Francesca Degli Espinosa
Like many in the field of ABA, Francesca’s verbal behaviour about behaviour analysis was initially largely shaped by a young child with autism who had very few words. She defines her career as the product of a series of fortunate events that eventually lead to being the lead clinician for the first UK-based EIBI outcome study and to a PhD in Psychology under the supervision of Prof. Bob Remington, at the University of Southampton, UK.
Francesca’s current academic pursuit is the translation of cognitive and developmental descriptions of key processes in language and childhood development into an analysis of controlling variables, with the aim of deriving a technology to remediate deficits in children with autism. Her clinical and research work with humans focuses on early social responding, generative verbal behaviour and theory of mind. She was the 2023 recipient of the “Clinical Supervisor Award in Verbal Behavior” from the VB Special Interest Group of ABAI. Presently, she runs a small diagnostic and assessment clinic in the UK, and has taught advanced behaviour analysis in a number of postgraduate programmes in Italy, the UK and the US. She is a past board member of the B.F. Skinner Foundation. She lives in Southampton, UK, with her husband and her two dogs, who daily challenge her knowledge and skills and have taught her to be a better behaviour analyst for the humans she serves.
Presentation at the ABA International Conference 2025
Contacting leads to knowing: A verbal behaviour analysis of Theory of Mind
Abstract:
Theory of Mind is typically used as an umbrella term to refer to, but also to interpret, a collection of responses that involve humans’ ability to explain and predict others’ behaviour based on an understanding of others’ mental states, such as beliefs and desires. Not only is the construct of Theory of Mind universally accepted in the field of psychology, but it has also come to represent a theoretical system from which to explain additional social and cognitive processes in both typical and atypical children and adults, with false-belief tasks becoming its litmus test. Challenging the basic premise that mental states cause behaviour, I will firstly deconstruct false-belief tasks into their individual verbal components. Secondly, I will attempt to answer the question of what it is that we as humans do when we engage in the complex verbal behaviour regarding another person’s behaviour through an analysis of its component controlling repertoires. Rooted in early social responding, I will thirdly provide an account of its development from infancy to early childhood and show how an applied technology can further and validate both a conceptual and experimental analysis of the subject matter.