Facilitating repertoires of coordination, opposition distinction, and comparison in young children with autism

According to Relational Frame Theory (rft), repertoires of derived relational responding are essential for the development of human verbal behavior. As a result, the implications of relational framing for the education of developmentally disabled populations may be immense. Although at the level of process, there appears to be little difference among specific relational frames, there is potentially a natural sequence to their emergence in typical development. However, there is very little published evidence of training children across multiple frames consecutively. The current research comprised four studies that explored an extended sequence of training and testing in the relational frames of coordination, opposition, distinction, and comparison in a sample of nine young children with autism. The results demonstrate the relative ease with which relational deficits in these areas were remediated. In addition, the relationship between outcomes on the Verbal Behavior Milestones and Placement Program-Assessment (vb-mapp) and individual relational training requirements was investigated