Association for Behavior Analysis International

Polls, presidential politics, and relentlessly increasing greenhouse gas emissions expose an environmental movement that is running on 20th Century metaphors in a 21st Century world. All of the land protection in the world will do little good if 7 billion people do not move to "green behavior." By dissecting past failures, we can learn where to go in the future with how we talk about and do conservation. We need to stop overstating doom and gloom, and recognize that opportunity, not despair, motivates people. Luckily, we have the science to support a new message of a resilient earth, which can then be a foundation for leaving behind worshipping at the false temple of pristine nature.

Background: Impulsivity is a central behavioral feature of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and many other psychiatric and substance use disorders. In recent years, the multi-dimensional nature of impulsivity has been recognized with cognitive processes including risk and reward evaluation, response inhibition, and delay discounting implicated in impulsive behavior. The nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) system has long been recognized for its role in regulating attention. Understanding the role of nAChR function in impulsivity has widespread clinical implication including providing a novel pharmacological treatment target. Methods: Data from human experiments using pharmacological manipulations of nAChR function and measuring response inhibition, risk taking and delay discounting will be presented. Studies using acute pharmacological challenge in combination with fMRI will illustrate potential mechanisms for nAChR regulation of impulsivity. Results: Acute nicotine and novel nicotinic agonists improve response inhibition and delay aversion in ADHD. Nicotine and mecamylamine (a nicotinic antagonist) have rate dependent effects on risk taking regardless of diagnostic group. Both nicotine and a novel nicotinic agonist significantly decrease the cognitive and clinical symptoms of ADHD. Conclusion: Targeting nAChR function may provide a novel treatment target for ADHD and other disorders involving impulsive behavior. The use of reliable laboratory measures of different facets of impulsivity will allow for refined treatment strategies targeting precise cognitive mechanism related to impulsivity.

Both behavior analysts and ethologists are aware that observable changes in facial expressions and body postures provide invaluable information about behavior. This presentation will include slides and videos illustrating subtle changes in expression in humans and canids that are not only similar, but are often predictive of future behavior. This perspective is not new: Charles Darwin wrote an entire book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, about the predictive value and comparative similarity of emotional expression in man and selected mammals. However, recent advances in visual analysis and neurobiology have greatly advanced our understanding of the link between expression, emotion, and future behavior. This information can be used by analysts working with either species, who are interested in improving their ability to notice, evaluate, and act on subtle but observable changes in facial expressions or body postures.

Behavior analysts interested in improving their skill in interpreting facial expressions and body postures as predictors of future behavior and suggestions about internal emotional states.

Quantum behavioral change refers to sudden, distinctive, and benevolent experiences resulting in enduring changes in a broad range of emotions, cognitions and behaviors. Although the phenomenon of quantum change has been well described for more than 100 years, it has rarely been addressed within modern psychology and there are few meaningful prospective experimental studies because such experiences usually occur at low rates and often unpredictably. Recent rigorous double-blind studies at Johns Hopkins have shown that under carefully controlled conditions psilocybin, the active component of hallucinogenic mushrooms, can occasion profound personally and spiritually meaningful experiences (i.e., mystical-type or insightful-type experiences) in the majority of healthy participants. The experiences mediate sustained positive changes in behavior, attitudes, and personality. As assessed with questionnaires, most volunteers had a "complete" mystical-type experience after a high dose of psilocybin, although more than a third of volunteers also had experiences characterized by some fear, anxiety, or unpleasant psychological struggle. The finding that psilocybin can occasion, in most people studied, quantum change experiences indicates that such experiences and the behavioral changes they produce are now amenable to rigorous prospective scientific study. An exciting direction for future research is the exploration of possible therapeutic benefits of such experiences in treatment of various psychological and behavioral conditions (e.g., anxiety and depression among patients with life-threatening medical conditions such as cancer; treatment of behaviorally based public health problems such as drug dependence disorders).

Although extinction in Pavlovian learning is highly context-dependent, less research has investigated the role of context in the extinction of operant learning. This talk will fill this gap and explore a number of parallels between Pavlovian and operant extinction. Recent research has studied the "renewal" effect after operant extinction, in which extinguished responding returns when the context is changed. We have produced clear evidence of ABA, ABC, and AAB renewal (where the letters correspond to the contexts of conditioning, extinction, and testing, respectively), even when the learning history of the contexts is controlled. We also have demonstrated renewal in nondeprived rats working for sucrose or sweet/fatty food pellets--the rodent equivalent of junk food. The ABC and AAB renewal effects suggest that operant extinction is more context-dependent than operant conditioning. Other experiments have studied "resurgence," in which a behavior that is extinguished while a second is reinforced recovers when the second behavior is extinguished. Resurgence can be viewed as another renewal effect. Contextual cues have a general role in the control of operant behavior. But the extinction of operant behavior, like the extinction of respondent behavior, is especially sensitive to the context, with a number of interesting implications for understanding behavioral inhibition, lapse, and relapse.

Evidence has been increasing that drugs of abuse alter sexual motivation, arousal, and performance. Drugs use also has been linked to an increase in high risk sexual behaviors such as increased sexual activity, multiple sex partners, and unprotected sex. This presentation will review the findings of the effect of drugs of abuse on sexual motivation and performance in humans and nonhuman animals, including those from a laboratory with an avian species. In particular, the effects of commonly abused drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine will be discussed. The presentation also will include data on the effects of drugs of abuse on a risk-taking model recently developed in a laboratory. Finally, potential brain areas where drugs of abuse may be exerting their effect on sexual behavior will be discussed.