links for 2007-08-04
August 4, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
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By Michelle Dawson on Autism Crisis
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From LIfehackerm with directions on making paper poppers: Charlie is often happily amused with whatever (a box of coins, random pens and paper lying around, the couch pillows) rather than anything snazzy, shiney, electronic, and with a big price tag.
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A mother in Scotland writes about her 3-year-old autistic daughter’s love of Streaky the cat, and of her 5-year-old son’s very different feelings.
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The New York Times on Nerdcore: Dungeons, Dragons and Dope Beats
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After decades of activism, disabled artists redraw boundaries—-the center is located in my hometown, Oakland, CA.
The Dawson post is very misleading. Howlin has always supported behavioral interventions, she only has doubts about how many hours per week produce positive results. Here is Howlin’s statement in a BBC interview.
“HOWLIN
I think there’s absolutely no doubt that behavioural interventions of that kind have been a help to children with autism and their families since they first began to be used in the late 1960s in fact. They offer consistency to the child and parents are helped to adapt their behaviours to the child’s needs and also given advice on how to build up skills. And I think the comment that behavioural approaches work for every child is beyond dispute. What’s more a topic of controversy is whether one really needs these 35 or 40 hours per week programmes, which certainly for some parents seem to work very well but obviously there are many families who – for whom that demand in terms of time would be too much and of course it doesn’t come cheaply either”.
PS. other controlled trials show opposite results as this report published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders:
Brief Report: Relative Effectiveness of Different Home-based Behavioral Approaches to Early Teaching Intervention.
Reed P, Osborne LA, Corness M.
Department of Psychology, University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK, p.reed@swansea.ac.uk.
The effectiveness of home-based early behavioral interventions for children (2:6-4:0 years old) with autistic spectrum disorders was studied over 9-10 months. Measures of autistic severity, intellectual, educational, and adaptive behavioral functioning were taken. There was no evidence of recovery from autism. High-intensity behavioral approaches (mean 30 h/week) produced greater gains than low-intensity programs (mean 12 h/week). Lovaas- and complete application of behavior analysis to schools approach-type interventions produced largest gains [similar to gains produced by longer-term clinic-based applied behavior analysis (ABA) programs]. Within the high-intensity groups, increased temporal input on the program was not associated with increased gains in the children. The results from clinic-based ABA trials were partially replicated on a home-based sample, using children with greater autistic and intellectual impairments.
PMID: 17180714 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Let’s see. RAJ takes the position that I’m dishonest. This is based on his/her position that I should not discuss or provide data from or provide quotes from a peer-reviewed paper whose conclusions RAJ disagrees with. Instead, I should use media reports. And I should only ever write about studies which support RAJ’s views and standards.
Sorry RAJ, I disagree. Also, anyone can find and download Magiati et al. (in press; there is a link to the abstract in my blog post), and confirm whether I have or have not provided an accurate description. While this is less important than the contents of a peer-reviewed paper, I also saw Dr Howlin report her data at IMFAR this year, as well as present a meta-study of ABA group designs.
I’ve read Dr Reed’s 10-month ABA study, for which there are two published papers reporting overlapping data. I suggest that these papers (rather than only one abstract) should be read. The methodological problems in Dr Reed’s studies are very serious, but the results (if you read both papers), even if reported uncritically (those low standards that RAJ demands), are possibly not what RAJ might expect.
Here’s your own article on ABA. Like so many ‘autism advocates’ you think autism is just peachy fine as it is and parents and therapists should stop torturing their children.
http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_aba.html
Behavioral interventions are the only proven therapy for autism and the debate is over how many hours per week is effective.
My response vanished. Too many links, I think (inappropriate behaviour, sorry). 2nd try (from memory, with additions and subtractions):
Hi RAJ,
I’m not an “autism advocate”. I provide a definition of “autism advocacy” on my blog, consistent with how “autism advocates” and “autism advocacy” organizations describe their goals. There’s also a 2005 Senate brief about “autism advocacy” on my website.
I haven’t been able to find where “torture” is mentioned in The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists, sorry. If you have factual objections to TMoB (based on its actual content), it would be productive to mention them, maybe on the gigantic public comment board provided for that purpose (see link at the bottom of TMoB). But misrepresenting an easily available article as you have done is not only unproductive, it doesn’t reflect well on your own standards.
What I argue in TMoB is that ethical standards which have improved the circumstances of all other persons would equally benefit autistics, and would also improve the state of the science.
This is what resulted in such phenomenal objections (and vilification, etc.) from “autism advocates” in Canada and elsewhere. Notice (in the letter linked to above) that I welcome factual criticism, and have spotted factual errors in TMoB myself. Only “autism advocates” claim to be infallible, and I’m definitely not an “autism advocate”.
I’ve also written more than one article about ABA-based autism interventions. This is not hard to verify.
You wrote, “Behavioral interventions are the only proven therapy for autism and the debate is over how many hours per week is effective.”
Behaviour analysts disagree with each other over which forms of ABA are or are not “effective” or evidence-based, over whether aversive procedures are necessary (see Foxx, 2005, about what this major behaviour analyst calls the “myth” of non-aversive treatment), over whether some forms of ABA are in fact behaviour analytic, etc.
A form of ABA which is taught in courses approved by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (as BCBA coursework) is derided by some major behaviour analysts (for one example, see Mulick & Butter, 2005), who demand that this form of ABA not be funded. And so on.
This is apart from the consensus reported in the autism research literature that “no single approach is the best for all individuals or even across time for the same individual with ASD.” (Volkmar et al., 2004).
Never mind that the only randomized controlled trial of comprehensive ABA-based interventions (the kind whose funding is being demanded as public policy) reported poor results (Smith et al., 2000, 2001–don’t forget to read the errata), particularly for children with the specific diagnosis of autism.
RCTs represent the standards of science that automatically protect and benefit non-autistics. I suggest those standards should protect and benefit autistics as well.
Sorry the comment with all the links disappeared—-Michelle, if you would like to send them to me via email I can repost them (apologies for all that typing disappearing). I’m at kristina AT b5media DOT com.
ABA has definitely helped my son. But some behaviorists have not been as helpful as others; some have had him do things that made some of his behaviors worse (and another ABA provider had to come in and deal with that).