What is Autism?
Article by Dr. Emily Barker
Published September 4th, 2026
And what magnificent instruments of observation we possess in our senses! This nose, for example, of which no philosopher has yet spoken with reverence and gratitude, is actually the most delicate instrument so far at our disposal: it is able to detect minimal differences of motion which even a spectroscope cannot detect. Today we possess science precisely to the extent to which we have decided to accept the testimony of the senses - to the extent to which we sharpen them further, arm them, and have learned to think them through.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Twilight of the Idols
In behavior analysis, there are considered to be two types of reinforcement: automatic and socially-mediated, where automatic reinforcement is defined in Cooper as "persistent, seemingly non-purposeful, repetitive, self-stimulatory behaviors." Now, because ABA has thus far failed to listen to the millions of autistic people who have communicated that neurotypical people engage in seemingly non-purposeful social interactions, they missed a type of automatic reinforcement.
The current leading theory of autism is the Dopamine Hypothesis, related to the Social Motivation Theory, which, backed by significant evidence, says that autism is caused by a lack of dopamine response for existing in the same vicinity as and behaving similarly to other members of the species. Such behavior is automatic because the social interaction itself is not reinforcing, rather, simply behaving like a member of the group is. We can therefore create a second category of automatically reinforced behavior which we can define as, "persistent, seemingly non-purposeful, repetitive, herd-like behaviors."
It appears that the brain has a fundamental need for an automatic dopamine response, and when it no longer gets that from herd-behavior, the sensory system takes over, creating an autistic person. It is actually really easy and also ethical to teach autistic people as long as you stop trying to brute-force them to engage in herd-behavior and teach through shared sensory interactions instead. Autistic people like social interactions, they just don't like social interactions that are based on herd-behavior.
A neurotypical person learns by getting a shot of dopamine straight to the brain for behaving like a member of the herd. It turns out shots of dopamine straight to the brain are much more effective at teaching than only reinforcing someone when they perform a trick on command like what ABA prescribes. If you want autistic people to be successful, you need to also teach in a way that is derived from their automatic reinforcement of the senses.
The way a neurotypical person instinctively makes eye contact, liking to do it but finding too much aversive, is the same way an autistic person is drawn to music but finds too much noise aversive. Each is an instinct that each group has, but ours is the only one that gets labeled overstimulation. For us, we are sent to therapy to learn "communication" to learn how to get our needs met, where everything we like is subject to being used against us as a reinforcer, while for them, getting access to their form of automatic reinforcement is such a given that they didn't even think to write about it in the textbooks.
