“Curious Minds: The Magic of Manding for Information!”

If anyone has seen the “how to” videos of Sarah and me on the VB-MAPP App I hope they have been useful. Of course, working with every client at every stage of their learning is amazing. I love analyzing the situation to make sure I’m teaching what I think I’m teaching, don’t you? And I often say to people I meet and train that teaching those first few Mands for an early learner is probably the most amazing thing you can do as a clinician.

However, I do have a favorite video that’s on the VB-MAPP App, and I wanted to share it with you. If I’m feeling down, I often find myself pulling up the Mand Milestone 11 video on the App, and end up finding myself giggling away. Let me explain….

If you don’t already know, Mand Milestone 11 is assessing and, then of course, teaching your learners to mand for information – basically teaching our students to ask those all-important “WH” questions (obviously only if and when they are ready to work on this skill). So, like us, we want our learners to be able to get answers to questions they are motivated to ask. This is the key – this is a Manding skill, there has to be motivation: there is no point in prompting your learner to ask, “Who is my teacher?” “When is Music?” if they don’t care. So, how do you teach and assess these skills and ensure your learner really wants to get the answers to the questions they ask?

Reading Sundberg et al. journal article (Sundberg ML, Loeb M, Hale L, Eigenheer P. Contriving establishing operations to teach mands for information. Analysis of Verbal Behavior. 2002;18:15-29) answered this question for me, as well as my spending time at the Carbone Clinic, observing this procedure being run. The procedure follows these steps: Set up a situation where your learner is so motivated to ask different questions, change up these situations often: for example, move a super reinforcing item from where it normally is, and this might result in our learner wanting to ask, “Where is____?” Quick aside to remember here, don’t rush to prompt the learner to ask “Where?” (if they need the prompt) instead wait for that searching behavior first – if you see this, then you know they “want” that information for “Where?” and you can then prompt. Also, another reminder, it’s the information they are asking for, so when they ask, provide the information, not the item, etc.

Check out the video below showing the procedure to assess/ teach Manding for Information. Here’s Sarah who obviously loves “Go Fish” and like most people we usually keep our Go Fish cards on top of the microwave (Doesn’t everyone?), but they are not there!!! What? Oh no!….check out the fun that ensues.