How to Teach Social Skills Using ACT

The How to ABA Podcast

In the past, we’ve touched on how to teach basic social skills. However, with some learners, we have to go beyond simple contingency management and reinforcement techniques. We’ve been exploring how to teach social skills using ACT – Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. ACT is rooted in Relational Frame Theory (RFT), which you may be familiar with as a BCBA. When we teach using ACT, we can build skills that require indirect experiences and abstract thought. We can also build psychological flexibility with our learners. It helps keep them in the present moment, create space for their values, and more.
Instead of relying on reinforcement, values-based teaching can sometimes be much more effective. We discuss how to help students take action towards their values while learning social skills along the way. We provide some real-world examples of how this works and how to use the DNA-V curriculum.

For our next CEU Event, we’ll dive deeper into teaching social skills with an ACT-based approach. The CEU event will be held on November 16th at 12:00 pm EST for The Bx Resource Pro Members. Sign up here to attend!

What’s Inside:

• How to use ACT to teach social skills
• Why values-based methods can sometimes work better than reinforcement
• Information about our upcoming webinar

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