Association for Behavior Analysis International

In the vast majority of operant experiments reinforcement magnitude (e.g., meal size) has been treated as a parameter of other independent variables that control the subject's behavior (e.g., the delivery of three food-pellets as reinforcement). By contrast, in some experiments conducted in our laboratory, we have focused on reinforcement magnitude (i.e., the number of response-produced food pellets) as the dependent variable of this type of experiment. In a first study, the rat's "natural" durations of an opportunity to eat and successive inter-opportunity periods were both altered. Shortening the feeding opportunities and lengthening the inter-opportunity periods increased the rate of eating. In a second study, the temporal location of a short neutral stimulus within the inter-opportunity period was varied. Food eaten was a decreasing function of lengthening the stimulus-opportunity interval, including either, the enhancement or suppression of eating about a baseline with no stimulus. In a third experiment, the effects of reinforcement delay in a food-accumulation situation were studied. Food accumulation (and consumption) increased as delay of reinforcement was lengthened. The general conclusion of our experiments is that independent variables commonly studied in conditioning experiments have considerable influence on the magnitude of eating by rats.

Behavior analysts interested in conditioning.

In this panel, the objectives for the conference attendees are to get an insight on the development and standards of operation in beginning an Applied Behavior Analysis business treating individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders. The presenters will review business plan development including market analysis, cost analysis, and service delivery models. Panelists will also discuss hiring procedures, theoretical and practical training protocols for service staff, and plans for ongoing staff supervision. Legal considerations including safety requirements, confidentiality, labor laws, and liability will be described. Additional emphasis will be given in the development of client policies such as financial contracts, treatment consent forms, and family requirements in treatment. A key core in successfully maintaining the operation of the business is development of the human resources side of managing the staff. All of the objectives above will be outlined in a first 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day business operation guide. This will allow participants to walk away with tangible operational forms to help with the beginning stages of running a successful Applied Behavior Analysis business.

We do not risk damnation when we espouse behavior analysis, as Copernicus did when he removed humanity from the center of the world. Yet, many still characterize behavior analysis as too simple, too dangerous and quite unacceptable. They reacted that way when Watson first espoused a behavioral approach 100 years ago, and they were not kinder to Skinner when he proposed a more all-encompassing approach to psychology while keeping true to the behavioral way. This paper will make an attempt to explain why behaviorism continues to elicit emotional responses from scientists and the public at large rather than the studied reaction that science is expected to elicit.

Psychologists, behavior analysts, graduate students and anyone interested in behaviorism.

Several studies have confirmed that stimulus equivalence is a promising behavioral model of symbolic behavior. Behavioral, psychometric, and electrophysiological studies indicate that members of equivalence classes share meaning. Some of these studies formed equivalence classes comprising abstract and meaningful stimuli and showed that meaning transferred to the abstract stimuli. There are indications that this transfer varies quantitatively as a function of parameters such as nodal distance, amount of matching to sample training and matching delay. This has suggested that equivalent stimuli may vary in their degree of relatedness, which is incompatible with the very notion of equivalence. This presentation will discuss these strengths and threats involved in the notion of equivalence and eventual interpretative alternatives.

Anyone who is interested in symbolic behavior.

The objectives for the symposium attendees are to apply the foundations of Applied Behavior Analysis such as motivation, rule-governed behaviors, and differential reinforcement (DRO, DRA, DRI) to be able to analyze treatment integrity. A synopsis of the literature review for established treatments based on the result of the National Standards Report on Autism Spectrum Disorders released by the National Autism Center will be discussed. A portion of the emerging treatments identified in the study are music therapy, developmental relationship-based treatment, exercise, massage/touch therapy, and theory of mind training. The potentially effective components of these emerging treatments should not be stand alone treatments but, rather, part of the established treatment interventions. The behavior analysis field has established procedural guidelines for practitioners to identify the core components of evidence-based treatment for the protection of our consumers and our field. The best way to make an informed decision as a practitioner and consumer is to analyze the details and components of all literature published in peer-reviewed professional journals.

This presentation will identify the key component of motivation in treatment effectiveness. Motivational intervention packages are a key component in behavior interventions and have been found to have collateral positive changes in imitation and rapid speech acquisition in "nonverbal"children (Koegel, O'Dell & Koegel, 1987), decreases in disruptive behaviors without needing to directly target them (Koegel, Koegel & Surratt, 1992) and increases in happiness, interest and enthusiasm (Vismara & Lyons, 2007). Emerging treatments claim the use of novel strategies. Further detailed analyses reveal that the foundations of Applied Behavior Analysis are the root of these treatment claims.

This presentation will identify the key component of rule-governed behavior in treatment effectiveness. Rule-governed behavior is behavior that is maintained via the obligation of maintaining order, which is verbally mediated. Emerging treatments claim the use of novel strategies such as theory of mind training and social interventions. Further detailed analyses reveal that the foundations of Applied Behavior Analysis are the root of these treatment claims.

The objective for this presentation is to review the strategies to replace behaviors competing with the maladaptive behaviors. A portion of the emerging treatments identified in the National Standards Study are behavior reduction treatment, exercise, and massage/touch therapy. The potentially effective components of these emerging treatments should not be stand alone treatments but, rather, part of the established treatment interventions. Further detailed analyses reveal that the foundations of Applied Behavior Analysis are the root of these treatment claims.

We have a greater understanding of the experiential sources for the social and language deficits in children with autism. Moreover, we know more about what to do to improve their social and verbal prognosis. These advances in the science of behavior are based on converging basic and applied research findings on: (a) emergent behavior (i.e., learned responses that emerge indirectly from directly teaching other operants or respondents), (b) verbal behavior and verbal behavior development, as well as (c) applications in schools with more than 300 children. One set of findings concerns how a single stimulus comes to control different verbal behaviors and how a single response comes to be useful for different functions. Still others show how children come to learn language incidentally (i.e., without direct or indirect instruction). Still other findings identify the role of conditioned reinforcement underlying language as a social tool and social reinforcer. These findings, and extensive replications with children, provide new and advanced expertise to bring children's verbal behavior under the natural reinforcers for language functions. The reinforcers for verbal behavior are the keys to what makes language social, and vice versa-these reinforcers are learned. We have identified many key learned reinforcers and how they are learned incidentally. Better yet, we now have protocols to condition them if they are missing in a child's reinforcement repertoire. True verbal and social behaviors accrue from changes in reinforcers for language.

Anyone interested in experiential sources for the social and language deficits in children with autism.

This symposium will address several areas of recent research for children with autism. The first presentation will address how defining and measuring anxiety in children with autism can be challenging particularly in treatment development. The second presentation will look further into anxiety responses by using neuroimaging to evaluate neural responding to pictures of stimuli that are associated with phobia in two children with autism. The third presentation is based on the demonstration that using a behavioral economics approach one can evaluate the relative value of social and nonsocial reinforcers for children with autism.

Research has yet to identify biomarkers in ASD associated with abnormal fear responses that may be associated with increased risk for anxiety disorders such as specific phobias. The purpose of the current study was to examine the neurocircuitry that supports excessive fearfulness in ASD. Two young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder, mild intellectual disability, and Specific Phobia participated in the study. During pre-scanning Subjective Units of Distress Scale ratings of phobogenic stimuli (i.e., bugs and spiders, respectively), Brian engaged in vocal verbal mediation (e.g., its just a picture) while Sean only engaged in avoidance (e.g., looking away, shutting eyes) or startle responses. Both participants were shown (a) phobogenic and (b) neutral pictures in a Skyra T3 MRI scanner. Sean showed increased activation only in the amygdala for phobogenic stimuli. However, Brian exhibited significant activation in the left frontal lobe suggesting verbal mediation in response to phobogenic stimuli. Additionally, Brian demonstrated increased average fractional anisotropy for both the left and right uncinate fasciculus, providing evidence of a higher level of connectivity between the frontal lobes and the amygdala. Implications for future research on pre-post treatment neuroimaging data to better understand biobehavioral mechanisms underlying response to behavioral treatment will be discussed.

For the past 10 years, the Global Autism Project has been providing training to autism centers around the world. In this symposium, we will discuss what has worked well and where we have had challenges along the way. Speakers from the Global Autism Project as well as our service partners will speak about the particular challenges of working with individuals with autism in their home countries. In addition, we will discuss various models of international training and how we have built collaborative and sustainable partnerships. Presenters will offer suggestions to those working cross-culturally in other countries as well as with culturally diverse clientele here in the U.S. Time will be reserved for attendees to ask questions.

Visiting another culture can always be challenging, and even more so if you are providing training. Volunteers from the Global Autism Project's SkillCorps program will speak about these particular challenges and ways to meet them when providing training in other cultures and when working with culturally diverse clientele locally

The dissemination of behavior analysis is one of our obligations as behavior analysts. This presentation focuses on the models commonly used by international non-governmental organizations. The specifics of each model is explained along with advantages and disadvantages of each model. The focus is on models which have the greatest chance of providing lasting behavior change on the part of participants and that demonstrate the greatest cultural sensitivity.

This presentation suggests that Israel Goldiamond's constructional approach can contribute to improvements in behavioral systems with profound social impact. The emphasis will be on contributions constructional behavioral systems analysis (BSA) can bring to understanding the dynamics of violence, and to supporting human rights through the construction of peaceful communities and social structures. (Similar analyses may be valuable in areas like achieving sustainable lifestyles, or constructing effective justice and policing systems.) Examples analyzed for current or potential contributions from constructional BSA will include: initiating and sustaining cultures of recognition and respect in schools; community action to construct peaceful neighborhoods in Chicago, IL, and North Charleston, S.C.; construction of cross-national cultures of youth activism for peace with the American Friends Service Committee; implementation of communitarian policing in Colombia; and sustainment of unity and nonviolent discipline in self-liberation movements globally. Some of these examples have explicitly incorporated BSA; others are well enough documented that probable systems dynamics can be extracted for further rigorous exploration. Both successes and struggles offer data that can contribute to our understanding of BSA, and crucially to campaigns for liberation from violence. Analytic tools from the author's recent book, Strategic Nonviolent Power, will be used throughout.

Psychologists, behavior analysts, graduate students, and anyone interested in contributions from constructional behavioral systems analysis.

Cultural practices are maintained by social contingencies that prevail in a given society, group, or organization. They may be in vigor for variable lengths of time, from some months, as in fashion, to some centuries, as contingencies that are part of the identity of ethnic groups. Most human operant behavior may come under the classification of cultural practices. Even behaviors common to all humans, like eating, are linked to social contingencies that determine what and how to eat. Such behaviors are acquired by newcomers to any given group, either a child or a stranger, by learning processes that may involve modeling, rules, and/or direct exposure to the contingencies. So contingencies, more than behaviors or consequences, are better to characterize any event as cultural.

Anyone interested in cultural contingencies.

Behavior analysts generally recognize that the operation of behavioral principles in the everyday world is constrained by the biology of behaving organisms and, in the case of humans, by the particulars of the cultural environment in which behavior occurs. In this paper, we distinguish between process and content in behavioral and cultural domains. We explore the constraints on behavior imposed by culture, conceived here as that part of the environment constructed by multiple people over extended time periods. It is suggested that "cultural practices" is not a technical term in a behavior analytic analysis of cultures, but rather is an everyday term used for a multiplicity of phenomena. The phenomena commonly called "cultural practices" are examined as products of various combinations of behavioral and cultural level contingencies of selection.

In contrast to many social sciences, behavior analysis offers a technical conceptual framework that is generic in the sense that it is valid in different contexts and for a variety of organisms. The selectionist perspective adds value to the analysis of behavior at different levels of complexity. The systems' perspective extends the scale and scope for behavior analysis to explain such phenomena as emergent behavior, self-organizing behavioral systems and the consequences of cultural cusps. The complex (functional) relations between behaviors and systems contingencies might be relevant when exploring both cultural selection and the selection of cultures.

Collective violence (war, terrorism, violent political conflicts, genocide, repression, organized criminal activity, disappearances, torture, and a range of other abuses of human rights) killed at least 200 million people, and injured an incalculable number during the 20th century. The problem clearly continues into the present in many parts of the world, and offers a rich field for exploring the dynamics of cultural systems. This paper explores the roots of such violence from the perspective of the natural science of behavior, which in combination with historical observation at least suggests potential approaches for understanding and challenging patterns of violence perpetrated among interlocking cultural entities and populations. Examples explored here will be drawn from post-colonial states, in which the dynamics of collective violence can be particularly challenging. The analyses that will be presented suggest that policy makers and communities often rely on politically manipulated strategies that are inherently weak or counterproductive. Constructional options (as sketched here and developed in detail in the authors recent book Strategic Nonviolent Power) offer alternatives drawing on recent advances in the selectionist analysis of cultural practices, networks of interlocking behavioral contingencies, and metacontingencies within behavioral systems. Behavioral systems/cultural analysts face enormous challenges and opportunities in this work, meriting the commitment of substantial scientific resources.

Typically, undergraduate psychology majors have difficulties writing complete and accurate descriptions of information presented in graphs that depict the interactive effects of two variables on behavior. Training visual-visual conditional discriminations between graphs and written descriptions did not improve the written descriptions of graphs. The graphs and corresponding textual descriptions have many elements that must be attended to if they are to influence writing behavior. Traditional conditional discrimination training does not require attention to all of those pictorial and textual elements. Training of conditional discriminations designed to ensure attention to all features of the graphs and printed text resulted in dramatic improvements in the written descriptions of these complex graphs. The establishment of joint stimulus control by all elements of graphs and their corresponding printed texts (a selection-based repertoire) induced accurate written descriptions of complex graphs (a production-based repertoire). Thus, students learned to write without writing.

The presentation will be of interest to those who are also interested in equivalence class formation, stimulus control, and behavioral implications for education, and secondarily, relational frame research.

Este symposium presentan tres investigaciones desde la Teoria de Marcos Relacionales (RFT), que analizan tres fenemenos psico-educativos: la transformacion de funciones derivadas a travos de diferentes marcos (coordinacion versus oposicion), la facilitacion de relaciones derivadas de equivalencia-equivalencia, y el papel de la regulacion verbal. Un primer estudio aborda la dificultad que tienen algunas personas para cambiar o transformar comportamientos. El objetivo es establecer una historia experimental para generar respuesta relacional de simetria y equivalencia en un marco de coordinacion para luego intentar que tales funciones sean transformadas a un marco de oposicion en base a consecuencias aplicadas. Un segundo trabajo analiza el razonamiento analogico o la habilidad de establecer relaciones de equivalencia-equivalencia. Se aplican distintos procedimientos de facilitacion de la equivalencia-equivalencia y se muestra la necesidad de ciertas habilidades prerrequisitas en poblacion infantil, concretamente el repertorio de redes relacionales y abstraccion de series. Ademes, aporta un software informatico (patentado como INCOLE) para implementar dichos procedimientos. Un tercer estudio evalua si la historia instruccional de los sujetos, entendida como tipo de Regulacion Verbal con el que se responde al ambiente (si responde a contingencias sociales -pliance- vs. contingencias directas -tracking-), se relaciona con la facilidad para cambiar su tendencia de comportamiento.

Esta investigacion aborda la dificultad que tienen algunas personas para cambiar o transformar patrones de comportamiento, desde el analisis experimental del comportamiento y, especificamente, desde la Teoria de Marcos Relacionales (RFT). El objetivo es establecer una historia experimental necesaria para generar repertorios de respuesta relacional de simetrea y equivalencia en el marco de coordinacion, y ver como son transformadas las funciones a un marco de oposicion con base en las consecuencias. Para ello, se realize un primer estudio cuyos resultados condujeron a un segundo experimento. La muestra estuvo compuesta de 16 sujetos, 7 en el primer experimento y 9 en el segundo con edades comprendidas entre 20 y 40 anos, quienes debean realizar una tarea de igualacion a la muestra, compuesta por dos fases y una evaluacion final de relaciones derivadas. La variable dependiente se definie como la ejecucion del sujeto (numero de ensayos) y la variable independiente como la introduccion de imagenes aversivas y agradables a fin de transformar funciones. Los datos muestran que las consecuencias obtenidas por los sujetos generaban cambios y nuevas relaciones de equivalencia, transfiriendo aso funciones diferentes que competian con la tendencia existente. Se discuten los resultados en relacion con la psicopatologia y la personalidad.

Diversas investigaciones abordan el razonamiento analagico como la habilidad de establecer relaciones de equivalencia-equivalencia. Este estudio analiza distintos procedimientos de facilitacion del comportamiento de equivalencia-equivalencia, as como las habilidades prerrequisitas para entrenarlo en poblacion infantil, concretamente el repertorio de redes relacionales y abstraccion de series. Se realize un estudio cuasiexperimental con comparaciones entregrupos e intrasujeto. Nueve participantes entre 7 y 10 anos fueron divididos en dos grupos en funcion del nivel de prerrequisitas. En cada grupo se contrabalances el momento de evaluacion de las prerrequisitas y el procedimiento de facilitacion con los siguientes niveles de ayuda: (1) entrenamiento de relaciones de linea base AB-AB y BC-BC en igualdad arbitraria; (2) entrenamiento de relaciones AB-AB y BC-BC en relacion de no-igualdad arbitraria; (3) test de equivalencia; (4) entrenamiento de relaciones BA-BA; (5) instrucciones dirigidas a resaltar la relacion entre los elementos de los estimulos multielementos; y (6) instrucciones dirigidas a resaltar lo anterior mos la relacion entre las relaciones. Para implementar dichos procedimientos se utiliza un software informatico elaborado al efecto (INCOLE). Los resultados muestran que solo los ninos con alto nivel de prerrequisitas se benefician de las ayudas para derivar la equivalencia-equivalencia y la evaluacion de prerrequisitos minimiza las ayudas.

Este estudio se enmarca en el ambito de la Teoria de los Marcos Relacionales (RFT), especificamente en la linea de investigacion denominada Regulacion Verbal. El objetivo de este trabajo fue evaluar si la historia instruccional de los sujetos, entendida como el tipo de Regulacion Verbal con el que la persona responde en su ambiente (si responde a contingencias de tipo social -pliance- vs. contingencias directas tracking-), se relaciona con la facilidad para cambiar su tendencia de comportamiento, cuando las consecuencias as lo favorecen. Para este fin, se diseno un analogo experimental compuesto por un entrenamiento en seguimiento de reglas y contingencias, con linea base y postest. Dado los resultados obtenidos, se diseno un segundo estudio. La muestra estuvo compuesta por 123 sujetos que deban pasar un criterio de exclusion, por lo que la muestra final fue de 39 sujetos para el primer estudio, y de 9 para el segundo, con edades comprendidas entre los 12 y 14 aos. Los resultados mostraron que los sujetos con una tendencia inicial Pliance, tuvieron mos dificultades para cambiar su tendencia despus del entrenamiento, comparado con los sujetos con tendencia inicial Tracking. Se discuten los resultados en relacion con la infancia y la personalidad.