"The rat is always right" B.F. Skinner
(Father of Operant Conditioning, Author, Researcher, and just all around amazing person)
"The rat is always right" is a classic Skinner saying that alllll ABA people should have stitched onto a pillow somewhere in their home.
What Skinner meant with this statement is that if something is not going right with your experiment, the rat is not to blame. The rat isn't being lazy, stupid, or stubborn. The rat is doing what you have trained the rat to do. Rats can only be rats.
I'm sure you see where I'm going with this.......
When your client just "isn't getting it" after intensive teaching, switching up reinforcement, and changing your materials/stimuli, do you blame the client? Do you assume they cant learn, or are just being noncompliant?
For parents, when the team of therapists leave your home and all of a sudden the child stops manding and problem behaviors begin, do you think the ABA just "isn't working"? Do you blame the therapists or supervisor that you cant get your child to complete tasks?
To put it simply: the child will do what you have the environment set up for them to do. So blame the environment, not the child.
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