Thanks, I suppose I should have been a little less terse. I suspect the downvoters didn't really get what I was saying. (Or dare I say, their reaction was... pa

Thanks, I suppose I should have been a little less terse. I suspect the downvoters didn't really get what I was saying. (Or dare I say, their reaction was... pavlovian). So yes, the approach described in the article is exactly the approach used when training an animal. And no, that doesn't mean the poor autistic kid isn't a human being... it means the principles of reinforcement learning are universal. Perhaps in this case the approach worked because it was a way to teach the child without the use of language.