CW: child abuse, suicide, transphobia, ableism, trauma, sexism
Behavior (bee-HAY-vyer). noun 1. An interaction between an organism and its environment. 2. Anything a person does.
When practicing behavior analysis, what are the two most important components we require to define a behavior?
Observable and Measurable. This has been drilled into our heads practically from day one of grad school, because it’s vital. The importance of these two components is undeniable. We need to make sure everyone is clear on what’s being measured, and we can’t measure things we can’t see. Trying to measure the invisible is mentalism, and mentalism is a dirty word.
Fact: Only behaviors that can be observed can be measured.
Fact: A private event can be observed and measured by only one person: Oneself.
Fact: We cannot accurately measure another person’s private events. Even when using devices such as heart monitors, we are measuring the machine’s output, and there is always the possibility of malfunction.
Dangerous overgeneralization: We can’t measure private events, so they don’t matter.
Insane fallacy: We can’t measure private events, so they don’t exist.
I am not going to disagree that thinking and speaking in terms of measurable behaviors is important. It helps maintain objectivity, sorts out hard facts from assumptions, and can help in learning how to think critically. Avoiding mentalism also has its place in measuring specific behaviors and ensuring your definitions are appropriate.
Discounting the presence or significance of private events, however, is stupid and dangerous. It also literally removes the major component of B.F. Skinner’s point in creating Radical Behaviorism. You know, that thing ABA comes from? That was the Radical part: The acknowledgment of the existence of private events.
We BCBAs like to lord ourselves over psychologists with their stupid mentalism, and stupid circular definitions of things, and stupid stupidness, but the fact is their knowledge base is important and relevant. If talk therapy was pointless, it wouldn’t be effective. We have got to stop acting like the only things that matter are the things that we have defined and measured. It’s a major defense of ABA and also a major fallacy. Not to mention it makes us look like huge assholes.
Measurement still has limitations. Even in the almighty science, the only conclusions we can draw for sure are based on what we’ve measured. The usefulness of those conclusions (validity) is subjective interpretation, but for some reason not considered dismissible. Dismissing everything else not measured as “inconsequential” completely ignores the presence or possibility of side effects, such as those being referenced by ABA’s critics, and many of those critics are measuring those side effects whether they want to or not.
Rekers and Lovaas (1974) is a perfect example of the issues with measurement and interpretation. If you aren’t familiar with this study, bring it up to whoever taught you ethics and ask why you haven’t discussed it. Here’s the short version: They were measuring stereotypically feminine behaviors and stereotypically masculine behaviors in a male child. Environmental manipulations were put into place with clearly defined consequences for specified behaviors. Definitions: Check. “Masculine” behaviors increased, “feminine” behaviors decreased, and Mom and Dad reported that they were happy with the results. Social validity: Check. The intervention was successful.
That child killed himself years later.
We can’t measure every single public event that led to that moment. Often, suicide occurs without clearly measurable behaviors until it’s too late. So, we can’t say the study was a direct cause of that person’s suicide, right? Because we can’t measure that.
Yes the fuck we can. Denying the “intervention’s” responsibility in that person’s death is dishonest and disrespectful. Denying our effect on private events and the significance of those events on further behavior ultimately boils down to protecting your own fragile ego. Multiple studies have shown that:
a. Exploring various gender roles is a normal part of development in all children, and not necessarily an indication of gender identity or sexuality, and
b. Suppressing and punishing such behaviors, especially in children who are not cisgendered and/or straight (you know, like the majority of autistics), results in a wide variety of psychological issues including depression, anxiety, anger, and yes, suicide.
Studies have also showed that supporting gender exploration and gender identities prevents suicide. All of this applies to masking in autistics as well.
It’s almost as if being allowed to be your authentic self is healthy or something… but what do those stupid psychologists know?
Saying “well, we can’t measure that” is a shitty way of discounting real pain and avoiding responsibility. The assumption that all public events have a corresponding and equal private event is hypocritical as well. How do you know if you don’t measure it?
For example: “The person isn’t crying anymore, so they’re not sad anymore.” My work here is done. You’re welcome.
Crying is behavior. Sad is a private event. No more crying =/= no more sads. Shit like that is why I’m in therapy.
Are you starting to see why dismissing private events is ridiculous? This is how ridiculous you sound when you try to deny others’ trauma and its relationship to ABA. If all you’re doing is changing the overt behavior and completely ignoring the private events, you are creating an environment that can only nurture mental illness. Really, BCBAs working with humans should have clinical psychology training in addition to ABA training, and that includes obtaining continuing education credits in these areas. This is especially true if we are working with vulnerable populations, such as autistics, like 73% of us do as of April 1, 2021.
It’s also still measurable.
Macari, S,, Vernetti, A., and Chawasrka, K. (2020) demonstrated that private events can be validly measured in their ethically questionable study, Attend Less, Fear More: Elevated Distress to Social Threat in Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Long story short: Literal toddlers were exposed to various threatening stimuli to measure their public and private stress behaviors. Public behaviors included things like screaming, running in terror to their caregivers, and use of emotional regulation strategies. Private events were measured electronically through monitors. The study showed that autistic children demonstrated far less salient stress behaviors, what we would consider adequately observable and measurable, but far higher levels of biological markers of distress such as heart rate, things we would not consider adequately observable and measurable.
If you regularly use stress measuring equipment in your practice, please contact me immediately. I have so many questions: Mainly if you are a unicorn and/or work for a unicorn. Pics or it didn’t happen.
I’ve never heard of this type of equipment being used outside of very specific research. Why? Especially with scores of people reporting trauma following practices we previously considered benign? If this technology exists, we should be requiring this, and immediately measuring every little move we make. Despite the heartbreaking effect that study must have had on those poor children, it exists, and it does contain important information. I have yet to see this information discussed in circles that militantly defend ABA, but I have seen it discussed quite a bit in circles that take a more open-minded (or militantly offensive) stance to ABA. This study illustrates what autistics have been trying to tell us for years: That private events and public events may be in drastic conflict with one another, at least the way non-autistics understand them.
Why aren’t these changes being made? Well there are a lot of reasons. Ableism is a big one. Even the study referenced spends more time pathologizing these different responses to stress than it does discussing the glaring issues in typical practice that the study inadvertently highlighted.
Ego is another big one. The constant need to present ABA as somehow infallible, despite that very thought process being in direct conflict with what we claim to represent. All of that culminates either to or from the dismissal of private events as irrelevant. Treating private events this way is unscientific, unsupported by research, and dangerous. Not to mention in direct contrast to Radical Behaviorism itself.
Verbal behavior
A popular way of criticizing clinical psychology among BCBAs is that it’s only measuring verbal behavior. That is the tricky part of private events, isn’t it? They can only be measured by the person experiencing them. Everyone else can only measure their verbal behavior about it. When a person tacts inner feelings as “anxiety,” they may be measuring actual products of brain chemistry and neurons firing to create a sensation, but we can only measure that they have emitted the word “anxiety.”
For many, this is a huge flaw and an unacceptable variable. It’s true that measuring anything through verbal behavior removes an uncomfortable amount of objectivity. It forces us to make a lot of unprovable assumptions, such as the truthfulness and accuracy of the person providing it. We are not always able to accurately tact even our own feelings for a variety of reasons that stem from our incredibly complex learning histories. If we’ve established though, that a person is motivated to alleviate these feelings– such as actively seeking out therapy, spending money, scheduling these sessions, discussing topics that are uncomfortable or upsetting– would it not be fair to assume that these tacts are accurate?
What about if a person is motivated to end an aversive activity? For example, an extremely difficult task is presented. The person is sitting in an uncomfortable chair under fluorescent lighting with a loud air conditioner, and told to do something that in the past has resulted in someone physically putting hands on them and forcing their body to perform a certain way. The person says “I need a break.”
Do they really need a break? What does it mean to need a break? Maybe they’re just saying that because in the past, emitting the words “I need a break” has been reinforced with escape from a task, and they’re just trying to get out of work.
Or maybe they just need a fucking break. Sometimes people need breaks. Sometimes they need more breaks than you think you “should” need in that situation. Only they can measure that.
Is it not worth considering that behavior is maintained by escape because the person behaving really does need to escape? Who are we to tell someone what they are and aren’t feeling or how intense it actually is? We can’t measure it, so why would you err on the side of your own convenience (wanting to work on this task with this person) and not err on the side of preventing unnecessary stress on them?
Maybe I’m just a terrible BCBA, but I would rather see fewer trials run and be told it seemed like the learner was having a tough time– regardless of what that means or if they really were having a tough time– than see a ton of trials run and end up with a learner who is masking and screaming on the inside. No goal is worth even risking doing that kind of harm to anyone, especially someone I am trying to help.
Another way of discounting self-reports is the assumption that the autistic community is simply imitating each other. Some claim that so many people are reporting the same things because they are seeing it from others. It’s not that they actually experienced it, it’s that they are parroting what others say. The abuse and trauma isn’t really that widespread. Most of the people who say these things never actually experienced it.
Man, that’s a dangerous assumption. I’m sure there are some who are echoing what others say and who have no actual knowledge of it, but who fucking cares? People are reporting it. A lot of people. So there’s no way to measure each individual person’s experiences or the accuracy of their statement. So what? Isn’t any too many? Isn’t enough to form an entire community too many?
What about reports of experiences of just being autistic? Same thing? “They’re just imitating each other?” I have a hard time imagining the motivation of falsely reporting autistic traits and the reasons for their topographies in a public forum. When interpreting results, such as verbal behavior on public forums, that’s the only tool we have: Our own experiences. Flawed? Absolutely. But it still has merit. If you are really listening, you will also see that many of the same traits are being reported from people who are autistic but who are not active in autistic communities where these things are discussed. That’s the best evidence you’re going to get. Private events can only be measured by one person. Otherwise, we are just going to have to trust the other measurement tools, such as monitors and verbal behavior.
So what if we take action and we’re still wrong? Perhaps results take a little bit more time to show up. Perhaps we have fewer traumatized people.
I’ll take the risk.