Nesrhtens…..

In the recent issue of The Behavior Analyst, no 32 – 2009, Stewart and McElwee brings up an interesting and potentially important point in describing and reporting research on relational responding; the use of terminology. As with all behavior analytic, and should be with all other research, the use of standardized terminology is a precondition for replication and for applying the research in practice. So it´s an important issue to address.

Stewart and McElwee reviews two papers, Berens and Hayes (2009) and Fin and Harrington (2007), where both studies has been using a procedures to establish contextual cues for generalizing relational responding. But there is according to Stewart and McElwee an inconsistency in the use of term, as I quite agree on.

And I really find it useful to adapt their conclusion and suggestion to a solution to avoid such inconsistencies in the future:

labeling in studies on relational responding should focus on the functional target of the protocol with respect to the behavior of the experimental subject rather than on some alternative feature of the protocol.

This of course not in conflict with investigating different aspects of teaching protocols, but as a mean to uphold a consistent terminology supporting applying the findings and replication.

In the previous weeks I have been doing a lot of assessments using Dr. Sundbergs VB-MAPP. As I have written previously it´s a great assessment tool to design and monitor ABA programs for early learners with autism (probably others also..). And I´m now using VB-MAPP instead of ABLLS-R. This to get some more experience with VB-MAPP, maybe I will use ABLLS-R for some children in the future. I´m not sure yet.

As it´s a great tool, there are some things I struggle with so far. This may be due to lack of experience with the assessment tool, or is it due to the design of VB-MAPP?

The element of VB-MAPP that I so far experience as a weakness of the tool, it that to many milestones seems to be done by clinical judgement, and is difficult and seems impossible to test objectively in a test-session. This also includes some of the milestones that’s marked with T for Testing. I´m of course going to get more experience, and exchange my experience with others to see if there are smarter and better ways for doing this. And of course I´m really interested in hearing your experience……

Many of the children I see doing “traditional” EIBI with a strong focus on Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) develop good language skills, but several of the children lack the flexibility in use of language and many of these children still struggle to acquire new verbal topographies. This may be due to insufficient transfer and generalization training, but it also may be due to the training-procedure. Specially the use of predefined stimulus materiel and lack of reversal training.

So I have been reading up on intraverbal training and stimulus equivalence, specially the emergence of novel intraverbals. Pérez-Gonzáles and colleagues published an article describing three experiments on emergence of novel intraverbals in The Psychological Record in 2008. The study is done with normally-developed children and show the possibility to rationalize training and get novel intraverbals in relations that “goes with”. Of course these findings need to be replicated, and it somebody should compare this results to how children with ASD will respond.

Petursdottir et al (2008) did a study on teaching categorization skills, also with typically developing children. But as the authors state, it´s needed more research on this. It would make a great impact on EIBI if the field of stimulus equivalence could contribute to design more efficient training procedures to teach categorization.

Much of the research done is concerned with the relation “goes with” or , simarility but research needs to be done on other relations. It´s nice to see that there are published studies on other relations, and with other populations. Pérez-Gonzáles et al, did publish in 2007 a study on antonyms with children with ASD. This study shows some possibilities, but more work has to be done here also, but it´s a great study pointing out many research ideas for other professionals.

Based on this literature it would be great to do some work comparing the responding of children with ASD and normally developed children, and on stimulus relations, or relational frames, like comparison, analogical etc.

I´ve been reading the article “The Role of Verbal Behavior, Stimulus Nameability, And Familiarity on the Equivalences of Autistic and Normally Developing Children” published by Jennifer O´Connor, Aoife Rafferty, Dermot Barnes-Holmes and Yvonne Barnes-Holmes in The Psychological Record, 2009 no 59 with great interest as stimulus equivalence, relational frame theory is one of my primary professional interests, and I specially interested in research in this area involving persons with ASD.

This study has investigated the influence of verbal capabilities of participants on the emergence of equivalence. And this study supports previous results by other researchers, that equivalence performance is related to levels of verbal behavior. Interesting is the classification used in this study. They apply the classification from the CABAS framework. Divided into; Listener/Prespeaker, Speaker/Prereader, Speaker/Reader, and Reader/Writer (Greer and Ross, 2007). I have never seen this classification used in this kind of research, and find it useful that they use an already much used classification based on the analysis of verbal behavior. It would be a great step forward for research in this area if several studies could use the same classification. But I do raise some questions regarding the description of ASD who is divided into Mild and Moderate without further information, but as this is not included in the discussion of results, it probably does not matter.

The study discuss the results in terms of the theory of naming facilitating equivalence and the position of RFT, stating that MTS and exemplar training facilitate the emergence of equivalence. The data gathered in this study can not support one over the other, but as the article states “the findings are consistent with existing empirical evidence that demonstrates the utility of exemplar training int the facilitation or establishment of derived relations as equivalence.”

The data indicate that the familiarity of stimuli correlated with rapid training and test performance, and that children who failed the equivalence test with unfamiliar stimuli passed the test with familiar stimuli. So, this study support the notion that familiar stimuli facilitate the production of equivalence. The data indicate this both with the normally developing children and the children with ASD.

This study included an antecedent, actually “goes with…”. And the data shows that this antecedent influenced the responding. This could as far as I see it, give the study a bias toward also testing the children’s listener-reportoar, and this may influence the data showing trails needed to achieve equivalence. It would be useful if some research could be done to investigate the impact such an antecedent has on performance.

I really appreciate the good and accurate description of the phases in the experiment. It´s really great to se that one describe the procedures in such a manner that one easier can evaluate the results, and doing it possible for others to replicate the experiment!

Happy reading!

To day I received notice that a new number of the journal The Psychological Record has been published. I find this a journal often publish good articles, specially related to stimulus equivalence and derived relational responding, also in this number. And I really looking forward to read these artickles:

• O´Connor et al. The Role of Verbal Behavior, Stimulus Nameability, and Familiarity on the Equivalence Performance of Autistic and Normally-Developing Children
• Myrphy and Barnes-Holmes. Establishing Derived Manding for Specific Amounts with Three Children….
• McVeight and Keenan. Multiple Functions in Equivalence Classes; and
• O´Toole and Barnes-Holmes. Three Chronometric Indices of Relational Responding as Predictors of Performance on a Brief Intelligence Test….

So, as I´m home from work to day, I´ll have some great reading….