Newsletter
Volume 30 | 2007 | Number 1
2006 SABA Fellowship Awardees
2006 International Development Grant Award
The Board of the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis is very pleased to announce the winner of the 2006 International Development Grant.
Javier Virués-Ortega (Instituto de Salud Carlos III and Universidad de Granada)
The 2006 SABA International Development Grant was awarded to Javier Virués-Ortega to fully implement the first BACB-accredited program in Spain. Specifically, the grant will be used to purchase teaching materials necessary to implement the program fully and training materials necessary for the BACB examination (e.g., bibliography, learning aids). This project will have very clear indicators of impact and success, namely, the number of students in the program completing coursework and experience requirements, the number of students who sit for the BACB examination, and the number of students who become and stay certified.
This project will improve the training opportunities in behavior analysis for Spanish and Hispano-American students. Specifically, the project will: (1) train an average of 10 to 15 new behavior analysts in Spain every year, (2) increase the quality of the current program by adapting it completely to BACB guidelines, (3) improve the resources for teaching and supervising students in the program, and (4) obtain all necessary resources to assist students throughout the certification process.
The implementation of this behavior analytic program will have a number of beneficial effects in the dissemination of behavior analysis, among them: (1) increasing the number of BACB certificants in Spain, (2) developing a new group of professionals in Spain who can provide behaviorally-based services, and (3) expanding the recognition of BACB certification in Spain.
2007 Fellowship Awardees
2007 SABA Experimental Analysis of Behavior Fellowship Awardee: Yukiko Washio (University of Nevada, Reno)
Yukiko Washio
Yukiko Washio started studying behavior analysis as an undergraduate at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan, where she worked with Dr. Takayuki Sakagami in basic human operant research. Immediately after graduation, Yukiko gained an opportunity to study at Western Michigan University (WMU) under the supervision of Dr. Richard Malott for her Master’s degree in applied behavior analysis. She belonged to the Behavior Analysis Training System (BATS) where she learned how to apply behavior analytic principles to manage her academic and personal life. This self-observational skill turned out to be the most valuable thing that she learned in graduate education as the key for successful scientific activities. During the latter part of her academic life at WMU, Yukiko worked with Dr. Richard Spates on PTSD and public anxiety. She also worked with Dr. Scott Gaynor on conjunction fallacy as basic human operant research, and co-authored a relevant study, which is currently in press in The Psychological Record.
After obtaining her Master’s degree, Yukiko moved to the University of Nevada, Reno for her doctoral education. She has had so many invaluable learning experiences through their program, mainly working with Dr. Ramona Houmanfar as well as Dr. Linda Hayes. She was initially interested in the field of second language acquisition, and her study with Dr. Houmanfar is currently in press in The Analysis of Verbal Behavior.
Yukiko has finally found her lifetime career interest in psychoneuroimmunology, and, recognizing how much behavior analysis can offer this field, she is engaged in further graduate education. In particular, her current work includes immunoconditioning, in which various immune responses are the subject matter for environmental conditioning. Her experiment with Dr. Linda Hayes and Dr. Kenneth Hunter has confirmed, using mice, a previous finding that a proinflammatory cytokine called Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF)-a showed a conditioned effect to the taste of saccharin associated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) via Pavlovian conditioning. Furthermore, the results showed that introduction of saccharin on a different day over the course of conditioning induced a different response phase in the development of TNF-a tolerance response at testing of the conditioned stimulus. This experiment obviously has an enormous applied implication relevant to those who are at high risk of gram-negative bacterial infections. Currently, Yukiko is designing and conducting a series of experiments based on the preliminary immunoconditioning model for endotoxin tolerance with mice. These pertain to investigating interrelations between biological phenomena and relations of behavior and the environment.
Yukiko has been expanding her network through participating in relevant conferences and visiting distinguished scholars. She is considering pursuing future post-doctoral positions to establish her research career in the field of psychoneuroimmunology as a Ph.D. thoroughly educated in behavior analysis.
2007 Sidney W. and Janet R. Bijou Fellowship Awardee: Melanie Bachmeyer (University of Iowa)
Melanie Bachmeyer
Melanie Bachmeyer received her Master’s degree in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Applied Behavior Analysis from Georgia State University (2005) while working at the Marcus Institute (2001 to 2005) under the direction of Cathleen C. Piazza, Ph.D. and Wayne W. Fisher, Ph.D. During her training at the Marcus Institute, she had the opportunity to collaborate with applied behavior analysts and contribute to the behavior analytic literature in the area of assessment and treatment of pediatric feeding disorders. She has co-authored peer-reviewed studies published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Behavioral Interventions, and Research in Developmental Disabilities. Her Master’s thesis, On the Relative Effects of Matched Extinction Techniques in the Treatment of Multiply Controlled Inappropriate Mealtime Behaviors, received the Outstanding Master’s Thesis in Educational Psychology Award from Georgia State University (2006). Following her training at the Marcus Institute, she joined the doctoral program in School Psychology at The University of Iowa in August 2005 and has continued to pursue areas of programmatic research in pediatric feeding disorders under the direction of Linda J. Cooper-Brown, Ph.D. and David P. Wacker, Ph.D. Her collective educational and clinical experiences have firmly established her commitment to an operant perspective of child development.
Her primary research and clinical interests involve the assessment and treatment of pediatric feeding disorders. Of particular interest presently is the role of positive reinforcement in the treatment of feeding problems. Specifically, she is interested in evaluating under what conditions and for which topographies of feeding problems positive reinforcement procedures will compete with negative reinforcement maintaining food refusal. She has recently conducted a study evaluating the use of a positive reinforcement procedure in the treatment of one child’s food selectivity and another child’s inadequate food intake. Manipulating the quality of the positive reinforcer resulted in an increase in food acceptance in the absence of escape extinction. In addition, she is currently conducting a study evaluating the effects of positive reinforcement on the production of responses exceeding required demands within a hierarchy of feeding demands. A second area of research is the evaluation of alternative methods to treat total food refusal. Although numerous studies have demonstrated the importance of escape extinction, negative side effects associated with escape extinction often occur. Thus, she is interested in developing and evaluating the effectiveness of alternative procedures to treat total food refusal. Finally, she will be conducting research evaluating the interaction between biological and environmental variables in the treatment of feeding problems. Although interventions to medically resolve or attenuate the adverse effects of medical conditions are typically implemented prior to behavioral treatments, ongoing biological variables (e.g., constipation or physiological deficits such as oral motor dysfunction) may influence the effectiveness of interventions designed to address the environmental variables maintaining the feeding problem. Therefore, she is interested in evaluating such biological variables as potential motivating operations in the treatment of food refusal.
2007 Sidney W. and Janet R. Bijou Fellowship Awardee: Sarah Bloom (University of Florida)
Sarah Bloom
Sarah Bloom received an A.A. degree from Simon’s Rock College of Bard and a B.A. degree in Social Theory with minors in Anthropology, Dance, and Political Theory from the University of Washington. After a brief career as a ballet dancer, she was a teacher at the Sussex Consortium of the Delaware Autism Program, where she began to learn about applications of behavior analysis with academic performance and problem behavior in the classroom. Sarah was a recipient of a Lower Delaware Autism Foundation Award. She began her graduate studies in behavior analysis at the University of Florida (UF) in 2003 under the supervision of Dr. Brian Iwata.
Taking advantage of the integrated program in theoretical, basic, and applied behavior analysis at UF, Sarah has developed a strong foundation in both conceptual and methodological aspects of behavior analysis. She also has taken a series of neuroscience courses offered by the psychology department. Sarah’s clinical and research sites have included school, day-treatment, and residential programs. She is currently the site coordinator for the laboratory at the Sidney Lanier Anchor Center, a public school that serves children with special needs.
Sarah’s research projects at UF have included the assessment of preference for, and reinforcing efficacy of, olfactory stimuli in individuals with Prader-Willi Syndrome and the development of a trial-based functional analysis methodology that can be used by classroom teachers to identify the environmental variables that maintain problem behavior. Sarah is currently working on projects that involve the assessment and treatment of chronic rumination and vomiting, and the development of an employee health and wellness program. The latter project is currently underway at the Recovery Centers of King County in Seattle, WA. Sarah is beginning a project focused on the cross-function emergence of verbal behavior in children without mand repertoires.
Following the completion of her Ph.D. program at UF, Sarah hopes to continue to pursue her research interests in an academic environment, to train future generations of behavior analysts, and to raise the public profile of behavior analysis.