If your autistic child is starting applied behavior analysis (ABA) to treat their autism, the therapist will start their sessions with a technique called “pairing”. Pairing is a technique that was developed through the scientific evidence of human behavior and how to manipulate it.
“Your learner’s choice should be reinforcement with you or no reinforcement at all.”
—Attentive Behavior Care (ABA Facility), Feb. 6, 2020
Pairing is a conditioning procedure used in social reinforcement. Variations include “stimulus pairing” and “response-stimulus pairing” among others.
The purpose of pairing in therapy is for the therapist to gain trust with the child so that they’ll be more likely to follow their adult-led instruction.
The process of pairing itself is not harmful, however, it manipulates the child into trusting a stranger quickly after meeting them. This is especially impactful on children regardless of neurotype where their “all or nothing” thinking may lead them to be more vulnerable to predatory adults because it makes them override their intrinsic judgment of character in favor of extrinsic motivation (receiving a reward or avoiding punishment). This learned skill is a form of masking where children may say “yes” when they really want “no,” increasing their risk of becoming sexually abused later in life.
While there isn’t just one person who designed the technique, Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner are considered to be the pioneers of modern behaviorism.
As early as 1901, the famous Russian psychologist, Ivan Pavlov and his assistant Ivan Tolochinov, are known for their experiments on the “conditioned reflex.” You might know these experiments as the man who rang a bell and then fed a dog some food, resulting in conditioning the dog to salivate at the sound of a bell.
John B. Watson carried out the unethical “Little Albert” experiment where he would terrify an 11-month-old child anytime he touched a pet rat by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer behind the child’s back, resulting in conditioning the child to become distressed at the sight of other furry creatures and even a Santa Claus mask.
In 1938, Burrhus Frederic Skinner (B. F. Skinner), the famous psychologist and behaviorist who believed free will was an illusion invented the operant conditioning chamber (aka the Skinner box) to study operant conditioning. You might know this experiment as the box with a rat and a lever that when the rat presses down on the lever, food may or may not be released. This data is often used in studying addictions and gambling.
Ole Ivar Lovaas, the founder of ABA, also experimented with perfecting pairing. Some of his autistic subjects did not respond to positive reinforcement such as praise or rewards, so he would induce anxiety through electric shock, slapping, and other forms of physical and emotional abuse to force his patients to listen to his adult-led instruction.
“[Pairing] is an essential component of ABA treatment… Additionally, pairing never ends.”
—Ellen Barnett, MA, BCBA, LBA (ABA Practitioner)
ABA “pairing” is actually a Child Predatory Technique called Grooming [Infographic]
![ABA "Pairing" is actually a Child Predatory Technique called Grooming. "What is pairing" as described by Special Learning, Inc., a pro-ABA company. Pairing turns you [the parent, teacher, or therapist] into a reinforcer. It provides increased compliance and instructional control. A reinforcer is something presented after a behavior that increases the behavior. Column 1: “Pairing tips” from Special Learning 1. Observe the child and interact in a way that is fun 2. Offer unconditional items only during work time 3. Observe the activities, toys, and foods enjoyed by the child 4. Reserve special items for learning or practice 5. Play without requiring response from child 6. Pairing never ends 7. Find items that you can control the amount or duration of (ex. tickles, hugs, high fives, food, drink, bubbles) Column 2: Peer-Reviewed Scientific Article titled, “Stages of Sexual Grooming: Recognizing Potential Predatory Behaviors of Child Molesters” 1. Child molesters groom while keeping a guise of being kind, charming, and helpful 2. They strategically manipulate the victim, their family, and their community to hide their deviant intentions and avoid detection. 3. Behaviors include strategies such as selecting a vulnerable victim, gaining access to the child, developing trust, and desensitizing the victim to touch. 4. ...step in the grooming process involves the emotional recruiting of the victim... This step is often regarded as the central role of the grooming process, wherein the offender establishes trust and cooperation with the victim... The offender accomplishes this by - befriending the child - learning about his/her interests - being helpful - showering the child with gifts and attention - sharing secrets 5. Depending on the child’s age this may include in engaging in peer-like involvement with the child, such as... - playing games with younger children - use inducements (e.g. money, treats, gifts, fun trips)](https://aurisecreative.work/aurisecreative.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/07/aba-pairing-grooming.png)
I created this infographic for the One Bad Autistic Facebook group’s learning units/guides on Applied Behavior Analysis and how and why it’s harmful.
Infographic Description & Transcription
The image itself has alt-text for screen-readers, but if you want to share this image on social media, please copy/paste the text below.
Image description: An infographic with a 2-column design comparing ABA's "pairing" technique in the first column and how-to's of a child predatory technique in the second column. Image Transcription: ABA "Pairing" is actually a Child Predatory Technique called Grooming. "What is pairing" as described by Special Learning, Inc., a pro-ABA company. Pairing turns you [the parent, teacher, or therapist] into a reinforcer. It provides increased compliance and instructional control. A reinforcer is something presented after a behavior that increases the behavior. Column 1: “Pairing tips” from Special Learning 1. Observe the child and interact in a way that is fun 2. Offer unconditional items only during work time 3. Observe the activities, toys, and foods enjoyed by the child 4. Reserve special items for learning or practice 5. Play without requiring response from child 6. Pairing never ends 7. Find items that you can control the amount or duration of (ex. tickles, hugs, high fives, food, drink, bubbles) Column 2: Peer-Reviewed Scientific Article titled, “Stages of Sexual Grooming: Recognizing Potential Predatory Behaviors of Child Molesters” 1. Child molesters groom while keeping a guise of being kind, charming, and helpful 2. They strategically manipulate the victim, their family, and their community to hide their deviant intentions and avoid detection. 3. Behaviors include strategies such as selecting a vulnerable victim, gaining access to the child, developing trust, and desensitizing the victim to touch. 4. ...step in the grooming process involves the emotional recruiting of the victim... This step is often regarded as the central role of the grooming process, wherein the offender establishes trust and cooperation with the victim... The offender accomplishes this by - befriending the child - learning about his/her interests - being helpful - showering the child with gifts and attention - sharing secrets 5. Depending on the child’s age this may include in engaging in peer-like involvement with the child, such as... - playing games with younger children - use inducements (e.g. money, treats, gifts, fun trips) Image Credit: One Bad Autistic, Facebook Group Image Source: https://just1voice.com/neurodiversity/autism/pairing-in-applied-behavior-analysis/
Predatory Child Grooming Highlights
Article snippets from “States of Sexual Grooming: Recognizing Potentially Predatory Behaviors of Child Molesters” that sound a lot like the pairing tip that reads, “find items that you can control the amount or duration of”).
After the child molester has acquired the trust of the child, they may gradually increase physical contact in order to desensitize the child to touch (Berliner and Conte 1990; Christiansen and Blake 1990; Leclerc et al. 2009; McAlinden 2006). The child molester escalates physical contact to prepare the child for the sexual contact that will occur during the impending abuse. Often times this begins with seemingly accidental touch or innocent behaviors, which then escalate to more intimate touching. For example, the child molester may first give the child hugs or pats on the back, and then gradually escalate to wrestling, tickling, or back massages and the eventual sexual contact. Other tactics include playing hide and seek in the dark, playing strip poker, swimming nude, drying a child off with a towel, massaging an injury, playing physical games, cuddling, or showing the child pornography (Lanning 2010; McAlinden 2006).
Georgia M. Winters, Elizabeth L. Jeglic, “Stages of Sexual Grooming: Recognizing Potentially Predatory Behaviors of Child Molesters” (Sep. 3, 2016). Deviant Behavior.
This one sounds nearly identical to the purpose of “pairing”, especially about the child’s compliance, and includes what the process serves.
…defined sexual grooming as: A process by which a person prepares a child, significant others, and the environment for the abuse of this child. Specific goals include gaining access to the child, gaining the child’s compliance, and maintaining the child’s secrecy to avoid disclosure. This process serves to strengthen the offender’s abusive pattern, as it may be used as a means of justifying or denying their actions. Successful grooming involves the skillful manipulation of a child and the community so that sexual abuse can be more easily committed without detection (van Dam 2006).
Georgia M. Winters, Elizabeth L. Jeglic, “Stages of Sexual Grooming: Recognizing Potentially Predatory Behaviors of Child Molesters” (Sep. 3, 2016). Deviant Behavior.
And finally, this snippet talks about statistics on how often abuse is detected and molesters being apprehended, and then the inability that the general public has in detecting it – which can be extrapolated to explain why parents and caregivers can’t detect it with ABA (but doesn’t excuse their defense of it).
A vast amount of research has supported the notion that many cases of child sexual abuse are never disclosed (Salter 2003) and it is speculated that as few as 5% of child sex offenders that are ever apprehended. Often after a child molester is apprehended there is outrage as the public questions why none of the abuser’s behavior was detected beforehand. However, Gillespie (2002) and Ost (2004) have suggested that it is highly unlikely that police and community members will be able to detect grooming behaviors that occur before the abuse in cases of intrafamilial and professional child abuse. Additionally, Craven and colleagues (2006) proposed that identifying grooming behaviors is more easily done retrospectively, compared to prospective identification. This is likely due to the fact that many grooming behaviors appear to be innocent in nature and typical of adult child interactions, while the motivation behind the behaviors is sexually deviant (Craven et al. 2006). In addition, offenders will change their strategies if they fear disclosure, making them even more difficult to identify (Conte, Wolf, and Smith 1989). Distinguishing between sexually motivated grooming and normal adult/child interactions is especially difficult when the witnesses have no knowledge of the grooming tactics employed by child molesters. Thus, there is a significant need to learn more about the sexual grooming behaviors of these offenders and how they may be identified prior to the commission of the abuse.
Georgia M. Winters, Elizabeth L. Jeglic, “Stages of Sexual Grooming: Recognizing Potentially Predatory Behaviors of Child Molesters” (Sep. 3, 2016). Deviant Behavior.
References & Sources
- Georgia M. Winters, Elizabeth L. Jeglic, “Stages of Sexual Grooming: Recognizing Potentially Predatory Behaviors of Child Molesters” (Sep. 3, 2016). Deviant Behavior.
- Claudia L. Dozier, Brian A. Iwata, Jessica Thomason-Sassi, April S. Worsdell, David M. Wilson, “A Comparison of Two Pairing Procedures to Establish Praise as a Reinforcer” (2012). Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis.
- Ellen Barnett, “Pairing: The Foundation of ABA Therapy” (Feb. 6, 2020). Attentive Behavior Care.
- B.F. Skinner, “The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis” (1938). Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.
- Dr. Saul McLeod, “The Little Albert Experiment” (2020). Simply Psychology.
- T. DeAngelis, “Mystery solved: We now know what happened to Little Albert” (Jan. 2010). Monitor on Psychology. American Psychological Association.
- Ole Ivar Lovaas, Gilbert Freitag, Melvyn I. Kinder, Bruce D. Rubenstein, Benson Schaeffer, James Q. Simmons, “Establishment of social reinforcers in two schizophrenic children on the basis of food” (Oct. 1966). Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
- “Operant conditioning chamber” APA Dictionary of Psychology. American Psychological Association.
- Kendra Cherry, “What Is a Skinner Box?” (Apr. 23, 2021). Verywell Mind.
- Ronald E. Robertson, “The 21st Century Skinner Box” (Jan. 15, 2018). Behavioral Scientist.
- Darrin Perez, “Skinner’s Box and Video Games: How to Create Addictive Games” (Sep. 4, 2020). LevelSkip.
