Realizing Children's Strengths (RCS) Staff Presents at Annual Autism Conference

NATICK, Mass. - April 23, 2018 - PRLog -- Renowned behavior analysts from RCS (Realizing Children's Strengths) Learning Center were presenters during the Poster Presentation session at the recent 12th Annual Autism Conference in Miami. Hosted by the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI), the theme of the conference was Science That Changes Lives: Behavioral Approaches to Assessing and Treating Autism.

The RCS Behavior Analysts presented posters on three topics, all pertaining to successful and proven techniques for teaching individuals with autism. RCS Learning Center's Executive Managing Director and Chief of Research and Application, Christina King, PhD, presented research on the Categorization and the Emergence of Selection and Topography-Based Verbal and Non-Verbal Behavior. Assisting King were Colleen Yorlets, RCS Chief Clinical Specialist; RCS Learning Center's Clinical Director Megan Breault; Clinician Lauren Donovan and Special Education Teacher Jessica Byrne, and Simmons' College Dr. Russell Maguire. The team assessed the efficiency and efficacy of training two arbitrary visual-visual conditional discriminations and one tact, and then tested for the emergence of nine additional untrained relations and categorization of the stimuli.

Yorlets, Breault, King and Maguire presented a study Increasing Safety Skills Through Discrimination Training and Derived Stimulus-Stimulus Relations. Yorlets, the Principal Investigator, used discrimination training and errorless teaching procedures to teach an 8-year-old child diagnosed with Autism to form stimulus classes of auditory stimuli, visual stimuli in the form of videos, and visual stimuli in the form of printed words.

In their third presentation, Breault, assisted by King, Yorlets and Maguire, focused on Emergent Coin Relations and Stimulus Generalization following conditional discrimination training, a strategy that has been an efficient method for teaching individuals with a diagnosis of Autism functional money skills. But until this study, which involved a 14-year-old boy diagnosed with Autism, none have tested for the demonstration of emergent money skills in the natural environment. They discussed data in terms of maximizing student learning and programming for stimulus generalization during conditional discrimination training.

"We are constantly exploring new methods for teaching individuals with Autism and other developmental and learning disabilities," said Dr. King. "Our research focuses on finding the most effective ways to teach academic skills and language skills that have an immediate benefit to our students and we believe it is our responsibility to share our findings with other Clinicians in this field in order to better the lives of children with Autism and their families.  Participating in these conferences is a productive way to accomplish this."

About Realizing Children's Strengths (RCS) Learning Center
Realizing Children's Strengths (RCS) Learning Center is a leading not-for-profit, chapter 766 approved private special educational school that provides the highest quality individualized behavioral and educational services to children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental disabilities.  For over a decade RCS Learning Center has exceeded the standards for teaching students with Autism through the use of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) treatment methodology with an emphasis on Verbal Behavioral Model for teaching communication and language skills.  Individualized curriculum, programming, and 1:1 support is tailored to meet the needs of each student that includes specialized vocational program for students 14 years and older.  Our highly respected leaders in the field of ABA conduct cutting edge research, present at national and local conferences and provide intensive training for individuals in the field of Behavioral Analytics and ABA. RCS Learning Center is based in Natick, MA and is a 501c3b non-profit. More information is available at
http://rcslearning.org/