hi my name is Erin Bertoli and I am a
board certified behavior analyst with
Brett DiNovi & associates this video is
a follow-up video to one previously
created on the analysis of private
events and the use of acceptance and
commitment therapy with kids if you
aren't familiar or haven't already
viewed it please check out our channel
for that and other content that has been
created on acceptance and commitment
therapy and my previous discussion of
private events I mentioned to act based
models that have been developed for kids
and young adults the aim curriculum and
the DNA V model this video will review
the aim curriculum this is simply an
overview more information training
opportunities and purchase of the
curriculum can be found at www.acceptidentifymove.com. the aim curriculum
was developed by dr. mark Dixon and dana
paula Lunas and is a combination of
mindfulness act and applied behavior
analysis dr. Dixon knew that act could
and should be used with kids so he
tinkered around with running act
processes on his own kids trying to
figure out ways for them to become more
mindful or to accept when it was time
for bed to step back from worrying and
to do their chores that they could watch
TV later in the day but he explained how
the heavy psychological concepts of act
needed to be stripped down to their
basic elements and articulated in
discrete learning trials and language a
child could understand and what resulted
was 180 days of actual lessons for kids
and a book that framed these lessons and
within the context of autism
intervention aim stands for accept
identify and move together these three
words serve as a philosophy towards
value driven life according to dr. Dixon
if we can accept both the wonderful and
terrible that is the natural course of
everyone's life identify what really
matters to us and what we like want our
life to be about and move towards these
goals and values we might just make it
the goal of aim is better living with
adaptive flexible behavior that leads to
success in various environments
mindfulness and parts of act seek to
increase an individual's awareness of
what is going on in the environment
right here right now rather than being
caught up in a world inside
their mind aba and other parts of act
seek to increase or decrease certain
behaviors making it more likely that he
or she will engage in behaviors that
result in rewarding experiences in that
environment together these three
elements help the individual be an aware
active participant in his or her life
aim can be implemented in homes or
schools either in a one-to-one setting
in small groups classroom wide or even
school-wide but remember this curriculum
utilizes the principles of act which is
rooted in relational frame theory if an
individual cannot make arbitrary or
derived relations and understand and
interpret metaphors and they may not
fully benefit from this curriculum in
other words the individual needs to have
a pretty sophisticated language
repertoire think about kiddos with high
functioning autism or emotional and
behavioral disorders kids with anxiety
or OCD and other mental health disorders
in terms of ages the curriculum is
developed for kids in grades K to 12
although my personal experience has led
me to make some pretty heavy
modifications for those in the younger
and older grades the aim curriculum has
five main components mindfulness
practices daily act lessons the aim
point system function based
reinforcement and ongoing progress
monitoring we'll start with the
mindfulness practices included in the
curriculum are 75 scripted mindful
moments which are one minute mindfulness
exercises that could be done at the
start of the session or lesson morning
meeting or even over the loudspeaker
during morning announcements mindfulness
can be understood as the foundation and
basic precondition for education
children need to learn to stop their
mind wandering and regulate attention
and emotions to deal with feelings of
frustration and to self-motivate
mindfulness practice enhances the very
qualities and goals of Education in the
21st century these qualities include not
only attentional and emotional
self-regulation but also pro-social
dispositions such as empathy and
compassion self representations ethical
sensitivity creativity and
problem-solving skills they enable
children to deal with future challenges
of the rapidly changing world
ideally becoming smart caring and
committed citizens next are the 175 act
lessons broken down into weekly themes
that include things like good versus bad
past and present the give and take
acceptance taking things one at a time
willingness values transformation
flexibility perspective taking quiet and
loneliness setbacks compassion and more
the lessons includes three tiers to
offer options of interventions based on
individual needs and amount of time and
resources available to the instructor
each lesson includes which core process
and the hexa flex the lesson is
addressing present moment awareness
acceptance diffusion values committed
actions and selfish context or flexible
self as I usually say
each lesson also includes a description
of the lesson preparation notes scripts
discussion prompts and experiencial
activities next we'll talk about the
point system and use of function based
reinforcement again one of the three
major components of aim is applied
behavior analysis and what good ABA
intervention doesn't include a good
solid reinforcement system an analysis
of function and a lot of data the
authors have created and shared a ton of
data sheets in the book including a
number of variations of point sheets
referred to aim point calculators a my
act monitor for self management an
example of a good function based
reinforcement menu that includes price
points and cash out opportunities ABC
and act record logs and more when
implementing aim the students have
opportunities to earn as well as lose
points for social and act related
behaviors in a number of different
categories on some of the data sheets
there are spaces to record the behavior
possible function and/or which component
of the hexa flex the behavior is related
to once the point system is chosen a
function based reinforcement menu should
be developed the menu should be broken
down into reinforcement options that
match the four functions of behavior
scape access to tangibles attention and
sensory the menu should also include
options offered at different prices
based on the chosen point system the
students are given set opportunities to
cash in their points to purchase
something from the menu
many behavior analysts out there likely
already utilize function based
reinforcement in their programs but
think about all of the classrooms we
work in that utilize prize boxes
trinkets and toys from oriental trading
are great for kids that are motivated by
access to tangibles but what about kids
that are motivated by escape kids that
are motivated to gain attention from
others engage in a lot of sensory
seeking behaviors it's really important
that we offer reinforcement options that
are functionally equivalent to the
students problem behavior think homework
passes lunch with the principle being
teacher for morning meeting
opportunities to work with a peer making
deliveries to favorite staff members and
so on there are two other components of
aim that I feel are worth pointing out
the first is the use of a response cost
and the second is the concept of delayed
gratification many practitioners don't
agree with a response cost system or the
removal of things that have already been
earned but the author's give an example
in the book about how adults will earn
money for going to work and then get
pulled over get a speeding ticket and
have to pay a fine embedding
contingencies as similar to the natural
environment as possible will increase
the likelihood that the appropriate
behavior will generalize to other
situations a big component of act is
persisting in behaviors or committed
actions even when it's hard in an effort
to access larger longer-term rewards as
opposed to smaller more immediate
rewards for those students who are ready
it's important to tweak the cost of
items and the frequency of cash outs in
order to expose them to this concept of
delayed gratification which is a big
component of the aim curriculum in terms
of data collection and progress
monitoring there are a number of things
that aim offers first there is something
called the child psychological
flexibility questionnaire where the CP
FQ you can use this to assess the
students before starting the program and
then a follow-up
intervention the CPE FQ provides a total
score that indicates psychological
flexibility as well as subscales for
each component of the ACT EXA flex you
can also graph the students total points
earned or the percentage of points
earned over time as mentioned earlier
there is also an ABC record log for
logging incidents of behaviors with a
corresponding act record log there is an
act quantitative analysis scale for the
AQA s which is a rubric that can be used
to rate the student's performance during
the ACT lessons finally there is a
program design checklist and even a
treatment fidelity checklist and act
implement our evaluation sheet this book
literally comes packed full of resources
and as some of our experts in the field
have said this timely and important book
describes the integration of three
effective and well-established
interventions into a coherent and
unified treatment approach with children
who are struggling to adapt and find
meeting in an often chaotic and
challenging world it is a must read for
any behavioral health professional
wanting to make a difference in these
children's lives aim is packed with
creative methods for moving behavior
change processes of known importance
this book gives practitioners the
scientific and practical understanding
needed to apply this modern form of
behavior analysis to children why isn't
easy to use it will make a difference in
your practice simply put this is the
book you've been waiting for there are a
lot of behavior analysts in our field
who believe that act is too mentalistic
too therapeutic or outside of our scope
of practice but as discussed in previous
videos Skinner made this very clear
behavior analysis is supposed to be a
comprehensive science of psychology a
comprehensive science of everything all
organisms do which include private
events thoughts and feelings are in fact
behavior influenced by or a function of
the same kinds of variables as publicly
accessible behavior let's take a look at
the bacb task list look at all of these
areas
and this is just to name a few now of
course as with any newer technology more
data is needed I am happy to share a few
samples of data that I have collected
over the past year or so and very much
look forward to seeing more data and
published studies on this curriculum I
will conclude by sharing some words from
dr. Dixon that had a huge impact on me
in hopes of doing the same for those
that are watching language changes
everything
once we start talking we begin to
interact with a psychological world that
might be removed from the current time
in place everything changes the
phenomena that behavior is under control
of substitute stimulus functions of the
actual stimulus objects is nothing new
within the science of behavior the
problem lies in altering behavior under
the control of such substitution but
this is only a problem for those who
believe that the three term contingency
of antecedent behavior consequence is
sufficient to produce results if anyone
thinks a simple differential
reinforcement system is sufficient to
change the behavior of a verbally
sophisticated human while they are a
damn fool go flip through the pages of
our most sophisticated peer-reviewed
journals if you doubt me
and try to find a robust research
program that manages to alter behavior
of verbally competent children and
meaningful ways using direct acting
contingencies when you can't go and
examine what has been developing over
the past 20 years when the participating
factors of language and cognition are
embedded within a traditional behavioral
approach and when we start teaching
children with interventions that match
their level of complexity and with
interventions that incorporate a
comprehensive contemporary account of
human behavior we will have accomplished
our aim as caregivers this curriculum
along with the DNA V model have taken my
approach with my clients to a whole new
level
there is more to intervention and
promoting behavior change than direct
contingency management we need to
include an analysis of private events
into our approach and act based
interventions like these are
technologies that are available to us
and are within our scope of practice as
behavior analysts if you have not
already done so please click subscribe
and stay tuned for further content being
created on the DNA V model and other
ways in which we can increase
psychological flexibility and our youth
you
