The Causes of Autism

This section of the library shall be dedicated to commentaries on the Hubermanlab podcast. Included below is not a summary of the episode (I’ll leave that for you to check out), but rather my comments on the episode in terms of psychology, health, and human behavior. Whenever possible, I draw connections to autism as well. Most of my comments originally appear on Twitter/X, so be sure to follow on there.

Dr. Adam Grant: How to Unlock Your Potential, Motivation & Unique Abilities

The implications of this podcast for autism are actually quite enormous, specifically for the science of applied behavior analysis. Motivation is often challenging when working with young children on the autism spectrum, and those who use the science of ABA often have to think of creative ways to foster motivation in certain children who are often not at all motivated for social interaction, have poor attending skills, verbal and motor tics, poor verbal imitation skills, and other comorbidities. You get the picture.

So, the science of applied behavior analysis basically tries to use the child’s MO by using the reward system through manipulating reinforcers to create more motivation in the future to engage in behaviors that are likely to benefit them and obtain them access to other rewards in the environment—usually, other things that they want.

The withholding of reinforcement when previous behaviors, such as tantrums, have been reinforced is often stressful, but ultimately, it’s the withholding of reinforcement that creates motivation to engage in other alternative behaviors, such as communication taught by adults.

Thanks for the episode.

As far as how I apply this episode to my own daily life, it made me think deeply about my own exchange from internal to external rewards through using social media platforms, and how I need to chill for a little bit and learn to be guided more by my intrinsic motivation. External rewards are quite addicting though, as evidenced by the addiction of many to social media. But, as Dr. Huberman pointed out, often people exchange an intrinsically rewarding experience, such as watching a sunset, for the external reward of taking a picture and then posting it online for social reward. If one uses applied behavior analysis terms, this could be called switching one’s motivation from Automatic Reinforcement (enjoying the intrinsic pleasure of the beauty of the sunset itself, for example) toward Attention/Social Reinforcement (likes and attention from peers, considering the functions of behavior). The problem, of course, is that what is more rewarding for one person is not always more rewarding for another person. Perhaps for some people, the sunset is meaningless, but they take pictures to obtain attention/social rewards they are more motivated to obtain.

As I’ve heard said with sports,
when it becomes all about the money,
some professionals experience a loss of enjoyment of sport itself.
The intrinsic enjoyment is gone. It became all about the money.

Anyway, thanks again.
Lovely episode.