How CMO-Ts help with increasing vocabulary and frequency of requests
Monday 12th February 2018
By Roni Dunning, B.A., M.Sc., BCBA of Blossom ABA
Manding and CMO-Ts: What are they?
Think about something you really want. Let's say: juice.
You really want this juice and you're prepared to ask for it until you get it!
Think that in order to get to actually drink the juice you will need to ask someone for it.
That's where the therapist comes in with helping a child expand their manding opportunities.
Now, what does the acronym CMO-T stand for?
It stands for Conditioned Transitive Motivating Operation (Laraway, Snycerski et al., 2003; Laraway et al. 2013). The mands that happen between a child's request for juice and the child actually getting the juice become conditioned (reinforcing) because they are leading up to juice (Langthorne& McGill, 2009; Rosales &Rehfeldt, 2007).
They are the mands we use before we get our final reinforcer (what we actually want).
Following on from the above example, if the juice is in the fridge and you can't get it, you will ask someone to open the fridge, get the bottle, open the lid, pour the juice, etc. These intermediate mands are all CMO-Ts leading to you drinking the actual juice.
You get to drink the juice after you ask for these things!
When there's motivation, adding in CMO-Ts is a very good way to increase a learner's manding repertoire when they request. Remember not to reduce it by adding too many of them and that in order to add in CMO-Ts, a child needs to be motivated for the final reinforcer which is what they wanted in the first place (Hall &Sundberg, 1987). If something is too hard to get, the effort might not be worth it.
Keep assessing motivation as you throw in your CMO-Ts!
References:
Hall, G. 7 Sundberg, M. L. (1987). Teaching Mands by Manipulating Conditioned Establishing Operations. The Analysis of Verbal Behaviour, 5, 41-53.
Langthorne, P. & McGill, P. (2009). A Tutorial on the Concept of the Motivating Operation and its Importance to Application.Behaviour Analysis in Practice.2 (2), 22-31.
Rosales, R. &Rehfeldt, R. (2007). Contriving Transitive Conditioned Establishing Operations to Establish Derived Manding Skills in Adults with Severe Developmental Disabilities. Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis.40 (1), 105-21.
Laraway, S., Snycerski, S., Michael, J. & Poling, A. (2003). Motivating Operations and Some Terms to Describe Them: Some Further Refinements. Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis.36, 407-414.
Laraway, S.,Snycerski, S., Olson, R., Becker, B & Poling, A. (2014). The Motivating Operations Concept: Current Status and Critical Response. The psychological Record, 64 (3), 601-623.
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