Normalizing the Function of Autistic Children
Wei Chi Chang
Arizona State University
Normalizing the Function of Autistic Children Despite the fact that Lovaas (1987) claimed that the result indicated early intensive behavioral therapy would be efficient and beneficial, Schopler, Short, and Mesibov (1989) criticized the study by pointing out three major flaws— subject selection bias, adequacy of the control group, and inappropriate outcome measures. The subject selection bias was targeting two main criteria issues that could influence the external validity of the study. First of all, the subjects were not “average (or below average)” as Lovaas (1987) described. There were several selection bias that could lead to obtaining …show more content…
All patients were assigned to be in the experimental group until none of the therapists were available to accommodate the patient. Since the nature of treatment needed more than 40 hours of attention for the experimental group subjects, there were concerns about the capability of the parents who were required to act as a therapist or teacher to maintain the intensive behavioral therapy. In fact, Lovaas (1987) indicated after the parent training that not all parents could be effective due to reasons such as divorce, personal interest, the mother needs a job, and more. Thereby, Schopler et al. (1989) suspected that families in the control group might not be as motivated and engaged compared to the parents in experimental group since they joined late in the treatment with all the possible factors mentioned above would limit the capability of those parents to give the most effective intensive …show more content…
Both measurement seemed to portray a lower score than ratio IQ, which was used by most of the studies (Schopler et al., 1989). Not only there were no explanations provided for the choice of using PMA and deviation IQ, but some of the pretest also could not support deviation IQ. Thereby, the suspicion of the participants in the experimental group had improved from autistic symptoms were due to their predisposition of high IQ and good prognosis instead of the treatment itself could be considered as valid. In regard to the focus question, the subject selection bias weakened the evidence on normalizing the function of autistic children since Lovaas (1987) failed to prove that early intensive behavioral intervention were efficient for all autistic children with a lower intellectual functioning (Schopler et al.,
Wei Chi Chang
Arizona State University
Normalizing the Function of Autistic Children Despite the fact that Lovaas (1987) claimed that the result indicated early intensive behavioral therapy would be efficient and beneficial, Schopler, Short, and Mesibov (1989) criticized the study by pointing out three major flaws— subject selection bias, adequacy of the control group, and inappropriate outcome measures. The subject selection bias was targeting two main criteria issues that could influence the external validity of the study. First of all, the subjects were not “average (or below average)” as Lovaas (1987) described. There were several selection bias that could lead to obtaining …show more content…
All patients were assigned to be in the experimental group until none of the therapists were available to accommodate the patient. Since the nature of treatment needed more than 40 hours of attention for the experimental group subjects, there were concerns about the capability of the parents who were required to act as a therapist or teacher to maintain the intensive behavioral therapy. In fact, Lovaas (1987) indicated after the parent training that not all parents could be effective due to reasons such as divorce, personal interest, the mother needs a job, and more. Thereby, Schopler et al. (1989) suspected that families in the control group might not be as motivated and engaged compared to the parents in experimental group since they joined late in the treatment with all the possible factors mentioned above would limit the capability of those parents to give the most effective intensive …show more content…
Both measurement seemed to portray a lower score than ratio IQ, which was used by most of the studies (Schopler et al., 1989). Not only there were no explanations provided for the choice of using PMA and deviation IQ, but some of the pretest also could not support deviation IQ. Thereby, the suspicion of the participants in the experimental group had improved from autistic symptoms were due to their predisposition of high IQ and good prognosis instead of the treatment itself could be considered as valid. In regard to the focus question, the subject selection bias weakened the evidence on normalizing the function of autistic children since Lovaas (1987) failed to prove that early intensive behavioral intervention were efficient for all autistic children with a lower intellectual functioning (Schopler et al.,