Association for Behavior Analysis International

Please come to this event becoming a tradition at ABAI. Dress comfortably and join us for a session led by qualified instructors (who are also BCBA-D). The session will be divided into introductory pilates strengthening exercises and finished with yoga stretches and relaxation. No experience necessary. We look forward to seeing you to revive and refresh; a really great way to start a conference day.

A 6K (just over 3 miles) run organized by members of the Health, Sport and Fitness Special Interest Group. All levels of runners welcome. Will meet in the assigned room to communicate the route and then head out as a group. Please wear appropriate running attire.

ABAI is pleased to offer a leadership training session for officers of ABAI Special Interest Groups (SIGs) for the purpose of providing strategies for guiding the growth of SIGs and providing services to members and constituents. This training is for SIG leaders only. Topics are being finalized. Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss strategies for growth and service provision with other SIG leaders. Although the SIG training is free for up to three officers per SIG, registration is required. This event is closed; attendance is by invitation only.

Parents and other caregivers of individuals with special needs (as well as professionals and students) are attending the ABAI convention in increasing numbers but may have questions about how to make the most of the experience. An event as large as the ABAI convention may seem overwhelming to newcomers. Parents, professionals, and students attendingthe eventfor the first time are encouraged to participate in this convention orientation and visit our webpage at www.AutismPPPSIG.org. We will provide an overview of ABAI and its convention and highlight the types of events that parents, professionals and students will encounter.

This paper summarizes facets of a research program on “emotional” processes in early human-infant behavioral development, in which I have long been involved. I have studied experimentally and successfully several developmental research themes of human infancy such as operant-learning processes, where the variance in the infant behaviors studied could be accounted for by their relations to the parentprovided proximal antecedent and consequent stimuli. These infant emotional phenomena include those termed “attachment,” “fear of the dark,” “fear of strangers,” and “jealousy.” I illustrate how these phenomena can be based on operant learning processes that, as process explanations, constitute remarkable discrepancies from nominal conceptions of “process” in the developmental and clinical literatures. For the most part, infant emotional phenomena heretofore have been explored by nonexperimental means, often under the aegis of nominal process theories that resort to explatory fictions (e.g., an “insecurely-attached” infant, an “anxious” infant). Mainstream developmentalists tend to minimize or exclude entirely the contributions of environmental factors, most specifically of antecedent and contingent stimuli provided via caregiver behavior, and of learning, to the infant (problem) behaviors at issue. Thus, many infant emotional responses are gratuitously conceptualized in the developmental literature as biologically based, or equally bad, as resulting from the nonprocess pseudocausal hollow variable of chronological age.

Behavior analysis has always had a strong position in applied settings in Norway, perhaps stronger than in any other European country. However, until recently an academic emphasis has been missing. Approximately 7 years ago, a master's program in behavior analysis was established at Akershus University College to facilitate the dissemination of behavior analysis in Norway. In 2010, a Ph.D. program followed. The addition of these programs as part of the education system opened the possibilities for teaching all aspects of behavior analysis, such as (a) conceptual or theoretical analysis, (b) experimental behavior analysis, and (c) applied behavior analysis. These programs are necessary conditions for the dissemination of behavior analysis and also prevent the impression that behavior analysis is just a "bag of tricks." Furthermore, I think the possibilities for training students in laboratory settings has made a great impact on the field by opening opportunities for collaboration with different laboratories allowing for the global exchange of students and ideas.

The Teaching-Family Model is a product of applied behavior analysis (ABA) and an example of mission-driven research and development. As outlined by Montrose Wolf and Lonnie and Elaine Phillips in 1967, the goals were to develop a treatment program that is humane, effective, satisfactory to consumers, cost efficient, and replicable. In this quest, procedures led to practices that led to programs. In 1970 Saleem Shah, director of the NIMH Center for Crime and Delinquency and a big supporter, called our wonderful research on procedures a "bag of tricks" and our insistence on behavioral language a "sacred cow." We soon learned he was right. Judges, probation officers, social workers, and others in the real world of human services wanted a program that could help children. Funders and referral agents wanted a description in plain language. Shah's advice led us down the path of program replication, and that led us to a science of implementation of evidence-based programs and other innovations. In 1981 Stephanie Stolz reviewed the lack of adoptions of innovations from applied behavior analysis and asked, "does anybody care?" In 2011 we can say, "Yes, Stephanie, they do care," but we have to help them care.

Sheila R. Alber-Morgan, Ph.D., Ralph Gardner III, Ph.D., and Nancy Neef, Ph.D., will accept the award on behalf of the program's faculty, students, and graduates. Their presentation will give a brief overview of the program's evolution, milestone events, accomplishments, and present day activities. For the past 40 years, The Ohio State University's (OSU) special education program has helped advance the science of applied behavior analysis to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. Because much of the research by OSU faculty and students takes place in inclusive classrooms, vocational, and community settings, learners without special needs and the practitioners who serve them also benefit. The M.A. program, accredited by ABAI in 1995, emphasizes the design, implementation, and evaluation of curricular and instructional interventions to improve academic, social, self-care, and vocational skills. Students may choose from a wide variety of school, residential, employment, and other community settings in which to complete field experience requirements and conduct their thesis research. Master's program graduates work as classroom teachers, behavior analysts, or program supervisors in public schools, private schools, or community agencies. The Ph.D. program prepares leadership personnel for special education whose research, teaching, and professional practice are grounded in the philosophy of behaviorism and the methodological and technological principles of applied behavior analysis. Since 1987 OSU has received a series of Leadership Training Grants from the U.S. Office of Special Education that provide tuition and stipends for students in the nation's only special education doctoral program explicitly built upon behavior analysis. In 1995 OSU was the first doctoral program to receive ABAI accreditation. While OSU faculty members have published hundreds of peer-reviewed journal articles and authored dozens of books in education, special education, and behavior analysis, the ultimate measure of the programs contributions can be found in the accomplishments of the programs graduates whose work has helped bring evidence-based instructional practices to teachers and students around the world.

The tutorial will outline some contemporary challenges facing applied psychological research, e.g., establishing the effectiveness as well as the efficacy of interventions. It will then review the history of the development of the standard model of psychological research, based on Fisher's Null-hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST), and will present some critical evidence indicating that NST has serious problems and limitations, especially for applied research and for the scientist-practitioner model of applied psychology. The tutorial will summarise the origins of single-case research from its origins in the experimental analysis of behaviour and show how the standard suite of applied single case designs emerged. Reversal, Multiple-baseline, Changing-criterion, and Alternating-treatments designs and their visual analysis will be discussed in some detail, along with their strengths and limitations. Recent innovations in single-case designs will be presented, including ways of adapting them for evaluating group interventions. Finally, the general utility of single-case designs for meeting the challenges of contemporary applied research in psychology will be affirmed.

Operant extinction is a cluster of procedures, all of which reduce the targeted response often while generating other responses. Procedures for reducing operant responses that have been labeled extinction include removal of the reinforcer, removal of the response-reinforcer relation, and rendering ineffective the reinforcer used to establish the responses. These different procedures are differentially effective in both eliminating the targeted response and in generating other responses. These generative effects include operant response bursts, spontaneous recovery, response induction, generalization, and recurrence phenomena such as reinstatement and resurgence. This tutorial reviews the varied effects of extinction on operant behavior; compares such effects to those of other procedures such as reinforcing other responses, punishment, and satiation; and critiques historical and contemporary research on these topics.

Delay discounting is the decrease in the present value of an outcome when its receipt is remote in time. Many problematic behaviors (e.g., drug addiction, obesity, gambling) can be conceptualized as problems of extreme delay discounting. Delay discounting has been extensively studied in humans and non-humans, using a variety of procedures, populations, and outcome types. Most (but as yet not all) of the basic findings in the area have substantial generality across these features. In this tutorial I will describe how to conduct research in delay discounting. I will give examples of illustrative procedures to measure delay discounting and evaluate their utility in different research situations. I will then provide a step-by-step description of how to use quantitative modeling to analyze the resulting data. I will explain different models and their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, I will provide a summary of major findings in the literature and possible future directions for the field.

JMP, developed in the late 1980's by SAS Institute, is desktop software for data exploration and analysis. JMP is a stand-alone product, with a point-and-click graphical user interface. However, JMP can also be integrated with SAS, providing an easy to use and flexible front end. Intuitive, interactive and graphical, JMP lets researchers move quickly from numbers to meaningful statements about findings and results. JMP provides a complete array of statistical procedures, from basic to advanced, providing a vast framework for making rational decisions from data. All JMP output is dynamic and visual, making it easy to graphically explore data and interpret statistical results. In this tutorial Mia will demonstrate popular JMP tools for exploratory data analysis, including graph linking, Tabulate, Graph Builder, Bubble Plots, the data filter, and new mapping tools. She will provide an overview of inferential methods commonly used by behavior analysts, and will introduce JMP tools for modeling, data mining and simulation.

The IGNITE motto is, "enlighten us but make it quick," and it is a fast-paced, fun, thought-provoking way of presenting ideas. Slide-based presentations are only 5-minutes long and each speaker is allowed only 20 slides that are automatically advanced by computer every 15-seconds. This year at ABAI for the first time we will have give IGNITE presentations plus one Roulette presentation. Topics include response cost, auture applied behavior analysis, equivalence, and anosognosia (you'll have to come to find out about this). IGNITE was invented in Seattle in 2006 and since then has caught on like wildfire around the country primarily by techies who talk about their latest innovations. We think that it is a perfect way for behavior analysts to add some spark to the conference-so come join us for an incredibly fast paced series of high-octane spiels by those gutsy and passionate enough to share (in 5 minutes or less) in a slideshow that automatically advances, whether we're ready or not!

A core component of research is the ability to replicate studies in an effort to test the reproducibility of the results. Journals articles contain several important pieces of information regarding the participants of the studies, but seldom do they provide enough information about who participated and under what conditions they came to be participants. These types of information may be important for the reproduction of all participant variables that may affect outcome, or guarantee that a different sample is tested during the replication. There may be differences between people who participate for monetary incentives versus those who participate for extra credit in a college course. It is argued that journals should allow for additional space to report simple, easy to report variables and conditions to aid in future research on the same topic. Failure to do so may be a central reason why there is variability in the results of replications.

The term "response cost" describes a negative punishment procedure used to decrease unwanted behavior. In addition, the term has recently been used to mean the difficulty or effort of a response. Unfortunately, the different meanings of these terms are similar enough that context alone is often inadequate to determine to what the speaker is referring. This confusion wastes time and jeopardizes the technological dimension of applied behavior analysis. It is our contention that this imprecision in terms should be resolved. This IGNITE is a brief introduction to the terms, their history, and our proposed resolution of this terminological confusion.

This humorous presentation will take a look at what possibilities lie ahead for the science and practice of applied behavior analysis, including the use of emerging technologies, education and dissemination, and how the principles and language of behavior may become embedded in everyday life. The purpose of this presentation is to examine where the field of applied behavior analysis is now, how far it has come, and to inspire the audience to strive to further the advancement of man through our science

This will be a brief discussion of how common words acquire the meanings they do in everyday situations. Everyday people in a variety of contexts utilize words to express themselves, words whose definitions would not seem to allow for such usage. Through equivalence conceptualization these words come to be associated with other concepts and by extension still more concepts are associated with those, generating equivalence classes of words and concepts.

Anosognosia is a condition in which a person with a disability is totally unaware of it and even denies it. The term came into the psychological literature in 1999 in an article by Dunning and Kruger: "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties of Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments." They began their research based on a brief account of a bank robber who believed that his face would not show up on video cameras if he rubbed it with lemon juice. In this IGNITE presentation I will describe some of the odder facts about this case and relate this phenomena and some of the research on anosognosia to behavior analysis in the hopes of heading it off in our field.

After being wowed by an amazing series of IGNITE presentations by fellow behaviorists, get ready for some crazy improv, riotous laughter, and all around great fun while watching the same five well-prepared people bite the bullet and present something which they didn’t prepare at all for your entertainment and education! What do we mean? In this round, each person submits a presentation to the pool. From the pool, the presentations will be chosen at random by a “spin of a wheel”–potentially leaving us presenting something we’ve never seen before. If the idea of a 5 minute presentation that auto-advances regardless of the speaker seemed crazy–you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!