Today in Brand New Positive Behaviour Support (a form of ABA), this:

The behaviourist research team want to change 'challenging behaviour' in autistic pupils. Have a look at this snip from the paper, about 'quality of life' improvements: (thread/) sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
I'm used to ignoring the marketing-speak in behaviourist papers,(bold claims about 'evidence-based' and 'best practice'. See the research in the link on my profile here for the actual evidence, which tells a rather different story.)
But, "...improves...quality of life"...?/

What on earth is this?
A team have skimmed hundreds of thousands of our autistic X posts, and got a computer to guess our emotions from those posts. Then called it science of some kind.
No mention of consent, ethics, etc.
What could go wrong, eh? 😱pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39176863/ The team think that too many of our posts seem sad.
Well, dear researchers, if more of you would behave politely & ethically with marginalised autistic people on social media, we'd be happier about it.
There's a clue for you.
Meantime, don't do this research again.

Thread about 'severe' or 'profound' autism.
It's important we get this right; it's about providing the right support for a person's set of different needs for very different things.
Here's a new research paper about 1400 autistic children, age 6-17: /journals.lww.com/jrnldbp/abstra… About 1 in 10 autistic children were thought of as having 'severe' autism, by their caregivers.
The team asked about lots of different things the 'severe' autistic children had been diagnosed with.
88% also had a language delay diagnosis.
45% also had an intellectual disability/

Day 4 of our look at that Brand New ABA book, "Ethical Applied Behavior Analysis Models for Individuals Impacted by Autism".
A focus on a paragraph in the book, page 71-72. I'll put it in the next two posts so you can read it. Content warning, leaving a distressed baby to cry/ First snip which I will describe and discuss below/

Day 3 of our exploration of the Brand New ABA book, 2024/2025. "Ethical Applied Behavior Analysis Models for Individuals Impacted by Autism".
Today, we wade into Chapter 2, which is all about 'treating' us. ABA teams are taught to assume command of people from the start:/ a) Describe autism as awful.
b) Explain that there are expensive 'treatments' (ABA) that will allegedly save parents and society from alleged breathtaking lifetime costs per child.
c) Pretend to be Clinicians, because parents will comply if they think you're like a Doctor/

Day 2 of our exploration of this Brand New ABA book, 2024/2025.
Today, let's delve into Chapter 1. It opens with a most extraordinary trawl through ancient history, to find derogatory ways to describe us. I'll put a picture of part of it, below. Yes, an ethics book./ Here we are with the opening explanation of our loved autistic people. In typical ABA style, the first sentence is an error, as the first to describe autistic individuals was Sukhareva in the 1920s. Good try, though. "Feeble-mindedness", eh? Well, thank you. Moving on/

Aha. The new book from the ABA industry has arrived: "Ethical Applied Behavior Analysis Models for Individuals Impacted by Autism". Allegedly this is the new, improved ABA, 2024/2025. Is it? Thread/ I tend to go straight to the index of new books, to find out what they have to say about e.g :
Human Rights.
Testing for any harms from the intervention.
Assent.
Consent.
OK, next post will be an example from the index:/

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"./