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When Practice Informs Research: The Road to Teaching Complex Verbal Discriminations |
| Saturday, January 19, 2019 |
| 9:10 AM–10:00 AM |
| Grand Ballroom A-C |
| Area: AUT; Domain: Applied Research |
| Instruction Level: Intermediate |
| CE Instructor: Nicole Rodriguez, Ph.D. |
| Chair: Christine Milne (Autism Partnership Foundation; Endicott College) |
| NICOLE RODRIGUEZ (University of Nebraska Medical Center's Munroe-Meyer Institute) |
 Dr. Nicole Rodriguez is the Coordinator of the Early Intervention program in the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders at the Munroe-Meyer Institute as well as an Associate Professor in, and Director of, the Ph.D. program in Applied Behavior Analysis at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. She has received training at arguably some of the top institutions in which behavior analysis is taught and applied, including Post-Baccalaureate training in Applied Behavior Analysis at the University of Florida, clinical and research training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Kennedy Krieger Institute, graduate training under the supervision of Dr. Rachel Thompson at the University of Kansas and Western New England University, and post-doctoral training under the mentorship of Dr. Wayne Fisher where she currently resides at the Munroe-Meyer Institute. She has authored several book chapters and published peer-reviewed research studies in top journals in our field, including the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, and The Analysis of Verbal Behavior. She has also served on the editorial board as guest associate editor of JABA and as a co-investigator on an NIH-funded grant.
Dr. Rodriguez’s research interests are largely guided by her clinical work in early intervention and autism spectrum disorders. Much of her research is applied in that it has a direct clinical impact on the children and families who serve as participants. However, she is also interested in translational research that allows for a better understanding of the processes that underlie the efficacy of procedures. Her research interests are versatile. Topics of current research projects include: understanding and treating invariant responding in autism, addressing faulty stimulus control, establishing divergent and convergent control in verbal behavior, and developing a model of cost-effective training for caregivers whose primary language is Spanish. |
| Abstract: To acquire functional language, children with autism need to be able to respond to complex verbal discriminations. However, there is relatively little research to guide the process of teaching such skills. The purpose of this talk is to explore various considerations that should be taken into account when teaching verbal conditional discriminations such as intraverbal tacts and convergent intraverbals. We will do so in the context of a practice-driven research question, challenges that arose when teaching these skills, and the inevitable research questions that followed. |
| Target Audience: Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students. |
| Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the presentation, participants will be able to: (1) describe component skills that may lead to the emergence of intraverbal tacts; (2) understand conditions that may lead to overselectivity; (3) discuss procedures for overcoming overselectivity; (4) recognize the interpretative challenges posed by programming extinction or differential reinforcement when testing for emergence. |
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