle,

I can’t resist jumping in.

By definition overcorrection is “to more than correct the physical products caused by incorrect behavior”. It was created by the early researchers Foxx and Azrin.

It is one of the most easily abused of all behavioral techniques. It can be considered the opposite of “Premack reinforcers”, which states that “activities can be reinforcing.” So Overcorrection could be explained as “certain behaviors are aversive.” Restitution overcorrection is the only acceptable overcorrection in my mind (even then, I am wary of it) although neither of your examples were overcorrection.

Dave, your mother being forced to eat the mustard powder is indeed unethical, but as she was forced to eat it, this seems more like “plain activity punishment”, than overcorrection. She would have mopped the floor had it been restitutional overcorrection.

Michelle, your example of the man kept in his own excrement is one of the most abusive forms of “natural consequation”, I have ever heard of. But it is not overcorrection, of any form as the man engaged in no corrective behavior.

An example I heard, that was mislabeled overcorrection is a student who spits, was spit back at. This is not even psychologically based, it is eye for an eye logic.

I was not happy to hear of Dave’s student being isolated. The student gains nothing that way. Research tells us that even Time-Out is less effective/ineffective for any age, if used for more than 5 minutes at a time (and is recommended at 2 minutes only). I was glad to hear that Dave (and others) won’t tolerate that.

I can only hope that these persons who implemented your examples of overcorrection were not real behaviorists, only other psychologist/workers who thought they knew what overcorrection was and how it works. I have used it one time so far. For some typically developing teenagers at a summer camp who vandalized some signs. I had them rebuild the signs they broke. Your examples show why I am leery about this technique, best it’s generally avoided, especially by people who don’t understand how it works.

Michelle:

Thanks for suggesting (elsewhere) that I adopt this discussion in your (temporary) absence. A hilarious offer because, as you know, I understand almost nothing about behaviourism. I've since understood that it might be useful to see what happens when 'Jane/Joe autistic' encounters behaviourism for the first time. What does it mean to those of us who are not 'scientists'? While preparing the role, I discovered this: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/

Before moving to another page, I'll at least mention the low and high points. The low point appeared through cumulative effect, but I didn't say anything (to myself) until this:

Behaviorism is unpopular. It is dismissed by cognitive scientists developing intricate internal information processing models. It is neglected by cognitive ethologists and ecological psychologists convinced that its methods are irrelevant to studying how animals and persons behave in their natural and social environment. It is rejected by neuroscientists sure that direct study of the brain is the only way to understand the causes of behavior.

I asked myself: "Why are autistic people getting the [short] end of the stick? The dregs; the 'second rate' science?" Is it because we're traditionally unable to defend ourselves? Is this opportunism? Do they think that because we're autistic we either won't notice or won't mind at all?

The high point, where I burst out laughing, was this:

Stich, for example, complains against Skinner that "we now have an enormous collection of experimental data which, it would seem, simply cannot be made sense of unless we postulate something like" information processing mechanisms in the heads of organisms (1998, p. 649).

*Hi John....

>I can’t resist jumping in.

*Who can on this board?! :)

>By definition overcorrection is “to more than correct the physical products caused by incorrect behavior”. It was created by the early researchers Foxx and Azrin.

*Ah....

>It is one of the most easily abused of all behavioral techniques.

*No shit!!!!

>It can be considered the opposite of “Premack reinforcers”, which states that “activities can be reinforcing.” So Overcorrection could be explained as “certain behaviors are aversive.”

*Eh???

>Restitution overcorrection is the only acceptable overcorrection in my mind (even then, I am wary of it) although neither of your examples were overcorrection.

*Interesting....

>Dave, your mother being forced to eat the mustard powder is indeed unethical, but as she was forced to eat it, this seems more like “plain activity punishment”, than overcorrection.

*Hmmm... figures....

>She would have mopped the floor had it been restitutional overcorrection.

*Hmmm... okay. That I can see as being restitutional in its purpose.

>Michelle, your example of the man kept in his own excrement is one of the most abusive forms of “natural consequation”, I have ever heard of.

*Glad to see that there are behaviourists who feel that this sort of thing is nasty.

>But it is not overcorrection, of any form as the man engaged in no corrective behavior.

*Yep.... that would be true.

>An example I heard, that was mislabeled overcorrection is a student who spits, was spit back at. This is not even psychologically based, it is eye for an eye logic.

*Yep....

>I was not happy to hear of Dave’s student being isolated.

Nor was I. This kid (not my student in the sense of me teaching him or anything... more like one whose case I am involved peripherally in.... ) is 12 yrs old and in one-to-one situations is usually good. If he is bullied he gives as good as he gets. But the way it looks is that the other kids' parents don't want a "freak" in "their" school, and so they are tring to "smoke the kid out of school": the parents of the other kids who bully this lad are more responsible, as far as I am concerned, since they haven't really taken on board the effect of their kids' behaviour in this case... and they don't want to, it seems. Child abuse by proxy, methinks.

>The student gains nothing that way.

*Even HE knows that, and he's not a psychologist.....

>Research tells us that even Time-Out is less effective/ineffective for any age, if used for more than 5 minutes at a time (and is recommended at 2 minutes only). I was glad to hear that Dave (and others) won’t tolerate that.

*I am a consultant practitioner who has experienced this stuff "from the inside"; I think it makes me a more ethical practitioner than most who learn from books... not that all book-learned practitioners are unethical.

>I can only hope that these persons who implemented your examples of overcorrection were not real behaviorists, only other psychologist/workers who thought they knew what overcorrection was and how it works.

*This is the slightly embarrasing bit: in Finland, class teachers usually have as their major subject educational psychology (although I must point out that it is educational psychology as it is known in the US, not in the UK), so chances are that this person knows about educational psychology (at least as theories). I don't know for sure, but this is what I gather. I am an applied educational psychologist, which is applying educational psychological principles to real world problems, like how to promote development of autistic kids or how to help an adult student who can't do exams to get a fair chance to show what s/he can do. That sort of thing. I do testing and educational diagnoses, as well as suggesting ways of doing things that mght prove more effective (even if they are not immediately "efficient"... humans aren't built for efficiency, we're built to be effective... we're third order lever systems.... that's not efficient, but it does get the job done, and remarkable well). My feeling is that the teacher concern was merely capitulating to the parents of the other kids in the class, and had no concern over what is happening to the lad whose case I am consulting on. Wilful negligence, I believe that it would be called.

>I have used it one time so far. For some typically developing teenagers at a summer camp who vandalized some signs. I had them rebuild the signs they broke.

*Restitutive justice. Quite proper. I can see though that it has a fairly heavy cognitive component to it for it to work properly. But yes, that's ethical.

>Your examples show why I am leery about this technique, best it’s generally avoided, especially by people who don’t understand how it works.

*Unfortunately, this seems to be many practitioners. Odd thing: on this board I have met two behaviourist-oriented practitioners whose ways of working are (from what I have managed to discover) not the norm for behaviourists....

David

Edited by author 04-12-2004 05:05 PM
Hi Ralph,

When I was studying as an undergraduate at Leeds, we covered behaviourism... I kind of figured then that it sucked. There is a reference I was given in which Skinner actually recants! I wonder if Lovaas or the high-pressure-ABA-salespeople lot have seen that! I'll try to dig it out....

LoL

Hi again Ralph...

"I asked myself: "Why are autistic people getting the [short] end of the stick? The dregs; the 'second rate' science?" Is it because we're traditionally unable to defend ourselves? Is this opportunism? Do they think that because we're autistic we either won't notice or won't mind at all?"

I wonder. I often wonder. Like I said in a message elsewhere or in this thread, I have used behavioural techniques in the teaching of mathematics so that people could get their GCSE examination in the subject. Teaching people how to manipulate equations in x properly... it can only be done well by using discrete trial learning: one bit at a time, with praise for having thought about the process correctly and having done the right thing with the equation concerned... and then moving on to the next step in the process... cycle repeats, and student (under only my _guidance_) does the actually mathematical manipulations, and this on the basis of why one does them ... marvellous.

But if the idea is to make an autistic person outwardly "indistinguishable from his peers", I then have to come in and say... "Whoa! That's not right!"

There is a massive difference between the cosmetic and the functional.

First, take a look at this....
http://www.asw4autism.org/dream.htm

Then take a look at this....
http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer?pagename=asa_ppa

ASW is (mathematically speaking) a proper subset on ASA.

Note in the Panel of Professional Advisors:

Lovaas- ABA developer
Rimland- ABA promoter
LaVigna- ABA salesperson
Gerhardt- ABA programme specialist
Edelson- sees Lovaas as "an excellent resource"
Blackwell- the Centre she is involved with is "ABA-rooted"

I could go on, but I can't be arsed at this late hour....

In light of Ralph's questions.... this is significant.

For clarity, the information about treatments on the ASAT site is just a reprint of the MADSEC report, though this is not acknowledged as a source on their site. They did acknowledge it when I spoke with them.

Drs Rimland and Edleson neither object to ABA nor promote it. Dr Rimland clearly was miffed when ABA started being seen as scientifially proven (as opposed to his DAN stuff), and I use some of his writing as a source for opposition to ABA from those with vested interests or those promoting alternate treatments.

Edited by author 04-12-2004 06:58 PM
Hi John,

Where was I? Somewhere in the pile there's something I'm supposed to reply to. Re overcorrection, being forced to eat something which is spilled (thereby cleaning it up) seems to count by my standards. Being forced (in this case by circumstance) to repeat the "wrong" behaviour, as happened to the man forced to stay in his own excrement, is not overcorrection according to some, and is according to others.

I once heard a parent refer to Dr Foxx's book about toilet training as "a great work of fiction".

John, I'm not going to abandon the implicit/explicit thing to split hairs about the possibility that functional analyses and all the DR's might even work when the wind is in the right direction.

One thing behaviourists have "scientifically proven" is that autistics are lousy at explicit learning. Even when explicit learning is expanded to occupy most of the autistic's life, most autistics will fail in these programs.

One thing behaviourists could learn, by looking at the epidemiology (and even the diagnostic criteria), is that autistics are clearly learning anyway. Behaviourists get around this as Ms Weintraub and Dr Green do, which is to deny the possibility of the existence of intelligent or even functional autistics who did not undergo ABA.

I can learn explicitly and have often set out to, and have found consistently (100% of the time) that it is very difficult and takes tons of time, and I often fail. Sounds familiar.

So, next problem. You have no way of knowing which behaviours are adaptive or maladaptive to the autistic.

You would certainly want to get rid of most of my behaviours. You would probably be appalled, as many have been. But they're the behaviours that allow me to learn and be productive. They would not be good behaviours for you or any other non-autistic, just like blind behaviour might not be good for sighted people, and vice versa.

For instance, you're allowed to put yourselve in pain by running. No one's going to stop you and lock you up. If I very adaptively (for me) punch myself in the face, I will be locked up, even though in many situations, punching myself in the face works better than anything else.

Language isn't the problem for autistics. Autistics who develop standard-issue speech are still ignored, even when supposedly (as I've been accused) articulate. We are as ignored as autistics who don't speak. If I tell someone they're hurting me by what they're doing, I know I'll be seen as acting inappropriately and will be ignored or shunned. Why? Because my needs, ergo my differences, are wrong.

No, I wouldn't hurt myself in an "environment" where it is okay to be autistic. These environments do not exist yet.

Re the nothing to lose thing, all you can define, measure, and work on are "adaptive" or "maladaptive" behaviours by your standards. By your standards, I would have to change practically all my behaviours, and dedicate my life to this effort. I used to think this is what I should do with my life. But, it's not much of a life, striving to be like the right kind of person, seeing as you're the wrong kind.

Re parameters of implicit learning, you don't seem to know what's involved. You do have to notice what the kid is noticing, and few non-autistics can do this. Kid lines things up. Fine. You notice something about colour is going on. You then supply many, many identical or similar objects which have different colour; and you provide many different kinds of these identical or similar things. Kid makes rainbows, everywhere. All kinds of rainbows lining up similar or identical objects by colour. If you have enough examples of each, the kid can make all kinds of lines (curvy, snaky) and shapes, all in rainbows. Kid learns that he *can* communicate, because he has communicated his knowledge (colours are related to each other) to you and you have responded. This experience (of having a non-autistic notice our way of communicating) is essential to autistics. Back to the rainbows, kid learns about all kinds of different objects while he's doing other things. Kid learns motor skills. So on. Simplest example I can think of.

I would consider it equally effective in your thirst EO to show that you understand the autistic is thirsty. He's probably expressed this. Communication is supposed to go both ways; but when the kid communicates, he doesn't get a response. He gets ignored or he gets a functional analysis and consequent procedures which teach him his communication (which was perfectly accurate all along) is wrong. He's stuck with your version of events.

By narrowing down I mean that by age 2 or 3, you learned to filter out most of the stimuli in any environmnent. You learned categories, eg, which not only eliminate information but distort it. Autistics don't learn to ignore or distort. This can be a terrible problem, and it can be marvellous. Forcing us repeatedly to perceive only the object of the lesson (no matter how "incidental" the lesson) is narrowing us down.

Most (untreated) autistics, even when rather young, have the party trick of producing information and skills that no one can believe they possess, because they've had no apparent access to the assumed-to-be necessary materials or teaching.

Facing rather aversive deadline. This is good distraction though. Thanks John. You're a Skinner guy, re adaptive/maladaptive behaviour, have you read The Misbehavior of Organisms (which inspired the title of my article)?

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Edited by author 04-12-2004 07:59 PM
After years of listening to all the wrong people, I now have a biographical page that might actually be useful: http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/bio.html

Hi Michelle...

>"For clarity, the information about treatments on the ASAT site is just a reprint of the MADSEC report, though this is not acknowledged as a source on their site. They did acknowledge it when I spoke with them."

*That's odd. They don't even acknowledge their sources?! How scientific! Not.

>"Drs Rimland and Edleson neither object to ABA nor promote it."

*Odd. The stuff on their sites actually gives the opposite view... very praising of it all....

>Dr Rimland clearly was miffed when ABA started being seen as scientifially proven (as opposed to his DAN stuff), and I use some of his writing as a source for opposition to ABA from those with vested interests or those promoting alternate treatments"

*Ahaaa... interesting....

Nice biog, Ralph...

Did you see my site?

http://dna1fi.tripod.com/intropage/

Sorry, David, I was unclear. Just that Dr Rimland and Dr Edleson aren't known for ABA at all, in contrast with Dr Lovaas. There are DAN supporters who like ABA and there are those who think it's barbaric and believe autistics just need chelation. Dr Edleson has written about practically everything, so it's unsurprising ABA is in there among the sensory/auditory integration and biological approaches, etc. Though imagining Drs Edleson and Rimland (who did support ABA wholeheartedly when he was a much younger guy) as behaviour analysts is pretty amusing.

Some words of wisdom from an interesting philosopher... somewhat appropriate to the autism issues we discuss here and elsewhere in this forum...

"If the remainder of someone's life looks like it's is going to be miserable, should a utilitarian kill that person? And what about if thousands of people would be ecstatic at the discovery of a certain person's death, and hardly anyone would be pissed off? Does that make it right to kill that person? Maybe it does.

This said, is utilitarianism preferable to selfishness? I would have to say yes, except for in my case, where selfishness is plainly the better option.

In conclusion: utilitarianism, while better than a poke in the eye with a live tuna, is nonetheless essentially arse."
Fergus Crawshay Murray BSc (Hons) MSc
http://fergusmurray.members.beeb.net/utilit.htm

Edited by author 04-12-2004 08:39 PM
Hi Michelle,

>Sorry, David, I was unclear. Just that Dr Rimland and Dr Edleson aren't known for ABA at all, in contrast with Dr Lovaas.

*Ah? I was under the impression from their writings that they were really proponents of it... I'm listening to too much James Taylor :P

>There are DAN supporters who like ABA and there are those who think it's barbaric and believe autistics just need chelation.

*I've heard about this chelation....

>Dr Edleson has written about practically everything, so it's unsurprising ABA is in there among the sensory/auditory integration and biological approaches, etc.

*True... I just saw something on his site suggesting that it was, as the saying goes in Britain, the dog's bollocks....

>Though imagining Drs Edleson and Rimland (who did support ABA wholeheartedly when he was a much younger guy) as behaviour analysts is pretty amusing.

*It is, somewhat.. :)

Edited by author 04-12-2004 09:41 PM
Dave:

Nice biog, Ralph... Did you see my site?

Yes, I was very glad to discover your site a while ago (can't recall where). As a graphics person 'by nature' [pauses expectantly] I'm always glad to put a face to a name (others must admit that they're just damn curious).

You've beat me to the punch re Fergus Murray, who is apparently the first person to use "bunch of arse" in scholarly context. I'm also very fond of his reference to "the intersection of art and mathematics", something I understand only in the visual sense (took me two years to pass each of the high school maths). More on that when I can put it in terms that are relevant to this discussion...might be a while.

Hi Ralph,

>I'm also very fond of his reference to "the intersection of art and mathematics", something I understand only in the visual sense (took me two years to pass each of the high school maths)

*Funny you should mention this. One of the things I used to insist on with my A-level students was that the algebra had correlates in picture-world and that - whenever they were dealing with functions in particular but anything involving equations generally - they should always think about what the picture looked like! Yes, there is more to teaching good maths than the application of DTL in drill stuff ;) Anyway, one of my colleagues, and my head of department, was taking some of this particular group for statistics (A-level Maths, Pure and Applied, where their Applied bit was statistics) and she could not understand why, when a student from the group had asked about a particular statistical problem and she answered that she couldn't think of an answer straight off (she was MSc in QuantMech) and she had to have a picture, everybody in the class burst into laughter.... :D

*I'd had that group the evening before, and was going on at them to always think about the picture that the equation/function described... and only when I told her about this group and the idea of trying to get them to be active learners.... using Omnigraph and stuff, and trying to get them to think in pictures.... :D LoL

David
(who, despite his serious career shift, still is very much in love with mathematical physics: of which psychology done properly is the most interesting application!)

Hi Michelle,

Heck of a thread, it will break 100 posts in 2 days or so.

Okay, I admit that an argument can be made for the powder example to be overcorrection, but I would still say “it’s not,” But on the excrement one, sorry, this just is not overcorrection, there is no effortful response made by the victim in this case. Although of course this is still abuse no matter what you call it. It is yet another good reason while the hopefully non-behaviorists responsible for this should not have been messing with any kind of overcorrection in the first place (assumably, they called *this* overcorrection because they needed quick social justification, but have no idea what it is).

You said “One thing behaviourists have "scientifically proven" is that autistics are lousy at explicit learning.”

I think you underrate the ability of some autistic children to learn very quickly through explicit learning. Several examples come to mind. A verb training procedure with errorless learning techniques I created and used for one high functioning boy, he whipped through it in a couple of days. Because I added generalization procedures to it he has begun to use an (ing) ending with other verbs he describes (while he is currently doing them). This young guy seemed to nail the concept almost right away. My university class is currently learning to say the same (ing) endings in Spanish. It takes (us) a while to get it too.

You said “Behaviourists get around this as Ms Weintraub and Dr Green do, which is to deny the possibility of the existence of intelligent or even functional autistics who did not undergo ABA.”

What then about behaviorists like me, who accept (know, mentor, are friends with) autistics of all different skill levels and who are not not turned off by discussion of implicit learning (although I still suspect reinforcers to be hidden in there), but still advocate DT as the best current method for teaching pre-academics and initial social skills? If that is your stance then I suspect that we are likely to be your albatross rather than vice versa.

You said “You would certainly want to get rid of most of my behaviours. You would probably be appalled, as many have been.”

Maybe, maybe not. I suspect not though. Neither of us could know over the internet.

I am no fan of self-injurious behavior. You compared it to my running behavior. But let me make another comparison. As a high school wrestler I remember friends who would lose a match and hit themselves repeatedly. I remember a kid at the state championship who practically disassembled the boys’ locker room with his head after being disqualified. Dissimilar outcomes, yes, but same behavior. I thought it was dangerous then too.

In the end my running although painful, gives me health not injury. I have also previously explained that I practice performance management on myself (ABA) in order to run at an appreciable level, so this is not an adaptive behavior for me, in that it produces not enough reinforcement to maintain my behavior without the added artificial contingencies. At the moment I classify adaptive behavior as being both (a) able to produce enough reinforcement to maintain it’s own occurrence (b) and as a direct means of gaining more ability/knowledge (c) it can be specified in a way that is appropriate to novel circumstances. My running is not adaptive because it fails the first point.

 I have seen a 2 year old crack his head against a brick wall (extremely aversive for me) and obviously painful for him (he cried intensely after he did that). That is one behavior I do use extinction for. All students who I have helped with in DT, now no longer do this behavior (only three did it to start with). But, I have been wrong before and will be so again, so if you find time, tell me why this should be otherwise.

You said “But, it's not much of a life, striving to be like the right kind of person, seeing as you're the wrong kind.”

Granted, I would be the wrong person in this regard. But all persons are in a continuous state of learning and behavioral adjustment, radical behaviorists know that as well as radical cognitivists. Although we may guess that in this regard it is easier for me or Dr. Lovaas to adjust day to day, adjust we must. Supports are needed and they take many environmental and cognitive forms. I have been happy to serve as a role model for some students, including non typical examples. I, in turn have people I tried to be more like, some of whom are indeed non typical.

We should talk in terms of what behaviors we are modeling/trying to emulate. For a recent example, I think Jim is a heck of a model for me in terms of the way he describes how he deals with hitting, scratching, biting. I have never done otherwise anyway, but, it is reinforcement for me to hear that, and will undoubtedly affect my own behavior even more in the future.

For lack of more eloquence I thought your rainbow paragraph was interesting.

You said “I would consider it equally effective in your thirst EO to show that you understand the autistic is thirsty”

Good point. At least for the immediate family. But what happens when he/she is at school, with other relatives, or with other persons?” Person specific communication is functional, as it passes my criterion (a), but it would fail my third criterion and maybe my second as well. Truly adaptive verbal behavior could be used in a context outside “mom and me”, interactions. Training in this may not be necessary; we both know examples where that is true. The party trick you spoke of is well appreciated by me, although language is still picked up somewhere. Maybe TV, which a friend of mine calls “the other mommy.”

I assume the ability of all children to learn functional (if not adaptive behavior). I am less convinced on communication based behaviors. Not that I assume incompetence, but this line of thinking has led to methods like F.C. A worthy idea maybe, but one that has no research validation. At the same time I recognize that it likely has helped some people, and that some autistics choose to communicate primarily through typing.

I recognized the reference your title is based on. I got a kick out of it. I will take a peek at the article which I have heard of but have not read. Thanks again.

Edited by author 04-13-2004 09:48 PM
As a kind of response to Weintraub, about her article, just to give her an idea of how senseless her "article" was, I translated some of it into Japanese and back into English. Twice. It makes more sense now, I think we can all agree. LoL

"Recently, Michelle Dawson that the net by the document learned the material which is posted from ASAT. For us as for unpleasantness, that that erroneous oven is dangerous, ASAT' So it is; The thing thing which finds explanation/learning discussion in all opinions of the net on the one hand; The usual policy of s which pursues the applied behavior analysis service for level of the central child of hatred this material and because it is very high, in regard to the range of the inaccurate report regarding ABA between the parent and the specialist, our opinions and " Front: " Someone following to the family, it is, ASAT that it chooses in order to publish response, confusion and harmfulness of the sky it is; The mother who fights for her child. Kit Weintraub and Emily, 10, and Nicholas, the autism whose 7 is fast (the achievement) the mother of dealing is for the family and the Wisconsin public official."

"Michelle Dawson and her supporter, I doubt that mean that perhaps I abuse my child. That is handled, the medical medical therapy of ABA due to fact in regard to me that, it is, or, violation, allots to my value system and high the right to be who in those. That especially my child my with like her, needs the protection from the team of therapists, and believes. Because it could not accept this logic due to 1 in regard to me, with dealing, when my oven unforgivable is bought is the medicine for the sickness of period of various infancy age ethically, managing, violation of the baby and private right interest and the storing which accompanies those of the doctor of those first years of life in order to inspect the crime of the can imagines, speech, when and being, am I. It is small, the year when number can be marked, before Emily with her aversive, the fact which you eat between week in regard to food taste and quality appearance which is the times when ardently it becomes the mouth. Her two times with this in order to eat directly, it is small afterwards, losing with 20 pounds which cover the time of the week when number can be marked, we her, approach of the action which is not used were hospitalized in order to obtain. It is hard and 6a. which that it goes is. it works. You can eat the food whose Emily is various, when going from the hospital where problem is eaten she who presently is compared is lowest. We crime of abuse Ohio state are high. Were our actions non ethical? Do we the dies permit her in something where that is not proper? Affirmative inclusion that' Without her; You take the lead or, either one; S. Dawson what which is done as for that being? At that of the shoes of the parent and the specialist whom viewpoint you criticize time exactly a little. What it did that in order to help our children? Is you the some actual proof being completed of order a fact which is dug under legitimate feature of one dealing which in order to increase why is shown in life? My child some kind of solution with that it dies and does she who is hungry propose her herself -?"

Vast improvement, no? ;)

Michelle Dawson's article is eloquent and fascinating. I'm the mom of two magnificent boys with developmental differences. I have always sought to help them be who they are and also able to navigate the rest of the world. (Even tougher than it sounds.) So far so good -- I'll let you know how it turns out or maybe they will. Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what Ms. Dawson and others think about Stanley Greenspan and floortime.

Michelle, just out of curiosity, what are your thoughts about RDI or relationship development intervention (either ala S. Gutstein or the home-grown version with parents and siblings just being silly and having fun with their "ASD-diagnosed" kids? By the way, "Edleson" should be spelled "Edelson". Aasa

Edited by author 04-14-2004 12:54 AM
In response to the Schafer Autism Report, Monday, April 12, 2004 Vol. 8 No. 62:
---------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 23:41:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: naa canada <naacanada@yahoo.ca>
Subject: From Michelle Dawson: Is one allowed to respond?
To: Lenny Schafer [xxxxxx]

Mr Schafer:
 
Though I'm easily available through email on my webpage, no one seems to have consulted me before defaming me.
 
I was also defamed on the ASAT website. I responded to that briefly and politely, but ASAT has not seen fit to correct the false and defamatory information they have published about me.
 
The information you have published about me personally is utterly false. You are also calling the Supreme Court of Canada incompetent. You are calling the people who have diagnosed me incompetent.
 
Sir, I have learned to treat people with respect. I am always surprised when others have not learned this simple lesson.
 
I have a large appetite for criticism, but your report has not offered any. Instead, you have indulged in baseless and, by my standards, cowardly character assassination.
 
I have little but good things to say about Dr Mulick, who I was very impressed by. He decided I was a journalist, and insisted on this, even when I corrected him. He said I was a "good journalist" when I uncovered, at the start of my research, an interesting ethical problem I so far have chosen not to write about. Somewhere in my inbox is an email from him telling me to "keep truckin'".
 
Dr Green and I spoke for five hours, and I have great respect for her also. I agree with neither Dr Mulick nor Dr Green. I have criticized their work, while showing respect for their positions by accurately reporting them and verifying them through their own published work, and while thanking them for their time.
 
I quoted Dr Mulick properly in context. My questions were directly based on Dr Mulick's spontaneous description of autism as a "psychiatric construct". This idea was familiar to me from Dr Lovaas' description of social construction. I don't imply that Dr Mulick believes autism is a hilarious accident. I sourced Dr Mulick and his work correctly throughout.
 
I did not present myself to Dr Mulick as an expert in anything; in the time we spoke, I had yet to be taken seriously in my own work. I did not present myself as anything but an autistic researching to write about behaviour therapies in autism. I was made aware of Dr Mulick through my interest in ABA legal cases in Canada, which have had an impact on all autistics because of the forums used for these battles. I accurately stated my wish to intervene in Auton, as no representation from an autistic exists in the proceedings.
 
Dr Mulick is not careful in what he says (as in what he writes) and I had to be very cautious and conservative in quoting him. Many things he said were incendiary. I enjoyed this and learned from him and would never show contempt for him.
 
Dr Green does not deal with the content of my article. I am very critical of the criticisms of ABA in my article, and give examples in my sources of criticism that were neither accurate nor useful. I say nowhere that ABA must be banned. I suggest applying the kind of ethical concern that, for instance, the late Dr Baer showed in his response to Dr Lovaas' work with feminine boys (who were described by Dr Lovaas as desperate and doomed to isolation and self-mutilation). I point out that ethical standards which have improved the circumstances of all other persons would equally benefit autistics, and would also improve the state of the science.
 
As I indicate in my sources, I did get support for the idea of ethical review.
 
In my ABA work, I was repeatedly struck by the generosity of the behaviour analysts in speaking with me, and in, I thought at the time, taking me seriously.
 
I know, sir, I am not allowed to speak in your world. Either the autistic speaks, and therefore is not autistic, or the autistic doesn't speak, and is autistic, but has no voice.
 
However, in my work I'm required to respect the existing diagnostic criteria.
 
Here is my letter to ASAT. It is not equal to the assault you have launched against me, but it may be instructive.
____________________________________
 

To those responsible at ASAT:

I have been made aware of a response ASAT has posted on its website, http://asatonline.org/resources/library/moms_perspective.html , re the article "The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists". In this article, I accurately describe some of ASAT's positions, as well as ASAT's stated dedication to science-based research and treatments in autism.
 
My article includes no personal attacks, except perhaps the reported and sourced attacks against autistics that I use as illustrations.
 
I am very open to criticism. I am not, however, open to personal attacks that falsely represent me and constitute defamation of my character.
 
If ASAT has problems with this article, ASAT should respect its own values and attack the weaknesses and errors in the article on the basis of the science. This is possible and would be welcome. For instance, I didn't know until after I wrote the article that one of the Rett syndrome girls was in Lovaas' Control Group One. This was sloppy research on my part, as was my failing to notice that the Rett syndrome study was not conducted in the early nineties, as evidenced by the previous sentence.
 
If you find my article misleading and harmful, you have the perfect right (even the obligation, if you are taking me seriously) to contest the article on the facts. That is, read the studies, read the court records, read the media reports. I did use personal communications as sources, but as little as possible. Personal communications are used by people on the ASAT Advisory Board in peer reviewed science (eg, James Mulick).
 
If you are claiming that this article is full of animosity, you should justify this. If you are claiming that I am accusing parents of not loving their children, you must justify this. If you are claiming that I am accusing parents of abusing their children then you must justify this serious claim. If you believe that my diagnosis, whatever it is, automatically invalidates my work, you must justify this position.
 
Instead, you have published a personal attack on me and my work that is unrelated entirely to the work in question, and therefore is demonstrably gratuitous and in violation of your own stated principles.
 
My article is not a personal memoir or anecdote. In some articles I've written, and some work I've done, my diagnosis is an important element. In the ABA article, it is not mentioned until later in the article and has little bearing on the contents. You assume I'm dishonest and irresponsible because, among other things, you don't believe my diagnosis. Now you can tell me when exactly it became good science to diagnose a person via the Internet.
 
While it is none of ASAT's business, I have been diagnosed as autistic by some impressive diagnosticians, including one on ASAT's Advisory Board.
 
My work has been accepted in many places, including IMFAR, and must survive the scrutiny of a research group known for its precision. It has been accepted, so far, by the Supreme Court of Canada, which would be unlikely to allow the individual intervention (they are not often granted) of a person hurling strident and malicious accusations.
 
ASAT's decision to attack me personally is a disgrace to ASAT and its values. I expected a serious argument on the facts. You have disappointed me and you have done your own members a great disservice.
 
I fail to understand the motivation for ASAT's decision to attack my character and not my science. Perhaps my article really is dangerous to those who have nothing but invective with which to address a scientific and legal argument based on the ethical consideration of autistics.
 
Now I will find out if ASAT is rigorous and scrupulous enough, and honest enough about your own stated ideals, to add this letter to your own website.
 
Sincerely,
 
Michelle Dawson
Clinique spécialisée de l'autisme, Hôpital Rivière des Prairies, Université
de Montréal
_____________________________________________


I will add only that I've received a great deal of support for my work from parents who have autistic children. My ABA article has been posted since January. There is a comment board attached, in which real discussions have broken out in a spirit of learning and discovery. My webpage is a democracy.
 
Finally, were my work worthless, and myself a pathetic basket case, you would not have wasted two millimetres of your very important Report on me. Seeing as you have gone all out, I should be permitted to respond.
 
Sir, your standards and values, unlike those clearly stated by ASAT, mystify me. So I don't know if it's possible for you to disgrace yourself. I had not seen "festering" before. I don't think it's autism that's festering here.
 
Best regards,
 
Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Hello Aasa,

Sorry I got Dr Edelson's name wrong. No excuse. Thanks for straightening me out.

I know about RDI and Dr Gutstein (he is really getting his message out), but I haven't studied it at all. Feel free to enlighten us all. Being silly and having fun sounds good to me. Not sure it needs an acronym (sorry, just being silly).

Michelle

Way to go Michelle.

Way to show them how to discuss a topic intelligently and with dignity.

I'm proud of you.

Dr. Mullick and the others ought to be ashamed of themselves.

I realize that people have their personalities on the line, they have invested themselves and lots and lots of money into ABA, and of course, someone is on the other end taking in lots and lots of money for doing ABA. Big money is a big motivator. I realize that you wouldn't like to discuss their real motives, but I would like to lay them on the table. $$$$$$ for discussion.
Being able to say that "My child can do thus and such" gives parents bragging rights. That's great, but should the child be damaged in the process of seeking those bragging rights? I have seen a physical therapist (in North Idaho, near Coeur d'Alene, in case you are out there reading this) address my daughter's hand-flapping with CONTEMPT, and I am not exaggerating, it was contempt. This is not about the ego and comfort zone of the parents and the teachers and the "experts". This is about who the child is and what he needs to do to cope with this rotten world.

oddizm

Hi CJ,

I always experience this great joy when people are crazy about their kids and call them magnificent.

I know a bit about Floortime, or DIR (going to run out of acronyms). I don't like the theory-of-mind-based emotional theory behind DIR. I don't like much of the theory behind DIR except for the idea of challenging the child to engage in difficult and interesting things through the use of materials. I do find his suggested materials limited. On the other hand, I might not be sophisticated enough to understand the whole theory. Dr Greenspan is a psychoanalyst.

I also don't like the practice of fooling the autistic in order to engage her. That one really bothers me.

But, to the extent that DIR also involves being silly and having fun, I don't mind it. I would guess that it is very good in the hands of an open, empathic, intuitive teacher, but then I would put the "success" down to the teacher, not the "technique".

I hope some more informed and helpful people will add to my very limited knowledge.

I would love to hear how it "turns out", from all points of view. Thank you for dropping by.

Michelle

Hi Oddizm,

The world is lots less rotten seeing as you're in it. Please keep on inspiring all of us to laugh and hope and keep going.

Michelle

Since autistics.org is down, the "In Support of Michelle Dawson and Her Work" article is temporarily located here:

http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/ao_daw.html

In light of the stuff posted to the Schafer Autism Report, we're working on new stuff as well. (Most of it, though, seemed like a rehash of the sort of stuff already covered in that article, only sometimes much more vicious, so it's a tossup as to whether anyone will *listen*...) To be posted at some point after autistics.org comes back up, which should hopefully be soon.

Edited by author 04-14-2004 07:01 AM
My own criticism of Weintraub's piece of invective can be seen here: http://dna1fi.tripod.com/intropage/id2.html


Where is Lenny Schafer's stuff dissing Michelle? I tried to find a link on his site but can't find one: none of the things that usually would be links seems to work. I have little better to do these days than take to pieces pieces of crap like these....

Michelle wrote:

"But, to the extent that DIR also involves being silly and having fun, I don't mind it. I would guess that it is very good in the hands of an open, empathic, intuitive teacher, but then I would put the "success" down to the teacher, not the "technique"."

You know I and some other moms have noticed that the most important factor, bar none, in whether or not a child learns and retains a love of learning is the teacher. If that person is empathetic, respectful, and really loves the kid, amazing things happen. If not, things get worse. I like that you refer to the person as teacher, not therapist. I would so love to see people start thinking of helping kids who develop differently as education, not medical intervention. Imagine what would happen if everyone were taught in the way they learn best. Truth is there's no such thing as a typical kid.

How do I find your website?

CJ

Hi CJ

>Michelle wrote:

>"But, to the extent that DIR also involves being silly and having fun, I don't mind it. I would guess that it is very good in the hands of an open, empathic, intuitive teacher, but then I would put the "success" down to the teacher, not the "technique"."

*Indeed she did :)

But I have something that I can add here.

>You know I and some other moms have noticed that the most important factor, bar none, in whether or not a child learns and retains a love of learning is the teacher.

*There have been studies on this, and it is no surprise that they subtract nothing from this common-sense statement; what IS surprising is that - if they add anything, they add little.

>If that person is empathetic, respectful, and really loves the kid, amazing things happen.

*This is what a century and a half of systematic education has taught us, yes.

>If not, things get worse.

*see previous comment.

>I like that you refer to the person as teacher, not therapist.

*As an applied educational psychologist, it interests me when I hear about needs for therapy or treatment: most of the time, what is needed is education... education for the parents in how children function and what can send behaviour going the wrong way and so on, without actually blaming them. I have mentioned the NAS's Early Bird approach elsewhere on this thread. But "education" means "drawing out", not "forcing in"... it is about the very things advocated by Vygotsky in the early part of the last century: close support being moved away further and further as the person becomes more of an expert in whatever it is that they are becoming expert in... whether it be nuculear physics or handling a teaspoon functionally.

>I would so love to see people start thinking of helping kids who develop differently as education, not medical intervention.

*How does my previous comment fit in with your desire here? I like that desire.

>Imagine what would happen if everyone were taught in the way they learn best.

*Educational utopia :) My job would be ... wait a minute... I'd be out of a job :(( LoL Of course I wouldn't: my job would revolve around delineating the ways in which any given person might be able to learn best. Usually, of course, by skillful asking ;)

>Truth is there's no such thing as a typical kid.

*I calculated the probability of finding a "normal" person, psychometrically speaking, using the 41 dimensions available to me in the basic standardised test battery I use. One person per seven and a half million is actually psychometrically normal. Essentially, then, in Finland there seven tenths of a normal person (popl: 5 million). In the UK.... (popl: 55 million) there are just under seven and a half normal people.

*I think we can conclude that any psychometrically defined normality ("typicality") is likely to be of a negligible occurrence rate.

David

At 11:52 AM 4/14/2004 +0000, you wrote:
>--QT-------------------------------------------------------------
> Reply by email or visit
> http://www.quicktopic.com/25/H/4NqUrcUWgSE5R/m95
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Michelle's
>website

try
http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_02.html Michelle's Web Site :)

________________________________
Ooops....Wrong Planet! Syndrome
Autism Spectrum Resources
www.PlanetAutism.com
  jypsy@isn.net

Edited by author 04-14-2004 09:11 AM
Nice catch, jypsy! Didn't realise that QT code doesn't translate 'properly' in email copies. Thanks! [Don't get me wrong; if it speaks its 'own language', I'm all for it!]

>
>Nice catch, jypsy! Didn't realise that that QT code doesn't
>translate properly in email copies. Thanks!

Aha - I didn't realize either ... that what was there was boardspeak and actually produced something other than a 404. In truth, in email I still come out only half right - but I could get there. Guess we learned something. (else)
-jypsy

I had to do this....

I have noticed a very strong bias in the minds of Finnish professionals regarding an autistic professional's ability to practice.

Now, that's the one hundredth message in this thread :D

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!


(This is the being silly that Michelle refers to in an earlier post, as applied in my shitty little existence :) )

Dave:

Where is Lenny Schafer's stuff dissing Michelle?

If your personal email is different to your home page account, check your home page inbox for summary re above.

Dave:

My own criticism of Weintraub's piece of invective can be seen here: http://dna1fi.tripod.com/intropage/id2.html

Cool! Am spreading it around...

Edited by author 04-14-2004 03:35 PM
Hi Ralph,

Am printing that report off as I type this.

Mullick comes across as just as much a bastard as Schafer does, regarding how he attacks Michelle. He called her a malingerer! Personality disordered? Mullick, fuck off.

I am disgusted by most US professionals anyway but this is about as much as I can stand of their idiotic abusive attitudes towards us as people.

Apparently, according to Mullick, I can't possibly be a psychologist since I am autistic and by definition cannot contemplate a career involving communication.

Is that guy an idiot or fucking what? The Nazis would have loved him.

Yes, personal attack on Mullick.

Why?

Because he's an objectionable person, with nothing good to say about autistics. Unless of course they agree with his obviously God-validated opinion on what it actually is.

Bullshit.

David

I've been following this topic with interest. Just to let you know, David - a great response!

FEAT et al must be wondering just what is going on. Our very modest and reasoned response to Linehan's sensationalist article was bumped from the ASPIRES website ( a FEAT affiliate) - someone threatened the list owner with a defamation suit - we're not dead yet. I have some very cool ideas about just how to pursue this.

And another article in the pipeline just guaranteed to set the cat among the pigeons. AUspin rules!

1. autistics.org seems to be back up and functional, including FTP access (finally).

2. Michelle -- would you like your letter re: the latest FEAT stuff reprinted on autistics.org, or do you prefer it remain on the message board only (or have another place for it)?

Hi Alyric,

I'm getting totally pissed off with the arrogance of these idiots. I finally figured out why it is that they go for ad hominem.... they can't think of anything else to do if someone disagrees with them. So they go all personal. Because they just haven't got the logic to understand the science: if they had, they'd know well why the objections to behaviour analysis AS A SOLE "TREATMENT" FOR AUTISM are sound. The evidence of over 30 years of studies shows that nothing stands out as a really effective intervention on kids (my supervisor, Glenys Jones did her PhD on this, and that was like 15 years' work!)... Other studies before that show that spontaneous speech occurs in many autistic kids (as it did with me), as evidenced by one of Rutter's studies. Pat Howlin, at the recent Conference on Autism and Asperger Syndrome in Copenhagen, gave another review of the work (with Rutter present) and concluded the same. And anyway.... doesn't take a fuckwit ten minutes, let alone a scientific practitioner/researcher, to realise that ANYTHING that absolutely NEEDS 40 hours a week in order to be any good HAS to be CRAP in the first place! Even sitting and talking for 40 hours a week (yes... that nasty word - psychoanalysis!) can do better than ABA at 40 hours a week.

There's two kinds of ABA workers it seems: there's those who use ABA techniques as part of a comprehensive package of support and assistance, and there's those who can't think about anything BUT ABA .... if it were us going like that, it would be labelled an obsession. Why isn't their cultish religious fervour seen for what it is? An obsession....

As for the defamation suit.... if someone makes a sensationalist article about something, and another set of people produce a "reasoned and very modest response", why the hell are these FEAT people not able to contain themselves with enough grace and decorum to stop going crying to mummy? How does a modest response constitue defamation? And why is that defamation, when their "reasoned responses" are clearly personal attacks on people who have studied more than just the basics of ABA and forgotten the rest of the stuff they learned in college? Defamation is defamation: and what ASAT/FEAT Wisconsin did to Michelle was defamation. She didn't go running with her head up her arse to the courts, did she? She confronted them.

AND THAT IS WHAT THESE PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE. They want all the autistic people to have no say in anything and to be compliant little nobodies.

Balls to that.

As to your ideas.... I'd love to hear them.

http://dna1fi.tripod.com/intropage/

I don't see the point in being temerate about the ABA lot. They take reasonable sensible analysis as personal afront, so... by that reasoning (which is worse than anything I have ever seen in people with IQ<70: I have an autistic nephew whose IQ I measured at about 86 FS, and at 70 on verbal, using a Wechsler) if I go at them and call them all the stupid buggers under the sun, they'll see that as reasoned analysis.

ABA-cultists get EVERYTHING arse about face, don't they?

Edited by author 04-14-2004 11:42 PM
I got a nice response from Dr Rita Jordan (Reader in Autism Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK), who is my course leader. If she is okay with me posting it here, I'll do that.

She was very supportive and thinks that we should be heard. And treated better than we have by these people. That much I can tell you.

Dedicating this little bit of poetry to Professor Mulick:

"Your dirty name gets passed about when something goes amiss.
Your attitudes are platitudes,
just make me wanna piss.

What kind of creature bore you
Was is some kind of bat
They can’t find a good word for you,
but I can...
TWAT."

John Cooper Clarke.
http://www.cyberspike.com/clarke/twat.html

Is that alright, Michelle? Bit of silliness? ;)

Okay, folks... from hereon in, I must maintain a face of dignity about this ABA-lot's digs at us. Thanks for your indulgences while I got it out of my system (how the hell Michelle copes, I do not know... fair play to her, I say).

I am hoping to do a review of the methodology of behaviourism - right from the first famous reported experiment in behaviourism: I have the paper as part of the study materials for the course in Developmental Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence. I would rather have done Lifespan Development though.

Amanda,

Please if you want post my response to Schafer on autistics.org. It incorporates my response to ASAT, which they have not replied to.

Schafer has responded to my letter to him. He is refusing to put my response in his report. He was rude in a way I suppose would have shocked me if I weren't so well trained in being insulted.

Thanks (and what a totally inadequate word in the circumstances).

Hi John,

I'm beginning to think of the title of my article as just an accurate prediction. Anyway, I promise I'll get back to you as soon as I get some consecutive hours of sleep and rescue my language from legal strictures. Later,

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Fair enough ma'am (laughing).
All right, back to spanish books with me.

Added.

http://www.autistics.org/library/dawson-response.html

[goes off to crash somewhere]

ABA Proponents Attack Autistics: Showing Their True Character, by Frank Klein
http://home.att.net/~ascaris1/attacking-autistics.html

Edited by author 04-15-2004 09:58 AM
Thanks Amanda.
Thanks again Ralph.
Gracias, John (and if I spelled that wrong, I'll retire in shame).

I have *no idea* who this "Ralph" guy is. [folds arms]

This is that Ralph guy....

http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/bio.html

:)

He definitely not as pig-ugly as me, is he?

http://dna1fi.tripod.com/intropage/

Ah-ooh, Lenny Schafer, Ah-ohh, Lenny Schafer....

http://www.ascendgroup.org/SCHAFER%20AUTIS...%20January%2014.htm

... where he says: "In the name of autism awareness clarity, I'd even take it a step
further: the Asperger's label ought to be kicked off the spectrum
altogether."

My big question is...


WHO MADE LENNY SCHAFER GOD?

Suggest everyone read this http://www.autistics.org/library/time.html

Previous comment withdrawn; was suffering from LS exposure and chocolate withdrawal.

Dave, am still laughing re 116. :)

Edited by author 04-16-2004 12:15 AM
Hi John,

Felt like an archeologist looking for your message, the one I haven't responded to yet. Oh, yeah, that was back at #83, in my youth.

Well, we've maybe had quite enough excrement in this space lately, but if you don't think staying in your own crap for a week is "effortful", you are an interesting kind of fellow.

Re your autistics who seem so good at "explicit" learning: speech is a bad example, unless the autistic is also deaf. It sounds to me exactly as though your "teaching" is purely incidental to the rate of learning. The guy already knew. He doesn't want you to keep telling him what he already knows ("errorless learning", where the autistic never gets a chance to be autistic, ie, wrong).

If someone gives me no choice as to how I respond, I will commit astounding feats, spilling my implicit learning all over the place, to have this coercion stopped. By coercion, I mean, "do what I want how I want now", which behaviour is duly rewarded. This may be progress or "learning" by some standards, but I'm surely not the only autistic who can do stuff like this perfectly without having any idea what anything means. I wonder how it came to be that the choices for autistics narrowed down to errorless learning and no-no-prompt.

My question to you about your bright boy is, what's going to happen to him when he finds out speech doesn't work either? I've mentioned this developmental milestone before. Speech is hard and effortful (you don't get better at it; you accumulate endurance) and the effort displaces other things. Which would be fine if speech "worked".

Here's an example for you, about you. Let's say you're a little kid again. You're typical so you develop speech on time. But, you seem to be in the wrong place. Nobody around you is like you. You come to notice this, then it is impressed upon you.

For example, when you speak, either (a) everyone ignores you, or (b) someone claps their hand over your mouth. Eventually you are singled out because you aren't functionning properly and can't communicate. So, someone decides what you might need and believes he can increase that need through manipulation (the EO). Then, he asks you to ask for what he's decided you need.

Let's say the proper way to ask here is by being silent for a precise amound of time, down to tenths of a second, then humming an exact middle C. You try and try and try and finally you succeed in being close enough, though you just aren't any good at this stuff. You're not equipped with precise time or perfect pitch. It's exhausting and nerve-wracking and meaningless to you. Anyway, your reward is to get what you have been told you need. This is communication?

Would you not be dying to have your consistent, patterned, accurate communication understood and responded to such that you can truly express your knowledge and needs? Would it not help you tremendously in understanding what's going on, and in translating the language you have into the non-language communication you lack, to have people consistently respond to your communication?

Well, you see, it's hard to explain. It's easier just to bang your head while everyone decides your very remarkable way of doing things is totally wrong and must be replaced with "functional behaviour".

One "functional behaviour" I've learned through decades of consistent reinforcement (using your terms here) is never to ask anyone anything that they have not indicated that they are willing to offer. Given my differences from most people, that means that if I want my real needs met, I have to accomplish this myself. Anything that requires me genuinely to ask others is out of bounds.

The only exception I make, besides being free to ask autistics, is in my research. But, my supposedly very functional language does not function like language at all; I can only say or ask for very limited things that have nothing to do with my needs and everything to do with everyone else's.

Obviously, if you're emulating someone, you're doing it as a choice, not as a forced necessity imposed on you because if you don't, you are ineligible to participate in society and may be locked up. I also emulate people, which is my choice. But I'm forced to act like someone I'm absolutely not at the same time, and I can tell the difference. The effort in emulation is freely offered and a pleasure; in forced imitation it is exhausting and futile.

Autistics do not hurt ourselves because we're autistic. I'll let you get away with mentalizing for the guy who hit his head; but I wouldn't, unless I'd been in his shoes, presume to know his emotions or how it feels before, during and after.

I understand why Jim's clients hurt, bite, fight back--they've been abused. I'm pretty disturbed when your clients act that way. Yes, extinction of self-injury in any one environment is possible and sometimes easy. In my case, I can't stand people running or even walking towards me. I learned in a wink that I had to hurt myself when I was alone, that the need had to be deferred. But I don't understand why any dependent autistic is put into a situation so painful and disturbing to him that he hurts himself.

I'm not the only adult autistic who has learned through experience that hurting oneself is often better than the forced alternative of becoming mentally and physically immobilized by fear and confusion (which is impossibly painful). Children should never be in a situation where their experiences teach them to hurt themselves.

Now imagine yourself back as the little boy who has normal speech in a world where communication happens otherwise, through means you're neurologically unequipped to access or practice. Imagine the pain and frustration, even though there's really nothing wrong with you and you're doing exactly what you're supposed to. Now, add it up.

If I'm not clear, I apologize (pauses for 2.7 sec and beeps at x khz).

Incidentally, the ineffable rainbows are a true story.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Ralph...

LS exposure? To what LS have you been exposed/exposing yourself? LoL

Now, the chocolate withdrawal... THAT I know about .....


*munch munch munch...... my daughter's great, she gets a shitload of Easter eggs but doesn't want tham all.... chockychock for mummy and daddy!!!!!!!!! YUMMMMM!!!!!!*

Edited by author 04-16-2004 11:51 AM
About some of Mulick's research (http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/2003/G/20034861.html)

>The researchers did a variety of assessments to see what effect EIBI had on the children. Results included:

*Hit me with it, Jimmy....

>Before EIBI treatment, all students had IQ scores below 51, which puts them in the moderately mentally retarded range.

*There is no mention of having looked into the possible reasons WHY these results were obtained: were the kids tired, or stressed, or at least apprehensive; or were scores prorated, and if so, from what sub-tests? All these can affect scores.

>After EIBI, all of the children had IQ scores above 70, with one child reaching 114.

*What was the increase due to? Where was it most great - verbal or performance tasks? This can be important, since it gives the impression that EIBI made the kids more intelligent when this statement is made. If the increase in IQ score was mainly from performance in the verbal tasks, then the increase is not likely at all to be in overall intelligence; rather, it is likely to be due to increased verbal ability... and - given that many autistic children to develop speech spontaneously later in childhood (according to Rutter's study at any rate!) - it is still not certain what has brought the gains.

>The researchers have preliminary results of three students one year after enrollment in this study. All three had made more gains in IQ scores: 4 points, 8 points and 30 points, respectively.

*A four point gain in overall IQ is, to be honest, not significant, and nor is eight. 30 points is, and so - after one year - there is a significant gain recorded for ONE child out of eight. Impressive result. Not.

>Seven of the eight students had made significant gains in adaptive behavior, such that they are ready for mainstream schools. This means they can do things like dress themselves and wash their hands.

*Now THIS is the important issue: functional behaviour. This sort of improvement I applaud - the only thing is, this is possible with interventions other than IEBI!

>All of the students showed borderline to normal scores on nonverbal cognitive skills (an example being knowing how to unlock a door or solve a puzzle).

*Which means that the improvements seen in the point on IQ scores were largely in the field of verbal skills.

>Language skills remained a problem for at least four of the students. "Language is one of the most impaired areas in autism," Mulick said.

*This would tie in with one good result out of eight attempts. But it isn't merely that "language is impaired in autism"... Mulick fails to take into account much that is missed by the ABA fanatics; namely the socio-linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects of language development in autistic people. Plus, I note in his lambastment of Michelle Dawson that he doesn't allow for technological remediation for speech-based difficulties, and the vast majority of ABA fanatics have a tendency to confuse speech and language.

>All eight students showed academic skills to a level where they were ready for school. While their language skills were not up to par with their peers, Mulick said they were good enough for school.

*Mulick said it, but what was his basis for doing so? We are not told.

>Only one of the eight students had autistic symptoms severe enough to be classified as autistic by the time of this study. This suggests a marked improvement.

*This is a matter largely of clinical opinion. Mulick's is not one that will find a lot of value here.

>Only one of the eight children showed emotional or behavioral problems at a level well above normal.

*And did anyone attempt to find out why they were there, outside of using a behavioural paradigm? I don't think so.

*Moreover, the statistics given are absolutely meaningless without explicit reference to the individual children they were collected about: they tell us nothing.

Hi Michelle,

Reading your reply I have a sneaking suspicion that “choices”, will be our next big topic. Oh well….

You said “It sounds to me exactly as though your "teaching" is purely incidental to the rate of learning. The guy already knew. He doesn't want you to keep telling him what he already knows ("errorless learning", where the autistic never gets a chance to be autistic, ie, wrong).”

Hmmm. well….that is always a possibility, but I suspect not. As a person interested in research, you know about different levels of research control and internal/external validity and all the rest. DT procedures often are designed like mini “Alternating Treatment Designs”, or “Changing Criterion Designs”, and sometimes “Multiple Baseline Designs.” We see repeated and varying manipulations of the independent variable that those designs provide.

Those designs are generally considered strong both in and outside of behaviorism. When a change in behavior is observed in accordance with these designs logic tells us that something has caused that change. When this change attends to a sub phase, where we see a repeated or steady increase it is very convincing. So, I have a logical reason for believing this change or learning was caused by the DT procedure. A more accurate criticism could be made for internal validity in that other factors may have made the DT more effective e.g. (speech therapy). Another problem is describing all this so that another person could replicate your IV in away that could reproduce the results (threats to external validity). These are the criticisms I suspect are valid. For these same reasons, not only is speech a good example it is a critical one.

You said “I wonder how it came to be that the choices for autistics narrowed down to errorless learning and no-no-prompt.”

I suspect the answer lies in the observed effectiveness of errorless learning and also research on the subject. I have had a few cognitive professors who were interested in trial and error and methods of cueing. They were passionate about his but I wondered where their research base was.

You said “My question to you about your bright boy is, what's going to happen to him when he finds out speech doesn't work either?”

Fair question….. But one I disagree with. You are operating under the premise that
He will find it ineffective. But I will answer your question anyway. We would have to look for another functional method of communication. (Please read the next post I make, I plan to mention him again). You fail to account for too many variables by stating speech will not work. It has worked, I have seen it do so in the sense of effective communication of needs, ideas, and thoughts.

You said “Anyway, your reward is to get what you have been told you need. This is communication?”

Do you really think I wouldn’t learn to do that with time and reinforcement? Are all communication modalities the same? I recall that the !Kung people of Africa use vocal clicks as part of their language. Non typical but highly effective as part of their language.
This is doubly true if “what I have been told I need”, is something I am after anyway.

You said “Would it not help you tremendously in understanding what's going on, and in translating the language you have into the non-language communication you lack, to have people consistently respond to your communication.”

Please offer a definition of communication when you get time.

Also what about the research that shows self-injury and tantrums go down when functional communication is taught (this almost always involves mands). All three of my students who had self-injury seemed to have it based on attention. Extinction eliminated this behavior at school and at home.

You said “Obviously, if you're emulating someone, you're doing it as a choice, not as a forced necessity imposed on you because if you don't, you are ineligible to participate in society and may be locked up.”
 
That’s true… Although, if I find emulating that models behavior reinforcing, then I also have a natural aversive contingency hiding in the shadows. Seems like coercion according to some folks?

You said “Autistics do not hurt ourselves because we're autistic. I'll let you get away with mentalizing for the guy who hit his head; but I wouldn't, unless I'd been in his shoes, presume to know his emotions or how it feels before, during and after.”

You may have never said anything I agreed with more on the self-injury due to autism part. As for the wrestler, actually, in way I have kind of been in his shoes, or he had been in mine. We both were 17, and High School Seniors. We both were wrestling for the State Championship at 171 pounds at a large professional venue in front of hundreds of people. We both had injuries going into our matches. We both lost to better wrestlers in front of all those people after four years of hard and sometimes painful work. He was not nearly the only wrestler to flip out. Another kid who should have won our division (no question the best athlete there) was disqualified for injuring an opponent. He nearly attacked the referee. The parents and coaches were nearly as bad.

What you would be correct to say is that I don’t know what his previous learning history had been like. That would be absolutely true. Not only do I hold myself to not make such inferences but others as well. By the way where did I mentalize (in terms about offering inferences about the thoughts of others)? I am usually careful about not doing that. I will be very happy to retract it.

You said “But I don't understand why any dependent autistic is put into a situation so painful and disturbing to him that he hurts himself.”

Makes a good ethical question. I can only speak for a few ABA folks, and maybe not even in a way they would agree with. We try to be sensitive to situations were a strong aversion is noticed to activities. This has meant abandoning a carefully planned hand washing training procedure because one student found running water terrifying. We used special sanitizing hand gel. We could have used systematic desensitization but no one in out lab was familiar enough with that technique. Part of being ethical is only using those techniques you are familiar with. And we are some of the most radical behaviorists you will find. Actually, children with specific functional communication could tell us what they don’t like and maybe why (as I have indeed seen). All this helps.

Please see my previous comments for your last paragraph.

Edited by author 04-17-2004 02:29 AM
Hi John,

Just a quick correction. The great time lapse between question and response has caused confusion. I was refering to the very young kid who, you reported, banged his head, looked "surprised", and burst into tears. The looked "surprised" part is the mentalizing. Lots of autistics don't have facial expressions corresponding to non-autistic norms (the proper affective display problem). Assuming this injury was not accidental, you reported you do immediate extinction. My question is, how on earth did this, the self-injury, happen?

I never hear, in all the horror stories of self-injury, what happened before. Not ever, when it is reported by non-autistics. And I know I have never been asked why, the few times I have hurt myself around other people. Assumptions were made about what I "seemed" to want, even when I had functional speech.

I have heard accounts of autistics hurting themselves and they are immediately familiar to me. I would suggest you be extremely cautious in assuming (you use the word "seemed", which seems, excuse me, very vague in such a critical situation) that the autistic is looking for positive reinforcement, ie, attention.

Temple Grandin, who does a better job than most of us of appearing typical, reports being spotted by very young children because her timing is slightly off. Most autistics are more "off" than that, and tolerance for differences often diminishes with age. But I can't seem to get you to take that into account. Clearly I'm not offering the right kind of reinforcement. I suppose I should do a functional analysis...

I'm not sure I can properly explain myself so long as the problem of how non-autistics respond to us is ignored.

It's not a small problem. I can't offhand think of another group of people, never mind children, who can be described as festering, a plague, tumours, horrifying, worthless, better off dead, and everyone applauds and has award banquettes and buys the t-shirts. Since this view of autism is pervasive at very public levels (government, courts, media), it does represent the public will about what we are worth.

Can you tell me where this comes from? Because you claim not to share these views, and I believe you, but knowledge carries responsibility, or it should. You have a much greater ability to speak out than I do. You are not autistic. If you want to know why there is a communication problem, you can read Schafer, and you can read Weintraub, and study their respectable contexts, and the absence of apparent objections from non-autistics.

So what happens when your bright kids get out of a controlled environment? You can say that all our experiences never happened and we don't know what we're talking about. But then, you're saying, even when we communicate ("make known"), you won't listen.

I'll get back to you on learning. I thought your program was a bit more flexible, and it looks like I was mistaken. I hope your Spanish is flourishing. Oh, and choices: that's interesting. I'm not sure I could deal with the Skinner quotes that would ensue...Forgot to ask how you're enjoying Breland and Breland.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Edited by author 04-17-2004 11:32 AM
Hi again John,

Re learning, I was trying to establish two things. Is it possible for your kids to learn their way in your program? And, how much in the way of "choice" (I was going to use freedom) do they have?

In the first question, you've just eliminated the possibility of implicit learning. You've returned to all-behaviour-all-the-time; you've built yourself a blank slate. What is observed is all there is. And here's Dr Lovaas from JABA in 1993: "Now, I had the chance to build language and other social and intellectual behaviors where none had existed, a good test of how much help a learning-based approach could offer."

In the second question, yes, I'm familiar with the manipulations you mention, as well as within-subject designs like Lovaas did to prove that aversives are an effective "active ingredient" in his program. I don't know if you saw the Rekers/Lovaas case study in JABA. They manipulated variables and had the boy totally regulated. They could get him to do whatever they wanted. This is like Skinner promising (did he really? I'll apologize if he didn't say this) that he can determine the precise height of the pigeon's head. And who decides how high the pigeon's head is?

So if your data are really showing you are being "effective" (definition, please), they also reveal the total absence of "choice", or freedom of the child to, among other things, learn in any way except your way.

This is one of the reasons why I decided to look at ethics. Re choice, I was told flat out by a behaviour analyst that people make bad choices anyway. They really, really want something, then when they get it, they're disappointed. So, (my conclusion) we take these incompetent decision-makers into our competent hands, and presto, effective treatment and here we go, beyond freedom and dignity.

Do wrestlers still starve and dehydrate themselves (and in one case I know about, give blood) in order to be at the right weight?

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Hi Michelle,

Oh my, this is going to be a long post. Maybe I’ll do it in two parts.

Also, I had two very interesting experiences the last two days, as they are related to our conversation. I’ll tell you about them in the next post.

To start, correction noted. You are right, I got sloppy and mentalized.

The child we were discussing kneeled on the ground and slammed his head into the floor. This occurred in variety of situations. Usually when he had been told the correct answer after making an incorrect response. Other times included transitions from preferred to non preferred activities. Although this is actually escape maintained.

Your criticisms were accurate based on my “seemed”, comment. Although, this leads me back to functional analysis due to its likelihood of demonstrating why a behavior may be maintained. I let this go way too easy last time. I am rapidly beginning to regret that.

You said “Clearly I'm not offering the right kind of reinforcement. I suppose I should do a functional analysis...”

My money is on escape….. Okay, in a more serious sense, I do not disregard that fact, but that may not lead me to a conclusion you have made.

I apologize for going out of order, you said “But then, you're saying, even when we communicate ("make known"), you won't listen.”

I will always listen, of course I will also always respond in the way I think is best as well. I have spent time with a fair amount of autistic children and make an effort to recognize patterns. Not everyone knows or understands this. I try to be accommodating and I enjoy teaching new skills especially ones that look for generalizability. This is a critical point.

You said “So what happens when your bright kids get out of a controlled environment?”

If he finds that behavior reinforcing he will continue to make use of it on his own.

You said “ I thought your program was a bit more flexible, and it looks like I was mistaken.”
 
You determined that after a few examples of varying levels of structure?

You said “I'm not sure I can properly explain myself so long as the problem of how non-autistics respond to us is ignored.”

Hard question Michelle, and maybe hard truths as well. I am not the designated speaker of radical behaviorism, just a contentious undergrad. I speak for….well….…when it comes down to it…..just me and those with identical views as me.

I take no satisfaction with the common portrayal of autism/autistics.

I am afraid you are right, I have said this before on this site, I am guilty of not being more involved in that regard. This has been a learning experience for me. I found David’s, Amanda’s, Jim Sinclair’s, Jypsy’s, the ISNT, and other sites just two or so years ago. And yours this year. This coincided with some real life experiences with HFA and Aspergers individuals who were older.

The trouble lies in varying perceptions of what are the correct ways of behaving for an autistic person. And also delineating who should do what, when, where, and how. I have seen emotional language used by parents, professionals, and yes, autistics advocating various ideas or treatments. We wouldn’t have to go any farther than this site to find examples of all three. I don’t scorn that, or consider any view irrelevant even when it conflicts with mine. You have demonstrated, that you suffer fools readily, I desire to do no less, regardless of talking about behaviorists or otherwise.

I believe my favorite author; Mark Twain once said “It is good to be noble and still nobler to teach others to be good, and less trouble.”

Happily or sadly, there is a grain of truth in this, at least from a governmental point of view. One more person not on aid and who can pay their taxes on time. Of course the same author also said “There are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics.” I am sorry, you are right, but there are no easy solutions or answers. It will have to be enough at the moment that I agree with you, at least till I sort out my own thoughts.

I finished “The Misbehavior of Organisms.” A classic piece and well written. But very old (1961). Breland was one of Skinner’s first students. A better animal trainer, there may have never been. I respect his work as a scientist and as a behaviorist. But flash forward to 2004, and he is of course, outdated. In a historical context that article still makes more sense. (1961) was just two years after what most behaviorists consider to be the first applied behavior experiment. The applied science of behaviorism was theoretical, or non existent. The next big applied work from Baer, Wolf, and Risely, was still a few years off. The behavioral revolution was in full swing but the science was very different from how it is today. We had much unaccounted for and much to learn. Breland quoted several ethnologist. Not surprising because some behaviorists site Darwin as influential to behaviorism in terms of a scientific study of organisms. But he quoted Niko Tinbergen who would later write a book called “Autistic Children”, (which I actually have sitting in front of me) which advocated for holding therapy and a psychogenic theory of autism. Ironic? Now in 2004, how much seems true? Not as much.

Muchas gracias, usted estar hablando la verdad. (thank you very much, you are saying the truth)

Hi again Michelle,

Round two

You said “Re learning, I was trying to establish two things. Is it possible for your kids to learn their way in your program? And, how much in the way of "choice" (I was going to use freedom) do they have?”

Depends on their level of functioning and what they seem to respond best to. Either way it is individually based.

You said “In the first question, you've just eliminated the possibility of implicit learning. You've returned to all-behaviour-all-the-time; you've built yourself a blank slate. What is observed is all there is.”

Tabla rasa? Not really, I do focus on overt behavior but I do not disregard covert behavior like cognition. The difference here seems to me to be one of “which came first”, or “how are they related”.
 
I’ll double check about the Skinner pigeon deal. I don’t actually know.

You said “So if your data are really showing you are being "effective" (definition, please), they also reveal the total absence of "choice", or freedom of the child to, among other things, learn in any way except your way.”

Effective is subjective. Although, measures of social validity sometimes add credibility to this. Please see another classic article, Montrose Wolf’s “Social Validity: The Case for Subjective Measurement How Applied Behavior Analysis is Finding It’s Heart”. As you are aware rejection of the null hypothesis is dependent on a predetermined statistical value. This is also subjective.

As for your second comment in that section. DT is a beginning and a source of training that leads to gains in adaptive behavior (refer to my definition). This is not the completion of an education experience. That is ongoing and by no means limited to behaviorism. When we don’t see evidence of adaptive or even functional behavior it is time to consider a solid DT program. The point of good behaviorism is, (that may have eluded our conversation so far) the program is tailored to fit the child, not the child is tailored to fit the program. This is by the way also a subjective measure.

You said “This is one of the reasons why I decided to look at ethics. Re choice, I was told flat out by a behaviour analyst that people make bad choices anyway. They really, really want something, then when they get it, they're disappointed. So, (my conclusion) we take these incompetent decision-makers into our competent hands, and presto, effective treatment and here we go, beyond freedom and dignity.”

You are the sugar in my caffeinated tea.
Your nicotine gets the best of me.
And driving fast gives me a rush.
Oh guilty conscience why don’t you hush.
There is no question.
There is no doubt.
Immediate reinforcers can wipe us out.
  -Dr. Dick Malott

No, I don’t agree with Dr. Malott across the board. But, there is a grain of truth in that. I respect the subjective ethical principles of dignity and freedom. My own early education training, rather hammered this into me. I also believe reinforcers make people do dangerous, violent, or maladaptive things (we can start but not end with the example of drugs) as well as beneficial things. The burden of whether a DT program will display those aspects will predictably, be dependent on how we do it.

Yes, sadly, wrestlers still starve and dehydrate themselves. Some States have implemented Alpha Weight programs which doesn’t allow wrestlers to lose any more body weight, and specifically body fat than is healthy (7%). Healthy is considered 12% for males and a little higher for females. But this is not total protection. I spent some days (when I was 12-17 years old) not eating much because my weight was a pound or two over. Seems stupid now. But if I missed, my coaches would seem disappointed, my teammates would be furious with me, a younger sibling who was also a wrestler would act disappointed with me, and the younger members of the team (who I new respected me) would act let down. It seemed easier sometimes just to skip the meals and wear heavy clothes during practice than have to face those aversives. Like I said, seems silly now, I encourage everyone if you must lose weight for wrestling to do it right and safe.

I know I said I would talk about the two thing that I found interesting the last two days in this post but I have written too much already. I will wait till next time.

Hi again Michelle,

Round 3

My apologies to you and to everyone else for writing so much. I promise to take a break for a while after this. But I wanted to discuss the two things that surprised me the last couple of days.

Yesterday, I gave an oral presentation at an undergrad psychology conference. I poured through the literature and made some suggestions on how we can increase the effectiveness of discrete-trial. I was the only behaviorist at this 200 presenter conference. I just knew that all the vehement young cognitivists were going to give me hell.

I was wrong. They were very enthusiastic about my presentation. A non behavioral professor called it best presentation of the day. Another student said that she was glad that we have continued to develop this science over the years. My impression for these comments were “so far so good”.

Then they began to say things that were disappointing. This ties in to the portrayal of autism/autistics that we were previously discussing.

One student said that she was glad people like me could work with these special children.

My impression: I like what I do, but that’s not the point. No one should not be seen as nobler than any other practitioner (or educator) because they work with this population. These “special children”, are as deserving of respect (yes, dignity and freedom) as anyone else. So while this comment complemented me, it took something away from autistic children. This is a reason behaviorist and many others fall into the reifications and errors of circular logic we have already discussed and agreed upon.

Another said that it was good that we can recover some of these kids.

My impression: Recover from what? Learning new things is not recovery. The only time we can maybe speak of a recovery is in the case of a student who loses skills (degenerative autism) and then regains them later. This occurs in maybe 20% of the cases according to the DSM-IV-TR. Unfortunately behaviorists are guilty of misunderstanding this.

Another one said “Why do work in that field, I guess it must be rough.”

My impression: Well it has its ups and downs like every other job, but it’s what I and some of my friends enjoy the most. It’s very reinforcing to work with someone and to see progress. Or just to watch as they do something by themselves for the first time, for that matter. Most people can be effective in interactions with these children. The few university students who do quit our program do so because they don’t want to change diapers or do toilet training. And they always leave in the first couple of days of the semester. The ones who stay beyond the first week always stay for the rest of the semester. Many students joke about adopting their children. Two weeks ago, I obtained permission for a former tech to come back and visit her former student who is now in regular kindergarten. She told me, it made her day. Her student is still labeled autistic and will doubtlessly always be. But he has valuable skills that she and others taught to him.

My second big occurrence was that one Friday I myself visited some former DT students all in an eclectic special education preschool for children with autism. They all received DT previously, but in varying levels and sometimes sub-programs.

They were having a large group conversation/argument of at least 4 people, about what game they would play. I remember when some of them didn’t have any words. They were using some words that I remember teaching them. Interesting……..

On the playground I saw something totally unexpected. Eight of these preschoolers with autism who had been through DT were doing some sort of chase game as a group. Up slides and down slides and all over the play ground. It usually ended in them piling on each other but that is age typical. They were talking and laughing and sometimes saying rules, an example was “no, do it this way”, as one child showed another the way to go up a slide. This was a true large group activity and I was astounded. Although I have seen small group (2 person play) I have never seen large group play by preschool children with autism. It’s also true that some children who had been through DT in this class did not participate in that activity.

I remember facilitating the first play interaction for two of these children two years ago. I was happy that day because they smiled and laughed during the activity. They smiled and laughed and talked even more on Friday. But I was not a part of that specific interaction. I was watching on the side lines, so to speak. On free time they can do whatever they want. They “chose?” to do group play. The teacher never said go play in a big group, all she said was “we have free time, let’s go outside.” They initiated themselves.

So maybe the big question is “why did they do this as opposed to something else.” This is what behaviorists call a free-operant situation. There is no strong, obvious evoking stimuli (actually there are, but this is theoretical). Why did they do this activity that we loosely taught, but to a level and generalization we did not work on? I have never seen such strong proof for the concept of a behavior trap. Why do it if it isn’t valuable or if it didn’t matter. Why laugh and smile if it wasn’t reinforcing. They were paying me (and every other teacher no attention during this). Perhaps they found these behaviors of use. They definitely were not doing it for my attention, but they possibly were for each others attention. I don’t know by I suspect.

These children are not cured, or recovered. That is not the goal. The goal is and was to teach them the most adaptive (my definition) skills as possible and to generalize the skills the best that we can. I think this is akin to what David refers to in the Vytgotskyan concept of allowing for greater and greater freedom as a way of increasing learning.

I believe that others have taken a different rout (other therapies, their own implicit learning) to get to a high level of functioning. And not that large group play is necessarily the most adaptive behavior possible, but it meets my definition. I have no doubt that this skill which I helped teach and which the students themselves seem to have cultivated; will be an asset for them in future learning.

Many apologies for hogging the space.

I am honored to have been a part of those children’s early education.

Edited by author 04-18-2004 06:30 PM
Hi John,

Re, round one, round two, round three: You Win!! <throws in towel>...

...Just kidding. I will absolutely get back to you when I've properly considered everything. <looks around for referee>

Thanks John.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

errrr.....

[Hi John,

Re, round one, round two, round three: You Win!! <throws in towel>...

...Just kidding. I will absolutely get back to you when I've properly considered everything. <looks around for referee>

Thanks John.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada]

I'm not the referee. I dunnwannabe the referee. And if any of yez hits me I'm off to tell me dad on yez all!!!!

*WÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄH!*

I know how to run and tell tales coz Lovaas taught me how :(


:D

I love an opportunity to take the piss out of Lovaas! ;)

Edited by author 04-19-2004 08:48 PM
Hi John,

Not sure where to start; I was strongly influenced by Round 3, but maybe my guard was down.

Many, many cognitive scientists in autism support and promote ABA. Check out Geraldine Dawson (no relation) for an example. Epidemiologists support ABA. So do geneticists (and claim they are trying to find which kids would benefit from what treatment). And those developmental guys, well, I covered them in my article and gave a source for the classic instance of ABA in developmental treatments. So, it's (almost) unanimous.

What has happened in cognitive science in autism is that those studied are predominantly adolescent or adult AS/autistics with normal or superior measured intelligence. I know of exceptions, but there are few, and this problem has been studied and documented (I can give you directions). It has been proposed that this is not okay. Also, the kids with below normal intelligence are just consigned to the behaviourists. What you encountered is just to be expected. I'm glad your presentation went well.

I'm happy that you've rejected the halo.

I'm sad that you find autistics acting kind of just like we're human to be unusual. I'm thinking I would've given quite a lot to hang out with other autistics when I was a kid. Many (not all, as you noticed) autistics are happy to interact with other autistics, as the huge autistic community can attest. It might be good to remember that autistics progress through development. You don't know what these kids are up to or whether it is because or in spite of you. "In spite of" is an autistic specialty. They were under no constraints that you describe, and how often does that happen?

I guess also you disagree with Lovaas, who wrote, even quite recently, that you can't put autistics together. They will regress. This is a view shared by many, in programs where autistics are totally isolated from each other and "hidden" in classrooms (see Sally Rogers).

Speaking of regressing, there is good debate that this is not a real phenomenon (as opposed to an apparent one). I've proposed a reason for apparent "regression". But there is actual dispute of the observations, and there is evidence that parents are not always accurate when describing (or even filming) their autistic children. And regression is not an accurate way to describe how autistics change over time, regardless of its popularity.

You dodged my concerns about choices. I don't know if you read that Rekers/Lovaas case study, but the data don't lie. They checked thoroughly to make sure that the boy was responding to "treatment". They could control his visible behaviour to a degree I find extremely disturbing. The treatment was a success, remember: this boy became "indistinguishable". He had no choice that I could see. And I believe you read the follow-up.

I also don't see how you can take cognition (mostly invisible) into account when you're busy accumulating behavioural data. Also, so far as I can tell, you don't have much grounding in autistic cognition (forgive me if I'm wrong about this). So how can you take it into account?

I have a question. Why don't behaviourists care about what autistics say about why we hurt ourselves? I can pretty much figure the thoughts and emotions of your little kid hitting his head on the floor. I've done that, though mostly I used and use walls and corners and available objects. I think you can't use the reductive three reasons for this (positive, negative, sensory reinforcement) or anything else without having reductive byproducts, ie, without diminishing the autistic, however successfully.

Another question, which is, in behaviourist language, what is generalization? I don't mean how it looks; I mean, how does it happen? What's the mechanism? I honestly don't know, though of course I should.

If you had carefully read the materials you found written by autistics, and considered their ramifications, you would either no longer be a behaviourist, or if you remained one, your descriptor of choice would be "ethical", not "radical", and you would not under any conditions quote Dr Malott except to point out that those who believe the world would be much, much better if everyone were like them should not be supported in their efforts.

Back to my corner. Sorry, that's boxing isn't it. Do you still wrestle?

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Edited by author 04-19-2004 10:02 PM
Hi John, forgot two things:

Didn't Montrose Wolf <searching memory> require the participation of consumers? Just like I did? Or is this just the problem of autistics not being considered consumers, or human, all over again? Or perhaps we who are untreated have no social validity whatsoever?

Also: I've reserved my strongest criticisms, by far, for cognitive scientists in autism. Behaviourists have, in comparison, had it easy.

That's all I think.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Re: Apparent "regression", I definitely believe that "regression" is not what people think it is. I've seen a number of *reasons* that things that *look* like "regression" can happen, but the entire idea of a person growing backwards is nonsensical to me.

Edited by author 04-20-2004 01:48 AM
Sorry John, that wasn't quite all.

I forgot two more things.

One, Niko Tinbergen. He won the Nobel prize along with Konrad Lorenz. His work in ethology has stood up over time, better than Lorenz's. In contrast, his work in autism was both idiotic and extremely harmful to autistics. The first part of this has been acknowledged. The second part really hasn't, though it has been written about by an autistic: http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=364&a=2179 . Tinbergen is surely not the only extremely accomplished person to have behaved totally stupidly and unethically when confronted by autism. That is the lesson to learn from him. Breland and Breland did not propose a pet theory about autism, which is greatly to their credit. Their article is so well-written and well-constructed that I could not read more than a few consecutive paragraphs without bursting out laughing.

Second point: Your favourite writer. Mark Twain is too sophisticated for me, but I can understand his shorter statements. My own favourite is what he said about Wagner: "He's not nearly as bad as he sounds."

That's my three rounds.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Edited by author 04-20-2004 03:20 PM
<peers in shyly>

Quick introduction: Aspie, wrote the article on holding "therapy" which Michelle just cited, wrote a book on the school experiences on children with AS/HFA, and work with "low-functioning" kids with autism on communication.

So this discussion is interesting to me for a number of reasons.

I get overloaded quickly by debates so I'll probably run away shortly, but I thought "The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists" was a beautiful piece of work.

Personally, I do believe that there are some tools originating within the wider field of applied behaviour analysis - such as incidental teaching - which can be very useful (when used ethically and wisely). But the dominant *ideology* of "behavior modification" (as articulated by Lovaas, Weintraub, et. al.) appalls me.

Edited by author 04-20-2004 05:24 PM
See that Clare there.....


I know her, I do.........


Hi Clare... thanks for coming in here.... do come in again ;)

And - re: ideology of Lovaas, etc - I agree with you. It IS the ideology that is so abhorrant. Which is precisely why - even though I have used things like DTL in my own teaching practice - I have problems with the ABA-salesforce.

Edited by author 04-21-2004 08:24 PM
Hi Michelle;

Thank you for the citations. I apologize again for the length. You gave me a lot to answer.

You said “I'm sad that you find autistics acting kind of just like we're human to be unusual.”

Not so, I was just sharing my enthusiasm for something I had not seen before. Remember, I am still learning myself. Thank you for your patience in this regard.

Depending on the program they may go out several times a day and certainly have some play time inside (structured or unstructured).

You said “You don't know what these kids are up to or whether it is because or in spite of you.”

But I can make a logical guess. Especially if I have taught them the basic steps of certain play skills. If this is what you would consider to be “in spite of”, then my students are welcome to do so.

You said “I guess also you disagree with Lovaas, who wrote, even quite recently, that you can't put autistics together. They will regress.”

I disagree with Lovaas in that regard. I have heard this before from children’s parents as well. Last semester I did an interesting little project when asked to do so by a teacher. She asked me to see if her students would learn from their autistics peers. I set up a sequence for three children who had all been through DT previously. Two high functioning and one low functioning. The “tutor”, was the “bright boy”, I taught the “ing”, endings to. Of course, previous research shows typical peers can be effective teachers for their classmates. If I remember correctly, the studies tell us that this is true if the teacher stays out of the interaction altogether and if the peers are somewhat extroverted. Although the students must be high functioning at the time…Interesting…..And this is behavioral research…..

Basically, I had a peer co-teach a discrete trial session with me. For the two high functioning children this produced better results than what I was getting singly. The low functioning student only did as good with the peer as when I taught singly. I used a mini, Alternating Treatments Design.

Of course, I was reminded by my supervisor that this also meant I had to switch to co-teaching for the remainder of the sessions for the two children because I had proven this to be the most effective teaching method for the two HF children. This was more work for my supervisor and me. She was also more radical than I am. Why do you suppose she was so concerned about ethics, she would definitely identify herself as a very radical behaviorist (her descriptor of choice).

You said “And regression is not an accurate way to describe how autistics change over time, regardless of its popularity.”

I will spend some time thinking carefully about what you and Amanda said.

You said “You dodged my concerns about choices.”

No, I gave a very general answer, to a very general question.

You said “I also don't see how you can take cognition (mostly invisible) into account when you're busy accumulating behavioural data.”

Multi-tasking, behaviorists are pros at it! Okay, just fooling around. To my understanding the thing that separates radical behaviorists from empirical and other types is that we are the only subtype (besides cognitive-behavioral) to give some explanations of covert behaviors. We address it as rule-governed-behavior and analog contingencies. Yes, we also make some inferences when addressing this. We have not abandoned it as others have incorrectly proposed. But we seldom deal with very young children of any sort in terms of cognition. For example if we know that a child is likely to be a strong visual learner (insert mentalisms here) we can add stimuli and prompts that are likely to cause/facilitate more learning.

We an also make comments and propose questions that are likely to increase/promote certain kinds of cognition. I use strategies like that on a nearly daily basis. Versions of Ellis’s rational emotive behavior therapy come to mind (really a cognitive strategy, but one that I like). Also there are certain cognitive strategies invented just by behaviorists. In the general field there are certain systematic desensitization strategies as well as acceptance and commitment therapy. These are not Skinnerian behaviorism concepts, but they are still radical behavioral concepts. Also performance management is thought based. The delay in the outcome, means that this would not work with a rat or pigeon but would work with a human. Covert behavior is a part of this. This is where a cognitivist would insert the term beliefs and I would talk about rule governance. Although, you are right I am not grounded in autistic cognition besides the fact that I look for logical patterns in many kinds of behavior including those I make inferences about.

Please consider the following carefully:

(Watson) “is probably responsible for the persistent myth of what has been called “behaviorisms counterfactual dogma.” And it is a myth. No reputable student of animal behavior has ever taken the position that the animal comes into the laboratory as a virtual tabula rasa.”

“If we are going to tell the whole story, we must deal with private events in our natural science.”
       -B.F. Skinner

When you speak of a blank slate or of not believing in cognition, you fail to account for Skinner and by extension, my own views. My concern is in the relationship between covert and overt behavior, not on assuming overt is based on covert.

I am not a major fan of social stories however. Although I grant that they have likely helped some children and are easy enough for classroom teachers to use with relatively little training. I am aware that they are related to TOM and Simon Baron-Cohen. I just finished critically reviewing some research on social stories. The authors used a reversal design which is a poor design for showing effects of teaching. The authors can not truly establish experimental control using such a design for that task. But that is just my analysis.

You said “I have a question. Why don't behaviourists care about what autistics say about why we hurt ourselves?”

I can not speak for all behaviorists. For myself, I will always listen, but that does not mean I will agree or generalize to another situation. I look at every situation and learner as unique. Behaviorism used like this is a powerful tool. Please see my next comment as well.

You said “I can pretty much figure the thoughts and emotions of your little kid hitting his head on the floor.”

You see…… even if I personally believe that, scientifically I reject that without more evidence. Even for myself, I reject making these inferences. I am your to convince on this, so fire away.

You said “without diminishing the autistic, however successfully.”

By FA? This technique certainly does not sum up a life or a learning history but it does give some ideas about what operants are going on, so to speak. Any limited analysis is in danger of this (or inference for that matter), but consider the purpose.

You said “Another question, which is, in behaviourist language, what is generalization? I don't mean how it looks; I mean, how does it happen? What's the mechanism? I honestly don't know, though of course I should.”

To my understanding we consider it phenomena. Failure to distinguish between related stimuli or an over distinguishing between related stimuli. This has been demonstrated in both animals and humans.

Yes, Dr. Wolf had his participants give feedback as part of social validity.

I believe you when you say you are rougher on cognitive scientists. Behaviorists are usually their own toughest critics and there are some notable bad feelings between certain sects of behaviorism. The JABA folks and the PBS folks come to mind. But also, the Lovaas and AVB folks. And the aversive vs. non aversive groups. I probably missed a few. We are our own worst critics. Perhaps that is as it should be. As you observed, Gresham is unapologetic in his critique of Lovaas, but he is a famous supporter of ABA in general. Why do you suppose that is?

I cite Tinbergen in the category of “talented people who say/do vacuous things.” Noam Chomsky, Steve Pinker, and John Broadus Watson also belong in that category.

You said “If you had carefully read the materials you found written by autistics, and considered their ramifications, you would either no longer be a behaviourist, or if you remained one, your descriptor of choice would be "ethical", not "radical", and you would not under any conditions quote Dr Malott except to point out that those who believe the world would be much, much better if everyone were like them should not be supported in their efforts.”

When I first “defected”, from cognitive to behavioral psychology (before I knew much about either) I couldn’t imagine anyone seriously opposing behaviorism anymore in this day and age. The internet “cured”, my of my naïveté. Though most of my friends and even the folks at the conference seemed to think Lovaas was the unchallenged winner of the autism teaching debate. So does Dr. Malott for that matter. They are unaware of the criticisms you have made or of the counter arguments I make for that matter. Undoubtedly some would think that this dialog is ridiculous and that I am silly for continuing it. This is not my position.

My alignment with radical behaviorism is one of science not faith. I have another religion for purposes of faith. “Ethical”, should be implied in my self label of radical behaviorism. It should not be seen as any different as say, a cognitivist. If it has been, than I know what area I should work on when I do get my Ph.D. While Dr. Malott and I disagree in many respects (including nearly everything he says about autism) we also agree in many areas. I am proud to support many of the things he says. Once again, no not his autism opinions. Incidentally, I also disagree with some of the things you write. This does not negate the value of your other points in my view, nor does it with Dr. Malott.

I still wrestle, but as not as often. For some side trivia, I have even heard of some autistics being good wrestlers.

Thanks

To Jim Dawson (reply to message 37). Thankyou for your reply. My guess is that you are in Australia (we are in the UK). I haven't replied earlier because of exhaustion and illness: it's very hard caring for my son who I love very much, but I seriously doubt my ability to keep going. I was re-reading Rita Jordan's book Autism with Severe Learning Disabilities and can't find any hope in it. She quotes a parent as saying they foresee their child's future as being in a benign prison and says, sadly, that's not too far from being the case.

That depends on what sort of hope you're looking for.

I know it can be extremely demanding looking after someone who has very high support needs.

But in my experience - working with kids and teenagers diagnosed with autism plus SLD (often plus "challenging behaviour") - there's usually a huge, HUGE amount that can be done to improve mutual understanding and communication, to give someone alternatives to self-injury or aggression, to reduce their stress levels, to provide an accessible and comprehensible environment, and so on.

Your son may always need a lot of support and assistance, but that doesn't mean that he can't have a good, interesting, meaningful life.

How old is your son? I don't give specific advice about anyone I haven't met, for obvious reasons (everyone's different, and what matters is what works for your son, not for other autistic people). But if you give some more information I may be able to suggest some books or UK resources that I (or parents or professionals I know) have found helpful.

By the way, I do think that Michelle's point in her original reply to Margaret (post 29) is extremely important.

Everyone communicates - at any rate, I have never met someone who doesn't. It may not be formal communication (e.g. using speech, sign, or symbols), and it may not always be intentional communication ("I will do this so that you will understand such-and-such and therefore ..."). But it *is* communication.

It may also be highly idiosyncratic and personalized - it may take observation and patience to learn that, for one person, gaze aversion means "I'm overloaded" while for another it may mean "I'm really interested in what you're doing and want to watch you with peripheral vision".

There are lots of reasons why it can be tremendously helpful to introduce a system of "formal" communication which that person can comfortably use and which is easily understood by those around them.

But beginning where they are, and learning as much as possible to "read" what they're already communicating, and respecting and acknowledging their terms - IMHO, that's a pretty crucial starting point.

Edited by author 04-22-2004 10:55 AM
Both Jim (who is in Australia) and I (Canada) wrote responses to Margaret. I have also read Dr Jordan's book and have respect for her. But I don't agree that any autistic is hopeless, and Maragaret correctly attributes the statement of hopelessness to a parent. I don't think this is Dr Jordan's view.

Many, many of us have been considered hopeless.

Thank you Clare, it is a pleasure to meet you. I do think that communication, recognizing and responding to it, is essential. I can say from experience how painful and frightening it is to communicate with all one's effort, and have this communication rejected because it is not "right".

Because of the new UK draft law about maximizing capacity, the group Autism and Computing put together a proposal for the relevant government officials. This has to do with providing tools and possibilities for autistics (often those no longer young, and labelled as "hopeless") to communicate, expressing their needs and abilities.

A&C included a short, informal case study of an autistic who would "present" like Margaret's son. "No" communication, severe learning difficulties, severe self-injury. However, this person was clearly able to communicate when assessed objectively. This person was provided with technologies which allowed the expression of choices when those choices were offered. Eventually, this person was able to control the presentation of a video documenting new accomplishments and abilities.

This would have not been possible except with the acceptance of the premise that this person could communicate and in fact had been communicating all along, and that this communication should be acknowledged and responded to.

The change in the "behaviour" of this autistic was described as remarkable. But this was no miracle. It was just that finally this autistic was recognized as a person able to communicate needs and preferences. When these needs and preferences were recognized as valid, abilities "emerged".

Hi John,

Thanks for your message, but your timing is a bit off. You picked an "inappropriate" time to explain to me that behaviourists reserve their strongest, or perhaps most strident, criticisms for each other. I have a great deal more proof than I wish I had that you are wrong.

Can I ask you a favour? This comment board is a public kind of thing, and you're writing lots of interesting things. It would help if you used terms that more people could easily understand. I can just about keep up with you, but I've studied the field and not all the readers here will have, though they could equally profit from your experiences and comments. Thanks.

Another favour, since I haven't got through my pile of PRT stuff, could you give me a study that uses autistic peers (I've seen non-autistic peers)?. Thanks.

I thought I had made it clear that I don't equate "effective" with "ethical". If the terms were interchangeable, then Lovaas' work with feminine boys (oh, they used peer stuff too, was effective) was ethical, since it surely was effective in the area of measured observed behaviour. It was a roaring success, actually. "Effective" as all get out. Technique was impeccable. Results indisputable. So a behaviourist determined to be very, very effective can qualify (apparently) as radical, but I would not equate this with ethical.

There has been writing about this in the area of ethics, about procedures or policies which seem effective and good. It is judged that these policies have also to be checked for their ethics (not, does it work, but, should we do it and what are the other consequences).

You seem to be telling me that this kind of examination is unnecessary, and the knowledge of those who could help in making ethical decisions is suspect or useless.

I wonder how far you would take that, that is, whose experiences you would be prepared to discount in favour of your observations about what a person is doing, and in your decisions about what that person should be doing.

What is your baseline, and how far do you extend it? How much are you willing to discard the possibility that behaviours may belong to behavers, and not to social (or other) reinforcers? Do you go as far as John Money? Dr Money went very, very far until he was denounced by one of his reported successes.

Re the (empirical) differences in autistic cognition, you are saying, so what? You are also saying that a person with the same kind of cognition as those you are working with cannot be helpful, since your duty is to your technique, or as Clare put it, to your ideology.

Re Dr Malott. I guess many things are matters of opinion. Some are not, not when they are stated by professionals in public, when those professionals have the means to act on these matters. I have another how-far-do-you-go question, which is, would you support Dr Malott if he expressed his wish that all those of your (for example) religion, or perhaps race, are horrifying and should not exist. Because I wouldn't, even if it was not my religion or my race. I would not say, jeez, but his technique is impeccable, and he does a great t-shirt.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Michelle wrote: "Both Jim (who is in Australia) and I (Canada) wrote responses to Margaret."

Yes, I saw, and hope I didn't seem to be ignoring (or pointlessly duplicating) your replies.

By the way, I wondered if you are familiar with the work of Melanie Nind and Dave Hewett? They've done some interesting work on developing interaction with people (autistic and non-autistic) considered "non-communicative" (not to mention "hopeless", "unreachable", etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. - including people with profound and multiple disabilities, and people who have survived decades of institutionalization), largely through "tuning in" and responding sensitively to signals previously not attended to or considered meaningless.

Not surprisingly, they've found that this enhances people's motivation to communicate, their ability to communicate intentionally (if they weren't already doing so), and to make use of whatever communication tools are available to them.

I wouldn't agree with them on everything (I don't agree with anyone on everything), but I do find their work unusually respectful and thoughtful.

Edited by author 04-22-2004 07:09 PM
Sorry Clare, I wasn't clear. Margaret combined my and Jim's names so I was just sorting us out with added geography.

I didn't know about Nind and Hewett. I did a quick jog around to get an idea what they do. I'll go look a bit more. I agree totally with the "not surprisingly" part.

Then there's the essential phrase "or considered meaningless." That's it exactly, isn't it. No one whose communication is considered meaningless is going to do very well. This is maybe a more useful way of stating that those assumed not to communicate will be unable to.

One thing that made me furious (back when, I've just remembered) was that scientists have found ways to elicit communication from "shut-in" stroke victims. Meanwhile, autistics get written off because our communication is "wrong".

Clare Sainsbury wrote, recently:

>Personally, I do believe that there are some tools
>originating within the wider field of applied behaviour
>analysis - such as incidental teaching - which can be very
>useful (when used ethically and wisely). But the dominant
>*ideology* of "behavior modification" (as articulated by
>Lovaas, Weintraub, et. al.) appalls me.

My opinion exactly.

I am the father of an autistic son.
I'm also Aspie myself.
Ten years ago, my son attended the preschool program of the May Center in Arlington, MA, which uses ABA teaching methodologies.

These teaching methodologies work beautifully for some autistic kids, to teach them to learn how to learn. They do so *precisely* because they leverage the children's specifically *autistic* strengths: good memory, attention to detail, attention to patterns and to the continuation and breakage of patterns. They also break cognitive steps down into units that can be tuned to match the children's cognitive and sensory bandwidth and attention span -- both at the outset and as they increase over time.

In Jeremy's case, this made a world of differnce: it made it possible for him to enter public school in kindergarten, in aide-assisted inclusion.

But I think the goal towards which so much autism-parent-driven ABA is geared -- that of rendering the child "indistinguishable from typical peers" -- is a dubious one at best.

I predict there will be a lot of business for psychotherapists in another ten to twenty years, as kids trained to be "indistinguishable" encounter one or another set of stressors in their lives that kick the legs out from under the behavioral structure they are trained into, to adopt a set of behaviors and perspectives that not only run contrary to the instincts and sensibilities they were born with, but which are presented to them in a manner which thoroughly devalues those instincts and sensibilities as inferior, worthless, meaningless. When it becomes too hard or stressful to maintain the facade of "indistinguishability", the implosion of their self-esteem may be catastrophic.

This needn't be.

I am not advocating doing nothing. That is an egregiously dishonest false dichotomy into which the parents and professionals who subscribe to the whole nine yards of "indistinguishability" as the goal of ABA teaching for autistic kids try to force anyone who disagrees with their dogma. Let me put the lie to that false dichotomy right here and now. If anything is "festering" (yo Lenny Schafer...) it is the dishonesty with which ABA is all too often oversold and misapplied. To its own detriment, I am convinced.

I think it is very necessary to teach our autistic kids all about NT social norms and how to engage in them sufficiently to effectively and harmoniously accomplish their personal goals in an overwhelmingly NT world.

But that is very different from teaching them that their own autistic instincts are bad, or inferior, or meaningless.

Two analogies:

When I visit the home office of my employer, I adhere to its dress code: I wear a suit and tie. I need to do so in order to work effectively within the established norms. But I do *not* wear a suit and tie when I am in my own office (which has a "business casual" dress code), and I don't even wear "business casual" when I am not at work -- much more comfortable in my well-worn jeans. Different rules for different contexts. No single set of rules is "better" than any other; each is appropriate for its own context. We should be teaching our autistic kids behavior that way; instead of over-application of a single set of rules, they just might learn how to navigate a more complex set of differing contexts by learning how to *detect* those contexts and then apply the rule-set that is valid for each.

This analogy is beautiful in another respect: I decide how much time I want to spend in a suit and tie, in business casual clothes, and in jeans based on *my* goals for operating in the contexts associated with each. If our kids crave down-time in which they can be flappy and stimmy, don't waste your energy and theirs attempting to totally extinguish that craving. Instead, teach them in *which* contexts that behavior will undermine their personal goals, and in which contexts that behavior is safe and harmless to their interests. And allow them *some* time and space in which the latter is the case, so they can recharge. I can tolerate several hours in a suit and tie if I know I can kick into my jeans when I get home.

The other analogy has to do with what we teach our kids about their innate autistic tendencies. I think we should teach behavior the way American business people are taught the language and social and cultural skills necessary to effectively do business in Japan. We don't train American business people to become indistinguishable from their Japanese hosts; that would be folly. We don't attempt to "cure" them of their Americanism. We don't reinforce implicit messages that their American ways are inferior or meaningless. We *do* teach them all about what the cultural and social expectations of their Japanese hosts will be, and how to effectively engage with those expectations in order to accomplish their business goals.

*That* is how we should be teaching NT behavior to our autistic kids.

It will prevent a lot of implosions of self-esteem and crashing and burning in late adolescence and young adulthood years down the pike.

I know because I have *been there and done that*. As my self-awareness began to kick in in late adolescence I started to try as hard as I could to be as "normal" as I could. I could never get to 100%. I always felt inadequate or lacking depth or resilience in comparison with the "normal" people around me. I became depressed, as so many Aspie young adults do. After gingerly skating around the edges of a nervous breakdown midway through college, I spent seventeen years in talking therapy of one kind or another for depression and dysthymia... until Jeremy was diagnosed, and we started reading about AS and realized that the profiles we were reading of AS described *my* developmental history. When I started to encounter other Aspies and auties, and realized how much I shared with them in terms of cognitive style, aesthetic sensibilities, sensory needs, and social preferences, I started to give myself permission not to try so damn hard to be "normal". And *that*, more than anything in seventeen years of therapy, helped heal my wounded self-esteem.

I don't want any kids on the spectrum to have to go through such an implosion and reconstruction of self-esteem.

And I think that the *way* we teach NT behavior, and the way we characterize autistic behavior as we teach, is a critical factor in that, and needs to be examined and rethought.

I think the drive towards "indistinguishability" as a goal bespeaks an inner conviction that society cannot be made to accommodate even harmless eccentricities in individual behavior, preferences, and social style. I think we need to challenge that assumption. I think that at a certain point, we need to decide that we have pushed for enough change in the individual, and that now we need to push for change in the individual's surrounding *social environment*, to accommodate the individual.

I think that autism is not just a disability issue. When the really significant disabling factors are overcome, the remaining eccentricities become a *diversity* issue.

If our workplaces and other social institutions have managed to come to terms with other forms of diversity -- racial, religious, ethnic, gender, physical-disability -- then surely they have the resiliency to come to terms with *neurological* diversity. Surely we can demand -- and succeed in obtaining -- accommodation for the harmless eccentricities and divergence in cognitive style, aesthetic sensibilities, sensory needs, and emotional repertoire that are part and parcel of our kids' identity as people on the autism spectrum.

And for that reason I think that we need to consider how to add another component to successful, state-of-the-art teaching/intervention for autistic kids: how to become effective self-advocates. How to live life proud to be autistic, and at the same time skilled in navigating an overwhelmingly NT world.

And *that* is what I think ABA-based teaching should be.
As I wrote almost ten years ago (http://www.autistics.org/library/pschwarz.html): I truly do not understand why more people are not capable of laying down their ideological battle-axes and joining me in the middle ground.

I still don't understand it.
And I welcome all who read this who find that they are ready to do so.
I'd like to work with those of you motivated to create ABA curricula that operate as I have described above, that teach our kids to navigate, not self-negate.

-- Phil Schwarz
Vice-President, Asperger's Association of New England (www.aane.org)
pschwarz@ix.netcom.com

Michelle wrote: " I agree totally with the "not surprisingly" part."

Exactly, and one of the things I like greatly about Nind and Hewett is that they are among the first to point out that much of what they're saying is in fact, looked at in the right way, completely bleedin' obvious.

They also seem to spend an unusual amount of time consciously reflecting on and discussing ethical and ideological issues in their work, which strikes me as a healthy sign.

Edited by author 04-23-2004 01:19 PM
I looked a little harder at Nind and Hewett. I do not totally agree with their "ideology"; I don't think that those who are finally allowed to communicate, having previously been ignored and often abused, then "learn" to be social, etc. That's insulting. They were never given a chance to be social, or to interact. They didn't have to "learn" this; they needed the terrible obstacles in the way of their being social removed.

Otherwise, I'm glad they exist and are doing what they're doing.

I disagree with Phil's idea that autistics have to learn how to learn. Nothing wrong with the way we learn, except that it isn't the way non-autistics learn.

If Phil means that we have to learn to learn like non-autistics learn, he is right, autistics have to learn this way of learning, which is called explicit learning. We are, like I note in the article, very bad at this way of learning, which is why we're assumed to need intensive interventions rather than plain education like non-autistics. We often fail terribly to learn things explicitly. This is where ABA comes in, and "teaches" us to learn "right".

On the other hand, there is more than one way of learning. If explicit learning (as in ABA) was all there is, there would be no splinter or savant abilities, and there would be no peaks of ability. Peaks of ability are characteristic of autism. So are savant and splinter abilities.

I have argued that our way of learning is okay also. It may even be very good. It is called implicit learning. It is how I learn; I am terrible at explicit learning and perform almost all tasks the "wrong" way. I can't take an explicit instruction and carry it out in front of someone. I can get the task done, I can often do it better than average, and sometimes better than most people, but I can't do it the "right" way.

In an ABA program, I would have been a "failure", even though I have the ability to learn. My ability to learn, in an ABA program, is "wrong". I'm not sure all or even most autistics have my extreme problems with explicit learning; but there is good evidence that our strengths are in implicit learning, which is discarded and "wrong" in an ABA program. The rather exuberant and unusual materials that enable implicit learning are also "wrong" in an ABA program.

I agree that some tasks may have to be taught explicitly, and in autism, because we're lousy at explicit learning, this may mean applied behaviour strategies (breaking tasks down, being consistent). And some autistics are better at explicit learning than others, or more willing to discard what they have learned implicitly. But to say that autistics must dedicate ourselves to learning to learn the "right" way is not, in my books, okay.

I spent more than three decades rejecting my own differences and trying with all my effort to be the right kind of person. This is not a real life. And I flunked anyway. Then I didn't get help in the sense Phil did. Instead, I used the law to try to establish if the kind of person I really am is allowed to exist and work in this society. That question is still open.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Michelle wrote: "I don't think that those who are finally allowed to communicate, having previously been ignored and often abused, then "learn" to be social, etc. That's insulting. They were never given a chance to be social, or to interact."

But if you haven't ever had a chance to do/experience something, it's very hard to learn how to (or practise if you have managed to learn).

When it comes to communication, for example, it's very hard to learn to deliberately communicate specific messages if there's no-one able (or willing) to receive or respond to your signals.

I do see the point you're making, but personally, I don't object to the idea of "learning" (which is very much *not* the same as passively being "taught") in this context.

I've encountered people for whom the very idea of sending a signal and having it be received and responded to is news, a discovery, something they haven't previously ever had the opportunity to learn or develop. And that's often because their existing signals have previously been misunderstood, not noticed, or deliberately ignored.

But when they have an environment which provides those opportunities, their communicative abilities can emerge and expand.

And this is something that Nind and Hewett do acknowledge in various places - that the issue is of changing the evironment around someone to make it responsive, e.g.:

"It is for those people whose signals we do not understand and whom we may have difficulty in perceiving as being social and communicative."

"... they may have been giving us all sorts of signals in their view, but we have not been watching sensitively enough to pick them up."

"We now take the view that whatever a person does is likely to be meaningful to that person; it may simply be the case that sometimes we are not able to share that meaning and understand it."

"... much of the responsibility for a person being socially remote lies with the rest of us, particularly those of us who are near the person every day. It may be our failure to be sensitive enough to that person's needs and understandings, to picture the world from his/her point of view, and particularly our failure to allow ourselves gradually to learn how to interact effectively with that individual, which is the most powerful factor in the withdrawal."

(all quotes from "Access to Communication", 1994).

As I said, there are things I'd disagree with them on. But they may be closer to your perspective than you think.

By the way, I'd be really interested to know your thoughts about the best materials for supporting implicit learning.

Edited by author 04-23-2004 08:27 PM
Thanks; those quotes are very helpful. I was working with a much more limited view of Nind and Hewett's work. The specific idea I dislike is that the work of therapists results in there now being social interest in autistics (or others) in whom it previously was absent.

Some of your quotes are reassuring; they show an understanding of the true source and nature of the apparent absence of social interest.

I agree wholeheartedly (that is an understatement) that autistics sometimes or even often are given no opportunity to succeed at communicating and the whole show becomes inaccessible and foreign to us. Yes, I am quite familiar with that one.

I simply am not sure that social interaction results from "teaching" social interaction, instead of just from the person finally having the means and opportunity to show that they are social. I'm showing my biases here, since I think autistic ways of being social are valid, and don't have entirely to be replaced with non-autistic ways of being social.

Nobody has studied implicit learning in autism.

We do learn from materials just because they are there. I am guessing but both the kind and quantity of materials are important (basing this on some science, some observation, some experience).

I wrote back somewhere in the pile about a young boy who made rainbows; he had access to materials of various colours and noticed the relationships between the colours. This ability was encouraged by providing more materials he could work on this idea with. The "repetitive" behaviour was not extinguished but encouraged, on the grounds that it represented learning. In this case, the quantity of materials was important also; this boy was extracting from many examples perfect sequences of colours.

There are materials which are just attractive to autistics, since reliable information can be absorbed from them (clocks, maps, calendars, dictionaries and some other books, trains, musical instruments, computers). But reliability can also be established through quantity of one particular material, or through properties and configurations (shapes, colours, volumes, textures).

Implicit learning also sits around and doesn't do anything until necessity strikes. Necessity may be someone posing a question (not necessarily in language) which engages what the autistic has learned. You can see this in some IQ tests, where very young autistics with few other apparent skills can easily do some of the tasks (which they were never taught).

I think the property or properties of the materials is more important than "appropriateness" of developmental level of the materials. But kids are going to learn different ways within implicit learning, just as there are great variations within explicit learning.

The most important factor in implicit learning takes us back to Nind and Hewett to some extent: you have to notice what the autistic is noticing (this anyway is a kind of communication); responding to this by providing information or materials to allow futher learning at various levels is necessary. I'd call it "reciprocity". You kind of have to be there.

Michelle wrote, "I simply am not sure that social interaction results from "teaching" social interaction,"

In fact, I'd say it's one of the areas where a directive "teaching" approach can actually prevent genuine interaction.

On the other hand, I do think there is a great deal that a communicative partner can do, not to "teach", but to *enable* - by providing means and opportunities, responding in a way which supports someone's communicative abilities, etc.

And I completely share your biases on this topic.

"responding to this by providing information or materials to allow futher learning at various levels is necessary."

I'm going to see if I can mention Vygotsky here before David does! <g>

I think his idea of "scaffolding" may be very useful here - the idea that you facilitate someone's learning not by taking over and directing it, but by providing the right supports/tools/information/encouragement/expansion at the right moments: "scaffolding" their own learning process.

Re: materials for implicit learning, I've always wondered why no-one seems to have researched the Montessori materials as tools for autistic spectrum children (my personal bias: I found them wonderful as a small child).

If you haven't come across them, they're beautifully-made materials designed to allow a child to explore concepts (shape, size, number, order, categorization, geometrical, mathematical) in a sensory and concrete way, through solitary, repetitive exploration.

When reading Montessori's writings, I was absolutely fascinated to find that she describes in great detail this sort of solitary, self-chosen, "repetitive" exploration of materials as a developmental *necessity* for all children at particular stages of learning. And the materials are designed as tools to support this.

Fascinating, given that this is the exact behaviour that's so often treated as "pathological" or non-functional when displayed by autistic children!

Probably not coincidentally, Montessori began working in education with institutionalized "retarded" children (some of whom were probably autistic), before going on to see if the same tools could be valuable for NT children too.

Phil's thing is now here:

http://www.autistics.org/library/anotherparent.html

>I'm going to see if I can mention Vygotsky here before David does! <g> (Clare Sainsbury)

Y'see... youz wimmen.... tae bloody fast fer me..... (to be read, thinking of how Billy Connolly would say it)

Again, Clare....

["... much of the responsibility for a person being socially remote lies with the rest of us, particularly those of us who are near the person every day.]

Absolutely. We're all in this world together, actually.

[It may be our failure to be sensitive enough to that person's needs and understandings, to picture the world from his/her point of view, and particularly our failure to allow ourselves gradually to learn how to interact effectively with that individual, which is the most powerful factor in the withdrawal."]

Yes. This has been my point over the past 6 or 7 years that I've known Clare and that I've been studying psychology. I see precious little (if any at all) of this attitude from those who have been disparaging Michelle of late; and I know I'll come in for the same shit myself; but I'm ready for them.

[(all quotes from "Access to Communication", 1994).]

Would be interested in getting a copy of this text.
David

Clare yet again.

"Fascinating, given that this is the exact behaviour that's so often treated as "pathological" or non-functional when displayed by autistic children!"

Much of clinical psychology, as I keep saying, is purely an applied fundamental attribution error.

Not much else one needs to say on that one, is there?

Hi Michelle,

First I need to make a self correction. In my original post I stated that Lovaas’s data were not the best ever achieved (I claimed 63%). This was based on a figure I heard when I was first learning about autism. Unfortunately, after a lengthy search I have found no peer reviewed article that supports that. This nullifies the statistic in my view. I suspect it comes form some program somewhere that reported its findings in something besides a peer reviewed journal. My apologies to yourself and to all other viewers of this board.

I have been mostly critical as of late. I will write about my agreements in my next post.

I will be happy to adjust my terminology.

I am sorry, I can not give you any autistic peer articles. Those do not exist to my knowledge. My example was merely a case study. Although, this is a special interest of mine. I hope this research of this sort goes up in the future. And I also wish (If it did any good) that you could have spent time with other autistics as a child.

If you have time; How is the PRT (Koegel) stuff going.

And for my part I do not equate effectiveness with “radical.” Although, I repeat my statement; ethical should be implied in radical behaviorist as much as it is implied in cognitivist. We can both cite poor examples in each category. Also, technical effectiveness and “impeccable”, are relative to the cultural times. Reker’s study failed long term on both of these accounts. That includes reviews from his peers.

You said “It is judged that these policies have also to be checked for their ethics (not, does it work, but, should we do it and what are the other consequences).”

Amen……..

You said “You seem to be telling me that this kind of examination is unnecessary, and the knowledge of those who could help in making ethical decisions is suspect or useless”

No, I said in another post that “their contributions (autistics) have already proved valuable.” But scientists are doing their job when we are skeptical. This takes us from false truths and the land of pseudoscience/antiscience to real science. I reserve the right to be deeply skeptical of any context especially subjective ones applied to other subjective ones. I welcome alternative scientific thoughts though and from what I have seen, you do as well. I also greatly distinguish between listening, considering, and coming to the same conclusion. Part of being ethical means I must both listen and consider. Agreement is another matter,

You said “I wonder how far you would take that, that is, whose experiences you would be prepared to discount in favour of your observations about what a person is doing, and in your decisions about what that person should be doing.”

This would depend on the individual situation. I have never believed in the concept of one size fits all (This includes early intervention). Said more simply, “If I didn’t believe your views were important I would not contribute to this site.”

You said “How much are you willing to discard the possibility that behaviours may belong to behavers, and not to social (or other) reinforcers? Do you go as far as John Money? Dr Money went very, very far until he was denounced by one of his reported successes.”

Define belong……..

I do not appreciate the works of John Money who was not a behaviorist anyway. I have read “As Nature Made Him”, as have you. I consider that work to be one of the influences in my ethical view. Money was displaced by Goldiamond, who did not denounce him, but presented better scientific evidence (including some persons Money failed to help). Goldiamond had too much class to denounce anyone. I find his professionalism admirable.

You said “You are also saying that a person with the same kind of cognition as those you are working with cannot be helpful, since your duty is to your technique, or as Clare put it, to your ideology.”

I do consider differences. This includes cognitive differences. But I consider those secondary to individual differences. Every student has a quasi-unique genetic makeup and learning history. These individual operants are more important to me. You seem to me, to be on the edge of making a genetic dogmatic error. Do autistic traits always exist in every individual? Why or why not? What about cognitive differences between one child with autism and another? Why do those exist?

You said “would you support Dr Malott if he expressed his wish that all those of your (for example) religion, or perhaps race, are horrifying and should not exist.”
 
No, nor do I supports this view with autistics.

Maybe I should explain that Dr. Malott is a novice in the autism field. . He has less practical experience than I do and freely admits that. I suppose his opinions right now are more of reaction and discovery than of clinical enlightenment.

One more thing. It doesn’t bother me whether behaviorists are actually are own worst critics or not. The important thing to me is that we remain highly critical of our own work.

I got into a little verbal argument today with a grad student over whether we should suppress self-stim. I said no, and he said yes. He felt that a child he had worked with who is now in a higher, non behavioral program is practically being abused because he now self-stims a lot. I just finished a skills check list scale on this child. He has more skills than ever, which I attribute to generalization. Seems like he is doing just fine to me. I do not know what purpose the self-stim serves for him. He came to this new program and his self-stim went up, but another boy’s self-stim went down in this same program Both are high functioning and very verbal.

Why does this happen? I repeat, individual differences are critical. This also makes my view different from the grad student’s. The grad student, despite being very intelligent, failed to consider if it is actually necessary to decrease that behavior, and what function it may fulfill.

About John Money, I read this:

http://www.infocirc.org/rollston.htm

Absolutely unprofessional and, to my mind, sick, this man.

Michelle wrote, " I wonder how far you would take that, that is, whose experiences you would be prepared to discount in favour of your observations about what a person is doing, and in your decisions about what that person should be doing."

This is a particularly interesting issue to me.

I do think there's a great value in systematic observations, and something like ABC charts can be valuable in so far as they force people to put aside any assumptions or theories and simply *look* at what's happening (although I wholeheartedly agree with Michelle that trying to categorize the results into 4 categories is ridiculously crude).

For example, I once volunteered to do ABC observations on the "challenging" classroom behaviour of a boy I was working with.

After doing that, I was able to show that while a small amount of his challenging behaviour seemed to occur when he was very excited, the great majority fell into a particular pattern, which went like this (and I saw it and recorded it repeated again and again and again):

The class would be listening to the teacher talking at a quite complex level (bear in mind that this is a boy with high energy, minimal speech at that point, and limited auditory comprehension, much less than most of his classmates).

After a certain amount of time without any activity he could engage in, he would start vocalizing and touching the arm of a teacher or assistant. Invariably, they would shush him and direct him to sit quietly and pay attention.

Then, a few moments later, he would pinch them, and/or kick at their legs. And they would exclaim in pain, leap to their feet, he would have people telling him not to pinch, might be removed from the circle of children, etc. etc. etc. During all of which, he'd be alert and clearly engaged.

Very obvious analysis: this was a child who was bored and frustrated (entirely reasonably given that he was being expected to sit through lessons which were totally unsuited to his needs). And he had a genuine desire to interact and engage with people.

But the environment was (unintentionally) doing its best to extinguish his positive and developmentally-appropriate attempts to initiate interaction (vocalizing and touching someone's arm), and teaching him that the only effective way to get any sort of interaction was to lash out.

Now, I'd definitely had some hunches about this before I started the charts (for example, I'd already noticed that he loved "big" reactions, and loved interaction but didn't seem to distinguish much between positive and negative responses). But I'd certainly not expected to see this particular pattern so clearly and dramatically.

And it was enormously helpful to be able to talk to the teachers and show them this pattern in black and white so that they could see what was going on (which they hadn't been able to do while in the thick of it). He was being completely reasonable - they were the ones creating the situation.

(And because they were generally smart and well-intentioned, they were able to recognize that, and make changes accordingly).

So yes, I think those tools of observation and analysis can be invaluable.

But I also know that I draw strongly on my own experiences, and on the experiences on other autistic spectrum people who I've spoken to and whose work I've read, in my work.

Intuition and recognition play a big role in shaping what I try and how I respond, even as observation (informal and formal) provides me with feedback and guidance as to whether or not something is useful for the particular person I'm with.

And I'm extremely wary of any crude dichotomy between "scientific, objective" observation and "personal, subjective, unscientific" first-hand experience.

I'm not even sure that you can have purely objective observation - just picking out what you think are the salient elements to record imposes a perspective. I got asked by this school to do observations a lot precisely because they found that I often spotted things that other people didn't see.

For example, at one point in a classroom situation, one of the teachers wondered aloud why a particular child had his hands over his ears. And I replied, without thinking, "Oh, because [other child's name] bumped into him at the schedule board."

To me, that was the obvious antecedent, and I guessed from my own knowledge that either the unexpected physical contact had overloaded this child in general (so he was trying to cut down on input by covering his ears), or he was unsure which sense the input had come in on.

But that is a factor that someone else might not even have noticed or recorded.

First-hand experience isn't ever enough to provide a complete guide, because people on the spectrum vary so much: for example, I've met people whose sensory issues are diametrically opposite to mine, hypo- where I'm hyper-sensitive and vice versa. There are people with language issues that I've never personally experienced. I always have to be willing to watch, and pay attention, and *learn*.

But.

As I hope I've made very clear, I don't think first-hand experience can be discarded either.

And when it comes to decisions about "what someone should be doing", and to the broader ethical/political issues of what the goals should be in educating children on the spectrum - that is where first-hand experiences absolutely MUST be heard (and, judging by the responses to "The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists", there are a lot of people who really don't want to hear them).

John wrote, " The grad student, despite being very intelligent, failed to consider if it is actually necessary to decrease that behavior, and what function it may fulfill."

But the whole idea that stimming may have a positive function, and not preclude learning (or even assist learning in some cases), is a pretty new one in the field.

Your grad student's response is hardly surprising, given that most of the textbooks on behavioural "intervention" with autism I've seen firmly state (on the basis of a few very small scale studies dating from the 60s, which now seems to be being superseded or re-interpreted) that self-stimming is "proven" to interfere with learning and "needs" to be suppressed.

Apparently research evidence is now showing this to be far from true - but people weren't able to start looking for that contradictory evidence until they were willing to consider the possibility that stimming might be more than a meaningless "behavioural excess".

Feeling very depressed just now, so am not really up to posting much, and this may last a few days or longer, I don't know.

Talk to you all soon.

Edited by author 04-25-2004 02:48 PM
Re discounting experiences, I can add to Clare's example that an autistic in an incomprehensible or even painful situation may seek a reliable response. Mostly when we speak or act we're responded to arbitrarily according to what everyone else has decided we are saying or doing. In a state of confusion we may require a reliable response, and one of the few available is how people respond to someone who has lashed out. Speaking from both experience and observation here.

I'll keep going on this theme in my response to John, which I hope to get to shortly.

But I'd really like to know, and probably I've asked before, why autistic gestures and movements were singled out, among all other available human gestures and movements, as being useless and wrong. This alone should cast doubt on the concept of "objectivity". And if there really has been a change in this area, why is the inaccurate and misleading term "self-stim" still used?

Re Montessori, there is a specific Montessori autism school, here it is http://www.torontomontessorischoolforautism.com. You can see they do ABA. I think in Ontario, you don't have much choice any more. Clare, can you tell me what you think of this? I mostly agree about the materials; they are beautiful and "reliable". Where I might differ is the idea that certain materials go with certain ages, which might not be true in autism. Another difference is that I think you can also use, for some kids, great quantities of cheap materials in order to cater to various needs and interests.

Re Vygotsky, can someone tell me (David, we need you) how he would have coped with kids who are better (faster, innovative, just more capable) than their instructors in some areas. Also, what happens if the child to be instructed has a different "culture" than the ambient one? And can someone tell me if the "scaffolding" has to come from social interaction with a person, or is allowed to take place from the materials provided by the person? Vygotsky doesn't account for those who don't think in words, so far as I can tell, though being generally clueless in this area, I stand to be corrected.

Hi Michelle....

"Re Vygotsky, can someone tell me (David, we need you) how he would have coped with kids who are better (faster, innovative, just more capable) than their instructors in some areas."

It feels weird to be needed. I an so fucking not used to it. I think, but I can't be sure, that Vygotsky would have loved the idea. The main thing in his theory is that the child learns in a social context which, naturally includes whoever that child is with. There is a saying that if you want to learn something properly, you have to teach it. And I have seen this, both in personal life and in academic life.

"Also, what happens if the child to be instructed has a different "culture" than the ambient one?"

That would be interesting. In Vygotsky's work, the emphasis seems to be NOT on the social teaching of people, regardless of culture, but the fact that knowledge is socially constructed between the participants in the process. In that sense, the adult/teacher-rôled-person would be in as much of a position to learn as the kid is.

"And can someone tell me if the "scaffolding" has to come from social interaction with a person, or is allowed to take place from the materials provided by the person?"

Interesting point, and we have to remember that his work was not complete: he died of TB before his big research project was completed. So, given the issue was never really researched. Therefore I can't give a definitive answer to that. What I can say is that, whilst learning is said (in the Vygotskyan framework) to happen in a social context, its actual process depends on the starting points of the people involved. So, to answer your question, it could just as easily be either, according to how the child best learns.

"Vygotsky doesn't account for those who don't think in words, so far as I can tell, though being generally clueless in this area, I stand to be corrected."

This is a problem in his work for me also, in that he didn't get chance to explore this notion. As far as I can tell, his theory was based partly on the idea that what Piaget called egocentric speech was infact what the kid did to internalise the instruction sequence for performing any particular task.

I'd do more but I am tired and depressed and need to die soon.

Hi John,

The 63% does exist somewhere. I believe that's where they did no intake measures.

Re criticisms of behaviourists by behaviourists, they don't have lots of choices; in autism, they don't know any other fields. So they must criticize each other. They do also criticize easy targets (FC, Secretin) in obvious ways.

Re John Money, I know he is not a behaviourist. But he is an example of what happens when "objectivity" fails utterly at every level. The consequences are severe. And I disagree with you, John, that the argument was academic, a fight among professionals. John Money was denounced by his "client". We who are treated also exist, and as more than reports and data, however imperfectly "subjective" we are.

As to behaviour belonging to the behaver, I'll use for clarity left-handedness. Left-handedness is treatable, with about the same apparent "success" rate as autism. Brain imaging shows significant functional differences between lefties and righties. There are also significant differences in function between "corrected" lefties and righties, even though the correction was far in the past, and the behaviour appears "indistinguishable".

Now let's get "subjective" experience in here. I worked for a very long time in an environment where important parts of the equipment used were not adapted for lefties. Everyone had to be able to use all the equipment, so it was all made for righties.

This had to result in significant differences between how lefties and righties work. The only other choice would have been either to hire all righties, or to oblige lefties to become righties.

I'm a righty. I knew all the lefties in this situation over a long time and in various different locations and not one chose to become a rightie in order to work like everyone else. They all worked differently, and these differences were visible and striking.

Now, when a new person came in, if she was a lefty, I would not have been able to train her. I couldn't properly imagine and simulate the way a lefty would work. Lefties were trained by lefties. They every one of them worked differently from righties, even though there was of course individual variation among lefties, and individual variation among righties. But you could walk into that workplace and see there were two ways to do this work.

In this case, being objective (this is the right way to work) would be wrong and very hard on lefties, who would have to "convert" or leave. Being subjective (this is how lefties have figured out how to use this equipment) was effective and allowed the lefties to work.

That's the simplest example I can come up with.

If I understand properly, you're saying, re Rekers (and it was not just Rekers; it was Rekers, Lovaas, Green, Rosen, Low, Bentler, etc) it was just too bad, and we should not learn from it. And if we really screw up with autism, that will be just too bad too. And I suppose we will not learn from this either. We must stay within the parameters of objectivity. That would be your "objectivity".

Also, if I understand properly, you're saying that autistics really have nothing in common. You're claiming the position Lovaas has taken, where individual behaviours are analyzed and treated as individual behaviours and nothing else. This was the rationale behind treating the Rett's girls. This rationale has been a scientifically-proven failure. I used the example of a blind boy, apart from the Rett's girls, in my article to show that the nature of the person to whom the behaviours belong may have some importance. This is not being subjective.

By saying that there are only individual differences among autistics, you're denying all the science outside your own field. That is not objectivity, it is absence of same. That's your privilege, but it's your loss, and I can't believe it helps your clients, any more than it would help blind kids to have their central differences (however variable within that difference) ignored. I can say from experience that blindness has an effect on most aspects of apparent behaviour, even though all blind people don't act exactly the same.

Re Dr Malott again, you ignored the second part of my question, which was the important one. To what extent are you willing to bestow credibility on a person so thoroughly violating principles of science and ethics? I've read a lot of Dr Malott's writings about autism, some of which are posted very officially on major sites, and nowhere does he let on he does not have a clue about autism. In fact, he presents himself as an authority. Sorry John, but that's inexcusable and dangerous, and says a great deal about how this person works and how his work should be regarded.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Michelle wrote, "In a state of confusion we may require a reliable response, and one of the few available is how people respond to someone who has lashed out. Speaking from both experience and observation here."

A big YES from me here (also from both experience and observation).

And that's one of the areas where I think some tools from ABA can sometimes be useful - in ensuring that other people are consistent and respond in reliable and predictable ways.

But for me, the importance of that is in allowing the autistic person to take control and discover that they can get these predictable reactions without having to kick people - making humans more like materials for learning, really.

Whereas the standard ABA ideological assumption seems to be that the adult should direct and control the interaction.

"Re Montessori, there is a specific Montessori autism school, here it is www.torontomontessorischoolforautism.com . You can see they do ABA."

Yes, I came across that site a while back and thought it seemed like a very contradictory combination, since their ABA approach seems to be entirely a DTT one. Which really doesn't seem compatible with the Montessori emphasis on children's right to independence and child-directed learning.

Maybe other approaches from the broader field of behaviour analysis, like incidental teaching or natural language approaches, *might* be more compatible, but certainly not generic-Lovaas-style-ABA.

(I've already had an argument with David in another context about whether incidental teaching can be counted as ABA at all - but it was invented by Todd Risley, among other people, so it certainly originates within the ABA field, even if it looks amazingly similar to what people with completely different theoretical backgrounds are doing).

"Where I might differ is the idea that certain materials go with certain ages, which might not be true in autism. Another differences is that I think you can also use, for some kids, great quantities of cheap materials in order to cater to various needs and interests."

Agreed and agreed.

But I think the Montessori materials are a good example of how intellectual concepts can be explored in a solitary, sensory way, and how self-directed learning can be facilitated. And a fascinating example of a context in which this sort of learning is actually accepted as positive.

One thing I admire absolutely about autistics is our apparent ability to be clear and helpful and generous regardless of our own circumstances and our constant experiences of rejection and futility. Thanks David.

Hi Clare,

Good examples. I would have missed that reason why the student covered his ears. Your personal experience is a tool for you. This is one more piece of good evidence why the views of those on the autism spectrum should be paid attention to.

But here is a question: Do you know why the student covered his ears, or do you logically suspect? Is that suspicion adequate to make recommendations? Is there a time you want something more than logical inferences when making a decision?

Here’s what I think in general, about subjective vs. objective. The line between subjective and objective can be thin. That said, objective seems vastly preferable when making a decision about an important educational issue. Objective means an observer must take the time to really focus on what is currently happening. They must collect data, preferably simultaneously with another person, whose data can then be compared. I have found it ironic how often I and others are wrong about a behavior when we sit down and collect the data. Techniques exist to help facilitate this process. When these are used it forces observers to more than go through the motions. It seems to me that personal experience is valuable in lending a guess as to why something occurs. Based on that, we can better recognize what to look for in our assessments.

Many techniques exist for conducting functional assessments. ABC charts, scatterplots, and true functional analysis. They all have their respective strengths and weaknesses. I use a type of ABC analysis most commonly (but a more technical form). I am also reasonably familiar with functional analysis. It is true that just 4 permanent categories would be crude. I just finished critiquing a functional analysis research article two days ago. I know from this that functional analysis can have many conditions of varying types. But because it requires a considerable knowledge of ABA it is usually done poorly if at all. Even PhD professional behaviorists regularly get this all confused. This is not a simple analysis, but darn hard stuff to learn correctly, let alone master.

The four (or whatever) categories should be used when we have a pretty good idea what is going on already and are trying to pin it down. We can conversely use this technique when we have no idea hat is going on. For example, maybe I can guess what is happening with an autistic child and for a child with ADHD. But maybe I have no clue for a child with borderline personality disorder. Beginning with observation then functional analysis, I may come to identify, more or less what is happening. The burden of proof is seeing if a change occurs between the different phases. The possibility exists that I may see no change. Then I have to sit down and re-think what is going on.

If we were really clever we would use a series of functional analyses to pin point what is going on. Preference and avoidance assessment are helpful in this way as well.

But all this takes time and energy. Functional assessment is a tool, whose usefulness or accuracy is based on how it is used.

Let me further explain. I also remember a case very similar to yours. A preschooler when he came to group with his schoolmates would scream and cry. I thought this had to do with the fact that immediately prior to this he had free-time, which was for him, highly preferred. We did not force him to come. We noticed that he would go back and continue to play with whatever he had been doing previously. I think we were guilty of a double escape contingency called, the sick social cycle e.g. (he has access to his toys, we tell him to come to group, he cries, and he has access to his toys again). So the staff and the student were reinforced. No more crying for us, and he gets to leave group.

I watched this behavior occur only occasionally at the start of the year when staff were more insistent, to every day by the end of the year. Now I don’t really know if this escape contingency is what caused the increase, but I can guess. And based on that guess I can set up a functional analysis.

I do not take the position that all behavior is communication; I do think all behavior has a function and a logic. Whether I can pick out that logic is the question I want to know.

I think you more or less were correct on the self-stim portion. I might add though, that in a direct teaching circumstance, self-stim may interfere with learning. I have seen children hand flap and not follow directions. I suppose that it is hard for most young children to engage in sounds and arm movements and focus on what is going on. The reverse is also true. This is why a decrease in self-stim is often observed as children learn and use language. The research is there. The behaviors are somewhat incompatible. I see a child who stims so much that are not learning than I will focus on teaching language and other interaction skills. That debate on self-stim is not new, and goes back to the 60’s and Dr. Risely’s experiments if I remember correctly.

Most people stim to some extent, albeit for different reasons. Self-stim is not proven to interfere with learning, but it may. Just like a child with conduct disorder jumping out of his seat during a math lesson may not interfere with his learning, but may. Our questions are how often does this happen and why?

I agree with your last statement, but where is that shown? To my knowledge you must extrapolate from other research like the AGRE.

Also, there is no such thing as a meaningless behavioral excess. All behavior has logic. Our question always remains; “does it matter one way or the other?”

re: message 165

Thank you, Michelle, that meant a lot to me.

Recommended reading: http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?r...4:24:370080:OPINION

"Where I might differ is the idea that certain materials go with certain ages, which might not be true in autism. Another differences is that I think you can also use, for some kids, great quantities of cheap materials in order to cater to various needs and interests."

This is why I don't like Piaget. He would, on the basis of his very dodgy theory (described by someone as "untenable"), say that materials do indeed go with ages. I would say that Vygotsky would have disagreed somewhat. For Vygotsky, the important determinant of what comes next was the child's zone of proximal development. His view was a very child centred one, so he is very under-represented in theoretical debates on autism, since most folk seem to want us to imitate the "normal"; personally, if "normal" is to wage war on a sovereign nation under a grossly false pretext, then - sorry, but I'd rather be dead than normal any bloody day.

Michelle wrote: "But I'd really like to know, and probably I've asked before, why autistic gestures and movements were singled out, among all other available human gestures and movements, as being useless and wrong. "

Assuming that was not a rhetorical question, it's what I think of as the Procrustean ideology: the belief that non-NT people are simply an arbitrary bundle of "behavioural excesses" and "behavioural deficits", and if you just chop off the bits that stick out, and stretch out the bits that are too short, then we'll be "normal" ...

(Procrustes, in Greek mythology, was of course enormously successful in getting people to fit his guest bed by this process - although they did end up somewhat mutilated as a result ....).

I don't think behavioural theory per se inevitably leads to this ideology, but it has certainly dominated the field of "ABA interventions for autism".

John wrote, "But here is a question: Do you know why the student covered his ears, or do you logically suspect? Is that suspicion adequate to make recommendations?"

No - one isolated observation shaped by personal experience is not sufficient to make recommendations, any more than one isolated behavioural observation is!

As it happened, I wasn't formally observing that child at the time. But if I had been, I would certainly have ensured that I kept my eyes open and did not miss further instances where sensory issues might have been affecting his actions.

And I would certainly have cited my own experiences in my report as an example to explain how bumping into someone could be connected with a child's covering their ears.

"That said, objective seems vastly preferable when making a decision about an important educational issue."

Objectivity is something to aspire to, although I'm not sure it's something anyone can honestly claim they attain.

As I've pointed out, even "objective" records of behaviour such as ABC charts are shaped by what the observer does or does not notice or perceive as salient.

And to me, objectivity involves considering *all* the available evidence. Arbitrarily excluding a certain type of evidence (autobiographical) from either general understanding of autism or attempts to understand a particular child or adult strikes me as extremely bad science, and very far from objective.

I think it's also important to acknowledge that moment-to-moment interaction with someone can very rarely be guided by purely "objective" assessment - imagine:

"OK, you're tugging on the doorhandle. Let me stop the lesson, fill in ABC charts for 3 weeks, do a formal analysis, then I'll know what this means and decide how to respond."

In the very-short-term, our responses have to be shaped by our understanding (both of autism and of the particular person we are working with), interpretations and past experiences.

Which is far from infallible in anyone's case, which is why systematic observations can be one useful tool - one part of the necessary feedback on whether those responses are in fact correct or helpful.

Another vital part of that feedback, needless to say, is listening to that individual's own indications (verbal or not) about what any behaviour means to them!

But pretending that any teacher can operate on a basis of pure scientific objectivity moment-to-moment is dangerously naive.

Anyone who maintains the belief that they are or can be 100% objective thereby tends to guarantee that they're anything but.

"I agree with your last statement, but where is that shown? To my knowledge you must extrapolate from other research like the AGRE. "

Sorry, you've lost me. AGRE? The only one I can find is the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange. And which last statement are you referring to?

"I think you more or less were correct on the self-stim portion. I might add though, that in a direct teaching circumstance, self-stim may interfere with learning. "

First of all, you're assuming that "self-stim" is a homogenous category, as opposed to a label covering everything from unusual physical mannerisms to forms of play or learning that NTs disapprove of.

(Side-note: in "Teaching Individuals with Developmental Delays", Lovaas goes into the most extraordinary contortions trying to explain why autistic forms of 'self-stimulation' are bad, whereas NT behaviour which is apparently equally 'self-stimulatory' in nature is fine and good. Towards the end of the chapter, he acknowledges that professional golf can be seen as a type of stimming, but that it's okay because people get paid for it).

But I'd say the key issue here is that of the interpretations being placed on the data.

As I understand it, this whole claim originated with a few studies showing that if you present an instruction to a child while they are absorbed in a physical stim, they will respond more slowly.

Well, yeah. If I presented an instruction to a child absorbed in reading a book (or any other interesting activity), I'm sure they'd respond more slowly too.

Similarly, if you had a population of children who were denied any lessons they could understand or opportunities to interact, but allowed them access to books, I'm sure you'd find they spent much of their time reading.

If you suddenly started providing them with interesting opportunities to learn or enjoyable opportunities to interact, you'd expect that the proportion of time spent reading would decrease as the time spent on other activities increased.

However, no-one would look at this data and conclude that "books interfere with learning" or that "book behaviour must be suppressed before a child can learn" ("NO! Book down!").

If a child was found reading a novel during a maths lesson, we might interpret that they are not paying attention and might find it reasonable to redirect their attention to the lesson - and, hopefully, deduce that they are finding the lesson boring and that it should be made more interesting for them. But we would not see novel-reading itself as pathological (in fact, we might see it as extremely desirable in many other contexts).

And we would also understand and accept that other forms of "book behaviour" during the lesson - for example, looking at the maths textbook, or taking notes - might actually not only be compatible with paying attention but play a vital role in facilitating learning.

At any rate, I don't imagine that we would spend a quarter of a century lecturing and writing on how "book behaviour" is a bizarre, abnormal, pathological behaviour that prevents children from developing and must be suppressed.

(Personally, I too have seen children hand-flap and not follow directions. I have also seen children hand-flap and follow directions. And I've seen children not hand-flap and not follow directions. I also tend to think that there's a lot more to learning than just following directions, but that's me ...)

Hi Michelle,

I’ll get back to you on your recent post.

First I want to talk about some agreements and other interesting things I have seen in the last week.

I visited a preschool boy in his DT program while he was having play time the other day. He has become very social compared to last spring. He asked to play tag and so we ran around a bit. A little girl who is brand new to the program was also there. She is non verbal and in general seems to have less skills than most of our students. She has been having a hard time with transitions especially from a preferred to non-preferred activity.

I noticed that she was watching us. I thought maybe she wanted to join in, but I had never seen her take interest in others like this. So she continued to watch us. She eventually came and stood by us while still watching us. I thought maybe she is just wanted to watch closer. Because, I thought if she wanted to play she would just do what most of our kids would do and jump in. I finally figured out that she wanted to play but wanted us to invite her. Her presence and looking at us may have served as the request “Can I play?” When we invited her, her smile and the fact that she already knew how to play were evidence that she did want to play.

This was a person specific form of communication. She had been trying to get my attention. But I did a poor job recognizing that. I think this is akin to what you referred to in your rainbow example. Another interesting question is “how has that behavior been reacted to in the past by parents and other child care givers.”

My second narrative: I just finished giving an autism rating scale to about 14 pre-school students. There is one four year old who went through DT and is now quite high functioning. He has made some impressive progress in verbal behavior. I noticed that he has begun to make generalized language errors in an age typical way e.g. (it hurted the dog, we goed there, we see deers). Those were all real examples that I can remember. I have seen this before in other children who came through a DT program. I am curious, have you seen this as well?

My third narrative: I have another student who loves to rough house, and play chase games. He also has what we call delayed echoic speech. He repeats whole paragraphs of lines from various TV shows. He makes a strong case for implicit learning, although I would consider this modeling and model reinforcement. This is ironic because his teacher considers him an extrinsic learner big time. Anyway we were on the playground when another HF boy ran up and joined us. This second boy is also rapidly acquiring skills but is not as high functioning as my TV show quoting friend yet. The first boy told me “you have to catch me”, and ran off, the second boy did the same without saying those words. Eventually the first boy had to go back inside. I sat down for a while. The second boy who is only beginning to speak in full sentences ran up and said “you have to catch me.” The only example he had for this, is the one time the other boy said it. Interesting…… Maybe modeling maybe implicit…..

Edited by author 04-26-2004 11:19 PM
I think Clare's treatment of "self-stim" is easily the most comprehensive and concise I've read. I could add very little apart from agreement, applause, etc. Perhaps it could be pointed out (I'm trying to adopt very objective language) that odd/repetitive movements can be directly, in some cases, connected with perception and perceptual needs (eg, as a way to manage or switch modalities).

Also, when I spoke with Dr Lovaas, he had progressed to accepting non-lucrative self-stim in non-autistics. He came to this by observing the behaviour of motorists stranded in traffic: they fiddle, they pick their nose (he said). Just bringing everyone up to date.

Re objective/subjective, how can one be objective when one does not have access to most of the information involved? This is the situation of non-autistics toward autistics. This is in the science.

Impartiality, necessary to objectivity, does not mean not taking a side. It means considering everything. Autistics are well-equipped for impartiality: you also can find this in the science. Non-autistics, at the most basic levels of perception, are influenced by many things that don't actually exist, and miss many things that actually do.

Hi John,

Thanks, those are all interesting observations.

Do you make any effort to find out, once you have decided on preferred/non-preferred activities re a client, what it is in these activities which is preferred? I'm unsure about this.

Autistics can, without prompting, extract enough information from a non-arbitrary situation to comprehend it. Doesn't matter whether the situation is social/non-social, or familiar/novel: what matters is the non-arbitrariness. But whether we're able to communicate this comprehension is, you've noticed, up to you.

Re age-typical language, oh my--generative grammar!!! Congratulations! Your kids have come down with a serious case of Pinker.

I have to restrain myself here from using experience, since I've had interesting language problems.

Instead, here's something I saw in a Sally Rogers presentation (in fact the first I ever saw, and that was recently). Dr Rogers extensively uses DTT. She was asked a question she couldn't answer, but I could. I had to stay quiet since her introduction made it clear that autistics were not supposed to be in the audience. In any case, she was asked about an autistic kid who had weird word order. He said, my bicycle green; and, my cat white. Dr Rogers had no explanation.

I practically yelled, the kid's a latent francophone! Dr Rogers didn't consider the kind of information an autistic might pick up in a society where he is surrounded by a language different from his own.

Michelle Dawson
naacanada

Hi Michelle,

"Instead, here's something I saw in a Sally Rogers presentation (in fact the first I ever saw, and that was recently). Dr Rogers extensively uses DTT. She was asked a question she couldn't answer, but I could."

And don't it make you feel good when you can answer questions that professionals can't....

"I had to stay quiet since her introduction made it clear that autistics were not supposed to be in the audience."

So, her philosophy is that we're only there to be treated, not consulted with? Who does she think she is? I don't like her already...

"In any case, she was asked about an autistic kid who had weird word order. He said, my bicycle green; and, my cat white. Dr Rogers had no explanation."

And what comes next is interesting..... but if this is Dr Sally Rogers, "National Academy of Sciences Committee Member, Education of Children with Autism 1999-2001", then I would have expected better...

"I practically yelled, the kid's a latent francophone! Dr Rogers didn't consider the kind of information an autistic might pick up in a society where he is surrounded by a language different from his own."

Which is deplorable behaviour for someone who considers herself a scientist.

Edited by author 04-27-2004 12:54 AM
From a Sally Rogers interview (http://www.abaforum.dk/artikler/2003/sally_rogers.php):

"What is your opinion about Ole Ivar Lovaas’ study and the replication sites?

I think that Lovaas’s group have provided the best studies of the method, and we have now two replications of his work (Lovaas, 1987; Smith et al., 2000; Eikeseth et al., 2002). And I think that all the Lovaas studies consistently show that children who received the treatment did better than the comparison groups. The degree of improvement varies from study to study, and only one of those has randomized assignment to groups. And it hasn’t been compared to any other specific method, so we don’t have comparative data, but I feel that it’s established that children who receive that treatment do better than those who receive minimal treatment.

However, those treatments were developed in the 60’s, and there’s been quite a bit of modernization of Applied Behavior Analysis since Dr Lovaas developed that technique, and my guess is that the more modern approaches to ABA may be even more effective than the mass trial approach that he used, but it hasn’t been studied in the same way. It’s been studied in small studies."

Apparently, this one's involved in the MIND Institute....

AND.... if this Sally Rogers is the same one....
"2001 Rogers SJ, "L'intervention precoce dans l'autisme: de la recherche a la pratique." Le Bulletin Scientifique de l'Arapi, 7, 29-34" And she couldn't spot a latent francophone? (I'm not sure that she would have employed a translator for that text).

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Somethings in Clare's post I'd be interested on commenting on.

>"John wrote, "But here is a question: Do you know why the student covered his ears, or do you logically suspect? Is that suspicion adequate to make recommendations?"

No - one isolated observation shaped by personal experience is not sufficient to make recommendations, any more than one isolated behavioural observation is!"

Indeed not, but often this is what happens in the so-called objective observational method... the behaviour is interpreted by the observer in accordance with his/her own experience and understanding. Objective observation is, in other words, very rarely possible.

"As it happened, I wasn't formally observing that child at the time. But if I had been, I would certainly have ensured that I kept my eyes open and did not miss further instances where sensory issues might have been affecting his actions."

Yes.

"And I would certainly have cited my own experiences in my report as an example to explain how bumping into someone could be connected with a child's covering their ears."

Yes, I would say so too... and I would advise that people should look for sources of discomfort in the kid's environment and aim to reduce their impact.

">"That said, objective seems vastly preferable when making a decision about an important educational issue."

Objectivity is something to aspire to, although I'm not sure it's something anyone can honestly claim they attain."

There is actually no absolute proof that it is the most preferable way to work: sometimes in science, people have gone away from pure objective observation and gone into what may be best described as "instinct"... they follow a hunch, regardless of the known "facts" about something. This is definitely true in physics (one of my starting disciplines, along with archaeology and mathematics), and I suspect that it happens a lot more in psychology than people dare to admit.

"As I've pointed out, even "objective" records of behaviour such as ABC charts are shaped by what the observer does or does not notice or perceive as salient."

Exactly... and in that way it is not actually objective. In the same way that sensory input is not perceived in any objective way (which is why - when dealing with chronic back pain, for example - one cannot have a single objective scale for it: it is a purely subjective experience based on how the client is able to experience it; no talking about "observing pain behaviours" and "reducing pain behaviours" and going ahead to reduce the behaviours associated with pain is going to actually make the pain go away... it is more likely to do harm than good, since it will teach the person in pain how NOT to express that pain, and the fact of the pain will go un-noticed thereafter... this is why behaviourism basically sucks.

"And to me, objectivity involves considering *all* the available evidence. Arbitrarily excluding a certain type of evidence (autobiographical) from either general understanding of autism or attempts to understand a particular child or adult strikes me as extremely bad science, and very far from objective."

It IS "extremely bad science": this is why I use the Lewinian equation so much to explain why people do what they do. People don't like it because the equation includes THEIR part of the responsibility for people's behaviour, and this goes against whatever it is that helps them stay comfortable. Fact is, we all form a system of behaving organisms and we are all interconnected because we perceive and observe each other and what each other is doing. My one-time professor, Järvilehto, had this idea that what we see as individual behaviour is in fact the result of the behaviour of this organism-environment system, and it actually makes sense (e