Newsletter
Volume 31 | 2008 | Number 1
Convention Highlights: Special Events
Celebrating and Expanding Our Scientific Foundations, State of the Science Address
Chair: Dr. Timothy D. Hackenberg (University of Florida)
Sunday, May 25; 4:30 p.m – 7:30 p.m.; Stevens 5
Timothy D. Hackenberg
From its inception and through to the present day, progress in all areas of behavior analysis has been fueled by advances in basic science. With the successful application of behavioral principles to an ever-widening array of practical problems, however, the science behind the application is sometimes overlooked. To underscore the vital importance of science to our discipline, this year’s convention will highlight and amplify the good science that has and continues to infuse the various branches of behavior analysis. The theme of this year’s convention, Celebrating and Expanding our Scientific Foundations, weaves together a broad array of topics that speak to our scientific roots and to extensions to new areas of science and application. The keynote event in this track is a session that brings together luminaries in the field to give “State of the Science” lectures—presentations that trace the development of key ideas and concepts in a specific area of research and theory. The speakers have each made pioneering and enduring contributions to our science; at the same time, each remains active and well-positioned to comment on key developments for the future. The event promises to provide fascinating perspectives on the historical roots as well as the future directions of important scientific problems.
Choice and Conditioned Reinforcement
Dr. Edmund Fantino (California State University, San Diego)
Edmund Fantino
Abstract: Psychologists have always been intrigued with the rationales underlying our decisions. Similarly, the concept of conditioned reinforcement has a venerable history, particularly in explaining behavior not tied to obvious primary reinforcers. The studies of choice and conditioned reinforcement have often developed in lockstep. Over the past decades their study has become increasingly quantitative (even complex). Yet many contemporary approaches to these fundamental topics share an emphasis on context and relative value. We trace the evolution of thinking about the potency of conditioned reinforcers from stimuli that acquire their value by pairing with more fundamental reinforcers to stimuli that acquire their value by being differentially correlated with these more fundamental reinforcers. We discuss some seminal experiments that have propelled us to the conclusion that the strength of conditioned reinforcers, as measured in choice settings, is determined by their signaling a relative improvement in the organism’s relation to reinforcement.
Stimuli, Reinforcers, and Private Events
Dr. John Anthony Nevin (University of New Hampshire)
John A. Nevin
Dr. John A. Nevin, known as Tony, studied marine engineering at Yale University and served five years in the Coast Guard before encountering experimental psychology, which proved to be surprisingly compatible with his background in engineering and physical science. His graduate studies at Columbia University combined human psychophysics and color vision with behavioral analyses of conditioned reinforcement in rats and matching to sample in pigeons. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1963, he taught at Swarthmore College until 1968. He returned to Columbia from 1968 until 1972, where he served two years as department chair. To the delight of his five children, he then moved to the relatively rural University of New Hampshire, where he remained until retirement in 1995. He now lives with his wife Nora on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, where he engages in community and environmental conservation projects while maintaining research collaborations in Utah and New Zealand through the magic of electronic communication, supplemented by occasional visits. The post-retirement persistence of his research and theoretical work on behavioral momentum is itself an instance of momentum, based on the many reinforcers he has been privileged to enjoy throughout his life.
Abstract: Radical behaviorism asserts that private events are like public behavior in that they enter into similar lawful relations with similar variables. Therefore, private stimuli can enter into the control of overt behavior, and private activities can be affected by external reinforcers. Recent models of conditional discrimination propose that the private activities involved in attending to stimuli depend on reinforcement in the same way as overt responses, and that remembering involves attending to private stimuli derived from conditional cues. The same approach can be applied to the private events involved in expecting future reinforcers. In some cases, public behavior corresponding to attending, remembering, and expecting can be identified, measured, and invoked to explain aspects of discriminative performance. When public concomitants of private events cannot be identified, however, explanation can be achieved through quantitative models which assume that reinforcement affects private activities in the same way as public behavior.
Reflections on Stimulus Control
Dr. Murray Sidman (Retired)
Murray Sidman
Abstract: The topic of stimulus control is too broad and complex to be traceable within the time allowed here—less than an hour. It would probably take a two-semester course to cover just the highlights of that field’s evolution. The more restricted topic of equivalence relations has itself become so broad that even an introductory summary requires more time than we have available. An examination of relations between equivalence and the more general topic of stimulus control, however, may reveal characteristics of both the larger and the more limited field that have not been generally discussed. Consideration of these features may in turn foster future developments within each area. I speak, of course, about features of stimulus control that my own experiences have made salient to me; others would surely emphasize other characteristics of the field and it is my hope that cooperative interactions among researchers and theorists who approach stimulus control from different directions will become more usual than is currently the case.
Behavioral and Brain Mechanisms in Self-Awareness
Dr. Travis Thompson (Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota School of Medicine)
Travis Thompson
Dr. Travis Thompson received his doctoral training in psychology at the University of Minnesota and completed post-doctoral work at the University of Maryland with J.V. Brady and Cambridge University (UK) with Robert Hinde. His earliest work dealt with the relations among concepts from behavior analysis, ethology and pharmacololgy. He was Director of the John F. Kennedy Center for Human Development at Vanderbilt University and Smith Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Kansas Medical Center before returning to Minnesota in 2003. He co-authored the first textbook in behavioral pharmacology with C.R. Schuster and has done basic and applied interdisciplinary research in developmental disabilities, including genetics, pharmacology and neuroscience. He was involved in developing one of the first large-scale behavioral intervention programs for individuals with intellectual disabilities, and for the past five years has directed home-based early intervention services for young children with autism in Minnesota. He has published 225 articles and chapters and 29 books. 48 doctoral students completed their training under his mentorship. Travis has received numerous awards, including APA Division 1 Ernest Hilgard Award, Division 25 Don Hake Award and Division 33 Edgar Doll Award. He is a Fellow of the Association for Behavior Analysis.
Abstract: Self-awareness refers to intraverbal responses based on the speaker’s previous verbal behavior and discriminative responding based on the state of strength of one’s own dispositions, i.e., autoclitic responding. According to cognitive and developmental theorists, a central feature of autism is lack of the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others, and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one’s own. This has been called theory of mind. The lack of such ability has been called “mind blindness” by Utta Frith and Simon Baron Cohen. While a colorful metaphor, it does not lend itself to amelioration of the hypothesized deficit.
Intensive early behavior therapy ameliorates this deficit to a significant degree in at least half of children with autism spectrum disorders (Lovaas, 1987; Sallows and Graupner, 2005). Children with ASDs who have shown the greatest social gains are those who exhibited motor and/or vocal imitation at baseline. Imitation requires that specific structures in the Mirror Neuron System are at least partially functional. Wise et.al. (2001) has shown Wernicke’s speech area is divided into several distinct functional components. The posterior superior temporal cortex is necessary for mimicry of sounds, including being able to transiently represent phonetic sequences, whether heard or internally generated and rehearsed. Iacoboni et.al. (2005) studied brain activation of typical volunteers in response to brief video vignettes of an action without a context (reaching to pick up a cup), an action with an intended consequence (drinking tea from the cup) and a context without an intended consequence (cleaning up after having tea). Activation of the superior temporal sulcus occurs to seeing a cup grasped with or without a context, much as if the person had actually been grasping a cup, i.e., it is a brain area involved in responding to biological motion. In other words, the STS plays a role in both verbal and non-verbal imitation.
Observing another person engaging in a movement produces sensations in the child doing the observing, that resemble those that occur had the child made the same movement her/himself (i.e., proprioceptive feedback). Teaching the child with an ASD to verbally tact those events becomes a component of self-awareness and other-awareness. These data, together with the foregoing IEBT findings suggest children with ASDs who have residual functioning of critical cells in the superior temporal sulcus of the Mirror Neuron System are amenable to profiting from therapy directed at self-awareness instruction, presumably by capitalizing upon neuroplasticity within those structures. These data, together with previous studies on the critical role of the amygdala (motivation) and orbitofrontal cortex (response-contingency relationships), suggest these three structures in combination can be enlisted through operant reinforcement procedures to create self-awareness as well as the ability to respond discriminatively to others’ private events among children who otherwise are unable to exhibit such skills.
International Development Brunch
Chair: Dr. Simon Dymond (University of Wales, Swansea)
Saturday, May 24; 10:00 a.m.
The international development brunch is scheduled for the first day of the convention to welcome international members and review the international development of behavior analysis being conducted at ABAI. All members are welcome. We expect conference attendees from 30 countries to join us for food and conversation.
Special Interest Group (SIG) Business Meeting with the ABAI Presidents
Chair: Dr. Janet Twyman (Headsprout)
Saturday, May 24; 8:00 a.m.; Williford A
The SIG business meeting serves to discuss issues related to ABAI’s SIGs with SIG representatives. SIGs are a critical component of ABA International and provide additional services and support to members with specialized interests. SIGs provide a forum for information exchange and a vehicle to promote a particular area of interest.
Affiliated Chapters Meeting
Chair: Dr. R. Douglas Greer (Columbia University Graduate School and Teachers College)
Saturday, May 24; 9:00 a.m. – 9:50 a.m.; Williford A
Representatives of ABAI affiliated chapters meet to review the activities of the Affiliated Chapters Board, the status of chapters, and to network.
Special Event
Chair: Dr. Kathryn Saunders (University of Kansas)
Saturday, May 24; 4:00 p.m. – 4:50 p.m.; Stevens 2
Paige McDonald
Dr. Paige McDonald is chief of the Basic and Biobehavioral Research Branch of the Behavioral Research Program in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). A program director since joining NCI in 2001, Dr. McDonald has cultivated the growth of the branch’s research portfolio, focused on elucidating biological mechanisms of psychosocial effects on health and disease.
Prior to joining the NCI, Dr. McDonald was a research psychologist at Howard University Cancer Center (HUCC) and a faculty member in the Department of Medicine at Howard University College of Medicine. Her research interests included stress and immunity within a cancer risk context, the influence of behavioral factors on breast cancer risk and survival, and the perceptions and knowledge of breast cancer and early detection behaviors among women residing in public housing.
Dr. McDonald received her undergraduate degree in Psychology and her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Her doctoral training included an emphasis on behavioral medicine and psychophysiology within the context of cardiovascular disease. Dr. McDonald completed her clinical psychology internship, with specialization in health psychology, at the Brown University Clinical Psychology Internship Consortium and postdoctoral fellowships at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the HUCC. In 2005, she received a Master of Public Health degree form Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. McDonald will give a presentation at the convention titled “The Behavioral Research Program at the National Cancer Institute: A Resource for the Scientific Study of Behavior.”
Abstract: The Behavioral Research Program (BRP) initiates, supports, and evaluates a comprehensive program of behavioral research ranging from basic behavioral research to research on the development, testing, and dissemination of disease prevention and health promotion interventions in areas such as tobacco use, screening, dietary behavior, and sun protection. Our goal is to increase the breadth, depth, and quality of cancer prevention and control behavioral science. Dr. Paige McDonald will present the scientific mission of the program, highlight research priorities, and discuss funding opportunities for the scientific study of behavior in a cancer control and population science context.
Autism Newcomer’s Event: A Guide to the Autism Track at ABAI 2008
Chair: Dr. Jeffrey Tiger (Louisiana State University)
Saturday, May 24; 9:30 a.m.
This session is intended for newcomers to the ABAI convention, but anyone is welcome to attend. An event this large may seem overwhelming to newcomers–whether professionals or parents. The purpose of this event is to describe the types of events in the autism track as well as to highlight special events across all areas of the program that may be of particular interest to autism track attendees. The session will be chaired by Autism Program Area Co-coordinator, Jeffrey Tiger. Former Autism Program Area Coordinator, Jack Scott, and current Area Coordinator, Bill Ahearn will also provide comments and suggestions. A few minutes will be devoted to questions from the newcomers. We hope to help you make the most of this year’s conference.