Ooo, look, there's a new book by the ABA industry. "Ethical Applied Behavior Analysis Models for Individuals Impacted by Autism".
I've never considered myself 'impacted' by being autistic. Have you?
I've bought it. Arrives end of month. Will review then. One notes this charming snip in a chapter made available via academic search engines. 'Organism' is such an interesting word, in the context of describing how ABA teams think of our loved autistic children. It worked on organisms, must be OK for autistic children...

Poll for autistic ppl.
PECS: Team want a child to give them a picture-card to say what they want.
If they do this, they get a reward, e.g. candy, cookie. If they do not give the 'correct' card, no reward.
e.g.
Do you approve of PECS?
Do share/comment. Not research. Personal page.
This is an informal community poll, in which we discuss things of interest or concern.
. is another site that may be useful.autisticslt.com/pecs-aba#:~:te…

Oh dear.
So, the research on 'intensive intervention' for autistic children ? No evidence of it working.

Countless thousands of autistic children whose young lives were just endless exhausting 'intensive therapy'.

And for nothing, it seems.jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap… Up again with this illustration that I created.
How many people got very, very rich from peddling this seemingly evidence-free stuff?

Occasionally I delve into the Ancient Texts about autism.
Today, a rummage in "Autism & Asperger Syndrome" (1991, so more than 30 yrs old). I won't name the famous writers, but their chapters in this are still being quoted in the current stuff.
First.../ ...one famous chapter-writer tells us of the allegedly horrifying social stuff they wish to stop us doing:
Brace yourselves...
A child who wanted to sit in a different chair in the living room, not the designated chair next to the parents.
A child who asked an adult their age/

Today, let us look at the EQ test (Empathy Quotient). For decades, it's been given to a lot of autistic people as some alleged test of 'deficits' in empathy.
You can see the questions at
Here we go.../embrace-autism.com/empathy-quotie… "I can easily tell if someone else wants to enter a conversation".
Yes. If it's an autistic person. (Generalising). No, if it's a nonautistic person. Different signalling.
So actually, this is a test of how many people in someone's life are autistic, not a test of empathy/

Such a strange experience to see a few teachers shouting about how all pupils have a choice about how they behave, and thus which rewards they get.

Do they?

Let's think about this. Thread.
1 in 7 pupils is disabled/neurodivergent.
They may be in sensory overwhelm/ They may be in physical pain.
They may be struggling to hear instructions.
They may be struggling to see instructions or read materials.
They may be living in fear of bullies in the classroom or before/after school, or in breaks/

Thread.
"You autistic people who write on here don't know anything about Real Autistic People and the struggles of their families".
I get that a lot. Many of us get this said to us, in fact.
I'll write a bit about my past family history here and my role as carer/ This goes back a few years, this particular situation. But it'll be familiar to a good number of people and families on here from their current lives.
The person at the heart of this is dead. They died decades too young.

It begins when my relative had a tough time.../

Brand New ABA, 2024. Basically, a 'quality control' ABAer tells autistic ppl off about our naughty behaviour in saying no to ABA.
No mention of Human Rights, consent, assent. No mention of partnership with autistic ppl.
Ethics = 'must have quality ABA'.researchgate.net/publication/38… To be fair, they are also upset with companies making money out of ABA and thus only paying ABA enforcers a tiny sum & not training them 'properly'.

I particularly enjoyed the bit where they claim ABA's core purpose is to improve autistic quality of life.

🤣

Brand new ABA. Four autistic boys age 10-13, all with fluent speech, are each put into a cell which has a one way mirror & cameras, & forced to take part in meaningless (for them) tests, over & over.

This is a bit of the write-up from the ABA team: / link.springer.com/article/10.100…
So, if I read this correctly, 2 out of 4 autistic boys had 'gamed the system' and chose random things rather than do what the ABA team commanded them to do/

A quick thread on why most autistic neurodiversity specialists like me do indeed know about people who have high support needs, and do indeed care very much about their lives and outcomes. We get a lot of misunderstandings.
So.../ Let's start by hearing from a huge number of neurodiversity supporters (those who want society to truly include neurodivergent people, instead of enforcing unwanted treatments/interventions on too many ppl).
Do we support human rights for *all* autistic people, for example? Yep.

Today, I would like to take a gentle stroll through this, by a person in charge of education that we shall not name, and who , it appears, blocks anyone who asks questions. Alleged Misconception: All behaviour is caused by an unmet need.

Arguably, it really is. Sometimes the need is about needing extra time to develop, or needing people to understand, be curious, etc. Sometimes it's a need for medical review e.g. pain conditions and/

Positive Behaviour Support (PBS). The industry is trying to get some more evidence of it 'working'.
Thus, a new bit of research.
I want to take a look at this, in a bit of detail. You may be surprised by some findings.
A thread relevant to autism/LD /onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.111… This is a team looking at people with a learning disability, sometimes called 'intellectual disability'. I'll shorten to PWLD here.
They contacted 167 organisations to see if they wanted to let them experiment on people, using PBS. 7 said yes/

A thread about the shocking life experiences of many autistic people.
This is a tough read, but an important one. It follows the recent discussion over too many teams asking poorly-phrased questions, then declaring autistic people are 'paranoid'.

What does the research show? / .
is our starting point about whether in general autistic people are 'paranoid' about e.g. whether some people think negatively about them.
It turns out it's absolutely accurate. I'll talk us through some findings/ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Goodness me. What next, eh?
A team notes that autistic people experience "..negative experiences of social interaction, rejection, victimisation and bullying", and then try to claim that resulting wariness of others is 'paranoia'.
Sigh.
link.springer.com/article/10.100… Let's have a look at how they are measuring 'paranoid', shall we? They use the Green Paranoid Thoughts Scale.
Here we go:
"I spend time thinking about friends gossiping about me".
How much time? Even 1 min a year is 'time'. Literal autistic answer therefore, "Yes"./

Brand new ABA. "We don't stop autistic children stimming, Ann".
Do they still stop them stimming? Yes indeed they do.
Feast your astonished eyes on this extraordinary new thing & what the team tried to stop: /
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01…
The ABA team tried to stop autistic children doing these:
Arm swinging
Moving their fingers
Flapping their hands
Trying to block noise by putting fingers in ears
Playing in autistic ways
Shaking a piece of string/

Handy.
You know that for years, autistic ppl have been told that screening tests aren't accurate at finding autistic ppl, and self-identity is therefore total rubbish?

Well, there's news... /journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13… This for example is one of the tests the researchers looked at.
And they found that people who self-identified as autistic had the same scores as people who were professionally diagnosed.
Well well/embrace-autism.com/raads-r/

More Brand New ABA, readers.

Stopping autistic children from playing and learning in naturally autistic ways, based on ancient results.
Let's have a look at some of their evidence:/proquest.com/openview/9f8f7… Firstly, this is someone who has put this in as their PhD work. So, after years of patient study and allegedly top academic excellence.
They tell us they looked at Rodriguez & team, in 2012 (14 yrs ago) who said that stereotyped play was socially stigmatising.
So, I looked too/

Brand new ABA.

An ABA research team look at children as young as 3, who fight back against ABA teams, in padded cells, and how the ABA team can keep forcing the child to comply.
No mention of consent, assent, harms, etc.
Plenty of mention of punishments/onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.100… I'll put up a few snips from the paper, as illustrations of the above.
This one gives the diagnoses. Nearly all autistic/

"But it works!"
A look at what may actually be happening, with Applied Behaviour Analysis and autistic children.

We get a few people saying, "But it worked for my child!"
Was that a result of ABA?
A thread/ This is all based on actual experience and actual data.
Here we go:

a) What do they mean by 'works'? Who decided what they were measuring? The child? Autistic specialists? Did it consider genuinely different autistic ways of playing, learning, communicating?/

Today, a mini-guide on why autistic people need advance information.
Why it's not 'unreasonable'.
Why telling us to 'just relax' isn't an answer.
And how to get some fantastic results.
A thread based on 30+ years in this industry as a trainer, lecturer, researcher, etc/ Here we go.
It's a generalisation. People are individuals. Experiences may vary.
But, generally...
Autistic brains take in too much information at once.
This can be very useful. Or not. /

Sigh. Brand new ABA. An 8 month old baby is given ABA to enforce use of hand signals from them.

I am especially concerned about this:
/ link.springer.com/article/10.100…
It shows how long the baby was crying for, during ABA.
At about session 18, the baby was crying intensely.
Then the crying stopped.
The team claim a success.
What was the success? Teaching a baby that the team will keep doing ABA whether you cry or not? Mmm?/