Association for Behavior Analysis International

Dr. Jomella Watson-Thompson is a professor of Applied Behavioral Science and a researcher affiliated with the Center for Community Health and Development. Dr. Thompson leads the Youth Violence Prevention Research Center- Kansas City, a Center for Disease Control and Prevention National Center of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention. Her research focuses on behavioral-community approaches to youth and community violence prevention, adolescent substance abuse prevention, and neighborhood and community development. She has examined the effects of community-based processes and behavioral-community interventions to promote mobilization and change in communities. Dr. Thompson also works with community collaboratives to examine social determinants or factors, including educational attainment and access to resources and supports, that may contribute to disparities experienced particularly for racial and ethnic groups and in underserved communities. She researches and promotes community-academic partnerships through community-engaged scholarship as an approach to foster sustainable change and improvement in communities. Dr. Thompson has received numerous funding awards and co-authored articles on community capacity-building, youth and neighborhood development, and adolescent substance abuse, and youth and community violence prevention. She serves on the Executive Council for the Association of Behavior Analysis International. She attained a Ph.D. in Behavioral Psychology, a Masters of Urban Planning from the University of Kansas, and a B.A. in Urban Studies from Jackson State University.

All convention registrants are welcome and encouraged to attend.

For the past several years, my colleagues and I have been developing models for a deeper understanding of factors related to the development and maintenance of severe behavior. The recent passing of my mentor and colleague, Brian Iwata, has set the occasion for reflection on the past decades of behavioral research specific to self-injurious behavior (SIB). I will provide some historical context of research and practice related to SIB, including some perspectives from Dr. Iwata’s lab and publications. I will summarize some of the key findings from the past several decades to date. But, in addition, I will make a case that there is a long path ahead to complete our understanding of SIB, and to continue Iwata’s work in developing effective interventions. I will suggest future research and practice in the following areas: a) a deeper understanding of negatively reinforced SIB, b) a deeper understanding of automatically reinforced SIB, c) translation of basic research on self-biting and aggression that may shed light on functional properties of SIB, d) the need for development of detailed and complex case studies, and e) the need for prevention science (and the conundrum that arises from our traditional methodology).

behavior analysts interested in research, history of the field, and assessment/intervention for SIB.

Supporting the needs of caregivers of children with disabilities is one of the most socially important problems behavior analysts address. While there are multiple methods to address this priority, since 2020 the importance of meeting the needs of caregivers remotely has been emphasized. Project ECHO is a data based virtual service delivery model that has been used to train professionals and paraprofessionals around the world. In this paper we describe Project ECHO and how we are using to support caregivers of children with disabilities who demonstrate challenging behavior at home and in the community. We will also discuss why Project ECHO is a useful tool for behavior analysts to disseminate successful interventions.

General

This session looks back on the 50-year career of the Association for Behavior Analysis with an eye to its future. The first presentation is focused on the development of ABA as organization, describing the challenges it has faced and overcome throughout its history. The second presentation looks at the mission of ABA and its role in the development and implementation of the organization’s strategic plan. The evolution of the science of behavior analysis, as reflected in ABA conference presentations over its history, is provided in the third presentation. The fourth presentation describes ABA’s longstanding commitment to the preparation of successive generation of behavior analysts as evident in its efforts to develop and sustain quality education programs. Following these presentations, the speakers will participate in a discussion with the audience, focusing on these and related issues as well as the aims and objectives of the Association for Behavior Analysis International going forward.

I have had the honor and the privilege of serving ABAI for over 30 years as Executive Director/CEO. Since its inception and especially, during the last three decades, the field of behavior analysis, like other disciplines, has been impacted by significant socio-economic changes. ABAI has successfully adjusted to those constantly evolving vicissitudes, while remaining committed to preserving, developing, and disseminating the science of behavior with the ultimate objective of contributing to the well-being of society. With that vision in mind, ABAI has grown from a small membership association to the largest in our field; from producing a convention and a journal to offering a great variety of products and services; from having no employees to establishing a competent and caring team. This presentation offers an inside perspective of ABAI’s growing pains, conflicts, and successes—an account that only a few members in its leadership have benefited from living firsthand. As well, it offers some reflections for future directions.

The mission of the Association for Behavior Analysis, International is “to contribute to the well-being of society by supporting, developing, and enhancing the growth and vitality of the science of behavior analysis.” Indeed, the statement of our mission has remained a relative constant since ABAI’s inception in 1974, even as the field of behavior analysis has grown in number, diversity of interests, and professional and educational identifications. For this increasingly complex and varied discipline, it is essential to ensure the strength of, and support for, scientific behavior analysis and the philosophy that underlies it. As ABAI has worked to balance the many, and sometimes competing, priorities of its constituencies, our mission has provided the compass. This presentation will: 1) describe ways in which major challenges for ABAI throughout its history have often involved pressures to deviate from its central mission; and 2) review the role of our mission in determining content and implementation of the organization’s strategic plan as well as the decision-making of its Executive Council over the past 50 years.

A science is identified by the products of its scientists as these are presented at its conferences and appear in its journals. The status of a science at any given time is especially evident in its conference presentations because these ordinarily (and ethically) precede their published appearances. The aim of this address is to examine the identity of the science of behavior analysis as revealed in the conference presentations of its scientists over the past fifty years. A retrospective analysis of these products, categorized in accord with present day program areas, will be presented. Changes to submission procedures, speaker invitations, and other relevant administrative actions will be noted as they occurred. The aims of these actions will be described, and their outcomes assessed to the extent possible. Some comments on the status of behavior analysis as a scientific enterprise at the present time will be offered along with some thoughts about its possible futures.

The vitality, development, and growth of behavior analysis depends on many factors. Perhaps most important is the quality of the educational programs that prepare successive generations of behavior analysts. ABAI’s commitment to education started early in its history with the establishment of the Education and Evaluation Committee in 1977 (just the fourth year of the association’s existence), progressed to the accreditation of graduate and undergraduate programs and, in collaboration with the Behavior Analysis Certification Board, verification of graduate course sequences. This presentation will focus on the development of the accreditation system, the challenges it faces today, and the role that ABAI accreditation plays in securing a future for behavior analysis as a science and profession.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, behavior therapists slowly transitioned – mostly – from offering interventions intended to alter a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Some, with the encouragement of those within the LGBTQ community like the late Dr. Charles Silverstein, realized that continuing research and clinical practice in this direction contributed to a climate of bias. Others failed until much later to recognize that the work was harmful to individuals undergoing it – some clinicians may still be learning this lesson. Conversely, behavioral strategies were slow to be advanced in the service of mitigating the effects of anti-LGBTQ bias. Funding and institutional support in this direction has also appears to have been slow, relative to the support of historic change efforts. How do we reconcile the goals of behavioral science that advocate for social justice and improvement of the human condition with its history of neglecting the perspectives and voices of marginalized people? How must our field continue to grow and change to reduce the likelihood of causing such harm in the future? Particular attention will be paid in this exploration of the relationships between behavior therapy, sexual orientation, and gender toward how ongoing bias in the field creates a context that maintains and supports harm in a global context.

Behavior analysts, students, practitioners, researchers.

Humans are biologically adapted for cooperation and cultural life in ways that other primates are not. Humans have unique motivations and cognitive skills for sharing emotions, experience, and collaborative actions (shared intentionality) that emerge in human ontogeny at around one year of age. Our nearest primate relatives do not seem to have the motivations and cognitive skills necessary to engage in activities involving collaboration, shared intentionality, and, in general, things cultural.

For Everyone

Vital Behaviors are the select powerhouse actions that propel groups to astonishing success when consistently practiced together. When a core percentage of a population collectively adopts the critical few Vital Behaviors, a tipping point is reached, and the culture shifts – the new habits become "just the way we do things around here." Do you need that to happen for your project, initiative, or organization? Do you want to establish Vital Behaviors as habits on a large scale across your organization or work unit, or maybe even in the populations you serve? This presentation will walk through the foundations for building a Vital Behavior Network and real life stories of how this approach has transformed organizations.

Leaders and influencers in an organization who want to increase behavioral consistency on a large scale.

Aggressive behavior is a prevalent and challenging issue in individuals with autism, especially for those who have limited verbal ability or intellectual challenges. This presentation investigates whether changes in peripheral physiology recorded by a wearable biosensor and machine learning can be used to predict imminent aggressive behavior before it occurs in inpatient youths with autism from 4 primary care psychiatric inpatient hospitals. Research staff performed live behavioral coding of aggressive behavior while 70 inpatient study participants wore a commercially available biosensor that recorded peripheral physiological signals (cardiovascular activity, electrodermal activity, and motion). Logistic regression, support vector machines, neural networks, and domain adaptation were used to analyze time-series features extracted from biosensor data. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) values were used to evaluate the performance of population- and person-dependent models. A total of 429 naturalistic observational coding sessions were recorded, totaling 497 hours, wherein 6665 aggressive behaviors were documented, including self-injury (3983 behaviors [59.8%]), emotion dysregulation (2063 behaviors [31.0%]), and aggression toward others (619 behaviors [9.3%]). Logistic regression was the best-performing overall classifier across all experiments; for example, it predicted aggressive behavior 3 minutes before onset with a mean AUROC of 0.80 (95% CI, 0.79-0.81). Further research will explore clinical implications and the potential for personalized interventions.

Individuals with autism, caregivers of individuals with autism, health care providers, researchers, insurers, and policymakers.

Over 70 years ago, behavioral pharmacology evolved as a scientific discipline integrating behavior analysis and pharmacology starting with the collaboration of B.F. Skinner and Peter Dews at Harvard. One of the first unifying principles that emerged from early research was the notion of rate dependency – that a drug’s effects on behavior was a function of the baseline rate of responding. This led to decades of experimental analysis in behavioral pharmacology. In this symposium, Dr. Jonathan Katz provides a brief history of behavioral pharmacology and rate dependency. Then others present data from several lines of research indicating that rate or baseline dependency remains a useful framework within a variety of domains including behavioral momentum, Dr. Jonathan Pinkston, impulsive and risky choice, Drs. Raymond Pitts and Chris Hughes, and contingency management of drug use, Dr. Stephen Higgins. Dr. Warren Bickel will be our discussant.

In the 1960s Peter Dews and associates published papers indicating that drug effects on operant responding under reinforcement schedules varied with response rates occurring under non-drug conditions. This so-called rate-dependency effect had precedents in physiological pharmacology, particularly in cardiovascular effects of drugs. It is also related to the Law of Initial Values (Wilder, 1962) which states that effects of any agent depend largely on initial levels of the studied variable. A 1964 paper by Dews using fixed-interval schedules examined the specificity of the effects of amobarbital on suppressed responding and was especially notable as it detailed how an evaluation of moderating environmental influences on drug effects could be conducted with due consideration of rate dependency. That analysis also occasioned critiques regarding how to properly express rate-dependent effects. One of these focused on absolute response rate, rather than change as the critical outcome after drug administration. The other considered that average response rates under fixed-interval schedules are unrepresentative of bimodal distributions of constituent response rates. Each critique can be shown to be of minimal significance. The empirical ubiquity across species, environmental conditions, and pharmacological agents indicates that rate dependency remains critical in consideration of factors influencing the behavioral effects of drugs.

Rate dependency refers to empirical observations that the effects of an intervention depend on the baseline rate of behavior. Early work on rate dependency occurred in the context of behavioral pharmacology. Repeated demonstrations that drug effects depended on the rates of behavior, and accompanying mathematical descriptions, affirmed the importance behavior itself plays in pharmacological treatments. At the same time, behavior analysis has shown behavior to be determined by environmental factors, raising the question of what factors determine the rate upon which rate-dependency depends. Our group has focused on one factor in particular—reinforcer magnitude. In several experiments, pigeons earned food according to multiple fixed-interval schedules, where the components differed only in the magnitude of the reinforcer earned. In examinations of several classes of drugs, we showed rate-dependent effects across the interval varied inversely with reinforcer magnitude, that is rate-dependent effects were reduced as magnitude increased. Thus, it appears that increasing reinforcer magnitude has a protective effect on fixed-interval behavior. The findings are consistent with the view of behavior proposed by behavioral momentum theory, whereby schedules are seen to establish response rates and reinforcer magnitude (density) establishes resistance to change.

Despite substantial progress over the past two decides characterizing drug effects on impulsive and risky behavior and elucidating some of the relevant neurobiological mechanisms, considerable discrepancies remain in the literature, both within and across studies. In our hands, drugs invariably decrease sensitivity to the particular reinforcement dimensions controlling choice, but the degree to which this effect occurs varies both within and across subjects. As such, using these data to predict drug effects on impulsive and risky choice is tricky. In this talk, selected data from our lab investigating drug effects on sensitivity to reinforcement under continuous choice procedures will be presented. These data strongly suggest that effects of a variety of drugs are best described as baseline dependent. These analyses suggest that baseline/rate dependence, an example of the original Law of Initial Values (see Wilder, 1931,1962), remains a viable concept, one that behavioral pharmacologists and behavioral neuroscientists ignore at their peril.

I will discuss how baseline rate of cigarette smoking or cocaine use are strong predictors of response to abstinence-contingent Contingency Management (CM) interventions. Similarly, duration of abstinence achieved during the treatment period is a strong predictor of the likelihood of sustaining longer-term abstinence. Regarding the latter, I’ll share experimental results from a randomized controlled clinical trial testing the validity of these observations in which 100 cocaine-dependent outpatients were randomly assigned to one of two abstinence-contingent CM treatment conditions (Higgins et al., 2007). In one condition, vouchers were set at twice the usual monetary value (maximum of $1,995 during the 12-week intervention) whereas in the other treatment condition they were set at half the usual value (maximum of $499 during the 12-week intervention). All else in the treatment conditions remained the same across treatment conditions. As illustrated in the figure shown below, increasing the value of the vouchers increased the mean duration of continuous cocaine abstinence achieved during the 24-week treatment period twofold, and as hypothesized, point-prevalence cocaine abstinence was consistently greater among those treated in the high-magnitude voucher condition compared to the low-magnitude condition in assessments conducted every 3 months throughout an 18-month follow-up period. This presentation will put particular emphasis the importance of a positive initial treatment response to achieving longer-term abstinence from drug use. remains critical in consideration of factors influencing the behavioral effects of drugs.

Have you heard about Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR) and are wondering how these fast-growing technologies can fit into your overall learning strategy? Innovative Learning Group CEO Lisa Toenniges will give you a high-level picture of AR and VR, describe which learning situations are best suited for AR and VR, and explain how you and your clients’ organizations can iteratively develop AR and VR capabilities and organizational experience.

Education and learning practitioners interested in using Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality for learning

Recent research developments in the identification and establishment of crucial verbal developmental cusps related to learning by observation provides a clearer picture of the trajectory of language development leading to incidental language learning (Incidental Bidirectional Naming or Inc-BiN). These findings suggest that a new account of Observational Learning (OL) is warranted, with particular attention to the role that it plays in language development. This reconceptualization of verbal behavior development includes cusps that encompass the following: a) imitating (see-do responding); b) emulating (duplication of outcomes); c) changing existing behavior; d) acquiring new respondents, operants, and higher-order operants; e) acquiring new reinforcers under denial conditions; f) learning listener and speaker responses from exposure alone; and g) learning multiple responses or arbitrarily applicable relations, all as a function of observation. This presentation will focus on the establishment of observational stimulus control that makes language learning possible.

Practitioners; researchers; theorists; students

Although behavior analysts have seen reinforcement as a basic principle of behavior for over 100 years, its range of application was always narrow. All it explained was the increase when behavior produced desirable consequences. As research advanced, the limitations of reinforcement and the molecular view it depended on—based on discrete responses and contiguity—became more and more apparent. Reinforcement failed with adjunctive behavior, with “misbehavior,” with avoidance, with originating new activities, and even explaining patterns engendered by simple schedules. It did not explain stimulus control. All of these shortcomings dissolve when one adopts a molar view and substitutes the concept of induction, which links behavior directly to evolutionary theory through the concept of Phylogenetically Important Event (PIE). When Segal introduced induction in 1972, she applied it only to non-operant activities, such as adjunctive behavior. When applied also to operant activities, induction explains all the phenomena that reinforcement fails to explain: the first instance, stimulus control, VI and VR performance, avoidance. Induction also offers a new way to think about verbal behavior. The explanatory power of induction far exceeds that of reinforcement.

All behavior analysts

We live in a complex time, socially, politically, and spiritually. Global and disciplinary paradigms are interrogated and challenged; questions about our human response to power, justice, knowledge, ethics, and suffering emerge daily. The science, practice and training of behavior analysis is at the nexus of this complexity. How does a young professor of applied behavior analysis find their place, purpose, and effort in this context? Through a series of examples and drawing on the wisdom of social activists within and outside of the field, as well as her own experience, Shahla shares reflections and advice for young professors, who are often concurrently serving as teachers, researchers, and practitioners. Through stories and data, loving and responsible possibilities are explored and examined.

New professors and advanced graduate students and researchers, and practitioners and advanced professors that are interested in supporting and nurturing the development of new professors in applied behavior analysis

This presentation explores the transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in enhancing our understanding of human behavior and informing clinical interventions. Synthetic intelligence provides novel perspectives on human intelligence, while machine learning enables the extraction of valuable insights from vast datasets. Emphasizing the inevitability of AI's integration, the presentation advocates for critical thinking in addressing concerns and engaging in conversations with technology developers. It underscores the collaborative relationship between AI and mental health clinicians, emphasizing that AI is a supportive tool rather than a replacement. The ethical considerations surrounding AI implementation are highlighted, emphasizing the necessity of nuanced discussions. Practical applications, such as using AI for early detection of developmental delays, leveraging diagnostic codes for classification, and the removal of geographical barriers through internet-based accessibility, demonstrate the tangible benefits of AI in clinical contexts. Overall, this presentation encourages a thoughtful embrace of AI's potential to revolutionize behavioral analysis and clinical interventions while maintaining a human-centric approach.

Behavior analysts and mental health clinicians

Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP) creates deep, meaningful and healing therapeutic relationships by focusing on the subtle ways clients' daily life problems occur in the therapy session. FAP uses awareness, courage and love (behaviorally defined) in the therapist-client relationship to produce significant change. Yet, you can only take your clients as far as you yourself have gone. In this talk, I will discuss the five rules of FAP that are simple but profound, and help you explore how you can bring your best self into the therapy room by facing avoidances, fears, obstacles and challenges that prevent you from flourishing personally and professionally.

Clinicians

From the viewpoint of a natural science of behavior, language acquisition is a developmental process.. In this paper we present the core principles of behavioral systems theory (BST) combining current developmental systems concepts with behavioral ones. We outline the core principles of BST relevant to early language development. Developmental changes are marked by the transactions between genetic inheritance, interactional history, current physiological and environmental conditions, and behavior dynamics. Contingencies operating in the young child’s current social environment are catalysts coalescing conditions into organized patterns of verbal behavior. Some of these emergent patterns allow verbal behavioral cusps to develop. Early language skills are the result of an intensive, intuitive, and naturally occurring learning process consisting of reciprocal contingent interactions between children and caregivers. This naturally occurring process resembles the use of multiple exemplar training procedures employed by researchers in training language skills in children. We explore the role of basic cusps in early childhood including orienting responses, eye contact, joint attention, social referencing, manding, tacting, naming, intraverbals, autoclitics generalized vocal imitation, and stimulus equivalence. These cusps facilitate the emergence of new and more advanced socio-cognitive skills later in childhood such as perspective taking and complex rule-following.

Behavior analysts, researchers, individuals interested in language development

Martha Pelaez is a Frost Professor of Psychology at the College of Arts, Sciences, and Education (CASE), School of Human Development, Florida International University. Dr. Pelaez teaches courses in Educational Psychology, Child Development, Single-Subject Designs, and directs infant and early childhood research. Her research has been supported by NIH and March of Dimes. Dr. Pelaez research involves mother-infant interactions and early social–learning processes, as well design applied early interventions with infants with developmental delays, child depression, early signs of autism, and language development Dr. Pelaez has published more than 100 articles in refereed journals (including the American Psychologist, Child Development, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Behavior Analysis in Practice, and Perspectives on Behavior Science), dozens of chapters and monographs, and an influential textbook on Child Development (with Novak, 2004, 2022).  Professor Pelaez is the founding editor of the Behavior Development Bulletin (1990-2017) and has been a member of nine editorial boards of refereed journals, including the European Journal of Behavior Analysis and Perspectives on Behavior Science. She has received Fellowship status from the American Psychological Association (APA) and from the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI). Dr. Pelaez is the 2023 recipient of the Nathan H. Azrin Award granted by the American Psychological Association (APA) for her distinguish contributions to applied research with infants. She is a trustee of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and serves as an At-Large Representative on the Executive Council Board of Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) and past member of the Science Board.

A new approach to documenting the skills and repertoires of professionals is emerging in several fields of study, including education, medicine, and information technology. The technology is called micro-credentialing. According to the Mozilla Foundation, micro-credentialing refers to “digital certification of assessed knowledge, skills and competencies which is additional, alternate or complementary to, or a component of, formal qualifications.” A micro-credential is an award, based on a short, verifiable presentation that demonstratesthat a scientist-practitioner has mastered a specific skill in a content area. An individual with a micro-credential can demonstrate competent, mastery-level performance of its corresponding skill—on demand. Here are some examples of micro-credentials relevant to behavior analysts:

• conduct a reinforcement preference assessment

• shape behavior in an operant chamber

• conduct an organizational needs assessment

• design a Precision Teaching program for a specific skill

• analyze delay-discounting data

Notice that micro-credentials are much narrower in scope than typical recognitions of study endeavors like M.S. or Ph.D. degrees, Continuing Education Units, and licenses or certifications like a BCBA. As important as these traditional recognitions are, they do not concretely indicate an ability to engage in ANY specific skill or expertise.Further, the latter recognitions emphasize only clinical skills rather than the broad array of skills that characterize diverse behavior-analytic jobs (e.g., laboratory skills, instructional design). Establishing skill-based credentials across the field of behavior analysis would provide additional reassurances about the skills of potential employees or supervisors and may provide a data-based way for individuals to demonstrate specific expertise in an area.

In my address today, I’ll describe a behavior analytic view of the concept, micro-credential, focusing upon micro-credentials for intellectual skills and repertoires—those related to “doing” vs. recitation or “saying” repertoires, as in the examples I listed above. Intellectual skills require teaching for generative responses. The learner must go beyond what has been taught and demonstrate mastery of responding in new situations, those never seen before. Then I’ll use the context of intellectual skill development to describe some “best practices” in instructional design that one could incorporate in a micro-credential learning program. I will focus upon micro-credentials relevant to three kinds of intellectual skills—concepts, principles, and strategies, highlighting evidence-based protocols for teaching each kind. Then I will describe and illustrate explicit generalized imitation training procedures to teach component intellectual skills, and procedures for practicing component skills to fluency. Finally, I will relate my discussion of intellectual skills to a new analysis of generalization, breaking it into two kinds of active processes—simple and complex generative responding.

Whether or not you agree with me about the benefit of establishing a micro-credential program in behavior analysis, no matter our everyday responsibilities and functions, every behavior analyst is a teacher who desires to engage in effective instruction and help their learners master everything they teach. So, I hope that my description of some best practices in instructional design will guide improvements to any instruction you provide in your work as a behavior analyst.

Kent Johnson, Founder and Executive Director of Morningside Academy and Co-Founder of Headsprout, received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1977. Morningside Academy operates a scientifically driven “catch-up” program for children and youth with learning and attention problems and a “get-ahead” program for average and above-average middle school youth, as well as provides a laboratory for developing instructional methods and materials. Morningside’s exemplary science-based approach has had global impact and serves as a beacon of hope for many, transforming lives and demonstrating what high-quality behavior analytic education can offer. Dr. Johnson’s commitment to and success in developing and disseminating innovative and highly effective behaviorally based educational practices have been recognized by his receiving the Award for Public Service in Behavior Analysis from the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis, the Edward L. Anderson Award in Recognition for Exemplary Contributions to Behavioral Education from the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, the Ogden R. Lindsley Lifetime Achievement Award in Precision Teaching from the Standard Celeration Society, and the Fred S. Keller Behavioral Education Award from Division 25 of the American Psychological Association.