Commentary on Commonalities and Divergence
Because the authors were able to present their models in depth, comparison of similarities and differences is provided. Points of comparison focus on factors driving decision making, core theoretical positions, child development, skill teaching, and learn
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Commentary on Commonalities and Divergence John McEachin
John McEachin: I have attempted to categorize some commonalities and possible points of divergence across the models. Let’s start with what these four models share in common. These are my thoughts: Commonalities 1. They have a strong ethic on being data-driven and making decisions that are based on objective data. 2. All four are informed by a learning/behavioral theory of one type or another. 3. All four incorporate a developmental model to some extent. 4. Each is aimed at remediating important skill deficits and replacing detrimental behavior with more adaptive behavior. 5. I think we can say they are all ambitious in what they aim to accomplish. 6. Similarly, they all seem to be comprehensive in scope. We can see different flavors of behaviorism and different branches of the behavioral family tree represented here, e.g. Watson and Thorndike vs. Skinner and radical behaviorism vs. a more pragmatic type of behaviorism, but the models are all informed by learning theory, including the ESDM model. Developmental theory is present most clearly in the ESDM model, but in the other three models we can also see evidence of the practitioners respecting the fact that the children are able to do certain skills at one age and other skills not until an older age. In the evolution of intensive behavioral programs for young children with autism, we didn’t start out explicitly investigating developmental sequence, but the mere fact that practitioners were responsive to the success and failures of their work meant that they were moving up and down the developmental hierarchy, ultimately
J. McEachin (*) Autism Partnership, 200 Marina Drive, Seal Beach, CA 90740, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 R.G. Romanczyk, J. McEachin (eds.), Comprehensive Models of Autism Spectrum Disorder Treatment, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40904-7_7
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being shaped into adhering to a developmental model. The quicker we figured out the importance of the developmental model, the more successful we were. I do think it’s fair to say that we can identify certain behaviors that kids on the spectrum engage in as being detrimental and these are four examples of models that are aiming very explicitly to try to steer kids away from behaviors that would be detrimental and to promote an expansion of a repertoire of behaviors that we would regard as adaptive. We can talk in a minute about where the models diverge in terms of directiveness, but even Sally’s child-centered model seems to care about discouraging detrimental behavior. I’m pretty sure that we can see aspirations toward being comprehensive, although Mark talked a little bit more about the verbal behavior repertoire of individuals. However, I do know that, within the work that Mark does, they are aiming to cover more than just language skills. Differences 1. Subtype of behavioral model and inclusion of theories beyond a strictly behavioral approach. 2. Parental involvement? 3. The entry po
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