James W. Moore
 
 
 

JAMES W. MOORE

Chief Clinical Officer, Apollo Behavior Services

Currently, Dr. Jim Moore is the Chief Clinical Officer at Apollo Behavior Services in the greater Atlanta-metro area. He is also a Visiting Assistant Professor in the online hybrid Professional Behavior Analysis program at the Florida Institute of Technology. Prior to this, Dr. Moore served as Director of Autism Solutions for Canopy Children’s Solutions in Jackson, MS. Previously, Dr. Moore was the Director of Training for the Master’s Training Program in Applied Behaviour Analysis at the University of Southern Mississippi. Dr. Moore holds a Ph.D. in School Psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi. He completed a pre-doctoral internship in Pediatric Psychology from the Kennedy Krieger Institute at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center and the Marcus Behavior Center through Emory University. He was the Director of School Consultation and Applied Research at the May Institute in Atlanta, GA before returning home to work as both an academic counsellor and Assistant Dean of Students at Pearl River College.

He has been a Board Certified Behavior Analyst since 2002 and became Mississippi’s first Licensed Behaviour Analyst in 2015. His research has been published in such journals as the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Behavior Analysis in Practice, Behavior Modification, Behavior Analysis: Research and Practice, Child and Family Behavior Therapy, Journal of Behavioral Education, Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, Proven Practice, Focus on Autism and other Developmental Disabilities, School Psychology Review, and School Psychology Quarterly. His research interests include teaching matching and discrimination skills to children with Autism, integrating Relational Frame Theory into Autism services, Behavioral Economics, Early Intensive Behavioural Intervention, Functional Analysis Methodology, Behaviours Maintained by Negative Reinforcement, Teacher/Staff training, integration of service delivery across home and school settings, the PEAK Relational Training System for children with autism, Parent Training in Behaviour Analysis, and health, fitness, and coaching using behaviour analysis.

In 2015, he was appointed as the first chair of the Mississippi Autism Board; the licensure and regulatory board for behaviour analysis in the state of Mississippi. In August 2019, Dr. Moore became a Director for the Behavior Analyst Certification Board, after being elected to Seat B by his peers. As a Director on the BACB, Dr. Moore currently serves as Chair of the Elections Committee.

 

SESSION

Derived Relational Responding and Relational Frame Theory: New Directions in Skill Acquisition (Treatment)

October 22, 2021 - 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM

Derived relational responding (DRR), in general, refers to the ability to perform novel responses not directly taught in a variety of different and novel conditions by relating concepts together. In other words, relating may be simply defined as responding to one event in terms of another. For example, rhesus monkeys may be trained to respond relationally to, and thereby select the taller or two stimuli (see Harmon, Strong, & Pasnak, 1982). This response is controlled entirely by the nonarbitrary or formal properties of the stimuli (i.e., one stimulus is actually taller than the other, and as such is not a verbal process). In contrast, Arbirtrarily Applicable Relational Responding (AARR) is a verbal process, because it is under the control of contextual features beyond the formal properties of the related stimuli or events. This class of responding, given that it is verbal and, as such, language, is often significantly impaired for individuals with ASD.

Given that the engine of AARR and relational framing is language, and considering that a core feature of ASD is impairment in language and communication, it is reasonable to assert that many individuals with ASD may show significant impairment in AARR and relational framing. The extent to which these repertoires are impaired may be directly related to the degree to which the individual experiences symptoms associated with various psychological conditions, psychological suffering, behavioral problems, and an overall deficit in quality of life. Many aspects of human communication depend upon the ability to use and understand non-literal language, including metaphor, metonymy, rhetorical questions, understatements, hyperbole, indirect requests, and verbal irony. Research conducted with typically-developing children has found that deriving appears established by the age of 4 or 5 and continues developing through middle childhood (see Pexman et al., 2011). Children with autism, on the other hand, appear to have distinct deficits in deriving and AARR. 

Deficits in AARR are not universal or consistent across individuals with ASD. Some individuals may show some ability with AARR with less complex stimuli, but as the complexity increases, so too does their difficulty in navigating the relations. Building strong repertoires of DRR and AARR may help not only accelerate skill acquisition at a significantly faster rate, but also help reduce problematic behaviors that stem from difficulties navigating aribrary stimuli and rules learners often encounter in the world. 

The current talk will introduce Relational Frame Theory and Stimulus Equivlance Teaching as a way to promote faster skill acquisition in learners with autism as well as reduction of problem behaviour. Prerequisittes to relational learning will be discussed.