Learning to talk is about becoming a partner in a culture’s dances.
—Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley

Part 2—Joint attention as a foundation for cooperation and language

As Hart and Risley put so beautifully, language develops through cooperative interactions with others: in describing their analyses of thousands upon thousands of interactions between children and caregivers, they note that “long before the children began saying words, it was clear that they had learned the social skills fundamental to interaction” (p. 36). Within cooperative interactions, we are motivated not only by a particular outcome, but also simply by a motivation to collaborate (Tomasello, 2023). That is, the act of collaboration itself is reinforcing: collaboration may be chosen over solo opportunities to achieve a goal, and collaborative activities may be engaged in “just for fun”; if a partner stops collaborating, whether in a social game or an instrumental task, the other is likely to engage in behavior to re-engage them in the activity. Sharing the experience itself is an important source of reinforcement. 

Learning to talk is about becoming a partner in a culture’s dances.

—Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley

Part 1—Cooperative contexts for learning

I have been involved in language-based early intervention in one way or another for most of my career. While much of that work has focused on precise, individualized development of VB and/or RFT-based programming to better establish flexible generative language, it has always begun with establishing a context for learning that is fun and engaging.

We should not ask what the words mean, as though they contained secrets, but what they are doing, as though they embodied actions.
—Denis Donaghue

We cannot speak of language as a “thing” that someone may or may not possess—rather, it is a complex set of skills, a repertoire of operant behavior. The skills commonly referred to as “language” or “cognition” develop in much the same way as any other behavior—through an individual history of interactions with the environment. And, as behavior, language cannot be examined except as an act within a particular context. That is, we cannot examine single words or phrases or sentences in isolation, based on their topography. We cannot identify what a behavior “means”—whether in the form of speaking a sentence or running out of a room—except in terms of its function.

We can not get anything out of life. There is no outside where we could take this thing to. There is no little pocket situated outside of life, which would steal life's provisions and squirrel them away. The life of this moment has no outside.
—Jennifer Matthews

Let’s start with some big questions: what even is time, and what does it mean to manage it? This question is at the heart of much stress and struggle in our culture. It's hard to conceptualize time–we can't "see" it, we can only experience it. To describe time, most cultures use spatial metaphors of some sort (Boroditsky, 2011). However, we don't all use the same ones. In English, we talk about future events as being “ahead” of us, while in other languages, such events might be described as being “below” (Mandarin) or “behind” (Aymara), reflecting how we read and write text. A few Australian Aboriginal languages do not use relative spatial terms (such as left/right), instead relying on absolute direction (north/south/east/west), and when they construct representations of time, such as when gesturing or sequence events, they do so from east to west!

The expert in anything was once a beginner.
—Helen Hayes

As behavior analysts, teachers, therapists, or any other helping professional, we spend our days listening and speaking to others, whether we are attempting to understand a particular problem, giving advice or providing instructions, writing treatment plans or lessons, teaching and training, and so on. That is, we engage in “language.” It seems obvious that “language” is critical to an understanding of human behavior—and yet at the same time, it is so embedded in our lives that we rarely examine it.

What does it mean to thrive? What makes someone resilient? These are questions we often ask ourselves when faced with life’s inevitable challenges. While some people seem to weather storms effortlessly, others struggle to stay afloat. But what exactly sets these resilient individuals apart?

Ko tōku reo tōku ohooho, ko tōku reo tōku māpihi maurea.
My language is my awakening, my language is the window to my soul.
—Maori proverb; translated by Sir Tīmoti Kāretu

Understanding RFT and ACT begins with recognizing the power of language as symbolic, as central to cultural and individual identity. Words matter. We must be prepared to understand and influence language (including psychological flexibility) at every level - from self and the individual, up to the groups and systems within which we work and that affect our clients, as well as the cultures that shape us all.