Episodi
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Welcome back to season 2 of “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is intended for listeners who are interested in learning and better understanding the autism diagnosis. If you are a new listener to our podcast, welcome to our community! Whether you are a parent, a health care provider, a teacher, a fellow community member, or an aspiring behavior analyst, this podcast is meant to create an ongoing discussion with you the listeners, to better understand all the mysteries of this autism diagnosis and be a resource to one another as we each partake in this journey together.
Today’s episode is on the topic of transitioning to adulthood for individuals that are diagnosed with autism. Those that follow autism research will have noticed that much of the research conducted focuses primarily on birth to childhood, but there’s a growing push for research to expand to adulthood and beyond for this specific population. Understanding life course trajectories can help us identify how different outcomes stem from different etiologies and different prevention strategies that would be most appropriate for different subgroups of individuals that are impacted by the autism diagnosis in various ways. Basically, what this means is that autism is a disorder that encompasses a wide spectrum, and in order for us to better understand the appropriate treatment and care for each individual, we need to conduct further research that focuses on more than just the infancy and childhood years.
A resource I want to point our listeners to is the National Autism Indicators Report. It’s a helpful guide put together by Drexel University to present current research findings and their implications. The specific report I want to point you towards is the report from 2015 that focuses on transitioning individuals into young adulthood. Young adults with autism have a difficult time post high school for all possible outcomes, whether it is work, continuing education, independent living, socializing and participating in the community, and staying physically healthy and safe. To further complicate these difficulties, many of these individuals face adulthood by first stepping off a services cliff. This is a common analogy utilized within the autism community to refer to the transition that individuals diagnosed with ASD go through once they graduate high school. They no longer qualify for the services they’ve had access to since infancy, and these transitions are some of the hardest obstacles that an individual diagnosed with autism and their family have to experience. The National Longitudinal Transition Study conducted in 2012 found that over ⅓ of teens diagnosed with ASD could not navigate to various locations outside the home, or were not allowed to do so. The report also identified that most teens with ASD could perform adaptive tasks, such as feeding and dressing, very well, but some had trouble using the telephone or looking up phone numbers or counting basic change. It’s also important to highlight in terms of social opportunities, individuals with ASD were found to engage in fewer social and recreational activities in middle and high school compared to their peers without an ASD diagnosis. Students with ASD were also found to have decreased levels of participation in sports, clubs, and other lessons/activities, and community service.
Over half of young adults with autism received no vocational or life skills services during their early 20s. It’s also important to note that nearly half of the youth on the autism spectrum were victims of bullying during high school. Over one-quarter of adolescents engaged in some type of wandering behavior in which they impulsively left a supervised situation, increasing their risk of becoming lost and going missing. Some of these statistics highlight the wide range of needs and accommodations that individuals with ASD will be needing; however, the health care system doesn’t have the resources...
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Welcome back to season 2 of “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is intended for listeners who are interested in learning and better understanding the autism diagnosis. If you are a new listener to our podcast, welcome to our community! Whether you are a parent, a health care provider, a teacher, a fellow community member, or an aspiring behavior analyst, this podcast is meant to create an ongoing discussion with you the listeners, to better understand all the mysteries to this autism diagnosis and be a resource to one another as we each partake in this journey together.
Since posting my very first episode, we’ve grown such a big community here, so I would like to start off this season with a quick recap of who I am, what is autism, and what our next steps are. My name is Amanda. I’m a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and I had been working with clients with Autism for about 8 years.
Straight out of my undergrad, I started off as a behavior therapist at a large ABA agency. Fast forward a few years, I got a masters degree in ABA and my BCBA license in 2016 and practiced as a clinician and a clinical manager leading a team of about 50 staff members and over 40 families and patients. I’m currently a graduate student at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researching and learning more about this autism diagnosis.
Let me clarify that although, I am a BCBA and an aspiring researcher, the intent of this podcast is to share my experiences and my knowledge to help my listeners better understand the Autism diagnosis and where the current research stands, but please note that this is not a means of medical or psychological diagnoses nor recommendations.
To open up our first episode, let’s talk about the updated prevalence data that was published recently in December 2021. The prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder in the US is 1 in 44.
But where do these numbers and data exactly come from? If you’ve been following the reporting of new prevalence data, there’s an updated prevalence report for ASD every 2 years. This data is published by CDC’s ADDM Network, which stands for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. The ADDM Network conducts active surveillance of ASD. When the ADDM Network publishes new prevalence data, this is based on the data that is collected from previous years. The 1 in 44 prevalence data is based on the 2018 data, so we wouldn’t know about the current 2021/2022 data till a later date, but one thing we know for sure is that the prevalence of ASD is ongoingly increasing. We started with 1 in 150 back in the 2000 surveillance year. The ongoing question is, why is the prevalence of autism increasing so rapidly? Is it the environment? Is it the food? Is it the changes to the diagnostic criteria? Great question…we don’t know! There are still so many unknowns when it comes to autism but over the years researchers have uncovered so many variables and risk factors when it comes to autism. This season, we’ll be specifically diving into some key findings over the course of the last decade. Let’s break down what each of these findings implies for the future of autism research, treatment, and policy changes.
If there are any other topics/questions, you’d like for us to cover, please reach out to us via email or on Instagram. You can always connect with me via email at [email protected] or on our Facebook page/Instagram @whattheautism. We upload a new episode on your favorite podcast platform every Sunday. Please note that this podcast has been created to discuss my personal experiences and opinions and is not a means of medical or psychological recommendations. But if you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our podcast channel, and I’ll see you in our next episode.
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Episodi mancanti?
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Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…
Today, I wanted to talk about teaching our children about safety...safety on the streets and safety on the internet. We live in such chaotic times where practicing safe habits can never do you and your child any harm. There are danger zones all throughout our communities, and many of our parents have nothing but fear and anxiety for their children. I wanted to talk about some basic strategies to help our parents prepare their children.
First, let’s talk about community dangers. What will my child do when he/she gets lost while we’re out in the community? Will my child know what to do if a stranger with bad intentions approaches my child? How will my child respond when confronted by the police? If you’ve never taught your child any of these skills, I think the majority of our parents listening in are in a situation where they cannot entrust their child to make the right call in these situations, especially for a child that has an autism diagnosis. These are skills that need to be taught and reviewed with your child over and over again. If your child is in any type of treatments, I recommend you bring up these concerns with them immediately. A really good indication of a good treatment provider is that they would and should have already reviewed this topic with you. But if your child is not yet in treatment, I would start with visuals. Print out pictures of different safety signs and review them with your child. Then take them out on community walks/drives to have them identify them. For more complex situations when it comes to identifying dangerous strangers, I would start with the hypotheticals. Teach them strategies in the home by teaching them ways to avoid different strangers and how they could seek help immediately. When you feel like your child may have the basic knowledge, I would embark in what we call the “stranger danger.” Seek out close family/friends that your child would not be able to identify. Ask if this individual if they can pretend to be a stranger and have them probe different questions and information from your child. This will be a great way to see what your child would do in these types of dangerous situations. Also, a recommendation a lot of parents skimp out on, but I would highly insist on is taking a visit to your local police station. Get to know your local law enforcement. I truly hope that you and your child never have to face any dangerous situations that require the law enforcement to get involved, BUT you can never be too safe. Take a trip down to the station and make sure they have a face to your son/daughter. It may help you and your child in any difficult situation.
Now, let’s talk about one of my favorite topics: the internet. Talking about internet safety is a MUCH newer topic of conversation, but it’s a much more complex skill to teach and navigate through. If your child is on the younger age range and just becoming exposed to games and online platforms such as Youtube, I highly recommend you start with extremely restricted usage. There are online predators on any possible platform you can think of, and I don’t mean to scare any of our parents, but it is EXTREMELY important that you are more aware of the possible dangers in handing your electronics over to your child while being left unsupervised. If your child is younger than 5-6 years old, I would monitor every video they watch and every game they play. Do not let them explore different apps...
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Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…
The years of 2020 and 2021 has been quite an eventual time. There have been so many global and cultural issues that will for sure be written in our history books in the years to come. As I was thinking about the next topic of discussion for our podcast, I wanted to talk about an area that many of our families may not realize is a large factor in our children’s lives. The topic of cultural differences. I don’t want to talk about the politics of all these different issues, but I do want to bring to light that your cultural identity as parents does greatly impact the way your child’s ASD diagnosis and treatment services come into play.
It’s a no-brainer that there has been a vast amount of research conducted on ASD, covering the realm of biomedicine, treatment, healthcare policies; however, an area that needs more research coverage is studying ASD from the perspective of minorities, especially for the AAPI community. There’s been quite a bit of research observing and analyzing the Black and Hispanic community, but I believe that the AAPI community has received very minimal amount of investigation and analysis when it comes to autism. While working with quite a bit of Asian families, and coming from an Asian heritage myself, I’ve come to see that there are some cultural differences in perspectives that can affect the diagnosing and treating of ASD within our children.
Coming from an Asian heritage I think there are still this level of stigma that comes with children being diagnosed with learning disorders, such as Autism. There is definitely a feeling of failure and shame on the mothers’ end. Fortunately, many Asian countries are starting to realize the growing prevalence of Autism and related disorders; however, I think there’s still quite a bit of shame and embarrassment that comes with this diagnosis for many Asian families today. I think a lot of these mixed emotions along with denial is often times what results in some children being diagnosed at a much later age, but for our Asian American listeners out there, if you suspect that your child may be showing any signs of delayed learning, please make sure you have your child evaluated by a psychologist. With now 1 in 54 children being diagnosed with Autism, this is not a individual issue that needs to be faced with shame and guilt, this is a global issue that needs to be continuously addressed through research and health care interventions. The sooner you can get your child diagnosed, the quicker your son/daughter can get the support they need!
Another area that I want to talk about is what services may look like for your family and your child. When you place your child through various therapy services whether it’s for speech, behaviors, or gross motor concerns, please don’t think this is a “the therapist knows best and will ‘fix’ my child.” GET INVOLVED! Ask questions! Get the training you need to better understand the treatment that’s being provided. Regardless of what treatment your child receives, the purpose of this treatment is for it to be ongoing 24/7 whether the therapist is present or not. This means that you need to be fully informed and trained on what you can do to best support your child when they’re not in therapy sessions.
If your child is enrolled in school, your treatment providers NEED to be in collaboration with your child’s school teacher. We need to have an ongoing healthy collaboration...
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Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…
I want to use today’s episode as an opportunity for us to have an open dialogue with our listeners who have been impacted by the autism diagnosis. Today I’ll be sharing with you a short snippet of my experience working with children and adults diagnosed with autism and provide you with an opportunity to share yours!
Let me tell you, since 2013 when I first started working as a behavior therapist, it’s been a long journey of learning for me and the learning never ends. When you think you know everything there is to possibly learn, a new learning opportunity arises. And I think that is what’s most important in this whole conversation about autism awareness. No one expects you to know everything there is to this diagnosis. What would encourage and support this community of individuals is for the us, the community, to remain open-minded and curious to learn more about the diagnosis, so that we can help dissipate some of the discrimination towards individuals with learning disabilities.
During the last 8 years of working with children and adults with autism, the biggest feedback I’ve received from friends, relatives, random strangers is “wow! You must be really patient.” And they couldn’t be any further from the truth. I’m definitely not as patient as I would like to be. I don’t like to wait in any sort of line for more than 5 minutes. I don’t like drivers who take their time making a wide right turn instead of using their blinkers to cut closer to the curb. A new year’s resolution that I miserably fail at since birth is “being more patient.” So why and exactly how did I continue working with the autistic community? You see, working with individuals with a learning disability isn’t necessarily about patience...I’ve learned that it’s about urgency and envisioning a bigger future. Patience can only get you to a certain point before you race past your threshold and you completely burn out, and that was one of the first things I learned when I started off as a behavior therapist. Whenever I had a new bruise or a bite mark, or whenever I lost another t-shirt to an aggressive episode, patience without vision only made me exhausted and fearful heading into another day of work. So what do I mean by “urgency” and “vision?” As a BCBA, I learned that a treatment program needs to be approached with urgency. Opportunities to maximize learning are limited. When I see a 2-year old, I get a sense of urgency...urgency to teach this child everything I possibly can to get them at their developmental milestone. The window of learning opportunities only grow narrower every year, and without a sense of urgency, there is no progress. This leads me to the topic of vision. As someone who works closely with families and individuals greatly affected by the autism diagnosis, it’s extremely important that we stay focused on the goals and the bigger picture. I ask parents at the beginning of their child’s treatment to start thinking about what they would like to see their child accomplish. I’ve had parents cautiously tell me that they want to see their child go to college, but to them it feels like wishful thinking. I’ve had a dad come to me and tell me that he just want his son to be able to play a game of catch with him. There are some 16-year-old clients that have told me that they want to own their cafe or their own nail shop. I’ve also had a 17-year-old client tell me that he wanted to become a character...
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Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…
Throughout the last 16 episodes, I’ve covered quite a large range of topics and areas of concerns that many families typically have when their child is first diagnosed with autism. All this information can often times be a bit overwhelming, so in today’s episode, I wanted to quickly review through some recommendations for any parents and/or caretakers that are new to this topic of autism.
As a clinician, there are a couple BIG recommendations that I can’t help but emphasize.
First, if you’re suspecting that your child may be autistic, have a psychologist see your child IMMEDIATELY. Delaying your child’s evaluation is only delaying the options you may have for your child in the future. Every month is a huge growth spurt opportunity for your infant, and as they grow older that window of opportunity grows narrower. So it’s extremely important that we don’t waste time. Getting an appointment in with a psychologist can be a very long wait, so make sure you do whatever you can to get an appointment in sooner than later. Just like with any medical doctors, there are private clinics and there are also county and/or state-funded clinics (in the state of CA, they’re referred to as regional centers). There is a wide range, and of course with each type there are pros and cons. For private psychologist clinics, you might have to pay out of pocket, dependent on your insurance benefits, but your child’s evaluation should be expected to be clinically very specific and customized to what your child may need. Dependent on their client-base, you may also be able to get an appointment in sooner than a county-funded clinic. The county-funded clinics should provide an evaluation free of charge; however, due to the higher level of need, the wait time might be longer and their evaluation will typically be a template assessment that’s completed. Every state has different resources available, so make sure to do your research on what resources are available for your state. I know we also have quite a bit of international listeners, as well. I’ve only worked with clients within the state of California, so I can’t provide specifics to any out-of-state nor international folks; however, I did leave a link to the ASHA website that provides state insurance mandates for the autism spectrum disorder. This is extremely helpful to review and understand before trying to set up any logistics with your insurance provider and your treatment providers (https://www.asha.org/advocacy/state/states-specific-autism-mandates/).
Second, do your research. There are so many voices screaming at you in so many directions. What’s most important is that you make the best decision for your child. But ensure that before you make any key important decisions, you do your research to understand what the scientific research has shown. I’ve worked with quite a handful of parents that have paid out of pocket for various treatments that claimed could “cure” autism. I’ve also witnessed families bend over backwards to get their child into a program that claims to be ABA treatment, but after much time, we found out that their methodologies aren’t based on ABA principles. So I just want to reiterate the importance of doing your research and asking various questions and addressing your concerns before signing up for
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Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…
In today’s episode, I wanted to talk about mental health conditions in children that have been diagnosed with autism. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210119114358.htm) A new U.S. study published in January earlier this year by the University of British Columbia and AJ Drexel Autism Institute found that nearly 78% of children with autism have at least one mental health condition in comparison to 14.1% of children without autism. Dr. Connor Kerns is an assistant professor and the lead author of this study, and he stated that “for a long time, mental health in kids with autism was neglected because the focus was on autism. There’s much greater awareness now, but we don’t have enough people trained to provide mental health treatments to kids on the autism spectrum. We need to bridge these two systems and the different sets of providers that tend to treat these children.”
Children with autism are at higher risk of other mental health conditions such as anxiety disorder, depression, behavior conduct problems, ADHD, and more. This study additionally compared the prevalence of mental health conditions in children with ASD to children with intellectual disabilities and children with other on-going chronic conditions that require healthcare attention. They found that mental health conditions were significantly more prevalent in children with autism than in any other groups. Dr. Kerns suggests that “the longer mental health conditions are allowed to exist and worse, the harder they are going to be to treat. It’s much better to catch them early. Right now, we don’t have a great system for doing that.”
This research study revealed some pretty interesting data and factual information about our population of children with autism. Even during my experience as a clinical manager, over half of my clients came in with other mental health conditions, such as anxiety disorders, ADHD, and severe behavior conduct problems. This comes to provide us with another reason as to why our children with autism needs treatment as soon as possible. I’ve encountered quite a large population of parents and advocates that push for neuro-diversity and not treating the autism diagnosis stating that we should seek to “change” our children. Neuro-diversity is definitely something that I strongly believe we need to continue advocating for within our healthcare policies and education systems to provide more learning opportunities for our children; however, leaving the autism diagnosis untreated leaves our children at risk for other mental health conditions that could result in dangerous health risks and safety concerns. The important thing to know is that effective research proven treatments such as ABA does not base their principles upon changing a child. The goal is for us to teach the child life skills that will help promote the children to become more independent in life rather than remaining dependent on their caretakers to provide their daily needs. When we’re looking at shaping the behaviors of our children, we’re not looking to “change their personality.” Rather, we are aiming to provide them functional communication and replacement behaviors for them to continue living life as independent and safely as possible. If you’re interested more about my opinions on ABA and what it can...
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Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…
In today’s episode, I want to talk about the research behind physical activity with autistic children. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210202113843.htm)Now, it may seem like a no-brainer that all children should be engaging in some type of daily physical activity, but surprisingly, the Oregon State University helped find some really interesting data when it comes to our children with autism. This research study was published earlier this year in February 2021 and found that between the ages of 9 to 13 years of age, children showed the biggest drop in active time. In order to help children with autism maintain healthy rates of physical activity, the study suggested that interventions should be targeted especially between the age of 9 to 13 years.
This study was one of the first to evaluate this issue on a longitudinal scale. The study relied on data collected from families in Ireland between 2007-2016. The children who participated in this study had their evaluations/interviews at the age of 9, 13, and then lastly between the age of 17-18. The study compared 88 children with autism to 88 children without autism over the course of these 9 years to determine how physical activity changed over time, along with patterns on screen time usage.
The study found no significant difference in screen time between children with autism and children without a diagnosis, but there was a significant difference in the amount of physical activity reported. As someone who has worked with many different families leading various lifestyles, I can see how some of our autistic children drastically decrease in physical activities in their adolescent years. As academics become more demanding and services such as ABA, speech, and/or OT continues to take up all afternoon, there is very limited amount of time to intentionally designate to physical activity. There’s not enough time in a day to go around. Some autistic children even despise being outside. Being out in the sun during the summer is one of their worst nightmares, but with positive association to the outdoors and building a higher tolerance to physical exertion can help a child better tolerate the outdoors. There is always a way to make it work. But during free time, I recommend not just handing off the phone or tablet to your child to buy yourself some time. Yes, when times get tough you need to do what you need to do to make things work. But what I want to focus on is not allowing that to become a daily routine. Our children need to be constantly moving and coming into more frequent contact with their environment outside of the electronics. Be intentional about taking your child outside for a walk around the neighborhood. You prefer to keep things indoors during this pandemic? Totally okay...have them move throughout the house. Incorporate a mini workout routine before dinner. Anything to get your children moving. The physical health created for our children now will determine their health patterns for their future. Let’s not let a child’s autism diagnosis affect their physical health as well.
The CDC recommends that between the ages 3-5 years, children should be constantly moving and engaging in physical activity all day. Children between the ages of 5-17 should engage in nothing less than an hour...
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Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…
During the last couple of episodes, I’ve been pushing hard on early intervention and getting your child assessed as soon as you notice any possible signs of an autism diagnosis. But today, I wanted to talk about the flip side and society’s role in all of this. What is our responsibility as fellow community members? In what ways can we fight for more autism awareness and promote inclusivity within our education system and within our community places?
There was a research study (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210208085441.htm) published in January 2021 that investigates whether reducing biases about the autism diagnosis would help facilitate and promote social inclusion. Individuals with autism experience different struggles. Movies/tv shows have boxed individuals with autism as one specific stereotype...typically they were white males that are socially awkward but intellectually gifted and brilliant. While this may be true for some, this is DEFINITELY not true across all. The autism diagnosis affects every individual in a different way. The variance across skill sets, communication styles, behaviors are all quite broad. There is a common quote that gets tossed around within this field and that is “if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person.”
In the research study we’ll be reviewing today, Dr. Desiree Jones led a study where 238 non-autistic adults were split into 3 groups: the first group completed an autism acceptance training that focused on factual information and engaging first-person narratives, the second group completed a general mental health training not mentioning autism, and the last group had no-training which served as the control group. The participants then responded to various surveys that assessed their knowledge on autism, the stigma, and their impressions of autistic adults, and completed a novel implicit association task about autism.
The study found that the participants in the autism acceptance training condition reported more positive impressions of autistic adults, demonstrated fewer misconceptions and lower stigma about autism, endorsed higher expectations of autistic abilities, and expressed greater social interest. These findings suggest that the autism acceptance training program increased autism knowledge and familiarity among non-autistic people, which resulted in reduced explicit biases towards the autism diagnosis.
One of the co-authors of this research study, stated that "it's not easy to be autistic in a predominantly non-autistic world, and making the social world a bit more accommodating and welcoming to autistic differences could go a long way toward improving personal and professional outcomes for autistic people.” So this comes to the question of what are YOU doing to better understand the autism community and to stay informed. As the prevalence rate of autism continues to spike, more and more children in our education system are needing special education services. As a professional that’s worked with a wide spectrum of this autism diagnosis, the hardest part of my job is working through a treatment plan out in the community or in school settings and having strangers and other children stare at and judge the child and parent like spectators on reality tv. Even with the...
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Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “What the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…
Today, I wanted to talk about developmental milestones and screenings. I’ve received quite a bit of questions about the process of getting their child screened and monitored for developmental delays and the developmental milestones that is expected for their child. For many of our parents, coming home with a newborn child can be extremely overwhelming. The list of things that need to be taken care of is quite extensive and I hope that today’s episode can help breakdown all the information out there into simple steps in the area of developmental milestones. As always, all resources, articles, research studies will be posted on our facebook page @whattheautism, but if you’d like access to any of these resources via email, feel free to email us at [email protected].
But let’s talk about developmental milestones. How your child plays, learns, speaks, acts, and moves provides us with important information about your child’s development. Developmental milestones are things most children can do by a certain age, and often times these milestones can direct us to the appropriate support your child might be needing. I’ll be including on our Facebook page the link to the CDC’s list of milestones that are expected as early as 2 months and as late as 5 years. For each age, the CDC posted a simple and easy checklist of skills that should be exhibited by your child. It covers social/emotional skills, language/communication skills, physical development and motor skills, and cognitive skills. If you prefer a much easier way to track your child’s skillset through a checklist, the CDC released an app for all smartphones. The app is called CDC’s Milestone Tracker and is available on your app store for any iOS and Android systems. But like I mentioned I will be posting the link to the CDC website for more information on these developmental milestones, if you have limited access to downloading this app to your smartphone.
Link for list of basic developmental milestones: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/index.html
Screening versus monitoring checklist/chart (in English and Spanish) https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/pdf/Dev-Mon-and-Screen-English-and-Spanish-P.pdf
CDC Child Milestone’s App: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones-app.html
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends developmental and behavioral screening for all children during their visit with their pediatrician or physician at these ages:
9 months18 months30 monthsIn addition, AAP recommends that all children be screened specifically for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during their visits at:
18 months 24 monthsIf your child is at higher risk for developmental problems due to preterm birth, low birthweight,...
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Intro: Welcome back to another episode on “What the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…
Research Article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5392775/
In the research study we’ll be reviewing today, we’ll be talking about self injurious behaviors and exactly how prevalent this behavior is within children with autism. In 2017, a handful of researchers conducted a population-based study that reviewed a large sample of children with autism to gauge exactly how prevalent Self-injurious behaviors are within the autism population.
Self-injurious behaviors (SIB) are quite diverse in its appearance. Common types of SIB in ASD include-head banging, hair pulling, arm biting, eye poking, and skin scratching. Often times these types of behaviors are established because of a child’s inability to communicate their thoughts and emotions. They have learned that when they engage in self injurious behaviors, they get an immediate response from their caretakers, which eventually leads them to what they want, whether that may be attention, release of built up frustration, and/or access to a particular food/object/person. Regardless of the function of the behavior, self injurious behaviors create a huge health and safety concern for families, schools, and within community members. As always, I’ll be including the research article on our Facebook page for you to follow along. The research article shows a table that breaks down the findings from this study to help you better understand the results of what these researchers found.
Analyzing the findings of this research study, they found that the prevalence of SIB in a population-based study of ASD averaged 27.7 % over three surveillance years. Due to various limitations and sampling differences in this study, there are speculations that this 27.7% may be an under estimation of the prevalence rate of self injurious behaviors amongst children with ASD. However, regardless, these results suggest that self injurious behaviors within ASD are common and deserve more clinical and research attention in order to further advance the level of awareness and treatment strategies.
This study revealed that SIB are a common phenotypic characteristic among children with ASD and that its prevalence is higher than has been reported in children with other developmental disabilities. SIB are dangerous behaviors but it’s also important to note the amount of impact that it carries within the immediate family and community circles. SIB deserve more clinical and research attention but of course, this requires time, effort, and financial means. In conclusion, SIB in ASD is an important public health concern that affects many children. Future research is warranted to better understand its potential risk factors and consequences, in order to develop effective and more targeted treatment strategies.
Does your child exhibit SIB or SIB-like behaviors? Does your child struggle in communicating their thoughts, feelings, wants and needs? This may some times result in them hitting their head or banging their head against the wall. Some parents I have worked with in the past have also reported that their child at 18 months used to cry and repeatedly bang their head against the pillow or against their parents’ stomachs. Now, although this doesn’t warrant huge safety/health risks as the pillows and stomachs have cushion, but how...
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Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…
Today I wanted to talk about a research article that was published back in May 2020. It’s titled “Adherence to Screening and Referral Guidelines for Autism Spectrum Disorder in Toddlers in Pediatric Primary Care.” If you would like to follow along while listening to the podcast or if you’d like to review this study at another time, I have left a PDF file of this research study on our Facebook page.
But the objective of this study was to identify and study the various factors that are associated with doctors/physicians completing a follow-up interview and referring families to the appropriate next step in services after the initial screening for autism. The American Academy of Pediatrics (also referred to as AAP) recommends that all young children are screened for the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during their regular check ups with their pediatrician. But a common concern that has been discussed is the disparities in the ASD diagnosis and intervention across children of minority. This research study goes into depth on some potential contributors and some possible things to consider when we discuss the diagnosing of autism and the immediate next steps taken by physicians in their recommendations and referrals.
Prior studies that examined referrals after developmental screening suggest that patient characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or gender may influence physicians’ responses. One specific study which I’ll also include on our facebook page, found that a girl with language delays was 60% more likely than a boy with similar symptoms to audiology. Among a sample of very-low-birthweight infants who are eligible for early intervention services, referrals were much lower among children of black mothers, mothers without private insurance, or from towns with higher poverty rates.
So in today’s research study, the researchers examined a group of children with positive results in their screening to estimate rates of completion of follow up interviews and the physicians’ adherence to AAP guidelines in referring patients to early intervention services, audiology, and/or for an ASD evaluation immediately. In this particular study, the screening that was provided was a M-CHAT-F which is a parent-report tool that involves 23 "yes/no" questions about a child’s behaviors to determine their risk of ASD. There is also a SWYC Milestones questionnaires that includes 10 age-specific questions to evaluate children’s attainment of motor, cognitive, and language skills. As part of routine care, caregivers completed both of these questionnaires and screening measures on an electronic tablet or through an electronic patient portal prior to their visitation with their physician. I won’t dig too far into the specific methods and measurements, but I did want to review the results of this study with you for us to have some type of dialogue of what this could mean for your child if you are questioning potential diagnosis of autism.
The results of this study found that there are multiple factors associated with increased likelihood of follow-up interviews being completed. The research study includes very easy charts and tables that break down the various factors, such as ethnicities, genders, etc and the percentage of each population group that are provided with follow up interviews.
From this study, researchers found that despite a high rate of screening across pediatric primary care,
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Welcome back to another episode here at What the Autism?! We hit our 10th episode, and I want to thank YOU the listeners from all around the world for tuning in and showing your support for our podcast! We have over 200 listeners from 24 different countries that are tuning in and I’m very excited to see our family here on this podcast channel grow! For those of you that are new here, welcome to What the Autism?! You can follow us on our Instagram and Facebook page, @whattheautism, for daily updates and if you have any questions or stories you’d like to share with us, you can email us at [email protected].
To celebrate our 10th episode here, today we’ll be running a Q&A session with questions that were submitted by our listeners. If you think of additional questions throughout today’s episode, feel free to email us or dm us on IG and we’ll answer those questions throughout the upcoming podcast episodes or in future Q & A episodes.
Question:
Why did you start this podcast?
I started What the Autism?! not only because I’m passionate about the work that I do, but also because throughout the 8 years I’ve been working as a clinician, I’ve witnessed so many family members who regretted some of the choices that they made throughout the years. And it’s not their fault. These parents feared the future of their autistic son/daughter. What would happen to their child if something happens to the parents? Is anyone out there to care for their child? And out of that fear, they wanted to provide anything and everything to their child in hopes that something sticks. But often times, that results in regrettable decisions that have left many families broken, financially, relationally, mentally, and emotionally. The purpose of this podcast is to help all our families understand the scientific research that is out there and to help parents make the most INFORMED decision when it comes to treatment and diagnosis. Time is of the essence and any wrong decision can waste money, and most importantly, time...time that your child cannot afford to waste. So before making any decisions on treatment, make sure you seek out the appropriate specialists, get multiple medical opinions and make sure you are well informed of type of services your child may need.
Is it hard for high functioning Autism to be diagnosed?
When we say high functioning, this typically means that the individual doesn’t engage in high rates of maladaptive behaviors and can functionally communicate with others. Although high functioning autism may be less noticeable in the community, a credible psychologist should still be able to quickly identify if a child has autism no matter how severely impacted the diagnosis is. A high functioning autistic individual may struggle with emotional sensitivities, social difficulties, resistance to change, or certain fixations. But regardless of what type of symptoms are present, an individual that’s less severely impacted by the autism diagnosis should still be able to be diagnosed with autism if they meet the diagnostic criteria. In Episode 2 of my podcast, I review the diagnostic criteria for autism and what checkboxes psychologists are looking for when it comes to the autism diagnosis so make sure to give that episode a listen to see if your child may meet the qualifications for the autism diagnosis.
I think my child has autism...what do I do?
The most important thing is to get your child diagnosed! Autism can be diagnosed as early as 18 months! Don’t let anyone tell you other wise. If your insurance provider and/or any agencies are telling you to wait till your child is 3 years old....don’t! Because when a child turns 3 years and then action is taken to schedule a diagnosis, by the...
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Welcome back to another episode on “what the AUTISM?!” This podcast is for anyone who is struggling with understanding what autism is and how we can better empower our autism community through research proven methods. In each episode, I will be sharing with you ground-breaking research and how the diagnosis of autism can often be misunderstood. If you are a new listener to our podcast, I highly recommend you start from episode 1 to catch you up to speed on various terminology and concepts! Now let’s get started…
Today’s episode will be covering the last part of our ABA 101 series. During the last 3 episodes, we talked about the ABCs of ABA, what behaviors are, the functions of behavior, reinforcement versus punishment, so today we’ll be talking about reinforcers and how we establish motivation in our children.
Let’s get started with a quick recap. Last week’s episode covered the difference between reinforcement and punishment in ABA terminology. Remember that reinforcement occurs when a behavior INCREASES because of a consequence of either adding or removing something from the environment. By definition, a reinforcer INCREASES behavior and there are 2 types of reinforcements: positive and negative reinforcement.
Positive Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus such as a person, an object, etc is presented immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases.
Negative Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus is removed immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases. Let me remind you, that just because the word “negative” is present, it does not mean anything bad.
What are some examples of reinforcers? Any items/access to activities such as electronics (tablets, video games, etc) or access to locations are all common examples of reinforcers.
What effects reinforcer effectiveness?
We must remember 4 different variables that effect reinforcer effectiveness. They are: deprivation/satiation, immediacy, size, and contingency.
1) Deprivation/Satiation: Often referred to as not enough or too much of a good thing!
Deprivation: Not having access to something that is highly desirable. Often this is used to increase the value of an item/activity to someone.
Example:
I’ve been working all day and haven’t had a chance to eat. Because I haven’t eaten anything, I’m deprived of food, so my motivation to get food is higher. If my child had access to their video games removed, their motivation to gain access to play their video games is higher.Satiation: This is the opposite of deprivation. Satiation refers to having too much. If the same reinforcer is used over and over again, it will lose it's reinforcing value.
Example:
Let's say you ate a cheeseburger for lunch today and for dinner, your friends want to go out to have burgers. Tomorrow, your co-worker suggests grabbing a burger for lunch again...no thank you! You are satiated with cheeseburgers.2) Immediacy: The item that is serving as the reinforcer needs to be delivered as quickly as possible as soon as the target behavior occurs. The longer the amount of time lapses between the behavior and the delivery of the reinforcer, the less effective the reinforcer will be.
Example:
Let’s say that Johnny was promised by his mom that he’ll get a lollipop if he’s behaves in the grocery store today. Johnny is on his best behavior, and on their way out of the store, mom promises that he gets his lollipop. However, on the way home, mom forgot that she has a... -
Have you ever come across a situation where a child doesn’t listen to you, no matter what type of punishment or negative consequences you place on them? Or have you ever seen a child start losing interests in earning some of their most favorite activities, toys, or foods? Today we’re going to talk about reinforcements versus punishments and what type of strategy may be the most helpful for your child. Please note that I’m not a child psychologist nor a family therapist. I’m a board certified behavior analyst that is here to talk to you about behaviors and how we can shape and develop desirable behaviors in our children. If you enjoy our podcast, please make sure to follow our podcast channel and follow us on our Facebook page and Instagram @whattheautism.
In today’s episode, there will be some technical language and vocabulary that is specific to ABA, but be patient with me, as I’ll be breaking down what each of these terms mean and present to you some everyday examples that may be helpful in you understanding a little more about ABA.
Now let’s start with “what is reinforcement?”
Reinforcement occurs when a behavior INCREASES because of a consequence of either adding or removing something from the environment. By definition, a reinforcer INCREASES behavior. Remember that consequences is not a negative association like a punishment. We talked about consequences in episode 6 where we described consequences as anything that occurs after a behavior takes place. So for example, let’s say that Jenny is instructed by the teacher to go to her desk to complete her worksheet. Jenny starts crying, whining, and throwing her toys around the classroom. Because the teacher is busy working with the other kids, she puts Jenny on a time-out until the teacher is ready to work with her. Now, based on all the things we talked about in previous episodes, what do you think will happen in the future when the teacher tells Jenny to complete worksheets? Jenny will continue to engage in tantrums and inappropriate behaviors in order to get out of completing her worksheets. So during the next couple days, she continues to exhibit these inappropriate behaviors. This “time out” now functions as a reinforcer in this situation. Why? Because these inappropriate tantrums and whining behaviors have increased. If you need a couple seconds to digest this concept, I suggest you take a pause here before moving on.
Now digging a little further into reinforcements. There are 2 types of reinforcements: Positive and negative. Don’t let the word negative get you to think that it comes with a bad connotation. It’s simply referring to whether a stimulus has been presented or removed.
1) Positive Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus such as a person, an object, etc is presented immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases.
Examples:
Bob finishes his math homework and afterwards he gets a piece of gum. A piece of gum is the stimulus that is presented. And because Bob is motivated by gum, the probability of him completing his math homework to get more gum increases.George sits appropriately in circle time and exhibits listening skills by answering questions about the story. This earns him 10 minutes of his favorite activity: blowing bubbles. The activity of blowing bubbles is a stimulus that is presented and because George is motivated by this activity, the probability of him engaging in circle time in the future increases.2) Negative Reinforcement: A behavior occurs. A stimulus is removed immediately following the behavior. The probability of that behavior occurring again in the future increases. Let me remind you, that just because the word...
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What are the 4 main functions of behavior:
EscapeAccess to Tangible (activity, object, anything)AttentionAutomatic (behaviors that you engage in because the specific internal sensation/feeling that you get feels good)Remember, a behavior is only a behavior when 1. The action is measurable and observable 2. Passes the dead man’s test. These are things that we reviewed last week in episode 6, so make sure to take a listen if you missed last week’s episode!
So let’s start talking about autism. How does the identification of the functions of behavior help in treating those with autism? When children engage in socially inappropriate behaviors such as aggression and self-injurious behaviors...if we do not understand why the child is engaging in these behaviors, we can’t properly treat the behavior. This results in a treatment program that will never get to the root of the problem.
We also review a research article that was published in 2018 titled "The Big Four." The purpose of this article is to suggest that by adding prevention practices to early intervention guidelines for problem behavior, this would increase the effectiveness of a treatment. The article talks about how understanding the core functions that produce problem behavior teaches us how to arrange environments and how to teach skills that would prevent problems from occurring from the start. I’ll go ahead and link this study on our facebook page, but it’s extremely important that we focus on the reason why a child is engaging in a specific behavior rather than how the child is engaging in the behavior.
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I’m really excited for today’s episode because this is an episode that will benefit listeners of all backgrounds. So whether you are a parent (you don’t have to have an autistic child for ABA strategies to be beneficial to your parenting), a treatment provider, or even someone who’s just curious about ABA. I’ll tell you from the start, ABA does NOT always equate to autism therapy. ABA can be used for anything and anyone that engages in behavior...which is basically all living and breathing organisms. ABA has been proven to be an effective method of treatment for children with autism, but ABA has been an effective method for those that struggle with substance abuse, fitness coaches, nutritionists, life coaches, organizational behavior management (which focuses of the behavior of a company’s employees and the company itself).
What is ABA? ABA is a therapy based on the science of an individual’s behaviors and how they learn. So in other words, behavior analysis helps us to understand how behavior works, how a person’s behavior is affected by the environment, and how their learning takes place.
The main goal of ABA is to increase behaviors that are helpful to an individual and decrease behaviors that are harmful or that can negatively impact learning. Ways that ABA therapy programs can help...is 1. Increase language and communication skills. 2. Improve attention, focus, social skills, memory, and academics 3. Decrease problem behaviors, such as intense tantrums, aggression, non-compliance, property destruction, and many more. ABA has been existing as a therapy treatment since the 1960s and since then the research behind ABA and its effectiveness has been thoroughly investigated and proven time and time again. During the last 3 episodes, I’ve touched on various research that proves the effectiveness of ABA and some common myths that have been debunked by research. Tune into episode 5 if you’re curious to hear more about other common myths on the topic of the autism diagnosis.
But to dive into the topic of ABA treatment, I’m going to simply breakdown some very basic foundational principles of ABA. This is going to be extremely helpful to know for future episodes when we dive further into research that has more complex concepts and scientific terminology.
In ABA, the surrounding environment is extremely important. When we first start services for our patients, what’s most important is that we control this environment to ensure that we create as successful of a learning opportunity as possible. In order to do this, we first need to understand how these environments are studied and how to effectively utilize these variables to control the environment.
First, we need to define what the word BEHAVIOR means. We define behavior as anything a person says or does that involves movement and has an impact on the environment. A behavior needs to be able to be observed, described and recorded. It needs to be able to pass what we call the dead man’s test. Basically, the concept is that If a dead man can do it, then it is NOT a behavior! So for example, a child not paying attention, not a behavior. Why? Because a dead man can do that. A child being non-responsive is not a behavior. Why? Because a dead man can do that. A child working on their homework, running, playing with their friends are all examples of a behavior.
Another common mistake that many people make is what we call circular reasoning. For example, some parents will come to me and say "Johnny doesn’t do his homework because he’s lazy?" So if I ask, "Why is Johnny lazy?" The parents will say "Because he doesn’t do his homework." There is no end to this circular reasoning. And this results in a behavior that can’t be observed. I can’t observe Johnny being lazy. What does lazy look like? How it looks for me might be different for someone else. If we can’t observe it, we can’t measure the behavior. And a behavior has
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In today's episode, we talk about some common myths that people have about the autism diagnosis and how research has debunked them!
Autism only affects children. False!Autism is just an issue with the brain. False! Co-morbidities (GI issues, sleeping problems, epilepsy, etc) are very common in children with ASD. Autism is caused by bad parenting. FALSE!! Research has proven that there was no difference in parenting styles between parents of typically developing children and parents of children with autism/anxiety disorder. Vaccinations causes autism. FALSE! We reviewed Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study that claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism. This study was retracted in 2010, but in this episode we dive deeper into this study to examine issues with this research study.All autistic people are extremely gifted/talented with memory skills, numbers, music, art. False! Although this may be true for SOME of our children, this doesn't accurately reflect across all children with autism.ABA treatment turns children into robots! FALSE! A good ABA treatment provider ensures that their programming has variability and generalization. ABA treatment has been research proven to be the most effective in treating autism.Go to our facebook page @whattheautism to find each perspective research articles and supporting studies to debunk every single one of these myths!
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Unfortunately, we do not know all of the causes of ASD. However, through much research and time, we have learned that there are likely many causes for multiple types of ASD. As we’ve discussed in episode 2, there is quite a wide spectrum of children when we talk about ASD. There are children that are extremely gifted with numbers and academics but has a really difficult time socializing with others. You also have children that have extreme high levels of maladaptive behaviors such as aggression, property destructions, self injurious behaviors and have minimal or 0 level of vocal communication. Because there are so many different severity levels within the autism spectrum, it’s difficult to say that one factor impacts the severity of the diagnosis. The autism spectrum disorder affects children of all races and nationalities, but certain factors increase a child's risk.
Most scientists agree that genes are one of the risk factors that can make a person more likely to develop ASD.A child's biological sex can also be a factor. Boys are about four times more likely to develop autism spectrum disorder than girls are.Family history. Families who have one child with ASD have an increased risk of having another child with the disorder. It's also not uncommon for parents or relatives of a child with ASD to have minor problems with social or communication skills themselves or to engage in certain behaviors typical of the disorder.Other disorders. Children with certain medical conditions have a higher than normal risk of ASD or autism-like symptoms. Some examples include fragile X syndrome and Rett syndromeExtremely preterm babies. Babies born before 26 weeks of gestation may have a greater risk of autism spectrum disorder.Parents' ages. There may be a connection between children born to older parents and autism spectrum disorder, but more research is necessary to establish this link.Let me remind you that these are just some POTENTIAL factors that might increase the risk that a child may have autism, there are other speculations that are being researched and studied, so the autism research community will definitely be needing more time and data.
ASD continues to be an important public health concern. Like the many families that have been impacted by autism, the CDC wants to find out exactly what causes the disorder. Understanding these different factors that make a person more likely to develop ASD will help identify more information about the causes. One of the largest U.S. studies to date is SEED (S-E-E-D): Study to Explore Early Development (SEED). SEED is currently looking at many possible risk factors for ASD, including genetic, environmental, pregnancy, and behavioral factors. SEED is a valuable resource for testing hypotheses regarding ASD characteristics and causes. I’ll link you guys to this research study and some helpful pdf documents on our facebook page, @whattheautism.
Although there is much more research that needs to be conducted, it’s important that as a community of autism advocates, treatment providers, educators, and parents, we find ways to contribute to the future of autism research. One easy way is to stay informed on the current research that is happening. Even though there’s a long list of possible factors and variables that might contribute to a child being diagnosed with autism, it’s an extensive list of possibilities that research needs more time to continue to digging through in order to find more answers. There aren’t any research studies that solely identifies that THIS specific variable causes autism, as many of these possible factors are just possible risks factors for the diagnosis. But as a treatment...
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A great way to make a quick observation of how your child is developing is...
1. Do a quick research of a timeline and understand the developmental milestones that your child should be meeting. At what age should my child be babbling sounds and trying to mimic words? Engaging in joint attention and be interested in playing with other children? Crawling? Playing with toys? Etc.
2. Immediately set up those peer dates with anyone and everyone that you can possibly expose your child to. Seeing your child in the same environment as their peers will help you to see what is typical and what is not.
If you are in a place of thinking your child may need help but maybe you're afraid, confused, and unsure. I hear you. I may not have directly experienced what it’s felt like to receive the news that my child has an autism diagnosis and that they won’t develop like their neuro-typical peers, but what I do know is what can lie on the flip side of the timeline once your child begins receiving treatment. Every parent that I have worked with has experienced the same type of fear and uncertainty, but I have yet to have met a family that has EVER regretted their decision to get their child’s autism diagnosis treated.
ABA treatment: Why is it the most effective? We cover research proving the effectiveness of ABA treatment. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a therapy treatment based on the science of learning and behavior. What we do as behavior analysts is take a look at an individual’s specific behavior and determine if this is this a behavior that we need to increase or decrease? If a child is aggressive or engages in excessive tantrums, that’s a behavior we want to decrease. Eye contact, functional language, social skills are all behaviors we want to increase in our children. This is where we begin to evaluate the environments that the child is in and determine what the child’s main motivators are in order for us to create a controlled environment that will also us to most successfully teach a child various skill sets and decrease undesired behaviors.
ABA has been proven in over 20 different research studies that intensive and long-term therapy using ABA principles improves outcomes for many children diagnosed with autism. The Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore Maryland is an internationally recognized institution dedicated to improving the lives of children and young adults with pediatric developmental disabilities through patient care, special education, research, and professional training. I’ll be linking you to their website that discusses their stance on ABA treatment on our facebook page. But over the past 40 years, an extensive amount of research has documented the success of ABA-based treatment to reduce problem behavior and increase appropriate skills for individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID), autism, and related disorders.
Another study to note was published in September 2017. E Linstead, D R Dixon, E Hong, C O Burns, R French, M N Novack, and D Granpeesheh conducted a study to investigate how treatment intensity and duration impact learning across different treatment domains, including academic, adaptive, cognitive, executive function, language, motor, play, and social. The results indicated that treatment intensity and duration were both significant predictors of mastered learning objectives across all treatment domains .
So why ABA? Why and how is it effective in treating autism. In ABA, we study the child’s environments and determine how we can best increase and decrease behaviors. And this means everything and anything, and this can also include skills sets that involve speech and occupational therapy. It’s not to say that one treatment trumps over the others, but it’s to say that ABA can many times be the most effective in showing significant progress across areas that are more than just treating maladaptive behaviors. We focus on providing our...
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