Association for Behavior Analysis International

The extraordinary success of behavior analytic interventions for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has fueled the rapid growth of behavior analysis as a profession. One reason for this success is that for many years behavior analysts were virtually alone in conducting programmatic ASD intervention research. However, that era has ended. Many investigators from other disciplines are now carrying out large-scale intervention studies and beginning to report successes of their own. The increasing number and range of studies has the potential to improve services for individuals with ASD, and it challenges behavior analysts to intensify their research efforts.

Professionals and graduate students

Technology offers the potential to play a critical role in improving behavioral health interventions in a manner that enables rapid diffusion of science-based interventions and which may be cost-effective. Evidence-based psychosocial treatment, provided via an automated, technology-based platform (e.g., web, mobile devices), could substantially advance treatment efforts by improving quality and availability of care, leveraging the efforts of clinical staff, and projecting treatment to rural and other underserved areas. Additionally, the temporal flexibility of technology-based interventions may allow for "on-demand," ubiquitous access to therapeutic support, thereby creating unprecedented models of intervention delivery and reducing barriers to accessing care. In this presentation, Dr. Marsch will provide an overview of her line of research focused on the development and evaluation of technology-based, psychosocial prevention and treatment interventions targeting substance use and related issues (including HIV prevention and mental health issues). This work has been conducted in a variety of settings, including physician offices, substance abuse treatment programs, criminal justice settings, educational settings and via the Internet. Dr. Marsch will discuss strategies for developing and evaluating technology-based behavior change interventions in a manner that ensures the inclusion of science-based content and evidence-based informational technologies. She will also discuss potential research opportunities in this area.

Graduate students, laboratory and applied scientists

Bill Hopkins, a true ABA Pioneer, impacted our science and our lives over his distinguished 50+ year career. His impact is truly impossible to fully quantify, but the people whose careers and lives he touched speak to his profound contributions with deep respect and admiration.

Bill graduated Emory University in 1957 with a degree in psychology, and in 1961 earned a PhD in clinical psychology from Indiana University. He and his beloved wife, Bot, married in 1957 and started a family in 1961. They moved many places as Bill accepted teaching appointments at the University of Washington, Florida State University, Western Michigan University, Southern Illinois, and The University of Kansas. In 1988, Bill became the head of the psychology department at Auburn University, where he retired in 2001 as emeritus professor of psychology. Upon retirement from teaching, Bill’s passion for our science and its researchers and practitioners did not wane. His contributions continued through the Behavioral Safety Now network, his consultation with many organizations, and his gentle mentoring of students, faculty, and consultants.

A humble man, an ambassador for our field, and a relentless pursuer of scientific principles and application, Bill’s contributions to generations of scientists and practitioners will be honored in this invited address.

Bill's quiet, wise, good-humored style will be described, along with his level-headed contribution during a time of upheaval at Western Michigan University.

Bill spent 18 years at The University of Kansas where he made significant contributions to the science through his publications and teaching. His colleagues reminisce about Bill’s years in Kansas and the lasting impact of his work.

Bill Hopkins arrived at Auburn University in the Fall of 1988 to take over the position of Department Head from Peter Harzem. Bill’s eight years as Department Head were remarkable on many fronts. He recruited junior and mid-career faculty members who were solid scientists, many with funded research programs, and who shared Bill’s enthusiasm for graduate education and a meaningful undergraduate major in Psychology. He advocated a democratic approach to departmental governance that contributed to a shared sense that all faculty contributed to the department’s well-being. Bill also continued his strong presence as a leader in the area of Organizational Behavior Management (OBM), which included being a strong mentor for his students, many of whom are now OBM leaders. His gentle approach served as a model for many of us who worked with Bill and provided a calm spirit even during contentious discussions. He retired from Auburn, but certainly not from behavior analysis, in 2001.

Bill’s dedication to advancing the science continued through numerous OBM practitioners even after his retirement from academia. We were lucky in CLG to have Bill’s input and influence as we learned how to help companies embed behavior analysis into their businesses by developing internal consultants. The methodology and tools Bill helped create have stood the test of time and have been replicated across many client situations with great impact. He was also instrumental in helping develop our internal training and materials to ensure that as we translated the language of behavior analysis for business we stayed true to the underlying principles of our science. Those impacted by Bill’s enduring passion and wisdom recall his influence, both in person and via video messages.

• Organizational systems and behavior analysis
• Facilitating executive alignment and deployment effectiveness
• Leading enterprise-wide coaching and performance improvement solutionsEducation and Background

The field of behavior analysis has shown tremendous potential to produce significant system change. Unfortunately, the application of science and technology in social systems isn't just about the quality of the evidence-base but also the capacity to navigate the implementation of the science through complex systems change efforts. This presentation will provide an overview of what we have learned in the past dozen years regarding the implementation of a positive behavior support approach in Florida. The Florida PBS Project has had a mission to increase the capacity of school districts to implement PBS within a multi-tiered continuum of student support. The presentation will discuss the systems change practices that have led to implementation in over 1200 schools and the outcome data about the impact of that implementation. Lessons learned from state, district and inter-project collaborations will be shared with the participants as well as existing barriers to implementation of a multi-tiered system of support with fidelity.

OBMers are diligent students of an organization's overt practices' looking ever-so-closely at input, throughput, and output while mapping processes. We identify contingencies of reinforcement and punishment, as well as sometimes obvious and occasionally near-invisible feedback that drives behavior in organizations. Our publications present the power of behavior-based technology in carefully defined applications. Applications of behavioral technology to improve products and services are valuable. Yet we often operate with a narrow, even myopic, view of performance that lacks the breadth and depth of analysis to yield a full assessment of an organization's performance. Often omitted is the power of its history. An organization's values may showcase today's promises, apparent reality, while masking darker, deadly, current and historical backstage practices. The continuing devastation from covert practices in the financial industry provides abundant evidence of the failure of limited vision. Underground mining disasters present tragic and all-too-familiar cases of apparent regulatory compliance masking pathological practices. This presentation will highlight histories and cumulative power of flawed, sometimes deadly, histories and practices in two chemical and pharmaceutical companies. Suggestions will be presented for, 1) improving organizational assessments, including corrective lens for OBM myopia, and 2) development of more complete models of organizations and performance.

This tutorial is suitable for introductory level and above.

Language training curricula for individuals with developmental disabilities often include programs that teach expressive or intraverbal categorization in which the learner is taught to answer questions such as "What toys do you have at home?" or "Tell me the names of some animals." Although such repertoires are undoubtedly important, some instructional approaches instill these repertoires as rote intraverbal chains. However, it is apparent that many sophisticated learners answer such categorical questions not through rote learning but by first engaging in other (often covert) problem solving responses. In this presentation, I will share the results of two investigations in which preschool-aged children were successfully taught verbal and visual imagining strategies to answer questions about category membership. The implications of these studies for teaching language to individuals with developmental disabilities will be discussed and some recommendations toward that end will be provided.

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Behavioral development can be seen to be a large open chaotic system with nearly infinite sources of influence. The behavioral systems approach presented by Novak & Pelaez (2004) provides a perspective on how behavior analysis principles apply to the maelstrom of development. This symposium will describe basic principles of behavioral development and apply them to emergent behavioral patterns seen in typical and atypical development. Pelaez will provide the basic concepts underpinning the behavioral systems approach. Important behavioral development principles such as multiple determinism, equifinality, cusps, phase shifts, and levels of systems will be among the principles described. Novak's paper will show how the behavioral systems approach can be used to explain the process of language acquisition and other communication. The role of ever-changing child-caregiver reciprocity will be given a central role. Suchowierska will apply the behavioral systems approach to the development of autism. Autism will be characterized as a diverse constellation of organized behavior patterns overlapping, but deviating from developmentally typical ones. Early behavioral interactional deficits in the development of autism will be identified.

Behavior systems theory suggests the impossibility of complete prediction and control of human behavior. Nevertheless, one can apply the principles of behavior systems to examine behavior development and its complexity (Novak & Pelaez, 2004). Multiple determinism suggests that human behavior is determined by: 1) the genetic constitutional make-up of the individual; 2) the interactional history of the person with his/her environment; (3) current physiological and environmental conditions; and 4) the influence of earlier behavioral trajectories on current learning (behavioral dynamics), including behavioral momentum. As viewed from a behavioral systems approach, different levels exist contemporaneously, with increasing complexity in the system as we move up the level of analysis. These include System Level I: Basic processes of development; System Level II: Emergent characteristics; System Level III: Social interactions; and System Level IV: Societal and cultural contexts. Biological structures such as organ systems can be seen as another level of systems. While the organized patterns of behavior that we call, for example "autism" are often observed during our functional analysis at Systems Level II, it is important to recognize the role of multiple determinants and the contribution that analysis of the other systems levels can provide.

In a broad sense, the study of behavioral development is concerned with just two basic questions. The first is "What develops?" The second is "How does this development occur?" Traditional developmental psychology focuses primarily on the first question, which is fundamentally descriptive in nature. The behavioral systems approach follows the tradition of behavior analysis and is primarily concerned with the second question, and is essentially explanatory. However, both the "What?" and the "How?" of development are necessary to provide a satisfactory account. This paper will describe a behavioral systems approach to typical and atypical communication and language development. The roles of genetic-constitutional, historical, and environmental factors will be described. Special emphasis will be placed on the role of the social environment as provided by caregivers and interventionists. Behavioral cusps that are pivotal in typical and atypical language development will be identified. The important role of hidden skills and deficits will be explained and detailed. The role of the caregiver as language acquisition device will be emphasized.

For behavior analysts, it is obvious that autism should not be treated as an internal disorder that causes a child to behave in a certain way. Rather, we look at it as a label describing the child's many behaviors. Taking into consideration a behavioral systems approach—autism is perceived as organized patterns of characteristic behaviors that are shaped by multiple environmental factors in reciprocal interaction. The concept of equifinality, coalescent organization of biological and learned characteristics as well as behavioral cusps will be discussed with regards to autism. Due to a very important place of early intervention for children with autism, the presentation will focus on early mother-infant non-vocal and vocal communication that forms the basis for such core skills as joint attention, social referencing and relational responding.

In an extraordinary career spanning over 6 decades, Joe Brady established a remarkable legacy. He was a man of vision. His empirical contributions ranged from investigations of the behavioral conditions that produce stress and associated physiological consequences, to pioneering work in behavioral pharmacology, to conditions affecting performance of astronauts in space. He was a man of exceptional generosity. For example, he established the Behavioral Biology unit at Johns Hopkins University and helped found the Institutes for Behavior Resources. He was a man of abiding inspiration. He trained, educated, and supported numerous students, post-docs, and colleagues; most have gone on to distinguished careers of their own. Recognizing that it would be impossible to capture adequately the breath and richness of Joe's contributions in a single session, in this symposium, close colleagues and friends will celebrate his career.

Those with interests in the history of behavior analysis, in behavioral pharmacology, and in understanding and treating drug abuse.

• Identify the immense contributions of Joe Brady to behavior analysis, behavioral pharmacology, and science in general
• Articulate some of the important contributions of Joe Brady to the field.

Joseph V. Brady established one of the first truly interdisciplinary �physiological psychology� research and research training programs (now called neuroscience), in the country after WWII. Brady divided his time between Walter Reed Army Research Institute and the Psychopharmacology Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park. He displayed in precept and deed, critical scientific leadership principles: (1) surround yourself with the brightest, most talented people in the field, (2) promote innovative interdisciplinary problem solving based on a solid foundation of principles of functionalism, similar to L. J. Henderson & B. F. Skinner, and (3) value scientific principles but ignore disciplines. Like embryonic stem cells, Joe Brady was a progenitor, conducting his own scientific research while encouraging independent lines of fundamental and applied research. His approach was pluripotent, promoting scientific advances that evolved into many important, sometimes unexpected independent fields, such behavioral neuroendocrinology, brain mechanisms in reinforcement, drug addition, basic and clinical behavioral pharmacology, physical rehabilitation, and analysis of complex human behavior in individual and social behavior settings. He was a highly strategic thinker, seeding new theoretically significant endeavors, working with federal agencies and scientific societies to create ongoing support for scientific training and infrastructure, and modeling outstanding interdisciplinary science.

Joseph V. Brady, an interdisciplinary research pioneer, forged a productive, creative and illustrious career by applying the principles of the experimental analysis of behavior to investigations of the functional relationships operating at the nexus of biology and behavior. In the process, Brady and colleagues demonstrated the remarkable precision, flexibility and generality of these principles as applied to such diverse topics as stress and emotion, neurobiology, psychophysics and biofeedback, drug abuse and drug treatment, language, clinical research ethics, and human learning, motivation and social behavior, culminating in the experimental analysis of behavior in space. Brady also applied these principles effectively in the training of graduate students and junior colleagues. Selected clinical studies and reports will be presented to document the manner in which Brady applied the principles of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior throughout his career. The corpus of Bradys life work serves as a rich case study of the consequences of steadfast engagement in the experimental analysis of behavior.

Joe Brady was a pioneer in the study of human habitability in space. He pioneered work to study performance of primates in space, starting with rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees and later humans in confined programmed environments. In the last decade of his life, he capitalized on advances in computer simulation to explore team performance in simulated space missions and created a test bed for examining a range of factors that can alter the performance of individuals and teams, including topics such as communication modes, autonomy, incentive conditions, and workload. As a direct outgrowth, very recent research has lead to the development of a brief test of cooperative behavior within a behavioral economics framework. This work has been demonstrated to NASA and is now deployed for operational testing in Antarctica.

This presentation will describe a partially validated set of instructional strategies designed to establish the conditional use of "requesting assistance" and "requesting a break" as alternatives to escape functioned problem behavior in young children with significant developmental disabilities. The presentation will discuss the necessity gaining an exact match between communicative alternative and the basis of a learner's escape. The use of competing schedules of reinforcement and several antecedent focused intervention strategies including "signaled delay of reinforcement delivery" will be described as strategies to assist in gaining the moderated use of newly established communicative alternatives. The presentation will also include a brief review of conditional use used with other areas of communicative instruction with individuals who experience severe developmental disabilities. These areas will include the conditional use of communicative modes, requesting items/objects, and requesting attention. Results of the work presented and work reviewed suggest that there is a small but growing base of experimental support of an effective instructional technology to promote the conditional use of socially acceptable social/communicative behavior. At the conclusion of the event, the participant will be able to: 1. Describe what is meant by conditional use of communicative behavior 2. Describe a package of intervention procedures to implement in teaching socially acceptable communicative alternatives to escape behavior used to gain assistance or to gain a brief break from an activity that has become aversive as a result of its length (or magnitude of work).

There have been some notable gains in recent years, but violence at the interpersonal, economic, structural, and political levels remains a central socio-cultural challenge of the modern era. Human rights violations and conflicts at the individual, local, national, or international level cause deep damage to persons, communities and cultures. Applications of the natural science of behavior and behavioral systems analysis to attempts to challenge injustice, construct peace, and heal people and communities are in their infancy. Still, there are compelling reasons to believe that contributions from that science are possible. In this symposium, the presenters will explore the issues from selectionist and contextualist perspectives, and sketch out what is presently known about strategies for constructing peace, resisting oppression nonviolently, and healing trauma.

This talk will present an evolutionary analysis of the generic features of conflict at several levels: the conflict we, as individuals experience within ourselves, the conflicts that occur between people, and the conflicts between groups—from small groups to international conflicts. Like other organisms, humans have an evolved bias toward detecting and avoiding danger. However our symbolic abilities—while useful for solving problems—mean that humans can perceive and seek to avoid threat that is only symbolically present. Reducing conflict both within and between individuals and groups depends on our reducing the power of symbolic relations to influence behavior that contributes to conflict. I will describe interventions that contribute to this change at all levels and will discuss the implications of current knowledge for reducing what appears to be the biggest threat to human wellbeing, namely our evolved tendencies to symbolically experience threat.

Mohandas Gandhi often indicated that nonviolent resistance was "a science," but very little scientific work (almost none from a natural science perspective) has been pursued in this area. In this paper, the author will outline applications of behavioral systems science to the practice of effective nonviolent struggle. Given the enormous human costs of violent strategies of resistance, insurgency and rebellion, their poor record of sustainable success, and the emerging evidence for the potential power of nonviolent alternatives, the rigorous exploration of alternatives is a critically important direction for applied cultural analysis. Effective strategic analysis can only emerge from an understanding of the underlying dynamics of strategic options. This presentation elaborates four major clusters of strategic options, identified using a functional, natural science perspective; the basic behavioral and behavioral systems dynamics involved with each will be explored here through historical and contemporary cases. The four clusters explored in this paper are: Constructive noncooperation; Protest and persuasion; Disruptive noncooperation; and Active disruption. These clusters overlap with, but also depart in significant ways from, the widely accepted classification developed by Gene Sharp. The conceptual analyses presented here suggest directions for practical experimentation, clearly an essential although challenging next step.

This paper will present an overview of the need for a behavioral therapy that goes beyond the treatment of PTSD symptomatology. Our treatment model uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to address a diverse group of problems that can often be considered under the umbrella of experiential avoidance. Experiential avoidance is the unwillingness or inability of an individual to remain in contact with distressing private events. Often, individuals take deliberate steps to avoid these unpleasant emotions and these increased attempts to avoid them serve to increase the frequency and intensity of the distressing feelings. Experiential avoidance is a process that some survivors of sexual abuse or assault engage in to reduce their distress, but it is thought that this increases their risk of subsequent additional victimization (Rosenthal, Rasmussen-Hall, Palm, Batten, S. & Follette, 2006). Treatment that focuses on reducing avoidance and increasing behaviors consistent with valued life goals is an essential alternative to traditional exposure therapy for trauma. While exposure therapy has clearly documented positive outcomes, additional treatment for unresolved trauma related issues is often not available. Treatment goals focused on prevention of re-victimization and behavioral activation in accordance with client-identified values will be discussed.

The talks presented in this symposium will celebrate the contributions of Charles R Schuster, known by everyone as Bob, to behavioral pharmacology by colleagues who directly trained with him. One of Bob's major contributions was the development of the drug self-administration paradigm demonstrating that drugs abused by humans could serve as positive reinforcers in non-human primates. Later, he extended this model of drug-taking behavior to humans. The findings that drugs were similar to other reinforcers in their ability to control behavior completely changed the conceptualization of drug abuse and the paradigm became a major component of the field of behavioral pharmacology. It also allowed the application of the tools and findings of behavioral analysis to further the understanding of the determinants of drug-taking behavior. A major variable controlling self-administration was the availability and nature of alternative reinforcers. In this symposium, each of the four talks will focus on the impact of alternative reinforcers on self-administration behavior. The final talk will demonstrate how the experimental findings in both in non-humans and humans have stimulated the development of innovative behavioral treatments for drug abuse

Those interested in behavioral pharamcology, in methods of the experimental analysis of behavior, and in the history of behavior analysis.

• Idenitfy Charles R. Schuster's immense contributions to behavior analysis, behavioral pharmacology, and science in general.
• Articulate his contributions to the study of drug abuse and to the development of methods to treat drug abuse.

Much of behavior, including self-administration of abused drugs, may be conceptualized as involving a choice among available alternatives. Laboratory research involving non-humans has substantially contributed to our understanding of the behavioral determinants of drug choice. It has been demonstrated that the relative magnitude drug and non-drug alternatives, as well relative cost, frequency and probability of reinforcement can all influence the choice to take a drug. In recent experiments, we have found that introducing a delay between the self-administration response and drug delivery can diminish the effectiveness of a drug as a reinforcer. Similarly, delaying the delivery of punisher can decrease the effectiveness of punishment of drug self-administration. For both reinforcement and punishment, the relationship between delay and effectiveness was well predicted by a hyperbolic discounting function. Thus, research with non-humans has much to contribute to our understanding of behavioral factors that can influence drug self-administration. By extension, basic research with non-humans can help suggest behavioral treatment strategies that may be useful alone or in conjunction with pharmacological treatment.

Schedule-induced polydipsia (SIP) is a form of adjunctive behavior that is generated when small proportions of food are delivered under intermittent schedules of reinforcement. The term was coined by John Falk and emphasizes both excessiveness (polydipsia) and the adjunctive relationship to the generating schedule (induced). Although most adjunctive behaviors rapidly dissipate when the induction schedule is terminated, SIP using an alcohol solution may establish a lifetime of robust, heavy alcohol self-administration. In other words, SIP can be used to establish alcohol intoxication (indicated by a blood ethanol concentration of >80 mg/dl) as a primary reinforcer. In monkeys subjected to SIP as an initial introduction to ethanol self-intoxication there are individual differences in the probability of future heavy drinking. Using a principal component analysis, the most robust predictor of future heavy drinking is the emergence of rapidly drinking (gulping) a six-drink equivalent (1.5 g/kg) under the SIP conditions. The monkeys that gulp alcohol during SIP subsequently self-administer enough alcohol to produce physical dependence. In contrast, monkey that sip their six-drink equivalent rarely drink an intoxicating dose. It is proposed that the gulping phenotype reflects the reinforcing efficacy of alcohol intoxication and probability of lifetime dependence upon alcohol.

Opportunity cost (OC) is a key concept in behavioral economics. OC refers to the total value (including explicit and implicit time and money) of alternative options that are foregone (not chosen). The study of OC involves understanding relations between choice and scarcity of options available to the individual. This is central to addictive behavior because substance abusers (particularly those who are physically dependent) habitually make choices that sacrifice access to non-drug alternatives. This talk will discuss (1) experimental data with heroin and cocaine abusers that illustrate this concept; and (2) implications for therapeutic approaches to schedule alternatives that may increase the probability of addictive behavior change.

This presentation will describe a program of research to develop an operant treatment for drug addiction that was heavily influenced by Charles R. Schuster (Bob). Bob, Kenzie Preston, and I began this research at NIDA's Addiction Research Center in Baltimore in the early 1990s. Our studies showed that voucher reinforcement in which patients received monetary vouchers contingent on providing drug-free urine samples could promote cocaine and heroin abstinence in low-income, injection drug users in methadone treatment. Although promising, half of the patients did not respond and many who did relapsed when the voucher intervention was discontinued. Influenced and encouraged by early discussions with Bob, my colleagues and I have been developing an intervention designed to promote abstinence in a large proportion of patients and maintain that abstinence over extended periods of time. The intervention harnesses the reinforcing value of paid employment to finance and maintain abstinence reinforcement. Under this intervention, individuals are hired and paid to work. To reinforce abstinence, participants are required to provide objective evidence of drug abstinence to maintain access to the workplace and maintain maximum pay. This presentation will describe this research program and discuss Bobs invaluable role in the development and future of this intervention.