Hi Larry,
 
Most research, even the best Multiple Baseline Design or the tightest Solomon four group design will have some flaws. Even a novice can spot them. Imagine what a Frank Gresham could do. I could no doubt find some flaws in L-Carnosine research if I looked. Also a blind, control-grouped study may be totally inappropriate to your specific independent variable. This design logic makes sense in medicinal research and is depending on how it is actually used, a very strong design.

You wrote “Show me an ABA study with even a control group...”

(Lovaas, 1987; Smith, Groen, & Wynn, 2000; Eikseth, Smith, & Jahr, 2002) to name a few. All being discrete-trial research having control groups and quasi-random or random assignment.

Since the majority of ABA autism research is published in behaviorist journals which typically encourage single subject designs as opposed to group design logic, we see much more research occurring in this sort of format. This method is no less accurate provided it is done with a design logic that shows experimental control. The various virtues of the two design types are discussed elsewhere so I will not go into it here.

This is a very, very short list of single subject ABA research including some PRT and Incidental teaching, since you said “ABA”.

(Grindle, & Remington, 2002; Sigafoos, & Saggers, 1995; Newman, Needelman, & Reinecke, 2002; Woods, 1987; Koegel, & Carter, 2003; Weiss, & Harris, 2001; Kok, Kong, & Tan, 2002)

Also, this is some research where DTT is directly compared to other ABA methods.
 
(Delprato, 2001; Miranda-Linne, & Melin 1992; Charlop-Christy, &Carpenter, 2000)

I restricted this to peer reviewed journals and only used DTT, PRT, and Incidental Teaching. And even then I didn’t even try to put in everything. Just to give you a rough idea on ABA’s research base, a student I know just completed a review of all research articles in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (perhaps ABA’s flagship journal). She found over 900 studies. Many of these include persons with developmental disabilities including autism. And this is only one journal…

In case anyone's puzzled about where two-thirds (messages 257 to 700-and-some), of this comment board went, ask my boss...there was a glitch. He's working on it. Apologies all 'round.

According to the QT Webmaster, due to data error in this thread messages 257 to 725 cannot be restored to this board. We do have copies of all messages posted here, so no one's contributions have been lost. We'll make these publicly available as soon as possible.

For further discussion in this thread, please refer to: http://www.quicktopic.com/27/H/vJvhV4fDnBgw7

Edited by author 07-03-2004 01:48 AM
After losing most of this board to a QT computer glitch, the good news is we've entirely restored messages 461 through 725 (to be published shortly).

Now I'm hoping that one of our "digest" subscribers will help fill in the blanks, namely the personal edits in messages 258 to 460 (which are not delivered to those who receive individual emails - such as myself).

If anyone has digest versions which include the above messages, please email me directly at nexus23@sentex.net

Many thanks.

Ralph Smith
naacanada

One of our subscribers very helpfully pointed out that digest versions do not include message numbers, only dates. So here's a second request to subscribers in this discussion board: if you happen to have digest copies of messages posted here between May 4 and May 19, 2004, I'd be very glad to hear from you. Please email me directly at: nexus23@sentex.net

And yet again, the current discussion board for "The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists" is here: http://www.quicktopic.com/27/H/vJvhV4fDnBgw7