Language Matters. Moving from Formula to Function: Progressing Applications of Behaviour Analysis with RFT and ACT

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Language Matters. Moving from Formula to Function: Progressing Applications of Behaviour Analysis with RFT and ACT

Presented in English, also available for session attendees (in Buenos Aires) via simultaneous AI (artificial intelligence) translation software in Spanish and Portuguese. More details available here.

Tuesday, 23 July 2024 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Wednesday, 24 July 2024 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
(13 total contact hours)

Workshop Leaders:

Nanni Presti, Ph.D.

Sarah Cassidy, Ph.D.

Workshop Description:

Modern clinicians are often no longer working with patients in short term ways to conduct one straight forward assessment or brief therapeutic work.  Rather, we are working with individuals with various individual differences and those of different neurotypes from early intervention settings all the way through to adulthood.  While clinical presentations and language capabilities can vary a lot, increasingly, most of our patients also experience mental health difficulties, and one thing is certain, a clinician needs a responsive and flexible tool kit to meet increasing demands with compassion and skill. Understanding their language needs and the traps that both the client and the therapist can fall into, can go a long way to enhancing clinical techniques.  As these individuals progress along developmental trajectories, our clinical tools need to grow up too, and quickly.  

Clinicians whom have trained in more traditional behavioural backgrounds may be struggling to find what they need in their VB tool kits and may be looking to ACT and RFT for the answers.  The ACT model aims to enhance psychological flexibility (PI), allowing individuals to adjust to the unpredictable conditions of their environment and live more meaningful lives by engaging with their natural sources of reinforcement. The PI construct is developed through experiential exercises and metaphors, which are most effective when tailored to the individual's unique learning history. In the past, ACT was often used very successfully with adults.  Although there are no inherent obstacles to applying ACT to children and adolescents, it is essential to consider the developmental progression of language-related processes and their impact on a child's emotional well-being as they move throughout their different periods of development. RFT does this very efficiently via the process of Multiple Exemplar Training. Thus, it may be necessary to provide training in basic relational framing skills before training the ACT processes. Furthermore, it is crucial to customize experiential exercises and metaphors to each person's level of experience and circumstances and even to their individual neurotypes, sensory needs and cognitive processing needs. Children exist within complex social environments, including family, school, and other social institutions, and constantly learn to interact at multiple levels (inside of themselves and inside of environments they are moving in). Consequently, a person's ever changing social & cultural repertoire, as well their neurotype and their own individual value system must be considered when designing ACT and RFT interventions.  In addition, behaviour analysts have come under extreme criticism in recent years for not engaging in neuroaffirmative practices from many outside this field.  Whilst some within the field of contextual behavioural sciences may not always agree with these criticisms, there is a wealth of information to be learned from the neurodiversity movement, and some of the key pieces will briefly be outlined as they relate to our interventions. Listening to the lived experiences of the neurodivergent community, and engaging in scientific practice are not dichotomous positions.  These are critical parts of engaging in effective and workable collaborative practices going forward and bringing clients through their trajectories from places of verbal stuckness in language traps through to lives that are more psychologically flexible and in line with values based thriving.  This workshop will bring to life just how truly transdiagnostic and flexible ACT really is.

About the Workshop Leaders: 

Giovambattista (Nanni) Presti was trained as a Medical Doctor and attended a Clinical School in Psychotherapy as a post-doc, and received his Ph.D. in Behavior Analysis. As Associate Professor at Kore University in Enna, he coordinates the undergrad program in Psychology. Nanni has a broad experience of teaching and living outside Italy and helped establish the European Association for Behavior Analysis. Nanni founded and co-managed IESCUM, which has fostered the diffusion of CBS in Italy. He deepened my research interests in BA and ABA focusing on the early equivalence studies and then RFT. Alternating clinical and basic science interests, he encountered ACT at the turning of the millennium, after knowing its first steps. 

Sarah Cassidy, Ph.D., is an Educational, Child and Adolescent Psychologist and a Peer Reviewed ACT Therapy Trainer. She is the Founder and Director of Smithsfield Clinic, a private Community Mental Health Service in Athboy, County Meath, Ireland. She is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the New England Centre for OCD & Anxiety, Ireland Branch. Sarah is also the Co-Founder and Chief Education Officer at RaiseYourIQ.com which is an educational tech company that continues to conduct cutting edge behavioural technological research nationally and internationally to evaluate how children learn and to maximise their learning potentials with Relational Frame Theory interventions. Her SMART training intervention was the first published empirical research to demonstrate that RFT interventions could raise IQ. She is a Chartered Psychologist with the Psychological Society Of Ireland as well as a serving Council Member of the PSI.  She is in the Division of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychologists with the American Psychological Association.  

Sarah is serving on the Foundation Board of Association for Contextual Behavioural Science. She is a former Chairperson of the ACBS Membership Committee, and currently chairs the Fellows’ Sub-committee for ACBS. She is also on the Steering Committee for the newly formed Neurodiversity Research and Practice SIG. She is a Lecturer in Child, Educational and Counselling Psychology as well as a mentor and trainer to professional psychologists, allied therapists and specialist teachers for several universities, organizations and clinics, nationally and internationally. She has designed a neuroaffirming children’s mental health program, MAGPIES to support children in learning how to build emotional regulation skills, to build self and other awareness skills, to increase their self- esteem and learn to cope with their anxiety. She has co-authored Tired of Anxiety; A Kid's Guide to Befriending Scary Thoughts and Living your Life Anyway (with Lisa Coyne) last year and it has been featured on a vast array of popular radio stations and podcasts.  Tired of Teen Anxiety; A young person’s Guide to Discovering Your Best Life (and Becoming Your Best Self) was released in January 2024. She has several other books in progress. She has numerous scientific publications in journals and text books and continues to conduct research in areas of child development, contextual behavioural science, children’s intellectual development, neurodivergence and children’s mental health issues.

After this workshop, participants will be able to:
1. Learners can expect to achieve clear understanding of how incorporating ACT + RFT into traditional behaviour analytic interventions is necessary for the modern behaviour analyst.
2. Learners can expect to gain understanding of how RFT techniques (e.g., Multiple Exemplar Training) aid with designing of more effective and practical flexible interventions for all ages.
3. Learners may expect upskilling in how employing the basics of RFT principles (e.g., Derived Relational Responding) can transform outdated interventions into something shiny and new to maximise the efficiency of clinical interventions. 
4. Learners can expect to learn why/how as our clients progress along their developmental trajectories, clinicians must tailor therapeutic techniques that can ‘age’ with their clients.  
5. Learners can expect to learn practical skills in how clinician’s need to tailor their language flexibly across developmental ages, stages, language repertoires and clinical presentations if they wish to maintain pace with the ever growing mental health crisis in children and adolescents across the globe.
6. Learners will be instructed on how language is both the problem and the solution for mental health interventions across ages, contexts and neurotypes.  
7. Learners can expect healthy discussions on the importance of compassionate and reflective listening for behaviour analysts to the lived experiences of neurodivergent clients and how listening to criticism can only improve our clinical science and practice.
8.  Learners can expect to learn how neuroaffirming practice is essential and how this cannot be merely topographical but rather, collaboration, choice and values guided compassionate respect for all neurotypes is an essential part of ongoing practice.
9. Learners can expect to gain experience with troubleshooting specific exercises for neurodivergent clients based on specific types of needs relate to ND presentations (e.g., autistic or ADHD clients that may have sensory processing differences) or language levels, and how clinicians may tailor interventions accordingly.  Demonstrations will be given from the MAGPIES children’s mental health program.
10. Learners can expect to have practical demonstrations of interventions for specific types of mental health concerns (e.g., anxiety, depression, emotional dysregulation) as their needs require. Learners can expect to gain knowledge on how to build meaningful paths of experience with their clients that bring fulfillment to their daily life, whatever the level of impairment is. 
11. Learners may expect a wide array of opportunities to learn about the transformative power of language in making our interventions more flexible such that they can effectively meet the ever growing complex needs of clients with increasingly higher distress, who need us for much longer periods of time and for a wider array of complex presentations.  
12. Learners can expect to understand the contribution that ACT and RFT perspective offer to the development of skills and repertoire’s that counteract the elevated risk, in autistic individuals, of incurring in psychopathologies, thus strengthening the results of early behavioral interventions beyond the basic curricula usually implemented.

*Please note that if neuroaffirmative practice is new to learners, they will likely wish to do an entire training just on this important area.

Target audience: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

Package Includes: A general certificate of attendance

CEs Available (13 hours): CEs for Psychologists, BCBA CEUs