My Concerns with ABA

I've been meaning to write this post for a while.  There are lots of concerns and confusion about ABA.  ABA is a particular application of behavioral psychology.  ABA tends to be dangerous when implemented for a few reasons.

First, most behavior based programs ignore internal motivation. They don't ask the person why, they just manipulate antecedents and consequences until they get the external behaviors they want to see. Check out this explainer on humanism and Behaviorism for more. I am heavily in favor of a mix of both with humanism as the primary technique. https://prezi.com/m/au2vljqlsot1/behaviorist-vs-humanist/

Second, ABA programs are often about compliance explicitly or implicitly. Generally speaking, over the long term, the skill of immediate unthinking compliance does not serve a human well. Compliance can make parenting easier for the first 10-12 years, then, suddenly, you and your kid's teachers aren't the only ones making requests and influencing your kid, other teens and young adults start making requests too. I'll explain the compliance aspect below:

A lot of ABA is based on establishing a target directive "Give me Apple" and drilling on that directive over a variety of scenarios until Mastery is achieved. Mastery is defined by a number of correct responses over a number of days without prompts within a specific time frame. 

For example, a program may be something like this: For each iteration where the child responds within 2 seconds without protest, the child gets social praise and when the child succeeds without prompting, a bit of food or other external enforcer.: first you have an apple on the table and say give me apple, you do that with prompts gradually fading the prompt, until the prompt is no longer needed. Then you add an "unknown" object with the and say give me apple with a prompt, such as pointing, or taking the child's hand, placing it on the apple, then having them grasp the apple and moving their hand to your other hand. Then you fade that prompt until the grab the apple every time you say it without prompting, then you switch to apple and another object the child does know and you do the same thing fading the prompt until they respond without prompts. 

Now, child has learned apple. This will continue for any object you need a child to know, any sight word you want child to learn, any word sound, word, phrase or sentence you want the child to speak, any action you want the child to take such as coming when called, sitting when asked, standing when asked, etc. And the goal is always quickly responding to the request.

So, after 20-40 hours of that type of interaction per week every week, we've established a pattern where a person asks you to do something and you comply within 1-2 seconds and person will reward you. When that's the habit you drill into a human's head, you cannot be surprised when they continue that pattern with all humans they interact with.

My third and biggest problem with ABA is essentially the result of combining problem one and two. Without asking WHY a child is objecting, we've trained them to comply. We've overridden their own instincts.  We've taught them to ignore their inner voice, and to comply even when everything in them screams something is wrong.  We've robbed them of trust in their own mind and body. 

Many of the problems people have with their autistic kids come down to incompatibility between their instincts and boundaries. Teaching a person to comply despite their own boundaries and reservations  is dangerous and irresponsible. It is very hard to balance someone learning to maintain their boundaries and the kind of compliance typically demanded by ABA. The Analysis used in ABA is based on data.  And almost all the data taken boils down to blanket compliance in the end. Blanket compliance only serves a child for a very short time in their lives.  

In the end, the same people that praised ABA for giving them a child they could manage, remove that child's autonomy when they reach adulthood.  They explain that the once-child/now-adult is gullible, that they give anyone their money, agree to anything someone asks them to do, and can't be trusted to make their own decisions financial or otherwise.  Some of these autistic adults even lose the right to vote as part of their parents taking guardianship.  So, we have traumatized autistic individuals who have repeatedly violated their own boundaries and in the end, allowing that to happen costs them their freedom.  ABA may look like fun and games, but the unintended lessons learned are a life-long tragedy.