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.

Ever since Skinner (1938), early on after presenting an extensive study of the rat, invoked his Let him extrapolate who will, we have been hesitant to do so. It is, nevertheless, also true that just a few sentences before that fateful one, in the very same book, Skinner had said: The importance of a science of behavior derives largely from the possibility of an eventual extension to human affairs. In that sense, John Stoddard (2001) should not have been so surprised that Skinner engaged in what the former called premature extrapolation. As we well know, Skinner went on to engage in much-attacked extensive, not to say excessive, extrapolation and for that reason I will try for some more modest, but not too limited, extrapolation, examining how one could apply the basic reinforcement contingency paradigm to complex human behavior and thus (eventually) shed light on how to improve it. Beginning immodestly with some of my early work with conditioning of speech deficient children and flat-affect schizophrenic patients, I will try to elucidate human error, communication (all the while not ignoring the overlap of the latter two), and other human vagaries by means of behavior analysis most basic concepts.

This panel will discuss training programs in behavior analysis from the perspectives of the developers, the implementers, and the consumers (the students who receive training). The panelists will discuss the development of new programs, as well as variables affecting the post-development maintenance and strengthening of programs. Mr. Johnston will provide the consumer's perspective, as well as a unique training model, the Satellite Master's Programs in Behavior Analysis offered by the University of Nevada-Reno. Dr. Sandaker will proffer the international perspective, describing the development of the newly-accredited program at the University of Akershus in Oslo, Norway. Dr. Osnes will offer information from the vantage point of a previous Program Director and as the Coordinator of ABA's Education Board. Audience participation will be encouraged throughout.

This symposium will include three presentations demonstrating advances in functional analysis methodology. The first paper will discuse the importance of familiar and unfamilar therapists and settings in identifying behavioral functions. The second paper will discuse the implications of conducting functional analyses on precursor behavior in order to develop effective treatment of severe problem behavior. The thrid paper will discuse the extenstion of functional analysis methodology tn school setting with children with emotional/behavioral disroders. Finally, comments relating to the implications of these three papers for research and clinical practice for evaluation and treating problem behavior will be addressed.

Individuals with developmental disabilities frequently display serious deficits in verbal abilities. Researchers and clinicians have therefore adopted or developed various alternative/augmentative communication systems to strengthen or supplement the communicative abilities of these individuals. Popular forms of alternative communication include manual signs, pictures exchange systems (or PECS), and microswitch-activated devices. Each of these systems are associated with distinct relative advantages and disadvantages that make them more or less appropriate for use depending on individual circumstances. The present series of studies will explore the conceptual bases for, and applied implications of, differences among these systems. More specifically, these studies involved meaningful comparisons with regard to factors including the assessment of prerequisite skills, ease of acquisition of one form versus another, generalization to new settings and communicative partners, preference across modalities, and the effects of prompts. Collectively, the studies will provide valuable, evidence-based insights towards the selection and promotion of one system versus another.

Social impairment is one of the core deficits in autism. As such, much time is spent developing interventions to address social skills for children with autism. However, there can be a tendency to view socials skills from a narrow perspective of simply teaching greetings and simple games within the school environment. While these skills are useful, social behavior permeates all facets of a students life. As such, the importance of targeting social skills in the broader context of school, family and community must not be overlooked. Social skills instruction needs to be incorporated into every aspect of the curriculum. The current symposium presents some novel methods of integrating social skills instruction into everyday classroom routines, and emphasizes the importance of teaching skills at school that enhance participation in family and community activities.

The 9/11 Commission Report provides a detailed account of the nature and extent of terrorism facing us and recommendations for a global strategy to combat terrorism and build respect among cultures. Their recommended strategy includes a remarkable range of initiatives seeking a coalition of forces to build respect for cultures, tolerance for diversity, opportunities for the disadvantaged, defense of western values, and defeat of terrorism. Many of their recommendations pertain to restructuring the US governments systems for security and defense and will require wide scale organizational change. The challenges and complexity of this are enormous and the struggle will require a unity of purpose and effort perhaps unseen in our lifetimes. The 9/11 Commission has wisely called for an open dialogue on this process. In response, this symposium presents four papers by behavior analysts reacting to the 9/11 Commission report. Our purpose is to contribute to the dialogue needed to develop a coherent response to global terror and suggest contributions by behavioral scientists to this endeavor.

This symposium will consist of three presentations that describe experimental studies of the applications of peer tutoring to children with and without disabilities and how pre-service teachers can be prepared to implement classwide peer tutoring (CWPT). First, Lisa Bowman will describe how CWPT was implemented in secondary classrooms for children with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). Her data suggests that CWPT is useful for promoting both academic and behavioral performance in children with EBD. Next, Renee Van Norman will discuss how peer-tutoring procedures can be adapted when tutors do not have sufficient academic skills to provide accurate feedback to tutees. Her results show that adding pre-recorded answers to tutoring flashcards promoted more accurate feedback and error correction from tutors. Then, Larry Maheady will describe how general education pre-service teachers were trained to implement CWPT via a 2-hour workshop. Results indicated that pre-service teachers could quickly learn to implement the procedures, and their students demonstrated increased performance in the academic area in which peer tutoring was implemented. Finally, Deborah Kamps will summarize the findings of these studies and discuss how these findings could impact educational practice.

Three data-based papers will be presented on the role of assessment in organizational behavior management. The first paper describes a comparison of two methods of assessing preference among employees in organizations. The second paper describes an antecedent analysis and intervention of the conditions under which employees greet customers in a restaurant. The third paper describes the use of the Performance Diagnostic Checklist to identify an intervention to increase employee completion of tasks in a physical therapy clinic.

There is growing evidence of a developmental trajectory for key verbal capabilities. The evidence comes from research guided by Skinners (1957) theory of verbal behavior and the accomplishment of schools based entirely on scientific practices. The broad verbal developmental factures identified include: listener, speaker, speaker-listener exchanges with others, speaker as own listener (self-talk, conversational units and naming), reader, writer, writer as own reader, and advanced verbal mediation. Many of the capabilities, and related subcomponents identified in this research, are higher order operants or relational frames. Our work in this area began when we first identified missing verbal capabilities in children, which, in turn, led to the identification and induction of pre and co-requisite repertoires. Once the missing verbal capabilities were induced, the children acquired repertories that had not been previously possible. We suggest that new evidence on the role of behavioral and cultural selection in the acquisition of verbal capabilities dismantles accounts of language as instinct. We shall present 2 papers on the evidence and related theories.

Joint attention is recognized as one of the earliest forms of communication in young children. Joint attention involves the coordinated attention between a social partner and an object in the environment. For young children, episodes of joint attention provide the context for communication with others. These reciprocal interactions are characterized by glances and gestures and are viewed by many as critical to the development of symbolic language. It has been demonstrated that children with autism often manifest deficits in joint attention skills. The development of behavioral assessment procedures for identifying deficits in joint attention and effective teaching procedures to teach these skills is critical to our ability to provide effective treatment for these children. The purpose of this symposium is to describe several research projects in which the authors are using the principles of applied behavior analysis to develop protocols for evaluating joint attention in children with autism. The implications of these analyses will be discussed as they relate to a behavior analysis of this traditionally developmental phenomenon.

Many college courses have fairly clear goals related to a specific verbal content, and are taught by assigning text material, giving lectures, and assessing student repertoires with in-class exams. Some learning occurs during class attendance, but most results from out-of-class study. This tutorial will describe the evolution, rationale, and current status of the use of detailed study objectives and frequent exams as a way to produce highly effective out-of-class study, excellent student performance, and very good course evaluations. The approach does not require any resources other than those ordinarily available to an instructor, nor any special class-scheduling arrangements, and over time can result in a course that approaches programmed self-instruction in appearance and effectiveness.

The purpose of this session is to demonstrate how the principles of applied behavior analysis can use used to effectively assess and treat individuals that are rarely represented in the extant literature. The first paper demonstrates how a modification in functional assessment procedures can result in the successful assessment of truant adolescents. The second paper demonstrates the relevance of a constructionalist approach for teaching critical content areas (e.g., math) to high school students with learning disabilities. And the final paper demonstrates how a word-picture association method was used to teach high school students with dyslexia to prepare for the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Social behavior deficits, while central to the diagnosis of Autism, remain an elusive behavioral target. In ABA, specific behaviors related to social functioning are often measured and targeted for treatment. Skills such as eye contact, intraverbals, or other specific responses are successfully developed through systematic instruction and programming for generalization. However, it remains much more difficult to define, assess, and target social competence as a more abstract concept. Agreement in the literature and clinical field as to what constitutes key social behavior and appropriate tools for direct measurement has not been established. Such agreement, to whatever extent possible, is necessary for more universal outcome research and comparison across individuals and interventions. This session will address a number of issues related to this central topic. The first paper will describe a series of pilot investigations developing a methodology for measuring social behavior in various settings. The second paper focuses on measuring social behavior in contrasting settings and over time as an instrument of assessing change and examining how setting and time interact. The final paper will examine the ways in which these systems are sensitive to change, with regard to other measures of social behavior. Future directions will be discussed.

Children and adolescents can be treated effectively using functional behavioral assessment and behavioral interventions for social, emotional and medical difficulties in a variety of settings. These settings include: a hospital treating children for chronic or terminal illnesses, a permanent residence with a loving family, a group home specifically designed to treat adolescents with multiple diagnoses, and a regular public school. The speakers in this symposium will present research-based approaches from the behavioral literature, as well as techniques they have used in clinical case studies, that effectively deal with numerous social, emotional and medical difficulties in children. Diagnoses that have been given to the children in these case studies include: Cancer, Diabetes, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Moderate Mental Retardation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Motor Stereotypy, Depression, Psychosis, Learning Disability, School Phobia with Panic Attacks and Social Anxiety Disorder. In each of the case studies discussed, these children either: were able to be receive necessary medical treatments that were previously refused, had one or more of their diagnostic labels removed or were able to be served in a typical setting after previously being removed due to their behavioral, social and emotional difficulties.

A rich body of literature now exists supporting the efficacy of implementing Precision Teaching methodologies within intervention practices for students with autism and related developmental disabilities. This symposium will highlight current and on-going research which uses Precision Teaching to document progress within specific educational programs

The four papers in this symposium discuss refinements in preference assessments for participants with developmental disabilities and autism. Articles present recent research regarding the impact of access to stimuli during systematic preference assessments on preference and reinforcer assessment results. The first paper compared preference and reinforcer assessments across two conditions (a vocal only condition and a vocal plus tangible condition). Reinforcer assessments indicated that the verbal plus tangible assessment more accurately identified reinforcers than the verbal assessment. In the second study, tangible, pictorial with access, and pictorial without access paired-stimulus preference assessments were conducted with 5 individuals with developmental disabilities. Although the tangible and pictorial with access assessments generated similar preference hierarchies, the pictorial without access assessment generated different preference hierarchies for some participants. The third paper investigated the effect of frequency of access during preference assessments on subsequent reinforcer assessments. Results suggested that the limited number of stimulus pairings in a typical paired-stimulus assessment might lead to inconsistent results in subsequent reinforcer assessments. The fourth presentation studied the effects of duration of access to the stimuli used in preference assessments on the outcome of reinforcer assessments; results suggested that duration measures were better predictors of preference than selection measures.

This symposium will present empirical research studies examining procedures for encouraging students with autism to make varied choices of reinforcers. A general methodology has been developed and evaluated across three age groups and in different settings for students with autism. Generalization of the effectiveness of the procedures is examined and discussed.

This symposium will address how an understanding of verbal behavior can contribute to a behavior analytic account of gambling.

In the past few years there has been growing interest in what some investigators have come to call Theory of Mind. Catalyzed by work with Chimpanzees by David Premack and his colleagues, it has been postulated that certain animals, particularly humans, develop a model for what another may be thinking. This model is used in turn to guide how the organism responds in various social situations. In essence, an individual generates a theory concerning the mind of another, and uses that theory to help maximize his or her own social effectiveness. Where such ability is lacking, social effectiveness is said to diminish. Recently, it has been suggested that such diminished capacity may be at the root of Autism. This presentation explores some of the data, both behavioral and from brain imaging studies, which are used to support some of the theory of mind hypotheses. Further, it suggests a behavioral alternative based on Skinners (1957) analysis of Verbal Behavior, with particular emphasis on autoclitic responses, and the steps behavior analysts might take to further explore this interesting area of animal and human research.

Although a common mechanism for disseminating research findings is the conference presentation, the standard for determining quality in scientific communication is publication in a peer-reviewed journal. However, traditional thesis and dissertation requirements, and the way in which these requirements are met, typically fail to produce research competence that survives the peer-review process. My presentation will focus on strategies for acquiring general research skills, formulating research questions, generating publishable data, and learning the ins and outs of the peer-review process.

The success behavior analysts have had in treating individuals with autism has had a substantial impact on our membership and has led to a much wider profile for our discipline. However, many challenges and obstacles face us that we have either not met or that we choose to ignore. Though agencies, such as the National Institute of Mental Health, acknowledge ABA as an empirically based effective intervention, they also state that there is no single best treatment option for children with autism. Prominent members of the autism community often criticize ABA as; not addressing social functioning, failing to establish dramatic play skills, incapable of establishing a theory of mind, and of creating children with robotic responding that lacks spontaneity. Other more practical critiques state that it is unclear what the effective components of ABA are, how many hours of service delivery are necessary to achieve gains, and what setting ABA services should be delivered in. The main purpose of this presentation is to describe what is necessary for ABA to address these criticisms. Among the recommended courses of action we will describe the importance of local, regional, and national advocacy and public relations.

Organizations are complicated entities: They incorporate constant, countless dynamic interconnections among behavioral contingencies of many individuals, and yet each configuration of interconnections is unique and temporary. In this context, linear approaches are insufficient to account for and manage organizational change. This presentation will address the complex, transient dynamics within organizations and propose methodological considerations for successful organizational change.

Among the criticisms of B. F. Skinners analysis of verbal behavior is Noam Chomskys claim that it had nothing useful to say about productivity, the generation of novel grammatical utterances. Yet the behavior analytic armamentarium includes a variety of sources of novel behavior, including shaping, fading, adduction, the direct reinforcement of novelty, and the emergence of novel instances of higher order classes. This presentation will consider the implications of such sources for the development of productive verbal behavior and will address Chomskian arguments such as the argument from the poverty of the stimulus. In so doing, it will examine semantic as well as syntactic novelty, as when verbal behavior allows the creation of novel entities such as angels and demons.This address is dedicated to Eliot Shimoff

This symposium, part of a three-symposia series celebrating Ogden Lindsley, will present an historical analysis of the important life events that shaped Ogdens repertoire and led to the development of one of his most important contributionsthe Standard Celeration Chart (SCC). Starting their analyses with Ogdens early work and moving through major contributions that punctuate Precision Teachings history to date, the authors of the symposiums papers will tell the story of the SCC and the man behind it.

The symposium will highlight the application of functional analyses methodology in a variety of school settings. The session will begin with a review of current literature on functional behavioral assessments that include experimental analyses conducted in public schools. The review will present collective data from 42 empirical studies. Population characteristics, educational placement, functional behavior assessment methodologies and outcomes, and treatment selection and outcomes will be presented. The literature review will be followed by two data-based presentations. The presentations will present multiple data sets depicting traditional and innovative functional analyses conditions conducted in school settings for a variety of problem behaviors. Additionally, outcomes from functional analyses based interventions will be presented. The presentations address analyses and interventions responsive to the dynamic environment of public school settings. A synthesis of the presentations and general comments regarding the current state of analysis and treatment of problem behavior in schools settings will conclude the symposium.

The papers in this symposium examine positive behavior support procedures that emphasize identifying and manipulating contextual or antecedent variables related to problem behaviors in individuals with developmental disabilities. Variables examined include staff and supervisor training, the role of choice making, setting events and discriminative stimuli, and the inclusion of direct support staff in the development and implementation of positive behavior support plans. The effects of these different strategies are examined and discussed in terms of changes in the trends of problem behaviors, changes in staff behavior, and changes in the acceptability of behavior support plans.

Three recent studies on functional analysis and function-based interventions will be presented. In the first study, a brief functional analysis was conducted to identify a treatment for tantrums associated with transitions in typically developing preschool children. The second study describes a functional analysis and treatment for food refusal maintained by multiple sources of reinforcement. The third study describes a functional analysis of feeding problems and evaluates a novel negative reinforcement-based intervention.

This symposium will present outcome data from the use of instructional methods and formats that may not be widely used in programs for children with autism. Given the challenges that these learners present, it is imperative that behavior analysts make efforts to ensure be aware of and fluent in newer procedures that have data demonstrating efficacy. These procedures represent skills that can enhance the repertoires of practitioners and thus enhance learning outcomes for children with autism. The procedure to be reviewed include; video modeling procedures to teach play skills, the use of photographic activity schedules to increase food repertoires in selective eaters, and a comparison of rates of acquisition of the most commonly used methods for increasing the production of expressive language in children with autism.

A discussion of Dr. A. Charles Catanias Invited Address: Sources of Novel Behavior: Implications for the Development of Verbal Behavior

Federal legislation, public policies and humanitarian concerns have led to a worldwide increase in the demand for capable behavior analysts to provide services in educational programs for children with special needs. Those trained and certified as meeting standards of competence in ABA bring a breadth of knowledge and skills to those programs. Included are functional, reinforcer and environmental assessment, methods of shaping social and educational performance, techniques for monitoring, recording, graphing and analyzing data and much more. Satisfying everyone simultaneously by meeting managerial, staff and parental priorities generally is not feasible. How behavior analysts in these setting are most efficiently and effectively to apportion and prioritize their time and effort becomes a real challenge. We shall address this issue, emphasizing 1) behavior analysts' performance functions in such settings and 2) tactics for setting long and short-term priorities and 3) for effectively managing that performance. Panelists and audience members are invited to share their own most successful strategies and materials.

This symposium was developed with the intention of bringing to clinicians some research influenced by economic analyses of behavior that might have a significant impact on providing clinical and educational programming to individuals with skill deficits and/or problem behavior. In behavioral economics, reinforcers are treated as commodities, and the environmental contingencies that govern access to those commodities as the price or effort necessary to access a commodity. One indication of the value of behavioral economic principles is the range of topics that they have been applied to. Though the most impressive demonstrations of the utility of behavioral economics have come in the area of drug abuse, it has also been recently applied in two distinct lines of investigation. The first line of research is in establishing more effective reinforcer assessment strategies while the other involves analyzing problem behavior and functional alternatives as substitutes for one and other. The present symposium will discuss the attempts by three groups to translate behavioral economic theory into practical application. Presentations, delivered by William H. Ahearn, Henry S. Roane, and Iser G. DeLeon, will detail several investigations conducted with individuals with developmental disabilities in attempts to translate behavioral economic theory into practical applications.

Decades of laboratory research has yielded functional relations that have been useful for improving peoples living conditions. Historically, the basic to applied research model has been largely unidirectional. However, with the increased interest in basic behavioral processes among applied behavior analysts, there is an emerging focus on studying applied issues in the laboratory. This symposium will feature research from rodent laboratories at the University of Florida and Vanderbilt University. A range of schedule-oriented analyses and pharmacological manipulations will be presented that relate to issues of interest to applied behavior analysts.

Science fiction has presented many futuristic images of robots that behave and learn like animals and humans. Behavior analysis is the scientific discipline most able to engineer the processes that would be involved in such an artificial learning organism, but behavioral engineering has been applied to animals and humans rather than robots. The papers in this symposium will describe research by Hutchison and Constantine in which computer models of behavior analytic formulations have been implemented in robots. The three papers will describe the practical and conceptual challenges that must be solved to fill the gaps between the environment and behavioral processes; how the behavior of robots can illustrate basic behavior analytic principles such as primary reinforcement, conditioned reinforcement, punishment, stimulus control, transfer of stimulus control, etc.; the value of such work for behavior analysis and practical applications; and major theoretical and philosophical issues raised by this work. Live demonstrations of this work with a research robot will be shown in the second paper.

This symposium addresses social skills training procedures for children with autism. Empirically validated training procedures for a wide range of social behaviors from specific behaviors such as joint attention to more abstract social behaviors such as social perspective-taking will be presented. Implications for design and implementation of social skills training packages and future directions of research will be discussed.

Behavior that is automatically reinforced must come under some type of stimulus control. However, the development of stimulus control is not discussed much by Skinner (1957), or by others who have since written about automatic reinforcement. The current presentation will briefly describe the concept of automatic reinforcement, its applications, and then suggest how stimulus control develops when behavior is automatically reinforced. The analysis may help to explain behavior such as delayed echolalia, self-stimulation, and verbal perseverations. In addition, techniques to evoke desirable behavior (e.g., infant babbling) related to a history of automatic reinforcement will be presented.

One of the challenges in providing home-based early intensive behavior intervention (EIBI) is to put into place mechanisms to ensure the quality of the services. This is particularly challenging in home-based services where staff and the children are not physically in a center. This symposium will present a series of papers describing quality assurance mechanism in an agency delivering early intensive behavior intervention for young children with autism in their homes. Each of the presenters will describe an aspect of quality assurance, discuss evidence of its impact, how it is used and case examples to illustrate its use

Some have maintained that the investigation and teaching of higher cognitive function is outside the domain of behavior analysis or at least Skinners treatment of Verbal Behavior. In contrast, this presentation will argue that Skinners treatment provides the foundation for understanding a range of complex verbal phenomena important to behavior analysts or anyone interested in higher cognitive function. This is particularly true for those who build programs to teach verbal behavior skills. Building on Skinners analysis, this talk offers a heuristic that may be useful for those who design Verbal Behavior programs. This heuristic helps delineate a hierarchy of repertoires and the contingencies that define them. These extended relations include: Basic units or sameness relations, which include concepts and simple equivalence relations; linked units or ordered relations, which include principles and more complex equivalencelike relations; and combined units or generative repertoires, which include reasoning, problem solving, and the use of metaphor. Generative repertoires are of particular importance for they provide the learner with the means for more autonomous learning. Accordingly, this category will be emphasized, drawing heavily from the work of Joanne K. Robbins (and others) and her analysis of how to teach the various types of intelligence.

Recently, issues concerning Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) have received a great deal of attention. Comparisons of epidemiological data from the last 30 years suggest that there has been a significant increase in the prevalence of the disorder. However, the meaning of this increase is currently poorly understood and few population-based studies have been conducted with large U.S. samples. This talk will detail past and present efforts to document the prevalence of autism, as well as discuss implications of the apparent increase in the number of individuals affected by the spectrum of disorders. In addition, characteristics that may increase the risk for developing autism will also be discussed. The few studies that have explored possible association have mostly involved analyses of small, ethnically similar samples which may make results more difficult to generalize. Data from two investigations of large ethnically diverse populations will be highlighted and areas of future investigation will be presented.

Teachers often encounter students who present with both academic deficits and social-behavioral difficulties. Deficiencies in basic academic skills can eventually lead students to be excluded from general education classrooms, while a lack of appropriate social skills affects not only their development of advanced communicative abilities, but also further exacerbates their isolation from peers. Both of these deficit areas are strong predictors of later problems in life. Fluency training, with its emphasis on ?the student knows best? approach, offers alternate strategies for addressing these issues. Fluency training has been found to increase acquisition and retention of both component and composite skills. This presentation examines how fluency training in combination with other treatments can improve a basic academic skill (i.e., oral reading and comprehension) and social skills in young children with developmental disabilities. Results will be discussed with respect to the retention, endurance, and application of these skills in classroom settings.