Chapter 14. Autism Enrichment Section: Is It Really Imitation?

1. We’ve said imitation is a crucial skill for kids to learn—a crucial prerequisite to learning most or at least may of the complex skills you and I have learned, everything from tying our shoes to talking, so crucial that almost every autism program starts off teaching imitation.  
   
And here’s the mistake many, if not most, of the autism programs make, including ours until we realized how dumb we were being; unfortunately, it took us many semi-futile years to realize that.
We have a toy truck and we give the kid one. We roll the truck and shape the kid’s rolling the truck.
We have a toy baby doll and we give the kid one. We hug the dolly and shape the kid’s hugging the dolly.
And we think we’re teaching imitation, but most often we’re not. Instead, we’re just teaching truck rollin’ and dolly huggin’. Cute, but not our goal of teaching imitation.
We’ve got the kid huggin’ and rollin’; we give the kid his truck; and before we can grab our truck and start modeling truck rolling, the kid’s already rolling his. Cool? Not really. We’re not really trying to teach truck rolling; we’re trying to teach imitation. Same thing happens with hugging the dolly; he beats us to the hug.

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Online Enrichment Considerations Inspired by Martin Ivancic’s CONSIDERING COVERT FUNCTIONS FOR BEHAVIOR

EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist:  

1. Generativity. I have been concerned about generativity for 50 years, at least. Simple concept formation like Herrnstein and Loveland’s (1964) pigeons pecking at pictures of people. This may even be an example of generativity where the stimulus class of people is hard to understand in terms of simple stimulus generalization. For example, We might get transfer to two pictures of people that are simply line drawings while we were trained only on full-color pictures. I imagine we might be able to train only green pictures of people and yet get transfer to red pictures of people but not a green chair. I am always amazed at the "generativity" of our autistic kids, like maybe transferring as the same concept of picture of mom and real mom and recognizing mama from the back and discriminating between her and another woman from the front. Maybe they have a complex behavioral history with mama outside of the DTT booth that helps with this quick concept formation and transfer to far out examples.

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Denise Ross--Verbal Behavior

1. PhD Columbia University
   
   1. College of Education at DePaul University
   2. Denise is co-author with Doug Greer of Verbal Behavior Analysis: Inducing and Expanding New Verbal Capabilities in Children with Language Delays
2. Listener Skills & Echoics vs. Mand training
   1. DG: First get instructional control.
   2. Difficulty of getting language is because of no listener skills
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Denise Ross: Behavior Analysis in Urban Education

1. Our technology is general across various population.
2. Behavioral Systems are having a national impact.
   1. RTI
   2. PBIS
   3. Direct Instruction
   4. DIBBLES 
3. They started a charter school in Chicago for K through 8.
   1. Teach the foundational skills.
      1. Read, write, math.
      2. Improve fidelity of intervention. 
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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: Susan M. Schneider: Operant Principles Everywhere: Interdisciplinary Behavior Analysis and the Future of Our Field

1. Not comfortable with this, but can’t articulate my concerns.
2. "Nature and nurture works together” is a common theme, these days.
3. Bird songs
   1. The “instinctive” male bird song acts as a reinforcer for the female bird
   2. Differential reinforcement the song can control its pitch.
   3. There are “instinctive” unlearned preferences for imprinting auditory stimuli and also bird songs, but the preferences can be changed as a result of operant conditioning.
4. Rhesus monkeys
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Autism Insurance in Michigan

1. Colleen Allen
   
   1. Speech and language is her specialty.
      1. Few have been trained in this area.
   2. At the moment, the medicaid benefit ages at age six.
   3. Nothing for teens and up.
2. Tom Lucking: Family Experience
   1. Parent and managed care consultant
   2. BCBS system is difficult to access.
   3. Preauthorization is needed but difficult.
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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: Hock & Dreyfus: When You're a Behavior Analyst, You Can Work Anywhere

1. RWM: If you want to have an international impact, you need to hang there for months or a year, not a weekend.
   1. It’s really hard to make an impact.
2. Hock: Or consider the first trip their introduction to you and behavior analysis, as a first step in a long term relationship.
3. Check out Global Autism.
4. Dreyfus
   1. Their matching procedure:
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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: Carl Johnson: White Noise, It's Not Just for a Skinner Box

1. Brackbill used white noise in infant sleep research. Facilitated going to sleep.
2. CJ: Play all night, fairly loudly. After a few days when it’s working, gradually reduce the intensity to zero and all’s cool.
3. DM: Should I use white noise to reduce my early, early, early morning wakening?
4. Isn’t there an app for that? Really.  
5. Even for our autistic kids
   1. Can use for going to sleep earlier (Knight & Johnson, in press).
   2. Probably get a pre-print of their article if you want to use it with your kid, to get the details that might help.

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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: On Autoclitics of Order. Robert Dlouhy (Western Michigan University)

1. Autoclitics are verbal responses that modify the effect on the listener of the primary operants that comprise B.F. Skinner's classification of Verbal Behavior.^[1]
2. Relational autoclitics are different from descriptive autoclitics in that they affect the behavior of the listener. For example, above in "the book is above the shelf" tells the listener where to find the book, thereby altering where the listener looks for the book. Another way to look at relational autoclitics is that they describe the relation between verbal operants, and modify the listener's behavior in that way. For example, in the statement "the book is black" the is tells the listener there is a relation between book and black, is specifies what is black.
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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: Thorndike’s Contributions to Psychology Today: The Obvious and the Not-So-Obvious. Michael Palmer (Central Michigan University)

1. RWM: Should Thorndike rather than Skinner get the credit for discovering or being the first to analyze operant conditioning?
   
   1. Michael: No, because he talks in terms of annoyers and satisfiers.
   2. RWM: I kind of like annoyers and satisfiers! Kind of.
2. One of the first to do research with animals.
3. Argued that thoughts don’t cause behavior.
   1. RWM: As Skinner did later in proposing radical behaviorism.

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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: Symposium: New Developments in Dissemination, Application, and Measurement of Contemporary Behavior Therapies.Chair:Christopher A. Briggs (Western Michigan University)

1. Evaluating a Therapist Training on Values-Based Behavioral Activation for Adolescent Depression. Julissa Duenas & Scott Gaynor (Western Michigan University)
   1. The training was effective.
2. Motivational Interviewing: A One Day Workshop Training Study. Justin A. Moore & Scott Gaynor (Western Michigan University)
   1. I  Objective: Increasing positive statements of the client.
   2.    Increase reported self efficacy.
   3.    Workshop worked. 
3. Motivational Interviewing and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: A Stepped-Care Approach to the Treatment of Adolescent Depression. Rachel Petts, Julissa Duenas, & Scott Gaynor (Western Michigan University)
4. The Predictive Validity of the FIAT-Q. Daniel W. Maitland, Rebecca Rausch, Kellie Reynolds, & Scott Gaynor (Western Michigan University)

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JRC: Staff Patrice Cort

1. JRC founded 1971
2. 243 residents
   1. Majority students are or were extremely aggressive and self-injurious
   2. They come from programs that failed to help them and or made things worse.
   3. Medications
      1. 100% come in with multiple medications that were not sufficient and had negative health effects
      2. Now 80% no longer need medications
      3. Now 20% are on greatly reduced medication
   4. Residential program
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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: ABAI Autism Conference 2014: Phillip Strain. Workshop: The Power of Peers to Influence Young Children's Social Competence

The Power of Peers to Influence Young Children's Social Competence

1. Early childhood peer relations is a strong predictor of many things of importance.
   
   1. The implication is that it’s important for the kids to acquire social skills to facilitate childhood friendships.
   2. It may be that one of the reasons these friendships are so important is because the friendships provide the opportunity for the learning of all sorts of other skills. 
   3. Learning social skills is on an even higher priority than language skills.
   4. RWM: So we’ve got a correlation. 
      1. Now the question is what are the causal sequences? 
      2. If you’re cool in several issues that will help you become socially skilled. 
      3. And if you’re socially skilled you will have the opportunity to learn the language skills.

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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: ABAI Autism Conference 2014: Laura Schriebman: Can't We All Get Along?: Combining Behavioral and Developmental Naturalistic Interventions for Young Children with Autism

Can't We All Get Along?: Combining Behavioral and Developmental Naturalistic Interventions for Young Children with Autism

1. I was 20 min late.
   1. Getting caught up with conference postings on FaceBook from yesterday.
2. With naturalistic approaches:
   1. The child always initiates each teaching episode.
      1. RWM: Need to know more about why.
         1. Is it because that means were dealing with something that’s reinforcing for the kid?
   2. Arrange the environment with tempting reinforcers.
   3. The reinforcers should be natural, not artificial. Don’t give Cheetos for the kid tacting “car”.
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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: ABAI Autism Conference 2014: Christopher McDougle: Practical Psychopharmacology of the Autism Spectrum Disorder

Practical Psychopharmacology of the Autism Spectrum Disorder

1. There are no medications approved for the treatment of the core symptoms of autism.
2. Evaluation
   1. Often important to make sure there are no physical issues.
   2. Genetic testing can be important.
   3. Not usually doing EEG, CAT, or MRI
      1. And even though the EEG may be abnormal, but there is implications as to what to do about it.
3. He seems concerned that they don’t have a sensory integration treatment program in their hospital
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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: ABAI Autism Conference 2014: David Richman: Emergence, Early Intervention, and Prevention of Self-Injury

Emergence, Early Intervention, and Prevention of Self-Injury

1. He tracked the kids, passively recording the evolution from self-stim to self-injury over the months and/or years with no behavioral intervention, in order to scientifically record the evolution of self-injury.
   1. He acknowledges the questionable ethics of this.
   2. Oh Sinclair Lewis and Arrowsmith, wherefore art thou?
2. Ah, but there was an experimental group.
   1. He only kept in his study those whose stimming was not socially maintained.
   2. He kicked out of his study those whose stimming was socially maintained.

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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: ABAI Autism Conference 2014: Pissed Off Autism Mamas (POAMs)

Parent Professional Partnership Special Interest Group of ABAI

1. We need to have a complete track for POAMs for every conference, ABAI, ABAI Autism, ABAI International Conferences, State and Regional conferences.
2. We need to get the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek Autism Society involved with this group too.

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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: ABAI Autism Conference 2014: Wayne Fisher: Elopment

Elopement

1. Problem
   1. Bolting (rapid, goal-directed)
   2. Wandering (no clear destination)
   3. Problem with 80% of the kids.
   4. They did a functional analysis.
      1. A primary bolter was going for attention.
      2. A mixed bolted/wander was going for ?

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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: ABAI Autism Conference 2014: Phillip Strain: LEAP Preschool

LEAP Preschool

1. Sid Bijou: Autism is a social reciprocity issue, nothing more and nothing less.
2. LEAP Classroom
   
   1. 14 typical kids and 4 autistic kids
   2. In public school settings.
      1. Often as a result of POAMs suing them.
   3. Don’t spend a lot of time assessment.
      
      1. More important to get started quickly.
      2. Often use parent suggestions as to where to start.

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EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist: ABAI Autism Conference 2014: Insurance

Insurance

1. Kentucky
   1. We need to get input from the Kentucky guy for insurance in Michigan.
   2. What is the current status of ABAI’s efforts to get CODES for insurance.
   3. Insurance companies
      1. Cool
         1. United Behavioral Health
         2. Cigna
         3. Tricare—way cool
      2. Semi-cool
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