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All about ABA

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The practice of ABA, or applied behavioral analysis, can be easily misunderstood. Rather than a single procedure, ABA is a variety of techniques that can be applied to different situations to improve communication, reduce aggression, and improve the quality of life of people on the spectrum. Why is it getting a bad reputation? Is the ABA of today the same as it was in the 1960’s? And what benefits does the techniques and principles of ABA confer to those on the spectrum? Listen to today’s #ASFpodcast which also includes footage from Melanie Pellecchia’s Day of Learning presentation.

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A new ways for the environment to affect genetic expression

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You have maybe heard about how environmental exposures after conception or birth may affect genetic expression and then risk of developing autism. But what research has been done to look at preconceptional exposures, presumably exposures that affect the cells that then give rise to sperm and eggs? Turns out they are susceptible to some environmental exposure too, which could lead to a change in the way genes are expressed in the embryo, the fetus, and then the child. Want to know more? Jill Escher just published a study with scientific colleagues about this hypothesis and she explains it in this week’s podcast.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34596807/

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Here’s what you won’t hear about that new JAMA study on Twitter

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A couple of weeks ago, a group in Australia published a study that investigated the efficacy of a “preemptive” intervention. That is, what happens if you provide support to parents to improve social communication, interaction and skills in infants before a diagnosis can be made? The results have a lot of meaningful implications of what interventions are possible at this age, how they can be delivered, and what it means to NOT receive an autism diagnosis but still show challenges. But the Twitter hive didn’t perceive it that way. This week I explain what the study did and didn’t do, and how it can help people across the spectrum.

Open access here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8453361/

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Passing as Non-Autistic

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You may know this as “masking” or “camouflaging” where autistic adults intentionally or unintentionally hide their autistic features to pass as non-autistic because they want to hide some of their challenges. This week, Drs. Erin Libsack and Matthew Lerner from Stony Brook University summarize a systematic review on this behavior. The original goal was to develop their own studies, but as it turns out, there are still so many unanswered questions to deal with that were unearthed from this systematic review.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34505231/