Association for Behavior Analysis International

Dr. Machado willpresent a Spencean, synthetic approach to interval timing in animals, an approach grounded on the hypothesis that temporal generalization gradients may combine to produce complex forms of behavior. The hypothesis is instantiated by the Learning-to-Time (LeT) model. First,he will review how LeT accounts for the generalization gradients obtained in prototypical timing procedures. Then,he will show how, by combining these gradients, LeT accounts for more complex data and some surprising findings. Finally,he will discuss some current obstacles to our understanding of timing, including the boundary conditions of generalization gradients, the possibility of inhibitory temporal gradients, and how temporal memories are created, accessed, and retrieved.

Licensed behavior analysts, psychologists, graduate students.

Feeding is a behavior essential for survival of every living organism. It guarantees adequate and varied supply of nutriments to maintain appropriate energy levels for basal metabolism, physical activity, growth, and reproduction. In mammals, the maintenance of a high metabolic rate to preserve constant temperature requires constant availability of a sufficient amount of energy stores. The balance between energy demand and expenditure is finely tuned by a constant dialog between homeostatic and hedonic brain systems, and peripheral signals to regulate feeding behavior and energy homeostasis. Understanding mechanisms that control feeding behavior remain a current and crucial scientific subject for understanding both etiology and potential therapeutic approaches of eating disorders that include some forms of obesity, on one hand, and severe forms of anorexia nervosa (AN) on the other. The purpose of this presentation is to describe some of the current animal models used to better understand the feeding behavior and eating disorders with a special focus on AN.

Board certified behavior analysts, licensed psychologists, graduate students.

After over five decades of research in behavior analysis devoted to behaviors of making and choosing music, learning of behaviors, teaching behavior and a cybernetic teaching system, as well as verbal behavior and its development, I think I have really been studying reinforcers rather than behavior. I shall describe why I think that identifying and establishing reinforcers that humans can learn (or not learn) to contact suggests the sources of multiple responses to single stimuli and single responses to multiple stimuli. Build reinforcers and the reinforcers will continue to add new responses, new motivational conditions, and numerous discriminative stimuli. Learned reinforcers and motivational conditions make complex human behaviors and contextual control possible.

Licensed behavior analysts, psychologists, graduate students.

An important modern challenge concerns how to make sure that we use the behavioral science that we already have. However, it is also a challenge to make sure we have the basic science that we need. For example, when working with children with autism, both of these challenges seem constantly relevant. Although basic behavioral science may in some areas be far more advanced than what we have thus far been able to implement in the general services for children with autism, there are also some striking holes in our basic knowledge. The present paper will address some of these shortcomings. For example, when children with autism deviate from other children in the range of stimuli that reinforce their behavior, a highly relevant question concerns how, most effectively to establish new stimuli as conditioned reinforcers. We do not really know. Further, if we simply establish standard reinforcing stimuli, such as other peoples nods and smiles, as conditioned reinforcers, can the children learn standard things from the natural environment, like typically developing children, without much contrived “teaching?” Another important issue has to do with the fact that shaping requires behavioral variability, and we need to know more about how such variability is most effectively established?

Licensed behavior analysts, psychologists, graduate students.

Pernicious patterns of behavior termed thought, anxiety, mood and personality "disorders" have long been recognized to be related to social punishment, but the relationship remains poorly specified, limiting the effectiveness of preventative and therapeutic interventions. This presentation reviews findings of a series of experiments supporting a view that seemingly maladaptive patterns of behavior such as stereotypic repetition, self-denigration, and idiosyncratic perception serve to terminate stimuli produced in the inchoate emission of socially-punished response forms, a process in which aspects of effective avoidance are reinforced adventitiously.

Licensed behavior analysts, psychologists, graduate students.

Principles of behavior ought to be shared by human and non-human organisms. However, many studies have shown that in similar circumstances human behavior often differs from non-human behavior. This discourse explores some variables that uniquely operate on human behavior. The most critical feature of human operant behavior is that verbal behavior and nonverbal behavior are intermingled in time. Both verbal and nonverbal responses may enter into common three-term contingencies of reinforcement and punishment. For example, verbal stimuli can evoke emotional changes and can work effectively as an establishing operations. For example, aversive verbal messages spoken or written by others may lead people to engage in avoidance behavior. Verbal events can also function as discriminative stimuli or reinforcing stimuli, as shown in our daily life. Thus, to clarify the variables controlling human operant behavior, an integrated perspective on human behavior must include an analysis not only of how verbal behavior and nonverbal behavior interact with each other, but also of what happens when verbal and nonverbal contingencies conflict with each other and produce inconsistencies in verbal-nonverbal correspondences.

Licensed behavior analysts, psychologists, graduate students.

Aesthetic responses are pervasive in human behavior and therefore deserving of scientific study. The term aesthetic is associated with certain types of surprise-tinged emotional responses evoked by stimuli consisting of synergetic interactions (interactions that have transformative effects) among elements that may be neutral individually. Such interactions are pervasive in nature (chemical reagents reacting to create another substance, DNA creating organisms, or photosynthesis creating leaves). Depending on art form or discipline, the interacting elements may be sounds, visual stimuli, words, abstract concepts, flavors, or actions of others. Artists, composers, poets, performers, chefs, etc. create aesthetic effects by assembling and combining these into “synergetic brews.” The synergetic interactions become stimuli for individuals who have a relevant priming history—familiarity with the elements of the brew and the memes of the relevant culture. Aesthetic responses occur when suitable potentiating circumstances prevail. Aesthetic responses have reinforcing effects traceable to their biological utility during our evolution. Such biological utility can be the result of certain types of instructional or informative events that result in surprise, often upon disconfirmation of expectations, expansion or refreshment of existing conceptual classes or relations; or learning of new concepts or relations. Examples drawn from music, poetry, visual arts, performing arts, and other disciplines, illustrate how artists, composers, poets, etc. use a limited set of devices to create synergetic brews. Some of these involve repetition, symmetry, and parsimony. Orators, actors, and other performing artists include, in their synergetic brews, emotionalizing elements generated by the audience’s mirroring of the performer’s emotional displays.

Licensed behavior analysts, psychologists, graduate students.

This presentation will address the theme of complexity and the need and possible contribution of the science of behavior to cope with complex problems in a rapidly changing world.

Licensed behavior analysts, psychologists, graduate students.