Association for Behavior Analysis International

ABAI is pleased to offer a Leadership Training Session for officers of ABAI affliated chapters for the purpose of providing strategies for guiding the growth of chapters and providing services to members and constituents. Althought this training is free for up to three officers per chapter, advanced registration is required and attendance is by invitation only. Presentations will include:

How Can Affiliate Chapters and Universities Join Forces to Promote Behavior Analysis to the General Public? INGUNN SANDAKER (Oslo and Akershus University College)

Interactions Between State Licensing Boards and Affliated Chapters ROBERT ROSS (Massachusetts ABA and Beacont ABA Services), MICHAEL DORSEY (Board of Registration of Allied Mental Health and Hunam Services Professions and Endicott College), GRANT GAUTREAUX (Louisiana Behavior Analysis Association and Nicholls State University) and others

Breakout Sessions

Following presentation, presenters will be available for toical breakout group discussions, focused on the presentation topics.

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. 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.

TRAINING AGENDA

Introduction to the SIG Board and ABAI Resources for SIGs (Christy Alligood)

Choosing the Right Technology for Your SIG (Amanda Kelly, Mark Mattaini, Matt Brodhead, Josh Pritchard)

This discussion will focus on how to choose between the many available communication technologies (websites, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) based on SIG communication goals. Panelists will share their experiences in this regard, including pros and cons of different technologies, and recommend goal-oriented strategies.

Creating Collaborations and Sustaining Momentum

-Strategies for sustaining momentum between ABAI conventions (Christy Alligood)

-Collaborating with ABAI chapters on additional conference participation (Heather McGee)

-SIG/SIG collaborations (Ben Witts)

-SIG/ABAI Program Area collaborations (Cindy Anderson)

This panel will focus on ideas for creating different types of collaborations amongst SIGs and other entities, as well as setting contingencies for sustained momentum within SIGs.

Breakout Sessions

Following the panel discussions, the panelists will be available for two topical “breakout group” discussions, focused on the panel topics.

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. Furthermore, an event as large as ABAI may seem overwhelming to newcomers. Parents, professionals and students who may be attending ABAI for 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

Life as a behavior analyst for Dr. Sigrid Glenn began some 30 years after B. F. Skinner’s momentous publication of The Behavior of Organisms. In 1970, the history and status of behavior analytic work could be summarized in 19 chapters in Honig’s Operant Behavior: Areas of Research and Application (1966). And a two-volume compendium of reprinted articles provided easy pre-Internet access to 98 original works on concepts, principles, methods, and applications of behavior analysis (Ulrich, Stachnik, and Mabry, 1966 and 1970). Further, as a new graduate student she could reasonably set out to read all 12 volumes of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and the one volume of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis that then existed. Most exciting to Dr. Glenn, Skinner’s newly published Contingencies of Reinforcement offered a coherent worldview that replaced a muddle of incoherent ideas. Behavior analysis was very different then. Looking back on the subsequent 45 years, Dr. Glenn will recount a few of the events that seem to capture the changes she has seen, and reflect on the relevance of those changes to the future of behavior analysis as a coherent whole. Finally, a brief survey of several future paths behavior analysis may take is followed by a recommendation for one that seems best to support disciplinary coherence.

A severe shortage of training courses exists across Europe to prepare professionals to meet the needs of parents whose children are diagnosed with autism. To address this concern and the resulting myths about applied behavior analysis that have sprung up, Leonardo, a former part of the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme, supported two projects to further development of an innovative multimedia program first developed in Northern Ireland by local charity Parents' Education as Autism Therapists (PEAT) and behavior analysts from the Ulster University. Called Simple Steps, this multimedia program uses video material in the form of parental testimonies, animations, demonstrations, and textural material to teach the principles of applied behavior analysis. The projects funded by Leonardo were each called STAMPPP and included partners from the United Kingdom, Norway, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland, and Germany; another group from Portugal obtained funding independently to develop the program. For some partners, this was the first time they had access to material on behavior analysis in their own language. In this presentation, Dr. Keenan will show examples of the resources that were developed and encourage others to think about the importance of moving beyond static images when teaching about something dynamic such as behavior.

Sustainability, education, workplace safety, language development, addiction, autism ... the list goes on and on. Behavior analysis applies very broadly indeed, and is inherently interdisciplinary. How can we best get our scientific principles recognized, valued, and used in all the areas they apply? One approach is to reach out to the public directly. In The Science of Consequences, Dr. Susan M. Schneider sought to cover the full range of our science and its applications, simultaneously highlighting many connections with other fields. This inclusive approach seems valuable for the sake of both science and dissemination: We now know how fully operant principles interact with others in the large and complex nature-and-nurture system, for example. Can we do better at getting the word out about all that we have to offer? In this presentation, Dr. Schneider will explore this continuing challenge as well as celebrate our progress.

Behavior analysis is a powerful tool that could ameliorate many of society’s problems. One of the first problems seriously addressed with a behavior analytic approach was the treatment of autism. Although a behavioral approach yielded promising results from the start, it took many years before the behavioral approach was accepted as the treatment of choice for autism. Although promising data also have been obtained from applications of behavioral technology to other social problems, these applications have not yet been widely accepted or disseminated. B. F. Skinner envisioned behavior analysis as a technology that would address a wide variety of societal challenges. Initially, behavior analysts were highly enthusiastic about society adopting our approach in areas such as education, but many people already working in these fields were resistant to a behavioral approach. This paper will examine a number of areas where behavior analysis could make a difference, and explore ways to overcome obstacles and accelerate the acceptance of our approach.

Psychologists, behavior analysts, practitioners, and graduate students.

Quantitative models of behavior are precise and succinct descriptions of functional relationships between behavior and environmental events. The purpose of this tutorial is to foster an appreciation of how quantitative models of behavior can be used to guide conceptually systematic analyses of behavior. The intended audience is academic applied behavior analysts and practicing board certified behavior analysts who are curious to learn how quantitative models of behavior can inform research and practice, but who may be a bit intimidated by the mathematics or may see quantitative models as too esoteric to inform solutions to socially significant behavioral problems. We will review examples from the literature on choice and decision-making, consumer demand analyses, matching theory, and other topics in order to demonstrate how quantitative models of behavior can be useful in framing questions about behavior and generating solutions to practical problems.

A problem in self-control arises when an organism chooses between one activity strongly induced by short-term reinforcers and a second activity weakly induced by long-term reinforcers but more beneficial in the long term. The short-term, strongly induced activity is called impulsivity, and the long-term, weakly induced activity is called self-control. Impulsivity and self-control have usually been studied as they affect discounting: delay discounting, probability discounting, and social discounting. Although discounting affords measures of impulsivity relative to self-control, discounting as a representation of real-world choice is unrealistic, because discounting applies only to discrete events like receiving a sum of money or a cigarette. Real-world consequences like good health or sobriety occur over long periods of time, not at specific moments. A more realistic, molar, view of impulsivity and self-control takes them as bad and good habits extended in time. Seen this way, a good or bad habit may be described as a conflict of time frames: Consequences evaluated in a short time frame are opposite to consequences evaluated in a long time frame. The molar view may be more useful than discounting for treatment--that is, discouraging bad habits and encouraging good habits.

The talk is a walk through a list of topics that came up as Dr. John Staddon revised a 30-year-old book on adaptive behavior and learning. What has changed and what has not? What endures and what principles can we now rely on?

In recent years, several authors have argued that zoos should be interested in behavior analysis (e.g., Maple 2007, Bloomsmith et al. 2007). But why should behavior analysts be interested in zoos? Modern zoological institutions place a growing emphasis on animal welfare, with goals including encouraging species-typical behavior, introducing novel sensory stimulation, and providing opportunities for choices within animal environments. In pursuit of these goals, zoos have recruited experts in specialized areas such as nutrition, pathology, endocrinology, aquatic medicine, and water chemistry. Although behavioral outcomes are central to animal welfare goals, the roster of experts at a given zoo rarely includes a behavior analyst. In this presentation, Dr. Christy Alligood will discuss the influence of behavior analysis on current practices at zoological institutions, including some examples of training and environmental enrichment at Disney's Animal Kingdom. She also will suggest some ways in which the zoo setting presents golden opportunities for applications of behavior analysis, and some reasons that "nontraditional" settings in general are important to the future of behavior analysis.