Newsletter
Volume 30 | 2007 | Number 3
A Convention Freebie and a Broad Marketplace of Ideas
By Dr. Thomas S. Critchfield
While each May brings the annual treat of the ABA International Convention, 2008 will offer a special bonus to those with scientific interests. As ABA International convenes in the Chicago Hilton (May 23-27), the fickle gods of convention scheduling have placed the Association for Psychological Science (APS) not far away in the Sheraton Chicago (May 22-25). This rare geographic conjunction of meetings offers a wonderful opportunity for scholarly exchange.
To facilitate this exchange, ABA International is pleased to announce an arrangement whereby our members and those of APS can visit each others’ conferences at no cost. Details of how you can take advantage of this opportunity will be described in upcoming convention publications. The general idea, however, is simple: Register for one convention, and you can attend sessions at the other for free.
What This Says about Behavior Analysis
Making complimentary cross-registration possible required considerable work over many months by many people, including APS Officials such as Executive Director Alan Kraut, Director of Meetings Kate Volpe, and Program Chair Louise Hawkley. Note that APS boasts about 17,000 members and since 1988 has been a leading home for psychological science. Their convention features some of the world’s most prominent psychological researchers, and their journals (particularly Psychological Science) are among the most respected and most impactful on the planet. You can find out about APS at http://www.psychologicalscience.org/.
It is a measure of ABA International’s growth and maturity as a scholarly society that APS saw value in collaborating on cross-registration. And it is a credit to the accomplishments of many behavior analytic scholars that, for a weekend in May, ABA International will be mentioned in the same breath with what is regarded by many as the world’s largest association of psychological scientists.
ABA International has taken initial steps to build on a relationship with APS by co-sponsoring several sessions that will take place, either at our convention or theirs, featuring scholars representing both organizations (the next issue of the newsletter will say more about these sessions and the devoted members of the ABA International Program Committee who helped to make them possible).
The next steps are up to individual members. Opportunities exist to widen the impact of behavior analysis, and some ways to do this are suggested below. As a preliminary step, however, it is important to define the problem that success in this arena would address.
Although ABA International and the major behavior analytic journals provide a happy home for our scholarly efforts, they have also limited our day-to-day need to interact with colleagues who approach their work through different methods and theoretical frameworks. Consequently, other scholars (who greatly outnumber us!) may know little about us and can be forgiven for not embracing our contributions. In my opinion, this is our collective failure, not theirs. Only by placing our work in the broad marketplace of ideas can we expect to influence the hearts and minds of others.
As we are all fond of saying, “the organism is always right.” If other scholars do not embrace behavior analytic work, then perhaps we have not made it available to them or have communicated in ways that leave unclear what reinforcers may be obtained by embracing this work. Examine the rare successes of behavioral scholars and practitioners in the broad marketplace—for instance, consider how our colleagues in Positive Behavioral Support have influenced public policy in education—and you’ll find close attention to precisely this issue. Those who are good at selling behavioral work are good at “starting where the organism is.”
Three Ways to Enter the Broad Marketplace of Ideas
Sample from the APS Program. From the perspective just described, it is an opportunity to be able to interact with our APS colleagues on their terms and on their turf. A key first step toward widely disseminating behavior analysis is to understand the topics and questions in which other scholars (who dominate most journals, associations, and funding programs) are interested. Look at the APS program when it is released (a few plenary addresses already have been announced) to find points of intersection with your own interests, and attend the relevant sessions. This is a no-cost opportunity to learn about a big world of psychological science in which behavior analysis has played a limited role for several generations. You may well find interests that are close to your own.
Welcome visitors from APS. There is also an opportunity to engage APS colleagues on our terms, on our turf. When you see an APS member at the ABA International convention, seek shared interests, explore testable points of contention, and in general take up the challenge of beginning a longer-term conversation. To take it a step farther: Before May, identify APS members with whom you might share interests, and invite them to attend sessions at our meeting that you think might be useful. Or set up a lunch at which issues of mutual interest may be discussed. If we seek out such interactions, and approach them with the respect we hope to receive from others, the result can only be good for behavior analysis.
Participate in APS (and other groups). As we examine our individual roles as participants in the broad marketplace of ideas, we must strive for more than the fleeting interactions that take place during a given convention weekend. Each of us should consider how regularly we venture into the broad marketplace. Do we contribute to organizations besides ABA International and affiliated behavior-analytic associations? Do we submit our work to non-behavior-analytic journals? Those who answer in the negative miss an opportunity to spread our science where it belongs, to the heart of every endeavor that really matters. I am confident that every reader hopes to see behavior analysis freely exchanged in that broad marketplace of ideas, but just possibly the main impediment to achieving this goal is... us, or at least those of us who find too much comfort in our friendly associations and journals. If we are really doing good work, then we should not be shy about advertising it!
As we examine our individual roles as participants in the broad marketplace of ideas, we must strive for more than the fleeting interactions that take place during a given convention weekend. Each of us should consider how regularly we venture into the broad marketplace. Do we contribute to organizations besides ABA International and affiliated behavior-analytic associations? Do we submit our work to non-behavior-analytic journals? Those who answer in the negative miss an opportunity to spread our science where it belongs, to the heart of every endeavor that really matters. I am confident that every reader hopes to see behavior analysis freely exchanged in that broad marketplace of ideas, but just possibly the main impediment to achieving this goal is... us, or at least those of us who find too much comfort in our friendly associations and journals. If we are really doing good work, then we should not be shy about advertising it!
The APS Call for Papers has been released, and submissions are accepted until January 31, 2008. Presenting our work to this important audience is a great way to see that behavior analysis gets its day in the sun. Of course, it is incumbent upon each of us to prepare a competitive proposal (not everything submitted to APS is accepted for presentation) and to describe our work in ways that make contact with others’ interests (“start where the organism is”). Because the two conferences overlap, presenting at APS might mean giving up some time at our own convention, but this highlights the challenge that is associated with every opportunity. We all have limited time, and must decide how to spend it for maximum effect.
Finally, as counterintuitive as it may sound, ABA International members might consider joining APS. Because APS also claims the Memorial weekend for its convention, taking full advantage of APS membership might mean missing our own convention now and then. In a cost-benefit analysis, however, we should consider what is good for disseminating our science.
The preceding is part of a general hope that readers will assume more visible roles in major associations outside of ABA International: the American Psychological Association, International Association for Applied Psychology, National Association of School Psychologists, National Association of Social Workers, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, or whatever group defines the broad marketplace of ideas in our respective areas of interest. A marketplace is, after all, a grassroots effort, in this case an amalgam of the contributions of individual scholars. By "setting up shop" in other organizations and "doing business" persistently and wisely (hearts and minds do not change overnight or without good reason), we can infuse the marketplace with behavior analysis in a way that no consumer of science could—or would want to—ignore.