Association for Behavior Analysis International

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Discussion of Behavior Analyst certification Board's International Development. Participants will receive information on international certification progress and challenges. The group will identify barriers to International certification, including equating coursework, and discuss possible solutions.

Increasingly, distance learning technology is opening university (and other) doors to a much larger audience. With a modern computer and an internet connection, employees, parents, indeed anyone who has limited access to, or interest in, traditional campus-based options, can conveniently participate in an increasing range of coursework. As teachers of behavior analysis, we can now reach a greatly expanded demographic base. Such is the case with Behavioral Intervention in Autism (BIA), a four-course distance learning curriculum designed to reach and educate a large number of parents and personnel in the application of behavioral intervention with children with autism. A large team of behavior analysts have collaborated to develop and evaluate this curriculum, with generous support from autism and instructional design experts outside of our team. In this tutorial, I have the pleasure of sharing our work on BIA as the illustrative case in support of two purposes: 1) to describe and present data on how distance learning can be used with professional integrity to educate a greatly expanded number of parents and personnel seeking to master behavioral intervention, and 2) to illustrate how behavior analytic instructional pedagogy can be meshed with current and emerging technologies to produce highly effective distance learning courses.

Salient social experiences trigger immediate early gene expression or suppression that are large, long lasting, and critical to the fundamental processes of neuroadaptation. These biologically significant stressors activate cells in the endogenous aminergic and peptidergic systems leading to sensitization as well as tolerance. We examine the hypothesis that this cascade of cellular events is the basis for neural dysregulation leading to out-of-control drug taking. Social stress engenders profound analgesia. The pharmacological tolerance to stress-induced analgesia appears to be based on a pattern of genes expressing specific opioid peptides and their receptors. Social stress also induces sensitization as expressed by an augmented response to psychomotor stimulants, and by inhibited zif268 expression in prefrontal cortical cells and increased zif268 expression in amygdaloid cells. One consequence of stress-induced sensitization is dysregulated cocaine binges. The delayed large increases in alcohol consumption in mice mutants lacking the CRH1 receptor gene highlight the enduring impact of salient experiences in gene expression and in heightened alcohol drinking. Our ongoing work on the neural circuits for social stress and intensely rewarding activities such as compulsive cocaine administration points to considerable overlap between them, and identifies targets for pharmacotherapeutic intervention in stress disorders and drug abuse.

Does the name of this special interest group The Experimental Analysis of Human Behavior, imply that those who analyze the behavior of human animals must organize themselves apart from those who analyze the behavior of nonhuman animals? Is the use of nonhumans in experiments really not relevant to the analysis of the behavior of humans? If so, then something must have changed. Many differences exist, of course, between the behavior of humans and nonhumans humans, for example, cannot fly under their own power but have we really isolated differences in principle, differences that require separate organizations for the study of each? I will try to indicate why I believe this is a serious concern, where the concern comes from, and what, perhaps, might be done to maintain what was once a flourishing bi-directional relation between research with humans and nonhumans, in both basic and applied research.

The purpose of this presentation is to describe how systems of behavior support can be established and maintained at the school, district, and state levels. The steps, resources, and content of efforts to build local behavior support capacity and systems will be described. Examples of activities and structures that support efforts related to action planning, team leadership coordination, coaching and facilitation, training capacity, and evaluation also will be described.

The purpose of this presentation is to address issues and present data that are relevant to Pivotal Response Treatment and Positive Behavioral Support Interventions for children with autism and their families. Topics will include a discussion of the identification of specific prognostic indicators associated with highly favorable outcomes following intervention; and a discussion of procedures used to conduct interventions in key pivotal areas that can change a previously poor prognosis to a favorable prognosis. The relevance of each of these topic areas will be discussed within the context of behavioral teaching strategies in the developing trend in comprehensive interventions for children with autism.

In the 1980s, Skinner spoke several times on Why we are not acting to save the world. He suggested that the lack of action resulted from the fact that behavior cannot be controlled by future events, and that advice or warnings about the future may not be heeded unless the source is highly reliable and the predicted events are imminent. The problem is related to self-control. For example, the immediate and certain economic advantages of resource exploitation for a few outweigh its apparently remote, uncertain and distributed ecological consequences. Another reason for inaction is the inertia of affluence (McKibben, The End of Nature). Research has shown repeatedly that behavior is more resistant to change in situations with high overall reinforcer rates, regardless of whether all reinforcers are contingent on the target behavior. Thus, in the affluent society of the US, behavioral patterns will be highly persistent even when they are counterproductive in the long run. Potent disrupters are needed to alter behavior in a reinforcer-rich environment. I will consider the disruptive effects of 9/11 on some behavioral patterns that, if unchanged, may bring humankind to a premature end.

Although interest and concern with the behavioral effects of drugs can be traced back some 25 centuries to Homers 500 BC reference in The Odyssey to the effects of alcohol and opium, the emergence of behavioral pharmacology as a scientific discipline has very much paralleled the basic and applied development of behavior analysis over the past half century. The best way to track the development of a scientific field is through the academic research centers that are the source of its trained professionals and it is in this important regard that both the methodological and substantive contributions of B. F. Skinner are most noteworthy. There were of course a number of seminal events as well as somewhat fortuitous circumstances that shaped the discipline in strange and wonderful ways, but the influence of substance abuse with its myriad basic and applied permutations cannot be underestimated. The generous support provided of late for both drug abuse research and treatment has greatly enhanced the opportunities for advancing both experimental and applied behavior analysis. As in all of our behavior analytic endeavors however, the field of behavioral pharmacology faces its greatest challenges in the transition from the controlled confines of the experimental laboratory to an endemic substance abuse natural ecology.

Existing medical treatments for many diseases are ineffective. Yet physicians persist in using the best available treatments even when they are known to be essentially worthless and cause considerable harm. Behavior analysis and clinical medicine have many similarities in terms of features of their data but differ markedly in their concepts of evidence. Adoption of behavior analytic concepts facilitate the problem solving needed to maximize clinical outcomes.

The panel will include information and advice on making the transition from graduate school to career. Sara C. Ernsbarger will discuss her experiences as a new faculty member, and how graduate school prepared her for a job in higher education. Julie Schepis will discuss her experiences working in an applied setting, and how graduate school prepared her. Both participants will discuss the job search process and how they chose their respective positions.

Chiding from the local Chamber about doing relevant research shamed Chris into taking on an all Afro-American 6th grade class (Pearley School) described as out of control as a first venture into applied behavior analysis. The presentation describes his unexpected success and how it led to escalating involvement in over 400 business/organizational OBM projects (some more complete than others), a graduate program, some really intricate OBM doctoral applications, and collaboration with truly talented student-researchers. Now, some 35 y later, OBM may be faced with a so-called paradigm shift. Some of Chriss final reflections on this shift will be presented.

Features of development create special circumstances in which aspects of learning are both constrained and given systematic attributes which in turn influence subsequent development. It will be argued that the paucity of sensory input, i.e., the sequential onset of the senses and their relatively limited sensitivity, prevents young organisms from experiencing James buzzing booming confusion and simplifies the task of selective learning. It is proposed that early features of learning provide a scaffolding for subsequent learning. The purpose will be instantiated by examining the manner in which fetal exposure to maternal speech influences hemispheric specialization and subsequent processing of facial information, contributing to the separation of analytic and holistic modes of information processing in the two hemispheres. Suggestive data on the way in which fetal learning of taste preferences by rats come to influence preferences for novel and familiar experiences will also be presented. In addition preliminary data from rabbits that suggests that priming by learning in an early developing system facilitates, or indeed enables, learning in a later developing system will be presented. The foregoing represents an extension of T. C. Schneirlas genuinely interactive position which avoids the largely sterile issue of nature vs. nurture by placing learning and the role of experience in a biological and ecological framework.

While behavior analysis often lays claim to being the science of behavior, and rationalizes this claim by pointing to its singular accomplishments in applied enterprises, behavior analysis occupies an unheralded position among other fields that not only make the same claim, but glean substantially more of societys material and intellectual resources for research, and wield more powerful influence over its cultural landscape. Little scientific progress resulted from the so-called cognitive revolution, and following the Decade of the Brain, organic approaches (with cognitive science tagging along beside) have ascended to favored positions among the behavioral sciences The present paper argues that, in this, the fourth year of the Decade of Behavior and the hundredth anniversary of Skinners birth, behavior analysis can provide a unifying and coherent paradigm for a comprehensive theory of behavior that includes exciting new findings from a range of other disciplines. It calls for more thorough education of behavior analysts in areas like evolutionary neurobiology and ethology, concerted efforts to forge collaborative alliances with researchers and intellectuals in these other fields, and an attempt to frame our knowledge of behavioral relations in a vocabulary that acknowledges and embraces important contributions made by other areas.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990) has been among the most eminent, prolific, and widely cited figures in modern psychology. Throughout the course of his distinguished career (1930-1990), he has also been the recipient of numerous awards and honors from various associations (e.g., American Educational Research Association), societies (e.g., Pavlovian Society of North America), and colleges and universities (e.g., Hamilton College). Among his many distinctions, he has been recognized for his (a) experimental (e.g., Howard Crosby Warren Medal, 1942), (b) applied (e.g., National Association for Retarded Citizens first annual award, 1978), and (c) conceptual (e.g., Humanist of the Year award, American Humanist Society, 1972) contributions; both nationally (e.g., National Medal of Science, 1968) and internationally (e.g., International Award of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation for Mental Retardation, 1971), within psychology (e.g., American Psychology Association, Citation for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology, 1990) and within the general sciences (e.g., President's Award, New York Academy of Science, 1985). In this paper, we (a) examine and discuss the nature of these and other awards and honors bestowed on Skinner as we (b) compare and contrast them to the categories and content areas of his works and contributions. Our aim is to better understand of the nature of Skinners work, and the behavior of scientists more generally. Such an understanding may contribute to a descriptive, empirical science of science consistent with Skinners empirical epistemology.

As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of B.F. Skinners birth, it is useful to consider his legacy not only for the field of behavior analysis, but for society at large. In this presentation, I examine several important intersections between B.F. Skinners work and the society in which it was embedded, using popular press material as a lens through which to magnify and explore these intersections. Specifically, I present results from a comprehensive analysis of material from newspapers, popular magazines, and books about Skinner and/or behavior analysis from the 1930s to the 1990s. I examine his impact on the popular topics of parenting, education, and self-help. I argue that the emergence and development of behavior analytic expertise influenced both personal and collective experience in ways construed as both positive and negative. Moreover, the development of a scientifically legitimated set of behavior change practices gave the public a new language with which to discuss, debate, and challenge practices that had, in some cases, existed informally for some time. In turn, this public discourse affected the very practices and practitioners themselves, solidifying the professional identity of behavior analysts and setting behavior analysis apart from other behavioral approaches.

B. F. Skinner is often credited as being the inventor of the cumulative recorder. While it is clear that Skinner was central to popularizing cumulative recording as a method of depicting response rates and developing some of the technology eventually incorporated in the commerical cumulative recorders, he was anticipated in some of his designs by late 19th- and early 20th century animal researchers. This paper will describe some pre-Skinnerian cumulative recorders and show published cumulative records from the early 1900s.