Association for Behavior Analysis International

This symposium will include three papers regarding the experimental analysis of the effects of reinforcement on intrinsically motivated behavior. Moreover, results will be discussed with respect to future research and implications for practice.

The knowledge gleaned from behavior analysis, instructional design, formative and summative evaluation procedures, and an organizational systems approach can be combined to create successful instructional programs with a broad, stable effects across numerous learners. An example of this is Headsprout Early Reading, an online reading program currently being used with thousands of children. The development of this highly effective behavioral program, (from identifying instructional objectives, applying the instructional design process, building the program, iterative testing, releasing the program to the public, to ongoing revisions), is non-linear and involves a process of continual adaptations based on sensitive measurement of the entire system. It also requires coordination and collaboration among various components of the organization, from instructional design and user testing, to graphics, sound and engineering. Further systems are needed distribute the program. This tutorial will discuss the organizational systems necessary to build and disseminate instructional programs and describe how they can be replicated across other products.

This panel is dedicated to Ernst Moerk

This symposium will look at diverse issues in staff-client interactions, client skill acquisition and impulsivity. The first study deals with assessing staff-client interactions using the PEARL Interactional assessment tool, and Group Activity Monitoring Form developed by Reid and Parsons. The second study uses the hyperbolic discounting laboratory model to assess adolescent impulsivity. Implications of the data may be helpful in gaining a better understanding of impulsive behavior as being a trait or a state. The third study used fluency training to help an adult re-learn his own autobiography. These studies demonstrate the multifaceted nature of applied behavior analysis within the neurorehabilitation setting, from organizational behavior management to clinical applications, and to experimental inquiries. They are all designed to increase client outcomes and our understanding of ABI.

Although not typically targeted for intervention, stereotypic and ritualistic behaviors can be problematic when they occur at high rates, interfere with acquisition of new skills, or when they lead to more severe behavior such as aggression or self-injury. The current symposium will address issues related to the assessment and treatment of stereotypic and ritualistic behaviors that are functionally related to severe problem behavior. The first presentation will illustrate two forms of response-response relations: one in which blocking stereotypic behavior induces aggression; and one in which self-injury had a higher probability of occurrence following stereotypy (revealed via a conditional probability analysis). The second presentation will illustrate how severe problem behavior can be maintained by gaining access to materials that are necessary for engaging in automatically reinforced stereotypy. The third presentation will illustrate a similar response-response between complex ritualistic behavior and severe problem behavior. In addition to presenting assessment methodologies for identifying response-response relations between stereotypic behavior and severe problem behavior, interventions designed to reduce these behaviors, based on an analysis of those relations, will be presented and discussed.

The Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center has been in the process of incorporating fluency-based instruction for learners with autism over the past few years. The papers will address an overview of the research outcomes compiled over a two-year period, implications related to quality of life, and the use of these data to direct future research for adolescents and adults with autism. The first paper will review the results of preliminary single-subject studies with one adolescent and two adults with autism. Data will be presented on the acquisition of fluency targets and the generalized effects of this type of instruction. The paper will also include reliability data and procedural integrity measures on 20% of instructional sessions for all three studies. The second paper will focus on the collateral effects of fluency-based instruction on quality of life indicators for the three subjects used in the preliminary research reviewed in the first paper. The third paper will discuss the overall implications for future research in fluency-based instruction for older learners with autism. A review of the conclusions based on preliminary research in light of the most efficient approach to this type of instruction and the most widespread generalized effects will be detailed.

Three investigations will be presented demonstrating how behavioral preference-assessment procedures can be used in practical ways to enhance life quality among people with severe disabilities and autism. In the first presentation, data will be presented showing conditions in which opinions of support staff can be used to accurately identify certain preferences of people with severe disabilities (validated through systematic assessments). Data will also be presented showing conditions in which opinions of support personnel are not likely to be accurate. In the second presentation, a practical protocol for empirically identifying work preferences will be presented. The protocol provides a means of using the most time-efficient process to identify preferences, followed by subsequent assessment processes if necessary that are more likely to identify preferences but are more time consuming. Data demonstrating the validity of the protocol will be presented based on results involving 11 workers with severe disabilities. In the third presentation, a teaching process will be presented that increases indices of happiness and reduces problem behavior occasioned by teaching programs. The process, involving embedding of preferences within teaching strategies, will be described using validation data from three behavior analytic studies.

We present three papers discussing the role of stimulus-stimulus pairing in the acquisition of vocal/verbal responding in children. Recent studies have shown that pairing adult vocalizations with preferred stimuli can increase speech sound vocalizations. Termed automatic reinforcement since no direct reinforcement is provided, the procedure may establish self-produced sounds as reinforcing events to the degree that vocalizations resemble the model during pairing; thus a childs vocalizations would function as conditioned reinforcers for vocalization responses. However, effects of this procedure are temporary, suggesting that direct reinforcement may be necessary to establish durable vocal behaviors. Esch and Carr report results of 3 experiments in children with autism in which the pairing procedure (1) failed to affect echoic responding and (2) failed to increase the frequency of post-pairing responding. Normand and Knoll report similar lack of effects of the pairing procedure on post-session target vocalizations in a child with autism. Practical and theoretical implications will be discussed.Dugdale reports research using combined behavioral and cognitive protocols to investigate rapid vocabulary acquisition of typically developing children via an equivalence procedure using stimulus-stimulus pairings between words and objects. Results suggest pairings produce emergent verbal skills that have relational properties associated with stimulus equivalence.

This symposium will present data-based research in the area of postural safety and behavior analysis. Postural safety is a growing field because repetitive motion injuries can cost employees and organizations a considerable amount of time and money, as well as cause unecessary pain and difficulty for the employee. The first presenter will discuss using a descriptive assessment to identify environmental variables that contribute to safe positioning and behaviors in a pharmacy . The second presenter will present a study that utilized equipment changes and behavioral safety techniques to improve safe typing postures in an office. The final presentation will discuss factors that related to the effectiveness of a commonly used safety intervention, peer observations. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of these procedures and the future of postural safety and ergonomics in behavior analysis by an expert in the area.

Applied Behavior Analysis is applied, behavioral, analytic, technological, conceptually systematic, effective, and concerned with generality. Prior research examined technological and conceptually systematic aspects of publication patterns. We discuss a retrospective analysis of behavior analytic publication that replicate prior work, and extends it to consider applied, analytic, effective, and generality issues. Outcome of this analysis and of a survey of ABA members regarding training and reporting practice as they pertain to these is discussed.

Although didactic training methods are not always successful in increasing workplace performance (Dyer, Schwartz, & Luce, 1984), more effective methods (modeling, immediate feedback, etc.) are often time intensive and less acceptable to participants. The present three studies demonstrate refinements of validated training methods to address these issues. The purpose of the first study was to evaluate the effect of a brief staff training procedure on number of learner-initiated incidental teaching episodes and on instructors use of the five trained incidental teaching responses. A large-scale replication of the brief instruction procedure was then conducted with 40 instructors from two schools serving learners with autism spectrum disorders. In the second study, video technology and self-monitoring were used to train instructors on correct implementation of complex behavior support plans for learners exhibiting dysfunctional behavior. Improvements in treatment integrity were achieved with minimized supervision. The third study illustrates how performance feedback and continuous improvement methods were used to initiate and maintain change in a multi-component human service agency shifting towards a behavior analytic model. A variety of measures targeting safety, protocol compliance, departmental coordination, student engagement levels and samples of staff activity will be presented in addition to scaleable strategies for affecting organizational change.

The Association for Behavior Analysis is an organization devoted to promoting behavior analysis as a science and a profession. Behavior analysis is a natural science approach to the study of behavior. Behavior analysis includes research on environmental factors that influence behavior as well as applications of the results of this research to problems of concern to individuals and society. Practitioners of behavior analysis include persons working in a wide variety of settings and dealing with a great diversity of behaviors and populations. Behavior analysts serve many kinds of consumers including service recipients, parents or guardians of recipients, institutional representatives, private or public agencies, and firms or corporations.Ethics and organizational effectiveness are inextricably linked. Dramatic examples of organizations that ignore their ethical responsibilities to various stakeholders and suffer serious consequences abound. Nevertheless, even in the absence of these drastic examples, organizations suffer serious consequences from their failure to address ethical issues. These consequences include high levels of staff turnover, poor staff morale, poor reputations in local communities, and the inability to provide services that are well respected. Attention to making ethics as an on-going part of the organizational discourse can provide tangible benefits to the organization.This symposium presents three papers regarding applied behavior analysis and the role of ethics. The papers discuss that a code of ethics is designed to educate and protect consumers, to provide guidance for professionals, and to retain the integrity of the discipline of behavior analysis

The education of children with autism in natural environments poses a unique set of challenges to the field of Applied Behavior Analysis. Rather than transporting children to environments that have specifically been designed to meet their needs, inclusion strives to both help children adapt to their community and to change these natural environments to meet their needs. This symposium examines different issues in the education of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders in the natural environment.

Play is an important part of a typical childs development and contributes to the acquisition of language and social interaction skills. Children with autism often do not develop play skills. Behavior analysts have been examining strategies for developing normalized play in children with autism for the past two decades. Modeling, prompting, and use of typical peer role models are just a few of the strategies in the literature. Most recently, video modeling has been used to teach a variety of skills, including play to children with autism. The purpose of this symposium is to present data on effective strategies for promoting play in children with autism, as well as, an overview of procedures involving technology to teach children with autism.