BA200 Unit 9 Criticisms of ABA Paper Example

My Cousin Said ABA Taught Her to Hide: A BA200 Unit 9 Criticisms of ABA Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

BA200: Conceptual Foundations of Applied Behavior Analysis

Unit 9 Criticisms of ABA Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, her cousin, the clinic and the children are composite; the studies and articles cited are real.

A Conversation at Thanksgiving

I have delivered ABA sessions to young children for two years. Last Thanksgiving, my cousin Jenna, who is 32 and autistic, asked what I did at work. When I told her, she was quiet for a moment, then said that the ABA she received as a child had taught her to sit still, look people in the eye and stop flapping her hands, and that she spent her twenties learning to stop hiding. She was not angry at me. She asked whether I was teaching kids to hide.

I did not have a good answer, and the question stayed with me for weeks. This paper is my attempt to find one, by examining the main criticisms of ABA, the evidence behind them and how behavior analysts have responded.

The Criticisms

Criticism of ABA from autistic adults and some researchers takes several forms. One is historical. Early behavioral programs for autistic children, including the well-known intensive program Lovaas (1987) reported, used aversive procedures such as slaps and shouting alongside reinforcement, and set the goal of making children indistinguishable from their peers. Even though aversives are now rare and widely rejected, critics argue that the goal of normalization persists.

A second criticism concerns compliance. Sandoval-Norton et al. (2019) argued that long-term ABA, by training children to comply with adult instructions over thousands of trials, may teach them to override their own discomfort and boundaries, leave them vulnerable to abuse and produce lasting harm. They described intensive compliance training as potentially abusive in its long-term effects.

A third criticism concerns trauma. Kupferstein (2018) surveyed autistic adults and caregivers of autistic children online and reported that respondents exposed to ABA were more likely to meet a threshold for posttraumatic stress symptoms than those who were not.

Jenna's question was not whether ABA works, but what it works toward, and that is the question the criticisms keep returning to.

Weighing the Evidence

The criticisms deserve to be weighed by the same standards behavior analysts apply to their own research. The trauma survey is important because it was among the first to ask autistic people about their experience, but its design limits its conclusions: participants were recruited online and self-selected, exposure to ABA was self-reported and not defined, and the study could not establish that ABA caused the symptoms. The compliance critique raises serious concerns but is largely an argument from principle and selected evidence rather than a test of current practices.

Leaf et al. (2022) evaluated a range of concerns about ABA-based intervention. They agreed with some: that historical use of aversives was wrong, that some current practices focus too much on compliance and on reducing harmless behaviors such as stimming, and that autistic people's perspectives have too often been ignored. They disputed others, arguing that the trauma and abuse claims rely on weak evidence and that many criticisms describe poor practice rather than the science itself. They recommended changes, including more attention to assent, goals chosen with the client, and abandoning targets that suppress harmless autistic behavior.

Where Critics and Defenders Agree

Reading the critics and the defenders side by side, I was struck by how much they share. Both reject aversive procedures. Both say goals should benefit the person rather than make the person look typical. Both say autistic people should have more say in what services aim at. The disagreement is sharpest on two points: whether the harms critics describe are common or rare, and whether they reflect the science of behavior analysis or its misuse. The first is an empirical question that current studies cannot settle; better research, designed with autistic researchers, could. The second matters less to a family choosing services than whether the clinic down the road practices well.

For a technician, the shared ground is the useful part. Whatever the eventual verdict on the evidence, the agreed principles describe what good practice looks like, and they can be checked in any clinic's treatment plans this week.

What I See in My Own Clinic

Looking honestly at my own work, I found reasons for both concern and reassurance. Our clinic does not use aversives and has moved toward approaches that honor children's assent. But I also found goals in older plans that Jenna would recognize: a goal to reduce hand flapping during group, and another to increase eye contact during greetings. Neither behavior harmed the child or anyone else. They were on the plan because they made the children look less autistic.

When I raised this with my supervisor, she agreed to review all plans for goals that target harmless behaviors. Three were removed in the following month. The eye contact goal was rewritten as a goal for responding to a greeting in any way the child chooses, words, a wave or a device.

What I Will Carry Forward

The criticisms changed three things about how I plan to practice. First, I will ask of every goal whether it helps the child or only makes the child seem less autistic to others. Second, I will treat a child's resistance as information about the teaching, not just as behavior to reduce, and watch for signs of withdrawn assent. Third, I will look for ways to include autistic adults' perspectives in my learning, by reading their accounts and, where my clinic allows, by supporting the involvement of autistic consultants in program review.

Jenna's Response

When I sent Jenna a draft of this paper, she wrote back that she was glad the eye contact goal was gone, and that she wished someone had asked her, at seven, what she wanted to learn. She also pointed out that I had written about autistic people's perspectives without quoting any, and suggested two books by autistic authors. I have started the first one.

Conclusion

Criticisms of ABA come from history, from concerns about compliance and from surveys of autistic adults. The evidence for the strongest claims, trauma and abuse, is limited, but the concerns about normalization and compliance identify real problems that some behavior analysts now acknowledge. Jenna's question has a better answer now than it did at Thanksgiving: I am trying not to teach kids to hide, and I have started checking whether my clinic's goals ask them to.

References

Kupferstein, H. (2018). Evidence of increased PTSD symptoms in autistics exposed to applied behavior analysis. Advances in Autism, 4(1), 19-29. https://doi.org/10.1108/AIA-08-2017-0016

Leaf, J. B., Cihon, J. H., Leaf, R., McEachin, J., Liu, N., Russell, N., Unumb, L., Shapiro, S., & Khosrowshahi, D. (2022). Concerns about ABA-based intervention: An evaluation and recommendations. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 52(6), 2838-2853. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05137-y

Lovaas, O. I. (1987). Behavioral treatment and normal educational and intellectual functioning in young autistic children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 55(1), 3-9. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.55.1.3

Sandoval-Norton, A. H., Shkedy, G., & Shkedy, D. (2019). How much compliance is too much compliance: Is long-term ABA therapy abuse? Cogent Psychology, 6(1), Article 1641258. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2019.1641258