Association for Behavior Analysis International

The prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is approximately 1 in 68. In many cases, the number of individuals requiring treatment surpasses the availability of service providers, such that children must wait to receive treatment. The purpose of my study is to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a self-training program intended to teach basic reinforcement techniques to parents of children with ASD who have been placed on a waitlist. The self-training program will be available through an online Computer-Aided Personalized System of Instruction (CAPSI), and will consist of 2 modules that will include: (a) reading materials, (b) demonstration videos (c) study questions, (d) practice exercises, and (e) direct observation sessions. A multiple-baseline design across training modules will be used, with evaluations at baseline, training, post-training, and follow-up. I predict that scores from the study questions and direct observation sessions will improve from baseline to post-training, and that the improvements in study question scores will maintain at follow-up.

The purpose of this research was to provide an data-basedl method of gauging candidate progress through a teacher special education preparation program. A vocabulary assessment was created and is framed with the CBE and RtI models that have a 30-year research base. Curriculum-based measures were used in order to monitor the progress of candidates as they proceeded through the special education program. Further, the technology appears to hold promise for identifying candidates who were likely to need support; the results showed a difference in candidate acquisition of vocabulary from the beginning of the program to the end of the program. The assessments also accurately identified candidates within the program who were experiencing academic difficulty with program content.

Though the dairy industry in California is an extremely important component of the state?s agriculture, it is faced with significant financial hardships. Our preliminary study conducted in 2015 shows that dairy farmers intended to reduce cost risks and to maintain a price over cost margin. However, farmers were found lack of knowledge about risk management instruments. In this study agribusiness researchers developed an interactive online teaching course in November 2015. The course is pre-tested with 135 agribusiness college students and the discrete choice model results suggest that: 1) senior students who have previously taken an online course tend to rate low for the online learning experience. 2) Female students are found to be less likely to rank high for the online course because they feel the course required more work and more time. And 3) participating students believed the online coursework is more difficult than a face-to-face course. The revised course should focus on the development of interactive course activities; should provide additional course work help to female participants; and should propose appropriate instructive methods to better explain risk management concepts.

Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) has become a highly sought after area of interest in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis, and for good reason. The majority of behavior analysts have careers in which they make their impact on consumers through the coaching and management of others, a skill that is enhanced substantially through OBM Training. However, only 21 out of 291 BACB approved course sequences offer graduate training in OBM and even fewer offer a hands-on learning, or practicum experience. This situation is unlikely to improve, as there are few faculty positions in behavior analysis programs that call for an OBM background. This poster will review options that behavior analysts have for obtaining training in OBM. A case study of a new course at Florida Institute of Technologys online ABA program that blends distance learning with hands on experience in OBM will be featured. The potential for programs such as these to bridge the educational gap in OBM for behavior analysts will be explored.

Behavior Analysis Concepts are commonly cited in academic and scientific environments, usually under control, but there is little information on introducing basic concepts in a mid-size company with over 800 employees that attends the control of transit in a 400,000 inhabitants city (an uncontrolled environment, in this case). The trigger of the study was an accident with one of the transit agents, that turned into a strike of the formers, that showed a need to change the paradigm of simply training the agents and other staff personnel into a Behavior Oriented paradigm because of the number of variables involved, from media people, urban population to employees (agents and staff). The environment was very dynamic (many transit situations every day and the media news promoting reactions inside the company and in the relation to towns population). A series of encounters were conducted at different levels within the company to introduce Behavioral Concepts, to establish empirical correlations with the facts common to their daily work and to change behaviors from transit agents to staff. The learning evaluation was made as the company members produced real time in the company responses based on the new operants produced instead of the respondent concepts.

Supervisors must provide training and supervision that results in the accurate implementation of behavior analytic practices. The present study is designed to investigate the effects of interdependent group contingencies on the generalization of behavior analytic skills to treatment settings. A multiple baseline design will be used to evaluate the generalization of Discrete Trial Training (DTT), Natural Environment Teaching (NET), and prompting. A trained observer will observe eight staff members working in school for children with developmental disabilities. All staff members are currently pursuing Registered Behavior Technician (RBT) certification. Data will be based on the percent completion of a predetermined number of steps the participant implemented in the naturalistic environment. Interdependent group contingencies will be implemented across behaviors utilizing a 90% group average criterion for three consecutive days to access reinforcement. If the group criterion is not met for 4 consecutive days a second phase of intervention utilizing modeling and daily performance feedback daily until 90% implementation is reached for 3 consecutive days at which time fading will begin. The results from the present study can be applied to the generalization and maintenance of behavior analytic techniques in a school-based, treatment environment. Data is currently being collected.

Although time-out is a widely used term and technique in behavior analysis and in the culture at large, its origins and evolution have not been accurately or completely described. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), its origins lie in turn-of-the-20th century vernacular use such as “the suspension in play” in sports and “an imperative, calling for a break.” These are accurate. The OED’s first behavior-analytic use is “a period of enforced seclusion, or of withdrawal of a stimulus…as a means of modifying behavior,” which it attributes to Ferster (1957). This is inaccurate. Based on original research, we describe the first documented use of time-out (a) as a term and a method in basic behavior-analytic research with nonhumans (e.g., to reduce schedule interactions; see Ferster, 1954), (b) as an aversive stimulus in basic research with nonhumans (see Herrnstein, 1955), (c) as an aversive stimulus in basic research with humans (see Baer, 1960), and (d) as a term and an intervention in applied behavior analysis (see Wolf, Risley, & Mees, 1964). After describing time-out’s origins and evolution, we address alternative claims (e.g., Staats’s use of the term and the intervention in childrearing) and priority claims in general.

Child raising practices adoption based on empirical evidence to community places promise antisocial behavior prevention in Mexico. The goal of the study was to describe the relationship between implementation level of the child raising practices promoted by psychologist in community settings and the parental behavior and reports of their behavior and their children in public health institutions. We worked with 18 psychologists with a 32 years old mean that worked too with 128 parents from 8 Mexican republic entities. We used psychometrical instruments for the parental and children behaviors reports and a direct observational system for the children raising practices implementation assessment (categories: identifying, correction, interaction and stimulus control). The study consisted in three phases: activities programming in Moodle platform, Distance psychologist training on child raising practices, and implementation phase. A factorial design of two (before and after assessment) per two (low and high implementation) was used. The results suggest parental behaviors changing in function of higher implementation of the child raising practices are praising, social interaction and instructions following. Higher implementation also was associated with less punisher reporting, more ignoring technique, problems solving, rules establishment and academic social interaction reporting.