Oct 6, 2026 · 2 hr 23 min · 12 segments
Welcome to the ABA and PT Podcast where I interview scientists and practitioners from the world of Precision Teaching as they share their journeys of how they found their way to the science of human…
Okay, at some point in the mid to late 80s, Connecticut hired a new commissioner to come into the department to head up the whole Department of Mental Retardation.
And he brought in people who were pretty much terminating effective behavior programs around the state.
if you had any sort of aversive consequence that had been highly effective for a self-abusive kid, that was banned.
and brought in what he referred to as the positive only approach, which was the forerunner of PBS.
So where had he got his worldviews from? Do you remember where he'd formed? The concept
Normalization.
At
See, the concept of normalization in the late 80s was that All behavior problems were just related to the fact that people were institutionalized and had no great environment.
And if you just took them and put them in wonderful group homes, all their behaviors would go away.
And they had one guy from one of the state training schools that they put in a group home thinking that that would cure all his problems, who ended up costing a million dollars to program for in a year.
He was in a group home by himself, and he did $50,000 worth of damage to the group home.
Okay, at some point in the mid to late 80s, Connecticut hired a new commissioner to come into the department to head up the whole Department of Mental Retardation.
And he brought in people who were pretty much terminating effective behavior programs around the state.
if you had any sort of aversive consequence that had been highly effective for a self-abusive kid, that was banned.
and brought in what he referred to as the positive only approach, which was the forerunner of PBS.
So where had he got his worldviews from? Do you remember where he'd formed? The concept
Normalization.
At
See, the concept of normalization in the late 80s was that All behavior problems were just related to the fact that people were institutionalized and had no great environment.
And if you just took them and put them in wonderful group homes, all their behaviors would go away.
And they had one guy from one of the state training schools that they put in a group home thinking that that would cure all his problems, who ended up costing a million dollars to program for in a year.
He was in a group home by himself, and he did $50,000 worth of damage to the group home.
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