If you’re a parent of a child with Autism you have probably heard the term ABA, an acronym for Applied Behavioral Analysis. If you’ve wondered exactly what therapies are available to help people with Autism, this is one of them. It is a form of therapy that is highly repetitive and firmly structured something most of our kids respond well to, but my wonder is how much comprehension is being communicated through these flash card download sessions? ABA has been considered a very successful form of therapy for children on the spectrum and unlike many forms of therapy for Autism it is scientifically supported.
With the documentation of its success I like most parents, wanted to see my son in a program that offered ABA. When my son was 3 this was not easy to find. I was warned it was very intense and I may not want my child involved in such a severe form of therapy. After hearing that I imagined how intense it could be, was he strapped to a chair and forced to look at images? Was medication involved? What were the adverse reactions if any? I began to imagine ABA as a form of Aversion Therapy similar to the kind Alex from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange receives.
Although ABA is intense and repetitive it is not as torturous as it was depicted to me. I think I was discouraged because of the lack of trained specialist and programs available at that time. Now, ten years later, every special education program claims to use the ABA method. They say it is “built into” the curriculum. As someone who used my own version of this method during our home school sessions, I can’t see how it could be. It is a method done one on one with minimal distraction. The information is delivered at a rapid, repetitive pace. I found the ABA method most useful during math drills as repetition with mathematics seems to work better than a slow research and discovery process, used for other subjects that require more comprehension than memorization like reading.
I noticed that J was memorizing these math equations but very rarely comprehending the results such as the value or quantity, and he couldn’t discuss it outside of the ABA sessions, which made me wonder is ABA the most effective method or is it a way to cram information into our kids brains so they can perform like parakeets? What do you think? Please respond in the comment area with your own experiences with ABA, would love to hear from Board Certified therapist on this as well.
-JRED
Applied Behavior Analysis
“Applied Behavior Analysis is the process of systematically applying interventions based upon the principles of learning theory to improve socially significant behaviors to a meaningful degree, and to demonstrate that the interventions employed are responsible for the improvement in behavior“ -As defined by Baer,Wolf, & Risley.
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