>> Rosemarie Griffin: We are going to discuss the power of manding and how to get your students communicating. I have always enjoyed working with students with autism and have seen the power of direct instruction mainly through Applied Behavior Analysis. Working on manding, I have seen great success with various clients and this is why I want to talk about the power of manding and how to get your students communicating. I will be referring to students with autism throughout the presentation because autism is the area that I have specialized in. I also work with students who are nonverbal and finding a response form that works for them.
I am hoping that today’s presentation gives you a background about verbal behavior and helps you to implement certain strategies into therapy right away.
Some of the students that I have worked with who have had success in increasing their communication started with manding. To give you a couple examples; we had one student, when I worked at a private clinic, who came to us as a 19-year-old young man who was very aggressive. After 19 years of therapy, he still did not have a functional response form. He did not have any way to communicate so we gave him a Tech/Speak, which is a non-dynamic AAC device, and we started with requesting. We saw an increase in his ability to request items he wanted and needed, and we saw a decrease in his aggressive behavior.
Another student, which I will be talking about throughout the presentation, came to us with a dynamic device but he did not work on manding with that device. He only worked on labeling and academic tasks. For him, that device was seen as work and not as a way that he could get his needs or wants met. He came to us with the device, but he had no functional communication and was not using it. With this student, we used the iPad and an app called Sonoflex. We just re-paired with the device. We will discuss later what pairing is. We worked on requesting with the device for months before we started interspersing more academic tasks. We wanted to teach him that he could request with it, the device was something good, and that his communication was going to get him things that he wanted. Those are a couple of examples that I have seen in my past that I think have been very powerful. When you start with requesting, it can blossom into other things.
Course Outline
What are we going to talk about today? We are going to talk about what applied behavior analysis is. We are going to talk specifically about what verbal behavior is. Not everybody that uses the science of ABA uses verbal behavior, but I use it with my students to help increase their communication. B.F. Skinner, who we learned about in Intro to Psychology, wrote a book called Verbal Behavior and we are going to talk about that. He identified different verbal operants. He talked about communication as a behavior and the function of communication. How are we functionally using it? The verbal operants refer to the different ways that we use our communication.
We will address the importance of direct instruction with manding. We will talk about what manding is and what it means. It is really just a term that Skinner used and it means requesting. We will discuss how to set up those manding sessions so that it is something that you feel more comfortable trying to implement with your students. I have seen many students start talking and communicating a lot more once I implemented manding.
