Derived Relational Responding and Transformations of Function in Children: A Review of Applied Behavior-Analytic Journals

A review on equivalence‐based procedures to teach food‐portion estimation skills

“…Results showed that EBI was implemented mostly with adults and only one study recruited child participants (Hausman et al, 2017). Compared to previous systematic reviews completed with other participants and training content using EBI procedures (Belisle et al, 2020;Gibbs & Tullis, 2021;Mclay et al, 2013;Raaymakers et al, 2019;Rehfeldt, 2011), results of this review indicated that there is a gap in the empirical literature of teaching portion size skill using equivalence-based procedures to children both with and without neurodevelopmental disabilities. These results contrast significantly with research conducted with other procedures, such as, weighting methods, visual cues, labeling, grouping food into general categories, portion size estimation aids, or exchange systems (Almiron-Roig et al, 2018;Amoutzopoulos et al, 2020;Benton, 2015;Hooper et al, 2019).…”

“…Stimulus equivalence is a behavioral outcome originally observed by Sidman (1971) and further refined in a seminal paper (Sidman & Tailby, 1982). Stimulus equivalence can be defined as observed responding showing the emergence of novel conditional discriminations following the direct training of a series of interrelated conditional relations (Belisle et al., 2020; Pilgrim, 2016; Raaymakers et al., 2019). The defining characteristic of stimulus equivalence is responding in accord with reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity (Sidman, 1994; Sidman & Tailby, 1982).…”

“…Despite the growing number of systematic reviews published on stimulus equivalence in recent years (Belisle et al., 2020; Brodsky & Fienup, 2018; Gibbs & Tullis, 2021; McLay et al., 2013; Melvin‐Brown et al., 2022; Rehfeldt, 2011), there is a lack of information related to assessing the effectiveness of derived stimulus technology to teach portion size estimation skills. Therefore, the goal of this systematic review is five‐fold: (1) to identify behavior‐analytic studies that have used EBI to teach portion estimation skills; (2) to evaluate the type of content taught, training structures and training protocols used in these studies; (3) to help target future research in this area to treat food restrictions in typical and neurodiverse populations; (4) to examine why EBI is specific to teaching portion size estimation; and (5) to provide practical applications for practitioners using EBI to teach portion size skills to both adults and children regardless of neurodiversity needs.…”

Using Relational Training to Improve Performance During Acceptance and Commitment Training Sessions

“…The field of ABA has seen a growing interest in identifying and addressing deficits of derived relational responding with individuals diagnosed with autism (Belisle et al, 2020). Different assessments have been developed, along with treatment protocols that explicitly target clients' ability to engage in relational framing (Dixon, 2016(Dixon, , 2019.…”

“…However, the majority of these studies only focus on the frame of coordination. Other than the one study that included a randomized controlled trial that evaluated the overall effect of relational training (Dixon et al, 2019), most of studies evaluated relational training procedures as a stand-alone intervention to develop a specific skill, not as a treatment package to improve overall responding (Belisle et al, 2020). No study to date has examined the effect of relational training on ACT interventions.…”