Introduction to RFT in EIBI

A practical introduction to RFT for behavior analysts working in early childhood intervention—get started on the basics with Dr. Siri Ming

This short on-demand course offers a clear, accessible foundation in RFT with a focus on early childhood intervention. Through real-world examples and practical tools, you’ll learn how to support the development of generative language by integrating RFT with Skinnerian verbal behavior strategies. Whether you’re brand new to RFT, looking for a quick refresher, or looking for a more practical entry point, this self-paced course will help you apply core concepts with confidence, and includes tools for integrating RFT with verbal behavior programming, real-world case examples, and expert support.

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Meet your instructor

Siri Ming, Ph.D., BCBA (she/her)

Siri is a leader in the field and our resident expert on applying Relational Frame Theory (RFT) to early intervention—and a trusted guide for behavior analysts seeking to bring clarity, purpose, and compassion to their practice. A peer-reviewed ACT trainer, behavior analyst, coach, and educator, Siri grounds her training in over 30 years of experience in the field in roles ranging from direct intervention and family consultation to quality assurance.

She is the co-author of Understanding and Applying RFT and the Using RFT to Promote Generative Language handbook series, as well as numerous peer-reviewed publications on RFT and early language intervention. But more importantly, she’s spent over 15 years doing RFT-based work on the ground—collaborating with caregivers and professional teams to develop assessment and teaching plans, solve problems, and apply principles in real-world early childhood settings.

Known for making complex ideas practical, Siri has been teaching and mentoring behavior analysts around the world throughout her career, emphasizing humility, collaboration, and socially meaningful outcomes. In addition to her courses with Constellations, she co-facilitates our practitioner lab and provides coaching and consultation for professionals and teams working in early language development.

Her work is grounded in values of rigor, generosity, and kindness—and a commitment to supporting professionals who are ready to go deeper in their practice.

Learn more about Siri’s work at www.siriming.com.

About the Course

Relational Frame Theory (RFT) offers a powerful lens for understanding and shaping human language—and nowhere is this more important than in the early years. If you’re a behavior analyst working with young children and you’ve ever found RFT confusing, overly abstract, or hard to connect with your current tools, you’re not alone. This course is for you.

In this foundational training, Dr. Siri Ming guides you through a clear, accessible introduction to RFT, rooted in the practical realities of early intervention. Drawing from her own learning journey and over 15 years of hands-on application, Siri makes the case that relational framing—the ability to respond to relations among stimuli in flexible, generalized ways—is the behavioral heart of generative language.

You’ll explore how RFT and Skinnerian verbal behavior analysis can be integrated in early childhood programs to support flexible, fluent communication and academic readiness. With examples from current research and practical tools from Siri’s own practice, you’ll learn how relational frames develop, why transformation of stimulus function matters, and how to assess and teach these repertoires in developmentally meaningful ways.

What You’ll Get:

  • A user-friendly framework for understanding RFT and its relevance to early language development

  • Step-by-step guidance on integrating RFT with Skinnerian verbal behavior strategies

  • Assessment and teaching tools you can use immediately in your practice

  • Real-world examples from early intervention programs

  • Supportive asynchronous discussions with Siri and other professionals applying RFT

As a course within our Constellations community, the Applying RFT in Early Childhood course has been created to serve three functions, with activities carefully designed for you to:

Learn: In every module, Siri presents educational and informational content to you through a variety of short video presentations and readings to teach you the conceptual core of that week's topic. Extra bonus content in the form of curated articles, podcasts, blogs or videos, gives you the opportunity to take a deeper dive into the technical aspects of each topic as your time and interest dictate.

Apply: Practical and experiential exercises will have you immediately putting the concepts to work for you in your own professional and personal practice. You’ll also get a course handbook to help you with preparing for the course, guiding your experience of it, and integrating what you have learned into your practice.

Connect: The course is designed to create community, and to foster connections that spark new ideas and forge new relationships. An asynchronous discussion board and threaded lesson discussions are available to you for getting your questions answered or simply posting your thoughts for discussion. You will also have access to a trial membership in our community of practice and practitioner lab, where you can carry the momentum from the course forward, both asynchronously and by joining our live meetings to discuss all things RFT, ACT, and ABA.

What participants say…

  • Dr. Ming was a pleasure to learn from, her personable style made the class fun, exciting, and relevant. She has a great knack for making potentially complex theory simplified in easy to understand terms for direct application in the field.

  • Think of this course as a pool of resources that you can come back to when you run into a problem in applying RFT in EIBI! I truly appreciate Dr. Ming’s guidance from the theoretical underpinnings of relational training, i.e., RFT & VB, to the practical aspects of assessing and training relational framing respertoires. It was eye opening to learn that RFT and VB could be synthesized and combined into one! I truly appreciate that it included a suggested teaching sequence based upon typical development of relational framing too. I have also begun to apply the method I learned in the course to move my learners from NARR to AARR by using familiar context and novel relations. It has been such an amazing learning experience! Thank you!

What to expect

Whether you’re brand new to RFT or looking for a clearer path to integrating it into your early intervention work, this course offers a supportive, step-by-step foundation for bringing RFT to life in your practice. The course is divided into three modules, each of which contains three-four sequential lessons to complete that consist of short videos, readings, and asynchronous discussion activities; you should anticipate spending about 15-20 minutes per lesson on these instructional activities (i.e., about an hour to an hour and a half per module). You'll see in the overview for each module what to expect in terms of lesson timing and commitments needed. Each module also has a variety of application activities that you should expect to spend more time on, with your clients or in your organization, such as developing your case review process, assessing clients, trying out teaching protocols, and so on. You will always be able to come back to these materials, so you can feel free to try things out as you go along, and then come back again to deepen your understanding later. Nonetheless, we do strongly recommend taking some time between lessons and modules to try out the activities, rather than going through the whole course at once. A pace of a module every week or two weeks is generally best.

Here is an outline of the course material:

Module One—RFT, VB, and EIBI, Oh My!

  • Relational frames as the building blocks of generative language

  • RFT distilled: Relational framing as operant behavior

  • Integrating RFT and Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior

  • Case conceptualization tools

Module Two—Getting technical: Defining properties of relational framing repertoires

  • Non-arbitrary vs arbitrary relational responding

  • Deriving relations: Mutual and combinatorial entailment

  • Transformation of function

  • Contextual control

Module Three—Getting practical: Assessing and teaching early relational framing repertoires

  • Understanding early learner skills as foundations of DRR

  • Assessing, teaching, and capitalizing on coordination/equivalence

  • Assessing and teaching non-sameness relations

  • Typical development and relational framing repertoires

Learning Objectives

Experiential Objectives

  1. For learners you work with, identify what repertoires of relational responding or foundations for relational responding are important to assess.  

  2. Practice implementing a protocol for assessing early derived relational responding repertoires with respect to frames of coordination (sameness/equivalence).

  3. Practice implementing a protocol for assessing or teaching early derived relational responding repertoires with respect to a non-equivalence relation. 

    Technical/Educational Objectives

  1. Describe how Skinnerian verbal operants can be considered within relational frames.

  2. Describe the importance of establishing a foundation of contextually-controlled non-arbitrary relational responding as well as early relational framing repertoires in early intervention

  3. Define and give examples of the properties of relational framing with respect to both sameness (equivalence) and a variety of other (non-equivalence) relations.

  4. Define and give examples of non-arbitrary and arbitrary stimulus relations with respect to a variety of relational patterns.