Fading Whose Script? ABA, Misrecognition, and the Erasure of Gestalt Language Processing

Script fading doesn’t teach communication—it erases it. This article exposes how ABA interventions silence gestalt language processors by misreading scripting as pathology instead of recognising it as speech.

Source Paper Citation

Strohmeier, C. W., Thuman, E., Falligant, J. M., Cengher, M., Chin, M. D., & Kurtz, P. F. (2025). Resurgence of Severe Challenging Behavior and Schedule Thinning with the Terminal Schedule Probe Method. Behavioral Sciences, 15(3), 382. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15030382

Introduction

In my previous article, I argued that scripting is not a symptom to be corrected—it is speech. For many autistic people, particularly those who process language gesturally or holistically, scripting is not only meaningful but foundational. It is how we anchor ourselves, how we make sense of the world, how we begin to speak. Yet in the 2025 study by Strohmeier et al., scripting is not treated as communication at all. It is lumped in with so-called “challenging behaviours” such as licking, swiping, or walking away from a therapist, and subjected to the same suppressive treatment: extinction through behaviour modification. The study proposes the use of the Terminal Schedule Probe method to reduce these expressions in autistic toddlers. And whilst I critiqued the broader legal and ethical failures of that research in my earlier piece, what prompted this follow-up was a more specific discovery made in developing the previous article: a Google Scholar search for “script fading” and “autism” yielded over 1,500 results. When I added “gestalt language processing” to the query, that number dropped to barely a handful.

This is not a coincidence. It is an indictment of the field. Script fading is a widely used and researched technique within Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), promoted by organisations such as the Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT), whose name carries the tragic irony of presenting itself as a resource for parents whilst endorsing interventions that fail to recognise the very children they claim to serve. According to ASAT’s own description, script fading involves teaching children specific, adult-authored phrases to use in social situations, and then systematically removing these prompts to encourage so-called “independent” speech. But what if the child was already speaking—just not in a way that the adult could decode? What if the scripts being faded weren’t externally imposed but internally generated? What if the behaviours targeted for extinction were, in fact, communicative acts misunderstood by a system that has never been trained to recognise gestalt language processing? This article takes up that question. It is a deeper critique of how script fading, far from supporting communication, too often enacts its systematic erasure—especially for those of us who speak through gestalts.

What Is Script Fading, and What Does It Assume?

Script fading, as it appears in the behavioural literature, is described as a structured intervention in which a child is taught to use pre-written, adult-authored scripts in specific social situations—typically greetings, initiations, or topic-related statements—and then prompted to “generalise” these utterances through the systematic removal of words, cues, or supports. The end goal, as laid out in foundational studies by Krantz and McClannahan and reiterated in more recent syntheses like Akers et al. (2016) or Topuz & Ulke-Kurkcuoglu (2022), is to produce what the field defines as “spontaneous” or “independent” speech. On the surface, this might appear benign—even helpful. But dig deeper, and the core assumptions become clear. These studies rest on a narrow, Skinnerian model of language: that speech is a behaviour shaped by reinforcement, and that valid communication is linear, decontextualised, and functionally measurable. Under this model, what matters is not the child’s intent or internal process but whether they can perform a rehearsed, adult-defined verbal act on cue, in the “right” setting, without prompting.

When I searched Google Scholar for the terms “script fading” and “autism,” over 1,500 results appeared—each reinforcing this view in different variations. The titles are revealing: “Teaching Children with Autism to Initiate to Peers,” “Improvement of Conversation Skills,” “Generalisation of Social Initiation Skills from School to Home.” Over and over, the focus is on increasing the frequency of externally visible, socially desirable behaviours. What is striking is not just the volume of literature endorsing this method, but what is missing from it. When I added “gestalt language processing” to the search, the list of results collapsed to fewer than ten. That contrast is not incidental—it is structural. It reflects the field’s overwhelming preoccupation with shaping autistic children into neurotypical communicators, whilst remaining oblivious to the existence of other valid developmental trajectories. Gestalt Language Processors—we who develop language in chunks or “scripts” before eventually analysing and recombining them—do not appear in this research. Our communication style is invisible within the data, not because it is rare, but because the framework cannot see it.

What script fading assumes—without ever stating outright—is that language only counts if it looks like what a neurotypical adult expects. That “spontaneous” speech must emerge from adult-shaped training, not the child’s internal patterning. That scripting is merely a prompt dependency or a behaviour to outgrow, not an emergent form of narrative or relational expression. Even the word “fading” is telling: it implies that something is being withdrawn or dismantled for the child’s own good. But from the perspective of a gestalt processor, what is being faded may not be an externally imposed scaffold, but an internally anchored unit of meaning. To remove it without understanding its function is not support—it is sabotage. The irony, of course, is that these scripts are often the child’s way of trying to meet the world halfway. They are bridges, not barriers. But in the ABA literature, those bridges are torn down in favour of manufactured replacements that can be measured, reinforced, and categorised within the standard operant framework.

What this body of research reveals is a paradigm that conflates performance with progress. It values fluency over authenticity, predictability over personal meaning. It does not ask what language means to the child, only whether it conforms to the adult’s goal. And so script fading, as widely practised, is not merely an instructional technique. It is an epistemic intervention—one that rewrites the child’s voice through the language of compliance. It tells us, quietly but firmly, that there is only one right way to speak. That spontaneity must look rehearsed. That if your words do not fit the pre-approved mould, they must be replaced with ones that do. That is the true assumption embedded in this practice: not just that externally authored scripts are better, but that the child’s original language never counted in the first place.

Not Just the Wrong Script—The Wrong Lens

At the heart of the problem is not simply that the scripts used in ABA are externally authored, but that the entire lens through which autistic communication is viewed is fundamentally flawed. GLPs are not seen as valid communicators. In fact, many practitioners—whether in ABA, speech-language pathology, or mainstream education—have never even heard of us. This isn’t just a gap in training; it’s a systemic failure of recognition, one that reflects deeper assumptions about what language is, how it develops, and who gets to be understood. This failure gave rise to my own books—Holistic Language Instruction and Decolonising Language Education—and was a central theme in No Place for Autism? In all three, I argued that the prevailing educational and therapeutic paradigms are built around Analytic Language Processing (ALP) as the presumed default. It is not just assumed to be typical, but natural, universal, even scientific. Nowhere is this more evident than in the current obsession with the so-called “science of reading,” which positions phonics and decoding as the only valid routes to literacy, and in doing so, erases other ways of engaging with language entirely.

Within that worldview, gestalt processing is rendered invisible. If a child speaks in scripts, they are seen as perseverative. If they echo phrases from media or familiar interactions, they are labelled prompt-dependent. Rarely does anyone ask what those scripts mean to the child—what relational, emotional, or sensory work they might be doing. Even more rarely are those scripts seen as legitimate building blocks of language development. Instead, the behaviourist lens treats them as obstacles to overcome, steps to fade, or problems to extinguish. The result is that GLPs are routinely misdiagnosed, mis-served, and misjudged. We are placed in programmes designed to fix what is not broken, and excluded from supports that might have nurtured our language if only someone had known how to listen.

But scripting, for a GLP, is not a barrier to communication—it is communication. It is how we begin to speak. Gestalts are not meaningless chunks of sound; they are coherent, contextually anchored units of emotional and social meaning. They are deeply felt. To dismiss them as behavioural artefacts is not only a misunderstanding—it is an erasure. And when interventions are designed around that erasure, we are not just unsupported—we are actively harmed.

This is where the concept of epistemic injustice becomes essential. When a practitioner cannot recognise gestalt language processing, they cannot support it. But the failure is deeper than knowledge—it is about what kinds of knowing are deemed credible in the first place. GLPs make meaning in ways that do not conform to analytic norms. We do not assemble language from phonemes and morphemes in a neat linear progression. We experience language as whole, embodied, emotionally charged. But that experience is not seen as data. It does not fit the charts. And so it is excluded—not because it lacks value, but because the system lacks the imagination to value it. This is the injustice: that the very children most in need of recognition are the least likely to be recognised, and the most likely to be subjected to “interventions” that silence the very parts of them trying hardest to connect.

What Script Fading Misses About Language Development

What script fading fails to grasp—indeed, what it is structurally incapable of grasping—is how language development actually works for GLPs. Built upon Skinnerian foundations, the entire approach treats language as a behaviour to be shaped, measured, and reinforced. Words are operants. Phrases are stimulus responses. Communication becomes a kind of verbal compliance, rewarded when it conforms to adult expectations and punished—however subtly—when it does not. This model has dominated intervention for decades, particularly in the early childhood years, and it is this very model that underpins the Strohmeier et al. study. They worked with toddlers—very young autistic children—subjecting them to methods designed to suppress what they termed “problem behaviours,” scripting among them, without any awareness of what those scripts might have signified. At no point is there any mention of Natural Language Acquisition (NLA) or the stages of gestalt language development. The entire framework treats the children as if they were analytic processors failing to perform, rather than gestalt processors communicating in the only way we know how.

In GLP, language does not begin with individual words. It begins with gestalts—whole units of sound and meaning that are emotionally charged, relationally embedded, and contextually rich. These might be lines from a favourite cartoon, a phrase heard during a meaningful moment, or something said by a caregiver during distress. They are not random. They are not meaningless. They are anchors. Over time, if supported, those gestalts are broken down, recombined, and eventually form the foundation of truly self-generated language. This process is not linear, and it cannot be accelerated through fading or reinforcement schedules. It requires attunement, safety, and time. And above all, it requires that the child’s way of processing language be seen, respected, and supported.

The irony is that ABA’s version of “spontaneous” speech bears no resemblance to what spontaneity looks like for us. In the behaviourist model, spontaneous speech means responding without a prompt—using the taught script in a new context, or approximating it closely enough to be scored as “generalised.” But for a GLP, spontaneity doesn’t emerge from the withdrawal of support—it emerges from internalisation, from repetition, from layering emotional meaning onto a phrase until it becomes part of us, and then finding ways to re-use it in new ways when we’re ready. Fading externally authored scripts does not make this process more natural—it interrupts it. It removes the scaffolding before the foundation has been laid. And for many of us, especially in our earliest years, it led not to growth but to shutdown.

This isn’t hypothetical. It is lived experience. I am one of a generation of GLPs who were subjected to well-meaning but deeply harmful interventions. Our scripts were seen as noise, our echolalia as pathology. We were interrupted mid-sentence, redirected, faded, and praised for abandoning the very phrases that made us feel safe. For some of us, this led to the collapse of our expressive language altogether. For others, it triggered years of selective mutism, trauma responses, or a profound distrust of those meant to help us. The harm was not incidental—it was systemic. It came not from individual malice but from a framework that could not recognise our humanity, because it could not recognise our way of speaking.

What script fading misses is not just a different language path—it misses the child entirely. It sees output but not meaning. It sees repetition but not regulation. It sees dependency but not trust. And in doing so, it risks extinguishing not just language, but the very beginnings of relationship. Because for many GLPs, scripting is how we say: I am here. I am trying. I am reaching out in the only way I can. And when those scripts are faded before we are ready—or worse, when they are seen as problems to fix rather than bridges to honour—the message we receive is chillingly clear: your way of being is wrong. Your voice is not welcome here.

The Harm of Suppressing Gestalt Communication

The harm of suppressing gestalt communication is not theoretical—it is emotional, ethical, and, for many of us, lifelong. When scripting is treated as a behaviour to extinguish rather than a language process to honour, what is actually being erased is not the behaviour itself, but the child’s means of regulation, connection, and narrative construction. Able Grounded Phenomenology (AGP) offers a powerful lens through which to understand this: it centres the lived, relational, and embodied experience of autistic individuals, reminding us that what may appear from the outside as “non-functional” is often deeply meaningful from within. AGP urges practitioners and researchers alike to ask: What does this action mean to the person doing it?—not How do we stop it?

Scripting, for a GLP, is rarely random. It is not simply repetition for its own sake. It is often a way to regulate overwhelming emotion, to create a sense of internal order, or to tether oneself to something safe in a world that feels too fast, too loud, or too unknowable. A familiar phrase can serve as an anchor in chaos. A repeated line can be a comfort when language is slipping out of reach. Scripts are not a detour away from meaning—they are the path through which meaning is built. They are how we hold ourselves together in the moments when everything threatens to fall apart.

And they are how we connect. Often, scripting is our first language of relationship. We echo words that were spoken to us in moments of care, or mimic lines from shows that mirror our own feelings because we don’t yet have access to words of our own. This is not “prompt dependency.” This is relational intelligence. This is our way of reaching out—of saying, “I remember this moment,” or “This phrase feels like me.” To remove those scripts before we are ready, or worse, to label them as pathological, is to sever that bridge. It tells us not only that our way of speaking is wrong, but that the connections we were trying to make were never truly seen.

This harm is cumulative. A child taught that their natural communication style is a problem to be fixed does not simply shift to a more “appropriate” one. More often, they retreat. They mask. They silence. They lose faith in their own voice. The trauma of being misunderstood—especially by those charged with supporting us—runs deep. It teaches us not to trust our impulses, not to express freely, not to reach out unless we are absolutely certain we will be received in the “right” way. That is not education. That is erasure.

I have said it before, and I will say it again here: When you fade my script, you erase the thread I’m using to stay tethered. You pull the lifeline from my hands and call it progress. But what you’re really doing is teaching me that safety is conditional, that communication is only valid when it pleases you, and that my voice—my real, emerging, hard-won voice—is less important than your metrics.

The ethical cost of such an approach is profound. And AGP makes that cost visible. It calls us back to the person behind the behaviour, to the meaning behind the repetition, to the inner world behind the surface compliance. It asks: are we supporting language, or are we enforcing silence? Are we building relationship, or are we rewarding performance? Are we listening for connection, or are we measuring for obedience?

Because if we are not listening—truly listening—we will never hear what the script is trying to say.

Toward a GLP-Affirming Practice?

If we are to speak honestly about affirming care for gestalt language processors, then we must begin by saying this clearly: the goal is not to retrofit Applied Behaviour Analysis into something more palatable. The tools of ABA were never made to support communicative emergence; they were made to enforce compliance. To graft GLP principles onto ABA frameworks would be like pouring sacred water into a cracked cistern—it will only drain away. The question is not how to make ABA more affirming. The question is what it would mean for ABA practitioners to fade their own scripts—to examine, deconstruct, and ultimately let go of the practices and assumptions that have caused so much harm to so many of us.

In Natural Language Acquisition and GLP-informed practice, the work is not about replacement but expansion. Scripting is seen not as a limitation but as a foundation. Echolalia is not a deficit; it is a narrative thread—an emotional, sensory, and relational throughline that the person uses to build expressive capacity over time. When respected, these gestalts evolve into flexible, generative language. The stages are observable, supported, and increasingly well-documented by neurodiversity-affirming speech-language pathologists. Practitioners who operate from this paradigm do not seek to overwrite the child’s voice. They seek to listen to it—to hear the meaning behind the repetition and meet it where it is, rather than where the developmental charts say it should be. This is care as accompaniment, not correction.

Moreover, we are seeing encouraging signs of convergence between GLP-aligned SLPs and autistic-led frameworks like AGP. AGP offers a complementary framework—one that prioritises the internal experience of the speaker, respects embodied knowing, and demands that interventions be relational, not coercive. These collaborations are not about softening the master’s tools. They are about replacing them entirely with tools grounded in lived experience, in dignity, in rights-based practice.

And that is what this moment requires. Not better ABA, but something else altogether. If anything, ABA itself needs a script fading procedure. It is long past time for practitioners to step back from the scripts they’ve been taught—the ones that say that scripting is pathological, that behaviour is devoid of meaning, that data sheets are more trustworthy than people. Practitioners must learn to fade their own reliance on control, on reductionism, on the delusion that obedience is evidence of wellbeing. It is time to fade the entire premise that language must conform to a neurotypical mould in order to be recognised as valid.

Across the United States, a growing number of autistic adults—many of us former “subjects” of these programmes—are now organising under the banner of victims of ABA. Their aim is not to reform ABA, but to decouple it from the massive funding structures that keep it alive: public insurance mandates, state contracts, and school-based service billing codes that funnel billions into behaviourist interventions regardless of outcomes or harm. They are asking whether ABA would survive at all without those subsidies—whether, if stripped of its guaranteed funding, it could compete on equal terms with approaches that are rooted in respect and evidence. Because the truth is this: there is no rigorous longitudinal evidence that script fading leads to lasting, self-authored communication. There is no data showing that suppressed scripting blossoms into meaningful dialogue. What there is, however, is a growing mountain of testimony from autistic people who were hurt by these methods—who were silenced, retraumatised, and denied access to communication on their own terms.

This is the real fading that must occur—not of our scripts, but of the system that could not see them as speech. Not of our language, but of the frameworks that insist it is meaningless unless it sounds like theirs. Not of our voices, but of the idea that only some voices matter.

Because once we stop asking how to make their system work for us, and start asking how to build something of our own, only then do we begin to speak with our whole selves.

Final Thoughts …

Script fading does not teach language. It teaches performance. It teaches children to produce speech that pleases adults, even if it comes at the cost of their own. It rewards the appearance of spontaneity while extinguishing the process through which real communication emerges. For GLPs like me, that cost is not metaphorical—it is felt in the marrow. The script is not just a phrase. It is a lifeline, a memory, a bridge, a beginning. And yet in the Strohmeier et al. study—and in hundreds like it—it is treated as a flaw to be corrected. A behaviour to be faded. A problem to be fixed.

In this framing, I hear the haunting echo of my own childhood—an era steeped in the quiet violence of “children should be seen and not heard.” A time when the mere fact of speaking differently marked you out for correction. I did not have words for what I felt back then, but I do now. And I know that the pain of being misunderstood, of being spoken over, of having one’s communication deemed unacceptable—it does not dull with time. In the autistic experience of memory, it is always now. The moment of silencing is not a scene in a distant chapter; it is a place I can still stand in, still smell, still feel. It is what made these two articles necessary. Not just as critique, but as release. As refusal.

And so I say again: scripting is speech. It is ours. It is sacred. To fade it without understanding is to sever the root before the blossom has had a chance to form. To declare it meaningless is to miss the meaning entirely. We do not need interventions that reshape our language to match neurotypical norms. We need systems that can listen differently—deeply, patiently, with humility. We need a paradigm shift that recognises gestalt language processors not as broken analytic learners, but as whole people with a different rhythm, a different logic, and a different beauty to our speech.

Let this be the call: to end the use of interventions that treat our words as mistakes. To honour scripting as the language it is. To confront the silences that have been enforced upon us, not only by individual practitioners but by entire systems built on mis-recognition. And to ask, at last, the only question that really matters: Are you listening?

Because if all you hear is the script, you’ve already missed the message.