ACT in Behavior Analysis: 9-week Consultation Course (May 2024)

ACT in Behavior Analysis: 9-week Consultation Course (May 2024)

18
CE Hours available
How do I get my CE?
Thomas Szabo, PhD, BCBA-D
Behavior analyst, trainer, and author

Space in this course is limited! If it is full, please inquire about our waitlist.

You’re a behavior analyst working to add acceptance and commitment training (ACT) to your repertoire. You’re seeking someone with experience to demonstrate and mentor you in how to integrate the model with your specific clients and the situations and environments you work in. What’s more, you want a collaborative, workshop-style setting where you can do some hands-on practice.

This consultation course offers just that.

Tom Szabo is a BCBA on the cutting edge of ACT who is renowned for his engaging presentation style and innovations in behavior analysis. 

Over the course of 9 weeks, Dr. Szabo will model how to use ACT skills with clients like yours, engage you in role plays, give feedback on your integration of ACT, help you set supportive goals, and assist you in evaluating your progress. 

In this intimate consultation series, you’ll have the opportunity to:

  • 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.

Dr. Szabo will guide you in using the ACT matrix in your work and in developing your own exercises and metaphors. The aim is that, upon completion of the course, 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 you work with and do so on the fly, in the moment.

This course is ideal for practitioners who want to focus the majority of their training on practice in a collaborative setting.

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 want intensive practice in a workshop setting so you can fully bring the ACT model into your ABA practice, this consultation course is right for you.

This training offers 18 CE hours if attended live. We can only provide CE to those who are present via Zoom for the live sessions. However, the sessions will be recorded and available to watch later. Registrants may access these recordings at any time for up to nine months after the live training ends.

Before registering, please review conflict of interest disclosures and complete CE information here.

Session 1 | May 10, 2024, 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. EDT

  • Introductions and Intro to ACT terms

Session 2 | May 17, 2024, 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. EDT

  • Scope of Practice and the ACT Functional Assessment

Session 3 | May 31, 2024, 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. EDT

  • ACT Functional Assessment Continued

Session 4 | June 7, 2024, 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. EDT

  • The ACT Matrix

Session 5 | June 14, 2024, 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. EDT

  • The ACT Matrix Continued

Session 6 | June 21, 2024, 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. EDT

  • Catching Metaphors in Flight

Session 7 | June 28, 2024, 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. EDT

  • Physicalizing Metaphors

Session 8 | July 12, 2024, 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. EDT

  • Putting It All Together

Session 9 | July 19, 2024, 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. EDT

  • Putting It All Together Continued

Participants will be able to:

  1. Relate ACT to its foundational underpinnings of Functional Contextualism, Relational Frame Theory, and Applied Behavior Analysis
  2. Describe the six core processes of psychological flexibility/inflexibility
  3. Demonstrate how to contact the present moment with flexible, yet focused, attention
  4. Demonstrate how to access the observing process of self-as-context
  5. Demonstrate how to cultivate compassion with the perspective-taking process of self-as-context
  6. Demonstrate how to facilitate defusion from sticky cognitions
  7. Demonstrate how to foster acceptance of painful private experiences
  8. Demonstrate how to construct and clarify values while differentiating from goals
  9. Illustrate how to use creative hopelessness to motivate a change in the control agenda
  10. Demonstrate case conceptualization and treatment planning with the ACT Matrix while probing for toward moves (committed action) and away moves (experiential avoidance)
  11. Formulate ACT-consistent informed consent, goal collaboration, and therapeutic stance
  12. Demonstrate how to model, evoke, and reinforce psychological flexibility within the therapeutic relationship
  13. Explain the concept of workability and how it informs the entire ACT model

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 courses offers 1 ethics hour.

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 contact us at events@praxiscet.com to cancel a registration.