Is there any information about RFT as it applies to an ABA Lovaas treatment program for autism?
May 19, 2006 - 1:56pm — Eric Lund
I supervise the Wisconsin Early Autism Projects Green Bay, WI clinic. I have been looking for a theory that would help me to organize the programs taught to autistic children. RFT seems to be a good possibility. Does anyone know if anyone has done any work using RFT with Autistic children?
Eric
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updates?
Hi, just finding this thread, does anyone have any updates on published protocols, agencies doing applied work in this area, etc.? Like Tony, I am very interested in applying RFT to VB-based EIBI programs. (As well as ACT work with families of kids with autism.)
applied rft
we have been applying rft methodology in an applied setting for awhile. we run an in home eibi program with 40 children ranging in age from 2.5-18 yrs of age, with multiple diagnosis. we have set up "rft" assessment and intervention protocols for our line staff. as well we have implemented a high mastery criterion (first 2 correct and 90% accuracy for derived relations). we have begun to adapt the ablls curriculum to reflect an rft perspective. what I have found is that the up front work of organizing an conceptualizing how to implement rft into meat and poatatoes therapy is very labor intensive. However the results we are attaining are simple amazing! We have found the initial program for a child to learn dreived relational responding is very time intensive, however subsequent interventions requiring derived realational responding more than make up in the time invested in the initial training. We track the days to mastery for all programs that we run and our initial data suggest that by teaching derived relational responding we make siginificant improvements in our time to mastery. I.E. in our old format of teaching tasks sequentially B1 then B2 etc.. our time to mastery for tasks could be 200 days, however when we started to implement an rft perspective to teaching these tasks in a relational frame we found a significant improvement in time to mastery 90 days. The underlying challenges of implementing this approach has been the training of line staff to 1 understand the process, and 2 to use this understanding to design and implement interventions. I can tell you it is near impossible or well out of my reach. To overcome this limitation I have designed a training manual of sorts. It is designed as a step by step manual that a staff member can use with little understanding of the underlying prinples of rft. I.E fill in page 1 and run it then go to page to if page 1 has met criteria etc.. It continues to be a work in progress and i am hoping to present it at the aba confrence in san diego. well hope this helps a little if you have specific questions fell free to e-mail me or respond here if you think it would be useful to other forum members
Gary Unser
Applying RFT
Excellent stuff!!! When you say,"learn derived relational responding" is this with non-arbitrary or arbitrary stimulus relations? What kind of pre-requisites are you requiring before implementing RFT protocols? Gary I have to applaud you for diving in on this with your clinical work. That first step can be a huge leap of faith. Not so much in whether or not RFT interventions will produce important changes, but, when you are one of the first and there are few other people out there doing what you are trying to do it is a step into a dark room. Way to go!!!
What you report about the difficulty in initial acquisition is not surprising. I am also not surprised that each subsequent step is quicker to master. You may even be able to speed up the acquisition of these sebsequent steps by requiring an even more stringent mastery criterion on the intial phases of training (of course that means more time in the initial phases and requires another leap of faith). Great work! Keep us posted.
Nick Berens
applied rft
when you ask about non arbitary or abritary, i have to get into the assessment and intervention protocols we have established. we start an assesment of a relation with all arbitary items if the child fails arb>arb>arb the next level of assessment would be arb>arb>na and so on arb>na>na, na>na>na. We start our intervention at the level above where the child was succesful.
i.e. child A asessment
1. arb>arb>arb fail
2. arb>arb>na fail
3. arb>na>na, pass
4. na>na>na pass
intervention for relation would start at level 2. the completion of intervention is when the child has passed level 1 with novel sets. our criterion for beginning the perocess is that you have entered our program. all children start this protocol as soon as we see them. as you can see we have tried to accomadate different levels of competency some early learners start with all na relational training and as they become more competent they graduate to higher levels of complexity.
Thank you for your kind comments it is a challenge but the results are worth it
RFT/autism
I am very interested in this topic - more in terms of how RFT can inform Verbal Behavior programs rather than traditional Lovaas, which I am hoping is on the way out! VB uses Skinner's analysis to inform autism teaching programs but in my experience runs out of steam as one moves into more conplex language areas, especially deriving relations, arbitrarily applicable relations, and the higher-order frames. Tony.
I'm glad to here others are relating RFT to autism.
What I am trying to do is integrate RFT with the object relations developmental approach of Greenspan, the principles of verbal behavior and Lovaas. The Lovaas programs seem to fit fairly well into a relational frame and object relations perspective.
For example, you begin by recognizing frames of coordination and distinction. The child is taught things are the same or different through matching and other programs. From there the child is taught to have behavioral responses to the same and different stimuli (receptive labels) and then eventually to label the same and different stimuli (expressive labels).
In essence, I see Lovaas programs moving up from making relational responses between objects, to objects as they relate to behaviors and then objects as they relate to verbal behavior.
I think Lovaas brakes down when programs move to higher relational frames into sentences and concepts that are more abstract. However, RFT seems to provide a theoretical plan for expanding language beyond expressive labels (tact) and manding.
Targeting three lines seems most relevant.
Auditory/verbal discrimination leading to,
Responding to verbal or auditory stimuli leading to,
Expression of a mand.
Echoic behavior leading to,
Non-verbal Imitation which leads to
Verbal imitation.
Visual/Spatial discrimination leading to,
Receptive labels, which leads to,
Expressive labels or Tact’s.
The ability to mand and tact along with the ability to
Imitate leads to the higher-level relational frames.
Greenspan’s concepts of representational elaboration and
Differentiation at this stage could be seen as developing
higher order relational frames.
In organizing Lovaas in this way, the programs have a
rational connection and flow between them.
There is
There is, but little yet published.
The applied work so far has been centered in Ireland, some in Australia, a bit in the US.
Context Press (with New Harbinger) is doing a book on these protocols edited by Ruth Anne Rehfeldt and Yvonne Barnes-Holmes
I think a post to the RFT list serve might be useful but also touch bases with Ruth Anne and Yvonne
- S
Steven C. Hayes, University of Nevada
a bit in Japan
I have a preliminary experiment.
This abstract is follows.
In this abstract, 'Expanding the Stimulus Equivalence paradigm' means RFT.
Takashi Muto,Ph.D.
Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, JAPAN
--------------------------------------
AN: 2001-18708-001
TI: Assessment and establishment of same/different judgments in individuals with autistic disorder: Toward a paradigm for analyzing and assisting relational concepts.
AU: Muto,-Takashi
SO: Japanese-Journal-of-Special-Education. Vol 39(1) Jun 2001, 1-15..
IS: 0387-3374
PT: Journal; Peer-Reviewed-Journal
AB: Examined the establishment of same/different judgments, considered to be the first step in relational concepts, in 2 boys with autistic disorder. Ss were 2 male children (12.5 and 7.6 yrs; mental age 6.5 and 3.4 yrs) with autistic disorder in Japan. Component analyses of same/different judgments were carried out by expansion of the Stimulus Equivalence paradigm. Through these analyses, 4 tasks requiring same/different judgments were identified. Ss were trained in 1 of 4 tasks. In the training, Ss were instructed to match the printed words "same " or "different" to 2 pictures that they had constructed. The results show: (1) that the target response in "same" trials was maintained by positive reinforcement, whereas the target response in "different" trials was maintained by negative reinforcement; (2) that after training with 1 stimulus set, 1 S could generalize the same/different judgments across 5 other stimulus sets and 3 other tasks; and (3) that the other S could generalize the judgments across 3 other stimulus sets and 3 other tasks after training with 3 stimulus sets. Expanding the Stimulus Equivalence paradigm for analyzing and assisting relational concepts is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved)
This is a good example of how RFT can help organize autism treat
When training animals to perform certain behaviors it is much easier if the animal already has the behavior hard wired into its behavioral repertoire. Like a dogs prey drive leading to being taught to fetch.
If it is true that humans are hardwired for mutually entailment and combinatorial mutual entailment would it be helpful to focus on teaching mutual entailment. If the child can be taught to flexibly mutually, entail what they learn, generalization may go a lot faster.
Thanks I cotacted Ruth Anne.
Thanks I cotacted Ruth.