Association for Behavior Analysis International

Although Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) promotes itself as being a type of clinical behavior analysis and as having its origins in behavior analysis, many professionals are skeptical of this or are unsure how to incorporate ACT in their traditional behavior analysis practices. A common concern amongst Behavior Analysts is how to know when doing work from an ACT perspective if one is operating within the scope of their practice. What are the conceptual boundaries? Are there some aspects that can be merged but not others? This panel will serve as a “Part II” to a panel discussion that took place at the ABAI 2014 Annual Convention, and will consist of a range of professionals with varying opinions on this issue. The goal of this panel is to facilitate a discussion that will include the pros and cons of each position in hopes to gain insight and answers into these very common questions.

Food selectivity is comprised of food refusal, limited food repertoire, and high frequency single food intake (Bandini et al., 2010). Food selectivity has an estimated prevalence as high as 85% in children with autism, often leading to nutritional deficiencies (Ahearn et al., 2001). Many behavior analytic approaches to treating food selectivity in children with ASD use escape extinction techniques. (Bachmeyer et al., 2009, Paul et al., 2007, Piazza et al., 2003). The present symposium will include a study in which the effectiveness of escape extinction and application of the Premack principle in treating food selectivity in two males with ASD was evaluated. Two additional projects evaluated the effectiveness of hierarchal exposure to foods and systematic desensitization using a 12-step food hierarchy in three additional participants. The final presentation involves a constructional approach to addressing food selectivity. Over fifteen children increased sampling of diverse foods through combinations of increased access, social consequences, and directly shaping approach to foods. Expanded food repertoires were observed in each of the four studies in the symposium. Considerations when selecting treatment procedures and implications for future research will be discussed.

Since Aristotle whole-part relations have been of fundamental philosophical concern. Within the sciences some version of atomism is generally a given, though not without misgivings. The integration of smaller behavioral units to comprise more complex behavior has been of interest since the days of Thorndike and Watson's Behaviorism and Tolman's Purposive Behaviorism, and was a topic of concern to Skinner throughout his career. Skinner never proposed a consistent mechanism accounting for the way individual operants are combined to form complex, naturally occurring behavior outside of controlled laboratory situations. In 1986 Thompson and Lubinski in the volume "Integrating Units of Analysis," suggested a mechanism based on Premackian relative probability relations, greatly elaborated recently by Killeen to include an comprehensive array of operant and non-operant behavior. Marr has questioned the generality of the concept of behavioral units in the light of various definitions, our methods of digitizing what is, in fact, a continuum, and Hineline has argued the key process holding a naturalistic narrative together appears to involve a dynamic role of establishing stimuli,.

Narrative permeates not only mystery stories and other novels: it is salient in newspaper and magazine discussions of social problems; it is part of the standard formula for political speeches and for soliciting money for a worthy causes; and, of course, story-telling occupies much of ordinary conversation. Nevertheless, behavior analysts have had little to say about narrative, perhaps because its salient characteristics are mainly structural, whereas behavior analysis addresses mainly the functions of verbal behavior. In addition, the role of the individual listerners behavior is crucial, and behavior analysts have tended to homogenize the listeners role as that of audience or verbal community. Despite these limitations, behavior analysts have delineated a few phenomena that appear to be relevant: joint attention and the discriminations and functions involved in imitation, equivalence classes and relational frames are a few. But the key process that holds a narrative together appears to involve a dynamic role of establishing stimuli, similar to the role of discriminative stimuli in other integrated units of behavior.

Early in his Behavior of Organisms, Skinner asserted, Thesystem is based on the assumption that both behavior and environment can be broken into parts which retain their identity throughout an experiment and undergo orderly changes. If this assumption were not in some sense justified, a science of behavior would be impossible (p. 33). He went on to describe the natural lines of fracture along which behavior and the environment actually break (p.33). Thus the analysis of behavior from its beginning has apparently depended on a concept of unit. More than three-quarters of a century has passed and we are still wrestling with this concept. I will survey at least a portion of that struggle with some exemplars of how the term unit has been applied as well as the vexing issue of how putative units might emerge from the behavioral stream. While certain examples may justifiably qualify as functional behavioral units in demonstrating a consistent integrity, one may question the generality of the concept in the light of various definitions, our methods of digitizing what is, in fact, a continuum, the focus on the steady-state as opposed to details of acquisition, and the non-linear, irreversible dynamics of behavioral change.

Units are standardized measurements of physical magnitudes. They are concatenated physically by juxtaposition and mathematically by addition. Inches are no more natural than centimeters; both are conventions. They belong to the scientist not the subject. Atoms are natural elements, nominally indivisible; they are concatenated physically by juxtaposition and mathematically by atomic physics. If juxtaposed too forcibly they fuse into new elements. Elements of a given name need not be identical; Iron has four stable isotopes and two-dozen unstable ones. The behavior of organisms does not have units, although behaviorists assign them. It has elements, such as the licking movement of the rats tongue, one among many action patterns identified by ethologists. Do the actions have isotopes? What does it take to fuse them? Does fusion reduce them to a lower energy state? Attend for answers; bring dosimeters.

Complex concatenation of arrays of naturally appearing behavior, dispositions and dispositional states arranged according to relative probability hierarchies, are proposed to account for natural human and other organisms behavior in natural settings. Components include operants, and embedded unconditioned reflexive, adjunctive, classically conditioned responses, as well a dispositions. Inclusion of Rylian dispositions and endogenous dispositional states, similar in some respects to Tolman's expectancies, makes it possible to account for a causal role of private events within naturalistic response sequences. To the degree that those disposition or states are tactable, (e.g. autoclitically) we conventionally refer to the speaker as having insight or self-understanding. Examples of laboratory and familiar natural human behavior will be discussed.

In multiple experiments, we studied the effects of social listener reinforcement in two elementary inclusive settings for students with and without disabilities. Probes were conducted in three settings: 1) social discussions, 2) academic discussions, 3) lunch time across 5 days for each peer and participant. Additionally, we measured social performance behaviors that each participant emitted throughout the school day across 10 consecutive days. The participants of the experiments included students with autism and general education students from different backgrounds, using a delayed multiple probe design. The sequence of the SLR procedure included: 1) I Spy, 2) 20 Questions, 3) Guess Who, 4) Advanced 20 Questions, 5) Peer Tutoring, 7) Group Instruction, & 8) Empathy. Results demonstrated that an advanced social-listener reinforcement procedure with a peer-yoked contingency increased the number of vocal verbal operants and social-performance behaviors emitted by participants.

Traumatic brain injury affects approximately 1.7 million Americans each year. Irritability, impulsivity, decreased attention, problems with perseveration and overstimulation, as well as lack of insight are common problems following brain injury. With difficult behaviors a common occurrence, staff employed to work with individuals with brain injury must be highly skilled and prepared to manage potential daily challenges. The presentations in this symposium will focus on the importance of well-trained staff. First, an evaluation of a commercially-available staff training program will be reviewed. Findings from the multi-site project will be presented including implications for application of the training curriculum and its use in further research. Next, results from a national survey of rehabilitation staff specifically regarding training and education received on how to manage difficult behavior will be presented along with an in depth discussion on how to incorporate ABA-specific training into the education of therapeutic staff to facilitate improved clinical practices and positively impact patient outcomes.

High performing organizations (Daniel & Daniels, 2006) have a few things in common. One of those things is their ability to remain competitive while adapting to change. We see examples of adapting to change though the revision of key processes to meet new state & federal regulations, amending policies to meet funding source requirements, and/or training staff to implement improved protocol. An approach to organizational change that has shown to be effective is the adoption of a performance-based approach to the designing and managing of infrastructure, processes and the people. It is these internal structures that define a companys service delivery, and in turn shapes their culture, and therefor their public image. To do so, Performance Thinking must be learned and embraced by everyone in the organization. In August of 2013 Easter Seals Bay Area (ESBA) and Optimal partnered to undertake the adoption of Performance Thinking within ESBA; not only as a way to design and manage key pieces of their infrastructure, but also as part of their cultural identity. This panel will describe the main organizational change initiatives that ESBA has implemented throughout the transformation process including the creation of a mission statement & strategic plans, the design & implementation of key processes, the development of mangers & leaders and how teams of people were able to shift an organizations culture. We will also show data illustrating their impacts and discuss important lessons learned along the way to becoming a Performance Thinking organization.

Many seasoned behavior analysts have come to realize that the effectiveness of behavioral services as well as the dissemination of our science is dependent upon how others perceive our field. Positive collaboration with other professionals can create allies that will support behavior analytic services for clients and help improve the image of our field. Unfortunately, many behavior analysts finish their education with little or no direct training on how to work collaboratively with non-behavior analytic professionals. For those pioneering individuals who take on roles as one of the only behavior analysts in a particular organization or region, learning these skills at a new job can be challenging. This panel is designed to provide the perspective of both university faculty and service providers on some of the challenges faced working with professionals from other fields. The panelists will also offer advice on overcoming these challenges and forging alliances with professionals from other fields.

Methods and components of staff training will be examined, including teaching staff to run discrete trial training, as well as performance on more general work tasks. Attention will be paid to components that increase performance, persistence, integrity and accuracy. These components include goal setting, feedback, training materials, and error correction procedures.

The current study evaluated the relative effectiveness of job aids and performance based feedback (PBF) on therapist implementation of DTI using a multiple baseline across participants within a changing criterion design. Performance based feedback included weekly vocal and graphic feedback detailing the DTI steps performed correctly and those performed incorrectly. Job aids were visual supports that served as brief, written reminders of the procedural steps required for high fidelity implementation of DTT. This study extends current research by incorporating a level system that segments DTI steps into levels that build upon one another, thereby facilitating the shaping of DTI steps within each level and the subsequent chaining of those steps to form a complete DTI sequence. Additionally, this study supplements the limited research found on training therapists to implement specific DTI error correction procedures.

Currently, the demand for applied behavior analytic services far exceeds the number of individuals that can provide them. As a result, service providers have multiplied the number of individuals they hire in order to meet this need. Despite this increase in individuals working with clients, the number of qualified behavior analysts that can provide effective supervision for these individuals is in short supply. Specifically, in rural areas, the lack of access to qualified behavior analysts often results in poor supervision experiences and long delays in receiving appropriate training. Furthermore, the lack of access to adequate support results in further delay for individuals pursuing credentials. In order to address this problem, researchers and practitioners have begun to provide supervision and training via remote technologies. In rural areas, where behavior analysts are in short supply, remote technologies can be one solution to the problem. Providing supervision via remote technologies allows for expert supervision and training for individuals in areas that might not otherwise get access to effective supervision. In this series, three expert panelists will review and discuss empirically based approaches to supervision and training via remote technologies. In addition, they will discuss implications and suggestions for future research in this area.

Few studies have examined the effects of mindfulness training on personal productivity. This paper will present two studies examining the effects of mindfulness on productivity. The first experiment used an alternating treatments design in which eight adult participants engaged in a brief mindfulness exercise or educational control before completing math problems while also engaging in a cold-pressor task. Results suggested that brief mindfulness training increased pain tolerance, but effects on productivity were not clear. The second experiment extends on this research by examining if repeated practice, both in a work environment as well as at home, results in gains in productivity. Participants were teachers and teacher’s assistants. Participants completed mindfulness sessions during a planning period, as well as at home, on a daily basis. The experimenters used a multiple baseline across participants design to evaluate the effects of mindfulness practice on the number of words written for lesson planning or on progress notes.

Third wave behavior therapies have been described as focusing on elaborating behavioral repertoires instead of decreasing psychological symptoms. This often includes, to some degree, both training mindfulness skills and constructing valued patterns of behavior. Third wave approaches have been applied to a variety of areas of human suffering. This symposium will review four applications of various components of third wave behavior therapies across formats, settings, populations, and target behaviors. The first paper in this symposium explores the impact of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as an adjunctive treatment to improve the quality of life of an individual struggling with stuttering. The second paper will present data on the effectiveness of a self-help book focused on improving body-image flexibility. The third paper in the symposium will explore the impact of a specific eastern meditation practice on substance use. The fourth paper will examine the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy for marijuana abuse. Implications for future treatment development efforts will be discussed.

Video modeling (VM) has been used to teach individuals with developmental disabilities and autism to complete various tasks such as play (Hine & Wolery, 2006), self-help (Shipley-Benamou, Lutzker, Taubman, 2002) leisure (Stromer, Kimball, Kinney, & Taylor, 2006) and academics (Charlop & Milstein, 1989). However, there are many variations of video modeling and little data on differences in skill acquisition from one form of modeling versus another. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of the presentation of two common forms of video modeling (Point of View VM and Scene VM) on the imitation of vocal and motor responses depicted in the videos. In baseline, play items were presented to the participant and data were collected on vocal and motor responses for 60 seconds. In the treatment condition, participants viewed either the point of view VM or the scene VM of a play routine, then the play items were presented and again data were collected on the target responses. The results suggest that little difference in demonstration of motor responses were seen across video types, however imitation of vocal responses occurred more frequently in the point of view VM condition.

The rapid pace of technological advances is resulting in an increasing availability of computer-based devices and software applications that can be used in teaching programs for individuals with developmental disabilities. Much research has focused on the use of the iPad and its benefits as a communication platform for individuals with autism spectrum disorders. To date, there are few empirical studies which focus on the iPad in the context of academic skills. There is also little research to suggest that learning in an iPad based format occurs at a faster rate than when using common instructional practices (i.e., flashcards). In the current study an alternating treatment design was used to compare the effects of the two different stimulus presentation modes (iPad vs. flashcards) to teach receptive identification by function. In one condition, the iPad was presented with an array of target stimuli in nine varying placements on the screen. In the second condition, flashcards were rotated in nine different placements on a black laminated sheet. The data indicate that the stimuli presented via the iPad were acquired more quickly than those presented via flashcards.

Few studies have illustrated the behavior analytic assessment and treatment process from start to finish (Hanley, Jin, Vanselow, & Hanratty, 2014). We conducted a systematic replication of the process outlined by Hanley et al. (2014) to treat screaming exhibited by a young male with an autism spectrum disorder in a home setting. First, a single-function test consisted of alternation between test and control conditions. During test conditions, screaming produced 30s access to tangible items (e.g., ipad). During control conditions, we provided non-contingent access to tangible items. Functional analysis results suggested screaming was maintained by positive reinforcement in the form of tangible delivery. Treatment consisted of differential reinforcement of an increasingly complex functional communication response, denial training, and subsequent parent training and parent implementation. Results were similar to those reported by Hanley et al. (2014), such that substantial reductions in problem behavior were observed concurrent with establishing appropriate alternative responses not observed in baseline. Inter-observer agreement data were collected for 36 percent of sessions and exceeded 83 percent.

Although functional analysis methodology is the most widely recommended pre-treatment assessment, the behavior analytic literature offers a paucity of functional analysis demonstrations in community settings. We extended research in this area by conducting a trial-based functional analysis in a community setting for screaming exhibited by a young girl diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Test conditions consisted of termination of walking to a particular location (e.g., Dunkin Donuts), whereas the control condition consisted of non-contingent access to walking to a particular location. Problem behavior occurred predominantly in test conditions relative to control conditions. Subsequently, a differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) procedure was implemented wherein pointing to a communication card produced access to the particular location while screaming was on extinction. The effects of the DRA procedure were replicated in a reversal design. During DRA conditions, screaming remained low and communication occurred consistently. A noteworthy feature of the analysis and treatment was its brevity, requiring 64 minutes and 55 seconds for completion. Inter-observer agreement data for the functional analysis were collected for 50 percent of trials and yielded 100 percent. Inter-observer agreement data for the treatment were collected for 32 percent of trials and yielded 89 percent.

The variables that control behavior are not an amalgamation of static stimulus conditions. Rather, behavior is changing, fluid, and evanescent (Skinner, 1953). This conceptualization is described by Israel Goldiamond whose pragmatic nonlinear approach to behavior recommends a multidimensional analysis. That is, one must acknowledge that the topography, function, history, and detection (measurement) of behavior may all yield varied accounts. An advantage to such a system is that it can bring the behavior of the scientist under multiple sources of control, engendering more effective technology. The purpose of this symposium is to highlight some of the key considerations presented by Israel Goldiamond, primarily from his comprehensive text entitled simply The Blue Books. In addition, the symposium will dive into the subtleties of key areas within the books including the focus on both scope and breadth of the constructional approach and the importance of Goldiamond's work in the area of stimulus control.

The field of behavior analysis has been described as a scientific approach to behavior that is composed of at least three distinct branches. The branches consist of the experimental analysis of behavior, behaviorism, and applied behavior analysis. As changes occur in any given branch, similar changes will also occur to and alter the other branches. In order to establish a cohesive system, all changes to any given branch must be examined with respect to their impact with the other branches. Israel Goldiamond's non-linear behavior analysis provides a cohesive system that facilitates work at all levels of the science to be flexible and effectively interact with their subject matter. The current paper will outline the importance of a cohesive system for the behavior analysis, provide examples of problems created by altering constructs within one branch without reference to the others, and briefly demonstrate the interpretative power of the system to phenomena that fall outside of the current scope of experimental investigation. Future directions for exploration of a non-linear approach to behavior analysis will be addressed and the potential will be opened for further exploration of the system.

The "Blue Books" were a series of brilliant, relatively short, apparently basic, yet overall comprehensive modules, developed for a course taught at the Institute for Behavioral Research (IBR) during the 1960s, originally called, A functional analysis of behavior and its extensions. They were authored by Israel Goldiamond and Donald M. Thompson and programmed in collaboration with Harold L. Cohen. They were recently compiled, edited and remastered in 2002 by Goldiamond's student and colleague Paul Andronis. This presentation will examine the extensive chapter on stimulus control and share insights from our field's past that may help illuminate its future.

Stimulus control in the field of behavior analysis has several conceptual interpretations. Stimulus control, as conceptualized within Israel Goldiamond's Blue Books offers a parsimonious interpretation that allows practitioners and researchers to effectively interact with behavior as a subject matter. The current paper will outline the conceptualization of stimulus control as offered by Israel Goldiamond. Following the general outline of stimulus control, various examples will be explored offering a demonstration of how conceptualization can lead to rapid identification of potential treatment packages. Future research questions relevant to stimulus control across both the applied and experimental branches will be offered.

A behavior analytic system of value must be able to generate novel research, create meaningful interventions, and have explanatory scope of other fields working inside of the domain of behavior. Israel Goldiamond's non-linear behavior analysis offers a conceptually systematic approach that has scope and depth. Non-linear behavior analysis will be applied to current research from various fields that often overlap with the subject matter of behavior. The value of contacting other fields work and being able to interpret them through a conceptually systematic approach will be highlighted. Key aspects to working with other investigators and applying a conceptually systematic approach will be discussed.