I'm still reading through Steve #Silberman's #NeuroTribes. I'm currently nearing the end of the longest chapter, "Fighting the monster", of which the latter part is largely about Ole Ivar #Lovaas and the origins of #ABA. It makes for harrowing reading. Samples:

#Lovaas: "You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense — they have hair, a nose, and a mouth — but they are not people in the psychological sense. One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person."

#Lovaas describing an occasion on which he dealt with a self-injuring autistic girl: "I reached over and cracked her one right on the rear ... I noticed she had stopped hitting herself. I felt guilty, but I felt great. Then she hit herself again, and I really laid it on her ... So I let her know that there was no question in my mind that I was going to kill her if she hit herself once more, and that was pretty much it. She hit herself a few times more, but we had the problem licked."

#Silberman as narrator: 'In a subsequent round of trials, instead of the electrified floor, Lovaas employed a remote-controlled device called a Lee-Lectronic Trainer — a box the size of a cigarette pack used in canine obedience tests — affixed to the boys' buttocks.
...
Lovaas put Mike and Marty on a strict behaviorist diet: no food at all, seven days a week, but the token scraps earned by their acquiring the ability to perform a complex social task while pressing a bar to avoid shock. Water deprivation was also stringently enforced, though he noted that, "to avoid dehydration," water was available to the boys "ad libidinum" after six p.m. each day.'

There is much more, but this is quite enough to provide an idea of how the research on which #ABA is based, carried out by its founder, was conducted.

It is a scandal that #ABA is not UNIVERSALLY condemned by both the theoretical and the clinical wings of autism psychology.

#OrcsWithPretensions #OWP

@autistics

I'm now starting Chapter 2 of "ADHD 2.0" (#Hallowell and #Ratey 2021). This is the one where they introduce the supposed neurological underpinnings of #ADHD. I'm noticing a jarring contrast of tone between this book and the autism literature I've read so far, such as Wenn #Lawson's "The Passionate Mind", or Steve #Silberman's "NeuroTribes" (which I'm also still working my way through BTW). The autism literature has more of what I'd consider scientific humility. It's taken for granted that autism is a profound topic, that it isn't easy to make progress with understanding it, and that much remains unsolved. But Hallowell and Ratey make it sound as if "the exciting new science of fMRI" (as they are pleased to call it) has illuminated #ADHD as thoroughly as anyone could wish, that the task-positive network (TPN) and the default mode network (DMN) are the solution to everything. It makes me feel talked down to — and puts me on my guard. This is how hucksters talk.

I'm also reminded of a recent science news article I saw, about a new study purporting to refute the most basic assumption of #fMRI studies (which BTW are NOT new) — namely, that the rate of blood flow in a brain area correlates closely with the level of neural activity. I haven't really looked into this yet, but if it's correct, much of what #fMRI has supposedly demonstrated will have to go back to the drawing board.

Here's a link to the news story on problems with #fMRI:

https://www.tum.de/en/news-and-events/all-news/press-releases/details/40-percent-of-mri-signals-do-not-correspond-to-actual-brain-activity

@autistics

#RIP @stevesilberman

#Brain as Mr. #Silberman put it:

“an interactive, adaptive, and endlessly innovative participant in the creation of our world.”

#SteveSilberman decided to write a book exploring the diagnosis’s history. The result:

“ #NeuroTribes
The Legacy of #Autism and the Future of #Neurodiversity ”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/09/04/steve-silberman-dead-neurotribes/

A sizeable portion of the #ActuallyAutistic community doesn't like or trust #Silberman even though #Neurotribes is one of the less awful books out there by NTs about autistics. This is very faint praise.

Young white boys' nearby #allistic adults are overrepresented in the #autism community and Silberman doesn't really do much to adjust for his own role as a nearby white allistic adult.

http://intersecteddisability.blogspot.com/2016/05/how-not-to-endorse-anthology.html

#AutisticWhileBlack