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Building Vocational Skills with
the Big Six
By
Richard McManus
Director of Beal Street Academy and
the Fluency Factory
Richard McManus wrote the original version of this article as part
of an invited workshop at the annual conference for the
Association for Behavior
Analysis International. The article discusses methods for
building the foundation skills that are used by every person
(whether adult or child; whether handicapped or not) to learn, to
play, and to work. Eric Haughton and Ann Desjardins were the
pioneers in this work, and Richard McManus was the first to apply
this approach to vocational preparation.
Fluency First
Eric and Elizabeth Haughton taught Kevin Solsten and I the benefits
of fluency in March of 1978. After learning about the
importance of fluency, we looked at our curriculum in every part of
Amego (a learning center for autistic individuals) in a dramatically
different way.
Broken Chains
We had repeatedly encountered situations in which carefully taught
chains of behavior did not remain intact after training. For
example, in our vocational training classrooms, we taught such tasks
as assembling a pen, hand stamping a greeting card, or putting
together a series of cards for a mailing.
We used errorless teaching (backchaining) to teach these skills to
our students. However, the best of our students performed
these tasks only slightly above a prevocational level of
productivity (25% of Industrial Standard Production), and none of
our students maintained their skills for very long if we tried to
remove 1:1 ratio teaching.
Since our students were learning job skills, we knew that they must
become more independent and their performances must be much higher,
or no one would hire them. We aimed to reach an extended
employment level of performance as shown below: We knew that
long term sheltered employment made an individual eligible for
federal funding. Prevocational funding was more precarious at
that time. When a student reached 25-50% of the industrial
performance standards we faded our prompting and reinforcing.
Our students then plummeted far below 25%, making them ineligible
for continued community placement when they turned 21. None of
our students could work for very long on any of these tasks, nor was
their quality very high.
We visited a nearby rehabilitation center and looked at the way the
professionals there analyzed vocational skills. WORK, Inc used
a series of standardized discrimination and assembly tests to place
incoming clients into the proper vocational training level. We
borrowed the design of their assessment center to prepare a
curriculum that would help our students get and hold jobs, even if
the jobs were in a sheltered work environment.
As we began to assemble our training and evaluation tools we timed
our teachers (and administrators!) in the skills and component
movements that we were going to teach our students. We had
containers full of nuts and bolts, we had pegs and nails, and we had
a variety of tools and assembly projects. We had an abundance of
work for each student, though none of these materials were high-tech
or expensive, and we had the performances of the teachers to use as
a benchmark for our students. We set our goals a bit low, at
the bottom of the teacher performance levels. Later we learned
that this aim was far too low. We should have set our aims for
the top of our teacher performances!
When we looked at performance of our students we realized that they
were extremely weak in the component skills that Eric called “the
Big Six.” Simply picking up and dropping objects into a box
was something that our teachers could do at well over 100 per
minute. None of our students could do these tasks at over 20
per minute. At that time our students could not practice
independently because they simply wandered off task or engaged in
self-stimulatory behavior without a teacher to keep them focused by
providing cues and reinforcement. They had neither the
strength nor the endurance to work very long or very rapidly.
Self Stimulatory Movements
When we looked at the performances of our students we immediately
learned that there was a problem. Every movement element was
weak, even movements that we termed “self-stimulatory” such as
hand-waving or flapping. These movements can resemble a
behavioral “white noise” as they are so high frequency within the
student’s repertoire that they prevent other behavior from
occurring.
We had reduced these behaviors through shaping and very careful
backward chaining. However, no matter how carefully we
programmed we found them showing up again and again in chains of
behavior that we had built very carefully. At every pause
there was the danger that a sudden flurry of hand-flapping would
break out! We imagined ourselves creating useful gardens of
behavior, with smooth utilitarian grass surrounded by useful
vegetables, lovely flowers, and ultimately shrubs and trees.
Instead after every small planting we would be faced with
dandelions—these self stimulatory movements that seemed lacking in
purpose and didn’t fit with our plans for the garden.
Nothing we did seemed to help, and we kept finding ourselves faced
with the reality that our students flapped thousands more times than
they read, or wrote, or even did the vocational component movements
that we had hoped to grow.
So We Did Something Different
We began to look at these movements for their potential value as
vocational building blocks rather than as “bad” movements.
Even these “self-stim” movements were far below the frequencies that
our teachers could attain. Quite often they were in the range
from 50-100% of the lowest teacher performance. While these
movements may have been somewhat deficient, they were the best
practiced and most fluent of these individual’s performances.
As a result they were the most probable and developed movements in
their repertoires. So that was why they kept appearing. It was
natural and right for them to do so!
The Big Six+
Eric Haughton had told us to set high performance standards, and
with those expectations we learned a new way to analyze a task.
This way of looking at doing a task breaks a complex operation into
the elements that compose it.
A task as simple as waxing a tabletop is composed of many
components. Here is a typical task analysis. We would use an
analysis like this as a step toward backward chaining a work task.
Polish Table
1. Reach to rag
2. Grasp rag firmly and continue to hold
3. Reach to tabletop
4. Move rag in circles with force sufficient to polish wax
5. Bend torso to stretch and cover entire surface
6. Look at table and wipe all of surface until the table is
completely polished.
7. Stand up straight and move to another table.
Eric helped us understand that we needed to
examine not just the presence of these movements but also the
fluency of each component. While some skills can be built in
chained practice, it is much more effective to build skills by
increasing the frequency of the component movements until they are
at fluent levels. When we began to approach our students this
way we rapidly achieved performances within the 100-200% performance
level. This level Eric first called “RAPS” (Retention,
Application Performance Standard) then later called REAPS
(Retention, Endurance, Application Performance Standard).
Recently Giordana Malabello has added Adduction to the list and
coined the term AREAS for Adduction, Retention, Endurance,
Application Standards.
These acronyms all indicate the key feature of building up elements
of movement prior to teaching complex chains of behavior.
Fluent elements will enable a learner to retain (keep available for
use for a long time), endure (work for extended periods of time),
apply (use their skills at fluent levels in a variety of
situations).
Building fluent components provides a foundation for all other
learning. Without this platform, most individuals will never
be able to achieve world-class performances.
As a result of our use of these standards our Amego students
impressed WORK, Inc. executives since, despite their more severe
disabilities, they consistently outperformed WORK Inc. clients.
My work as a consultant at WORK and CP&S stemmed from the high
productivity of our Amego students.
The Trunk of the Tree
The Big Six are of importance as fundamentals to any learning we do
that uses our bodies. They are the “trunk” of the tree,
critical to the support of all other behavior that the individual
can do. If a learner cannot perform fluently on one or more of
these elements than that individual must have a curriculum that will
build these skills. Poor performance in any of the Big Six
elements will inhibit all the skills that branch from that element.
Learners who are struggling in the classroom or in vocational
training are frequently suffering from deficiencies in these
movements. These deficiencies in turn create problems in
learning to read, to write, to pay attention to a teacher.
While our focus here is on vocational performances, these movements
are just as fundamental to all other learning. You must see
the tree—the high expectations that you provide—as you plan your
vocational curriculum!
Building World Class Skills
Consolidated Products and Services
is a medical device manufacturer located in Randolph, Massachusetts.
The company was initially sponsored by WORK, Inc., a rehabilitation
center. The long term goal was that CP&S would bring in money
that would support the efforts of the parent organization, thus
keeping the fees for service that the Rehabilitation Center charged
as low as possible. The strategy at WORK, Inc. was always to
make the costs per client as inexpensive as possible so that the
center could constantly be growing larger. Eventually the
difference in their overall missions led to a separation of the two
organizations. CP&S presently employs seventy-five people in
manufacturing operations. In the early 1980’s we were very
happy when we manufactured a million ice packs in one year for the
first time. It was a huge milestone when we got to 10,000
icepacks per day. CP&S presently manufactures over 10 million
icepacks each year.
CP&S has been shipping internationally since 1988, making products
for major medical labels throughout the world. The employees
are paid full salaries and benefits. They must produce
effectively to sustain those salaries and benefits. If you
walk into the manufacturing environment you will be immediately
struck by the quality and productivity of the work that is being
performed. Few visitors notice that these highly skilled
machine operators are in fact severely handicapped.
World-class athletes base their performance on world-class
frequencies in Big Six movements. Each of these movement
components must be at the absolute top of the possible spectrum of
skill to enable a world-class athlete to compete successfully.
World-class vocational performances rest on the same
movements that athletes depend upon. Professional staff
setting the expectation level for a vocational training environment
must aim high. The most important expectation is that each
student can perform all of these elements at fluent levels.
Practice strategies for the Big Six are the most effective
technique to assure vocational skill in larger movements and complex
discriminations.
General Practice Strategies
1. Remember Elizabeth Haughton’s Happy Learner: 80% of student
effort should be independent practice! At the same time
that we were learning about the Big Six and component movements,
Elizabeth showed us a simple “happy face” pie chart. Most of
the face was practice. The proportions were something like
this: 8% instruction, 10% measurement and 2% “testing” in the
sense of standardized testing. The lesson was clear to us.
Hovering over our students—providing too rich a teaching
environment—was holding them back. What we learned to do
instead was to find materials and situations in which they could
practice independently thousands of times per day. This
practice became the foundation for the most powerful learning.
2. Make measuring easy and part of the task, for example use:
- Pre-counted materials.
- Grids to make counting simple and quick.
- Counters that register each time the target
movement is made.
- A weighing scale to count parts.
- A ruler to count paper (i.e. 1 inch = 200
sheets).
Student efforts to reset tasks: disassembly
should be part of the training activity for the next group.
(Do not break hearts by having students put together, then take
apart an assembly, but do not give the teachers all the work).
3. Have thousands of pieces of materials! Never let scarcity or an
overly complex task reduce the number of practice opportunities
available to your learners.
4. Plan a measurement and charting strategy from the beginning.
The chart will tell you if what you are doing is correct. Start at
the beginning so that you don’t find yourself wasting important time
going in the wrong direction.
5. Use the “fluent chaining” approach to teach tasks. Whether you
use frontward or backward chaining, build the skill at REAPS level
so that the student is accustomed to performing at fluent levels.
Add the other elements of the chain and constantly insist upon
fluent performance before increasing complexity.
6. Never say “this learner can’t.” let me repeat that one. NEVER SAY
“THIS LEARNER CAN’T.” You must set high standards and give each
learner the opportunity to develop as fully as possible.
7. Flat lines are death. “He not busy being born is busy dying.”
8. Use the chart to steer you toward increasing skills.
Reach (Wave)
Reach is the movement that we make when we simply extend our arm.
A “reach cycle” is a reach and return. You can see some truly
fluent reaches done by athletes, but only in warm-ups will you see
them performed in isolation. Probably the best “reachers” are
professional baseball, football and volleyball players, who build
great strength and speed in their reach movements.
Aerobics shows frequently demonstrate Big Six movements in
isolation, and reaches are among the most frequently demonstrated.
Reach is the basic positioning movement for your hands; if you
cannot reach, you will be unable to do much else with your hands and
arms. This is the very first of the Big Six movements.
When you look at “The Karate Kid” you will see the emphasis on
development of powerful reach component movements through car
polishing. The ultimate usefulness of these thousands of
practice movements is demonstrated by the immediate delivery of a
karate block when needed.
Similarly the ultimate usefulness of vocational practice in Big Six
movements is demonstrated by enduring mastery of vocational
performance.
Ideas and Materials for Practice; both hands are important!
- Lever with spring and mechanical counter.
- Rub a desktop or wall.
- “Wax on, wax off” (as seen in Karate Kid).
- Imitation of reach movements (at high
performance speeds!).
- Physical guidance (at high performance
speeds!).
- Bicycle pump.
- Karate “jab” movements.
- Boxing movements.
- Shaking maracas.
- Aerobics arm movement.
Touch (Tap)
Touch is the end of a reach movement. It
involves reaching to a point in space—and the point could be
anywhere, since this is a big movement. Touch also involves an
input, though we won’t worry about that too much right now.
Touch is touching a wall, a table, a window—it is “completing” a
reach by touching a specific place.
World Class athletes are also “Touch” champions. You “touch” a
volleyball or a baseball into your glove. This skill underlies
much of everyday behavior. A touch is a part of opening a
door, eating a sandwich, writing a letter, and so on.
Naturally it is more difficult to “touch” a moving object than a
still one. Nevertheless the skills are very similar, and it is
worth beginning with still objects, speeding up the hand movements
until it is possible for the learner to touch moving objects, such
as a balloon, a tethered ball, etc.
Ideas and Materials for Practice; both hands are important!
- Touch targets on a table or wall.
- Touch buttons that will count and make a sound.
- Imitate and touch teacher’s hand.
- Touch balloons, then light balls or foam
materials.
- A sequence of numbers on a wall or desktop.
- Certain colors or shapes.
- Bang on a drum or other noisemaker.
- Bells or other noise makers.
- Tethered balls (like a punching bag!) or other
springy target.
Point (Aim)
Point is a more selective movement. It involves again using a
sensory input to direct our finger(s) to a particular target.
I might point at a letter or a number on a page, or point to a
particular visual element of a picture or other visual display.
We point to a button or a key on a keyboard. Like the other
Big Six elements, point is especially important to young children as
they learn about the world. You will often see young children
practicing their Big Six movements in isolation, and point is a
particular favorite.
Fluent pointing is a key element in academic skills, as pointing
helps new learners to select the proper part of a page or screen.
Ideas and Materials for Practice; both hands are important!
- Point repeatedly to one visual stimulus or
object.
- Tap a counter.
- Hit a key on a keyboard.
- Tap a light-switch or counter.
- Point to a series of numbers (in order) or
objects.
- Use imitation to establish the chain, then
build fluency.
- Point to a particular object on a screen.
- Point to a particular class (“point to all the
boys”).
Grasp (Squeeze)
Grasp is the movement of clenching your hand.
Grasp and Release can be described as a single element. When
Eric Haughton first formulated the Big Six he decided that though
they are two parts of the same movement they were so important that
they must be described and practiced separately. Practicing
grasp and release separately does not seem practical in most
situations, though a spring could be used to bring the hand back to
position and allow grasps or releases in isolation.
Grasp is at the base of all use of our hands. Fluent use of
this element is especially critical for world class ball playing
athletes in any sport that requires hand use. Athletes often
develop this skill through squeezing a rubber ball or a hand spring.
All of our human ability to manipulate items in the world rests upon
our ability to use our hands to grasp. Surprisingly the
autistic students we served at Amego were quite deficient in this
area, a finding we never expected since they appeared to have the
ability to grasp rapidly. Only when we began to examine these
movements in isolation did we discover how deficient our students
were in this skill.
Ideas and Materials for Practice; both hands are important!
- Squeeze a rubber ball.
- Squeeze a hand spring.
- Clench and release empty hand.
- Squeeze counter lever or switch.
- Squeeze trigger on Windex bottle.
- Squeeze “the alien” toy with popout antenna and
eyes.
Release
Release is the other half of grasp. The
movement is simply opening the hand so that whatever is held there
can be dropped. Although different topographies, grasp and
release are the same movement cycle. People with disabilities
are often more fluent with one of these movements than the other.
Quite often there is a long latency to one of these movements, as
one set of muscles or the other is undeveloped. When planning
to teach better use of the hand there are methods for providing
resistance to hand movements in both directions, but most of the
materials we can easily use strengthen grasp rather release.
Ideas and Materials for Practice; both hands are important!
- Squeeze hand in and have student push out.
- Squeeze/release nerf ball or other rubber ball.
- Open empty hand in response to cue.
- With hand on flat surface, raise fingers up.
Place (Get)
This element is a “carry” element. Grasp an item and move it to a
particular point. Putting a fork on a plate, or a plate on a
table are everyday examples of these elements. In a certain
way place is a composite of other Big Six elements.
Place didn’t last into the later formulations. However doing
most vocational work depends upon "placing" items during the work
cycle. In the videotape you will see many different “place”
examples.
Strictly speaking “place” is a composite behavior, not an element.
However it is the easiest of the “Big Six” to practice. Your
materials should be self-counting if possible and provide for
hundreds of practice opportunities. Since it is a composite
behavior made up of several different elements it has the advantage
of providing more rest for each muscle group.
Ideas and Materials for Practice; both hands are important (AND
in place, two hands working together are important):
- Marbles from a bowl into a container.
- Tennis balls into a barrel.
- Nuts or bolts into a coffee can.
- Deal playing cards.
- Move boxes from one stack to another.
- Stack objects.
- Empty a container piece by piece.
Jim Pollard on the Big Six (Slightly
Abridged)
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 15:05:28 EDT
Reply-To: SClistserv@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Subject: In case it helps someone...
X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 16-bit for Windows sub 38
...here's how I conceptualize it with seeds planted by Brother Eric,
shaping courtesy lots of folks with retardation, perceptual
problems, autism and Huntington's Disease, kids and adults, as we
worked together on teaching, recapturing or holding onto self-care
skills:
BIG SIX:
Reach............
Touch............
Point.............
Grasp...........
Place ...........
Release........
Although different topographies, grasp and release
are the same movement cycle when practiced apart from the chain.
Except in rare cases and that's another albeit esoteric story.
So BIG SIX in my mind is (my own) BIG FIVE, that is minus Release.
So:
BIG FIVE
Reach..........
Point............
Touch...........
Grasp...........
Place...........
In self-care chain skills force is a very
important dimension of movement, often the essential one for
critical effect, exempli gratia, …”using toilet paper." So I
take THE BIG FIVE and add more force, so...
Reach when repeated, with more force, becomes
PUSH/PULL
Point stays the same or is simply renamed AIM
Touch, with more force, becomes TAP
Grasp, with more force, becomes SQUEEZE
Place, with more force, becomes RUB
It's true these names were conceived, revised,
reconceptualized, tweaked, etc.perpetually by Eric. I had
maybe 5 or 6 phone conversations with Eric and they were all
regarding this element topic. […] The only thing that's
quintessential is the conceptualization of chain (remember I'm
talking self-care here) skills as elements. Eric once
rhetorically asked me, "Before the discovery of elements, what did
we have?" With devilish relish of the thought, he exclaimed,
"Alchemy!!" He looked like a damn wizard with his goatee!
For what it's worth...
—Jim Pollard
Amego Task List For Assessment and Practice
Center
Kevin Solsten and Richard McManus, 1979
- Operate pencil sharpener (we mounted this on a
board so we could alternate hands by turning the board upside
down)
- Turn doorknob
- Twist wooden handle
- Put large screws into nuts and tighten (Only to
finger tight!)
- Medium screws (Only to finger tight!)
- Small screws (Only to finger tight!)
- Golf tees (Push tight into pegboard holes)
- License plate fasteners (Only to finger tight!)
- Large nuts and bolts (No fixture, lose nuts and
bolts)
- Medium nuts and bolts (On press board fixture)
- Small nuts and bolts (Press board fixture)
- Large nuts and bolts (Press board fixture)
- Move eye screws to box (Using fingers)
- Move eye screws to box (Using tweezers)
- Eye screws to cribbage board (Fingers)
- Tennis balls down a tube into barrel
- Deal Playing cards (Deal from flat on table
with each hand)
- Move typing paper
- Newspapers (Grasp paper on folded edge and make
stacks)
- Scissors (Straight line cutting and curved)
- Nails in Styrofoam (Use new holes for each
trial. Push to head of nail)
- Push pins in press board (Use new holes for
each trial)
- Bicycle pump and tire
- Place clothes pins on the edge of a box
- Garden hose nozzle (Hold in palm and twist with
other hand)
- Squeeze squirt top bottle
- Squeeze handle of squirt bottle
- Pump foot pump with foot
- Staple (Move paper and have student keep
stapling)
- Tearing bags open (Tear open plastic bags)
- Heat sealing (Seal object in small poly bag)
- Reach to horn (Place stick in holes of large
fixture)
- Reach to box (Place hand inside box, move hand
the length of box hitting each end with hand. Count each
movement away from body as one reach.)
- Collating (Typing paper, five (different)
sheets per bunch)
- Cross stacking paper (Single sheets of typed
paper)
- Moving boxes (each bundle of books weighs five
pounds)
- From table to floor
- From floor to table
- From top of stairs to bottom
- From bottom of stairs to top
Composite Practices
The videotape demonstrates that composite movements can lead to
higher skill. The key is to assure that your students are in
the practice range (50% of REAPS and UP!) before allowing them to
engage in composite practice. The outstanding performances
that you see on this tape are the result of thousands of hours of
intense and supported practice, daily, constant measurement, and
positive reinforcement. Make certain that you provide those
supports to your learners when you provide practice on composite
skills.
CHECK THE BIG SIX and make sure that your students possess them at
high levels!
Another List of Elements
- Wave
- Aim
- Tap
- Squeeze
- Get
- Pump
- Rub
- Shake
- Twist
Kevin Solsten, my partner in Amego and Tools for
Change efforts came up with Twist from our experiences in looking at
critical elements for vocational skill performance. This list
of nine components was one of Eric’s later lists. I guess you
could call this the “Big Six plus Three” or the Big Five plus Four.
The name “The Big Six” somehow has seemed right and was planted very
deeply in our memories thanks to Eric’s passion about it. |
