Thank you for your interest in the Relational Language Assessment and Training Elements (RLATE)! The RLATE includes the Relational Language Assessment (RLA) and the Relational Language Training curriculum (RLT).

The following is a proposed training sequence for the RLATE. Hours may vary depending on the amount of practice and feedback you would like during training. The course is yours to curate according to the needs of your practice!

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or if you would like to discuss further.

Duration

• 8–12 hours (2 hours/session)

• BACB CEUS available

 Description

Introduction: RFT is a contextual behavioral account of human language and cognition, which sees arbitrarily applicable derived relational responding (AADRR), or relational framing, as the key operant underlying these repertoires. AADRR is the learned skill of responding to one event in terms of another, based on contextual cues that specify the relation rather than on the formal or physical properties of the stimuli being related. This introduction to RFT covers:

Introduction

• Verbal behavior & Applied RFT

Stimulus equivalence

From stimulus equivalence to relational framing

• Generative language

• Deriving stimulus relations is operant behavior

Nonarbitrary stimuli

• Using relational language in early language training

• Direct, bidirectional relations, and mutual relations

Training relational language:

• The relational evaluation procedure (REP)

• Multiple exemplar instruction for relational language training

Arbitrary stimuli

• Transitioning to arbitrary stimuli

• Arbitrary stimuli and the REP

Relational framing

• Directly trained relations

• Bidirectional responding

• Mutually entailed relations

• Combinatorially entailed relations

• Transformation of stimulus function

• Relational networks from linear to nonlinear-same and nonlinear-mixed

• Relating relational networks

Description of frames and the applied utility of each frame:

• Coordination

• Distinction

• Comparison

• Opposition

• Hierarchy:

  • Containment          

  • Classification 

  • Part-whole relations

• Conditionality/causality

• Temporality

• Spatiality

• Deictics

• Analogical relations (relating relations)

• Increasing language complexity, flexibility, derivation, and coherence to facilitate functional language use and comprehension

• Video examples of training arbitrary relations

Introduction to the Relational Language Assessment and Training Elements (RLATE):

• Relational Language Assessment (RLA)

• Relational Language Training Curriculum (RLT)

The application of RFT to train functional language: Commonly used language training protocols routinely target only the nonarbitrary properties of an object or stimulus (i.e., the physical properties of an item such as its shape, contrast, number, color, size, parts, and position) and ignore the more complex, arbitrary relational language required for speaking with meaning and listening with understanding. Arbitrary relational responding refers to the socially agreed-upon symbolic qualities of relating. For example, as a society, we agree that a dime is worth more than a nickel, even though the nickel is physically bigger than the dime.

RFT provides substantive evidence that arbitrarily applicable relational framing underlies human language and cognition. Recent research also shows that training in relational responding can boost intellectual abilities.

A noted advantage of the RFT approach is the analysis of relational frames in terms of functional units. The Relational Language Training protocol systematically deconstructs relational frames into small, measurable relational units, allowing us to identify which component relational skills require further training to facilitate fluent relational responding.