Inside Behavior Analysis
Volume 2 | 2010 | Number 1 | On-line ISSN: 2151-4704
2010 SABA Fellowship and Grant Awardees
Experimental Analysis of Behavior Fellowship
Jeff Stein (University of Kansas)
Jeff Stein
After graduating with a BA in English Literature from the University of Kansas, Jeff Stein became interested in behavior analysis while working as a behavioral service provider for adults with intellectual disabilities. After returning to the University of Kansas to pursue basic and applied coursework in behavior analysis, he entered the doctoral program in applied behavioral science under the supervision of Gregory Madden.
Jeff’s research interests focus broadly on the environmental, genetic, and neurochemical factors involved in the induction and attenuation of impulsive choice (i.e. steep delay discounting) in nonhuman animals. Within this framework, he is pursuing two lines of research. The first is the experimental manipulation of delay discounting. Steep delay discounting may play a role in the development and maintenance of impulsive decision-making such as gambling and substance abuse, although this has not been experimentally demonstrated. Jeff is presently examining the effect of training delay tolerance (or self control) in rats on their subsequent preference for gambling-like schedules of reinforcement. Jeff will also soon begin studying the effects of chronic food competition on subsequent rates of delay discounting and ethanol self-administration in rats.
The second line of research examines strain-related differences in delay discounting in rats. Comparisons between Lewis and Fischer 344 rats, widely documented to differ in regards to dopamine (DA) function in the mesolimbic pathway, provide an avenue for the study of neurobiological variables that underlie delay discounting. Consistent with previous findings, Jeff found that Lewis rats discount delayed rewards more steeply than Fischer 344 rats using a steady-state adjusting-amount procedure. This finding further implicates DA function as important in the delay discounting phenomenon.
Jeff continues to refine his teaching skills so that he may better mentor future students of behavior analysis. Upon completing his Ph.D., Jeff will pursue a faculty position that will allow him to continue his research examining environmental variables that underlie delay discounting and addictive decision making.
Experimental Analysis of Behavior Fellowship
Monique Udell (University of Florida)
Monique Udell
Monique Udell’s fascination with animal behavior began long before any formal training. As an undergraduate student she decided to put her interests to work, conducting both field and laboratory research on animal behavior and volunteering as a keeper at an exotic cat rescue facility. After receiving degrees in biology and psychology from Stetson University, she decided that her aspirations for graduate school could best be met by studying under Clive Wynne at the University of Florida. It was here that Monique was first introduced to behavior analysis.
Upon entering graduate school Monique began a line of research new to her program, focusing on the social interactions between humans and domestic dogs. Although interest in the adaptations and behavioral traits allowing domestic dogs to thrive within a human environment had been circulating for over a decade, the existing research had almost exclusively stemmed from evolutionary and cognitive perspectives. Her growing exposure to behavior analysis convinced her that a better understanding of canine behavior could be accomplished through the experimental analysis of behavior, using predominantly behavioral methods and interpretations. Heavily influenced by coursework taken with Jesse Dalley and Timothy Hackenberg during her first year in the University of Florida’s behavior analysis program, these ideas were formalized in a review article written for Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, coauthored with her research mentor Clive Wynne. This marked the foundation of the Canine Cognition and Behavior Laboratory, which now consists of students ranging from undergraduates to postdoctorates who wish to study canids from a behavioral perspective.
Monique’s current research interests center around environmental and experiential factors that contribute to canid success in using human gestures as discriminative stimuli. This involves testing domestic dogs from different populations (pets, working dogs, strays/shelters) on standardized tests that require the use human stimuli to obtain reinforcement. She has also conducted comparisons with human-socialized wolves and coyotes. This line of research has emphasized the importance of early and lifetime experience for the development of canid responsiveness to human action. It has also demonstrated that not all human stimuli are equal predictors of canine behavior; stimulus properties and an individual’s learning history contribute greatly to their performance on these tests. These findings suggest that treating dogs’ positive responsiveness to humans as a given inhibits a broader understanding of the lifetime development of canine social behavior, sometimes resulting in less effective policies and training practices within a society where the presence of dogs is inescapable. Monique hopes to broadly impact the way humans view their interactions with dogs, tying her experimental work to practical considerations for applied settings.
After graduation, Monique plans to continue her research as well as teach at the college level. She hopes to extend what is known about canine social behavior and human-canine interactions through experimental analysis of behavior and also demonstrate the effectiveness of behavioral methods and interpretation in this field.
Sidney W. and Janet R. Bijou Fellowship
Jade Hill (Arizona State University)
Jade Hill
Strongly influenced by her earlier work with children with autism, Jade Hill began her undergraduate track in behavior analysis at Jacksonville State University in 2003. Throughout the course of her studies she developed an interest in basic research under the guidance of William Palya. Her work there involved the mechanisms of classical and operant conditioning with a focus on behavioral allocation under the control of fixed, serial stimuli, as well as the interresponse time structures of variable interval and variable ratio schedules of reinforcement. She graduated in 2008 with a BS in Psychology.
In 2008, Jade began her postgraduate career in the behavioral processes lab at Arizona State University (ASU) under the supervision of Federico Sanabria and Peter Killeen. There she has performed basic research in topics such as choice behavior, response structures of spontaneously hypertensive rats, behavioral inhibition, and the dynamics of classical conditioning. Her primary research has focused on studying impulsivity in rats and pigeons, using a variety of response-withholding tasks and predictive, quantitative modeling. Consistent with this interest, she has led a collaboration with Nancy Eisenberg’s developmental lab at ASU in an attempt to extend the general procedures and models used in animals to assess impulsivity in the domain of child development.
Jade hopes that the advancement of quantitative models of impulsivity will lead to a more accurate and informative definition of impulsivity in children. Her goal is to develop improved diagnostic procedures that will provide for well-specified functional analyses and effective applied behavioral treatment options for children diagnosed with behavioral problems related to impulsivity.
Sidney W. and Janet R. Bijou Fellowship
Allison Tetreault (West Virginia University)
Allison Tetreault
Allison Tetreault became fully immersed in behavioral applications when hired as an in-home service provider for a child with autism. Allison subsequently worked with several families of children with autism and as a behavioral technician in a local public school.
To build upon these experiences, Allison then took a position with the Texas Young Autism Project (TYAP) in Houston, TX. There, in addition to serving as a case supervisor and helping to establish TYAP’s Day Treatment Center, Allison conducted research on the function and generalization of nonword vocalizations, on the effectiveness of different modalities of parent training, and on the utility of various standardized assessments with children with autism.
In 2005, Allison was accepted to the Master’s graduate program at the University of Houston – Clear Lake (UHCL). Working with Dorothea Lerman, as part of the UHCL graduate research team, Allison assisted with research on the application of signal detection theory to observer accuracy, teacher training, and data collection. During this time, Allison also served as a behavioral consultant for a local public school district. Allison’s Master’s thesis focused on teaching social initiations to children with autism using point-of-view video modeling.
To further develop her research abilities, Allison began her doctoral training at West Virginia University (WVU) in 2007. Under the supervision of Claire St. Peter Pipkin, Allison has worked on several studies examining behavior analytic methods in the school and home settings. Currently, Allison is a Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities trainee at the WVU Center for Excellence in Disabilities, with the task of developing an intensive behavior analytic services program there.
To date, Allison’s research has focused on child development, with both typically developing and developmentally impaired children. Allison’s primary area of interest is the impact of variability training on early language development. Her dissertation is focused on the historical effects of exposure to lag schedules on vocal variability. She hopes to continue this line of research after graduation, while also teaching the importance of a behavior analytic approach to child development to the next generation of behavior analysts.
Doctoral Dissertation Grant
Paul Guinther (University of New Mexico)
Paul Guinther
Paul Guinther is a doctoral candidate working under the supervision of Michael Dougher at the University of New Mexico. Paul is interested in the conditions that influence how people interpret the meaning of events and how different interpretations can lead to different behaviors. While working towards his Master’s degree, Paul trained as a researcher of cognitive psychology and investigated how people use organizational strategies to promote remembering. This early cognitive research oriented him to his current line of functional-contextualistic research on verbal processes and memory. He is conducting translational research on false memory in verbally competent adults, showing how environmental manipulations can lead people to recall a single event in multiple, different ways. He has developed a paradigm that allows him to engineer derived, semantic false memories through the manipulation of contextual variables, and hopes to extend this paradigm in order to produce mood-congruent false memories and false memories that elicit specific emotions. Eventually, he would like to extend his research to include considerations of the Pennebaker paradigm, bereavement, post traumatic stress disorder, and other domains involving the intersection of memory, loss, trauma, and recovery. Ultimately, Paul hopes that his line of memory research will contribute to a full behavior analytic account of “cognitive distortions” and “reframing,”and lead to technologies that can help people interpret and reinterpret their experiences in ways that promote adaptive functioning.
Doctoral Dissertation Grant
Steven Meredith (University of Florida)
Steven Meredith
Steven Meredith began taking classes and conducting research in the field of behavior analysis in 2004 at the University of Florida where he served as an undergraduate research assistant to Jesse Dallery. In Dr. Dallery’s behavioral pharmacology lab, Steven worked on both basic and applied projects. He helped conduct experiments examining the effects of nicotine on the behavior of nonhuman subjects, and he investigated contingency management (CM) programs designed to promote abstinence from cigarette smoking. In 2005, he graduated with a BS in Psychology.
After earning his undergraduate degree, Steven continued his work at the University of Florida as a graduate assistant. For his Master’s thesis, he examined the effects of nicotine on responding maintained by conditioned reinforcers in rats. Although Steven was initially interested in behavioral pharmacology research as a means to understand basic principles of behavior, it was his work on an internet-based CM program developed by Dr. Dallery that inspired him to focus on more applied research questions. Impressed by preliminary findings that showed internet-based CM was effective at promoting smoking cessation, he began working on projects designed to improve the efficacy and acceptability of the behavioral intervention.
Steven’s primary research goal is to develop powerful yet practical treatments for smoking. Currently, he is investigating the effects of group contingencies and on-line social support on smoking cessation. Following graduation, Steven hopes to continue research on.
Master’s Thesis Grant
Adam Fox (Western Michigan University)
Adam Fox
Adam Fox received his undergraduate degree from Western Michigan University (WMU) with a major in psychology. During his time at WMU, he worked in the labs of Cynthia Pietras and Jim Carr. After receiving his degree, he decided to pursue a graduate education in the experimental analysis of behavior at WMU.
Adam’s research interests lie in several different domains within the experimental analysis of behavior. His Master’s work at WMU is assessing the effects of a response-cost punisher on instructionally controlled behavior in humans. He is also currently working to assess the conditions under which conditioned punishers develop in humans in a human operant setting and the effects of carry-over earnings on human choice in an earnings budget preparation based on his mentor Cindy Pietras's work.
As Adam works toward his academic goals, he would like to continue examining human choice and the effects of instructions and punishment on human behavior. He is interested in the effects instructions have on human behavior with respect to behavioral momentum. He is also interested in the behavioral neurological aspects of these types of phenomena in both humans and nonhumans.
He would also like to further investigate how behavioral psychologists can use behavioral-ecology models and theories to investigate behavior of both humans and nonhumans.
Adam plans to obtain a Ph.D. in experimental psychology, work in a postdoctoral position, and eventually work in an academic setting teaching and conducting basic behavioral research. He would like to thank the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis for all of their support of behavior analysis, especially graduate student research. He would also like to thank Cindy Pietras and everyone in the Human Operant and Behavioral Pharmacology Lab at WMU.
Master’s Thesis Grant
April Becker (University of North Texas)
April Becker
April Becker earned her undergraduate degree in zoology from Colorado State University, where she studied the vocalizations of songbirds under Myron Baker. She worked for several years in various positions in wildlife and bird shows in Colorado, Minnesota, and Texas before returning to school to directly study the core science that provides a touchstone for all animal trainers: behavior analysis. April is currently earning her MS from the University of North Texas (UNT). April’s research aspirations sprouted from the idea that the scientific analysis, verification, testing, and expansion of animal training practices provide the best hope of improving the lives of animals and the skills of their human caretakers. At first, her research at UNT centered on reinforcer effectiveness and shaping, but later extended to response variability, creativity, and cultural analysis. Incredible mentors at the UNT such as Jesus Rosales-Ruiz and Sigrid Glenn helped both to expand her interests and to expand her views on the potential impact of behavior analytic research. Thanks to the generality of behavior principles, humans as well as other animals stand to benefit from a deeper understanding thereof, whether the research is conducted with a particular application in mind or not. April hopes someday to make a contribution to the community’s effort to increase behavior analytic understanding and bring that understanding to bear on real-world problems, in the field of animal training and elsewhere.
International Development Grant
Smita Awasthi (Association for Behavior Analysis of India)
Smita Awasthi, is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, beginning her Ph.D. program at Queens University, Belfast. Being the first Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) from India in 2004, came with its set of responsibilities. She could continue to work with kids with autism in India and the region, or she could create a behavioral momentum for advancing the science of applied behavior analysis (ABA) in India. As she traveled across India, from Kolkata in the East to Mumbai in the West and from Bangalore in South to Bhilwara in North, it did not take her long to see innumerable kind-hearted and dedicated professionals working with children with autism. The struggle they went through clearly needed to be addressed with evidence-based teaching practices.
Between Februaryof 2004 and November of 2009, she conducted more than 45 workshops on using ABA and verbal behavior. These were attended by special educators, clinical psychologists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, and parents. This included orientation workshops at King’s George Medical College, Lucknow in 2006 and an introduction to ABA in the Indian Speech and Hearing Association in 2009 to a group of 50 speech and language pathologists. Other significant invitations came from Social Affairs Department, Chattisgarh in 2007 and Sri Ramchandra University (SRU), Chennai in 2008, to name a few. The stage was set, the behavioral momentum created, and people were writing to the Association for Behavior Analysis of India (ABA India) to ask where they could take ABA courses.
In 2006, under the aegis of the ABA India, Smita sent a letter to universities; Maurice Feldman of Brock University replied instantly. Brock University’s program was already approved by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board. Thus, Dr. Feldman and ABA India began a collaboration with SRU Chennai, India to begin the first university-based ABA course in India. This was actively followed-up personally by Dr. Feldman and Smita Awasthi to begin the first of a series of faculty trainings at SRU in November of 2009. The university program at SRU Chennai, India intends to impart ABA training to students to eventually prepare them for BCBA examination. This will generate a resource pool of behavior analysts who will go on to mentor others. This 2-year program will be the first course in India thoroughly dedicated to the science of behavior analysis. Universities in India are guided by regulation from other apex bodies and SRU is identifying ways to begin a new program in compliance with the apex bodies.
The course intends to create a domino effect that will make cost effective ABA courses available to meet the immense need for ABA education in India while bridging the gap as per market needs. On behalf of all members of ABA India, Smita would like to thank SABA for supporting the advancement of behavior analysis in India. The grant fund will be used to support faculty training through distance contact, meetings and by providing mentoring services.
International Development Grant
Veneta Dimitrova (Columbia University)
The errors of omission (Eshleman & Vargas, 1988) regarding the science of behavior and its applications to teaching are still present among Bulgaria’s scientific and pedagogical community. For example, the two required textbooks in abnormal child development course taught as part of the psychology or special education pedagogy programs at the University of Sofia “St. Climent Ohridski” fail to reference any behaviorist theory literature (Matanova, 2009, 2003). The lack of translations and publications of applied behavior analysis literature also has a negative impact on the acquisition of the behavioral terminology and the further exposure to the literature investigating the principles of the science of behavior. Teachers who apply the science of behavior organize their teaching and curricula around scientifically derived principles and evidence-based methods. However, the implementation of pedagogical methods based on the principles of operant behavior is unknown practice in Bulgaria. Bulgarian professors, students, and teachers who are not fluent in the behaviorist terminology do not have access to the existing empirical research.
The SABA International Development Grant will be used to create two library resource centers which will contain copies of major behavioral theory and practice works. These works will be supplemented with a small behavioral terminology glossary translated in Bulgarian. The acquisition of the terminological language of the science of behavior will provide the prerequisites for future specialist training in the methods of applied behavior analysis. The target population includes professionals in the field of special education, pedagogy and psychology such as professors, students, therapists, and teachers.
International Development Grant
Monika Suchowierska (Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities)
We are very honored and thankful to the Board of the Society for Advancement of Behavior Analysis for having selected our project entitled “Publication Behavior Analysis From A to Z—promoting the discipline to the public” as one of the recipients of the 2009 International Development Grant.
The project will help in publishing a book entitled Behavior Analysis From A to Z. This publication will be the last stage of a process beginning in January of 2007, when a group of members from the Polish ABA embarked on creating and translating a glossary of behavior analytic terms from English into Polish (for details see Suchowierska, 2008, in Current Repertoire 24, 3). After having prepared the glossary it was decided to enlarge the project into a full book.
Behavior Analysis From A to Z will present, in a concise and original format, information on a developing—but still relatively unknown—in Poland discipline: behavior analysis. In Poland, behavior analysis has been associated mainly with working with children with autism. As there is a great need for individuals skilled in behavior therapy, also in the area of developmental disabilities, interest in behavior analysis has increased drastically over the last 5 years. There are several centers in Poland that offer therapy based on the principles of applied behavior analysis. Thus, many parents, teachers and paraprofessionals are interested in learning more about this therapy. Unfortunately, there are only a few books that deal comprehensively with behavior analysis that are published in Polish. We hope the proposed book with be a useful recourse for those readers.
Additionally, more and more individuals from the academia, including scientists-practitioners, focus their work on behavior analytic techniques. Many of them teach courses in behavior analysis. In Poland, there are at least four higher-education institutions—Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities (WSSSH), Jagiellonian University, Warsaw University, University of Gdańsk—where such courses are offered regularly. At WSSSH, the first Behavior Analyst Certification Board approved course sequence in applied behavior analysis in the country was established in 2006. Additionally, in 2009, the Department of Behavior Analysis—also the first in the country—was founded at WSSSH. The problem that many lecturers face is lack of publications in Polish that could be recommended to students. Thus, our hope is that the proposed book also will help students interested in behavior analysis.
Finally, there are two associations focusing their interest and activities on behavior analysis and behavior therapy—Polish Society for Behavioral Psychology and Polish Association for Behavior Therapy. We are convinced that authorities of those associations would happily recommend this publication for many of the associations’ members. This is the third group of target readers.
The book is in the last stages of being written and it will be most likely published in the spring of 2010 by the Gdańsk Psychological Publications, one of the most well-known publishing companies in Poland. The authors of the book—Przemyslaw Bąbel, Monika Suchowierska, and Paweł Ostaszewski—hope that it will promote behavior analysis to the large number of individuals in different regions of the country and over extended period of time.