Eric V. Larsson, Ph.D., L.P., BCBA
Presentation Title: “Current Innovations in Early Intervention: Social and Language Programming”

Abstract & Objectives:
This workshop will focus on key interventions which have clearly played a significant role in producing recovery in our clinical practice.

Children with autism can recover from their symptoms, when the family is able to access intensive services which address the child's clinical needs on a 24-7 basis. These clinical interventions should be flexible, dynamic, and accountable. The best outcomes are obtained if the focus of therapy is to develop spontaneity, creativity, and responsiveness; all of which occurs independently of the need for specialized treatment. The typical best outcomes will comprise age-appropriate empathy, observational learning, creative language, and mutual friendships.

In intensive early intervention with young children with autism, a great number of social and language skills are developed. This workshop will outline how to develop the skills within a coherent conceptual framework, enabling productive treatment planning and program evaluation. The framework will be a matrix of social language skills that follows a sequence of generative language development. After basic receptive and expressive skills are developed, the matrix naturally flows into auditory comprehension and production skills. Most importantly, not only is the matrix of skills organized across generalization modalities, syntax forms, and conditional discriminations, but it is also clinically focused on the functional social relationships which interfere with natural development. The organization of the language curriculum is used to control the pace of development related social skills in a systematic manner.

Due to the functional social impairments often displayed by children with autism, cooperative play skills, and therefore mutual friendships, are not developed without specialized intervention. Therefore the workshop will also focus on the developmental progression of play, effective behavioral techniques and procedures to develop creative and spontaneous play skills, problem-solving strategies to enhance the acquisition of play skills, and generalization of play skills from highly structured environments to naturalized environments. Complex social contingencies will be addressed to ensure that the child is not only acquiring social skills, but is using those skills functionally throughout the child's 24-hour and 7-day life.

Objectives: Participants will learn to:

1. Plan a child's language curriculum as part of a coherent system for achieving recovery from autism.
2. Implement programs that promote creative language production and auditory comprehension through generative language learning.
3. Program genuinely functional social language skills.
4. Program the development of play skills that include: independent play, parallel play, associative play, cooperative play, imaginative play, social congruent play, and social language.
5. Incorporate generalization procedures to promote natural play skills.
6. Incorporate clinical interventions which are likely to result in spontaneity, creativity, and responsiveness.
   
   

James Mulick, Ph.D.
Presentation Title: "The Physiological Basis for Early Intensive Behavior Treatment of Autism"

Abstract & Objectives:
General behavior theory has been an effective background source for the formulation of intervention strategies that can accelerate learning in early childhood among children with autism related disorders, children who otherwise risk substantial developmental retardation. Careful examination of the interventions used toward this end is consistent with naturalistic observations of the emergence of words in typical children who learn to talk naturally. Neuroscience has revealed many of the differences between the growth and development of children with autism and related disorders and that of typical children. These findings suggest that early intervention can canalize the environmentally expectant neurodevelopmental processes that are active in young children, both autistic and typical, to the extent that the behavior of autistic children can be normalized to an impressive degree. The use of selective exposure, planned and carefully managed learning environments, direct instruction, and reinforced practice turn out to be completely consistent with the emerging knowledge of how experience shapes and facilitates the structure and function of nervous system architecture during human development.

Objectives: Participants will learn to:

1. Recognize the neurological changes at the cellular level that result from learning .
2. Understand the implications for treatment of the research support for a sensitive period for first language learning in humans.
3. Recognize the role of imitation and practice in first language learning.
4. Recognize the fundamental similarity of Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI) treatment sequences to the typical learning sequence in children who learn to talk naturally.
   
   

Florence D. DiGennaro Reed, Ph.D., BCBA
Brian Liu-Constant, M.S.Ed., Ed.S., BCBA
Lisa A. Studer, MS, BCBA
Presentation Title: "Innovative Approaches to Addressing Problem Behavior in Children with Disabilities: Application of Behavioral Relaxation Techniques"

Abstract & Objectives:
Behavioral relaxation training has been shown to be an effective technique to reduce severe, challenging behaviors and teach appropriate alternative behaviors. This technique, used in combination with modeling, feedback, and reinforcement, is a powerful behavior change procedure. The purpose of this presentation is to educate attendees on the components of behavioral relaxation training and its use for individuals with disabilities, and to share findings from a number of case studies in which behavioral relaxation was included as part of a multi-component intervention package. Positive findings resulted in each example suggesting that individuals with autism may be taught to use behavior relaxation techniques as an antecedent management strategy.

Objectives: Participants will learn to:

1. Identify the components of behavioral relaxation training and how it has been used to reduce challenging or undesirable behaviors.
2. The participant will be able to identify modifications that have been shown to aid individuals with autism in using behavioral relaxation with success.
3. The participant will learn about various treatment packages that include behavioral relaxation and the subsequent data to demonstrate effectiveness of this approach by examining outcomes of individual cases.
   

Continuing Education Credits:
CEUs Approved: IACET (Speech & PDPs) / APA / BCBA
CEUs Applied for: NASW / EI

Contact Info:
Professional Education Resources and Conference Services
321 Fortune Boulevard
Milford, MA 01757
Tel.: 508-473-3882 x117
Fax: 508-478-0615

services@percs.info