Why autism education needs to change

Elsewhere on this forum I have given my thoughts on a few autism interventions. As this thread is now clearly a promotion of RDI I feel that I should comment here about ABA’s in general and RDI in particular.

Firstly I would like to disclose that I have no interest, financial or otherwise, in any autism products or services.

ABA’s have been coming out of America since the 80’s and are constantly evolving as new theories and ideas come along. RDI has been around for about 10 years but has only recently made the leap across the Atlantic with the first RDI councillors starting up over here about 4 years ago.

RDI is an ABA no matter how you dress it up and as such I can see no reason why it shouldn’t be just as successful at accomplishing its goals as other, more established ABA’s such as Lovaas.

It is important to recognise that although RDI still has no independent studies into its effects, when some are published they will only have limited scientific validity. This is true for all ABA studies to date.

Even the now famous 1987 study by Lovaas which showed approximately half of the children who started the Lovaas programme by the age of 3, were able to fit into mainstream primary education at the age of 6 was scientifically tainted. Although they used a control group of similarly impaired children they didn’t employ double blind procedures so the results were contaminated by participant bias and expectation. In fact I think it is impossible to employ double blind procedures because of the very nature of ABAs.

So although ABA’s clearly have a high success rate for achieving their goals it would be wrong to compare these success rates to those of biomedical interventions which are considerably cheaper and have numerous scientifically sound studies into their efficacy.

With all interventions the earlier you start the better the prognosis but our children’s childhood flies by so fast. There is not enough time to try everything randomly so parents must use their own unique set of observations of their child’s problems to try to guess what is right for their child.

Some parents and people on the spectrum are uncomfortable with ABA’s in general seeing them as hammering a square peg into a round hole and I acknowledge and respect that perspective.

However I also respect the opinion of parents who do think that an ABA is the way to go for their child. If you fall into this category and you have the means to follow it through then choose your ABA wisely.

Parents of children who have benefited from a particular ABA are often used as salespeople to gather new recruits. Zoe’s zeal is testament to how effective they can be and you will meet many more of them spouting the merits of the particular ABA that their child benefited from.

It is a jungle in the ABA world with very high stakes all round. It is difficult to give clear advise on how to sift through the sales patter of different ABA success stories in order to determine which is best for your child.

I would suggest that first you look at the methods employed and make sure you are comfortable with all of them. Then look at the results because, after all, that is what parents who go into the ABA jungle are looking for. I would be very wary of somebody trying to sell an ABA, theory first. Few of us have the time or inclination to become a pseudo neurologist to properly evaluate those arguments.

Good luck with your choice of path if you go into this jungle.

Elsewhere on this forum I have given my thoughts on a few autism interventions. As this thread is now clearly a promotion of RDI I feel that I should comment here about ABA’s in general and RDI in particular.

Firstly I would like to disclose that I have no interest, financial or otherwise, in any autism products or services.

ABA’s have been coming out of America since the 80’s and are constantly evolving as new theories and ideas come along. RDI has been around for about 10 years but has only recently made the leap across the Atlantic with the first RDI councillors starting up over here about 4 years ago.

RDI is an ABA no matter how you dress it up and as such I can see no reason why it shouldn’t be just as successful at accomplishing its goals as other, more established ABA’s such as Lovaas.

It is important to recognise that although RDI still has no independent studies into its effects, when some are published they will only have limited scientific validity. This is true for all ABA studies to date.

Even the now famous 1987 study by Lovaas which showed approximately half of the children who started the Lovaas programme by the age of 3, were able to fit into mainstream primary education at the age of 6 was scientifically tainted. Although they used a control group of similarly impaired children they didn’t employ double blind procedures so the results were contaminated by participant bias and expectation. In fact I think it is impossible to employ double blind procedures because of the very nature of ABAs.

So although ABA’s clearly have a high success rate for achieving their goals it would be wrong to compare these success rates to those of biomedical interventions which are considerably cheaper and have numerous scientifically sound studies into their efficacy.

With all interventions the earlier you start the better the prognosis but our children’s childhood flies by so fast. There is not enough time to try everything randomly so parents must use their own unique set of observations of their child’s problems to try to guess what is right for their child.

Some parents and people on the spectrum are uncomfortable with ABA’s in general seeing them as hammering a square peg into a round hole and I acknowledge and respect that perspective.

However I also respect the opinion of parents who do think that an ABA is the way to go for their child. If you fall into this category and you have the means to follow it through then choose your ABA wisely.

Parents of children who have benefited from a particular ABA are often used as salespeople to gather new recruits. Zoe’s zeal is testament to how effective they can be and you will meet many more of them spouting the merits of the particular ABA that their child benefited from.

It is a jungle in the ABA world with very high stakes all round. It is difficult to give clear advise on how to sift through the sales patter of different ABA success stories in order to determine which is best for your child.

I would suggest that first you look at the methods employed and make sure you are comfortable with all of them. Then look at the results because, after all, that is what parents who go into the ABA jungle are looking for. I would be very wary of somebody trying to sell an ABA, theory first. Few of us have the time or inclination to become a pseudo neurologist to properly evaluate those arguments.

Good luck with your choice of path if you go into this jungle.