The Problem with Applied Behavior Analysis | Chloe Everett | TEDxUNCAsheville

[Music] what if I told you that everything about the way we treat autism is fundamentally wrong so the most common therapies we used to treat autism is based on years of bad science when the first of these treatments was created nearly 60 years ago it left consequences that still hurt people on the spectrum today when I was growing up the Andrew Wakefield study falsely linking the MMR vaccine to autism was very fresh in people's minds the neurodiversity movement was only a couple years old it seemed that just as autistic people were deciding that they liked who they were and were okay with the label they identified with other people were hard at work to change that when I was around 7 years old I was diagnosed with sensory processing disorder or SPD I hated being touched I hated loud and sudden noises and I had a knack for hearing everything within a quarter mile radius I really struggled with social rules and constructs I was also hyperlexia which is a really fancy way of saying that while most kids my age were reading books with only a handful of words for page I was reading Harry Potter getting me to do anything that was not reading her art was like pulling teeth the sky could be falling but I would ignore it in the interest of more time with my books and my books and my paper and markers if you dared to take them away from me intrude upon my space or make an unsavory noise I would become a small child version of the Incredible Hulk I realized I am speaking of my symptoms in the past tense however that definitely that does not mean that I don't still struggle with them today I still find people really confusing I still really hate loud and sudden noises I'm just I also am definitely still him quick to anger as I once was I'm just a lot better at hiding it now that's my secret I'm always angry well many of these are characteristic traits of autism I was never given a separate diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder which I'll refer to as ASD henceforth it was to my understanding that sensory processing disorder it was under the ASD umbrella at my time of diagnosis so an additional diagnosis would be redundant I also feel that my symptoms better align themselves with ASD versus sensory processing disorder which is why I refer to myself as autistic then the IEP is the CVT the ABA and idea and all the other Elfa vet soup that comes with my mother bless her heart so much had to cart me to a therapist once a week make sure that my features were following my individualized education plan that's an IEP scour the internet for clothes that would not cause me to meltdown keep fidgets and literally every nook and cranny and keep an eye on a series of very incompetent principals and superintendents I would often come home from school and tell her about what happened that day and I'd say something to the effect of Oh mister so-and-so did X Y & Z to which she would quickly reply they did what I like to think that if I had a dollar for every time one of those people broke a clause of the ABA or idea I would be very well off my mom was also there at virtually all of my therapy appointments behavioral therapy for all you uninitiated out there is when a woman in her 50s it's at a very overstuffed chair and tells you how to make yourself as normal as possible sometimes she has BTS or behavioural tax which our 20-somethings fresh from their undergrad degrees who make art with you or play board games with you well the older woman watches she takes notes on what I do Dee's words like please or thank you did you inappropriately display anger did you use any self-regulatory behaviors this is also known as stimming which that is any behavior that helps an individual self-regulate or process information that is how I like to stim a rub a satin ribbon and between my fingers and that really helps me focus I recognized the importance of what I was taught and all the sacrifices that went into it however at the heart of most behavioral therapy is the idea that neuro divergence or neurological traits that just that differ from the perceived norm are wrong and needs to be corrected when I needed processing time or had a meltdown I was often scolded if I was able to effectively and verbally communicate my needs I was praised this is called masking hiding there are diverse traits and the interest of appearing more normal and this is what many autistic and nerd virgin people are taught in the place of proper coping mechanisms I realized I only got a much milder version of behavioral therapy so not true ABA but I certainly felt the negative effects that can be associated with it when I was around 11 years old I fell into a very deep depression I didn't understand why I was so different or why I had to hide that on top of the bullying and exclusion I faced at school I also had virtually nowhere to go with my bottled up emotions so I tried talking to other people I would show them my words words I had spent hours drawing and composing and working on but all they would do was look at it and say that's beautiful they say that when words fail art speaks I was only asking for help but got very discouraged when I realized other people did not speak my language when my family stopped encouraging me to be someone I'm not my mental health seriously improved I slowly but surely learned how to take off the mask but what I found really bothered me well I had had it on for all that many years continuously I was losing out and who I was I forgot who I was as a person that made me think there must surely be a better way of doing this and while there was there is why is it so much less common than standard behavioral therapy the answer to that is buried in quite a bit of history in the 1960s a man named Ola a viola vos saw a great promise and BF Skinner's work on pigeons and rats to be adopted to humans BF Skinner did studies where he would give the animals rewards if he pressed a bar this is a concept known as operant conditioning the subject is given a reward if they perform the correct choice or given a punishment if they choose the incorrect choice Lovaas created this into a treatment known as applied behavioral analysis or ABA and he hoped it would be able to make children quote indistinguishable from their peers the first child to be referred to low bosses clinic was a young girl named Beth who had very severe self interest behaviors when that's why become agitated she would bang her head on hard surfaces such as tables or violin cabinets Lovaas attempted to teach her behaviors such as hugging when they was requested or responding to music with dancing initially Lovaas and his team ignored Beth self interest behaviors as they thought acknowledging it would cause it to be reinforced when that didn't work they tried consoling her using phrases such as I do not think you were bad that didn't work either and one day Lovaas got so frustrated with Beth that he in his own words quote cracked her one on the rear Beth's used all her head-banging behaviors after that the next set of children to be referred to Louis's clinic was a pair of twins two boys named Mike and Marty Mike and Marty had quote a fair amount of tantrum behaviors such as screaming throwing objects and hitting themselves Lovaas tried loud sounds sounds over a hundred decibels but when that didn't work he implemented and activated an electric floor when the twins took more than three seconds to initiate a hug with a lab assistant they also weren't allowed any food or drink except for the token scraps that they earned for performing desirable behaviors after some time Mike I'm already quicker quickly and outwardly displayed affection there was very much media coverage for low vassa's work with the twins people praised him for his effectiveness with his work however it was not without criticism even BF Skinner the father of operant conditioning and the use of ABA spoke out against this treatment parents weren't exactly sold on the idea of harming their children into being normal either Lovaas responded to this criticism by accusing the parents of not loving their children and presenting his therapy as the only way that their children could leave normal lives despite methods like teach which originated around the same time and we're much friendlier teach to not get quite the same amount of press as ABA and therefore it was not nearly as common you may have also noticed the recent outcry against gay conversion therapy gay kids are being abused and to no longer experiencing sexual attraction and they are protesting their treatment people are calling for gay conversion therapy to be banned especially for minors now you may be asking what does this have to do with autism and ABA and the answer to that is actually quite a bit not only was ABA and gay conversion therapy created by exactly the same person it uses virtually the same techniques we all know it's not okay to force a child to be someone they're not and have the ability the love and support of others around them be based on their ability to be someone they're not so I ask you this why is it okay when the child is autistic but for any other child it's considered inhumane when are we going to start holding the same standards for children and ABA to this day we still use the same techniques on autistic children as we would with rats and rats with wings shock devices although they are not nearly as common are still used in some places such as the judge Rotenberg Center despite the FDA condemning their use scientists have also noticed an epidemic of emotional health problems within the autistic community a 28 2015 study in Sweden identified that adults with autism are 10 times more likely to commit suicide compared to the general population an additional study in 2018 identified masking as a major risk factor for suicidal ideation and autistic adults masking is again hiding neurodivergent traits and the interest of appearing more normal and unfortunately masking is something that ABA very much encourages so what can we do about it my goal is not to chide those of you who work in behavioral therapy or call you all bad people nor is it my goal to call the parents who put their kids through treatment bad people it is critical that we addressed the problem of some therapists misusing their position and no ABA is very high abuse potential but that is certainly not everyone finger-pointing does us no good my goal is to start a conversation between autistic and neurodivergent people their families and their providers because when we all talk and we all listen that's when real progress happens if you're a mental health professional or plan to become one please do not assume he won't encounter people on the autism spectrum in an ordinary clinical setting so if we are to properly address the issue of the emotional health crisis in the autistic community we need providers who are able to spot the overlaps and autism and some mental illnesses even those of us who are fully verbal can still struggle to explain our feelings with the and without a lack of diagnostic tools catered specifically towards people with autism we definitely need mental healthcare providers who are able to spot these subtleties if you're a parents a family member or a friend of somebody on the autism spectrum or an other horizon or a divergent person please do not equate masking with progress congratulating us on our ability to pretend to be someone we're not is harmful to our emotional health and can be even more harmful when it comes from a loved one when my parents noticed how unhappy I was with pretending to be someone I'm not and instead noticed and congratulated me on my ability to deal with my emotions and my symptoms in a healthy way I became a much happier person true healthy progress is going to look different for everybody and will happen at different speeds some days we can do more than others but what we need to know is that what we can do no matter how small or insignificant it may seem is valuable and important and we need to hear that from you if you work with autistic people or plan to please take great care with the methods you use let's imagine you are in a strange alternate universe where neuro divergence is the norm would you tolerate being forced into behaviors that are painful for you would you tolerate being told that the proper way to express happiness is to spend in circles but then be punished when you smiled or laughed instead I don't think so do your best to find things to help your clients that don't hurt themselves or others or require them to let go of who they are hand flapping hurts nobody nor do most interests if your client loves video games or dinosaurs or what-have-you please do not put them off to it these can serve as important methods of communication and communication should be considered valuable no matter what form it comes in so please do not be so quick to change us especially if who we are hurts nobody in the wise words of Temple Grandin the world needs all kinds of minds if we fail to support an entire group of people simply because we feel they are too different then we fail to support ourselves we fail society because the gifts that they could contribute are lost if we do not all succeed we do not succeed at all thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 170,093

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Social Science, Behavior

Id: pCqEb0aG7tg

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 08 2019