Association for Behavior Analysis International

What makes us human? That is an old question, much older than the modern division of science. Today anthropogeny tries to explain the origin of humans with a multidisciplinary approach. To answer that question one first has to define culture. For some biology researchers, “culture is information that is capable of affecting individuals’ behaviour, which they acquire from other individuals through teaching, imitation and other forms of social learning. Here, ‘information’ includes knowledge, beliefs, values and skills.”. In behavior analysis, Skinner has shown a definition that can cover all of the meanings of previous attempts, with the advantage of specifying what and how it is learned; in his own words, “the usefulness of any lawful relation depends on the sharpness of reference of the terms in which it is stated.” In behavioral terms, culture is the set of conditional relations, or contingencies, which regulates the power to reinforce or punish members of a group. Large groups usually have some controlling agencies for different kinds of behavior.

This award will be accepted by Julia Todorov-Thomsen on behalf of João Todorov.

Len Green received his undergraduate degree from the City College of New York (CCNY) and his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. After completing post-doctoral research, he ventured west of the Mississippi (despite thinking he still would remain east of the river) where he is Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences and Professor of Economics at Washington University in St. Louis, as well as Director of Undergraduate Studies. His research concerns choice and decision-making in rats, pigeons, and people, with a particular interest in models of self-control, impulsivity, and choice and decision-making. He is one of the developers of ‘behavioral economics,’ a transdisciplinary field that combines the experimental methodology of psychology with the theoretical constructs of economics. He is co-author of the book Economic Choice Theory: An Experimental Analysis of Animal Behavior, and editor of Advances in Behavioral Economics, the third volume of which is subtitled Substance Use and Abuse. His research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Aging, and the McDonnell Center for Higher Brain Function. He served on the Executive Board of the Society for the Quantitative Analysis of Behavior (SQAB), was President of the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (SEAB), and was Editor of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB). He is a Fellow of the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) and the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and was President of Division 25 (Behavior Analysis) of the American Psychological Association. He received the Victor G. Laties Award for Lifetime Service from the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior in 2018.

I obtained my doctorate in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University in 1974 since when I have been in academic posts in Northern Ireland where I have been a full professor since 1986. I published textbooks on behaviour analysis in 1979, 1996, 2000, 2002. As well as teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses, I have successfully supervised 48 students who have obtained PhDs in fields including, experimental analysis of behaviour, applied behaviour analysis, psychopharmacology, behavioural neuroscience, experimental psychology, applied psychology. Three PhD’s were concerned with behavioural strategies to address environmental issues. In 1977 I was co-founder of the group, Behaviour Analysis in Ireland which became a chapter of ABAI. In 2004, the group became the Division of Behaviour Analysis of the Psychological Society of Ireland, and I am currently the Division chair. I organised the Third European Meeting for the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour in Dublin, Ireland 1999, and have co-organised 13 annual conferences of the Division of Behaviour Analysis from 2007 to 2019, variously in Dublin, Galway and Athlone. I have been a keynote speaker at the European Association for Behaviour Analysis in Milan in 2006, in Crete, Greece in 2010, at the Brazilian Association for Behaviour Analysis, Salvador 2011, and at the 30th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Comparative Psychology 2018, and at the 10th International Conference of the Association for Behavior Analysis International in Stockholm, September 2019.

Jennifer L. Austin received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the Florida State University, where she had the privilege of studying under the supervision of Dr. Jon Bailey. For over 20 years, she has worked as a behaviour analytic researcher and clinician, whilst also playing a key role in the development of behaviour analysis programmes in the United States and the United Kingdom. She currently serves as Professor of Psychology and Head of Behaviour Analysis at the University of South Wales, where directs the MSc Behaviour Analysis and Therapy and PgDip Behaviour Analysis Supervised Practice programmes. She also serves as the Clinical Director of the USW Behaviour Analysis Clinic, which is the only university-based behaviour analysis clinic in Europe. Dr. Austin’s research and clinical interests have focussed primarily on behaviour analytic applications in mainstream education, as well as applying our science to populations that are relatively underserved by the field, including children who have experienced trauma and prisoners. She has been a key driver in the development of the UK Society for Behaviour Analysis, which seeks to protect consumers of behaviour analysis, whilst also working toward professional recognition of behaviour analysts in the UK. Dr. Austin has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and is a former associate editor of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Behavior Analysis in Practice, and Education and Treatment of Children.

A fortunate part of my early academic environment was exposure to behavior analysis, which has been critical to my investigation of drugs, addiction, risk behavior, and therapeutic pharmacology. One topic is behavioral economic demand analysis, which I have used to examine the relations among tobacco products, such as traditional cigarettes and e-cigarettes, and the effects of a potential cigarette nicotine-reduction policy. Another topic within the realm of behavioral economics is delay discounting. I have conducted studies helping to identify delay discounting as a fundamental behavioral process underlying addiction across a variety of drugs. My research has applied delay discounting to understand risky sexual behavior in the form of condom use decisions. My drug administration studies show that cocaine and alcohol acutely increase sexual risk behavior by decreasing likelihood of condom use through a delay discounting mechanism. I have conducted drug administration studies with drugs from nearly all drug classes, investigating abuse liability and behavioral effects. These have included first-in-humans studies and studies of novel or atypical drugs such as salvinorin A, the active agent in Salvia divinorum. Finally, I have conducted extensive research with the psychedelic drug psilocybin, including studies showing large long-term reductions in depression and anxiety in cancer patients, and high smoking cessation success rates in treatment-resistant smokers. Overall, my research has provided me the opportunity to speak to the media about a larger number of topics such as: the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs; novel psychoactive drugs largely unknown to the public; the risks associated with alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and other drugs; the effects of drugs on sex and sexual risk, and the changing landscape of tobacco/nicotine and cannabis products. My behavior analytic background has not only been instrumental in conducting my research, but also in responsibly communicating about these topics to the public.

Matthew W. Johnson, Ph.D., has broad expertise on psychoactive drugs, addiction, and risk behavior. Early contributions include research contributing to the recognition that delay discounting, or the devaluation of future consequences, is a fundamental behavioral process broadly relevant to addiction. His early research also validated methods and developed analytic techniques that have since become widely adopted in delay discounting research. He has conducted tobacco/nicotine research throughout his career, determining the role of nicotine and nonpharmacological factors in tobacco use and addiction. This includes recent research on e-cigarettes and current research funded by the Food and Drug Administration using behavioral economics to evaluate cigarettes with potentially modified risk. Applying behavioral economics to sexual risk behavior, Matt has conducted seminal research implicating delay discounting in condom use decisions. He published the first human research determining the effects of cocaine administration on sexual decision making and risk, providing important information for addressing the high rates of HIV among cocaine users. Matt is also a leading expert on the effects of psychedelic drugs and has conducted seminal work that has expanded basic and therapeutic interest in these compounds, including research suggesting potential therapeutic effects of psilocybin in cancer-related psychiatric distress and smoking cessation. He has conducted studies administering nearly all classes of psychoactive drugs. Matt has published 119 articles and chapters including studies on cocaine, tobacco/nicotine, methamphetamine, alcohol, psilocybin, dextromethorphan, salvinorin A, GHB, cannabis, opioids, benzodiazepines, and cathinone-like compounds (“bath salts”). He has been internationally sought as a science communicator on psychoactive drugs and addiction, being interviewed by the CBS 60 Minutes, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Show, Fox Business News, BBC, National Public Radio including Morning Edition and the Kojo Nnamdi Show, Labyrint (a public television show in the Netherlands), the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail, the Daily Mail, USA Today, CBS News, the Baltimore Sun, the Atlantic, the Washingtonian, Psychology Today, Scientific American, and Nature, among others. Matt was quoted and his research was described in Michael Pollan’s best-selling book How to Change Your Mind: How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

The Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) was founded in 1990 by Doreen Granpeesheh, Ph.D., BCBA-D, at the suggestion of O. Ivar Lovaas, Ph.D., who wanted the participants in his groundbreaking study to have an ABA program to attend when they aged out of his UCLA research. What began as a one-woman practice in Westwood, California, grew into the largest ABA provider in the world with more than 260 clinic locations in 33 states. Having practiced, researched, and advocated for ABA for over 40 years, Dr. Granpeesheh provides a view of the earliest years of behavioral applications to the treatment of autism, and speaks of the ways in which access to ABA has grown, largely as a result of the onset of health insurance funding. Dr. Granpeesheh shares the lessons learned in the field, describes how data-driven decisions continue to shape behavior analysis, and shares her insights on future directions.

Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh is the Founder and CEO of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) and the Founder and President of the Board of Autism Care and Treatment Today (ACT Today). Dr. Granpeesheh received her Ph.D. in Psychology from UCLA under the mentorship of Professor Ivar Lovaas. She is licensed by the Medical Board of California and the Colorado, Texas, Arizona, Virginia, Michigan and Oregon State Boards of Psychologists. Dr. Granpeesheh holds a Certificate of Professional Qualification in Psychology from the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards, is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, doctoral level, and has been providing behavioral therapy for individuals with autism since 1979. She has been a member of numerous scientific and advisory boards including the US Autism and Asperger's Association, the Autism File journal, Autism 360/medigenesis, the 4-A Healing Foundation, and the Defeat Autism Now coalition. In addition, Dr. Granpeesheh has served on the National Board of Directors of the Autism Society of America, the practice board of ABAI, as well as the Autism Human Rights and Discrimination Initiative Steering Committee, the Early Intervention Taskforce of the Senate Select Committee on Autism and Related Disorders, and the Oversight Committee of the Department of Developmental Disabilities.

Dr. Granpeesheh has co-authored the book Evidence-Based Treatment for Children with Autism and numerous peer reviewed publications on issues concerning the diagnosis and treatment of Autism. She was awarded the George Winoker Clinical Research Award from the American Academy of Clinical Psychiatrists for her publication titled: Retrospective analysis of clinical records in 38 cases of recovery from autism. Together with her colleagues at CARD, Dr. Granpeesheh created Skills® for Autism, a web-based software tool that creates comprehensive treatment plans for children and adults with autism spectrum disorder, and founded the Institute for Behavioral Training, an online platform for training professionals and families on the principles of ABA.

In 1968, Baer, Wolf and Risley wrote: “Better applications [of behavioral science], it is hoped, will lead to a better state of society, to whatever extent the behavior of its members can contribute to the goodness of a society.” I grew up with that idea and passion—even before I was their student, but they had the practical science. Only a few things from ABA have been brought to population-level scale—with measured population-level benefits. My talk is how my colleagues and I have achieved population-level impact on violence, mental health, addictions and academics using ABA and other proven science. The driving example in this talk, and paper, uses the Good Behavior Game, because it was the first ABA publication on a whole classroom implementation of ABA. Scaling up and scaling out GBG is a function having worked with Sesame Street, implementing my national child-safety effort in NZ, implementing an ABA tobacco control strategy, and understanding and building a business based on sales rather than grants. Achieving population-level benefits with ABA is unlikely to happen as a direct result of an NIH grant. The contingencies are not aligned. Both the Good Behavior Game at micro level and as our international prevention-science company involve selection by consequences to achieve the vision that Baer, Wolf and Risley envisioned. My talk lays a step-by-step pathway to population-level impact of ABA informed prevention science that Don, Mont and Todd foresaw 50 years ago, but did not live to see. From these lessons, we might succeed in bettering the world they predicted.

Dennis D. Embry received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas, focused on using ABA for population-level efforts with Sesame Street and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety—ultimately implementing that work throughout New Zealand. Dr. Embry is president/senior scientist at PAXIS Institute in Tucson, and co-investigator at both Johns Hopkins Center for Prevention and the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy.  Founded in 1998, PAXIS Institute is an international prevention science company, focused on preventing mental, emotional, behavioral and related physical disorders at population-level. He is a SAMHSA/CMHS National Advisory Council member, the board of the National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, and the scientific advisory board of the Children’s Mental Health Network. In the 1990s, he implemented the first RCT at population-level to reduce youth violence (PeaceBuilders) using ABA principles. In 1999, he began replicating the longitudinal Hopkin’s studies of the Good Behavior Game. Today Dr. Embry’s prevention efforts affecting more than one million children in 38 states, multiple provinces of Canada, and EU countries with multiple studies showing population-level reduction of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders using PAX GBG and evidence-base kernels. As grad student, Dr. Baer (his advisor) asked Dennis why he wanted to study ABA having a political and history background, the answer: “I want to use science to make our world a better place for children.”

The efficiency of behavior analytic intervention to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) increases when it is early, intensive, comprehensive, and long-lasting. This is particularly true for children with moderate to severe impairment. The above-mentioned key elements make behavior analytic intervention often inaccessible for most of the affected population in developing countries, such as Brazil. The main causes for that are: the shortage of trained professionals and the absence of specialized public services. Some of the families have the profile to be trained to participate in the intervention plan. Parental implementation may be an important tool for behavior analysts to deliver interventions with the required intensity, comprehensiveness, and extension. On the other hand, training technicians efficiently is another challenge. In this scenario, research focusing on the advancement of training procedures to develop implementation skills in parents of children diagnosed with ASD and also technicians is helpful. This presentation describes some of our applied research on teaching basic skills to implement behavior-analytic intervention to ASD. We describe our results with instructional video-modeling to teach parents to implement structured teaching and its impact on their respective children. We also compare results of implementation by parents to results of implementation by technicians. Research on training basic skills to implement incidental teaching is also reported, along with data on self-video-monitoring to prevent drifting in implementation by technicians. This research line as a whole is dedicated to developing useful tools for behavior analysts to quickly bring others to help in an intervention plan.

Students and professionals interested in the dissemination of Applied behavior analysis.

The purpose of these three studies was to evaluate different variables that may impact skill acquisition in individuals with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The first paper evaluated the order in which stimuli were presented (i.e., sample-first or comparison-first) during receptive discrimination in six children. Results suggest that all participants learned faster during the sample-first condition. The second paper examined if the participants acquired receptive identification and tacting of unknown stimuli presented in array of stimuli that included directly trained tacts. Results suggest that receptive responding may emerge after tact training and that for some individuals tacting and receptive identification may be acquired through exclusion. Finally, the last paper investigated whether the form of visual stimuli affects the acquisition of object-to-picture matching in three young men. Results suggest that the use of stimuli with greater visual similarity to the target object may yield greater efficiency in mastering object-to-picture relations for some individuals diagnosed with ASD.

RBTs, BCaBAs, BCBAs, graduate students

Our field continues to refine and advance methods of teaching individuals with autism critical language skills that allow them to more fully interact with others in their surroundings. The goal of research within this area is often to produce spontaneous language that allows individuals with autism to have more successful social experiences. The papers in this symposium will address teaching language skills to individuals with autism with respect to question-asking skills and simple social responses for an individual also diagnosed with catatonia. Through the use of single-subject experimental designs, the researchers have investigated strategies of teaching language responses to students with autism and demonstrated the effective use of such strategies to increase appropriate spontaneous language responses in the presence of target discriminative stimuli. In addition, each presenter will define methods by which the generalization of these important verbal skills was targeted and the extent to which these responses were displayed under non-training conditions. Finally, each presenter will detail the acquisition and generalization of these responses through a learning-based account and comment on the importance of these skills in advancing the language repertoires of individuals with autism.

Professionals in behavior analysis, education, and clinicians serving individuals with autism who hold certification in behavior analysis or BA, MA, or Ph.D level degrees.

Children with autism exhibit severe deficits in social communication and social interactions (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Studies show that even if children acquire a verbal repertoire they rarely engage in spontaneous speech (Krantz, Rams Land, & McClannahan, 1989; Stevenson, Krantz, & McClannahan, 2000). Question-asking skills is a key aspect of spontaneous language that typically is absent or delayed in individuals with autism (Hauck, Fein, Waterhouse, & Feinstein, 1995; Stone & Caro-Martinez, 1990), and a particular form of question asking that is of vital importance is asking for help. During our presentation we will show the use of audio scripts, an interrupting chain procedure and sufficient exemplar training in teaching preschool aged children with autism to ask for help. Children were taught to request help across three different skill domains (play, self-help, and academic tasks). We employed a nonconcurrent multiple-baseline design across three participants. The intervention was effective for all participants. All three participants learned to ask for help when appropriate, and to refrain from asking for help when help was not needed. Furthermore, asking for help behavior generalized to untrained situations and to new people. Asking for help behaviors were also maintained at follow-up, conducted three months after intervention.

Catatonia is a syndrome characterized as a cluster of difficulties in verbal and motor behavior that interfere with everyday function. The following is an experimental analysis of the effects of a prompt-fading behavioral treatment package on the verbal behavior of an adolescent girl with autism spectrum disorder and catatonia. Data were collected on the verbal production of three target responses previously in the participant’s repertoire: “Hi;” “That sounds great;” and “Excuse me.” Following the presentation of an opportunity to respond (e.g., following an instructor’s greeting), the instructor provided full manual guidance, in conjunction with a verbal model when needed, to assist the participant in emitting the verbal response. Over time, manual prompts were replaced with graduated guidance, spatial fading and shadowing. A functional relation between prompt-fading and verbal behavior was demonstrated by the systematic increase in the percentage of verbal responses displayed following the introduction of prompt fading across three verbal responses. As manual prompts were systematically faded, independent verbal responding emerged. Responding was displayed across unfamiliar adults and maintained over a 12-month period. Future researchers may want to investigate the effectiveness of prompt fading to reestablish verbal behavior across different individuals with similar/less similar profiles.

Behavior Analysts in the applied setting have a unique opportunity to contribute to a robust literature base by providing replication of existing best practices, and by evaluating treatment models rooted in behavior analytic literature. We are compelled by our ethical code (and our funding sources) to continue to disseminate evidence that Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is an effective treatment for Autism Spectrum Disorder. The call to disseminate, combined with the opportunity of capturing progress in real-world settings, is a powerful argument for conducting meaningful applied research. In practice, there are numerous potential hurdles to conducting quality applied research. This panel will propose an approach for creating infrastructure to support in-house research initiatives, as well as strategies for implementation within the time and resource constraints faced by practicing Behavior Analysts. Additionally, the panelists will review the benefits of mentorship and collaboration between academics and practitioners, as well as self-reported benefits to clinicians who participate in research efforts in the applied setting.

Behavior Analysts

Individuals without a fluent speaking repertoire may show disproportionate levels of strength across samples of verbal operants. Verbal behavior is inherently social in that its reinforcement is mediated by a listener. Common examples of verbal behavior within the applied literature include conditioning mand, tact, echoic, and intraverbal control. Sampling responses from these four operant classes allows us to infer the overall strength of these populations of behavior, and analyze differences in their relative strength. The null hypothesis for this type of analysis is that the levels of strength across these four operants is proportionate, a phenomenon commonly described as “fluency” that facilitates transfer of stimulus control across changing environmental conditions. The alternative hypothesis is that the levels of strength across these four operants is disproportionate, a phenomenon commonly described as “autism” that inhibits transfer of stimulus control due to certain response prepotencies. Assessment strategies and implications for treatment will be discussed.

Individuals without derivational stimulus control may show disproportionate levels of strength across samples of intraverbal relations. Derivational stimulus control refers to the extent to which listeners effectively respond to verbal stimuli along a generalization gradient. Common examples of derivational stimulus control within the applied literature include reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity. Sampling responses from these three operant classes allows us to infer the overall strength of these populations of behavior, and analyze differences in their relative strength. The null hypothesis for this type of analysis is that the levels of strength across these three operants is proportionate, a phenomenon commonly described as “listener comprehension” that facilitates prolonged verbal episodes and facilitates the development of other social skills. The alternative hypothesis is that the levels of strength across these three operants is disproportionate, a phenomenon commonly described as “autism” that inhibits transfer of stimulus control due to certain response prepotencies. Assessment strategies and implications for treatment will be discussed.

In this panel discussion we will identify parent barrier behaviors and treatment indications resulting from parent barrier behaviors. We have developed a basic checklist of parent barrier behaviors observed in an ABA clinic in Arizona and corresponding data will be described. These identified parent barrier behaviors have been hypothesized to impact treatment duration and ultimately impact the child’s long-term access to effective ABA intervention. Many of the families with high barrier behaviors often begin ABA services with various providers in a geographic area with limited duration of services at each location. These barrier behaviors are often seen in various settings with the caregiver, therapy, school, and other medical providers. This checklist was designed to identify what barrier behaviors may be exhibited by parents or caregivers, establish a threshold score to indicate a specific treatment focus, and a suggestion for high intensity parent training at the onset of ABA therapy and other treatment indications should be discussed. The goal is to focus on parent barrier behaviors and address them behavior analytically in order to increase duration of effective ABA services for the child.

BCBAs in practice, BCBA administrators that may have policy control, practitioners that have direct contact with parents on a regular basis.

A child psychologist, child psychiatrist, general pediatrician, and behavior analyst all walk into a room and... The result is a discussion about how integrating applied behavior analysis into a 10-bed medical-behavioral unit at a children's medical hospital has impacted the practice of non-behavior analytic colleagues. From providing capacity for these practitioners to use their unique skill sets to ensuring that patients receive more effective treatment, the presence of behavior analysts on the medical-behavior unit has allowed for behavior to be assessed and treated with efficacy and integrity. This has resulted in a larger emphasis on behaviorally-based treatments rather than the sole use of psychotropic medications. Practitioners report greater proficiency with behavioral terminology, better understanding of behavioral technologies, increased use of behavior analytic assessment and treatment, and overall improved outcomes for patients. As a result, non-behavior analytic practitioners are able to re-focus resources as needed to patients and families with a greater understanding of why behaviors are occurring as well as more targeted treatment.

Target audience includes consultants and behavior analysts working with acute feeding disorders and/or medically complex clients.

According to the most recent report of the US Employment Demand for Behavior Analysts, annual demand for Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) has increased about 800% from 2010 to 2017. While this leads to greater job security in the field, it also means that employers are under a great deal of stress to provide services to significantly more clients, leading to either turning away business and money, or pressuring staff to take on more than they can handle. Gregoire (2016) reported that levels of stress in the workplace are reportedly 18% – 24% higher now than they were 30 years ago. The first presentation in this symposium will provide an overview of the theory of self-care and Basic Conditional Factors (BCFs), commonly overlooked barriers to self-care. The second presentation will provide an overview of results from a recent study that examined the relationships between self-care strategies, job crafting practices, work-life balance, work engagement, and burnout among behavior analysts. The third presentation will provide an example of how self-care practices have been integrated into the organizational culture of a multi-specialty practice pediatric practice and provide suggestions for how these practices can be generalized to other settings.

Professionals, including behavior analysts, working in human service settings of any type, interested in supporting personal and professional health and wellbeing of individuals and organizations; psychologists, behavior analysts, practitioners, and graduate students.

Efficient and effective training on evidence-based practices including applied behavior analysis (ABA) based interventions may not be accessible to caregivers and professionals implementing interventions. In order for caregivers and professionals to effectively implement ABA-based interventions, training and ongoing coaching are critical. However, numerous training barriers associated with traditional didactic models exist (e.g., time, costs, scheduling, shortage of qualified individuals). Telehealth is a model that can address these barriers and support individuals as they learn to implement ABA-based interventions. Telehealth is the use of online and communication technologies to deliver explicit training and ongoing coaching from a distance. This presentation aims to address the need for efficient and effective training on ABA-based interventions through the use of telehealth. The results of four single-case design studies in which caregivers and professionals (e.g., teachers, early intervention providers, and parents) were taught and coached via telehealth to implement ABA-based interventions are presented. Data regarding implementation fidelity, child outcomes, and social validity are shared.

Practicing BCBAs

Applied Behaviour Analysis is the basis of the most effective interventions for the treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders. However, there is a significant shortage in appropriately qualified individuals (i.e., Board Certified Behavior Analysts; BCBA®) that can design and oversee the implementation of individually-tailored interventions that meet service-recipients needs. To address this gap in professional training and service provision, telehealth has emerged as a model that makes use of technology to increase treatment efficiency and accessibility by providing remote training and supervision of behaviour analytic treatment. Given existing research on the use of telehealth presents important methodological flaws, rigorous experiments are warranted before telehealth can be classified as evidence-based practice. Our work has focused on the creation and experimental testing of two parent and professional training packages that use instruction and live coaching to teach skills that promote communication and independent living skills. In this presentation, we will share data on efficacy in terms of parent/professional skill acquisition and child outcomes, fidelity of implementation and social validity.

Growing evidence suggests complementary findings in research on verbal development and relational responding. A large body of research in relational responding demonstrates stimulus control involving complex human behavior and communication including language. Simultaneously, decades of research findings in verbal development and applications identified stimulus control for the range of cusps and how this changes children’s prognosis. This program of research suggests experiential and reinforcement sources of stimulus control that lead to incidental language learning as bidirectional naming (BiN) and the component unidirectional naming (UniN). Another body of research on BiN increasingly points to the presence of BiN as a facilitator of relational responding. We present and discuss two papers whose findings show correlational and functional relations between the presence of and onset of the BiN cusp and arbitrary derived relations (AAR). Each body of research represents extensions of behavior analysis to domains traditionally seen as exclusive properties of cognitive psychology. Findings showing the intercept of stimulus control for these lines of investigation are evidence of a more mature science that promises a bright future for the science of behavior.  

Intermediate level, behavior scientists,

Bidirectional Naming and derived relational responding have both commonly been used to explain the accelerated rate in word learning that often occurs within the second to third year of life. However, there has been limited research on how these repertoires may intersect and relate to each other. Across two analyses we evaluated the relation between Bidirectional Naming (BiN) and derived relational responding demonstrated by 31 preschool students with and without diagnoses. Within the first experiment we tested the presence and strength of relations between BiN, arbitrary and non-arbitrary relations which were mutually and combinatorial entailed. Data from the first analysis indicated a strong, significant correlation between participants’ degree of BiN and scores on tests of derived relations. The second analysis compared the mean differences between the establishment of arbitrary unimodal and cross-modal relations for 18 preschool students, selected from participants included within Experiment 1. The data indicated a significant difference for both cross-modal and unimodal derived relations. The obtained results of both experiments have implications for research in how Bidirectional Naming and derived relational responding may lead to learning at accelerated rates and in new ways.

The rapid growth in computer technology means that nearly anything imaginable is either possible or will soon become possible. Behavior analysts, as specialists in learning and behavior, are uniquely trained to become strong collaborators on multidisciplinary teams focusing on projects to advance machine learning, simulation-based experiences, and much more. In this tutorial, I will discuss how we currently leverage such technology in my lab and integrate robotics, virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI) in our behavior analytic research. I will share the outcomes of some of our current research projects as well as my collaborative efforts on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) grants.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Dr. Kazemi is a Professor at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) where she has developed and teaches undergraduate and graduate coursework in behavior analysis for the past 10 years. She founded the Masters of Science Program in Applied Behavior Analysis in 2010 and has collaborated with the CSUN community to provide graduate students high quality supervision experiences. She currently has two different lines of research. Her applied research interests involve identification of efficient, effective strategies for practical training, supervision, and leadership. Her laboratory research involves leveraging technology (e.g., robotics, virtual or augmented reality) for efficient training and feedback using simulations. She is currently working on several nationwide large projects (e.g., with FEMA and NASA) with a focus on effective training and behavioral outcomes. She has received several mentorship awards including the ABAI Best Mentor Award, the Outstanding Faculty Award, the Outstanding Teaching Award, and the Outstanding Service Award. She has published articles and book chapters on a variety of topics including training, staff turnover, and the use of technology in behavior analysis. She is the leading author of a handbook written for both supervisors and supervisees that is titled, Supervision and Practicum in Behavior Analysis: A Handbook for Supervisees.

Effective presenting is an important skill for graduate students do develop in the context of their training. However, effective dissemination is often neglected in training programs which is problematic in regard to professional advancement and overall dissemination to the field. This question-and-answer-style Professional Development Series panel will offer an opportunity for students to ask questions regarding oral presentations. The panelists will discuss all components to presenting, from creation of slides and effective story-telling to delivery based on audience type. Panelists will focus on three main components to presentations: organization and structure, slides, and delivery. Presenters will offer advice on how to give effective and engaging presentations while giving enough time for ample questions from the audience. The goal of this panel is to offer insight and advice to students on how to become a more effective and engaging presenter through the expertise of the invited panelists

Graduate students, certified behavior analysts

Often thrown into the bucket of “behavior sciences,” Behavior analysis is frequently misunderstood or even maligned by members of the general population who believe it is something “done” to a person with special needs or autism without regard to social validity or the environment. As behavior analysts, we understand the great need for the technology of ABA across almost every facet of life. From moms, teachers, and coaches to CEOs and even world leaders, a fundamental understanding of the principles of behavior can drastically improve performance, outcomes, and quality of life across multiple environments. However, our skillsets and reinforcers are predominantly related to the application, not the dissemination of the science. Most people are left in the dark regarding the greatest science in the world. After all, what science can benefit all other sciences by improving the performance of their perspective scientists? This panel discussion will focus on current efforts to disseminate while providing participants tips and techniques for Expanding the World's Collective Wisdom of Behavioral Science to Change the Landscape of Government, Education, Industry, and Society at Large.

Behavior Analysts seeking to expand the field and impact of behavior analysis through dissemination.

This invited panel is sponsored by ABAI’s new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Board; it represents the first of an annual series of program events highlighting topics identified as central to success in DEI achievements. After a brief review of the Board’s activities this year by Carol Pilgrim, the panel discussion will focus on the critical issue of recruitment efforts in DEI. Dr. Jomella Watson-Thompson will address recruitment strategies and challenges within practice and field settings, Dr. Sarah Bloom will discuss recruitment of university students, and Dr. Mike Perone will speak to recruitment practices targeting university faculty and administrators. Time for questions and comments from the audience will be included to allow for sharing relevant experiences and lessons learned. Future panels in the DEI series will target themes including retaining individuals once recruited, mentoring programs, inclusion and equity strategies at the organization level, inclusion and equity strategies at the individual level, and others.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Dr. Jomella Watson-Thompson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Behavioral Science, and the Director of the Center for Service Learning at the University of Kansas. She is also an Associate Director with the Center for Community Health and Development. She attained a Ph.D. in Behavioral Psychology and a Masters of Urban Planning from the University of Kansas. She applies behavioral science methods and interventions to improve how communities address issues related to community health and development. Her research has focused on behavioral-community approaches to neighborhood development, substance abuse prevention, and youth and community violence prevention. Dr. Thompson supports community-engaged scholarship using participatory approaches to address social determinants or factors that may contribute to disparities, particularly for marginalized groups and communities. She has researched the effects of community-based processes and behavioral-community interventions to promote mobilization and change in communities. Dr. Thompson has co-authored articles on community capacity-building, youth development, and prevention and received numerous federal, state and local funding awards. She is as an Associate Editor with Behavior and Social Issues. Dr. Thompson has extensive experience providing training, technical support and evaluation for coalitions and community-based initiatives.

This symposium involves studies investigating the effects of lag schedules and teacher presentation rates on academic, play, and social behavior of children with autism. The first presentation will discuss using a lag schedule to teach variable play behavior in preschoolers with autism, and assessing preference for variable or repetitive play. The second presentation will discuss using fixed and varied instructional arrangements to establish varied intraverbal responses. The third presentation will discuss the role of intertrial intervals of instruction presentation on skill acquisition and rates of problem behavior. The final presentation will discuss skill acquisition and problem behavior rates during two different intertrial intervals of instruction presentation, as well as student preference for instruction presentation rate. The discussant will provide comments on each of these studies.

BACBs, graduate students, researchers

Although individuals with autism tend to behave repetitively, certain reinforcement contingencies (e.g., lag schedules) can be used to increase and maintain behavioral variability. In a lag schedule, reinforcement is only delivered for responses that differ from recent responses. We designed the present study to promote variable play behavior in preschoolers with autism interacting with playsets and figurines, and to assess preference for variability and repetition contingencies. Limited data have shown a preference for variability in pigeons and college students, but this effect has not yet been explored in clinical populations. In this experiment, three preschoolers with autism were taught to discriminate between variability and repetition contingencies. With one set of discriminative stimuli, only play behaviors that met a lag schedule were reinforced, and with another, only repetitive play behaviors were reinforced. After differential performance was established, participants were presented with a choice between the two sets of stimuli, and participants completed a play session with the corresponding contingency. Two participants showed a slight preference for variability over repetition, and the other showed indifference. These results indicate that some individuals with autism play repetitively, not because they prefer repetitive play, but because they would require additional teaching to play variably.

Research on the importance of antecedent variables when teaching persons with autism has the potential to provide pragmatic methodologies for the applied setting. This study replicated and extended the work of Roxburgh and Carbone (2013) on the effects of the rate of teacher-presented instructional demands as an independent variable. An alternating treatment design was used to evaluate the effects of the rate of teacher presented instructional demands across three intertrial intervals (1 s, 5 s, 10 s). Dependent variables were frequency of problem behavior, frequency of teaching trials for target skills, frequency of error responses, frequency of mastered skills presented, and rates of reinforcement during discrete trial instruction with four students with autism. Results indicated that reduction of intertrial intervals resulted in a commensurate increase in rates of socially mediated positive reinforcement, increased rates of instructor presented teaching trials, and a decrease in frequency of problem behavior. Issues related to the importance of replication, the role of translational research in applied settings, and conceptual analyses of the role of motivating operation on the occurrence of problem behavior will also discussed.

This study was a partial replication and an extension of Roxburgh and Carbone (2012). The purpose of the study was three-fold. First, we evaluated the effects of varied teacher-presented instructional demands (inter trial interval = 1s, 5s) on the opportunities of respond, the number of responses emitted, percentage of correct responses, and percentage of intervals with disruptive behavior for three children with autism. Second, we compared the effects of varied teacher presentation rates on responding, especially the accuracy of responding and occurrences of disruptive behavior during easy and hard tasks. Third, we used a concurrent-chain procedure to assess participant preferences for teacher presentation rates during easy tasks. An alternating treatment embedded in ABAB without baseline design was used to compare the effects of the two treatment conditions (inter trial interval = 1s, 5s) and two task conditions (easy and hard). The results of the study demonstrated that as compared to extended intertrial interval (ITI), brief ITI increased the rate of instructional demands presented, rate of learner responses emitted, and rate of correct responding during both tasks while increasing percentage of correct responding and reducing problem behaviors during hard tasks only. During easy tasks, the participants’ choices between two rates were inconsistent, suggesting avoidance contingency might have been in effect.

Several reviews and meta-analyses have demonstrated the robust effects of behavioral treatments for feeding problems, including increasing oral intake, increasing diet variety, teaching feeding-related skills, and decreasing inappropriate mealtime behavior. This symposium will include four presentations related to recent advancements in the assessment and treatment of pediatric feeding disorders. The presentations are a product of research being conducted across different laboratories and clinical sites across North America. The first presentation will discuss indices of child happiness during treatment for pediatric feeding disorders. The second presentation will describe using structured visual inspection criteria with functional analyses of inappropriate mealtime behavior. The third presentation will compare a re-presentation and modified chin prompt technique to treat different topographies of liquid expulsion. The final presentation will display large-scale outcome data from an inter-disciplinary pediatric feeding disorders program. The symposium will conclude with a discussion and integration of how each of the presentations advance our current understanding of pediatric feeding disorders.

BCBAs, BCaBAs, clinical behavior analysts, clinicians working with children with pediatric feeding disorders

Caregivers may discount the clinical benefits of an effective intervention if it does not appear to lead to positive changes in their child’s affective behavior (Dillon & Carr, 2007). Some researchers suggest that when children appear to enjoy teaching procedures, caregivers may be more likely to seek out the treatment for their child and adhere to implementing the procedures (Green et al., 2005; Kazdin, 1980). Escape extinction, an empirically supported intervention for the treatment of pediatric feeding disorders, is often necessary to improve consumption of healthy, targeted foods for children with feeding disorders. However, escape extinction may occasionally be associated with undesirable side effects (e.g., bursts, increased emotional responding) (Bachmeyer, 2009; Woods & Borrerro, 2019). In the current study, we identified behavioral indices of happiness and unhappiness and collected data on those behaviors before and during escape and attention extinction in the treatment of pediatric feeding disorders. We have observed an increase in levels of happiness and a decrease in levels of unhappiness during escape extinction relative to baseline in one treatment evaluation thus far. We will discuss these findings and address future directions of the study in terms of intervening on child happiness or unhappiness during treatment.

The extant literature on pediatric feeding disorders indicates intensive, multidisciplinary treatment holds benefits for children with severe feeding difficulties, such as patients relying on enteral nutrition (e.g., gastrostomy tube). The most common methodology documenting outcomes for these programs are Nonrandomized Studies (NRS). Although NRS represents a valuable tool for providing insight to intervention, prior research utilizing NRS included potential bias concerning data abstraction. Additionally, there is a lack of standardization across studies regarding uniformity of outcome measures, and description of patient characteristics and treatment protocols. The purpose of the present study was to examine the clinical presentations, intervention characteristics, and treatment outcomes in a sample of children receiving intensive, multidisciplinary intervention for feeding tube dependence. This study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) criteria to plan the study, guide data abstraction and structure the study’s methodology. We conducted a retrospective electronic medical review to gather outcome data for patients admitted to an intensive day treatment feeding program. The review included 81 individuals dependent on enteral nutrition. We will describe treatment setting and protocols and outcome measures including demographics, anthropometrics, meal-time behaviors, oral/enteral intake and caregiver satisfaction at admission, discharge and follow-up.

The current symposium outlines dissemination efforts in countries beyond the United States of America and in fields beyond autism, with the aim of inspiring the audience to become better ambassadors for applied behavior analysis (ABA). Our first paper reviews the power of social media and the challenges that can be faced when becoming a social behavioral influencer. The second paper examines the current status of the dissemination of ABA in the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East, including an overview of efforts related to the translation of behavior analytic works and collaborations with non-behavior analytic professional peers. The third paper brings us into the field of health and fitness, and specifically football, with an evaluation of the antecedent and consequent components of the standard Behavioral Skills Training procedure. Our final paper will discuss current growth rates of certified behavior analysts, barriers to dissemination, and avenues for support in Africa. The discussant will highlight and integrate the contributions of all presenters in relation to and under the framework of her #dobetter professional development movement.

Basic level event designed for: BCaBAs, BCBAs, BCBA-Ds and anyone interested in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and its dissemination.

The world has changed significantly over time, however many of our problems remain the same. Luckily, our tools for accessing and sharing information with others have drastically improved. One of the most powerful tools available to us today, for communicating with others, is social media. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook were among the first social media platforms to become available for the everyday user. For me, they emerged while I was deep in my “dissertation-writing-avoidance-phase” of my life. What originally started as a website for parents and teachers, which housed a few resources, turned into a Twitter handle, and then a public “persona” on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. Due to social media, we are now able to reach millions of people without leaving the comfort of our homes. Ironically, as a result of my efforts, I have been invited to travel and speak at events throughout the world. As Behaviorbabe, I have experienced many successes, however, there have also been many missteps and some outright failures. I invite you to take a journey with me, to learn the history of Behaviorbabe, and to use these experiences to help you become an ambassador for behavior analysis.

“Behavior analysts are responsible for disseminating behavior analysis by making information about the science available to the public, professional peers, and government officials” (Kelly, Martin, Dillenburger, Kelly & Miller, 2019; p. 440). This presentation examines the current status of the dissemination of applied behavior analysis (ABA) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council in the Middle East (Kelly et al., 2016). Dissemination efforts will be shared including: the initiation of the first graduate Verified Course Sequence in the country; presentations at non-behavior analytic conferences; translation of behavior analytic works; and collaborations with non-behavior analytic professional peers including experts in educational technology, and members of the Ministry of Education. Finally, an overview will be provided of results from an online survey that investigated levels of awareness of autism and ABA amongst 232 pediatricians in the UAE. The results indicated suboptimal awareness of the causes and characteristics of autism as well as alarming support for unestablished interventions for individuals. Dissemination efforts with pediatricians will be shared.

Behavioral Skills Training (BST) has been a common procedure to help teach or improve various behaviors for some time, and it involves instruction, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. However, there might be instances in which some components of BST are not necessary. For example, common coaching techniques in American rules Football involve a coach providing antecedent instruction without detailed feedback immediately after a rehearsal, and the players appear to often learn the desired skill. This means that there might be times when antecedent instruction might be sufficient when attempting to change behavior, and consequent feedback could be an unnecessary laborious task. Thus, we evaluated antecedent and consequent components of the standard BST procedure to teach proper tackling form to 3 football players. Overall we found that instruction and modeling helped all players improve their behavior. However, the immediate feedback following rehearsal proved to help all participants improve their behavior to desired levels. Procedures, results, and implications will be discussed.

Individuals who are unable to use conventional speech are at risk for challenging behavior, social isolation, and poor long term outcomes. Approximately 30% of children with moderate-severe disabilities are at high risk for complex communication needs; most of these individuals would benefit from AAC. AAC has been supported as effective for a variety of implementers, procedures, and target outcomes. However, many questions remain regarding the quality of reporting this research, critical outcomes, and features of implementation. Without this information, it is difficult to determine when and how AAC-based interventions are most effective. Comprehensive systematic reviews examining the impacts of AAC for individuals with complex communication needs, including individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities, were conducted by the presenters and their research teams. The presenters will synthesize available evidence about AAC to address the methodological quality of the literature, effects of AAC intervention on speech production, the use of telehealth in AAC interventions, and factors related to parent-implementation of AAC-based interventions. Participants will gain an understanding of critical points related to implementing AAC and will be able to summarize the current state of the science.

Researchers, Graduate Students, Behavior Analysts

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is an effective, empirically supported classroom management procedure that behavioral researchers continue to study and refine. In the current symposium, researchers from multiple laboratories will present their research on procedural variations, component analysis, indirect effects, generalization, and maintenance. In Study 1, researchers examined the effects and social validity of variations in team size. Study 2 examined the effects of systematic component removal on student behavior. In Study 3, researchers examined the effects of fading effortful components of the GBG and conducted a systematic analysis of peer interactions as an indirect effect. Study 4 examined the differential effects of dosage levels on the generalization and maintenance of GBG effects on student behavior.

Behavior analysts working in or consulting with schools, special education teachers, university faculty members, graduate students, and other certified behavior analysts interested in group contingencies

In this symposium, four studies will be described that evaluated procedures to facilitate emergent responding and/or equivalence class formation with adults of typical development or adults diagnosed with ASD. In the first study, equivalence-based instruction (EBI) was compared to a PowerPoint lecture to teach differential reinforcement procedure descriptors to college students. In the second study, EBI was compared to self-study of videos to learn examples of American Sign Language and to combine them in novel ways using both listener and speaker behavior. In the third study, adult participants were trained on nutrition Information for different food items using conditional-discrimination training. In the last study, adults with ASD learned classes of stimuli representing computer hardware (i.e., hard drive, CPU fan, RAM, processor, and power supply) using EBI and then demonstrated the emergence of untaught relations, intraverbals, and assembly of a hard drive. Collectively, these studies inform best practices of procedures used to promote emergent responding and equivalence class formation across a broad domain of skill areas.

College instructors / BCBAs

Mastery criteria are a ubiquitous component of skill acquisition programs; however, there is limited research on its use. Studies in this symposium will cover a range of issue related to an educator's use of criteria. Our first talk discusses data analysis and how the continuity of data collection affects mastery. The second and third talks manipulate an aspect of mastery criterion and evaluate its effect on skill acquisition. The final talk focuses on appropriate criteria and instruction to promote eye contact.

Researchers and practitioners who design educational interventions for children with developmental disabilities

Data collection procedures must be chosen to work for the clinician, rather than expending inefficient effort on gathering underutilized information. Balancing clinician use of time with effective instructional interventions and decision-making. This study applied a multiple baseline across participants design to compare the two approaches using parallel data-based decision protocols regarding the impact on client skill mastery, false mastery indicators, rate of instruction, and overall clinician intervention decisions. The data collection systems of the programming for 6 children with autism were manipulated in a private day school in suburban Virginia. Licensed special education teachers supervised by behavior analysts designed the skill acquisition programming. The data indicate that while mastery of targets was similar between the conditions, significant differences were found in teacher decision-making effort, rate of instruction, and targets falsely flagged as mastered. Exploring the potential effects a data collection system may have on client skill acquisition and the efficient use of limited clinician time can help service providers determine which systemic processes they will use in their practice.

In humans, eye contact is one of the most important nonverbal communicative behaviors. However, deficits in eye contact are characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and other neurodevelopmental disabilities. Interventions targeting increasing eye contact in this population are important as eye contact can be conceptualized as a behavioral cusp that allows the individual to access novel environments and contingencies. Previous research has used a variety of procedures to increase eye contact in this population with limited success and arbitrarily determined mastery criteria. Thus, the purpose of this presentation is to discuss three studies which evaluated eye contact. In the first study, researchers used descriptive analyses to determine normative levels of eye contact in a sample population. In the second study, researchers used eye tracking software to increase eye contact in individuals with disabilities and evaluated generalization across settings. In the third study, researchers used a progressive model to teach eye contact and evaluated maintenance during follow-up probes. Limitations of these studies are discussed along with suggestions for future research on increasing eye contact in individuals with developmental disabilities and programming for generalization and maintenance.

Since its inception in the late 1960s Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) has been applied across a wide variety of industries. Within these various industries different goals, populations, and procedures make OBM one of the broadest applications of behavior analysis. However, the differences across settings require a range of skills in an OBM practitioner that include industry specific terminology, knowledge of safety procedures, government regulations, among others. This symposium contains two presentations in a human service setting, a study that took place within a hospital, and a final study that took place in a manufacturing plant. The goals and methods of the studies vary widely and highlight how OBM procedures can be implemented. The applications of OBM will be compared and contrasted by the discussant.

Behavior analysts

Signs are a commonly used antecedent intervention. There are a number of variables that make a sign more likely to be followed (proximity, response effort, changing vs. static), but there is little research into whether a sign is more effective if the message is provided in a “do” versus a “don’t” format. Providing a “do” request is generally considered more effective in clinical populations but has not been studied in an employee population. In the current study, written requests, in the form of a posted sign on a door, were used to measure the effectiveness of a “do” message (find another way) and a “don’t” message (do not enter) with employees in a school setting. Adherence to the signs did some to be influenced by the message.

Pay-for-performance broadly describes systems where an employee’s behavior is tied to her or his performance. The current applied study describes the effects of transitioning a team of four behavior analysts from a standard pay-for-time paradigm to a pay-for-performance system. In the pay-for-performance system a percentage of pay was made contingent upon the number of hours billed. Results indicated an increase in the number of monthly hours billed across all behavior analysts. Additionally, the improvements in performance achieved in the pay-for-performance program made the department profitable for the first time.

Hospital errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States. One way to reduce errors is to increase communication between doctors, nurses, and patients. Each stakeholder brings valuable information to the discussion and can serve as a second check during medical decisions. In this study, we examined a package intervention that included task clarification, prompting, and feedback for increasing discussion among doctors, nurses, and patients during morning rounds on two units. Communication was measured using a checklist of items to be discussed during rounds. Furthermore, nurse presence and submitting orders during rounds was measured. Results indicated that they intervention was successful at improving communication.

Organizational behavior management (OBM) techniques have long made positive impacts in businesses and organizations. One successful area within OBM is performance management or focusing on employee behaviors to reach organizational goals. The current study used performance management techniques to improve casting productivity and efficiency in a copper manufacturing company. Combinations of goal-setting, task clarification, and feedback were used to target both pounds of copper casted and the amount of time needed to complete a cycle (cycle time). Overall, productivity increased by 7.2% and cycle time decreased by 4.4% during the intervention and this change was estimated to be worth over $5 million. Methodology and other results will be discussed.

As access to information increases with internet searches and almost instantaneous global communication, behavior analysts become exposed to a wide-variety of perspectives and strategies for treatment implementation. This exposure can cause behavior analysts’ worldview to shift from applying the theoretical foundations of behavioral science to incorporating other worldviews (e.g., mentalistic, non-scientifically supported theories) into their clinical practice. Some behavior analysts have confused the technologies of behavior analysis (e.g., curricula, assessments, etc.) for behavior analysis itself or have not adopted a behavioral worldview. “If this were a theoretical issue only, we should have no cause for alarm; but theories affect practice… Confusion in theory means confusion in practice” (Skinner, p. 9, 1968). This symposium, which includes four presentations and a discussion, will examine the variables that impact the shift to or away from a behavior analytic "worldview", the necessity for incorporating a behavioral worldview into ethical practice, and the impact for not utilizing a behavioral worldview.

Practicing behavior analysts, students of behavior analysis, clinical supervisors.

A worldview is the lens through which we look and make sense of the world. A worldview constructs the foundation of what we believe, and dictates how we explain, assess, and deal with the phenomena of interest. Behavior analysts, through their training, are exposed to and supposedly embrace the worldview of behaviorism and all that that means, such as adherence to scientific attitude and practice, that informs our assessment and treatment of behavior. However, there is accumulating evidence that behavior analysts are using and supporting treatments and interventions that are not based upon the behavior-analytic worldview or conceptualization of behavior. Such practice hurts consumers, hurts our field, and demonstrates ethical disarray on the part of the behavior analyst. Behavior analysts have an ethical and practical responsibility to adhere only to behaviorism as their worldview and behave according to only its tenets and philosophy.

Despite ethical requirements that behavior analysts function under a behavioral world view, it appears that some behavior analysts have adapted more of a conspiracy theory – flat earth world view not based upon our science. In fact, evidence indicates that some behavior analysts believe that the behavioral world view only applies to specific populations and age groups – not the full earth. This may be due to a lack of understanding and application of the fundamental philosophy of the science or an over-reliance on marketing behavioral analysis to specific populations and commercialized guides as easy to use as a point-and-click google search. Marketing may have been appropriately conducted to disseminate to the public behavior analysis’ effectiveness for specific populations, it may have marketed too well – changing behavior analysts’ world view. Although curriculum and guides initially may have been appropriately developed to assist behavior analysts, but not replace the fundamental applications of the science, the over reliance on their simplicity may be replacing the comprehensive understanding and use of the behavioral world view and application of such. Without a thorough understanding and application of a comprehensive behavioral worldview, behavior analysts may evolve into superficial and unethical, point-and-click behavioral technicians and not analysts.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may exhibit deficits in language and social communication; therefore, behavioral intervention needs to ameliorate deficits in verbal behavior and expand relevant repertoires. Continuous refinement of procedures to assess and teach these skills is needed to promote efficacious and efficient intervention strategies, which should produce meaningful outcomes for clients. This symposium will present empirical data from research projects aimed at identifying efficacious and efficient procedures to teach and expand the verbal repertoires of children with ASD. Chance, Cividini-Motta, and Livingston will present on a comparison of methods used to condition echoic behavior as reinforcers to increase vocalizations. Niland et al. will describe the results of a comparison of isolated and compound stimulus presentations to teach auditory tacts. Scott et al. will describe the results of a comparison of different antecedent verbal stimuli on the acquisition and emergence of bidirectional intraverbals. Finally, Guerrero et al. will report on a comparison of procedures to teach multiply-controlled verbal behavior, short story recall. Presentations will be followed by a discussion of applied implications and future directions.

Applied researchers and applied practitioners

Tacts are verbal operants evoked by some object, event, or stimulus feature, and tacts should occur in the presence of stimuli across all five senses. An example of an auditory tact is saying “siren” upon hearing the high-pitched noise of an ambulance. We replicated and extended a study by Hanney, Carr, and LeBlanc (2019) by examining the efficacy and efficiency of three different stimulus-presentation conditions including: (a) isolated, (b) compound with known visual stimulus, and (c) compound with unknown visual stimulus. We evaluated the acquisition of auditory tacts with an adapted alternating treatments design embedded within a nonconcurrent multiple-baseline design across sets with two children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). All three conditions were efficacious with at least one set of stimuli for each participant. However, the compound conditions were more likely to lead to mastery in the least amount of time. In transfer probes, isolated stimuli were presented as compound stimuli and compound stimuli were presented in isolation; correct auditory tacts emitted throughout probes indicated appropriate control of auditory stimuli persisted. Implications for future applied research and application to practice will be discussed.

Reading comprehension is an important early academic skill that may pose challenges for some children with autism. Prior research (Valentino, Conine, Delfs, & Furlow 2015) has reported effective methods for teaching children with autism to retell short stories that were previously read to them, as a possible first step in establishing a reading comprehension repertoire. We replicated and extended this prior work with three school-aged children with autism using a multiple baseline across stories and a non-concurrent multiple baseline across participants. Participants were exposed to an initial baseline, a reading with reinforcement condition (treatment 1), and a backward chaining with textual prompts condition (treatment 2). All three participants emitted mastery-level recall of stories more rapidly and under less complex intervention procedures than in prior research. Improvements in story recall were associated with increases in correct answers to basic comprehension questions, and intervention also resulted in generalized improvements in recall across multiple stories. We also conducted standardized reading assessments with all participants before and after completion of the study. These data have important implications for behavior analysts and educators providing reading intervention to children with autism and suggest several possible avenues for future research on reading comprehension and recall.

This event, coordinated with the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences, will feature program directors (to be announced later) from federal funding agencies relevant to behavior analysis (e.g., NIH, IES, NSF). Program directors will briefly discuss funding priorities of relevance to behavioral scientists, suggest ways to better align behavior analytic proposals with these priorities, and take questions from the audience.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Clinicians may implement a number of preliminary assessments (e.g., functional analyses, demand assessments, preference assessments, etc.) prior to developing behavioral programs for clients with autism. The researchers in this symposium will describe two applications of concurrent-operants preparations for evaluating stimulus functions prior to initiating treatment. Lindsay Lloveras and colleagues will describe a concurrent-operant demand assessment (CODA) to identify a hierarchy of preferred and nonpreferred demands. Allie Rader and colleagues will describe a concurrent-operants assessment for determining the relative reinforcing efficacy of events hypothesized to maintain problem behavior. Implications for practitioners and applied researchers will be discussed.

Graduate students in behavior analysis, clinicians working with individuals with problem behavior, applied researchers

This symposium includes three papers two of which evaluate interventions for efficiently teaching safety skills to children with developmental disabilities. Miltenberger, Novotny, Maxfield, and Baruni evaluated video self-modeling with children with autism and preliminary data show the procedure is effective. Orner, Miltenberger, and Maxfield evaluated small scale simulation training with kids with autism and found it effective for only one of three children. Lastly, Maxfield, Park, and Blair discuss the results of their meta-analysis on 26 single subject design studies on safety skills interventions for individuals with intellectual disabilities.

BCBA and BCaBA

Every year children are unintentionally injured or killed due to finding an unattended firearm. Although research evaluating various approaches to teach safety skills shows that behavioral skills training and in situ training are effective, limited research exists evaluating small-scale simulation training in teaching safety skills to children. Furthermore, there is no research evaluating this approach with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This study evaluated the effectiveness of small-scale simulation training in teaching firearm safety to 5 to 6-year-old children with ASD. Simulation training was effective for one participant, in situ training was necessary for one participant, and an incentive was required for the third participant to demonstrate the safety skills.

This study provides the results of a meta-analysis of 26 single subject design studies on safety skills interventions for individuals with intellectual disabilities. Results indicate that individuals who have mild to moderate ID, particularly school-age children, have benefited most from the safety skills interventions, and that that the interventions have demonstrated low-to-large effect sizes across safety skills (e.g., abduction prevention, fire safety, first aids, daily living safety, pedestrian safety skills). The behavioral skills training (BST) with and without additional components was the most commonly used safety skills intervention for individuals with ID; however, BST alone demonstrated a larger effect than BST with additional components, and video modeling had the largest treatment effect of all intervention types. Outcomes for abduction prevention skills were larger than those of other safety skills. Implications for practice and future research are discussed in the following areas: implementer, dose of intervention, treatment fidelity, and social validity.

Traumatic experiences can have significant, and long-lasting, effects on the individuals who survive them. Frequently, clients who live through trauma experience a host of behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and physical health problems. When these individuals come to therapy, most of them are hoping that they will be able to eliminate the nightmares, memories, anger, anxiety, and other posttraumatic symptoms that they experience. In fact, most of them have tried many things (such as isolation, substance abuse, even suicide attempts) to manage these symptoms. However, what many of these individuals fail to realize is that their heroic efforts to avoid the pain of their posttraumatic experiences may actually be making things worse - and may even be the heart of the problem. In many ways, despite their best efforts, trauma survivors frequently find themselves trapped in a life that is largely devoted to the avoidance of pain. Effective empirically supported treatments for posttraumatic symptoms have been developed to aid trauma survivors in improving traditional PTSD symptoms. However, they are not universally effective, and not all clients are willing to engage in exposure-based treatment. In addition, given the high levels of psychiatric comorbidity with PTSD, treatments are needed that can cut across diagnostic categories and begin to treat presenting problems based on functional dimensions. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a contemporary behavior therapy, provides an alternative to the feel-good agenda and instead focuses on helping clients to reconnect with those ideals and principles for living that are deeply important to them and that dignify the difficult events that they have survived. This presentation will introduce clinicians to contextual behavioral tools to work with trauma survivors on identifying each person’s valued life directions and then help motivate experiential acceptance and behavior change in the service of those values.

Clinicians, supervisors, students

Providing behavior analytic services in an acute inpatient psychiatric setting can be very challenging, especially when working with individuals with serious mental illness, significant trauma history, co-morbid personality disorders, and limited intellectual functioning. A team of behavior analysts at NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County in Brooklyn, NY work with an interdisciplinary team of clinicians to provide evidence-based behavior analytic treatment for people with varying serious mental illnesses. This panel will include an interdisciplinary team (behavior analyst, Doctor of Nursing, and Peer Specialist) which will discuss the trials and tribulations of providing behavior analytic services for individuals in an environment where people do not have experience with behavioral interventions. Some topics discussed among the panel will include: a) understanding serious mental health symptoms and behaviors from a function-based behavior analytic approach; b) the importance of “playing nicely in the sandbox” and receiving support to create effective service delivery models; and c) discussion of other treatment modalities and how behavior analysts can work with others to create effective behavior change. This panel will also provide a few case studies of challenging cases to provide other behavior analysts in attendance some creative ideas and solutions to very complex, challenging cases in mental health settings.

Behavior analysts in public health settings; Behavior analysts who work with individuals diagnosed with mental health diagnoses; Behavior analysts who are interested in systems change and collaboration

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students. 

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students. 

This panel will be a discussion of Dr. Ellie Kazemi’s SQAB Tutorial on the utility of computer technologies in behavior analysis.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

In this symposium we provide a discussion of unique presenting concerns and clinical evaluations in clinic settings. The first two papers address schedule thinning considerations functional communication training (FCT). The study by Smith and colleagues evaluates a comparison of a compound schedules of reinforcement involving discriminative stimuli (e.g., multiple or chained schedules, Greer et al., 2016) or within the context of probabilistic, progressive-delay schedules (e.g., contingency-based progressive-delay schedule, Ghaemmaghami et al., 2016) and the relative efficacy of these two methods during schedule thinning for individuals with severe challenging behavior. Similarly, the study by Salvatore and colleagues investigates the efficiency and preference for alternative activities during schedule thinning within FCT. Garcia and Wunderlich extend the work of Edgerton and Wine (2017) by using a function-based treatment to increase appropriate voice volume responses. Last, another unique study by Weber and colleagues implemented an adaptation of the Good Behavior Game with a sibling dyad to decrease destructive behavior. Dr. Tracy Kettering will provide comments on navigating challenges presented by adaptations of assessment and treatment to address unique cases in a clinical setting.

Behavioral specialists Graduate Students Practitioners

Functional communication training (FCT) is an effective treatment for decreasing socially-reinforced destructive behavior (Carr & Durand, 1985). Multiple schedules are frequently used to thin the reinforcement schedule during FCT (Hanley et al., 2001). An extinction burst is possible with each schedule thinning step, contributing to slow treatment progress. In clinical practice, individuals are often expected to sit and wait during periods of restricted access to functional reinforcers; however, in the natural environment, they generally do not wait without alternative items/activities available. Ten children referred for treatment of destructive behavior participated in this study. Therapists conducted functional analyses and taught participants a functional communication response to access functional reinforcers. Therapists implemented a multiple schedule during schedule thinning, comparing a control condition (nothing available during S-delta intervals) to separate conditions with embedded items/activities during S-delta intervals (moderately preferred tangible items, attention, demands). After reaching the terminal schedule in at least one condition, therapists assessed participant preference across S-delta conditions. For 80% of participants, the terminal schedule was only reached with alternative items/activities. All participants demonstrated preference for alternative items/activities and therapists indicated preference for conducting these sessions. For 6 participants, we simultaneously targeted an escape function during the S-delta condition including demands.

Inappropriate prosodic production is often observed, but rarely treated, communication skill deficit for individuals with autism. Few studies have evaluated the acoustic characteristics of prosody in children with ASD, and obtaining a pragmatic measurement of their conversational skills is typically limited to parent and teacher report measures. In one exception in the research, a previous study by Edgerton and Wine (2017) implemented an intervention for shaping the conversational speech volume of an intellectually disabled participant. Expanding on the previous literature, we conducted a functional analysis of the voice volume responses (VVR) of two children with ASD utilizing similar procedures to those from Edgerton and Wine. Further, we evaluated the efficacy of using a function-based treatment, in conjunction with the visual feedback from the app, to increase appropriate VVR. Results of the evaluation, as well as implications for the treatment of inappropriate voice volume and other prosodic behaviors, will be discussed.

In 2012, Hanley provided guidance to mitigate and overcome the myths that functional analyses (FAs) are too complex, take too long, and are too risky for dangerous behavior. Despite Hanley’s recommendations and evidence suggesting that FA is the most informative tool in the assessment of problem behavior, many practitioners rely on indirect or descriptive methods. We will share extensions of the practical functional assessment (PFA) and skill-based treatment (SBT) model and describe how they can directly influence practitioners’ assessment and treatment practices. In Study 1, FA training was evaluated wherein participants of various backgrounds learned how to accurately conduct Interview-Informed Synthesized Contingency Analyses (IISCAs) in ecologically relevant settings following a PFA workshop. IISCAs with 3-minute analysis sessions were conducted in Study 2, which led to meaningful treatment outcomes with nine clients in a consecutive case series. The remaining studies attempt to break down the myth that FAs are too risky when it comes to severe problem behavior. To evaluate risk, a group FA and treatment was conducted with clients who have severe problem behavior in a classroom with limited resources (Study 3) and IISCAs and treatment were developed for clients whom had been reported to have idiosyncratic problem behavior in a specialized school (Study 4).

BCBAs, BCBA-Ds, BCaBAs, licensed psychologists, and other behavior analytic providers who wish to learn how to assess and treat problem behavior.

The purpose of the present symposium is to provide an overview of research advances on varaibles that impact the efficiency of language acquisition interventions. Two presentations will discuss the role of stimulus disparity within conditional discrimination training and two presentations will evaluate the efficiency of instructional sequences on acquisition of targets. In the first study, Halbur and colleagues compared the acquisition of high-disparate sounds, low-disparate sounds, and words as sample stimuli during conditional discrimination training for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the second study, Wu and colleagues manipulated stimulus disparity of color saturation and conducted analyses to identify error patterns during conditional discrimination training. In the third study, Martin, Lechago, and Romo investigated acquisition of listener skills when the instructional sequences (i.e., English-Spanish, Spanish-English, mixed language) were varied for bilingual children with ASD. In the fourth study, Devine, Cox, and Petursdottir conducted multiple experiments that evaluated the impact of tact instruction on the establishment of bidirectional intraverbals and other relations. Following the four presentations, our discussant will summarize, provide clinical recommendations for efficient teaching procedures, and suggest areas for future research.

behavior analysts, graduate students, researchers

Conditional discrimination skills are foundational in teaching many functional skills in children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Antecedent- and consequence-based intervention are commonly used without the understanding of patterns comprising these errors. A framework based in behavioral-choice and signal-detection theory can quantify error patterns due to (1) biases for certain stimuli or locations and (2) discriminability of stimuli within the conditional discrimination. Three children diagnosed with ASD responded in delayed matching-to-sample procedure. We manipulated sample disparity through changes in relative color saturation between samples on a touchscreen across four experimental conditions. Sample-disparity differences were high, low, zero, and a return to high disparity. Decreases in sample disparity primarily produced corresponding decreases in discriminability without systematic changes in stimulus or location biases. These findings demonstrate the use of these analyses to identify error patterns during conditional-discrimination performance in a clinically relevant population under laboratory conditions. Further development of this framework could result in the development of technologies for categorizing errors during clinically relevant conditional-discrimination performance with the goal of individualizing interventions to match learner-specific error patterns.

How to structure social skills groups across ages and skill levels has been a challenge for many behavior analysts. There are limited evidence-based curriculums and assessments, so clinicians are often found creating curriculums, goals, assessments and data collection systems on their own. Doing so takes up a great deal of time for an already stretched thin behavior analyst. We aim to alleviate some of this burden by offering case studies shown to have had effective treatment to address social skills, resources regarding evidence-based curriculums as well as for individualized goals, assessments to verify the presence of pre-requisite skills, progress and caregiver stress prior to and after treatment, and finally logistical recommendations for the overall success of the group. We will then provide information on how to incorporate caregivers and support their skill development in the non-traditional applied behavior analysis social skills group structure and lastly will pose recommendations for future research and directions of social skills groups. Key Words: Social Skills, Group Therapy, Autism, Behavior Systems

BCBAs, BCaBAs, Graduate students

Criminal behavior is a broad, socially significant problem that affects many individuals and wider communities across the world. For example, in America, mass shootings occur on average 334 times per year, and smuggling activities contribute towards acts of terrorism which cause devastation and costs countries billions to manage. A factor that can increase the likelihood of a person committing criminal activity is a previous learning history with crime, and operant behaviors with which it is associated. If conceptualized behaviorally, environmental factors and functional relations maintaining criminal repertoires could be addressed pragmatically and effectively. The possible applications of behavior analysis to criminal activity are broad-ranging, and we will present the application of the science in a port setting to analyze and explore behaviors of interest, explore behavioral skills training for active shooting scenarios, present a behavioral conceptualization of mass killings, and research the use of behavior analysis in criminal justice systems. Although the applications presented in this symposium are diverse, they represent an attempt to understand criminal behaviors, and how these can be manipulated or changed with behavior analysis.

Any individual who wants to learn more on a new dissemination topic Those in behavior analysis with interest in expanding into their communities

Functional communication training is the most empirically supported intervention for the severe problem behavior exhibited by individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Despite this strong research base, the translation from the highly controlled clinical settings in which the process has been described to more normative environments has been imperfect. This group of researchers presents work addressing the challenges of this transition including the use of antecedent strategies, the programming of procedures to support delay tolerance, the transition from motor to vocal alternative responses, and in visual analysis strategies.

Practicing BCBA's who see individuals displaying severe problem behavior