Newsletter
Volume 31 | 2008| Number 2
Kansas ABA
By Dr. Edward K. Morris
The purpose of Kansas ABA (KansABA) is to provide a forum for disseminating information about the science and practice of behavior analysis and education and training programs therein; discussing issues relevant to the science and practice of behavior analysis; maintaining disciplinary, professional, and ethical standards in the science and practice of behavior analysis; and enhancing and recruiting interest in behavior analysis throughout the State of Kansas.
Among KansABA’s primary 2007–2008 contributions was to assist Kansas City area autism advocacy groups in making a case to the Kansas state legislature for funding and for services for children with autism and their families. With the assistance of testimony from Professor James A. Sherman (University of Kansas), the autism community was successful in gaining services for an initial group of families. Another contribution has been to co-sponsor and offer BACB continuing education units (CEUs) for behavior-analytic workshops in Kansas and the Kansas City metropolitan area, most notably, a December, 2007 workshop by Ron and Justin Leaf on the facts, folklore, and myths of discrete-trial training in early intensive behavioral intervention in autism. This year, we also began offering BCBA CEUs for colloquia sponsored by the Department of Applied Behavioral Science (ABS) at the University of Kansas, among them Michael Dougher’s “Clinical and Everyday Implications of Recent Research on Derived Relational Responding,” Jay Moore’s “When Did B. F. Skinner Become a Radical Behaviorist?,” and Dan Bernstein’s “How Generative Is a Behavioral Model of Teaching?” We also now offer BACB CEUs for ABS talks and formal discussions. These have been on such topics as adjunctive behavior, behavioral pharmacology, conditioned reinforcement, functional analysis, the matching law, preference assessments, and the misrepresentation of applied behavior analysis in autism.
For 2008–2009, we plan to continue assisting the autism community, co-sponsoring workshops, and providing CEUs for the workshops and ABS colloquia and related events. In addition, we will upgrade our Web site, making it more accessible and useful to the citizens of the state of Kansas.