ABSTRACT
Behavior analysts are by nature critical thinkers, skeptics even. Families desperate for any shred of hope for a cure for autism seem disinclined to engage in critical thinking about treatment effectiveness. Critical thinking requires people to separate information from their assumptions about the information. Perhaps the greatest debacle tied to a failure of critical thinking involved facilitated communication (FC), a fad treatment if ever there was one. FC began in Australia as a treatment for individuals with cerebral palsy and then migrated to the United States in the early 1990s as a method for assisting communication for people with autism. “Critical thinking comes into play every time professional behavior analyst opens a journal to research the current best practices in behavior analysis.” One behavioral study done with sensory integration (SI) as an independent variable was carried out with the specific purpose of testing SI theory.
