Speech Pathology and Behavior Modification
During the late 70’s I was fortunate to have been selected by the Burbank Unified School District to be sponsored for a weeklong intensive professional training seminar on implementation of behavior modification techniques for School age Autistic Individuals.

This excellent program .... the Santa Barbara Autism Dissemination Project…a principally scientific approach to changing human behaviors…. and it really works…. Stimulus…. response…reinforcer…start in non distracting setting with needed prompts and rewards…then reduce prompts…reduce rewards…increase distractions…generalize target behaviors…. use of intermittent and inconsistent reinforcers…

We did not us any negative rewards…. only the blahs…. or no positive or delayed positive instead of negative…. this way works but not as fast as using a negative.

When you had that autistic child that could not place his hands down and make eye contact these behavior mod techniques worked….

You really had to look at the environment in which the individual was attempting to function…Autistic individuals are on the opposite end of the intelligence spectrum from retarded…they are just as exceptional from the norm but on a different dimension…. disabled yes…definitely…

Normal folk of course are just as easily managed with behavior modification techniques.

The Regan Administration neutralized the program.. Knowledge about these control tools of human behavior are not to be shared.
- posted by Samuel Bell @ 9:22 PM