Association for Behavior Analysis International

The present symposium serves as investigation to the various ways in which the technology of Derived Relational Responding (DRR) and the PEAK Relational Assessment System may extend beyond the typical contexts in which it is applied and the implications for the science of behavior analysis and beyond. We will provide promising evidence supporting PEAK's use within behavior analysis and the potentially massive impacts these endeavors could have when communicating with or about other psychologies, diagnoses, and ethnicities.

beginner-intermediate behavior analysts

Applied Behavior Analytic (ABA) therapy has one of the largest bodies of literature on effective treatment interventions for children with autism. Parents, providers, teachers, and insurance companies always have to worry about how much intervention is best, and at what cost is enough. There is limited research on the effects of ABA at various hour doses per week, although most providers will always advocate for “more is better.” The current study sought to investigate the impact of a low dose of ABA at 4 hours per week compared to a larger dose of ABA at 10 hours per week, over an 8-week period. In addition to traditional discrete trial intervention, all participants received. Children’s intelligence quotients were measured before and after intervention. Preliminary results suggest that children who received the larger dose had greater gains in intelligence, but some children who received the lower dose also made positive gains. These preliminary results suggest that ABA with relational training at a low dose may still be an effective treatment option for some children if a larger dose is not available. In addition, improvements on derived relational responding skills will also be assessed and discussed.

Over the past several decades, the number of individuals that receive an education from the public-school system has increased significantly, along with an increase in equal access regardless of disability or socioeconomic status. Despite the increased access and amount of resources afforded to the educational system, a corresponding increase in academic performance and intellectual ability has not been observed. Therefore, an empirically validated method for increasing these behaviors is necessary. The current study aimed to evaluate the effect of a set of procedures based on Relational Frame Theory on academic performance and intelligence. Experimenters obtained pre-training and post-training performances by administering Curriculum-Based Measures and WISC-V IQ tests to a control group and an intervention group. Following pre-training assessment, the intervention group was exposed to a series of relational training phases, in which the participants were required to respond in accordance with arbitrarily applicable relational responding across a series of relational tasks. Following training the participants in the intervention group showed improvement in academic performance and an increase in IQ, whereas those in the control group did not. Taken together, the results add to a growing body of literature that support the use of RFT-based interventions to promote complex behaviors.