It's one of my favoritest books! Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind, reviewed (at length!) here. It's short and easy to read, at least at our levels (my dyslexic mother would struggle, unfortunately).
Caveat, though, that all my praise of the author's treatment of animals in those posts was based on the author's respectful descriptions of how she treated their minds and granted them the status of human children and her descriptions of their interactions. There has since been a huge controversy over her physical neglect and endangerment of them, in which she lost her access to them. Which is hugely disappointing if true. (She rejects the accusations and says the apes are now being treated with no dignity and have reverted to being animals in a zoo again. Both could be true--god knows there are plenty of neglected human children.)
Is the "traditional approach" ABA?
ABA is deeply problematic, but the only aspect addressed by this book (or at least the part I'm talking about) is that the stimulus-response conditioning approach to language used with apes and disabled children does not teach them that language is a symbolic tool for communication if they don't already grasp that. And thus they never do anything that could really be called language. At best, they end up like rats pressing levers to get pellets, and at worst, they end up doing random things that researchers desperately want to find evidence of language use in.
What they *don't* do is initiate communication using language to convey their needs and better their lives. Which, if you think about it All so-called "language" use among these apes is prompted by the researcher, and the subject reacts as they've been trained, if they've been successfully trained (and usually that's not even the case).
And that's exactly where my brothers are. At least one understands and can react to a handful of phrases, less than your average dog. Neither of them initiates it. One initiates communication in different, non-linguistic ways, like bringing his sippy cup to my mother when he wants it filled up. (The other one was only 3 when I went to college, so I have fewer data points. I have no memories of being told he did anything like this, but it might have just flown under my radar.)
What's interesting is that my mother always told us that there was no way to tell if my brothers understood everything they were hearing and were possibly doing advanced physics in their heads, and were just lacking the ability to talk, or if they didn't understand anything, or somewhere in between.
Having seen my one brother's use of his picture board, and having read this book, I'm now 99% sure communication via language as symbolic vehicle is not taking place, and thus they're not understanding anything either, any better than a dog.
His use of his picture board is totally random as far as I can tell. When he presses buttons and words/phrases come out of the device, my mother struggles to interpret what he's saying. (I think this is equally true of the other brother too.)
You can hypothesize all you want that they're thinking all sorts of things that you and I would think and pressing the buttons that best communicate that--but the button pressing is indistinguishable from random. Commmunication is literally not taking place. There is no evidence that they are using it any differently than they use a toy piano keyboard: press a button, a sound comes out, that's cool.
Here's an example of an exchange with my mother that I witnessed:
My brother: sitting and chilling out at the dinner table, no apparent emotion other than contentment. Pressing buttons on his picture board with no evidence of intent, changing strategies, or frustration that he's not getting through.
Picture board: "Apple." Mom: I don't have an apple. Do you want a cookie? Picture board: "School." Mom: Uh, school is tomorrow. Yes, you'll see your teachers and friends tomorrow. Picture board: "I'm mad." [Context: when he's frustrated or upset, you know it! He is frequently frustrated or upset precisely because he can't communicate his needs.] Mom: Are you mad about something? [Highly skeptical.] Picture board: "Dog." [Context: we have no dog, there is no dog at school, I'm not sure he's seen a dog in 15 years.] Mom: Okay, I think you're just playing with that. Or if you're not, I'm sorry, I can't figure out what you're trying to tell me.
Any scientist would have to say that this behavior shows no evidence of being statistically significantly distinguishable from the null hypothesis of random button-pressing.
And the fact that the method in the book was successfully used to take intellectually disabled children/teenagers from exactly that level, to using language for its actual purposes, makes me think that this technique is the one thing that has a chance of getting my brothers to understand what communication is for and use it to better their lives.
If we were on speaking terms and they were still in school, I would ask to go to an IEP meeting and present the technique and see if I got any signs that anyone grasped the difference between "language as symbolic vehicle for communication" and "stimulus-response" well enough to implement the plan correctly. Or at least someone who understood which parts of the plan were important enough that they can't be deviated from for it to still be the same plan that does the right thing.
Unfortunately, understanding why this technique works the way it does requires a lot more technical understanding than the collaborate problem-solving approach in Lost at School, which is why I can rec the one book to anyone and everyone and the other one I kind of sigh and am not optimistic about. It took me a fair bit of college-level linguistic and philosophical education to get to the point where I could grasp the concepts involved; high school me would not have, I'm pretty sure. And I am 99% sure if I tried to explain the plan to my mother, she would be convinced that she understood it and wouldn't.
Tangent: I understand why she wants to believe her children understand everything that's being said to them, but this is the same woman who decided that an infant got upset when her brothers started fighting because they were breaking the rules. The infant does not understand the rules! She's either scared, or she's upset because she wanted peace and quiet and they were disturbing her rest.
She would also dramatically overestimate my nephew's cognitive skills. Now, he's a sharp kid! But no, at the age of three, he could not compensate for my sister's educational neglect by memorizing a Dr. Seuss book that I read to him once on one of my visits, and then reading it to himself subsequently. He couldn't remember a word from one page to the next. (I tried the whole-word method that my mother tried with me, but his patience was less and I only had the one visit. Mom had far more time with young me!)
I know that my kids have a better than average chance of having a low-functioning ASD child
Yeah. :/
Just from anecdata, my Dad's side looks like this:
Dad: high-functioning ASD. His two sons: extremely low-functioning ASD. His brother: somewhere in the middle.
Perfect illustration:
Dad: Salts his own food. My brothers: There's no point in giving them a salt shaker, they wouldn't do what to do with it or why. My dad's brother: Can salt his own food, but his mother has to tell him when to stop.
My sister who died, the only one of the daughters who was Dad's and therefore might carry that gene, would have been advised not to have children, according to my mother.
Oh, speaking of that, and speaking of things that are too difficult for the average person to grasp and apply, my parents saw a professional about whether to have another child after the last one turned out so disabled. They were told that the odds of having one low-functioning autistic children were small, and the odds of having two were *even* smaller, and they already had one, so the chances of having a second one were vanishingly small!
Leaving aside the fact that the genetic component was unknown then, I'm sure you can see the problem. Even if those are independent probabilities, once you've had the first child, the odds of having a second one are the same as having the first one! That's the gambler's fallacy. I accepted this logic when I was thirteen and my mother was pregnant, but I grew up to go, "...Wait a minute." I would be amazed that a genetic consultant (I hope it was just a regular MD or even PA, but still) was giving this advice, but the MIT-hosted web page that went up about Boston weather after the big Snowpocalypse of 2015 said that our chances of having a second snow season like that in the near future was vanishingly small, because we'd already had one!
Leaving aside the fact that these are dependent probabilities, because CLIMATE is a thing, omfg, even if they were independent, that's the gambler's fallacy again!
I remember ranting to my wife about this one when we found it. MIT! I ask you!
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Date: 2022-06-29 12:27 am (UTC)Caveat, though, that all my praise of the author's treatment of animals in those posts was based on the author's respectful descriptions of how she treated their minds and granted them the status of human children and her descriptions of their interactions. There has since been a huge controversy over her physical neglect and endangerment of them, in which she lost her access to them. Which is hugely disappointing if true. (She rejects the accusations and says the apes are now being treated with no dignity and have reverted to being animals in a zoo again. Both could be true--god knows there are plenty of neglected human children.)
Is the "traditional approach" ABA?
ABA is deeply problematic, but the only aspect addressed by this book (or at least the part I'm talking about) is that the stimulus-response conditioning approach to language used with apes and disabled children does not teach them that language is a symbolic tool for communication if they don't already grasp that. And thus they never do anything that could really be called language. At best, they end up like rats pressing levers to get pellets, and at worst, they end up doing random things that researchers desperately want to find evidence of language use in.
What they *don't* do is initiate communication using language to convey their needs and better their lives. Which, if you think about it All so-called "language" use among these apes is prompted by the researcher, and the subject reacts as they've been trained, if they've been successfully trained (and usually that's not even the case).
And that's exactly where my brothers are. At least one understands and can react to a handful of phrases, less than your average dog. Neither of them initiates it. One initiates communication in different, non-linguistic ways, like bringing his sippy cup to my mother when he wants it filled up. (The other one was only 3 when I went to college, so I have fewer data points. I have no memories of being told he did anything like this, but it might have just flown under my radar.)
What's interesting is that my mother always told us that there was no way to tell if my brothers understood everything they were hearing and were possibly doing advanced physics in their heads, and were just lacking the ability to talk, or if they didn't understand anything, or somewhere in between.
Having seen my one brother's use of his picture board, and having read this book, I'm now 99% sure communication via language as symbolic vehicle is not taking place, and thus they're not understanding anything either, any better than a dog.
His use of his picture board is totally random as far as I can tell. When he presses buttons and words/phrases come out of the device, my mother struggles to interpret what he's saying. (I think this is equally true of the other brother too.)
You can hypothesize all you want that they're thinking all sorts of things that you and I would think and pressing the buttons that best communicate that--but the button pressing is indistinguishable from random. Commmunication is literally not taking place. There is no evidence that they are using it any differently than they use a toy piano keyboard: press a button, a sound comes out, that's cool.
Here's an example of an exchange with my mother that I witnessed:
My brother: sitting and chilling out at the dinner table, no apparent emotion other than contentment. Pressing buttons on his picture board with no evidence of intent, changing strategies, or frustration that he's not getting through.
Picture board: "Apple."
Mom: I don't have an apple. Do you want a cookie?
Picture board: "School."
Mom: Uh, school is tomorrow. Yes, you'll see your teachers and friends tomorrow.
Picture board: "I'm mad." [Context: when he's frustrated or upset, you know it! He is frequently frustrated or upset precisely because he can't communicate his needs.]
Mom: Are you mad about something? [Highly skeptical.]
Picture board: "Dog." [Context: we have no dog, there is no dog at school, I'm not sure he's seen a dog in 15 years.]
Mom: Okay, I think you're just playing with that. Or if you're not, I'm sorry, I can't figure out what you're trying to tell me.
Any scientist would have to say that this behavior shows no evidence of being statistically significantly distinguishable from the null hypothesis of random button-pressing.
And the fact that the method in the book was successfully used to take intellectually disabled children/teenagers from exactly that level, to using language for its actual purposes, makes me think that this technique is the one thing that has a chance of getting my brothers to understand what communication is for and use it to better their lives.
If we were on speaking terms and they were still in school, I would ask to go to an IEP meeting and present the technique and see if I got any signs that anyone grasped the difference between "language as symbolic vehicle for communication" and "stimulus-response" well enough to implement the plan correctly. Or at least someone who understood which parts of the plan were important enough that they can't be deviated from for it to still be the same plan that does the right thing.
Unfortunately, understanding why this technique works the way it does requires a lot more technical understanding than the collaborate problem-solving approach in Lost at School, which is why I can rec the one book to anyone and everyone and the other one I kind of sigh and am not optimistic about. It took me a fair bit of college-level linguistic and philosophical education to get to the point where I could grasp the concepts involved; high school me would not have, I'm pretty sure. And I am 99% sure if I tried to explain the plan to my mother, she would be convinced that she understood it and wouldn't.
Tangent: I understand why she wants to believe her children understand everything that's being said to them, but this is the same woman who decided that an infant got upset when her brothers started fighting because they were breaking the rules. The infant does not understand the rules! She's either scared, or she's upset because she wanted peace and quiet and they were disturbing her rest.
She would also dramatically overestimate my nephew's cognitive skills. Now, he's a sharp kid! But no, at the age of three, he could not compensate for my sister's educational neglect by memorizing a Dr. Seuss book that I read to him once on one of my visits, and then reading it to himself subsequently. He couldn't remember a word from one page to the next. (I tried the whole-word method that my mother tried with me, but his patience was less and I only had the one visit. Mom had far more time with young me!)
I know that my kids have a better than average chance of having a low-functioning ASD child
Yeah. :/
Just from anecdata, my Dad's side looks like this:
Dad: high-functioning ASD.
His two sons: extremely low-functioning ASD.
His brother: somewhere in the middle.
Perfect illustration:
Dad: Salts his own food.
My brothers: There's no point in giving them a salt shaker, they wouldn't do what to do with it or why.
My dad's brother: Can salt his own food, but his mother has to tell him when to stop.
My sister who died, the only one of the daughters who was Dad's and therefore might carry that gene, would have been advised not to have children, according to my mother.
Oh, speaking of that, and speaking of things that are too difficult for the average person to grasp and apply, my parents saw a professional about whether to have another child after the last one turned out so disabled. They were told that the odds of having one low-functioning autistic children were small, and the odds of having two were *even* smaller, and they already had one, so the chances of having a second one were vanishingly small!
Leaving aside the fact that the genetic component was unknown then, I'm sure you can see the problem. Even if those are independent probabilities, once you've had the first child, the odds of having a second one are the same as having the first one! That's the gambler's fallacy. I accepted this logic when I was thirteen and my mother was pregnant, but I grew up to go, "...Wait a minute." I would be amazed that a genetic consultant (I hope it was just a regular MD or even PA, but still) was giving this advice, but the MIT-hosted web page that went up about Boston weather after the big Snowpocalypse of 2015 said that our chances of having a second snow season like that in the near future was vanishingly small, because we'd already had one!
Leaving aside the fact that these are dependent probabilities, because CLIMATE is a thing, omfg, even if they were independent, that's the gambler's fallacy again!
I remember ranting to my wife about this one when we found it. MIT! I ask you!