Applying RFT in Early Childhood: Sample Lesson Material
Module 3: Same/Different: An exemplar of curricular sequencing
Lesson 5: Psychological Flexibility in EIBI Programs—Foundations of psychological flexibility
As we saw in the first module with our more technical definition of psychological flexibility (hierarchically framing your own behavior and values in relation to the deictic “I”, deriving rules related to valuing [i.e., motivative augmentals], which transform the function of stimuli in the immediate context, and then persisting or changing your behavior accordingly), psychological flexibility is a highly complex relational framing repertoire. So, let's reel this back to the beginning: what are the earliest component repertoires of psychological flexibility—the foundations—that we can be promoting in early intervention?
We take the perspective that this is a complex languaging repertoire that develops through multiple exemplar training in many component skills, just like any other composite repertoire. The foundation for flexibility in early childhood is established in a number of different ways. To begin with, children are born curious. As Skinner (1948/1962) notes, “No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.” (p. 123) We are essentially born flexible, attending to a wide variety of stimuli, primarily learning by trial and error. Children with autism may have atypical development in these early repertoires though, and we need to pay attention to how to promote flexible responding from the very beginning, not just after problems arise.
In this next video, I'll describe some of the important aspects of psychological flexibility to program for in EIBI, including expanding relational networks, promoting behavioral variability, and increasing flexibility in responding to changes sources of control.
Flexibility is not only about response variability, accurately responding to changing conditional discriminations, or even fluency of deriving new relations, although these are critical component skills. Flexibility ultimately requires engaging in behaviors that potentially contact long-term reinforcement, in the absence of immediate reinforcement as well as in the presence of immediately aversive conditions.
As an example of promoting psychological flexibility in young children, Ruiz and Perete (2015) describe teaching a 5-year-old boy (Samuel) who presented with episodes of problematic behavior ranging from persistent complaints to crying and tantrums, described by both parents and Samuel as related to being “jealous” or “angry”. As part of the treatment program, Samuel was first taught to discriminate and deictically relate a variety of his experiences as being “there” by painting a picture of the experience; experiences consisted of a thought or a sensation, first directly felt sensations such as being required to perform a difficult posture, and then simple sensations he was prompted to remember, such as feeling thirsty, and finally more complex thoughts, such as the feeling you have when you win a race. Then, he was taught to hierarchically relate the experience as being a part of (contained by) himself by answering questions such as “who is having that thought?” “who is painting it?” “who is bigger, the feeling or Samuel?”—that is, he was taught a beginning repertoire of selfing-as-context. Finally, he was taught to relate the experience to rules that specified long term consequences (that is, motivative augmentals), in this case rules about a token economy that included back-up reinforcement for staying calm rather than engaging in problem behavior under circumstances in which he might report feeling angry or jealous. While a 5-year-old such as Samuel could not be expected to relate his behavior to an overarching value as an adult would, even relating his behavior to himself as the observer of his own behavior, and to simple rules about the future, represents a beginning repertoire of psychological flexibility. Very young children can also be taught to vocalize what they are doing, what they are going to do, and be provided with reinforcement for accurately describing and predicting their own behavior (and that of others). Many studies have shown that with practice, we can establish a generalized repertoire of ‘say-do’ correspondence in children (see Bevill-Davis et al., 2004 for a review). Further, literature from within behavior analysis has demonstrated that individuals with autism can be taught to follow novel rules via multiple exemplar training (e.g., Tarbox et al., 2011; Wymer et al., 2016).
From the beginning, adults can help infants and young children broaden their repertoires, even in the presence of aversive contingencies, and can thereby promote early forms of flexibility. However, aversive contingencies for children often present aversive contingencies for their caregivers. So in the context of EIBI, we need to consider psychological flexibility not only in terms of promoting the foundations of flexibility for children, but also promoting caregiver (and therapist!) flexibility.
Take some time to look over the psychological flexibility case conceptualization materials you saw in Module 1's case conceptualization lesson. What stands out to you about this lens as an overarching framework for thinking about the aims of our work in early intervention?