ABAC/VB-SIG Exceptional Scholars Series Presents: Dr. Francesca degli Espinosa: Early Social Responding: A Conceptual Analysis and Derived Applications Through Social Behavioural Chains

ABAC is honored to partner with the ABAI VB-SIG to bring you the limited run Exceptional Scholars Series

Dr. Francesca degli Espinosa in August 2022

Friday, August 19, 2022 | 11:00 am- 12:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time |12:30-1:00 pm Bonus Q&A Session!!!

The recording of all ABACLive events are accessible to those that register for the live event for 2-weeks.
Continuing education credit and professional development requirements must be met within that two-week window.         

Recording opens the day after the live event. Recording closes 9/2/22 at 11:59 pm eastern (New York)

Each speaker will present for 1-hour and, following their event, will be interviewed live by a graduate student member of the ABAI VB-SIG

 Dr. Tiffany Kodak - November 4, 2022 | Dr. Martha Hübner - December 9, 2022

Dr. Francesca degli Espinosa: Early Social Responding: A Conceptual Analysis and Derived Applications Through Social Behavioural Chains

ABSTRACT

Language is typically acquired in the context of and maintained by social interaction. Given the limited sensitivity to social stimuli in autism, interventions that aim to address social responding early may result in clinically significant outcomes for this population. Early focus on establishing people as both discriminative and reinforcing stimuli may enable children to acquire verbal behavior under more environmentally valid sources of control. The current presentation will firstly briefly review the sparse literature on naturalistic, behavioural and developmentally based interventions on early social responding; secondly, it will discuss the extent to which, as a scientific community, we can contribute both a behaviour analysis and a technology to establish this crucial repertoire in young children with autism. The presentation will particularly focus on operationally defining and illustrating strategies to establish early social responses (e.g., anticipation, eye-gaze monitoring, joint attention) through social behavioural chains, patterns and routines.

Target Audience: All those directly involved in early intervention with children with intellectual disabilities and/or those with some experience with working with young children and a solid foundation in behavioural principles and procedures We welcome students and others who are also interested in the topic to join us.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the conclusion of this event participants will be able to:

• Identify examples of early social or indicating responses.
• Identify the components of a four-term social contingency
• Identify the components of a social behavioural chain

PRESENTER BIO

Francesca gained her undergraduate degree in Psychology from Goldsmith’s College, University of London and her Ph.D. at the University of Southampton, under Prof. Bob Remington. She was the Lead Clinician for the first UK-based EIBI outcome study (Remington et al., 2007) at the University of Southampton and within that context developed the Early Behavioural Intervention Curriculum (EBIC) an intervention framework derived from functional analyses of language to establish generative multiply controlled verbal behaviour, which subsequently formed the principal focus of her Ph.D. Currently, she runs a small diagnostic and assessment clinic in the UK, teaches advanced behaviour analysis in a number of postgraduate programs in Italy, the UK and the US, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the B.F. Skinner Foundation. Originally schooled in cognitive developmental psychology, Francesca’s academic pursuit is the translation of cognitive and developmental descriptions of key processes in language and childhood development into an analysis of controlling variables, with the aim of deriving a technology to remediate deficits in children with autism. Her clinical and research work focuses on early social responding, generative verbal behaviour and theory of mind.

DISCLOSURE

Dr. degli Espinosa does not have financial or non-financial relationships or interests to disclose.