Before I introduce the following paper that I wrote for Jared Gonzalez (jaredgonz1999@yahoo.com) I am going to have to repeat this a couple of times. Jared Gonzalez (jaredgonz1999@yahoo.com) owes me $100 because he hired me to commit academic fraud. I wrote a paper for Jared Gonzaelez (jaredgonz1999@yahoo.com) and he didn’t pay me.
When I tell people what I do for a living, I can talk about the background acting, the stories that I sometimes sell to magazines or anthologies, the publishing company, but I have to admit that my day job is writing term papers for lazy college students (like Jared Gonzalez whose email address is jaredgonz1999@yahoo.com) and that brings joy. It’s a day job just sketchy enough to feel like we’re sharing a dirty secret but not so sketchy that it could lead to exploding meth labs.
It’s a fun job but it also sucks at times. It’s been pretty bad this past year because students have been using Chatgpt instead of paying me $25/hour to write papers that won’t obviously come from plagiarism software (although one client tried to tell me that my last paper failed the AI test - which is bullshit but she’s paid me so far). So I’ve been having to put up Gofundme to pay my rent. I’ve also been looking for a real day job. A recruiter told me that my resume was very impressive since I DID found an independent publishing company.
Only sometimes I get a client like Jared Gonzalez who thinks he can ghost me after I write his paper. That’s Jared Gonzalez of jaredgonz1999@yahoo.com. I sent him the paper. I told him where to pay me:
Zelle: omanlieder@yahoo.com
Paypal: timlieder1@yahoo.com
That’s Jared Gonzalez who sent this email
Jared gonzalez
From:jaredgonz1999@yahoo.com
To:omanlieder@yahoo.com
Fri, Feb 23 at 5:08 PM
Hi. I find your email in this app called Reddit I was wondering if you are available to do a paper work for me? Thank you
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
Used to be I could post the client’s paper on Livejournal and the next day, they’d be sending me money and begging me to take down the post. Now they just ignore it. Or they string me along for weeks.
Jared Gonzalez (jaredgonz1999@yahoo.com) got the link to his paper and FINALLY wrote back with “is this where I send payment? Sorry my English is bad” (no it’s not. Also I put up the payment info already). I told him where. He asked if I could wait until the weekend. I said “sure” because I wanted to be generous.
It’s Tuesday night. Jared Gonzalez (jaredgonz1999@yahoo.com has yet to pay me.
Update he responded to this article. Apparently he goes to Texas state university
So here is the paper I wrote for Jared Gonzalez (jaredgonz1999@yahoo.com) so if you’d like to hire me to write your next term paper (edit your thesis, revise your resume, etc.) you can email me at omanlieder@yahoo.com
Please note I don’t think this particular psychological approach works and many Autistic people say it’s abusive. I was just writing for the class. It was due on February 25, 2024. I think. I wrote it for that day.
The Ways of ABA
Introduction
Applied Behavior Analysis is a form of behavioral engineering theoretically meant to improve social skills and normalize behavior with many different attempts to use stimuli and punishment. The original name for ABA was behavior modification. In recent years, it has come under attack by members of the Autistic Spectrum Community who claim that it is an abusive attempt to force “normal” behavior. Still there are several ways that ABA can be applied.
Features
There are several features of ABA. ABA is based on the concept that by recognizing and working on certain behaviors, the individual can better fit into the societal expectation. A parent or a therapist may “choose specific behaviors to work on, set clear goals, and use consistent rewards and positive methods to encourage good behavior and discourage challenging ones during daily activities.” (Tatom) ABA is basically psychotherapy and pedagogy as it seeks to teach children, mostly autistic children to “act normally,” with behaviors that don't make people uncomfortable.
ABA is also used for children with behavioral issues, phobias, and addictions. A great deal of ABA involves reward and punishment. However, ABA also “seeks to understand why someone behaves in a certain manner so that more effective solutions can be created. It is also important to note that while reinforcement and consequences are part of ABA therapy, they should be used responsibly” (Elias 2023).
ABA is mostly concerned with unwanted behavior but also seeks to encourage people to complete tasks. For example, one of the goals for autistic children may involve making eye contact. So the ABA would work on that eye contact. ABA would also make an effort to understand why neurodivergent individuals do not want to make eye contact, find eye contact creepy, state that they don't believe in premarital eye contact in a way that doesn't necessarily sound like they are joking. Maybe then they can make eye contact with greater ease.
Many believe that ABA is an effective treatment for ASD to help ASD students into the mainstream of the school curriculum. “School-based practitioners should aim to implement evidence-based behavior management strategies that have been proven to be effective for students with ASD. A robust literature base supports the use of many approaches, including applied behavior analysis” (White 2014, p. 85)
Three Pillars of ABA
The three pillars of ABA are stimulus, behavior and response. A stimulus can be negative or positive. When one is treating someone using ABA, stimulus, one can use negative stimuli like electric shock in order to provide a stimulus that keeps someone away. Or one can have an associative stimuli such as Pavlov's Dog salivating upon hearing a bell ring.
Stimulus was parodied in the South Park movie where Cartman was given a device that administered an electric shock every time he used profanity. By the end of the movie he had used so much profanity that he was able to shoot lightning bolts. This is not how stimulus works in ABA therapy but it is a popular conception and it can illustrate the debate over stiumulis.
Behavior is the key to ABA. With ABA, the individual is being trained to behave in a certain way and this behavior is being moved in one direction by response and stimuli.
Response is the way that ABA controls people. You say a word. Someone hits you on the hand. That's the response. Your stimuli is negative.
Another example of stimuli, response and behavior is daily report cards (DRC). “The DRC is an operationalized list of a child’s target behaviors (e.g., interrupting, noncompliance, academic productivity), and it includes specific criteria for meeting each behavioral goal (e.g., “interrupts three or fewer times during math instruction”). Teachers provide immediate feedback to the child regarding target behaviors on the DRC.” (Pyle & Fabiano 2017). The behavior is the type of behavior shown by the child with ADHD. The response is the report card. The stimulus is the reward or punishment in regards to the DRC.
Classical vs. Operant Conditioning
Stimuli and responses are the way that ABA conditions the patients. Also conditioning is something that happens throughout our daily lives. Our mothers scream at us to do the dishes and we do the dishes and this is a type of conditioning. We grow up reading sexist books that depict men and women in some kind of blood feud for supremacy and this affects our attitude toward dating. Other types of conditioning can occur in regards to sitmuli. If you eat pasta and throw up, you might feel nauseous when you are served pasta again. This is regardless of whether the first pasta dish that made you vomit was spoiled.
Pavlov's dog is the quintessential example of classical conditioning. The dog associated the bell with food and salivated when hearing the bell. If a child is exposed to a dog that bites the child, the child may associate barking with danger.
Operant conditioning is a more important part of conditioning. With operant conditioning, the person being conditioned is encouraged to actively participate in their conditioning. “Operant conditioning may be more obvious since the consequences and reinforcement are apparent. Classical conditioning can be more insidious or unknown.”(Arzt & Fuller 2023).
An example of operant conditioning happens in brainwashing, such as with Mao's army where every member was supposed to confess to their sins and to the sins of their comrades. Those who resisted the conditioning were pushed out of the group and needed to find other things to do. Those who remained in Mao's army kept confessing their sins and their comrade's sins so much that they were completely under the thrall of the party. They didn't contribute anything but their obedience. Later Maoist purges such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution would continue this conditioning with younger party members turning in their older comrades for being counterrevolutionaries and spies.
Reinforcement
Reinforcement is an important part of life. We all reinforce our behaviors on a daily basis. We brush our teeth in the morning if he want to have fresh breath and save money on dentists. Setting an alarm is a type of reinforcement. Negative reinforcement means that you are putting something off.
Exercise can be both positive and negative reinforcement. It's negative because you are trying to lose weight and put off the death that awaits for just a little longer. If you exercise regularly, you are less likely to die of a heart attack or develop diabetes. However, it is also positive because it gets the blood pumping and the endorphins going.
If you are not likely to exercise, you can use more reinforcement such as music so you are dancing on the treadmill or television so that you can catch upon your favorite anime. This is always personal and part of the program.
Ideally reinforcement should be personal. One of the issues with neurodivergence is that reinforcement is not as easy. With ADHD or ASD, one has to remind oneself to do all the things every day and even use other forms of reinforcement.
Schedules of Reinforcement
Schedules of reinforcement are tools used for neurodivergent people to schedule their time and their activities so that they are getting key goals addressed. Someone with ADHD might need fixed intervals of reinforcement to make sure that they do certain things. They can set alarms and also set aside time for busy work. There are also ways of tokens that help people to understand themselves.
Conclusion
Even though there are ABA critics who note that ABA might be used to force people into artificial normalcy, there are some benefits to ABA. ABA does help people to condition themselves into dealing with responsibilities and social interactions. Furthermore, ABA will allow people to schedule their time in a comprehensive manner.
References
Arzt N &Fuller K. (2023). Classical vs. operant conditioning: What is the difference? Choosing Therapy. Retrieved from https://www.choosingtherapy.com/classical-vs-operant-conditioning/
Elias M (2023) Is ABA therapy only for autism? Six myths. Discovery ABA Therapy. Retrieved from https://www.discoveryaba.com/aba-therapy/myths
Pyle K & Fabiano G.A. (2017) Daily report card intervention and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A meta-analysis of single-case studies. Exceptional Children 83(4). 378-395. DOI: 10.1177/0014402917706370
Tatom C. (2023) The 7 dimensions and core principles of ABA. Autism Parenting Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.autismparentingmagazine.com/aba-principles/
White, S. E. (2014). Special Education Complaints Filed by Parents of Students With Autism Spectrum Disorders in the Midwestern United States. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 29(2), 80-87. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088357613478830