Listening with Humility:Lessons Learned from a Dialogue with Scholars from Critical Autism Studies

Abstract The field of applied behavior analysis (ABA) appears to be at an inflection point where we are experiencing substantial criticism from the autistic community. We as a field can choose to defend our field from the criticism or we can choose to listen and be responsive to it. Some early forays into discussing the implications of neurodiversity for ABA have been fruitful (Veneziano & Shea, 2023; Mathur et al., 2024) and it seems clear that the time for direct dialogue between ABA scientist practitioners and some of our greatest critics has come. Suckle et al. (2025) described one side of a recent dialogue between scholars of ABA and Critical Autism Studies (CAS), in which CAS scholars posed questions to ABA scholars and ABA scholars answered them. That article was explicitly composed for a disability studies audience and accordingly published in a disability studies journal. The current article describes the other side of that dialogue, in which ABA scholars posed questions to CAS scholars, who then provided their answers. The current article is explicitly written for the ABA researcher and practitioner audience. We may not feel entirely comfortable with some of the criticisms of ABA that come from CAS scholars but we believe that willingness to experience this discomfort is a critical prerequisite for our field to evolve. This article explores how our field can engage in cross-disciplinary collaboration and concludes with potential actionable steps that ABA researchers and practitioners can put into practice today.