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Applied behavior analysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So today in my children’s language disorders class we had to watch a video about Applied Behavior Analysis as a treatment for autism. Basically, they sit the autistic child in a chair and do behavioral drills with the child for hours and hours for at least 40 hours a week over the course of two years. For example, there were hours of drills for the acts of making eye contact and clapping the child’s hands.
The intervention strategy struck me as really weird in that’s it’s super hardcore behaviorism—it reminds of me human “programming” or brainwashing—but then they showed this autistic kid who started the ABA intervention really early and years later he was in a regular preschool class, indistinguishable from peers his age! And then the video showed another autistic kid who started the intervention program like at preschool age and has been doing those drills for seven years but the child only has an expressive vocabulary of 300 words.
And then I started to tear up because kids with developmental disorders really make me sad. That latter kid’s parents tried for years and years and they didn’t get the kind of miraculous outcome the other autistic child did. They asked that mother if she thought it was worth it and she said that yes it was because “each new word he learns is a miracle”. That line broke my heart.
