Dr Louise McHugh is an Associate Professor at University College Dublin. Her research interests are centered on the experimental analysis of language and cognition from a behaviour analytic and Relational Frame Theory perspective, including especially the development of complex cognitive skills such as perspective-taking and the process-level investigation of behavioural and cognitive psychotherapies including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. She has published over 70 papers on these topics and has received funding from several sources including the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Waterloo Trust and the Welsh Assembly. She is a Fellow of the Association for Contextual Behavioural Science (ACBS).
Presenting at the Bucharest International ABA Conference 2018:
A Behavioural Approach to Understanding and Training Perspective Taking
A critical social skill involves the capacity to take the perspective of others and understand that other people have desires, wants and wishes that are different to our own. Relational frame theory (RFT) is a modern behavioral approach to human language and cognition that accounts for complex human behavior, such as perspective taking in terms of derived relational responding. According to RFT, a history of reinforcement for relating deictic relations, such as I–you, here–there, and now–then, are critical to the emergence of a sophisticated repertoire of perspective taking. This theoretical understanding of complex behavior has resulted in the design of interventions to establish these repertoires when deficient. The current talk discusses the burgeoning literature in the area of perspective taking and contextual behavioral science.
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