Very touching ABA video

[sickofsocalledexperts]

I couldn't resist posting this video showing the great effects ABA has had on twin boys aged 3. Just don't see how anyone could argue early ABA intervention isn't a good thing, after watching this!

The speed doesn't need to be fast as a rule. It needs to be whatever leads to optimum learning.

The child's attention needs to be held and so change needs to happen regularly to make sure boredom doesn't set in. 'How regularly' this is requires skill.

Moondog, Do you know if there been an increase in interest in the ABA Masters since the documentary?

I know applications are increasing each year but I wondered if there had been an extra rush?

Yes, Star, many more enquiries although already the situation where demand for places outstrips supply. Many LEAs and health boards also sending people to train as makes more sense to have them 'in house'.
A health board I know of has sent clinical folk to train into figures that run into two digits so good for them!

Zzzz, pace is important. Skinner said his greatest greatest contribution was not (as is commonly believed) that of using reinforcement but pace-frequency of a given behaviour. For learning to take place, the person learning needs a chance to practice that skill over and over and over again. This is what we might call massed trials or discrete trial training.
Of course, those multiple opportunities to learn must occur in a reinforcing environment but reinforcement means nothing unless sufficient opportunities are given.

A big movement I this sort of therapy is the use of a quality control tool where therapists learn to 'score' their own performance and to be 'scored' by supervisors. Quality control of the profession at every level is paramount.

Those people would have data on thousands of trials with those boys. Compare and contrast to the almost total absence of data on such skills that a teacher or an s/lt would (not) collect. Usually there is an anecdotal entry in a file.
'Sean worked hard at picture/object matching today in his session'

That is not good enough.

I am not that involved with the sort of therapy shown, which is EIBI (early intensive behavioural intervention). I have many colleagues who carry out this work and do so to an incredibly high standard, with the resultant dramatic improvements as seen in these boys.
I am more interested in another aspect of ABA which focusses on fluency.

Fluency. That is exactly it. Exactly the argument I need. Thanks.

DS is 'exposed' to lots of good stuff and at last staff at his school know how to engage him to attempt it (mostly). But no-one cares about fluency or opportunities to practice (actually I'm sure they 'care' they just don't know that it is a thing they need to target).

Fluency in functional skills. I think that might be a very strong ABA argument against eclectic mish-mash and inconsistency.

zzzzz I see learning as exponential. It happens whether we 'intervene' or not. It's just that the learning isn't always helpful to the child (i.e. learning and practising over and over, total disengagement from the social environment.

If you can get in there as early as possible you can change the course of learning and development.

I believe strongly that you can 'intervene' successfully at any time, but if you leave it until later you are teaching a 10 year old skills and behaviours that you could have taught at age 2. Additionally, you have 10 years of behaviours to 'undo'. If you can influence as they develop in the first place I think it is easier on everyone, just as it would be for an NT child. You don't start saying no to them for the first time at 10years old.

Bialy is right zz. The evidence points to ABA as being the most effective intervention for children of this age. Crucially, increasing evidence that fewer hours per week of EIBI yield same results (a couple of PhDs just being finished up on this to add to groundbreaking work by Eikeseth in Norway.)

The issue is one of ensuring that functional behaviours are established and reinforced as part of a repertoire before the dysfunctional behaviours really establish themselves. Fir those boys, that means the screaming, back arching, resisting, running away. They are dysfunctional in our world as it means quite simply it is going to be hell to do anything with them or take them anywhere for starters, but fro the boys they will be functional as they will serve their purpose which is to get everybody to clear off and leave them alone.

The argument of children being 'developmentally ready' has often been hijacked and wickedly abused by people who, if they were more honest, would say 'I just don't know how to engage effectively with this child with the training and background I have'

I had a professional person telling parents of a severely language disordered child this a few weeks ago. He wasn't according to this person 'developmentally ready' to learn functional skills to ask calmly for the things that he wanted. He needs to focus on 'pre-language skills' apprarently, such as turn taking and joint attention. The only problem is, the child certainly isn't going to take turns playing with a toy because he has no learning history of effective interactions with others. He wil ljust take it, stim with it and scream if someone tries to take it from him.
The child is about 5.

Absolute nonsense and it makes me so angry to type it out.

er, what Moondog said. I think it was what I said (though not as well).

I would make it much quieter zzz.

That is another issue with special schools. They are too damend busy, people in and out all the time. Staff talking to each other al lthroguh the day over kids' heads. Madness for kids who have problems concentrating.
Parents also ring all through the day with all sorts of trivial requests.
I work hard on trying to point out to staff that by taking these calls all through the day, they are reinforcing this behaviour in the parents.
The message unfortunately is that your kid's education is of such little importance it really doesn't matter if ten people drift into theclass before lunch, the school secretary rings to ask for someone's NI number and Hunter's dad phones in to say he has forgotten to bring in a spare pair of undies for him.

Eliminating all of that alone would improve special education 1000%

I'm a very talkative person but I shut up completely when working with kids and try diplomatically to get others to do the same. Every instruction, every word of praise or correction is so important and nothing extraneous should be there-particularly at the stage these boys are at.

With the book thing, zzzzz, the challenge would be to think about what will spur your child on to read.
I have one avid reader and one very reluctant one.
The latter loves cooking though so she is free to choose any recipe to cook at any time as long as she reads it, sorts out a shopping list and follows the instructions to make it.

She is also involved in a deal with me at present where, upon reading six short books and giving me a verbal and written précis of each, I will take her to McDonalds.

There is no coercion involved. We worked these out together and both of us are happy with our terms.

I'm pretty sure its AP in the South. I think I recognise one of the staff.
While the costs are high I would point out its a not for profit organisation and the fees for therapy have to cover not just the therapists, but the premises, the supervisor, the cleaner, the admin person, the heating, travel expenses for staff, the telephone bill, toys, maintenance, staff training including regular whole day training days etc etc. You are not just paying for the therapist your fees have to cover the cost of the whole operation which is similar quality to what you would get in an American research university early intervention centre.

If you added up the similar costs in a school or hospital (%of building rent and upkeep and all staff including the caretaker,office staff etc per child) I imagine the costs would be very similar if not substantially more.
So when people say you can do it vastly cheaper you are not comparing like for like. If it is AP, I know the staff are not well paid and the whole operation is done on a shoestring. Staff would be vastly better paid if they became teachers or SLTs. Most staff start straight from university on minimum wage and are trained up intensively over months, similar to doing a teaching training or university course.

As anyone who has tried to run their own business will know £87 a hour isn't really that much when you have staff and premises to pay for.

For the State to run something similar it would have to set up a training college / intervention centre and staff it and would cost vastly more per child than this.

Yes you can get cheaper ABA in some parts of the country but those are usually people who have trained in an organisation like this and then set up on their own, so they have the benefit of the expensive training parents like these are paying for.

And to add to that zzz, of course there are important issues of what is appropriate. No use putting the roof on a house where the foundations aren't even dug properly is the way I explain it to staff. The idiocies of the NC means that, as you suggest, kids are pushed into lessons and curricula of zero relevance which become massively aversive.

'Learning' about Diwali or Henry 8th when you are non verbal.
Two insane examples out of many hundreds I could tell you about.

That however is a totally different kettle of fish to telling parents of a small child he is not developmentally ready to request.
[hmmm]

'But I do think that teaching a skill before you are ready to learn it can cause all sorts of stress.'

Yes. This is also where the eclectic model falls down, especially with learning social skills. It would be like putting those two boys into a nursery to 'model' the behaviour of NT children. They are not ready.

You have to take the skill you want to teach and break it down, and then break it down some more. You also have to thoroughly assess where the child is and what they ARE developmentally ready to learn, and then teach that, and the next skill, and the next skill, as fast as they are capable of learning it.

Not just waiting until some mythical future date when all of a sudden with no prior teaching they will be 'ready' to interact in a NT environment.

Yes indeed.

Top tips

1. Shut up
2. Don't let other people speak and keep them out
3. Take some data

Yes. It looked a lot like an AP place to me.

I would add also that because ABA is so powerful, there is a huge focus on ethical behaviour and practices in an MSc in ABA and the professional exam one has to pass in order to become a behaviour analyst. That exam has a 40% pass rate and it has been dropping steadily over the years. Most people who fail struggle with experimental design and Ethics.

The Ethics section is going to get even more difficult in the next year and even to qualify to take the exam, those who already have an MSc and the relevant hours of supervision, will need to go back to university to complete another module.

As it should be.
This is powerful stuff.
We need to keep away people who might abuse this science.

Oh I got loads of that *zzzzz. Professionals in my house talking nonstop TO ME until the time was gone. I stopped offering tea, because then they would 'wait for their tea' before they got started. Then they would have their cup of tea WITH ME as if it was some kind of social event, disguising it as 'catching up with where ds was', offering me platitudes or telling me about things he needed to learn as if to justify what a huge up hill struggle it was and to ensure my expectations were suitably low.

Then, after 5 minutes of attempting to get ds to do something, decide that we're half way through the time and so they ds needs a break.

Glad those days are over.

I agree the developmentally ready thing is often abused. Our NHS SLT said she wouldn't teach DS language until he had gained joint attention as his brain had to learn skills in the same developmental order as typical children to have any meaning. When we challenged her she quoted some obscure research about attachment disorders and nothing to do with autism.

She also said by doing ABA and using tutors we were depriving DS of parental attention, that in her view (conveniently for her budget) joint attention had to be taught by parents. By farming him off on tutors we were delaying his development / abusing him.

Well first of all we were the ABA tutors! we couldn't afford to hire any. Any secondly DS is now on 3-4 keywords and his joint attention is slightly better than then but still vastly delayed and I doubt it will ever be typical. I hate to think how many children she refused to teach to talk until they had demonstrated their brain had followed a normal developmental route.

The answer to a quip that your child isn't developmentally ready to learn something is 'well what IS he developmentally ready to learn then? How do you know this? And finally: So let's get on with teaching him THAT.

Agnes, I think you have answered zzzzz's long standing question of who is it that gets SALT.

Typically developing children.