Association for Behavior Analysis International

Private events present a dilemma for behavior analysis. On one hand, their reality seems manifest; everyone thinks, senses, and feels. On the other hand, their privacy is problematic for a science of behavior, because one cannot observe them in another creature. Even if we allow that privacy is accidental-only the result of absence of technology-the problem remains, because private events in another creature can only be inferred and therefore are as hypothetical as any mental construct. We may clarify the problem by examining three examples: waiting, hearing, and pain. From these, we see that the problem arises when one asks what a person is doing at a particular moment. Behavior analysts have sometimes tried to distinguish one momentary activity from another by appealing to private events, a move no better than folk psychology. The solution to the problem appears when we see that the phrase "momentary behavior" is an oxymoron. Behavior is temporally extended by its nature, and asking what a person is doing at a moment is a pseudo-question, akin to asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Extended patterns of behavior produce observable, measurable, results. Applying this insight to the examples of waiting, hearing, and pain, we see how it removes the need to talk about private events at all.

This presentation will describe evidence-based strategies for training important work skills to human service staff. Initially, a description of a behavior analytic model for staff training will be summarized. Next, ways of effectively applying the model will be provided with a focus on practical considerations faced by supervisors, consultants, and clinicians. Means of making staff training procedures acceptable and well received by staff will also be presented. Common mistakes made in staff training endeavors will likewise be summarized, along with recommendations regarding how to avoid obstacles that impede training effectiveness and acceptability. As a result of attending this presentation, attendees will be able to: (a) describe five steps constituting performance- and competency-based staff training, (b) identify three strategies for making staff training programs highly acceptable to staff trainees, and (c) identify three common obstacles to effective training of staff and strategies for overcoming the obstacles.

Garfield Park Preparatory Academy (GPPA) is a new elementary school that developed as part of the Department of Applied Behavior Analysis at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Currently in its second year, GPPA is located in East Garfield Park, a Chicago community with low rate of employment and graduation. The school's mission is to provide strong academic foundations for students in East Garfield Park, and to provide a quality training site for students at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. In this presentation, Denise Ross will describe the process of starting a public school designed to apply principles of behavior analysis to schooling. Dr. Ross will also discuss the school's community engagement strategies, barriers and successes to its implementation, academic outcomes in the first year, and the school's future goals.

Private behavioral events are an important topic in the theoretical, philosophical, and conceptual orientation of radical behaviorism. This presentation makes the case for private behavioral events by addressing such questions as the following: (a) Of what are we speaking when we speak of private behavioral events? (b) What are two types of private behavioral events? (c) What is the nature and causal status of private behavioral events? (d) Are private behavioral events necessarily related functionally to public behavior? (e) How does the present view of private behavioral events compare with explanations in traditional psychology that appeal to internal, unobservable phenomena? In sum, the presentation argues that we can most effectively understand behavior, and bar the door to mentalism, when our interpretations of behavior recognize that events currently inaccessible to others, but nonetheless from the behavioral dimension, can influence behavior.

Prevention science has arrived at the point where it is realistic to experimentally evaluate comprehensive interventions to improve child and adolescent development in high poverty neighborhoods. This presentation will review the evidence in support of this statement. Numerous family and school interventions that have been shown to prevent multiple problems and to enhance the development of prosocial behavior are available. I will then describe one such comprehensive intervention that has been developed on the basis of this evidence. It includes evidence-based programs, policies, and evidence-based kernels. I will then lay out the multiple baseline experimental design that is proposed for evaluating it. In addition, I will describe work we have been doing on the use of acceptance and commitment therapy to help organizations with issues of stress, social cohesion, and organizational flexibility.

Behavior analysts providing early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) to children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may be asked to provide other interventions or collaborate with those providing other services. A large number of supplemental and or competing therapies exist, some of which have empirical support while many others do not. This workshop is designed to comprehensively review the philosophical underpinning, assessment methods, instructional goals and specific instructional practices involved in the implementation of EIBI and the developmental, individual difference, relationship-based (DIR/Floortime) model. This review suggests that a number of specific practices of DIR/Floortime are in direct contradiction to and may undermine the effectiveness of behavior analytically based interventions used in EIBI services. Video exemplars will be use to illustrate these differences. The ethical issues associated with combining these two approaches will also be discussed.

Within classroom settings, students can choose to engage in desired behavior or a host of competing alternative behaviors. Enhancing relative rates of reinforcement can increase the probability of students choosing to engage in assigned work. In this presentation, I will review research on variables that affect choice. I also will describe and analyze research on the discrete task completion hypothesis (when given an assignment comprised of many discrete tasks, each complete task is a reinforcer) and the additive interspersal procedure, which show how educators can arrange contingencies such that students choose assignments requiring more effort (e.g., 20% more long math problems) by adding even more work (some additional shorter problem). Those who attend will acquire an understanding of how the classroom (and life) is essentially a continuous choice paradigm and how those choices affect learning. In addition, attendees will learn a counterintuitive procedure designed to enhance the probability of students choosing to do higher effort work. Finally, I hope to expand attendees' basic understanding of reinforcers and describe how learning histories, along with rate, quality, and immediacy of conditioned reinforcement, can interact with effort to influence choice classroom.

There are numerous problems with the traditional view that brain dopamine (DA) systems, particularly in the nucleus accumbens, directly mediate the "rewarding" or primary motivational characteristics of natural stimuli such as food. The present review is focused upon the involvement of nucleus accumbens DA in the selection of instrumental responses based upon effort-related processes. Viewed from the framework of behavioral economics, the effects of accumbens DA depletions and antagonism on food-reinforced behavior are highly dependent upon the work requirements of the instrumental task, and DA depleted rats show altered elasticity of demand for food. Moreover, interference with accumbens DA transmission exerts a powerful influence over effort-related choice behavior. Rats with accumbens DA depletions or antagonism reallocate their instrumental behavior away from food-reinforced tasks that have high response requirements, and instead these rats select a less-effortful type of food-seeking behavior. Nucleus accumbens DA and adenosine interact in the regulation of effort-related functions, and other brain structures (anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, ventral pallidum) also are involved. Studies of the brain systems regulating effort-based processes may have implications for understanding drug abuse, as well as energy-related disorders such as psychomotor slowing, fatigue or anergia in depression and other disorders.

Deficits in cognitive and executive functioning occur with aging and exposure to toxicants and are common across a number of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The neurobiological systems involved in the behavioral processes commonly referred to as memory, executive function, and impulsivity are the subject of intensive research both from a basic science standpoint and for those interested in the development of pharmacotherapeutics. Pharmacological analyses may provide clues regarding the neurobiological systems involved in these processes and are necessary for the development of pharmacotherapeutics. The following symposium will highlight studies on the effects of drugs on behavioral processes referred to as memory, executive function, and impulsivity. Chris Newland will present data on the effects of calcium channel blockers in an incremental repeated acquisition procedure. Suzanne Mitchell will present data on the effects of dopamine D2 receptor antagonists in a variety of discounting procedures. Mark Galizio will present data on putative cognitive enhances in titrating delayed-matching-to-sample (DMTS) and memory span procedures. Paul Soto will present data on alpha5-selective GABAA inverse agonists in a DMTS procedure. These studies will highlight the involvement of multiple neurotransmitter systems in cognitive and executive functions and interactions between those systems and behavioral variables.

The olfactory span task is a non-match to sample procedure developed in rodents in which the number of stimuli controlling responding increments after each trial. Accuracy decreases as the number of stimuli to remember increases which provides some validation for the task. I will present data collected from a novel adaptation of this procedure will show the effects of several drugs including some putative memory enhancers (e.g., olanzapine, xanomeline) and others which are posited to interfere with remembering (e.g., MK801/dizocilpine, chlordiazepoxide, scopolamine). In general, the procedure is quite sensitive to drugs that interfere with accuracy, but perhaps surprisingly, ceiling effects may limit the use of the procedure with enhancers. A representive figure showing the effects of dizocilpine is attached.

Studies manipulating the effort required to earn a reinforcer often alter the number of responses required to earn rewards, establishing a correlation between the effort required and the time taken to earn the reinforcer. This makes it difficult to disambiguate the mechanisms involved in assessing effort-associated costs from those involved in assessing temporal costs. To examine this, the subjective value of a sucrose reward that was delayed or required a single large effortful response was measured in rats. Delay discounting increased following raclopride (a D2R antagonist; Exp1) but not SCH-23390 (a D1R antagonist; Exp2). Effort discounting was unaffected. In a follow-up study, the requirements for the delay and effort groups were derived from the performance of subjects required to complete different numbers of responses to earn the reinforcer (Response Group). Early data with raclopride administration suggest that D2 receptors only have a role in effort discounting if the effort requires multiple responses over time.

Calcium regulation has long been implicated in learning processes and compounds that affect this regulation may have detrimental consequences to normal functioning. Most studies have used drugs that act on ligand-gated calcium channels to investigate this issue. Here we emphasize L-type calcium-channel blockers (CCBs), which act on voltage-gated channels and are used clinically for the treatment of cerebral ischemia and hypertension. Nifedipine, verapamil, and nimodipine were administered to mice performing an incremental repeated acquisition (IRA) procedure. This procedure requires the acquisition of a different response chain, repeatedly. A control procedure requires the performance of a particular chain. Ketamine, which antagonizes ligand-gated NMDA receptors on Ca++ channels, was also used. For all four drugs a range of doses was injected ip to BALB/c mice (N=8). Responding decrements and learning/performance deficits were seen with nimodipine (3 mg/kg). Verapamil did not produce any behavioral effects. Nifedipine reduced responding (3 mg/kg), but no changes in learning or performance occurred. Ketamine selectively impaired learning (3 mg/kg and higher). The drug that acts on ligand-gated Ca++ channels disrupted learning selectively but none of the drugs that block voltage-gated channels did so. Although the CCBs have similar mechanisms of action, they differ from each other in their behavioral effects and differ as a group from ketamine.

It has been suggested that inverse agonists at the benzodiazepine (Bz) binding site on a5GABAA receptors (a5GABAARs) might serve as potential therapeutics for Alzheimer's disease-associated memory loss. The present study evaluated the effects of RY-23, a selective a5GABAAR inverse agonist, in rhesus monkeys responding on a delayed-matching-to-sample (DMTS) or spatial working memory (SWM) procedure. DMTS trials began with presentation of a photo image (sample) on a touchscreen. Touching the image initiated a delay followed by presentation of three images, one matching the sample. Touching the matching image produced a food pellet. Touching either of the other images produced a timeout. SWM trials began with presentation of a configuration of boxes. Each non-repeat touch produced a food pellet, whereas repeat touches produced a timeout. Accuracy decreased with increased delay (DMTS) or box number (SWM). RY-23 produced a modest increase in DMTS, but not SWM accuracy. RY-23 dose-dependently antagonized the effects of triazolam in the DMTS and SWM procedures, but did so less effectively in the SWM procedure. The results suggest a greater involvement of a5GABAARs in the memory-impairing effects of triazolam on DMTS performance and further suggest the importance of a5GABAARs as a potential therapeutic target for memory loss.