Description

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Help children develop language and verbal functions "This is definitely a book I will be purchasing for my professional use. I supervise student teachers in home-based programs as well as school programs and this book will be a perfect fit for the program implementation we currently present. Greer and Ross have produced an excellent accumulation of research compilation, assessment and program descriptions for implementation by professionals training and working with autistic children and adults." -Dr. Irfa Karmali, Shelby Residential and Vocational Services "Overall, a very technically accurate book and one well suited to accompany a practicum component in verbal behavior. Very comprehensive and does] a good job of covering most questions, concerns and issues for] training others to implement verbal behavior strategies. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it." -Janet Goodman, University of West Georgia Responding to the overwhelming demand for effective language development tools for children with no language and severe language delays related to autism and other disabilities, Douglas Greer and Denise Ross present newly identified methods to assist teachers and parents in their efforts to provide verbal capabilities to children. In their book Verbal Behavior Analysis, Doug and Denise describe how to help children produce novel and spontaneous verbal functions, acquire language incidentally, and become socially verbal. They carefully integrate the latest research, including many new findings, and present readers with a clear outline of the current state of the science of verbal behavior and its application to children with real needs. Behavior analysts, parents, and teachers will find the procedures applicable to all forms of language (signs, pictures, and voice-generating devices) while maintaining a strong emphasis on the vocal production of a child's speech.

• Describes how to teach children to be literate listeners, reducing the number of instructional times required to teach basic skills from four to ten times. (Chapter 3).
• Presents the necessary procedures to teach children to become observational learners. (Chapter 5 and 7).
• Offers practitioners methods for teaching children to acquire novel language and language usage incidentally, allowing children to expand their language without direct instruction. (Chapters 3, 5, and 6).
• Demonstrates helping children to move from emergent speakers to readers, and learn to enjoy books in free time, and to read. (Chapter 6).
• Introduces a verbal developmental scheme to guide instruction and aid practitioners in determining which children need particular interventions and when they need them, along with alternative tactics and strategies for solving learning problems. (Chapters 2 and 7).

About the Author

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Doug Greer is Professor of Education and Psychology and Coordinator of the Programs in Behavior Analysis at Columbia University, Teachers College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he has taught for 37 years. He is the author of over 120 research reports (27 on verbal behavior analysis) and conceptual publications in 25 different journals, as well as 12 books, and he has sponsored 130 doctoral dissertations. Greer is a Fellow of the Association for Behavior Analysis and is the recipient of: (a) the American Psychology Association's Fed S. Keller Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education, (b) The Association for Behavior Analysis award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Dissemination of Behavior Analysis, the designation of May 5 as the R. Douglas Greer day for Westchester County by the Westchester Legislature, and Distinguished Contributions to the Fred S. Keller School by The Fred S. Keller School. He is a CABAS(R) Board certified as a Senior Behavior Analyst and a Senior Research Scientist and has assisted in the development of CABAS(R) School in the USA, Ireland, England, and Italy. His research interests have included verbal behavior analysis, the development of verbal behavior, a learner-driven science of teaching and the organizational behavior analytic procedures to support that system, pediatric behavioral medicine, a behavioral psychology of music, and the induction of and applications of observational learning. He has served on the editorial boards of Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Journal of Behavioral Education, In Segnare all' Handicappato, Journal of Early and Intensive Behavioral Interventions (Associate Editor), European Journal of Behavior Analysis, The American Psychologist, Verplanck's Glossary and Thesaurus of The Science of Behavior, The Behavior Analyst, American Journal of Mental Deficiency, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, and the Journal of Music Therapy. Greer has served as distinguished visiting professor at five universities in Spain (Cadiz, Almeria, Oviedo, Grenada, and Salamanca), a higher education programs in applied behavior analysis in Norway, and has lectured at the University of Wales at Bangor. He has presented keynote addresses at conferences on behavior analysis in Canada, Israel, Nigeria, Japan, Spain, Ireland, England, Brazil, Norway, Italy, Taiwan, and Korea. Denise E. Ross is an associate professor of psychology and education in the Programs for Applied Behavior Analysis at Teachers College, Columbia University. She completed her PhD at Columbia University in 1998 and taught at Florida Atlantic University before joining Teachers College in 2002. Her research on verbal behavior and children with autism and other developmental disabilities has been published in Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities, Research in Developmental Disabilities, the Journal of Behavioral Education, The Behavior Analyst Today, Journal of Early and Intensive Behavioral Interventions, and the Analysis of Verbal Behavior.