What is Today's ABA? Session 160: A Q and A with Greg Hanley

[@alexandraetta]

Can someone link the essay? I can't seem to find it on the inter-webs. Thank you

[@shirleybrown8340]

My daughter has 4 children. She has two who are autistic non-verbal children ages 4 and 5 and Because local public schools or autism schools in this area are not trained to help them, it is frustrating to get the help needed in our area.

[@hmac163]

Scroll to 7:49 to skip all the ad filler and thanks to…if you want.

[@Neilgs]

‘I am an ableist. I hold strong that All need to learn better, tolerate better and communicate better.” Then you go on about helping children relax and feel better before anything. Well may I suggest you educate yourself in Polyvagal Theory. It is not about our new and improved less 1970/80, 90 ish ABA but rather about cultivating feelings of internal safety by deepening affect reciprocal attachment and attunement around each child’s affect sensory processing differences. It is about subcortical limbic autonomic social emotional engagement beneath the medial front cortex, nothing to do with Learning Theory and teaching skills!

[@Neilgs]

It’ is NOT about reinforcing behaviors. Please get an education on how all behaviors are emergent properties of the child’s physiological /autonomic state. “Do I feel safe with you and my surroundings or is my sympathetic nervous system mobilized fir defensive fight/flight or parasympathetic withdrawal/shut down or dissociation.’ Ableist indeed! Why? Learning Theory no matter how much you attempt to twist and distort (dress it up) is still nonetheless based upon modified declarative semantic memorizations, training behaviors inculcating skills. None of these have anything to do with 80% on implicit procedural learning, affective subcortical limbic autonomic shifts in state regulation which results in the functional emotional developmental capacities including social pragmatic communication/language coming online. There is nothing such as , “Problem behaviors.” From whose perspective? In any case not from a neuroendocrinological, neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and psychosocial perspective. Perhaps educate yourself on real science, Developmental Affective Neuroscience, Interpersonal Neurobiology and Polyvagal Theory.

[@karlatorres-madrigal4501]

Can you elaborate what you are saying please ?

[@Neilgs]

@@karlatorres-madrigal4501 If you have a specific question, I would be more than happy to elaborate.

[@aliraejae3664]

Interesting comment. The tone could do with some revision. :) But I think I get what you're asserting here. I'm not a behavior analyst. My interest in ABA came after caring for my 103-year-old grandmother in the last year of her life. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was using many ABA therapies/modifications with her, and the change in her well-being was remarkable. She became happy and coherently conversive, even after 10+ years of dementia and extreme depression behaviors. That experience inspired me to learn more about environmental modifications to change behavior, towards the well-being of folks who cannot communicate their needs effectively. My question: What can be done to help developing children or differently abled adults gain the skills they need to take care of themselves (i.e., decrease self-harm) and increase their chances of living a more fulfilling life through altering affective subcortical limbic autonomic shifts in state regulation? What does that look like? I agree that "problem behaviors" is a tricky term. No behavior should ever be modified strictly for the convenience of others. However, behaviors - and relational/verbal behavior frames - are constantly modified by environmental factors, whether that's for the better or worse of any individual. The world manipulates all of our behaviors; why not use that science to do some good..? I think the utility of behavior analysis will always be helpful for some in society, to give them voices, to help them better understand the options available to them, as these options currently exist in the natural environment. In other words, ABA is practical. Altering the affective subcortical limbic autonomic shift of state regulation is not so practical at this time. Is it? People need help now. How else might we help them? If the only way to help the average ASD/ID/EBD/dementia client is to study up on Developmental Affective Neuroscience, Interpersonal Neurobiology, and Polyvagal Theory... well, that'd be a whole lot fewer effective caregivers in the world. Unless you want to institutionalize folks (again), there must be practical methods to influence and change behaviors that would otherwise prevent folks from coexisting in their homes or in social settings. Just my nobody/dummy two cents. Cheers.

[@Neilgs]

@@aliraejae3664 I would venture to speculate that it is the way you interacted (i.e., "the relationship") with your grandmother rather than schedules of external reinforcement or "operant conditioning." The latter is not how people, mammals, organisms work. People are not a series of inputs/outputs of operant conditioned responses. What is embarrassingly and sorely missing from ABA methodologies is the person/organism, which is NOT a set or series of extrinsic motivating operations, schedules or reinforcement or operant conditioning, ABA as much as it might appear otherwise is concluded by real science to be entirely fraudulent. Why? Because the S(timulus) and R(esponse) are not detached or external variable operating upon a tabula rasa (blank slate). Thus, they leave out the most critical or crucial factor: The intervening variable or the physiological state regulation/autonomic nervous system with respect to how that person's is interpreting each and every interaction. This is not subject to operant conditioning (i.e., change the antecedent and/or consequence). For example: "Do I feel safe and available for engagement with others and my environment or is my sympathetic-adrenal nervous system geared toward fight/flight defensive behaviors or worse parasympathetic freeze, withdrawal/shutdown and/or dissociated behaviors. All behaviors are Adaptive and emergent properties reflecting our underlying physiological/autonomic state regulation. They are not willful behaviors. They are intrinsic or beneath conscious willed or declarative memories or extrinsically conditioned responses. They are subcortical/affective and dispositional. Essentially, again what it feels like. Is it felt/perceived as welcoming and inviting or unsafe or perceived (actual or perceived) life threatening. "I agree that 'problem behaviors' is a tricky term. No behavior should ever be modified strictly for the convenience of others. However, behaviors - and relational/verbal behavior frames - are constantly modified by environmental factors, whether that's for the better or worse of any individual. The world manipulates all of our behaviors; why not use that science to do some good..?" As I said above, I do not along with many others (in attachment or regulation theory and the psychobiological sciences, etc.) take the view that "relational/verbal behavior frames - are constantly modified extrinsically or by environment factors but those environmental factors are determined by how we internally or interoceptively register, assess and feel how safe or unsafe it is to engage with other and the environment. It is about cultivating the conditions (not schedules of reinforcement or operant conditioned responses which are cosmetic surface cognitive-behavioral responses devoid) of underlying feelings of interoceptive relational safety which then determines the associated adaptive and emergent behaviors. It is not about people understanding the options available to them but encouraging how they are actually feeling; gaining accessing rather than shaming and blaming (with new surface reconditioned responses) and again creating underlying foundations that will encourage feelings of embodiment of safety and engagement with others. "In other words, ABA is practical. Altering the affective subcortical limbic autonomic shift of state regulation is not so practical at this time. Is it?" The former, ABA methodologies are antiquated, punitive and destructive, i.e., promoting further forms of repression by external and simplistic conditioning. The latter, understanding people's bodies and physiology by encouraging the interpersonal and interoceptive foundations that promote safe are not only practical but necessary and is a fundamental corner of affective neuroscience and social-emotional individual and global health and well-being. It is not something theoretical or esoteric. Read for example, Polyvagal Theory. Actually, there would be much more healthier and effective caregivers. As we again are not talking about something far removed and esoteric by the very core foundations of healthy attachment, co-regulation and engagement at all levels for both the so-called, neurotypical and non-neurotypical. More accurately human neurodiversified spectrum.

[@pardonmyfrench4760]

floor play time is not evidence-based procedures