What is ABA?

[Kay Dowd]

Please excuse my ignorance - but what is ABA? Having been "lurking" for
some months now, I am intrigued at the amount of "mentions" it gets.

Regards
Kay Dowd

[Mary McDonald]

ABA stands for applied behavior analysis. It is a science that is part of
Psychology, research goes back at least thirty years in this area. It is
data-based and has shown great improvements in individuals with autism, as
well as typically developing children, animals, husbands, self ....etc....
Go to Yahoo and type in applied behavior analysis
It'll keep you busy for quite a while.
Mary
Good luck

[Blackjar]

I had been wonder myself until recently, so I asked some questions and did
some digging. All ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) really is is an
applied form of what psychologists call "Shaping" (or "Shaping of
Behavior") -- behaviors are broken down into small components and taught
bit by bit. Reinforcement and punnishment, are then used to condition
each step of a complex behavior. When one step is learned another is move
to. Some (eg, Ivar Lovaas) claim this is a "cure" for autism, because it
can removes or reduces the behavioral markers that are used in diagnosis
it.

I think that training out behavioral characteristics is treating the
symptoms and ignoring the "disease." I am also wary of certian behavioral
programs that have as a sole goal "normal appearance" (with the designers
concept of normalcy being used as a standard). The proof of the
effectiveness of such programs is the psychiatric equivalent of saying
children are more likely to learn how to read if they are taught! In
other words, the "empirical proof" they offer is only to their own goals
-- it can be empirically proven that red paint can make a car red, but
that doesn't mean much if I want a blue car, nor does it mean red is
better than blue. (This includes the one called Lovaas -- many people
seem to think he has invented the "paint," when all he has really done is
dictated the "color.")

This type of teaching can be used on anyone (though, it should never, in
my opinion, be the sole method), and has been done for a LONG time -- a
less scientific variation of the same thing could include the old system
of parents spanking (or otherwise punnishing) or rewarding there children.
Some of us (like me), however, question the goals it is used for by some.
Some forms of ABA are also contraversial because of the type of
punnishments ("adversives") being used, and the fact that some would use
ABA *exclusively* -- in the absence of other forms of teaching.

Jared Blackburn
http://members.aol.com/blackjar/

[Patti Gay/Jerry Schwarz]

Jared--I think your response was quite eloquent. Many parents who first
embark on an ABA program can be led into being totally dependent on it. We,
in fact
were close to that way back when our son was three. Now that he is five,
we've learned a few things about his style, including the point that he
generalizes well. This is why we are, and have been, heavily integrating
and diversifying
his program. We want him to have the best quality life he can have--if he
appears "normal" as a result of all we are doing, then great. But, it is
not our first concern by any means. We all "stim", and we all are in need
of having some behaviors shaped, but it is up to us who have the control
over these things to determine how important that is. For some of our
children, we need to give them a little "assist". ABA serves that purpose
to a degree, but there are so many
pieces to our son's puzzle. Thanks again for your astute observations.--Jerry

[John M. Wobus]

What Lovaas tried and claimed success for was the intensive use of
behavioristic teaching methods (e.g. 40 hours a week) with autistic
children at a young age, and he claimed roughly half of those he tried
this with "recovered" in the sense that an evaluation of them would no
longer conclude that they were autistic and they required no further
special education. This does not mean that all adherents of ABA think
a 40 hour week is required or indicated.

The book "Let Me Hear Your Voice", which is an account of the use of
intensive ABA with two young autistic children, indicates that at a
certain point they started picking up things themselves as opposed to
requiring the laborous teaching of each detail. This suggests that
there was a "hump" to get over, i.e. to get the children onto the
"typical" track where they learn more for themselves. Or in other
words, what was not required was the continued use of explicit teaching
of the details of typical human behavior until the entire repertoire of
typical human behavior was achieved. I haven't read about other
children who recovered through the use of ABA to see if this is the
usual pattern of recovery for those that do recover.

Applied Behavioral Analysis is a buzz phrase indicating a set of
currently-used methods of teaching children borrowed/adapted from
behavioristic psychology. Behavioristic psychology categorizes all the
things that can change a person's behavior and one of those categories
is "punishment". However, to conclude from that that ABA includes the
use of aversives is a big leap.

The behavioristic view of the world is that all teaching of any kind
is essentially changing of the behavior of the person being taught
and the teaching techniques that accomplish that all fall under the
categories of "things that change behaviors", among them reward and
punishment. If I were being a sophist, I might continue by saying that
thus you could conclude that the behaviorist believes all teaching is
in some sense behavioristic, the only difference in the behaviorists's
method being that he/she recognizes the mechanisms and uses them
explicitly. However, I am not a sophist so I won't say that. :-)

Then what is unique to ABA as opposed to the rest of the special
education teachers? Like any "behavioristic educator", the ABA
educator does not shy away from the idea that he/she has the goal of
changing behavior. Another large part of ABA is relatively rigorous
recording and reviewing of progress to provide feedback to the
teacher.

-John Wobus

P.S. For those who see a term such as ABA and wonder what it is for
weeks or months, you may be interested in the "Memo that answers
frequently asked questions about Autism" that is available online from
http://web.syr.edu/~jmwobus/autism/autism.faq.html
Also, there are web sites dedicated to ABA. Pointers to tons of such
autism-related websites are at http://web.syr.edu/~jmwobus/autism/