Prof. Alvin Ng, DPsych, FMASO is Deputy Dean (International) at School of Medical and Life Sciences, Sunway University, Malaysia, where he is also a Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology. He currently leads the Master of Applied Behaviour Analysis programme there. Alvin's research interests include mental health literacy, psychosocial interventions for caregivers of people with dementia, resilience training in adolescents and behavioural fluency in education. Alvin was instrumental in setting up the Malaysian Society of Clinical Psychology in 2010 where he was the Founding President. He was also the Secretary of the Asian Cognitive Behavioral Therapies Association. While no longer in clinical practice, he is very active in promoting mental health literacy in the community and supporting the development of clinical psychology in Malaysia. Alvin was recently at University of Oxford as the Jeffrey Cheah Scholar in Residence at Brasenose College from early September until early October 2024.
International Conference on Gerontechnology 2024
Collaborating for the Future of Gerontechnology
Speakers
Department of Psychology
Behavioural Fluency: Considerations for Applications in Geriatric Care Training and Practice
Fluency is usually ascribed to spoken language. What about other behaviours? This talk introduces the concept of behavioural fluency, a subset of applied behaviour analysis (ABA). It is an approach to achieving mastery over a measurable skill by short bursts of speeded repetition training of component skills focused on accuracy that would contribute towards the improvement of a composite skill. It is guided by precision teaching where target behaviours are explicit and feedback on performance is immediate. As a low-cost method, it has been found to be very effective in improving human performance in various settings including sports, education, administrative processes and even the training of healthcare professionals. Behavioural fluency applied to geriatric care typically includes occupational therapy and social prescription activities. It is also used in the training of health care professionals to improve in theoretical and clinical competencies. In this lecture, Dr Alvin Ng will demonstrate what behavioural fluency is and how it is applied using the precision teaching method. He will then discuss how fluency-building of skills applies to the geriatric health care setting, particularly for both health care professionals and services users to improve skill mastery and performances in daily tasks and activities.
