Hmm, I was writing recently about how David Burns makes exposure therapy sound like a miracle cure for all sorts of things, including some things that I wouldn’t have previously expected to be treatable by exposure therapy (and he says that exposure therapy doesn’t have to look like the classic “graduated exposure”). But he doesn’t say anything about sensory sensitivity or autism in the book.
So I dunno. I guess it doesn’t sound totally crazy off the top of my head, but that’s just casual speculation, from someone who is an expert on neither exposure therapy nor autism. :-)
This linkseems to be “we tried exposure therapy for sound sensitivity, and it didn’t work”, but I would be more inclined to describe it as “this isn’t proper exposure therapy at all, it’s just making loud noises in kids’ ears for a minute or two”. This seems relevant but I don’t know how to find the associated paper if any. This and this makes it sound like exposure therapy for sensory sensitivity is already routinely used for people with autism, at least to some extent, and it works like normal.
Many years ago I read this NYTimes article (paywalled, DM or email me for a PDF) about Applied Behavior Analysis (note: see Ann Brown’s reply to this comment), claiming it could “cure” classic autism; if that’s true (a big “if”!) I guess we should consider the hypothesis that the underlying mechanism is “basically just lots and lots of exposure therapy for everything, day after day for years”.
Many autistic individuals who experienced it have attested that Applied Behavior Analysis is an extremely unpleasant experience that caused them harm. It is a form of operant conditioning, that trains us to behave neurotypically and not behave autistically through reward/punishment. It does not ‘cure’ but control.
Hmm, I was writing recently about how David Burns makes exposure therapy sound like a miracle cure for all sorts of things, including some things that I wouldn’t have previously expected to be treatable by exposure therapy (and he says that exposure therapy doesn’t have to look like the classic “graduated exposure”). But he doesn’t say anything about sensory sensitivity or autism in the book.
So I dunno. I guess it doesn’t sound totally crazy off the top of my head, but that’s just casual speculation, from someone who is an expert on neither exposure therapy nor autism. :-)
This link seems to be “we tried exposure therapy for sound sensitivity, and it didn’t work”, but I would be more inclined to describe it as “this isn’t proper exposure therapy at all, it’s just making loud noises in kids’ ears for a minute or two”. This seems relevant but I don’t know how to find the associated paper if any. This and this makes it sound like exposure therapy for sensory sensitivity is already routinely used for people with autism, at least to some extent, and it works like normal.
Many years ago I read this NYTimes article (paywalled, DM or email me for a PDF) about Applied Behavior Analysis (note: see Ann Brown’s reply to this comment), claiming it could “cure” classic autism; if that’s true (a big “if”!) I guess we should consider the hypothesis that the underlying mechanism is “basically just lots and lots of exposure therapy for everything, day after day for years”.
Many autistic individuals who experienced it have attested that Applied Behavior Analysis is an extremely unpleasant experience that caused them harm. It is a form of operant conditioning, that trains us to behave neurotypically and not behave autistically through reward/punishment. It does not ‘cure’ but control.
Thanks for sharing, I didn’t know that.