ACT in Behavior Analysis: 9-week Consultation Course (June 2023)

ACT in Behavior Analysis: 9-week Consultation Course (June 2023)

Hands-On Guidance in Developing Your ACT Skills

18
CE Hours available

Please note: space in these consultation courses is limited! If the training is full, feel free to inquire about our waitlist.

You’re a BCBA and you’re interested in adding acceptance and commitment training (ACT) to your repertoire. However, you’re seeking someone with experience to demonstrate and mentor you on how ACT can be effectively integrated with the clients, situations, and environments you work in. This consultation course addresses how to do just that: introduce ACT into your practice effectively and appropriately within your scope of practice, and adapting ACT practices to fit your work.

Tom Szabo is a BCBA on the cutting edge of ACT who is renowned for his engaging presentation style and innovations in behavior analysis. In this consultation series, you will:

  • Engage in fluency drills to hone your skills at identifying the six core ACT repertoire deficits from small bits of dialogue.
  • Identify competing contingencies of reinforcement, verbal delay discounting, verbally mediated under and over-matching, behavioral inertia, and other means by which client verbal behavior derails your efforts to bring behavior under relevant stimulus control.
  • Craft intervention targets to bring client behavior under the control of appropriate contingencies of reinforcement.
  • Practice in-the-moment creation of unique, client-specific exercises.
  • Harness the metaphors your clients use to expand flexible relational networks and undermine thorny verbal rules.

In this intimate consultation course, Dr. Szabo will model ACT skills with clients like yours, engage you in case-specific role-plays, give feedback about your integration of ACT, assist you in setting supportive goals, and assist you in evaluating your progress. Attendees should expect an average of 1.5 hours worth of homework between sessions—this may involve reading or video assignments as well as communicating with other members of the course for the purposes of further skills training work. If you’re attracted to ACT and want intensive practice in a workshop setting before trying to use the model in your ABA practice, this consultation is right for you.

During ACT in Behavior Analysis 9-Week Online Consultation, Tom guides you in the development of your own ACT exercises and metaphors. The aim is that upon completion, you will not need to rely upon books, tapes, or other supplemental prompts to find ACT interventions. You will learn to create your own function-based behavior analytic strategies to meet the needs of individuals with whom you work and to do so on the fly, in the moment.

This training is worth 18 CE credit hours if attended live. While we can only provide CE to those who are present – i.e. logged in – for all live sessions, Praxis webinars are recorded for later viewing. Registrants may access these recordings at any time for up to nine months from the conclusion of the training to which they pertain.

Prior to registering, please click here to review speaker-planner conflict of interest disclosures and complete CE information.

Session 1: June 2, 2023, 1 PM—3 PM EDT

Introductions and Intro to ACT terms

Session 2: June 9, 2023, 1 PM—3 PM EDT

Scope of Practice and the ACT Functional Assessment

Session 3: June 16, 2023, 1 PM—3 PM EDT

ACT Functional Assessment Continued

Session 4: June 23, 2023, 1 PM—3 PM EDT

The ACT Matrix

Session 5: June 30, 2023, 1 PM—3 PM EDT

The ACT Matrix Continued

Session 6: July 7, 2023, 1 PM—3 PM EDT

Catching Metaphors in Flight

Session 7: July 14, 2023, 1 PM—3 PM EDT

Physicalizing Metaphors

Session 8: July 21, 2023, 1 PM—3 PM EDT

Putting It All Together

Session 9: July 28, 2022, 1 PM—3 PM EDT

Putting It All Together Continued

At the conclusion of this workshop, participants will be able to:

  1. Set goals, identify barriers, review expectations, establish measurement and consultation program-evaluation strategy.
  2. Identify the six repertoires involved in behavioral flexibility and inflexibility.
  3. Evaluate speech for competing contingencies, delay discounting, inertia, matching, and defective stimulus control.
  4. Analyze the same speech for experiential avoidance, fusion, over-focus on past or future events, rigid perspective-taking, unclear priorities, and behavioral alignment with values.
  5. Describe recent applied literature on establishing a variety of relational frames.
  6. Apply interventions to behavior with different functions.
  7. Discuss how to help clients set goals, identify potential barriers and interventions, and monitor progress.
  8. Identify and analyze metaphors in client speech and use them to transform stimulus functions.
  9. Use physical movement to address deficits and excesses in core ACT repertoires.
  10. Use physical movement plus items found in your clinic- or home-based service environments to address deficits and excesses in core ACT repertoires.
  11. Develop games, initiatives, and writing and reading activities to promote ACT repertoires.
  12. Set personal goals for using ACT training in your practice and identify ways of implementation.
  13. Identify barriers and interventions, design measurement and intervention evaluation strategy with clients.

Please review complete CE and conflict-of-interest disclosure information prior to registering. This live online course is sponsored by Praxis Continuing Education and Training and is approved for 18 CE Hours by the following listed below. There was no commercial support for this activity. None of the planners or presenters for this educational activity have relevant financial relationship(s) to disclose with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.

Praxis CET maintains responsibility for the program with the CE approvals outlined below:

Behavior Analysts: Praxis CET is an approved BACB ACE Provider # OP-17-2718.

This is an online learning event. Access to a computer and high-speed internet is required. Refer to our FAQ page for further information on technical requirements for this training.
Behavior analysts, BCBAs, BCaBAs, RBTs beginner-intermediate level.

Brazeau, K., Rehfeldt, R. A., Mazo, A., Smalley, S., Krus, S., & Henson, L. (2017). On the efficacy of mindfulness, defusion, and behavioral skills training on job interviewing skills in dually-diagnosed adults with developmental disorders. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 6(2), 145-151. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2017.04.002

Castro, M., Rehfeldt, R. A., & Root, W. B. (2016). On the role of values clarification and committed actions in enhancing the engagement of direct care workers with clients with severe developmental disorders. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 5(4), 201-207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2016.09.003

Chancey, C., Weihl, C., Root, W. B., Rehfeldt, R. A., McCauley, D., Takeguchi, K., & Pritchard, J. (2019). The impact of mindfulness skills on interactions between direct care staff and adults with developmental disabilities. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 12,160-169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2018.07.004

Gould, E. R., Tarbox, J., & Coyne, L. (2018). Evaluating the effects of Acceptance and Commitment Training on the overt behavior of parents of children with autism. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 7, 81-88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2017.06.003

Pingo, J. C., Dixon, M. R., & Paliliunas, D. (2019). Intervention enhancing effects of acceptance and commitment training on performance feedback for direct support professional work performance, and job satisfaction. Behavior Analysis in Practice. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-019-00333-w

Szabo, T. G. (2019). Acceptance and Commitment Training for reducing inflexible behaviors in children with autism. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 12, 178-188. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2019.03.001

Szabo, T. G., Willis, P. G., & Palinski, C. J. (2019). Watch me try: Improving athletic performance of young adults with ASD. Advances in Neurodevelopmental Disorders, 129 (in press). https://doi.org/10.1007/s1252-019-00129-7

We understand, sometimes things come up!

Praxis will offer a full refund to registrants of both live and live-online trainings who cancel their registration up to 14 days before the course or workshop start date, minus an administrative processing fee of $30 for a 2-day workshop or online course, and a $50 fee for a 4-day workshop. If cancelled within 14 days, no refund will be issued, however, a credit for the same amount will be applied toward another learning product, which expires within 1 year. Please email us at events@praxiscet.com to cancel a registration.