Tag Archives: teaching

How Siblings Of Children With Autism Can Help Improve Behaviors

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When I first came across this study, “Behavioral Training for Siblings of Autistic Children,” I was immediately hesitant. There’s something about the idea of sibling-as-therapist that makes me cringe a little bit. When I work with the families of children with autism, the hope is that the siblings of the child with autism still have a childhood without being pushed into the role of caregiver. And I also want the child with autism to have independence and feel like an individual who is heard, which may be more challenging if their siblings are issuing demands just as a parent or teacher would. But as I read the study, I realized that the work they completed had incredible social significance.

In the study, there were three pairs of siblings. The ages of the children with autism ranged from 5 years old to 8 years old. The ages of the siblings ranged from 8 years old to 13 years old. The researchers trained each sibling of a child with autism how to teach basic skills, such as discriminating between different coins, identifying common objects, and spelling short words. As part of this training, the researchers showed videos of one-on-one sessions in which these skills were taught, utilizing techniques such as reinforcement, shaping, and chaining. What the researchers did next was the part that really stood out to me: they discussed with the siblings how to use these techniques in other environments. Finally, the researchers observed the sibling working with their brother/sister with autism and provided coaching on the techniques.

It should be noted here that the goal of the study was not to have the siblings become the teacher of basic skills. Instead, it was to provide a foundation of skills in behavioral techniques for the sibling to use in other settings with the hope of overall improvement in the behaviors of the child with autism. The researchers demonstrated that, after training, the siblings were able to effectively use prompts, reinforcement, and discrete trials to effectively teach new skills. But, perhaps the most meaningful aspects of the study were the changes reported by both siblings and parents. The researchers provide a table showing comments about the sibling with autism before and after the training. One of the most striking comments after the training was, “He gets along better if I know how to ask him” (p. 136). Parents reported that they were pleased with the results and found the training beneficial.

This study provides excellent evidence that structured training for siblings has real potential for making life a little easier for the whole family. The idea isn’t that they become the therapist, but instead that knowledge truly is power.

References

Schriebman, L., O’Neill, R.E. & Koegel, R.L. (1983). Behavioral training for siblings of autistic children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. 16(2), 129-138.

WRITTEN BY SAM BLANCO, MSED, BCBA

Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.

 

Tip of the Week: Using Token Economies In Autism Classrooms

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Token economies are used in many different environments. They’re typically simple to implement and achieve desired results for behavior change, especially in autism classrooms. Furthermore, there are tons of research on how to best use them. If you want to get the best results while simultaneously promoting independence in your learners, it is not as simple as just putting some stars on a chart.

 

  • Use a preference assessment. This will help you identify reinforcers your learner may want to earn. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I often use the Reinforcer Assessment for Individuals with Severe Disability (Fisher, Piazza, Bowman, & Amari, 1996). You can view it here.
  • Define the target behavior. What behaviors do you want to increase? And how can you define them so they are clearly observable and measurable. For instance, your learner could earn tokens for raising his or her hand in class or responding to a question within 3 to 5 seconds. It is important the behavior is clear and everyone using the token economy agrees on what each behavior looks like.
  • Choose your tokens. When I was a classroom teacher, I had a class-wide token economy in which my students earned paperclips. The paperclips had no value initially, but once the students understood the system, I could put paperclips in the bags of the students who were sitting quietly while still continuing to teach my lesson. It allowed them to reinforce the appropriate behaviors and make the most of instructional time. For other students, I’ve used things such as Blue’s Clues stickers, smiley faces I drew on a piece of paper, and even tally marks on an index card.
  • Choose when and how tokens will be exchanged. With the paperclip system in my classroom, exchanges occurred at the end of the day. After everyone had their bags packed and were sitting at their desk, we did the “paperclip count” and students could decide whether to spend or save. There was a menu of options ranging in price from 10–100 paperclips. It was also a great way to reinforce some basic math skills (such as counting by fives and tens and completing basic operations). For other students, they might be able to exchange tokens after earning a set amount. Depending on their level of ability, that set amount may be very small (such as 2 to 3) or much larger (such as 25). Sometimes, students have a choice of items or activities, while at other times they earn a pre-selected item or activity.
  • Keep it individualized. Conducting a preference assessment helps to make sure it’s individualized to your learner’s preferred items. With my students, the menu of items/activities they could earn was generated through a conversation with them.
  • Decide if you will implement a response cost. For my students, I have never used a system in which they could lose tokens they had already earned. But you may find that utilizing it may help. It all depends on your particular learner, which makes the next point all the more important.
  • Take data. You need to take data so you will know if your token economy is helping you achieve your goal with the target behaviors you have set.
  • Thin the reinforcement over time or change the target behaviors. I do not want any of my learners to be using a token economy for one behavior for all eternity! Let’s say I start with a young learner who is not sitting down for instruction. I may start the token economy by having my student earn a token for every instance in which they are seated correctly for a specified period of time. As my student masters that, I will increase the amount of time required before a token will be earned. Once they’ve achieved the goal I set, I can either fade out the token economy, or keep the token economy but use it for a new behavior.

WRITTEN BY SAM BLANCO, MSED, BCBA

Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.

Tip of the Week: Could Teaching Environments Affect Solving Problem Behaviors?

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A few years ago, I went in to observe an ABA therapist I was supervising. The first thing I noticed when I walked in to observe was that she did her entire session at a long wooden table, sitting side-by-side with her student. She was working with a ten-year-old girl with Aspergers. One of her goals was to increase eye contact during conversation, but her student wasn’t making much progress in this area. She had consulted the research and was considering a new behavior intervention plan, and wanted my input before doing so. I wondered could teaching environments affect solving problem behaviors?

After watching for about ten minutes, I asked if we could change the seating arrangement. We moved her student to the end of the table, then had the therapist sit next to her, but on the perpendicular side. This way, eye contact was much easier as they were able to face each other. The student’s eye contact improved instantly with a small environmental change. (Of course, once we made the environmental change, we worked together to address other changes that could be made to encourage eye contact.)

Environmental changes can be a quick and simple solution to some problem behaviors. Here are some questions to consider in order to alter the environment effectively:

Is it possible that a change in furnishings could change the behavior? For example, moving a child’s locker closer to the classroom door may decrease tardiness, putting a child’s desk in the furthest corner from the door may decrease opportunities for elopement, or giving your child a shorter chair that allows them to put their feet on the ground may decrease the amount of times they kick their sibling from across the table. You may also want to consider partitions that allow for personal space, clearly-marked spaces for organizing materials, proximity to students and distractions (such as windows or the hallway).

Can you add something to the environment to change the behavior? For example, your student may be able to focus better on independent work if you provide noise-cancelling headphones, line up correctly if a square for him/her to stand is taped to the floor, or your child may be more efficient with completing chores if they’re allowed to listen to their favorite music while doing so. I’ve also seen some cases in which the teacher wears a microphone that wirelessly links to a student’s headphones, increasing that student’s ability to attend to the teacher’s instruction.

Will decreasing access to materials impact the behavior? For example, removing visuals such as posters and student work may increase your student’s ability to attend or locking materials in a closet when not in use may decrease your student’s ability to destroy or damage materials.

Will increasing access to materials impact the behavior? For example, making a box of pre-sharpened pencils may decrease the behavior of getting up frequently to sharpen pencils. (I recently visited a classroom in which the teacher put pre-sharpened pencils in a straw dispenser on her desk, and each week one student was assigned the job of sharpening pencils at the end of the day).

Whenever you do make changes to the environment, you may want to consider if the changes require fading. For example, if I make a square on the floor out of tape to teach my student where to stand in the line, I will want to fade that out of over time to increase their independence.

A final consideration is that whatever impact you expect the environmental change to have should be clearly defined and measured. Take data to ensure that the intervention is working so you can make adjustments as necessary.

For more detailed information on modifying environments, there is a great article from the Council for Exceptional Children by Caroline A. Guardino and Elizabeth Fullerton entitled “Changing Behaviors by Changing the Classroom Environment.” Click here for the article.

WRITTEN BY SAM BLANCO, MSED, BCBA

Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.

Tip of the Week: What Is Reinforcement In ABA?

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Sometimes, people hear about ABA and equate reinforcement with bribery. But the two are quite different, and it’s important to understand those differences. First, let’s look at bribery. The definition of bribery is “to persuade someone to act in one’s favor by a gift of money or other inducement.” The first thing to note is that bribery helps the person persuading, not the person completing the action. The second thing to note is that when we consider bribery with children, it’s often implemented when the child is already engaging in an inappropriate behavior. For instance, you might see a child throw himself on the floor in the grocery store and begin kicking and screaming. If the father says, “If you get up, I’ll buy the candy bar,” that would be considered bribery.

So what is reinforcement, then? Reinforcement is anything that occurs immediately after the behavior that increases the future likelihood of the behavior. And reinforcement occurs all the time in real life! If I turn on a new radio station and it happens to be playing by favorite song, I am more likely to turn to that radio station again in the future. If I send a text to a friend and she responds immediately, I am more likely to text her again in the future. If my stomach is upset, then I drink a seltzer and it calms my stomach, I am more likely to drink seltzer in the future when my stomach hurts.

Where confusion often sets in is when we plan reinforcement to increase the behavior of an individual. It’s important to understand that the goal in ABA teaching should always be to move from planned reinforcement to unplanned or natural reinforcement. Think of it as jumpstarting a behavior that will benefit the individual. For instance, I have a student that would run into the street if you let go of his hand. Part of teaching procedure was to teach him to stop at the curb. This behavior is obviously a benefit to him and helps increase his safety. When he stopped at the curb, he earned a token. When he had earned five tokens, he earned access to the iPad. After he was successfully stopping at the curb, we taught him the next step was to reach for the adult’s hand. He no longer earned tokens for stopping at the curb, but he did earn tokens for completing both steps. We continued in this way until he was appropriately stopping at the curb, reaching for the adult’s hand, then waiting for the sign to say “Walk,” looking both ways, then walking into the street. It was a lengthy process, but planned reinforcement in the form of tokens was the best method for teaching him to be safe on the street.

A final note about reinforcement: it varies by individual. Some individuals are highly reinforced by chocolate or books or access to music. Others are highly reinforced by playing with a ball or going for a walk. In ABA, we don’t just walk in and give a kid M&M after M&M and hope their behavior magically changes. The first step is to conduct a preference assessment. A common one I use can be found here. This tool will help guide you to the most effective reinforcers for your learner and make your intervention more efficient.

WRITTEN BY SAM BLANCO, MSED, BCBA

Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.

Pick of the Week: Toilet Training Books – Save 20% this week!

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Toilet training can be easier! Toilet Training for Individuals with Autism by Maria Wheeler, MEd, and Toilet Training Success by Frank Cicero, PhD, BCBA, offer toilet training tips and strategies for parents and professionals to implement into their programs using the methods and principles of Applied Behavior Analysis.

Toilet Training for Individuals with Autism presents clear solutions for transitioning children from diapers to underpants, covering how to:

  • gauge readiness
  • identify and reduce sensory challenges
  • overcome anxiety
  • develop habits and routine
  • teach proper use of toilet, sink, toilet paper
  • and more!

 

Toilet Training Success introduces the reader to effective toilet training interventions for individuals with developmental disabilities, including urination training, bowel training, increasing requesting, and overnight training. The manual also addresses when to begin toilet training and how to use positive reinforcement, collect data, and conduct necessary assessments prior to training.

Use our promotional code POTTY20 at check-out this week to redeem your savings on either or both of these manuals!

* Promotion is valid until May 17, 2016 at 11:59pm EST. Offer cannot be applied to previous purchases, combined with any other offers, transferred, refunded, or redeemed and/or exchanged for cash or credit. Different Roads to Learning reserves the right to change or cancel this promotion at any time. To redeem offer at differentroads.com, enter promo code POTTY20 at checkout.

How Occupational Therapy Can Benefit ABA Programs

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This month, we’re proud to feature a wonderful piece from the Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT), written by Amy McGinnis Stango, MS, OTR, MS, BCBA, on the benefits of occupational therapy as a supplement to your child’s ABA program. Amy is a nationally registered occupational therapist and board certified behavior analyst, and provides consultative direct and consultative services to families, clinics and schools across the country and internationally. She is also the co-author of Assessing Language and Learning with Pictures (ALL PICS), an assessment tool designed to make administration of the VB-MAPP more accurate, efficient, and cost-effective for schools, clinics, agencies, and private practitioners.

To learn more about ASAT, please visit their website at www.asatonline.org. You can also sign up for ASAT’s free newsletter, Science in Autism Treatment, and like them on Facebook!

My child is enrolled in an ABA-based program where he also receives some OT services. How can occupational therapy benefit my child’s ABA program?

Answered by Amy McGinnis Stango, MS, OTR, MS, BCBA

Occupational therapy (OT) can be beneficial as a supplemental treatment to your child’s ABA program. The goal of occupational therapy is to support an individual’s health and participation in life through engagement in occupations or everyday tasks (AOTA, 2008). The occupational therapy process begins with an evaluation. The evaluation helps to determine whether your child has met developmental milestones in a wide variety of occupations. The occupational therapy evaluation can help your child’s behavior analyst choose developmentally appropriate goals to be included in his ABA program. The OT evaluation may also be helpful in understanding why a child struggles with a particular task. For example, if your child struggles with handwriting, the evaluation can determine whether this difficulty stems from an inappropriate grasp, poor posture, muscle weakness, visual memory, or lack of eye-hand coordination. Pediatric occupational therapy typically addresses the following domains:

  • Play
  • Activities of Daily Living
  • Education
  • Social Participation

Play is the primary occupation of childhood and is often an area of need for children with autism. Occupational therapy can be effective in helping children learn new play skills (Stagnitti, O’Connor, & Sheppard, 2012). Many pediatric occupational therapists use a play-based approach to their sessions, exposing children to a variety of toys, games, and different ways to play. If your child engages in repetitive play behaviors or has limited interests, the occupational therapist may be helpful in finding other activities that share similar sensory properties of the toys your child already enjoys. Some of the sensory activities used in occupational therapy may function as reinforcers, which could be used in your child’s ABA sessions as well (McGinnis, Blakely, Harvey, Hodges & Rickards, 2013).

Occupational therapists typically include an assessment of activities of daily living (ADLs) as part of the evaluation. ADLs include those basic self-care tasks that an individual performs each day, such as eating, grooming, dressing, and using the bathroom. Occupational therapy can help to build the strength, coordination, and perception skills needed to perform these tasks. For example, if your child has oral motor deficits, occupational therapy can help your child learn the mouth movements necessary for chewing and drinking (Eckman, Williams, Riegel, & Paul, 2008; Gibbons, Williams, & Riegel, 2007). Occupational therapy can also help older children and adolescents learn more advanced ADLs, like independent bathing (Schillam, Beeman & Loshin, 1983). Occupational therapists are trained in identifying multiple ways to perform routine tasks, and can recommend an approach that will work best for your child and can be integrated into your routines at home (Kellegrew, 1998).

As individuals with autism age, occupational therapists can help teach skills that will lead to greater independence at home and in the community (McInerney & McInerney, 1992). These include preparing meals, managing money, shopping and using public transportation. Often these skills are more complex and may require an activity or task analysis that breaks the task down into simpler steps. With extensive training in developing task analyses, occupational therapists can share these analyses with your child’s ABA team so that skills can be taught across settings. If tasks are still difficult, an occupational therapist may recommend adaptive equipment to make a task easier. Occupational therapy can also help your child participate more fully in his or her educational program. Occupational therapy can help young children acquire tasks such as coloring and cutting (Case-Smith, Heaphy, Marr, Galvin, Koch, Ellis, & Perez, 1998), as well as help older children acquire skills such as handwriting (Denton, Cope, & Moser, 2006). If your child has difficulty moving through the school setting or actively participating in movement activities, occupational therapy can help your child develop functional mobility skills. Continue reading →

What Is Procedural Fidelity In ABA?

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It is not uncommon for parents or practitioners to implement a new intervention that appears to be working well, then after a few weeks or months report that the intervention has stopped working. Often, the change in behavior in feels like a mystery and leaves people scrambling for a new intervention. But before searching for a new intervention, you should consider the possibility of problems with procedural fidelity, which “refers to the accuracy with which the intervention or treatment is implemented” (Mayer, Sulzer-Azaroff, & Wallace, 2014).

Problems with procedural fidelity in ABA are common, and you will experience more success with your interventions if you take steps to address fidelity at the outset. Here are a few suggestions:

  • Post the steps in a visible spot. Clearly list the steps of the procedure and put them in a spot where you will see them often. This might be on the actual data collection sheet or on the wall. One parent I worked with had a Post-it® note with the steps for our intervention attached to her computer screen. Another parent kept the steps inside the ID part of his wallet, where they were protected and visible each time he opened his wallet.
  • Plan meetings to go over the steps. As part of your intervention, set brief monthly or quarterly meetings to go over the steps of the intervention and be sure everyone is maintaining procedural fidelity.
  • Assess for procedural fidelity. Schedule observations to ensure that each step of the intervention is implemented as described. If you do not have someone who can supervise you, take video of yourself implementing the intervention, watch it and compare your actions to the steps outlined in the intervention plan.
  • Outline steps for systematic fading of the intervention. When implementing an intervention, the goal is to have the learner eventually exhibiting the desirable behavior without prompts or planned reinforcement. Sometimes when a parent or practitioner sees the learner’s behavior improving, they begin to remove the prompts or planned reinforcement before the learner is quite ready for it. By writing a plan for fading the intervention into the plan, you make it clear to everyone involved what the requirements are for each step towards mastery.

REFERENCES

Mayer, G.R., Sulzer-Azaroff, B., & Wallace, M. (2014). Behavior analysis for lasting change (3rd ed.). Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing.

WRITTEN BY SAM BLANCO, MSED, BCBA

Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3–12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.

Autism Awareness Month: DIY Spatial Awareness Button Buddy

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sugar aunts 1Looking for a simple tool to help improve your student’s handwriting skills? Check out this super easy, DIY solution from Sugar Aunts called the Spatial Awareness Button Buddy!  This tool helps youngsters accurately space letters and words within a sentence using a small Popsicle stick and a button.

Simply glue a button to one end of a Popsicle stick and instruct the student to lay the Button Buddy on its side to indicate where they should place the next letter as shown in the photo below.

sugar aunts 2

 

Once the child has completed a word, ask them to lay the Button Buddy flat on their paper, with the button right next to their last letter.  Show them that the space between each word is as long as the width of a button and have them write their next word on the opposite side of their Button Buddy.

Continue on until your little writer has mastered their new spatial awareness skills and can write full sentences without their Button Buddy!

For more spatial awareness activities and ideas, read the full article from Sugar Aunts here.  Otherwise, let us know what other crafts and activities you have come up with to help your students improve their handwriting in the comments section!

Facilitating Social Groups for Students with Autism

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In honor of Autism Awareness Month, we’re pleased to highlight an NYC-based agency called East Side Social this week! Alicia Allgood is a BCBA and co-founder of East Side Social. With her co-founder Kimia Tehrani, BCBA, they organize social groups and also provide a wealth of additional services for both parents and practitioners in the field of autism. Alicia was kind enough to provide some very comprehensive answers to our BCBA consultant Sam Blanco’s questions about facilitating social groups for learners with autism. You can learn more about East Side Social here.

Autism Awareness Highlights: Interview with Alicia Allgood, MSEd, BCBA
Co-founder of East Side Social, New York, NY

Facilitating Social Groups for Students with AutismSam: What prompted you to begin East Side Social?

Alicia: I co-facilitated social groups in San Diego in the early 2000’s with an amazing group, Comprehensive Autism Services and Education. They provided a number of other services, but the social group was the directing psychologists’ pet project, and you could really tell for the quality. It was wonderful to see these quirky, amazing kids that were struggling socially come into this group and make friends. They engaged with one another in significant ways that impacted their sense of well-being and confidence, all the while learning how to be more and more socially appropriate. I was inspired. When I met Kimia in New York, she and I found we worked very well together. I mentioned my interest in starting such a group in New York, and Kimia held me to it. We both saw a need for these services here, but there really wasn’t much being offered at the time, and that which was being offered didn’t have a behavior analytic approach. In our mind, this suggested they weren’t objectively verifying the effect of their programs, nor were they necessarily using evidence-based practiced to teach the skills these kids needed to learn. We saw a need, we were inspired, and so made the necessary movements to begin East Side Social.

Sam: What is the primary challenge to organizing social skills groups? How have you addressed it?

Alicia: We were both private practitioners prior to starting this social group. Starting a business is a whole other beast in its own right, and being a good technician doesn’t necessarily mean you’re prepared to grow that skill into an actual business. We were caught a bit by surprise by all that would be necessary on the back end. From marketing to balancing the budget and handling insurance billing, we were not prepared to take all of that on while maintaining our private clients and actually preparing for and leading the social group. Realizing our deficits along the way, we’ve hired consultants and people to support the back end, and that is what has really made this possible. We couldn’t do what we do without the support of a small group of really wonderful people. It’s also been extremely challenging to find a way to collect data on target behavior during our groups. We’re suddenly extremely sympathetic to classroom teachers who are asked to collect data on their students. We have tried data collection systems into our token economies. We’ve also used time sampling data, and once when feeling highly ambitious and having approval of all parents, we video-taped all groups and spent hours upon hours watching and re-watching these videos, tracking target group behavior and individual learner behavior. This is a continuous work in progress that we feel dedicated to on account of our commitment to ethical behavior analytic practice. It’s also a bit fun to solve this puzzle. Continue reading →

10 Things Autism Awareness SHOULD Be About

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We’re so thrilled to be kicking off Autism Awareness Month with a special guest article from the Executive Director of the Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT) David Celiberti, PhD, BCBA-D, who shares with us 10 things autism awareness should be about. David has also provided a wealth of information and resources for parents and professionals to utilize in finding the best treatments out there, seeking out reliable research and asking good questions, helping individuals with ASD find a place in the workforce, and much more. To learn more about ASAT, please visit their website at www.asatonline.org. You can also sign up for ASAT’s free newsletter, Science in Autism Treatment, and like them on Facebook!

10 Things Autism Awareness SHOULD Be About

10 Things Autism Awareness SHOULD Be About
by David Celiberti, PhD, BCBA-D

April is Autism Awareness Month. The blue puzzle pieces will appear on thousands of Facebook pages and billboards, and the media will give greater attention to, and information about autism. Further awareness is a wonderful thing, as detection and diagnosis are necessary first steps to accessing help in the form of treatment, information, and support. With well over 400 treatments from which to choose, parents of children with autism need guidance, tools, and accurate information to make the best possible choices for their children: choices that will undoubtedly have a profound impact on both their current quality of life and their children’s future.

Clearly, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is no longer the rare diagnosis that it once was. With the incidence of one in 68 children, and one in 42 boys, our own families, neighbors, and co-workers are all touched by autism. In fact, the sheer numbers have heightened awareness of autism in and of themselves. This awareness is essential: it promotes early detection, and with early detection, we hope for a relatively clearer course toward effective treatment and better outcomes. Sadly, however, the early detection of autism alone does not always mean a seamless path to intervention. Furthermore, families whose children are diagnosed with autism are still not able to expeditiously access the most effective science-based treatments available. Instead, families often have to sort through over 400 pseudo-scientific treatments until they arrive at the most effective and research-proven intervention in addressing the complex disorder of autism. We must do better!

“Autism Awareness” should be about more than just detection and diagnosis. It has always been ASAT’s hope that the conversation around autism awareness would be broadened to focus upon the obstacles that separate individuals with autism from effective, science-based intervention and distract their families, caregivers, and teachers from accurate information about effective autism intervention. Below are 10 ideas about what Autism Awareness should be about, along with ways that the Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT) can assist families and providers in navigating the complex maze of autism treatment options.

ASAT_Point1

Autism treatment is a multi-million dollar industry. For the majority of the 400+ available interventions, science is overlooked in favor of pseudoscience, and they are marketed with heart-wrenching testimonials, anecdotes and video montages, and often bolstered with poorly crafted and misleading surveys. Many boast inaccurate and even outrageous claims that are touted as evidence of effectiveness. Aggressive marketing of these so-called “therapies” and “cures” is absolutely overwhelming and it drowns out accurate information for parents who are desperate to help their children.

For most other medical conditions, a provider who disregards a proven intervention in favor of using a “fringe” treatment could be sued for malpractice! Such safeguards do not widely exist for autism treatment. We do no favors for children with autism, their families, and those charged with providing effective services when we not only ignore quackery, but allow it to proliferate by failing to counter baseless claims. Families deserve better. Individuals with autism deserve better. Visit our website to learn more about the scientific support behind various autism treatments, the relevance of peer-reviewed research, the pitfalls of testimonials, as well as many other articles related to becoming a more savvy consumer. Please also see our review of Sabrina Freeman’s book, A Complete Guide to Autism Treatments.

As adults, voters, consumers, providers, and parents, choice underlies all of our decisions. Decision-making power comes with tremendous responsibility. There is a myriad of stakeholders whose decisions have profound implications for children and adults with autism – not just parents, but siblings, teachers, treatment providers, administrators, program coordinators, and taxpayers.

  • Scientists need to take responsibility in making their findings about an intervention’s effectiveness clear, unambiguous, and unexaggerated. Efforts should be taken to promote replication.
  • Administrators and program leaders need to take responsibility in identifying internal and external training opportunities that further their staff’s competence with evidence-based practice. Additionally, they should make sure their staff receives the support needed to sustain these efforts and to continually engage in data-based decision making when both selecting and monitoring interventions. They must be savvy and selective in their selections of trainings for their staff and not fall prey to gimmicks, splashy sales pitches or fads.
  • Providers need to select procedures that are based on published research, adhere to their discipline’s ethical guidelines about evidence-based practices, and maintain a commitment to ensuring that parents have truly been given the opportunity to provide informed consent. For example, if there is no scientific evidence to support an intervention that one is using, then it is an ethical obligation of the professional to inform parents of this lack of evidence. Please see Principle #1 and #2 of the Ethical Code for Occupational Therapists, Section 2.04 of the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, and Section 2 of the Guidelines for Responsible Conduct for Behavior Analysts.
  • Parents must continue to exercise caution in sorting through autism treatment options to make the best possible choice for their children, particularly since many providers do not make the path to effective treatment clear and simple.

There are far too many individuals with autism who do not have access to effective treatment, are receiving ineffective treatment, or are subjected to treatments that are, in fact, dangerous. Every minute of ineffective intervention is one less minute spent accessing effective intervention. Every dollar spent on an intervention that does not work depletes resources available for interventions that do work. For questions to ask to make sure that the individual with autism in your life is receiving science-based treatment, please see our article on questions to ask marketers and read more about the following three phases of inquiry about particular interventions and their associated questions and considerations in The Road Less Traveled: Charting a Clear Course for Autism Treatment:

  • Phase I: Exploring the viability and appropriateness of a particular treatment approach.
  • Phase II: Assessing the appropriateness of an intervention under the supervision of a specific service provider for a specific individual with autism.
  • Phase III: Monitoring the implementation of the treatment and evaluating effectiveness.

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As we know, not all information on the Internet is reliable and accurate. You have probably heard the term, caveat emptor (“Let the buyer beware”). Consumers must also practice caveat lector (“Let the reader beware”).

Often Internet information is deemed equivalent in relevance, importance, and validity to research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, but it is not. Testimonials and uncontrolled studies from so-called researchers can lead parents astray and be a tremendous source of distraction. Parents of newly-diagnosed children may be particularly vulnerable. Know the red flags to avoid and learn how to evaluate research by visiting our website. Our library of articles highlights scientific concepts and methods as they relate to potential autism interventions, with the goal of providing families, educators and clinicians with the information they need in order to be savvy consumers of marketed treatment products and therapies.

Continue reading →