Principles of ABA: Reinforcement

Today on Autism Live: Dr. Adel Najdowski talks about the basic principles of Applied Behavior Analysis, including the way in which we use reinforcement to strengthen the likelihood a behavior occurs. If you have been confused about the difference between positive and negative reinforcement, this is your answer.

[hi]

so therefore social positive reinforcement falls under all of this?

[Neilgs]

It is NOT that "reinforcement" doesn't work! Rather from a comprehensive biopsychosocial perspective it is entirely misguided and potentially quite harmful. Why? Because it is NOT about reinforcing positive behaviors, etc., but addressing the underlying affect (emotional) and sensory-processing foundations and autonomic regulation system (i.e., fight, flight, freeze) re in the context of increasingly felt secure safe relationships by the child in the context of child/adult deepening reciprocal attachment and attunement that makes engagement not only available for that child but increasingly integrated, that is, integrated from a comprehensive evidenced based biopsychosocail perspective.


ABA methodologies while seemingly effective actually does NOT address the core challenges of thinking, r elating and communicating in the context of non-verbal affective relationships. 93% of communication is non-verbal. It is these non-verbal affect based cues which cannot be trained on command or reinforced behaviorally, upon the surface as it were vis a vis ABA methodologies. Rather, this has to to do with implicit-procedural memory NOT declarative memory system. And to this point and moreover, it has to do with subcortical (limbic system/autonomic regulation, etc) functioning which form (or reforms, as the brain is tremendously neuroplastic ) the basis of executive functioning, which includes language.


This can only be supported in the context of supporting your child's social-emotional intelligence which cannot be "trained on command" or reinforced through rewarding "positive behaviors", which is absurd and primitive, but by gently and empathically re-establishing the functional-emotional developmental foundations that make all the aspects of social-emotional relating and engaging possible. The latter in accordance with Developmental Affect Neuroscience, not this simplistic, antiquated and potentially harmful nonsense!