ABA Therapy

Since ABA therapy is designed to help ASD children with their cognitive functioning and everyday living, there should be a strong correlation between learning/memory and ABA therapy. ABA therapy is known to help children function within reason in everyday life. Therefore the cognitive functions of learning and memory should be increased with ABA therapy.
Even though there are tons of instances where ABA therapy has worked for children with ASD, there has been minimal research to support this. ABA therapy aims to improve the lives of children with ASD with the use of positive reinforcement, there should be research done to show that learning and memory can be increased through ABA therapy. With that in mind, one possible experiment would be
to compare children with ASD while doing ABA therapy to regulars kids at the same cognitive level while also doing ABA therapy. There would be one group of children who have ASD and a control group that does not have the disorder. Each child would go to ABA therapy every day for four hours and then be in a regular school class for another four hours. This would give each child a full school day. This testing will go on for approximately five weeks. While performing the ABA therapy the children will be tested on their abilities at the end of every week. During the testing on the first and last weeks each child will be hooked up to an EEG machine while working at IT. This will test the electrical functioning within the brain. These results will be included in the data along with their weekly scores. Theoretically, the results would should that there are similar increases in correct answers for IT scores for both groups. EEG tests would also indicate increases of electrical current throughout the brain during the research. If the results show this positive increase, it would indicate that ABA therapy can work for those with ADS as well as those without and disabilities. This research would support the claims that ABA therapy improves the cognitive functioning of those with ASD.
Another experiment to test the effectiveness of ABA therapy on the brain would be to perform an fMRI to look at the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is involved in memory and learning and has been looked at in several different ways (Leuner, et al., 2004). Therefore the hippocampus should be active and improving for these with ASD while being treated with ABA therapy. With increased seasons of ABA therapy, there should be more blood flow within the hippocampus than before ABA therapy. This research would look specifically at the children currently involved in and just starting ABA therapy. There would be two group those who are just starting ABA therapy and those who are already in the program. An fMRI scan would be taken of child’s brain specifically looking at the hippocampus. Every child would go through their normal routine with ABA therapy. After six months another fMRI scan will be taken for all the children participating. The second set of scan will be compared to the first to see if there is in fact more blood flow to the hippocampus indicating there is more activating of learning and memory. The data would have to be charted for each individual child to see the difference between the six months. Ideally, the results would show that all of the children had more blood flow within the hippocampus during the second scan. The group of children new to ABA therapy would show how well this therapy can be right from the start. Also those who were already participating in ABA
therapy should show increased blow flow in their second scan compared to their first. This data would support that ABA therapy can work in the long run and not just in short spurts at the beginning.
All around the world there are people who are affected by ASD either directly or indirectly.
With such a mass number of people involved in this one disorder there is a real need to find a treatment that will work best for the majority of children. ABA therapy could be that treatment since there are many children who have already seen the effects of this therapy. If ABA therapy is not the most effective way to give the children with ASD the best quality of life, then there should be more research done to find this new therapy. Since ABA therapy has a high correlation with learning and memory, it would make sense that it is one of the best forms of treatment for
ASD.