Derived Relational Responding Applications for Learners with Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities: A Progressive Guide to Change

Copublished with Context PressDerived Relational Responding offers a series of revolutionary intervention programs for applied work in human language and cognition targeted at students with autism and other developmental disabilities. It presents a program drawn from derived stimulus relations that you can use to help students of all ages acquire foundational and advanced verbal, social, and cognitive skills. The first part of Derived Relational Responding provides step-by-step instructions for helping students learn relationally, acquire rudimentary verbal operants, and develop other basic language skills. In the second section of this book, you'll find ways to enhance students' receptive and expressive repertoires by developing their ability to read, spell, construct sentences, and use grammar. Finally, you'll find out how to teach students to apply the skills they've learned to higher order cognitive and social functions, including perspective-taking, empathy, mathematical reasoning, intelligence, and creativity. This applied behavior analytic training approach will help students make many substantial and lasting gains in language and cognition not possible with traditional interventions.

About the Author

Ruth Anne Rehfeldt, PhD, BCBA, is professor of behavior analysis and therapy at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL. She holds doctoral and master’s degrees in psychology from the University of Nevada, Reno; and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Puget Sound. She is also a board-certified behavior analyst. Ruth Anne is a fellow of the Association for Behavior Analysis International, and previous editor of The Psychological Record. She has published numerous articles in the area of verbal behavior and derived relational responding for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other developmental disabilities. Yvonne Barnes-Holmes, PhD, is lecturer in psychology in the Department of Psychology at the National University of Ireland, in Maynooth, Ireland. Steven C. Hayes, PhD, is Foundation Professor Emeritus at the University of Nevada, Reno; and president of the Institute for Better Health. Author of forty-eight books and more than 700 scientific articles, he has been president of numerous professional organizations and is among the most cited living psychologists. He has shown in his research on relational frame theory (RFT) how and why language and symbolic thought leads both to human achievement and to human suffering, and has guided the extension of RFT to ACT.