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Tania Melnyczuk Profile picture
@ekverstania
Aug 2, 2022 • 98 tweets • 19 min read • Read on X
Poppycock from the infamous friend of Ivar Lovaas, Ron Leaf:
"Even Positive Behavior Support guidelines included the use of strong aversives under some circumstances (Brown et al., 2008)..."
"...and Electric Convulsive Therapy (ECT) is often the recommended intervention with severe depression (The UK ECT Review Group, 2003)."

Dude, they put those people under GENERAL ANAESTHESIA so it won't hurt. It's not an aversive. Are you THAT obtuse?
"While research has demonstrated the effectiveness of punishment-based procedures in reducing the likelihood of similar behavior occurring (adaptive or aberrant),..."
"...many have associated punishment, more generally, with occasioning undesired side effects (Lerman & Vorndran, 2002; Risley, 1968). In their extensive review of basic and applied findings related to punishment, Lerman and Vorndran (2002) noted..."
"…that textbooks and literature reviews commonly discuss aggression, escape behavior, and emotional reactions among these side effects."

NO SH**, SHERLOCK! When you hurt people, they sometimes fight back or run away or get miserable. But you needed researchers to tell you this?
"However, Lerman and Vorndran also noted that applied research has demonstrated a variety of desirable effects from the use of punishment-based procedures."

Oh, like when sadists hurt people, they feel better?
"Nonetheless, the possibility of side effects is likely a reason some autism rights and neurodiversity activists have expressed opposition to the use of any punishment-based procedures."

Oh yes, maybe that's one reason! Good guess, Ron! I won't pepper-spray you this time.
"Based upon the literature, there is some validity to concerns with the use of punishment-based procedures for autistics/individuals diagnosed with ASD."
"That is, if punishment-based procedures have been documented to result in undesired side effects, there may be cause for concern with the use of those punishment-based procedures within the same conditions."
Right, so if the punishment produced a result that was not your intent, then it's a side-effect, but if it changes the behaviour the way you planned, then it's fine? Got it. Oh, and tracking the effects of punishment clinically, as though it's 'treatment', is important?
Dear reader, I make extensive use of sarcasm throughout this thread, so don't expect sarcasm indicators. If I say something outrageous, it's probably sarcasm; if the quoted text seems outrageous, though, it's because this guy actually IS outrageously callous.
Ron leaf continues, "However, as Lerman and Vorndran (2002) noted, “The prevalence of these side effects is unknown, however, because relatively few studies have directly examined the effects of punishment on unpunished behavior in clinical settings” (p. 454)."
Now get this: "As such, to fully evaluate concerns of the use of punishment-based procedures for autistics/individuals diagnosed with ASD, more research is necessary."

Translation: They want to do more experiments involving punishment, violating the CRPD. un.org/development/de…
Actually, you're not allowed to do this type of research...
...but, y'know, when it's disabled children in the US, where they haven't ratified this human rights treaty, then it's probably OK to do a few experiments using torture or whatever, right? If they complain, we'll just call it a 'side effect'.
By the way, you know this Lerman person he keeps on quoting? She's a punishment expert. And because she's a punishment expert, of course she's on the ABAI panel to decide whether shocking people at the Judge Rotenberg Center is a good idea or not.
Because, y'know, there really hasn't been enough research on torturing disabled people yet, so you need experts to think about it for a while and maybe come up with some more experiments that... oh, woopsie daisy, there's that CRPD violation again, shucks. un.org/development/de…
Maybe also a violation of this international treaty... wma.net/policies-post/…
And this one... ohchr.org/en/instruments…
"ABA-based interventions should work toward empowering and enhancing options rather than achieving conformity."

That sounds nice, especially coming from you, Ron! So you're gonna only do consent-based ABA now? THAT would be empowering.
Like, maybe you need to learn a bit about consent from... I dunno, ANYONE who knows a bit more about it than you do. How about the kink industry, perhaps?

Ron Leaf quotes Jo Ram, a disillusioned BCBA, who writes, “Extinction (including planned ignoring) goes against what all the research is showing us about child and human development. Extinction doesn’t care about trauma, in fact it can cause trauma.” neuroclastic.com/i-am-a-disillu…
Ron Leaf adds his own critique, viz., "Ram did not expand on how extinction is at odds with research on child and human development, making it difficult to further examine this claim."
Now, this is completely unscientific, of course, because it is not formal research, but maybe look at all the testimonies in the replies and quote retweets here:
As if this actually needs pointing out! But because behaviourism is designed to kill your intuition and your natural understanding of right and wrong and compassion and justice and common sense, Ron Leaf needs some experiments to show that doing this harms loving relationships.
I offer you my completely unscientific anecdotal tweet, based on instinct and uncalibrated personal observation—and the replies and quote retweets, in which people recount the heartache they suffer to this day because of planned ignoring by their parents when they were little.
Another one of my completely anecdotal tweets, based on instinct and uncalibrated personal observation. Oh, this also got a lot of painful stories, as did the rest of the thread:
More anecdotal nonsense from me! More heartbroken responses. All about planned ignoring, not only by parents, but also by people in authority over many years. But who knows whether planned ignoring is really a problem to people's wellbeing?
More planned ignoring! It's part of our culture! It's an international institution. Who knows whether it's bad to gaslight people? Has anyone ever done any research? We probably should do some research to prove a negative... or something.

Anyway, I am rambling now, and I should probably wrap this up for today.

So, just a bit more from Ron Leaf, ABA specialist at The Autism Partnership:
"While awaiting the results of more research on punishment and extinction, an approach behavior analysts might take to help address any confusion and concerns is to have meaningful discussions with stakeholders and autistics/individuals diagnosed with ASD."

(We're 'confused'.)
"These discussions may benefit from including a behavior analytic conceptualization of punishment (i.e., a functional relationship) and how that contrasts with traditional conceptualizations of punishment."

Do you need me to translate?
This is where they say that if you're an ABA professional and you get flak from disabled people because you torture humans, you should 'splain to the auties how ABA makes it legit to do things which would otherwise be bad, and how punishment can be good for healthy relationships.
Enough of this nonsense for now. If you like, you can go and read the rest of Ron Leaf's excuses for doing things to disabled people without their consent. Maybe I'll write a PS sometime. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
PS:

While Ron Leaf and the rest of the 'experts' spend another lifetime ablesplaining and writing papers and musing about whether torture is good for us or not, Americans with more of a natural sense of good and evil can take action against torture here:

Now my addenda.

First of all, I shouldn't have credited Ron Leaf with this pompous piece of academic bogroll, because he's not the first-listed author. I should have said JUSTIN Leaf et al.

Blame it on my ADD...

youtube.com/clip/Ugkx9VCWc…
Next, I went and shared the paper with some BCBAs and asked them to explain about the punishment, as the authors suggest.
Their responses upon reading the paper included, "What, is this 1955 or 2022?!"
My 'reviewer' group included ABA professionals (mostly BCBAs), autistic people, and autistic ABA professionals. I didn't ask people to declare in which group they fall (some did say in their responses, though). So some of the following comments may be from any of these.
One person zoomed in on this statement in the paper:

"It is also important to note that all of the authors [of the paper] support neurodiversity, promote acceptance and accommodation..."

Having met both Leafs, they were like, no, dudes you're not neurodiversity-friendly AT ALL.
But lemme give you some text from the Web site of Ron Leaf's The Autism Partnership, so that you can judge for yourself whether this sounds like the neurodiversity paradigm to you. (Justin is connected to the 'charity' arm of the organisation, The Autism Partnership Foundation.)
"Autism is a severe disruption of the normal developmental processes that occurs in the first three years of life..."
"It leads to impaired language, play, cognitive, social and adaptive functioning, causing children to fall farther and farther behind their peers as they grow older..."
"The cause is unknown, but evidence points to physiological causes such as neurological abnormalities in certain areas of the brain."

Source:
autismpartnership.com/about-autism
I dunno, that doesn't sound like 'neurodiversity' framing to me, what do you think?
Now let's look at another part of the site, the part where they talk about recovering children from autism.

They mention how their organisation was founded on the successes of Lovaas (as I mentioned, Leaf worked directly with Lovaas), as an outcome of a follow-up study.
They say that seven of the nine children in their study were classified as Best Outcome and also referred to as “recovered”.
They say, "Many people disagree with using the term “recovery” in reference to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This is partly due to a lack of belief that children can actually progress to a level of functioning where they become indistinguishable from peers."
For those who don't know, this phrase, "indistinguishable from their peers," was first used by schoolteachers to describe the children 'successfully' transmogrified in the earlier Lovaas study (where children were subjected to ABA for every waking hour over a long period).
More about the Autism Partnership and their beliefs around 'recovering' children from autism using ABA: autismpartnership.com/recovery-autism
So, given that Ron and Justin Leaf say those things about autism and recovery, and given that they are among the authors of that study, would you say that all the authors support the idea of neurodiversity?

Well, let's test this. This essay by Nick Walker is widely accepted as a seminal artefact defining what is meant by the 'neurodiversity paradigm'.

Do the beliefs of Leaf et al. match this?

neuroqueer.com/throw-away-the…
Now, whether or we like Nick or agree with Nick is of no consequence here; the fact is, this piece of writing is key to our understanding of neurodiversity and the neurodiversity movement.

Do Leaf et al. support this?
If I learned anything from my three years of critical analysis, studying English literature as a scholarship student at the University of Stellenbosch, then (unless all these texts were intended as fiction), the answer is...
So, what's happening here, then?

It's this... (rabbithole):

They're using Words We Like to try to disarm our criticism, because our relentless criticism is at last starting to hurt their industry.
This is what it's about (another rabbithole):

These are some of the most hardcore ABA guys out there, and to survive, they suddenly have to pretend like they're actually quite tame and open-minded.

One of my 'reviewers' pointed out that the authors appear to have used an academic trick here to elevate themselves above the 'neurodiversity activists':
To build their own argument, they make frequent use of academic citations which support their point, and call for more research into their own areas of priority.
To explain the neurodiversity activists' perspective, they mainly reference blog posts and other non-academic sources, apparently to undermine the credibility and the number of citations of autistic academics.
Whilst recognising that the criticism exists, they want to show that it's subjective (and by implication less valid), while their own perspectives are clinically objective.
This links to one of the core beliefs of hardcore ABA, namely that what YOU think you feel doesn't matter. It's your behaviour that matters, and a behaviour analyst is therefore a better judge of what you need than you are. You are whatever they measure.

When it comes to stimming, the authors of the paper basically says this:
"You may say stimming performs a regulatory function for you, but we don't look at it that way. It's our duty to prepare you for the real world where stimming, unfortunately, is not acceptable, and people who don't stim get accepted more and get ahead in life." (My paraphrase.)
"Therefore, while you have no choice, in your own best interest, we'll train you to the point where your stimming is minimised or eliminated, but because we don't want to force you to conform, you can choose whether or not you want to use this skill after we're done with you."
I wish I didn't have to explain why this is an ABJECTLY ATROCIOUS way to teach children how to navigate an ableist environment, AND a dreadful way of perpetuating the ableism while you as an established 'autism expert' could have spent your efforts on advocacy for acceptance!
Masking for safety (including suppressing stims) is important in some communities where there is grave risk of ableist abuse, and if it's going to be taught for that, the learner MUST know that what they're learning is specifically a self-defense tactic.
A tactic is something one uses in a SITUATION, like, "I see the bullies approaching, there's nowhere to run, let's try to not do anything that might catch their attention and hope they'll just pass by."
You're not supposed to have to live like that every friggin' day.

Yet some people ARE forced to live like that every friggin' day because the people who are "preparing them for the real world" actually agree with the bullies.
Context matters.

Uh, for those who don't know, 'masking' (or camouflaging) means pretending to be less autistic or pretending to not be autistic. (I support the OTHER 'masking', namely wearing facemasks to prevent diseases from spreading.)

What I have noticed from my engagement over the years with 'lower-ranking' ABA professionals, is that there are some who want to do better in helping autistic people, they just need help getting beyond their ableism and indoctrination.

This can't be said for the guys at the top.
The top guys don't care what the **** you feel, as long as their prestige, income and cult beliefs remain dominant.
So if ABA survivors, other autistic people, survivors' parents and therapists sympathetic to human rights ALL make a noise loud enough to disturb the perpetrators' power, these ABA leaders will try to grab our words and diffuse them into their own narrative to confuse our cause.
And that's what's happening right now. The 'ABA controversy' is starting to feature more regularly in mainstream media, beyond the disability community. The JRC is in the news more often. The bill to #StopTheShock is with the Senate now.
So sooner or later someone in government or some other place of power is going to say, how could this have gone on for so long? Why are taxpayers paying for this fermented cesspool of claptrap? Who are the ringleaders of this child abuse cult, and what's in it for them?
This is like when you were the chief Komissar in some awful regime and you see sympathies turning towards the Resistance and now you want to pretend that you're suddenly woke so that you survive the change of dispensation with your pride and pension and sense of legacy intact.
The public have a short attention span. But recently, one theme has started to gain more awareness in mainstream media: #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs.

This is the message that the public needs to hear about ABA.
They don't need much detail.
What they DO need to know that the 'us' are often the most disabled people among us.
That's why we have to MASSIVELY share the words of nonspeaking autistic people.

Nonspeakers are the ones the ABA industry are trying to hold onto while they pretend to have common ground with the rest of us.
The Lancet Commission on the future of care and clinical research in autism is ALL about denying the agency of nonspeaking people and preserving ABA.

These people are trying to hold onto their turf by every means possible.
Don't forget, ABA is a multibillion dollar industry. ABAI has a full on business development ORGANISATION to get ABA into new markets. These people strategise about this stuff.

Nonspeaking autistic people with high support needs are their excuse for every abuse: "Ah, but you're high-functioning, you don't understand! Parents are at the end of their tether! We must do this for the severe cases, it's the only way!"
Rubbish.
#ListenToNonspeakers.

You don't even have to read that long thread if you don't want to. It's for people who are prepared to go deep in this battle.
What you do need to know is the lengths Jason Travers and the rest of the ABA cult leaders are prepared to go to, to harm nonspeaking autistic people, in their effort to hold onto their stolen turf.
When the world out there starts to realise that with individualised AAC, nonspeaking autistic people are nearly all capable of communicating in full, rich sentences and paragraphs, but that they are being actively PREVENTED from doing so by a US taxpayer-funded industry, then...
Then...
Where do you think taxpayers will want that money chanelled instead of to an industry that keeps vulnerable people imprisoned and won't even allow them to communicate life-saving medical information to a doctor?
This has very little to do with Elon Musk, Hannah Gadsby, Anthony Hopkins or most other autistic celebrities, so don't argue for people's right to freedom from abuse by sharing stories of fame and fortune achieved by autistic people who never had ABA and who 'pass' in public.
It's about the millions of autistic people who are at risk of having their rights denied forever while Leaf et al. play academic mindgames with words like 'neurodiversity' and encourage further research on the benefits of punishment.

#ListenToNonspeakers

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More from @ekverstania

Tania Melnyczuk Profile picture
Apr 20
What these people are advocating is child abuse. I know the way they put it doesn't sound bad, but this is about a very controlled, clinically callous form of manipulation. I'll drop some more links below so you can understand the context.
What they're advocating is based on the principles of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA). Here's what that's about:

autisticstrategies.net/nonspeaking-au…
Someone who refers to behaviour as 'attention-seeking' is highly likely to negatively judge people who need, deserve and ask for attention—like this:
Read 9 tweets
Tania Melnyczuk Profile picture
Feb 17
[THREAD]
Why is it so hard for people in the field of ABA to improve the field, even with the support of autistic activists? One of the reasons is this:
Powerful people in the industry will try to destroy you for listening to autistic people, for trying to do a job compassionately, and for calling out the abuse.
I'm going to ask Jennilee Sunshine, a BCBA, whether I might tell her story here verbatim. It's already public on Facebook.
Read 57 tweets
Tania Melnyczuk Profile picture
Nov 17, 2023
Vladimir Putin's standard modus operandi is to make agreements and then demonstrate his power by breaking them with impunity.
Any suggestion that Ukraine should negotiate a settlement with Russia is borne either out of ignorance of this long track record, or out of ill logic, naïvete and stupidity (like, "I know, but I'm sure it won't happen again") or straight-up support for Russia.
Ukraine must WIN this war. Its allies are wasting time, money and lives, and strategic opportunities by holding back the support that's needed for victory. Ukraine has more than proven itself to be deserving.
Read 17 tweets
Tania Melnyczuk Profile picture
Jul 13, 2023
[THREAD] Request to
#BCBA
#BehaviorTwitter #BehaviorAnalyst #BehaviorAnalysis

Content warning: ABA, child abuse

The following account was posted in an ABA survivor group. I have permission to share it to ask what this person can do to stop the abuse.

1/x
"I have step kids that are currently in the custody of their maternal grandparents. Dcf is involved and put the youngest in ABA (I have no say in her care as of now, and neither do her parents)."

2/x
"When I was over at their house most recently, I heard her crying and went to go see what was going on, her ABA therapists pulled me aside and told me we were now ignoring her when she cries until she calms herself down and uses a happy voice."

3/x
Read 8 tweets
Tania Melnyczuk Profile picture
Jul 11, 2023
LOOOOK! #BanABA #ABAisAbuse

I downloaded the draft resolution. If I get the final one, I'll tweet the contents. It's just three pages. https://t.co/KwFH0eiyps
They're withdrawing support for ABA, did you see that? The American Medical Association are withdrawing support for Applied Behaviour Analysis!
Going to quote from the draft version now:
Read 68 tweets
Tania Melnyczuk Profile picture
Jun 5, 2023
In contexts other than ABA, the process which behaviour analysts call 'pairing and/or developing rapport' is called 'grooming'.
Does anyone perhaps have a terminology map that explains ABA terms (such as "creating a positive reinforcement inventory") in a way that would help someone familiar with grooming better understand the rationale behind the steps in ABA?
inhope.org/EN/articles/th…
What I have so far is some rough notes. Please feel free to point out mistakes.
Read 38 tweets

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