Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Behavior Analysts PDF Download

Author: Mark R. Dixon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000836185
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This book provides a thorough discussion of acceptance and commitment therapy or training (ACT) and a guide for its use by behavior analysts. The book emphasizes how the intentional development of six core behavioral processes – values, committed action, acceptance, defusion, self-as-context, and present moment awareness – help establish the psychological flexibility needed to acquire and maintain adaptive behaviors that compete with maladaptive behavior patterns in verbally able clients. Split into three parts, the book discusses the history and controversy surrounding the rise of acceptance and commitment strategies in behavior analysis and shows how the processes underlying ACT are linked to foundational behavioral scientific principles as amplified by stimulus equivalence and relational learning principles such as those addressed by relational frame theory. In a careful step-by-step way, it describes the best practices for administering the acceptance and commitment procedures at the level of the individual client, organizational systems, and with families. Attention is also given to the ethical and scope-of-practice considerations for behavior analysts, along with recommendations for conducting on-going research on this new frontier for behavior analytic treatment across a myriad of populations and behaviors. Written by leading experts in the field, the book argues that practice must proceed from the basic tenants of behavior analysis, and that now is the opportune moment to bring ACT methods to behavior analysts to maximize the scope and depth of behavioral treatments for all people. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Behavior Analysts will be an essential read for students of behavior analysis and behavior therapy, as well as for individuals on graduate training programs that prepare behavior analysts and professionals that are likely to use ACT in their clinical practice and research.

Author: Thomas G. Szabo
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
ISBN: 168403583X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Quickly master a proven-effective behavior therapy that will allow you to expand the effectiveness of your practice. As a board-certified behavior analyst (BCBA), you work with a wide range of clients, particularly those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Some of these clients may not be verbal at all on one end of the spectrum, while some may have very advanced language skills on the other. For these clients and their families, you need a flexible and adaptable therapeutic framework to ensure the best behavior outcomes. Drawn from relational frame theory (RFT)—the psychological theory of human language—acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can help. With this definitive professional manual, you’ll learn to conceptualize your cases using ACT, create your own exercises, generate metaphors, be present with the unique individual learner in front of you, and practice the core ACT skills flexibly to ensure better behavior outcomes for clients and their families. You’ll find an overview of the theoretical connections between behavior analysis, RFT, and ACT, as well as the core act skills, including present-moment awareness, flexible perspective taking, committed action, and values work. Finally, you’ll find information on cultural competency and diversity to help you service a wide range of clients. If you’re like many BCBAs, you need specialized resources when working with linguistically sophisticated clients, as well as their parents and caregivers. Let this book be your comprehensive guide to incorporating ACT into your work.

Author: Thomas G. Szabo
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781684035816
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Quickly master a proven-effective behavior therapy that will allow you to expand the effectiveness of your practice. As a board-certified behavior analyst (BCBA), you work with a wide range of clients, particularly those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Some of these clients may not be verbal at all on one end of the spectrum, while some may have very advanced language skills on the other. For these clients and their families, you need a flexible and adaptable therapeutic framework to ensure the best behavior outcomes. Drawn from relational frame theory (RFT)--the psychological theory of human language--acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can help. With this definitive professional manual, you'll learn to conceptualize your cases using ACT, create your own exercises, generate metaphors, be present with the unique individual learner in front of you, and practice the core ACT skills flexibly to ensure better behavior outcomes for clients and their families. You'll find an overview of the theoretical connections between behavior analysis, RFT, and ACT, as well as the core act skills, including present-moment awareness, flexible perspective taking, committed action, and values work. Finally, you'll find information on cultural competency and diversity to help you service a wide range of clients. If you're like many BCBAs, you need specialized resources when working with linguistically sophisticated clients, as well as their parents and caregivers. Let this book be your comprehensive guide to incorporating ACT into your work.

Author: Paul W.B. Atkins
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
ISBN: 1684030269
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
A groundbreaking, comprehensive program for designing effective and socially equitable groups of all sizes—from businesses and social justice groups to global organizations. Whether you work in business or schools, volunteer in neighborhoods or church organizations, or are involved in social justice and activism, you understand the enormous power of groups to enact powerful and lasting change in the world. But how exactly do you design, build, and sustain effective groups? Based on the work of Nobel Prize winning economist Elinor Ostrom and grounded in contextual behavioral science, evolutionary science, and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), Prosocial presents a practical, step-by-step approach to help you energize and strengthen your business or organization. Using the Prosocial model, you’ll learn to design groups that are more harmonious, have better member or employee retention, have better relationships with other groups or business partners, and have more success and longevity. Most importantly, you’ll learn to target the characteristics that foster cooperation and collaboration—key ingredients for any effective group.

Author: Alyssa Wilson
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
ISBN: 1648480926
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Learn powerful ACT training skills to foster parental collaboration and achieve therapeutic goals. As a board-certified behavior analyst (BCBA) working in the field, you understand how essential it is to enlist the support of parents when working with autistic children. This book offers proven-effective acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) training skills to get parents on the same page and working with you to achieve measurable results. The Behavior Analyst's Guide to Working with Parents offers a comprehensive conceptual framework for using ACT in parent training contexts. With this clinical guide, you will find a brief overview of relational frame theory (RFT), rule governance, and how these core concepts and principles align within the ACT model. The book also provides: Empirical evidence for using ACT within parent training contexts Virtue-based ethics and specific BACB® ethical codes to consider Step-by-step processes for using ACT in parent training contexts Informed consent processes Finally, you’ll find an overview of specific ACT components that highlight detailed assessment considerations and metaphor development for each component—such as present moment awareness, acceptance, flexible perspective taking, and values-based action. If you’re looking for strategies to improve parental collaboration, this book has everything you need to get started.

Author: Kevin L. Polk
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
ISBN: 1608829251
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
If you are an ACT practitioner or mental health professional, this eagerly awaited resource is an essential addition to your professional library. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is an evidence-based therapy that has been successful in treating a variety of psychological issues, such anxiety, depression, substance abuse, trauma, eating disorders, and more. In contrast to other treatment options, ACT has proven extremely effective in helping clients who are “stuck” in unhealthy thought patterns by encouraging them align their values with their thoughts and actions. However, the ACT model is complex, and it’s not always easy to use. Traditionally, ACT is delivered with a focus around six core processes that are often referred to as the hexaflex: cognitive defusion, acceptance, contact with the present moment, observing the self, values, and committed action. Each of these core processes serves a specific function, but they are often made more complex than needed in both theory and in practice. So what if there was a way to simplify ACT in your sessions with clients? Edited by clinical psychologists and popular ACT workshop leaders Kevin L. Polk and Benjamin Schoendorff, The ACT Matrix fuses the six core principles of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) into a simplified, easy-to-apply approach that focuses on client actions and behavior as workable or unworkable, rather than good or bad. Most importantly, you’ll learn how this innovative approach can be used to deliver ACT more effectively in a variety of settings and contexts, even when clients are resistant or unmotivated to participate. This is the first book to utilize the ACT Matrix model, and it is a must-read for any ACT practitioner looking to streamline his or her therapeutic approach.

Author: Georg H. Eifert
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
ISBN: 1572246863
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT (pronounced as a word rather than letters), is an emerging psychotherapeutic technique first developed into a complete system in the book Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Steven Hayes, Kirk Strosahl, and Kelly Wilson. ACT marks what some call a third wave in behavior therapy. To understand what this means, it helps to know that the first wave refers to traditional behavior therapy, which works to replace harmful behaviors with constructive ones through a learning principle called conditioning. Cognitive therapy, the second wave of behavior therapy, seeks to change problem behaviors by changing the thoughts that cause and perpetuate them. In the third wave, behavior therapists have begun to explore traditionally nonclinical treatment techniques like acceptance, mindfulness, cognitive defusion, dialectics, values, spirituality, and relationship development. These therapies reexamine the causes and diagnoses of psychological problems, the treatment goals of psychotherapy, and even the definition of mental illness itself. ACT earns its place in the third wave by reevaluating the traditional assumptions and goals of psychotherapy. The theoretical literature on which ACT is based questions our basic understanding of mental illness. It argues that the static condition of even mentally healthy individuals is one of suffering and struggle, so our grounds for calling one behavior 'normal' and another 'disordered' are murky at best. Instead of focusing on diagnosis and symptom etiology as a foundation for treatment-a traditional approach that implies, at least on some level, that there is something 'wrong' with the client-ACT therapists begin treatment by encouraging the client to accept without judgment the circumstances of his or her life as they are. Then therapists guide clients through a process of identifying a set of core values. The focus of therapy thereafter is making short and long term commitments to act in ways that affirm and further this set of values. Generally, the issue of diagnosing and treating a specific mental illness is set aside; in therapy, healing comes as a result of living a value-driven life rather than controlling or eradicating a particular set of symptoms. Emerging therapies like ACT are absolutely the most current clinical techniques available to therapists. They are quickly becoming the focus of major clinical conferences, publications, and research. More importantly, these therapies represent an exciting advance in the treatment of mental illness and, therefore, a real opportunity to alleviate suffering and improve people's lives. Not surprisingly, many therapists are eager to include ACT in their practices. ACT is well supported by theoretical publications and clinical research; what it has lacked, until the publication of this book, is a practical guide showing therapists exactly how to put these powerful new techniques to work for their own clients. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders adapts the principles of ACT into practical, step-by-step clinical methods that therapists can easily integrate into their practices. The book focuses on the broad class of anxiety disorders, the most common group of mental illnesses, which includes general anxiety, panic disorder, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Written with therapists in mind, this book is easy to navigate, allowing busy professionals to find the information they need when they need it. It includes detailed examples of individual therapy sessions as well as many worksheets and exercises, the very important 'homework' clients do at home to reinforce work they do in the office. The book comes with a CD-ROM that includes electronic versions of all of the worksheets in the book as well as PowerPoint and audio features that make learning and teaching these techniques easy and engagin

Author: Mark Dixon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998623399
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
A Behavior Analytic Curriculum for Social-Emotional Development in Children

Author: Steven C. Hayes
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 147570447X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Animal learning and human learning traditions have been distinguishable within psychology since the start of the discipline and are to this day. The human learning wing was interested in the development of psychological functions in human organisms and proceeded directly to their examination. The animal learning wing was not distinguished by a corresponding interest in animal behavior per se. Rather, the animal learners studied animal behavior in order to identify principles of behavior of relevance to humans as well as other organisms. The two traditions, in other words, did not differ so much on goals as on strategies. It is not by accident that so many techniques of modem applied psychol ogy have emerged from the animal laboratory. That was one of the ultimate purposes of this work from the very beginning. The envisioned extension to humans was not just technological, however. Many animal researchers, B. F. Skinner most prominently among them, recognized that direct basic research with humans might ultimately be needed in certain areas but that it was wise first to build a strong foundation in the controlled environment of the animal laboratory. In a sense, animal learning was always in part a human research program in development.

Author: Michael E. Levin
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
ISBN: 1684033128
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
Discover the latest innovations in ACT research and clinical practice—all in one comprehensive, edited volume. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a powerful and proven-effective treatment model for alleviating several mental health conditions, ranging from depression and anxiety to addiction and eating disorders. And because ACT is an ever-evolving modality that relies on processes, rather than fixed protocols, it is primed for substantial clinical innovations as researchers and clinicians develop new strategies for increasing psychological flexibility. Innovations in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy combines the latest, cutting-edge ACT research with a wealth of “in-the-trenches” experience from leading clinicians in the field, including Steven C. Hayes, Matthieu Villatte, Benjamin Schoendorff, and more. In this volume, you’ll find an overview of innovations spanning the last decade, how to translate these innovations into everyday interventions, and a summary of future directions for researching and refining ACT in practice. The book also includes: New research on clinical behavior analysis, relational frame theory (RFT), and evolution science Innovative methods for applying basic RFT principles in clinical practice Implications for developing process-based assessments and interventions Tips for integrating ACT in applied behavior analysis As ACT continues to evolve, you need up-to-date resources to inform and improve your work with clients. Whether you’re a clinician, researcher, or student, this book is a must-have for your professional library.