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Worthy Link – Autism Conference in Dublin

Check out the Red Door Autism Conference Dublin website. I’ve been told these guys do amazing work in the field of “Applied Behaviour Analysis”, a science which is proven to markedly improve the lives of people with autism and of course, their families. Here’s a recording from Newstalk about ABA.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 5:40 pm and is filed under blogs, irishblogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Worthy Link – Autism Conference in Dublin”

  1. Sharon says:
    June 14, 2007 at 11:19 am

    Hello Damian.

    I hear this claim made repeatedly, that ABA is ‘a science which is proven to markedly improve the lives of people with autism and of course, their families.’

    It’s just not true.

    Most people are not aware of just how poor the evidence for the effectiveness of ABA really is. Most of the claims are based on a paper written in 1987, in which almost half of the 19 children who had 40 hours of ABA and aversives (shouting loudly at them, slapping them) were said to go on to mainstream school without support. They were described as ‘recovered’. No other study has replicated those results. The science behind ABA is really very flimsy.
    I wrote a bit more about it here.
    For a thorough investigation of the science and ethics behind ABA (or rather the lack of both), you can’t beat Michelle Dawson.