6/13-6/14/03
Dr. Pat McGreevy BCBA
Advanced Workshop On Verbal Behavior
Hey all! I was able to go to Dr. Pat McGreevy's presentation last Fri and Sat. and wanted to pass on my notes (and notes from the handout-better since they are more accurate!) for those who couldn't come.
What an informative, personalized, and heart felt two days it was!
As a parent, thank you to the professionals that attended this workshop and take advantage of the rare opportunity (now made available to us on Long Island thank you so much ELIJA) to learn from the most respected, experienced and knowledgeable professionals in the field.
I have to say I personally was once again discouraged, saddened and even embarrassed by the small turn out (about 20, from what I could tell about 7 of us were parents), on the other hand Dr. McGreevy took the opportunity to really individualize this workshop which was quite a challenge being we were a mix of attendees as far our experience and knowledge on the subject.
Dr. Pat talked to us about the Verbal Behavior approach to teaching language to individuals with developmental disabilities (including Autism) based on the works of Jack Michael, Barb Esch, John Eshleman, Doug Greer, A. Charles Catania, John Esch, workshops by his colleague Dr. Carbone but most of all the books and work of Mark Sundberg and James Partington (authors of the ABLLS-an amazing skills assessment so you know what skills to teach- and Teaching Language to Children with Autism or Other Developmental Disabilities)
He went into detail about the functional independent units of language:
~Verbal Operants (Speaker behavior)~
Echoic (vocal imitation),
Motor Imitation,
Mand (request) my notes-the Mand is the first repertoire to build and MOST important, mands can be taught before knowing what the item is. ex. infants mand for items before knowing the language receptively, traditionally way to much focus is put on receptive skills before teaching the child to ask for it-
Tact (label or description),
Intraverbal (fill-in-the-blank answer, response to a statement, answer to a question),
Autoclitic (Talking about what you are saying, syntax),
Textual (reading) and
~~Non-verbal Operants (Listener Behavior)~~
Receptive and RFFC (receptive by function, feature and class, responding to the verbal behavior of others).
After an in depth debate on the advantages of choosing Sign Language for children who are not echoic and have little to no impairment in motor skills (why is it that sign is so rarely considered or not even thought of as an option?), Dr. Pat then talked about "the major, practical advantage of the Verbal Behavior approach- the prompting and prompt-fading transfer (ie., stimulus control transfer) procedures from one category of verbal or non-verbal behavior to another"
a.ECHOIC-to-MAND
b. MOTOR IMITATION-to-MAND
c. MAND-to-TACT
d. TACT-to-INTRAVERBAL
e. "Bridge" from RFFC-to-INTRAVERBAL
f. Other transfer procedures
1. TACT-to-MAND 2. INTRAVERBAL-to-TACT 3.TACT-to-TEXTUAL
Dr. Pat could not emphasize enough the importance of improving and maintaining compliance (along with video examplers).
Starting out-
Find out what the child likes and begin pairing yourself (give freebies to become a conditioned reinforcer) 2. start to teach the mand (minimize response effort, keep motivation high and motivation for escape low) contrive and capture many opportunities each day to mand, utilize errorless teaching 3. start fading in demands, preferred, easy, less effortful tasks, then gradually more difficult, more effortful and less preferred tasks (if the child starts to resist, STAY WITH THEM till IT IS OVER, either prompt the child through the task or wait till they calm down then prompt. When the task is completed it does not yet lead to a mand, but another task. When that task is complete it then leads to a mand "DON'T UNDERESTIMATE COMPLIANCE!" Reinforce for appropriate mands and task completion. Gradually increasing the number of tasks between opportunities to mand increasing the endurance of task completion.
Topic From Handout: "specific procedures to enhance the effectiveness of the Verbal Behavior approach-"
Increasing the rate of acquisition of new skills--providing many direct intensive teaching sessions (discrete trials) and many opportunities in the natural environment to exhibit the same skills (incidental teaching with discrete trials); also, providing a rapid pace of instruction and using ERRORLESS teaching
Increasing the extent of generalization of acquired skills to new situations and similar skills--mixing and varying conditions (stimuli) and prompting variation in responses FROM THE BEGINNING
Decreasing the frequency of inattentive, non-compliant, and other problem behavior-- mixing and varying tasks FROM THE BEGINNING providing a rapid pace of instruction, and using errorless teaching; later, gradually fading in errors, a slower pace of instruction and gaps in the pace of instruction
Improving the maintenance and application (the extent to which component skills improve the rate of acquisition of more complex composite skills) of acquired skills--teaching until specific language skills occur rapidly and without hesitation (fluency)
Improving overall effectiveness of instruction--collecting probe data and making data-based decisions
Dr. Pat talked about having the learners mand with peers for socialization and "Thematic Verbal Behavior Module" (pick a theme that interests your learner ex. "eating cheetos and watching videos" using acquired mand, tact/receptive, RFFC, TFFC, and intraverbal targets) for practicing conversation. He also spoke about joint control procedures for kids having a difficult time with multiple step procedures (echoic and textual jointly controlled-repeat steps verbally or privately as they are completing the task).
From handout: topic "Typical outcomes of the Verbal Behavior approach and the specific procedures described in this workshop"
*learners are more willing to approach the instructional setting
*learners acquire skills more rapidly with less problem behavior
*learners exhibit "spontaneous", expressive language more frequently
*learners initiate interactions with other peers more frequently
*learners retain skills for a longer period of time without practice
*learned skills are functional
*learned skills are exhibited in a variety of situations
*there is considerable variation in learned skills
*language sounds "natural", rather than "scripted"
In closing and most importantly Dr. Pat wanted to remind us all to enjoy our kids and the process of teaching them. Thank you Dr. Pat for coming up from Florida and teaching us about Verbal Behavior and also for sharing your experiences and stories. I really enjoyed your presentation and how sincere, caring and passionate you are about how to teach our kids (and adults) not to mention how personal and intimate you made it for us who attended. You were constantly making sure we all were following you (the slightest facial contortion that had even a hint of confusion prompted immediate attention by him!-then again he is a behavior analyst duh!) and that we all walked away with some knowledge that we didn't have two days prior.
Thank you,
Jennica 6/17/03
Dr. McGreevy's website www.behaviorchange.com he mentioned that in the upcoming months some wonderful
Info and downloads will be available so check back soon!
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