What to do instead of ignoring a behavior: The Matching Law
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Many well-meaning parents and ABA professionals will tell you to ignore a behavior you don't want to see. What they don't know, or don't tell you, is that ignoring a behavior can cause the behavior to get worse - and sometimes lead to dangerous behaviors. This is known as an extinction burst.
Here's what you should do instead!
For resources and support for ABA professionals visit: masteraba.academy
Excellent
I advise people to be extremely careful if you're just going to ignore a behaviour, this is too central on behaviour and setting the parents up.
As we know, behaviour is communication, if you keep ignoring their communication they may stop turning to the parents for help as they've gotten the message "my mam and dad are not going to help me, they won't listen to me."
By ignoring the behaviour what the children are asking for or trying to let you know is left unaddressed.
You can't just ignore the behaviour and replace the behaviour, what's making them perform the behaviour must be addressed to identify their needs. Like if a child who struggles with unexpected changes starts a behaviour when an unexpected change occurs, you can't just ignore that the child now has elevated levels of anxiety and leave them in greater anxiety.
This is just another reason autistic adults still describe ABA as abusive, people are not taught which behaviours mustn't be ignored.
If your own parents ignored your elevated levels of anxiety negatively effecting your emotional well-being not addressing your needs, wouldn't you feel emotionally abused?
You are right, it's important to be careful if you choose to ignore a behavior. You should never ignore a behavior when a child feels anxious, scared, hurt or even if the child doesn't have the skills needed to get your attention or meet his needs in a better way.
@@masteraba4260
As I've said to ABA workers mocking autistic people for their feedback is a bad idea and great ignorance of the history they're supposed to learn from.
I see one of the most common complaints by autistic people is they see some as "manipulation" which by fact is a form of abuse. There's a bit of knowledge and a characteristic about behaviour being left out, "motivation."
Unfortunately ABA does not do longitudinal studies to see the effects later in life, the experiences of autistic people show negative effects in the long run.
The piece which is missing is "desirability." Psychology shows us desirability is crucial for effective long-term abilities, if we don't have desirability of a task, we don't have internal motivation. We have to ask, what are the children motivated to do, obtain the reward or learn the objective?
If the desirability is the reward, when the reward is no longer available they will not have motivation for the task. We've witnessed that after the positive reinforcer has "faded," not long afterwards the motivation gradually fades away making them prompt dependent and dependant on extrinsic motivation, which is dependent instead of independent.
This is why it's best to link and connect the lesson to their Special Interest Area, connecting the two, what you're trying to help them learn and their SIA creates the desirability to do the task as the task becomes an additional part of their SIA which they find so desirable.
It's been noticed that when an autistic person is engaged with their SIA they appear more happy and enthusiastic, make more eye contact, have more facial expression and are able to learn more easily.
Neuroscientists investigating the differences of an autistic brain have the suspicion and theory this is connected to what makes nonautistic people more enthusiastic when socializing.
@@danielmoore4024 it would be great if every child had the ability to learn through their interests. In general I think it's a great teaching strategy and one I used when I taught preschool. This can be hard to do in a group setting, although I have done in-depth teaching on topics such as boxes, flight, the night, and pets. You can dig into science, math, reading, art, music, and movement in any topic. In my ABA practice, I do use what interests my learners to teach. Unfortunately, once children enter public school, especially here in the US, there is so much pressure on teachers to follow the curriculum and teach to the standardized tests that making learning enjoyable gets lost in the process. One learner I worked with was particularly interested in plungers. It's amazing the number of different activities you can do with plungers if you get creative. When implemented compassionately, ABA teaches from a child's interests and strengths.
@@masteraba4260 I dig it.
It makes no sense to ignore a behavior, especially if the kid is in distress and/or if the behavior is not being maintained by social consequences.
I think many people don't understand the concept of "planned ignoring" or extinction based on function. Ethically, if a practitioner implements an extinction protocol based on function, they need to implement a positive reinforcement procedure to increase a replacement behavior.
Bothers me so much when people use extinction and ignoring synonymously lol
@@pardonmyfrench4760 Very true! Extinction is not ignoring if the behavior is not attention maintained. The terminology has overgeneralized and lost a lot of accuracy. That being said, there are many ways to avoid the use of extinction altogether. It's time for some out-of-the-box thinking about the ethical and compassionate use of ABA. ☺