Association for Behavior Analysis International

Please join us for opening remarks with conference co-chair, Dr. Terry Falcomata. 

What if the key to unlocking a child’s potential wasn’t held by a single expert, but by the powerful alliance of two? At the Centro Ann Sullivan del Perú (CASP), we call this transformative partnership “The Power of Two”—a model where families and professionals are trained to work together as equal partners in a child’s education. With 46 years of experience, CASP has developed a family-centered approach that delivers lasting results. Each family receives between 64 and 102 hours of training annually, including large-group sessions, small-group practices, and in-home guidance. They are supported with a personalized, Parent Individual Educational Plan (IEP), helping them reinforce skills at home, school, and in the community. With a 93% annual participation rate in the School of Families, these families become empowered leaders—not only for their own children but also as trainers of other families across Peru and internationally. As a result, individuals with autism are working in real jobs and contributing economically to their families. This session will share practical strategies, measurable outcomes, and inspiring stories that demonstrate how “The Power of Two” is building a sustainable, replicable model of inclusive education across Latin America and beyond.

This session is intended for professionals, caregivers, and advocates involved in autism services who are interested in family-centered models of care. Behavior analysts, psychologists, educators, administrators, and service providers working in clinical, educational, or community settings will benefit from learning about practical strategies to strengthen family-professional partnerships. This presentation is also valuable for those working in global or cross-cultural contexts, or those seeking replicable, sustainable approaches to inclusive education and community integration for individuals with autism.

Clinical practice in autism largely depends on clinical assessments and caregiver report measures, both of which can be highly subjective. Quantitative behavior analytic approaches may also be limited by human perception and the contextual presence or absence of behaviors. The development of objective and sensitive assays to measure the social and communicative characteristics of autism presents a significant opportunity to improve clinical practice. These measures have the potential to complement existing approaches by providing information that is not readily observable. Dr. McPartland will discuss a research program focused on the development of brain-based indicators of function—biomarkers—in autism. Biomarkers offer promise in key areas such as predicting intervention responses, assessing treatment outcomes, and categorizing the diverse autistic population into more homogeneous subgroups. For over a decade, the Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials has been rigorously evaluating potential biomarkers and engaging with the FDA for their qualification. This lecture will summarize the progress made in biomarker development and highlight its potential to advance the field of behavior analysis.

This session is designed for behavior analysts, autism researchers, and clinicians who are interested in expanding their understanding of how biomarkers can enhance assessment and intervention in autism. It will also be valuable for psychologists, educators, and allied health professionals seeking to integrate objective measures with existing behavioral approaches. Attendees who are curious about interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly the intersection of neuroscience, clinical research, and applied behavior analysis, will find this presentation especially relevant. The talk is accessible to practitioners with a range of backgrounds and is appropriate for both researchers and service providers who aim to improve the precision, effectiveness, and long-term impact of their work with autistic individuals.

Complimentary coffee will be available in Central Park East & West. 

In the first few years of working with children and adults with severe, complex, and multiple disabilities [1966-1968], it became apparent to me through the guidance of three teachers — Lou Brown, Hazel Turk, and Paul Retish [to whom I am grateful beyond description] — that specific, functional skills were necessary to result in a significantly improved quality of life for these children and adults, and that, for all practical purposes, when I was with these children and adults, I was ‘home’, which to this very day, is where I’ve always wanted to be.

The instruction of these children and adults should always include functional skills of everyday living, including… (1) motor skills that permit children and adults to complete tasks of recreation and everyday living (2) an effective and efficient method of functioning as a speaker, which may include spoken words, signs, or gestures, (3) an effective repertoire of speaking skills, (4) an effective and efficient repertoire of listening skills, (5) a useful repertoire of daily living skills, (6) a repertoire of tolerating skills, (7) a repertoire of imitation skills, and (8) a repertoire of safety skills.

This instruction should also be guided by four incredible teachers: B. F. Skinner and Jack Michael [and their analysis of verbal behavior], and Ogden Lindsley and Eric Haughton [and their development of standard measurement and the Standard Celeration Chart].

This session is intended for behavior analysts, special educators, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and other professionals who support children and adults with severe and complex disabilities. It may also be of interest to licensed psychologists, supervisors, program developers, and graduate students focused on functional skill development, verbal behavior, and improving quality of life across educational, residential, and community-based settings.

Join us for lunch in the Lenox Ballroom. 

Within the field of behavior analysis, there are distinct terms to describe a host of teaching strategies. One set of strategies is associated with shaping, while many others involve various types of prompts and related strategies to remove those prompts. Some strategies involving prompts describe features that can be faded while other strategies involve changes within a variety of prompt hierarchies. This talk suggests a way of discussing prompts to help minimize the current level of confusion within the field regarding this topic. Another subset of teaching strategies is described as errorless, varying between changes in stimulus features, response features, or temporal features. Other strategies involve modifications of various reinforcement contingencies and schedules of reinforcement. The goal of this presentation is to suggest that what these, and many other teaching strategies, have in common can be identified as gradualism. Gradualism involves systematically making small changes to a feature of the teaching process in a manner that accumulates over time and opportunities, resulting in substantial skill acquisition.

This session is designed for behavior analysts, psychologists, educators, and practitioners who design or implement teaching programs in applied or research settings. It will be particularly valuable for professionals and graduate students who want to deepen their conceptual understanding of shaping, prompting, fading, and errorless learning strategies, and to explore a unifying framework that simplifies and clarifies these approaches. Supervisors, instructors, and researchers interested in advancing both the precision and coherence of teaching practices will also benefit.

Culturally responsive practices focus on the need to adapt behavioral interventions to the individual cultural and contextual variables of each consumer. Unfortunately, many individuals with autism are unable to access any form of behavior-analytic services in their community. A reason often cited for the inability to access supports in their community is the limited, and often lacking, availability of qualified behavior analytic service providers. Yet these same individuals with autism live in communities surrounded by caregivers and teachers who interact with them daily. By working collaboratively with caregivers and teachers, it may be possible to provide supports to scaffold learning and promote inclusive environments for individuals with autism. Importantly, such an approach allows for stakeholder involvement, which is the bedrock of culturally responsive practice. This talk will describe approaches to engage caregivers and teachers in a culturally responsive manner to support the learning and skill acquisition of individuals with autism across settings.

This session is intended for behavior analysts, psychologists, educators, caregivers, and other professionals involved in supporting individuals with autism. It will be especially relevant to those interested in culturally responsive practices, inclusive education, and community-based collaboration. The session is also suited for professionals working in settings with limited access to behavior-analytic services who are seeking practical strategies for engaging caregivers and teachers to support learning across environments.

A brief break in sessions. 

Telehealth as a service delivery model in behavior analysis is no longer a question of “can we” but a question of “under which conditions”. For example, the effective use of telehealth in behavior analysis has shown continued growth across behavior analytic subspecialities (e.g., challenging behavior, skill acquisition, feeding, sleep concerns), resulting in increased opportunities to interact and connect with individuals and their caregivers on socially significant concerns in their natural environments. However, many demonstrations continue to focus on younger children, and many of the published demonstrations continue to be rooted in research rather than practice. Thus, there is a need to continue exploring the conditions under which telehealth is best used clinically to ensure all individuals in need of our behavioral services have access to them. This presentation will first highlight the applications of telehealth along with their benefits and limitations. Then, using the assessment and treatment of challenging behavior as the example, the conditions under which telehealth shifts easily (or not) from research to practice will be explored, as well as recommendations for bridging the research to practice gap.

Behavior analysts, clinicians, and psychologists interested in or currently providing services via telehealth, particularly those working with individuals with autism and related needs. This session is especially relevant for BCBAs, BCaBAs, and other professionals seeking to expand their understanding of the clinical applications, benefits, and limitations of telehealth and how to bridge research and practice in behavior analysis.

Function-based treatments (e.g., functional communication training) have strong empirical support. However, applied research on treatment relapse has shown that initially impressive treatment effects are prone to deterioration under a range of challenging conditions (e.g., change in treatment context, worsening in reinforcement conditions), highlighting concerning susceptibilities to relapse for some of our most common treatment approaches in applied behavior analysis. These insights have fueled bidirectional research spanning the basic–applied continuum in search of practical strategies for mitigating relapse and improving long-term treatment durability and effectiveness. What we have learned over the last decade plus of work in this area has not only identified specific treatment refinements suitable for use throughout applied behavior analysis but an ever-growing sense that treatments must be intentionally and strategically challenged for behavior analysts to assess treatment durability and effectiveness. In this presentation, I provide an overview of work on this topic and share general and specific recommendations for behavior analysts working in clinical service delivery and beyond.

This session is designed for behavior analysts, psychologists, clinicians, researchers, and graduate students who are interested in strengthening the durability and long-term effectiveness of applied interventions. Attendees working in clinical service delivery, supervision, and program design will gain practical insights into how relapse research can inform treatment planning and refinement. Researchers and academics will benefit from the integration of basic and applied findings, while practitioners at all experience levels will leave with strategies to evaluate and enhance the resilience of interventions across settings.