Facilitating relational framing in children and individuals with developmental delay using the relational completion...

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• The Relational Completion Procedure (RCP) is established for teaching derived relations in verbally able adults.
• Its efficacy in young children or individuals with developmental delays remains unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effectiveness of the RCP in establishing derived relational networks in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and developmental delays.
• To assess the adaptability of the RCP for typically developing young children.

Main Methods:

• Experiment 1: Utilized the RCP with a multiple exemplar intervention for nine individuals with ASD (eight with language delay) to establish sameness networks.
• Experiment 2: Employed the RCP to establish sameness networks in eight participants, including typically developing children (5-6 years old) and individuals with developmental delay.

Main Results:

• Seven out of nine participants with ASD in Experiment 1 demonstrated derived relational responding.
• In Experiment 2, all typically developing children and four out of five participants with developmental delay successfully learned derived relations.

Conclusions:

• The Relational Completion Procedure can reliably establish derived relations in young children and individuals with developmental delays.
• This automated procedure offers a viable method for enhancing relational learning in diverse pediatric populations.