Association for Behavior Analysis International

ABAI training sessions are great opportunities for chapter leaders to gain knowledge and expertise on issues of central importance to their ABAI affiliated chapters. This training is for chapter leaders only. Although the training is free for up to three officers per chapter, advance registration is required. This event is closed; attendance is by invitation only.

Presentations will be made by Eitan Eldar (Israel ABA), Grant Gautreaux (Louisiana Behavior Analysis Association), and Martha Hübner (ABAI International Representative to the Executive Council; ABA of Brazil). Break-out sessions for moderated discussion are planned on "chapter communication and conflict resolution" and "state licensure updates," among other topics.

ABAI is pleased to offer a Leadership Training Session for officers of ABAI Special Interest Groups (SIGs) for the purpose of providing strategies for guiding the growth of SIGs and providing services to members and constituents. This training is for SIG leaders only. Although the training is free for up to three officers per SIG, registration is required. This event is closed; attendance is by invitation only.

Presentations will provide information and assistance in setting up and managing useful, low-cost means of SIG communication. Behavior Analysis for Sustainable Societies representatives will share their experiences leveraging Facebook, a blog, and a listserv to effectively disseminate information to SIG members and nonmembers. Health, Sport, and Fitness SIG members will provide guidance on specific web page technology for the development of websites specific to the needs and interests of members. Presentations will be followed by break-out sessions for moderated discussion on the topics presented.

Parents and other caregivers of individuals with special needs as well as professionals and students are attending the ABAI convention in increasing numbers but may have questions about how to make the most of the experience. Furthermore, an event as large as ABAI may seem overwhelming to newcomers. Parents, professionals, and students who may be attending ABAI for the first time are encouraged to participate in this convention orientation and visit our website. We will provide an overview of ABAI and its convention and highlight the types of events that parents, professionals, and students will encounter.

As the defining feature of his professional life since his junior year of college, behavior analysis has imparted many gifts to Dr. Kennon Andy Lattal. These simple gifts cover the breadth of his experiences with the conceptual foundations, empirical database, methods, and people with whom he worked and collaborated with throughout the years. In this brief talk, Dr. Lattal will reflect on some of those experiences and the people responsible for them—how they have shaped his behavior in and out of the classroom and laboratory; what he has learned (and has not learned) as a result of these broad, diverse contacts; and what he would have others take away from his accumulated history of being a researcher, teacher, observer, participant, and fellow traveler with colleagues, students, and many friends in our fine discipline.

SEEK Education, Inc. will be represented by Sharon Chien, SEEK founder and chair, as it receives this award. An 8-minute video of SEEK Education’s record will show its dedication and commitment toward advancing the study and training of applied behavior analysis throughout Asia, and to introduce the organizations and the people who have been benefited from the science of ABA through SEEK’s dissemination work and its enthusiasm of learning and applying ABA. Organizations SEEK works with include the Wuhan Hospital, Autism Society of China, Central China ABA Association, Taiwan ABA Association, and Shenzhen Autism Society. SEEK also expresses gratitude and excitement about bringing ABA into its educational system.

Drugs of abuse are powerful positive reinforcers that promote and maintain substantial and often escalating amounts of drug seeking and drug taking behavior. Our pioneering research showed that behavioral principles could be usefully applied to the study and treatment of substance-use problems and that drug-taking behaviors could be readily influenced by appropriate scheduling of consequences. We specifically demonstrated that alternative positive reinforcers, including treatment clinic privileges and cash payments, could be used effectively in an operant conditioning paradigm to compete with powerful drug reinforcers and support drug abstinence versus drug-seeking behaviors. This early translational research has led to a substantial and growing body of work clearly supporting utility of the operant behavior analytic approach to substance-abuse problems. It also has led to development of incentive-based contingency management interventions that can effectively compete with drug reinforcement and that have been widely studied and adopted as an evidence-based treatment intervention.

The Behavior Analysis Area of the Experimental Psychology Graduate Program of the University of São Paulo in Brazil strives to strengthen the theoretical and experimental research in behavior analysis, train new researchers and teachers, play a role in the training of behavior analysts, promote the participation of students in supervised systematic investigations, and function in the context of multidisciplinary integration with the neurosciences and ethology branches of research in the program. The program was created in 1970 and was approved by the Brazilian Federal Government to operate at the master’s degree level in 1970, and at the doctoral level in 1974. Its creation evolved from Fred Keller’s first visit to Brazil in 1961 after he created the first cohort in Experimental Analysis of Behavior at the university. The program has received support in the form of scholarships for master’s, doctoral, postdoctoral, and research productivity, and project financing from Brazilian FIPSE (CAPES), National Council for the Development of Science (CNPq), National Foundation for Education and Research (FINEP), and São Paulo State Foundation for Research Support (FAPESP). It also was part of the only research group in Brazil in psychology and behavior analysis to receive a national project grant from the National Institute of Science and Technology. Also, the program has received the highest government national grade (7 on a scale of 3-7) for the most recent 3-year evaluation periods. The program faculty collaborates with many foreign institutions and researchers, and has worked on journals such as The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, The Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior, and The Brazilian Journal of Behavior Analysis as peer reviewers. Faculty members also hold leadership positions in scholarly and service organizations such as ABAI, the Council of Brazilian Society of Psychology, and the Brazilian Association of Psychology.

Can Behavior Analysis Be “Funalicious?”: It is a myth that if you “build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door.” Everyone here believes that we have a better way to deal with most of the world’s problems because all of them require, in the beginning, middle or end, someone’s behavior to solve them. With a technology that is able to address the pressing problems of the world you would think that some of us would be inundated with requests to appear on the morning talk shows, Oprah, TED Talks, The Tonight Show, hounded for interviews, and be quoted by bloggers daily. However, that is far from the case. Dr. Aubrey Daniels has said for many years that we have the best kept productivity secret in the world; not that we planned it that way but that is the way it has worked out. The best that we can say is what the Marines say, “We are the proud, the few, the Marines.” Let’s face it. There are almost no marketing people among us. That is certainly our “sweet spot.” By training we expect our results to speak for themselves. They may, but not fast enough to reach Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, at least in my lifetime. It is time for us to spread the word about our technology in a way that we will impact many of the daily problems of living that prevent billions of people in the world from living productive and happy lives. It is a noble undertaking worth pursuing. Not that I have all the answers, but I do have a few.

Aubrey C. Daniels, Ph.D., is the world’s foremost authority on applying the scientifically proven laws of human behavior to the workplace. Daniels helps the world’s leading organizations employ the timeless principles of behavioral science to re-energize the workplace, optimize performance, and achieve lasting results. His management consulting firm, Aubrey Daniels International (ADI), works with business leaders in more than 20 countries to develop management strategies that reinforce critical behaviors vital to their long-term success. Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, the firm was founded in 1978. Daniels is the author of six best-selling books widely recognized as international management classics: Bringing out the Best in People, Performance Management, OOPs!, Other People’s Habits, Measure of a Leader with James E. Daniels, and Safe by Accident? co-authored with Judy Agnew, Ph.D. His books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish and French and have been licensed in China, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Romania, and Saudi Arabia. He lives in Tucker, GA, with his wife, Becky. He has two daughters, two grandsons and one granddaughter.

Most of the students with whom we work own an iPad. This session will teach behavior analysts how to capitalize on iPads functionality as a source of instructional support. Participants will learn how to train and support parents as well as pros and cons of various applications. Finally, participants will learn how to use applications to teach specific skills.

Recent research in Pavlovian conditioning has led to an increasingly expansive view of Pavlovian processes and a growing appreciation for their sophistication. Unfortunately, there has been relatively little progress in applying this knowledge toward the promotion of mental and physical well being. It is clear, however, that Pavlovian processes are important for more than phobias and drug relapse. Their influence extends to a variety of biological systems important for maintaining homeostasis and fighting illness, and they appear to play an important but overlooked role in response allocation. This tutorial will describe a variety of health-relevant Pavlovian phenomena from a contemporary perspective. The discussion will involve a description of the different types of Pavlovian stimuli, the circumstances that establish them, how to identify them, and what is known about the ability to modify them through intervention. Although behavior analysts have had great success in modifying behavior through principles of reinforcement and punishment, it is only when Pavlov's science is also brought into the fold that the full promise of behavioral intervention can be achieved.

This talk will focus on a fundamental property of language: using words to refer to objects in the environment. What consequences does such labeling have on cognitive and perceptual processes? To what extent is “normal” human cognition, actually language-augmented cognition? The talk will review evidence indicating that verbal labels do more than communicate information between individuals, but in fact actively modulate conceptual representations brought online during tasks that seem on their surface to have nothing to do with language. Using words to refer to objects affects the learning of new categories, memory for object details, and reasoning about familiar categories. Disruptions of linguistic processes likewise appear to affect performance on a variety of apparently nonverbal tasks. Strikingly, verbal labels also affect performance on even the most basic visual tasks. Together, the findings point to pervasive effects of language on ongoing cognition and perception.

At the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in Boston, MA, over 7,000 homeless animals are taken in every year, about 1,200 of which are dogs. In this "open-admission" Shelter, no animal is turned away, and hundreds of people, in the form of staff, volunteers, and visitors, interact with, care for, walk and train Shelter dogs every month. Behavior analysis allows us to measure appropriate and inappropriate behaviors of humans around dogs, and to shape human behavior to include safe procedures, interactions, and training of homeless dogs to keep the dogs in a manner that will encourage their adjustment to the Shelter environment and increase their chances of adoption. Where and how visitors view dogs available for adoption, how to encourage visitors to keep their fingers out of the kennels will be discussed, and "Safewalk," an Instructional Design curriculum for staff and volunteers, will be discussed.

Shelter dogs everywhere are typically cared for by both staff and volunteers. At the Massachusetts Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Boston, prior to 2009, any member of the public who was over the age of 16 and who attended one orientation could walk any dog that was available for adoption. There was no systematized method of training volunteers or staff to walk unruly, strong, or extremely fearful dogs. Using the Dick and Carey (1996) model of Instructional Design, a curriculum was devised and implemented that created a hierarchical system for volunteers that included training and consistent measurement of attitudinal, intellectual, psychomotor, and verbal domains of behavior. Training was applied for all staff and volunteers consistently for three years. Adoption outcomes and lengths of stay were then compared for dogs for the three years before and after Safewalk. Changes in adoption rates and length of stay for the dogs most at risk were significantly improved, as were other components of Shelter life for dogs and people.

Multiple studies have examined the behavior of visitors in zoos and museums in an effort to understand what variables affect attendance. However, few studies have looked at the same factors in animal shelters. With about 52 million pet dogs in the United States and about 15 million dogs in animal shelters, this is a relevant issue in modern society. Previous research suggests that crowds in zoos and museums may attract more visitors and that visitors spend more time at interactive rather than passive exhibits. However, other research shows that impaired visibility of exhibits decreases the number of visitors; thus, crowding could discourage rather than facilitate visitor-dog interactions. In a shelter with volunteers on the adoption floor, it is important to determine how best to utilize those volunteers to provide a more positive experience to visitors, who might then adopt an animal or recommend the shelter to a friend. This study took place at an animal shelter with volunteers whose responsibilities included interacting with shelter dogs during open hours. The study examined visitors kennel-approaching behavior in the presence and absence of other people in front of the kennel.

In Massachusetts, a dog that bites a person is subject to a 10-day quarantine for the purpose of preventing exposure to the rabies virus. A bite that causes no damage from a mouthing puppy is not differentiated from a bite from an adult dog that requires the victim to receive medical attention. Anecdotally, dog bites at animal shelters are often the result of people putting their fingers through the wire kennel runs. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of four interventions to decrease the fingers-in-kennel behavior of shelter visitors. The first two interventions involved posting different types of signage on the adoption floor telling visitors not to place their fingers in the kennels. A third intervention involved stationing a volunteer at the entrance of the adoption floor to model appropriate interaction with shelter dogs. The fourth intervention included stationing a volunteer at the entrance of the adoption floor telling visitors not to put their fingers in the kennels. All four interventions resulted in a decrease of fingers-in-kennel behavior. The results of this study have important implications for decreasing dog bites in shelters, and support the use of volunteers for mediating public-canine interactions in animal shelters.

In this symposium, we present four recent single case studies regarding antecedent interventions for challenging behavior with young children with autism spectrum disorders. The first paper examines how varying ratios of high-probability requests influence differential effects of escape-maintained challenging behaviors, correct responding, and latency of response to subsequently delivered low-probability requests in children with autism during discrete trial training. The second paper investigates the use of pre-session exercise in the treatment of motor stereotypy for a young child with ASD. The third paper compares the use of signaled versus unsignaled delay to reinforcement on tangibly maintained challenging behavior during instruction. Finally, the fourth paper presents a component analysis of differential reinforcement of other behaviors on automatically maintained challenging behavior. All papers will present implications for future research and clinical practice.

The high-probability request sequence (HPRS) is an intervention involving both antecedent and consequential components used to increase compliance to subsequently delivered low-probability requests. Previous research has primarily focused on manipulating the response-reinforcer relation in the HPRS, in which a range of 3 to 5 requests within the HPRS has been employed as a constant variable. However, an experimental analysis across varying ratios in the sequence has yet to be demonstrated in the literature. The purpose of this study is to examine if varying ratios of high-probability requests will result in differential effects on escape-maintained challenging behaviors, correctness, and latency of response to subsequently delivered low-probability requests in children with autism during discrete trial training. A multielement and repeated acquisitions design is in use to compare across 3 conditions (0 [control], 2, and 4 high-probability requests). Preliminary results suggest that challenging behaviors were associated with skills in the acquisition phase of learning for participant 1. Data collection for participant 1 was anticipated to be complete by December, andtwo additional participants are anticipated to be included in this study with their data collection completed by May. Implications for practice and future research will be presented.

We evaluated the effects of antecedent physical exercise on the stereotypy for two children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Participant engagement in stereotypy was evaluated using a multielement design consisting of three conditions: no presession exercise, brief presession exercise, and presession satiation on exercise. A criterion of three rejections was used as a behavioral indicator of satiation. This study extends previous literature by confirming the automatic function of stereotypy prior to the exercise treatment, experimentally manipulating different intensities of exercise, and using a behavioral indicator for satiation of physical exercise. Implications for practice as well as future research are provided. Data collection will be complete by December 2012.

Delayed access to reinforcement has been shown to be effective in decreasing escape maintained challenging behaviors in children with disabilities and in some cases, has let to maintained treatment effects. Previous studies conducted on delay of reinforcement were mainly focused on reducing escape maintained challenging behaviors and those studies took place in structured settings such as in a one-on-one setting. In this current study, we sought to extend the literature base by comparing effects of explicit delay cue of reinforcement (i.e., using Time Timer and explicit statements) to general delay cue of reinforcement (i.e., using general statement and a visual card) in decreasing tangible maintained challenging behaviors of children with autism. Also, by conducting the study in multiple settings, it was anticipated that delay of reinforcement might be effective in decreasing those behaviors across settings. One 4-year old boy with autism participated in this study, and a multiple baseline design across settings including one-on-one setting, art, and play time was used. It is anticipated that a signaled delay cue of reinforcement shows higher effects than general delay cue of reinforcement in decreasing the participants tangible-maintained challenging behavior while increasing an appropriate behavior to take a turn for a preferred item.

The results of this comparison will allow practitioners and teachers to design more effective, research-based self-monitoring and differential reinforcement of other behavior interventions. The study compared two different treatments: DRO alone versus DRO with self-monitoring procedure and their relative effectiveness in decreasing challenging behavior. The study used an ABAC design. One 8-year-old female with autism participated in the study. A functional analysis showed that the behavior was multiply maintained (attention, tangible, and automatic reinforcement). Baseline rates indicated a stable, high rate of challenging behavior (repetitive question asking) and a low rate of appropriate behavior (asking a single question and waiting for a response). Data collection is ongoing.

Public school settings provide unique challenges to behavior analysts in providing science-based assessment and intervention for students with severe behavior disorders. Functional assessments are the most common assessment practice in public schools; however it is possible to utilize functional analysis and hypothesis driven assessments to identify the functional properties of aberrant behavior leading to development of effective interventions. The present series of papers discuss the assessment and treatment effects of the use of protective equipment with students who display self-injurious behaviors. Two students diagnosed with autism with escape maintained self-injurious behaviors were exposed to contingent application of a helmet to reduce their head directed self-injury. A third student diagnosed with autism engaging in self-injurious behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement was exposed to a non-contingent protective equipment fading procedure for head, arm, and leg directed self-injurious behavior. Overall, results suggest that the application of protective equipment, that addresses the functionality of self-injury, can be effective even under conditions in which the school environment does not support scientific fidelity.

Self-injurious behavior can be a dangerous behavior emitted by many individuals with autism. This behavior can be a stigmatizing behavior that can result in an exclusion from peers. An 8-year-old male student diagnosed with autism with a history of head-hitting, self-injurious behavior enrolled in a specialized public school setting participated in the current study. In the past, the student required the use of continuous helmet application procedure throughout his day. A functional analysis was conducted to identify the maintaining variable of his behavior and identified escape as the functional property of the behavior. The purpose of the present study was to use a reversal design to measure the effects of protective equipment versus attempting to physically block the self-injurious behavior. The results of the present study suggest that a contingent helmet application with a contingent removal of is an effective approach to decrease head-hitting, self-injurious behavior and the duration of helmet application.

An 11-year-old male student diagnosed with autism, with a history of self-injurious behavior to the head, arms, and legs, who attends a specialized public school participated in the present study. Because of the frequency and intensity of the self-injurious behavior, protective equipment was applied through the use of a helmet and arm pads. The use of continuous protective equipment was stigmatizing in the school setting resulting in a need to fade the protective equipment to a more socially validated form. The purpose of the study was to use an alternating treatment design to measure the effects of noncontingent application of protective equipment versus noncontingent removal of protective equipment, as well as the effects of noncontingent sweatshirt application vs. noncontingent removal of the sweatshirt. Results indicate that a sweatshirt can be utilized as a stimulus substitute for protective equipment allowing the student to present in the public school setting in a more socially acceptable way.

A 13-year-old female student diagnosed with autism, with a history of aggression and self-injurious behavior in the form of mild to severe head banging, attending a specialized public school program participated in the present study. Because of the frequency and severity of the self-injurious head banging, protective equipment in the form of a helmet was applied through the use of a contingent application and removal program. Severe head banging and frequent aggressions required the student to have an individualized instructional classroom within the ACES school setting, resulting in social isolation of the student. Results indicated that some forms of severe aberrant behavior present school settings and personnel with significant challenges and barriers that require placement in more restrictive, highly specialized settings.

Previous investigations have identified techniques for assessing and treating behaviors associated with pediatric feeding disorders. The current symposium will focus on extensions of previous research, primarily on the application of these methods to the treatment of individuals who display co-morbid autism spectrum disorders and feeding disorders. The first presentation describes the use of an avoidance paradigm for three participants. In this assessment, a low-preference food was treated as an avoidance food and was presented contingent upon non-acceptance (i.e., the children could avoid the food by accepting a bite of the target food). The second presentation involves the use of a choice arrangement in conjunction with differential reinforcement to increase acceptance of targeted foods and decrease inappropriate mealtime behavior. This investigation is noteworthy in that it did not include escape extinction as a treatment component. The final presentation describes a model for increasing age-appropriate feeding skills (e.g., chewing, self feeding) for children with and without developmental disabilities. A case example will be presented to illustrate the application of this model. Finally, Dr. Valerie Volkert will serve as the discussant and will provide a synthesis of these studies within the context of current research in the area of pediatric feeding disorders.

Negative reinforcement-based procedures have been shown to be effective in the treatment of feeding disorders. Using an avoidance procedure may be an effective way to motivate a child to consume bites of target foods. If a hierarchy of preference is established among target foods, it is possible to arrange a contingency where the consumption of one target food results in the child to avoiding exposure to a less preferred target food. This concept was demonstrated by Kelley et al. (2003) in that if the child did not consume his drink quickly (within 30 seconds) he was given a bite of nonpreferred food. This procedure resulted in increased consumption of the targeted drinks. The primary purpose of the current study was to extend the findings of Kelley et al. (2003) by using a similar procedure to increase the acceptance and consumption of table texture solids for three children, ages 5, 9 and 14, with varying levels of developmental delays.

It has been reported that as many as 70% of children with autism are described as selective eaters (Twachtman-Reilly, Amaral, & Zebrowski, 2008). Escape extinction (EE) is one behavioral strategy that has been shown to be an effective procedure for increasing acceptance and variety of foods consumed by children with autism (Volkert & Vaz, 2010). Although effective, EE may also have adverse side effects that may prevent its use in applied settings. Moreover, because the use of EE during feeding interventions often includes nonremoval of the spoon, it may not be feasible with older individuals that are aggressive. However, little research has focused on intervention for food selectivity that do not include EE. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate a treatment for food selectivity that did not include EE. Specifically, we evaluated a forced-choice procedure in combination with differential reinforcement for increasing acceptance of foods previously not accepted. Results of the forced-choice procedure showed an increase in acceptance of foods previously not accepted. Further results showed a decrease in inappropriate mealtime behaviors to near zero levels. Future research and clinical implications are discussed.

Typically eating children naturally develop skills to consume higher-textured (table) foods and often independently initiate self-feeding (Vaz, Volkert, & Piazza, 2011). However, this progression to age-typical eating does not always occur in the absence of treatment among children with feeding disorders (Piazza, 2008). When attempting to advance texture, many children with feeding difficulties swallow the food without chewing, expel or pocket the food, or mash the food with their tongues. The ultimate goal is to progress a child with a feeding disorder to self-feed age-appropriate portions of table food. Consumption of higher textures and self-feeding, however, involve complex skills (e.g., chewing, tongue lateralization, fine and gross motor coordination) and require greater response effort. Children with feeding disorders often lack the skills or motivation necessary to achieve these goals independently. We have developed a model that incorporates strategies to teach each aspect of this progression to age-typical eating (e.g., development of chewing and self-feeding skills, followed by advancement to portion-based meals). We will present this model and provide a case review of one childs progression from increasing basic chewing skills to consuming age-appropriate portion-based meals.

A diagnosis of an Autism spectrum disorder means impairments in language, play, cognitive capabilities, social behavior, and overall adaptive functioning. These impairments can lead to a child falling further and further behind their peers as they grow older. Thus, comprehensive treatment must be implemented to help improve the overall quality of life for individuals with autism. The intervention that has the strongest body of empirical support demonstrating efficacy for improving the overall quality of life and functioning for children diagnosed with autism is intervention based upon the principals of Applied Behavior Analysis. In order for an individual to reach their fullest potential, behavioral intervention needs to target not only the individual but also the environment in which the individual is a part of. This symposium will present three papers that implemented various behavioral interventions. The first paper applied a self-monitoring procedure to help individuals with autism succeed in their community. The second paper evaluated a behavioral coaching procedure for parents of children with autism. The third paper evaluated a private self-funded school providing behavioral intervention to individuals with ASD. Results of the three studies, as well as recommendations for clinicians, parents, and future researchers, will be discussed throughout the symposium.

Today a variety of behavioral interventions are implemented to individuals diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. One of these procedures is self-management. Self-management is shown effective in increasing a variety of appropriate behaviors of individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The current study investigated the efficacy of a self-management treatment package to teach community skills to students diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. The package included self-selection of reinforcers and self-monitoring of the engagement of each step of a chain of behaviors using an activity schedule on an iPhone. Results showed that the self-management package was effective in teaching the participants the target community skill of purchasing a bakery item. The participants generalized the skill across settings. They also maintained the skills after the withdrawal of the schedule and during follow-up. Additionally, various social validity measures conducted by independent reviewers showed that a positive change was made for all participants. Clinical implications will be discussed throughout the presentation as well as areas for future research.

Effective support for parents is an integral part of a treatment program for children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Most parent training is conducted one-on-one, group approaches have not been fully explored. With a group approach to parent coaching a natural community of reinforcement between the parents can be established. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a group coaching approach on a) parent skills, confidence, and affect; b) child skills, interest and affect; and c) parent report of satisfaction and efficacy. The coaching package was designed to develop a natural community of reinforcement for the parents so that once experimental intervention was removed the parent group would continue to support the behaviors taught during the parent training. This experimental intervention involved four group sessions (topic presentations, discussion, video sharing and problem solving) and three individual in-vivo coaching sessions regarding specific child skill development. The measures were both quantitative and qualitative. Direct measures included a skills checklist, child target behaviors, child and parent affect, and parent confidence and stress. Parent satisfaction interviews were conducted and analyzed using phenomenological methods. Results from five parent-child dyads indicated an overall improvement in all measures, reports, and follow-up.

It is currently estimated that one in every 88 children will receive a diagnosis of autism. Autism is marked by qualitative impairments in language, social behavior, and restrictive and repetitive behaviors, which can lower the overall quality of life for individuals with autism. In order to ensure that individuals reach their fullest potential, they must receive behavioral intervention in the home, community, and school. This paper will describe an international, private, behaviorally orientated school, located in Hong Kong, which provides only behavioral interventions to individuals with autism. The symposium will present information about the students who attended the school in the 2011 to 2012 school year, the training and supervision of teachers, the various classrooms, the unique curriculum taught to the students, and the various behavioral interventions implemented throughout the school year. Additionally, we will provide some preliminary results of the students' progress both on an individual level and on a school level. In addition, we will provide data on parents' satisfaction with the school, the procedures implemented, and the progress made by their child. Recommendations to teachers, clinicians, consultants, future researchers, and parents will be discussed throughout the entire symposium.

The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate the effectiveness of discrete-trials training (DTT) for young children with autism by presenting clinical data from the intensive Autism Service Delivery Clinic in Morgantown, WV. Skill acquisition data from three clients younger than 6, all with diagnoses of autism will be presented. Clients to participate spend between 12 and 18 hours a week at the clinic. About 66% of their time in the clinic is spent engaged in DTT programming. Additional time is splitamong recreational activities, group instruction, and more naturalistic training strategies. Data will include intake assessments (either the ABLLS or VB-MAPS) and follow up data at 6-12 months after the start of the intervention. The same assessment used at intake will be used during the follow up assessments. In addition, cumulative records of mastered skills will be presented for each client. Only skills acquired using a DTT format will be included in the cumulative records. Clinical implications including comparisons of DTT to alternative instructional methods (verbal approach and Competent Learner Model) will be discussed.

This study evaluated the impact of the Competent Learner Model (CLM) on the development of children with autism spectrum disorders. The main objective of the CLM is to assist teachers and/or parents while they endeavor to establish learner repertoires that facilitate students' successful involvement in their home and/or school environments. The CLM is fully implemented at the Vista school. The study measured changes in the children's behavior from their initial enrollment at the school until two years later using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Second Edition, The Gilliam Autism Rating Scale, and the Preschool Language Scale. The incorporation of the CLM curriculum led to significant improvement in students' adaptive behavior, personal, school community, interpersonal, play and leisure, coping, socialization, auditory comprehension, and expressive language skills. The CLM was especially successful in development of expressive language and auditory comprehension as measured by the Preschool Language Scale and in development of socialization as measured by Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Second Edition. Expressive language and auditory comprehension had a large effect size (r = 0.7) and socialization had a moderately large effect size (r = 0.6) indicating the statistical and practical importance of the changes in the children's behavior.

Single-case research designs have been the hallmark of the means by which applied behavior analysis has demonstrated the impact of behavior-analysis-based interventions on socially important human behavior. Persons with autism were among the first to be treated by behavior-analysis-based interventions. The effects of these interventions were demonstrated using single-case research designs. The growth of the incidence of autism spectrum disorders has provided many more opportunities for applied behavior analysis to demonstrate its usefulness. Most of these demonstrations employed single-case research designs. The use of systematic replications is a single case research tactic that serves as a means for isolating the features of interventions essential for treatment effectiveness. The incorporation of single-case research designs into the evaluation of autism treatment programs has provided the means to move from isolated interventions to sets of interventions that have become the applied behavior analysis based autism treatment programs.

This eclectic symposium will include four talks on behavior analytic approaches to physical activity. The topics to be addressed include a functional analysis of exercise-promoting variables, the use of preference assessments to elucidate exergame preferences, and the preliminary efficacy of contingency-management interventions to increase physical activity among adults. Dr. Matthew Normand’s talk will discuss the results of a functional analysis to investigate the effects of several consequent variables on moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) in children. Dr. Raymond Miltenberger will evaluate the utility of various methods for assessing students’ preferences for exergames. Dr. Wendy Donlin will discuss the effectiveness of a prize-based contingency-management intervention to increase physical activity among adults. Finally, Allison Kurti, M.S., will discuss the feasibility, acceptability, and the preliminary efficacy of a web-based, contingency-management intervention to increase walking in sedentary adults.

Physical inactivity is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Prevalence rates of overweight and obesity continue to climb and threaten the health and well being of about 30% of children. Although physical activity can reduce the risk of obesity and other health complications, estimates show that children are largely sedentary. Behavioral interventions targeting physical activity have been implemented to increase physically active behaviors, however, the function of physical activity was not established, possibly contributing to the poor maintenance of such interventions. The purpose of the current study was to conduct a functional analysis to investigate the effects of several consequent variables on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). The level of MVPA exhibited by four pre-school children was observed in four conditions: alone, attention contingent on MVPA, adult interaction contingent on MVPA, and escape from task demands contingent on MVPA. These four conditions were compared to a naturalistic baseline and to a control condition. Overall, the results indicate that the children were most active when interactive play was contingent on MVPA. Such information might be used to arrange social environments that encourage physical activity, especially MVPA, and these arrangements can be tailored to the individual child.

Exergaming has been shown to increase physical activity over standard PE classes with elementary students. The purpose of this study was to evaluate methods for assessing students’ preferences for exergames because the use of the most preferred exergames is likely to result in the most physical activity. The study evaluated a paired choice preference assessment, a rank order procedure, and social validity surveys to determine the preference order of six exergames for six elementary students and measured heart rates as the children played the six exergames. The results of this study show that preference varied across children and across the different assessment methods. The rank order procedure was significantly correlated with the paired choice assessment. On the other hand, the social validity survey was not significantly correlated with the paired choice assessment. Implications for increasing physical activity in children are discussed.

Most American adults would not be classified as "physically active," according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines (2010). Contingency management interventions have been used to target physical activity with mixed effects. Some adults respond to contingency-based interventions (responders), while others are insensitive (nonresponders). In a multiple baseline across participants contingency management study in our lab, 15 healthy adults wore a Fitbit® pedometer for six weeks and earned prize draws for reaching a daily step criterion based upon a percentile schedule of reinforcement. We compared the structural features of activity between responders and nonresponders. Changes in walking structure appeared to be mostly a function of increases in total active minutes per day during the intervention phase. Additionally, a log-survivor analysis of inter-step intervals revealed that subjects could meet criterion by increasing the average length of bouts, frequency of bouts, or rate of stepping within a bout. This analysis informs how specific features of baseline activity levels can be used to tailor interventions to increase physical activity.

A majority of adults fail to obtain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommended amount of physical activity, and have an increased risk of developing health problems (e.g., heart disease, hypertension, Type II diabetes). The present study used a web-based, contingency management (CM) intervention to increase walking (measured in steps by the Fitbit®) in sedentary adults 50-plus years of age (N=6). A changing criterion design was used, in which participants received financial consequences for meeting a gradually increasing series of step goals on a minimum ofthree days during consecutive, five-day blocks. Results showed that study adherence was high, participants rated the intervention favorably on a treatment acceptability questionnaire, and all participants substantially increased their steps over the course of the study according to experimenter-arranged criteria. These results support the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a web-based, CM intervention to increase walking in sedentary adults.

Clinical behavior analysis has a long history of developing successful applications of behavior analysis for complex psychological difficulties. Recently, many of these developments have taken place within Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS). Contextual Behavioral Science emerged recently as a specific approach to clinical behavior analysis defined by functional contextual philosophy. CBS is aimed at developing clinical interventions nested in basic science and aimed at maximizing the potential for reducing human suffering. This has resulted in the development of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and the underlying basic analysis of human cognition, Relational Frame Theory (RFT). ACT and RFT have been effectively applied to a range of psychological difficulties to facilitate significant behavior change. The papers in this symposium will review the basic, analog, efficacy, and process research on RFT and ACT to understanding and intervening on difficulties associated with autism, anxiety, and psychosis. Implications for future developments will also be discussed.

Traditional behavior analytic interventions for learners with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been well documented. However, some of the more traditional behavior analytic interventions for learners with ASD have been criticized for not establishing flexible generative repertoires (see Alessi, 1987; Smith, 2001). Similarly, traditional behavior analysis has been criticized for failing to make meaningful progress in the experimental analysis of complex human behaviors such as language and cognition (Vilardaga, Hayes, & Levin, 2009). These criticisms can be addressed through work being done from a contextual behavior science (CBS) approach. From a CBS approach, behavior analysts are working to develop an account of complex human behavior that can be predicted and influenced with precision, scope, and depth. To date, the results of these efforts with respect to interventions for individuals with ASD have been promising. The research reflecting the synthesis of Skinners (1957) verbal operants and Relational Frame Theory (RFT) to establish basic language skills will be discussed. Research documenting interventions focusing on more complex repertoires, such as perspective taking, will also be highlighted.

Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS) embraces much of the traditional sensibilities of behavior analysis, regarding behavioral phenomena strictly in respect to function and context. However, Relational Frame Theory offers a contemporary approach to verbal behavior that provides some minor but noteworthy differences from more mainstream approaches to the analysis of complex behavior. A potentially useful example for illustrating those differences is with clinically significant levels of anxiety. Traditional approaches to anxiety disorders often emphasize the use of exposure with an intent to reduce anxiety and escape from anxiety-provoking environments. With a CBS approach, the possible role of relational conditioning in the development and maintenance of anxiety problems leads to treatment strategies that may include exposure but also involves interventions that diverge from exposure as it is typically conceptualized and conducted. These contemporary strategies will be illustrated with examples and discussed in respect to a growing body of empirical support for their implementation with anxious populations.

The aim of this paper is to review the past and current research about psychosis in Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS). Relational Frame Theory (RFT) a branch of CBS focuses on verbal behavior to address issues linked to language and cognition. RFT research on psychosis has given rise to a number of empirical data on the topic of Theory of Mind impairments (approached in RFT as deficits in deictic relational responding). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a psychotherapy model stemming from RFT which aims to reduce problematic behaviors such as experiential avoidance and to build new patterns of actions directed toward valued living. Brief exposure to ACT has proven to reduce rehospitilization rates and symptoms of patients experiencing psychosis. Data collected through measures of psychological flexibility and experiential avoidance, such as the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II and the Voices Acceptance and Action Scale, have been useful in predicting paranoia. Further research in these areas is encouraged in order to expand successful treatments for this population.

Due to the increasing heterogeneous population that Behavior Analysts are serving, it is important to gain competence in meeting the needs of diverse populations. The United States Census bureau projects there will be significant increases in racial and ethnic diversity over the next four decades, in part due to international migration (Guarneri & Ortman, 2009). Paralleling this growth, behavior analysts will be called to serve an increasingly heterogeneous population. Recognizing the internationalization of behavior analytic studies and services the Association for Behavior Analysis International, moreover, has a diversity policy: (it) seeks to be an organization comprised of people of different ages, races, nationalities, ethnic groups, sexual orientations, genders, classes, religions, abilities, and educational levels. This panel will meet and discuss the need to develop cultural competencies in the field of Behavior Analysis. Participant will have the opportunity to address the gap in the BACB ethics guidelines to address cultural diversity, and explore ways to better accommodate the diversity policy of ABAI including the establishment of standard of cultural competencies.

The Standard Celeration Chart is not widely used in the field of applied behavior analysis. However, the use of the Standard Celeration Chart allows for unique analysis of human behavior. Using the Standard Celeration Chart makes two critical elements apparent. First, behavior grows by multiplying, not by adding. Secondly, the chart makes us look at not only the frequency of a persons performance, but also at the growth of learning across time, (i.e., the celeration) (Calkin 2005). This symposium will focus on the use of the SCC to address three unique problems in individuals with developmental disabilities. Each presentation will review and discuss these problems and how the SCC allowed for analyses that lead to solving these problems.

A 12 year-old student with multiple disabilities presented with no meaningful form of communication. Although he did engage in vocalizations, there was no known way communicating needs or wants. This presented a significant problem in being able to assess reinforcer preferences as the student had no way of clearly indicating those preferences. To address this problem, a Standard Celeration Chart was used to chart the frequency of vocalizations under three reinforcement conditions: attention, edibles, and manipulatives. In each condition, vocalizations led to access to one of each category of reinforcement. A clear differentiated pattern was shown in the attention condition. The results and subsequent programming changes will be discussed.

An 11 year-old student with multiple sensory impairments was resistant to instruction of eating with utensils. A baseline was performed for the fine motor component skills of grasp/place/release resulting in a rate that was below competent performance as measured by established performance aims (Kubina 2002). Fluency instruction was initiated for grasp/place/release. Spontaneous use of utensils began after instruction for a period of time. The results of fluency instruction and the effect on the composite behavior of using a utensil to eat will be discussed.

An adult with developmental disabilities was referred for a functional assessment due to the problem behavior of motor hesitation. This individual would be provided with an instruction to initiate an action (e.g. eat, transition to another area, exit or enter the van), which resulted in his repeatedly starting and stopping the action before being able to complete the request. The primary function of the behavior was determined to be attention seeking with a secondary function of automatic reinforcement possibly related to his diagnosis of anxiety disorder. Fluency instruction for the gross motor skill of free walk was initiated. The results of fluency instruction and the application of this instruction to non-training environments will be detailed.

When teaching a child with developmental disabilities, it is imperative that effective reinforcers are identified. If effective reinforcers are not identified, the program will not be successful in changing the client's behavior. A procedure commonly used to identify potential reinforcers is a preference assessment. Preference assessments have also been used to identify preferred tasks and teaching methods in order to decrease non-compliance. This symposium will examine three different aspects of preference assessments. First, the efficacy of three different formats of the multiple stimulus without replacement procedure (MSWO) at identifying reinforcers for children with developmental disabilities will be examined. Second, children with autisms' preference for various prompting procedures will be examined in order to promote efficient and preferred teaching methods. Finally, children with developmental disabilities' preference for a frequent small reinforcer versus a larger infrequent reinforcer will be examined. All of these topics will contribute to the research on preference assessments in order to promote efficient and effective methods of teaching children with developmental disabilities.

While preference assessments are effective at identifying potential reinforcers, they consume large amounts of time and resources. Multiple variations have been developed in order to save time and money when conducting assessments such as brief versions of the assessments, verbal assessments, and pictorial assessments. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of three different MSWO procedures at identifying reinforcers for four children with developmental disabilities. The procedures examined included a tangible MSWO procedure which provided access to the edibles (TA), a pictorial MSWO procedure which provided access to the edibles (PA), and a pictorial MSWO procedure which did not provide access to edibles (PWA). After hierarchies from all three assessments were identified, a reinforcer assessment was conducted to determine the efficacy of highly preferred stimuli. Data presented in Figure 1 indicate that all three assessments identified different edibles as highly, moderately, and less preferred. Further, the edible selected as highly preferred in the PA procedure was a more effective reinforcer than edibles selected in the TA and PWA procedures (Figure 2). The results of this study will determine whether a more efficient MSWO assessment will yield the same results as previously developed procedures.

This study focuses on determining whether children diagnosed with autism demonstrate a consistent preference between two prompting procedures (simultaneous prompting or constant prompt delay) and whether either procedure results in higher skill acquisition for participants. Many young children with autism lack the ability to communicate to therapists; therefore, it is difficult for therapists to evaluate the types of teaching procedures the children may prefer. The findings of this study will shed light on how treatment components can be guided by clients despite their lack of ability to communicate. An alternating treatments design is used to evaluate effectiveness and efficiency of the two prompting procedures. A concurrent chains procedure is used to determine what the preferences for the two prompting procedures are for six participants ranging in age from three to nine years old. The terminal goal of the study is to discover the most preferred, efficient, and errorless prompting procedure.

Research with pigeons has indicated that when given a choice between a discriminative stimulus and nondiscriminative stimulus, the pigeon will select the discriminative stimuli even when it results in less reinforcement. The current study sought to investigate whether individuals with and without developmental disabilities would engage in sub-optimal choices when given a choice between a discriminative and nondisciriminative stimulus. Participants were asked to choose between two buttons on a computer screen. Choices on the left button resulted in either a blue or green light. The blue light resulted in reinforcement 0% of the time and the green light resulted in reinforcement 100% of the time, however the green light only appeared for 20% of the times that the left button was selected (the left button resulted in reinforcement 20% of the time overall). Choices on the right button resulted in either a red or yellow light. Both the red and yellow light were reinforced on 50% of the occasions they came up and each occurred 50% of the time (the right button resulted in 50% reinforcement overall). Results indicate that people with disabilities do not regularly prefer the lesser reinforcement, instead selecting both sides at nearly the exact same frequency

The use of technology for interventions involving skill acquisition has been demonstrated to be promising for students across a wide range of learning difficulties. As technology advances, it is important to investigate effective applications to teach a variety of skills to students in more efficient ways. This symposium will review three different applications of technology to increase social, academic, and play skills. In the first study, the effects of culturally responsive, computer-based social skills instruction on the social skill acquisition and generalization of urban sixth graders with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) was examined. In the second presentation, a keyboarding instruction program and self-graphing were used to improve the keyboarding skills of six students with intellectual and developmental disabilities in a postsecondary program at a state university. In the third study, a treatment package consisting of video modeling, prompting, reinforcement, and multiple exemplar training was used to teach a generalized repertoire of play skills to four children with autism. Collectively, these three studies showed effective uses of technology in teaching a variety of meaningful skills.

This study examined the effects of culturally responsive, computer-based social skills instruction on the social skill acquisition and generalization of urban sixth graders with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). Six students received the social skills intervention three to four times a week for approximately 3 to 7 weeks. A multiple-probe across participants design was used in this study. This design allowed the experimenter to note the effects of the social skills intervention on the participants ability to follow adult directions. The dependent variables included: following adult directions, participation, and entering conversations appropriately. Pre- and post-test measures were given to determine the effects of the social skills intervention on each participants overall ability to learn information pertaining to the social skill of following adult directions. Results revealed that culturally responsive, computer-based social skills instruction was effective at increasing the participants ability to follow adult directions, participate in classroom activities, and enter conversations appropriately. Generalization results were modest for four participants but two students demonstrated increasing trends across experimental conditions for the dependent measures. Overall, these results support the use of culturally responsive, computer-based social skills instruction for urban adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders.

Self-graphing, a form of self-management, and a keyboarding instruction program were used to improve the keyboarding skills of six students with intellectual and developmental disabilities in a postsecondary program at a state university. Specifically, students graphed their corrected words typed per minute in an online typing test and their correctly spelled words per minute of self generated essays in a Word document. The keyboarding instruction program consisted of a keyboard cover that prevented viewing the keyboard letters and a free online keyboarding instruction program that systematically teaches keyboarding. A multiple baseline design across participants design was used with two tiers of three participants. The first tier consisted of novice keyboarders who had not received keyboarding instruction in high school and typed an average of 10 or less words per minute.in baseline. The second tier consisted of experienced keyboarders who had received keyboarding instruction in high school and typed an average of 25 or more words per minute in baseline. A multiple baseline across participants design demonstrated that self-graphing and keyboarding instruction was functionally related to an increase in corrected words typed per minute by both novice and experienced keyboarders with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

A multiple probe across participants design was used to assess the effectiveness of a treatment package consisting of video modeling shown via an iPad, prompting, reinforcement, and multiple exemplar training to teach a generalized repertoire of play skills to four children with autism. Each child was taught nine play sets that corresponded to three different toy categories. Generalization probes were conducted on a novel toy category (across toy categories) and on a novel play set from each toy category (within toy categories). Results demonstrated that appropriate play actions and verbal statements increased once the treatment package was introduced for both trained and novel play sets. In addition, unscripted and novel play actions and verbal statements increased as a result of the treatment package. Lastly, appropriate play skills maintained at the one-week, two-week, and one-month follow-ups. Social validity measures showed that the treatment goals, procedures, and outcomes were socially accepted by professionals, teachers, and college students. Results added to previous research by demonstrating that a treatment package consisting of video modeling, prompting, reinforcement, and multiple exemplar training taught children with autism a generalized repertoire of play skills across play sets.

When a student is not successful, the behavioral approach involves identifying environmental variables that, when altered, result in improved academic performance. Similar to functional analysis of problem behavior, experimental analysis of academic performance is designed to identify variables that are functionally related to academic performance and then incorporate the relevant variables into intervention. Three papers will be presented in this symposium, each demonstrating the process of matching intervention to the results of an experimental analysis. Kelly Schieltz will present the first paper on the role of establishing operations and negative reinforcement on academic and problem behavior. The second paper will illustrate experimental analyses designed to test hypotheses pertaining to the acquisition, retention, and generalization of reading skills and will be presented by Stephanie Snidarich. Sam Thompson will present the third paper on a comparison of two sight-word reading strategies. In all presentations, implications for instructional practice and directions for future research will be discussed. Finally, Ed Daly will serve as discussant.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether improvements in academic performance produced collateral decreases in problem behavior. Cade was a 7 year old male diagnosed with Charge Syndrome. His primary communication was sign language with emerging vocal communication. Primary behavioral concerns were refusal to engage in writing tasks, aggression, and property destruction. All procedures were conducted in an outpatient clinic. Interobserver agreement was assessed across 38% of sessions and averaged 94%. During Phase 1, a brief functional analysis was conducted within a multielement design. Results (Figure 1, top left panel) suggested that problem behavior during a writing task was maintained by negative reinforcement. During Phase 2, a motivating operations analysis was conducted within a multielement design to determine the effects of three instructional strategies on negatively reinforced problem behavior during a writing task. Results showed that high levels of problem behavior (top right panel) and low levels of academic performance (bottom right panel) occurred during copying and copying with PG. In contrast, problem behavior occurred at zero or near zero levels and academic performance increased during dictating. These results suggested that problem behavior may be a result of a skill problem rather than a motivational problem.

Brief experimental analyses of behavior have tested one or more hypotheses proposed by Daly et al., in 1997: (1) the task is too hard, (2) the student has not had enough help, (3) the student has not had to do it that way before, (4) the student has not spent enough time doing it, and (5) the student is not motivated. However, there are occasionally cases where despite each of these hypotheses being addressed in comprehensive instruction, the student is still not demonstrating desired academic performance. In these cases, it is plausible that a different set of hypotheses need to be considered. In the process of learning, individuals begin in the acquisition phase, then proceed to the maintenance (or retention), before moving into the generalization phase. It is plausible that interventions tailored to these three phases of learning could be identified, tested within a brief experimental analysis, and implemented to improve academic performance. This presentation will include a data set to illustrate an analysis of problems with acquisition, retention, and generalization. Implications for practice and future directions for research will be discussed.

Strategic Incremental Rehearsal (SIR) is effective for teaching sight-word acquisition, but very little research has been conducted comparing the efficiency of SIR to ongoing instructional strategies in the natural environment. Experimental analysis of sight word acquisition via an alternating treatments design was conducted with a 23-year-old woman with Down syndrome who could not read. SIR was compared to Current Reading Instruction (CRI) utilized in a classroom for young adults with intellectual disorders transitioning from high school to work or post-secondary education. CRI procedures included touch prompts (touch the word bat), echoic prompts (say bat), textual prompts (read the word), and sentence reading. SIR procedures included textual prompts on flash cards, praise contingent on correct responding, and corrective feedback contingent on incorrect responding. Results indicated that SIR was associated with more rapid acquisition of sight words compared to CRI. Directions for future research on modifications to SIR that may increase the rate of sight word acquisition will be discussed.

Discrimination training procedures are commonly used to teach novel behavior. This symposium provides four examples of procedures that facilitate accurate discriminant responding during instruction. More specifically, presentations include an examination of the effectiveness of error correction procedures used to resolve inaccurate or biased responding that may develop during discrimination training. In addition, there is a presentation on the development and evaluation of assessment procedures to identify the most appropriate error correction procedure to use with individual learners. Presentations will also include an evaluation of variant task interspersal procedures to promote skill acquisition during discrimination training. The symposium will also include a presentation on an application of discrimination procedures to teach tactual discriminations of braille characters with a brief discussion on individualized error correction procedures. Together, these presentations will extend the research base on applications of discrimination training, a teaching technique fundamental to skill acquisition and the development of novel behaviors.

Task interspersal is commonly recommended for working with individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities. However, the research on the efficacy of this procedure with this population is mixed and little is known about the components of the procedure that make it effective when it does work. In addition, researchers have not typically factored in the amount of instructional time required to deliver instruction that includes task interspersal. The purpose of this study is to investigate how variations of task interspersal affect acquisition of commonly targeted skills among young children with autism. Experiment 1 compared 3 ratio schedules of interspersal (3:1 known-to-unknown, 1:1 known-to-unknown, 1:3 known-to-unknown) to an acquisition-only condition on an object-labeling task. Experiment 2 examined the extent to which the results from Experiment 1 would generalize to different curriculum domains. Experiment 3 investigated whether the number of acquisition targets taught simultaneously within the context of task interspersal would differentially affect learning level and rate. Comparisons were made to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the procedures as well as retention of mastered skills across all conditions for all participants.

We taught three children with visual impairments to make tactual discriminations of the braille alphabet within a matching-to-sample format. That is, we presented participants with a braille character as a sample stimulus and they were to select the matching stimulus from an array of three comparisons. In order to minimize participant errors, we arranged braille characters into training sets in which the target and non-target stimuli in the comparison arrays were initially maximally different in terms of the number of dots comprising each character. As participants mastered these discriminations, we then increased the similarity between target and non-target comparisons (i.e., an approximation of stimulus fading). All three participants accuracy systematically increased following the introduction of this procedure.

Error correction procedures vary in terms of the degree of additional responding required by the learner and instructor (i.e., level of intrusiveness). Prior research indicates that the relative effectiveness of different error correction procedures may be idiosyncratic across learners Rodgers & Iwata, 1991; Smith, Mruzek, Wheat, & Hughes, 2006; Turan, Moroz, & Croteau, 2012), suggesting the potential benefit of an individualized assessment prior to teaching. In this study, we evaluated the reliability and utility of a rapid error correction assessment to identify the least intrusive, most effective procedure for teaching simple and conditional discriminations to five learners with autism. The initial assessment included four commonly used error correction procedures. We compared the total number of trials required for the participant to reach the mastery criterion under each procedure. Participants then received additional instruction with a subset of the error correction procedures from the assessment. Results suggested that an initial assessment may be beneficial for identifying the most appropriate error correction procedure to use with learners.

Stemming from the immense success of relational frame theory as the foundation of robust psychotherapeutic methods, the Contextual Behavior Science community is now expanding the application of RFT to educational endeavors. This symposium will delineate concepts and practices from a Contextual Behavior Science approach pertaining to education. Papers presented will range in topics from the comparison of commonly held worldviews informing pedagogical decisions, to applications of relational training for the improvement of social and academic skills. Attendees can expect to benefit from an advanced orientation toward communication with educators and understand the basic considerations for training relational operants.

This study provides support for the notion that social perspective-taking skills might be shaped through operant conditioning of deictic frames and that acquisition of these skills may generalize to novel stimuli and contexts.This study replicates and extends recent findings in the functional contextual literature by 1) establishing complex deictic relational responding skills in 3 persons diagnosed with schizophrenia and mild-moderate intellectual disability and 2) assessing for the possibility of generalization through pre and post-instructional measures directed towards Theory of Mind functioning. Results suggest that increasingly complex levels of deictic relational responses were acquired and mastered by all participants and that generalization to the Deceptive Container Task (ToM levels 4 & 5) and Hinting Task may have occurred.

A students ability to comprehend what he/she reads is evidenced by effective action with respect to textual stimuli. Common tests of reading comprehension include questions about a reading passage that require the student to summarize and recall explicit details or infer new details beyond those explicitly provided. Although such assessments are a useful indicator of the students current comprehension repertoire, they do little to inform targeted interventions. In this data-based presentation, we will demonstrate how the treatment-utility of reading comprehension assessments may be improved via direct measurement of the component skills, such as isolated relational operants or phonemic decoding skills, involved in a broader reading comprehension repertoire. In short, direct observation of critical component skills allows for more efficient and effective interventions. Methods for component skill measurement and learning profile analysis are discussed. Both relational fluency and reading fluency are identified as critical for a functional reading repertoire.

Emotion recognition is an important component of day-to-day social interactions. Deficits in this repertoire have been documented in a variety of populations, including autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, Parkinsons disease, and schizophrenia. Traditional approaches to teaching emotion recognition skills have either emphasized physical expressions removed from context or used short stories in which different stimulus functions of emotions are lost. Recent advances in emotion recognition literature have begun to emphasize the importance of context in labeling emotion both in the self and others. Functional contextualists and other behavior analytic researchers should use this opportunity to improve emotion recognition interventions with sound behavioral principles and techniques. For instance, Relational Frame Theory offers a particularly useful framework for conceptualizing emotions in a more comprehensive manner. Instead of discrete entities, emotions could be viewed as relational frames of specific emotion labels related to contexts and stimulus functions. These relational frames would be unique to the social-verbal community in which they were trained, thus accounting for the frequently documented cultural differences in the emotion literature. Implications for the development of an emotion recognition skills intervention based on this conceptualization will be discussed.

Behavior analysts are well positioned to impact education. Nonetheless, little impact has been made. Few applications from our science have been adopted, and research-based practices are often neglected in education. Classroom practices typically reflect notions about teaching and learning widely adopted by educators, and are shaped by educators assumptions about the world. When evidence-based practices conflict with held notions, they are unlikely to be adopted, presenting barriers to effective education. This presentation will reverse engineer from the notions and practices in education to the point of reason from which they evolve: worldviews. Heward (2003) outlines several faulty notions that obstruct the adoption of more effective methods. We will walk the audience through these notions and resulting practices and the unstated assumptions guiding them. The focus will be to expand the behavior analysts knowledge of the assumptions influencing pedagogy with the intent of improving communication with educators and effective action within this domain.

Research has been conducted on social skills training with typically developing teenagers, developmentally disabled individuals, and juvenile delinquents, however no known studies on social skills training have been conducted with youth in the foster care system. Massinga and Pecora (2004) suggest that more should be done for older children in foster care to help with life-skills and building relationships that may lead to improved transitioning to independent living. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a classroom based training in teaching social skills to four adolescent females between the ages of 13-17 years old and residing in foster care. The training took place over a three week period, one night a week, for three hours at a time and utilized a Behavioral Skills Training format. The assessments were conducted via role play scenarios; pre- and posttraining. The results showed that each participant demonstrated an overall increase in skills from pretraining to posttraining indicating that youth in foster care were capable of learning the social skills taught.

Although there are a myriad of variables that influence foster child placement decisions (e.g., availability of a bed in a particular foster home, foster home licensing regulations), there is a critical need for identifying foster placements that are more likely to be successful (i.e., homes in which the foster child will likely remain and, thus, avoid a placement change). Currently, no such system to identify placements for foster children has been evaluated. The purpose of this study is to evaluate a potential method of systematically matching foster children to foster parents using data from preference assessments. This presentation will first review the preference assessment methods and results obtained with foster children (presented previously). Next, the matching algorithm and procedures for matching will be discussed. Currently, 2 children have been placed in matched foster homes. The number of days in placement in matched homes will be compared to the childs previous placement durations. The system designed for assessing preference and placement matching has been adopted by an agency in Florida and we expect that more children will be placed in matched homes. Collectively, these studies, and the web-based system designed for this study, attempt to advance routine child welfare practice.

Children in foster care are twice as likely to exhibit runaway behavior as children of the same age in the general population, are at great risk for school failure (Sedlak et al., 2002), and are vulnerable to innumerable influences and potential victimization (Courtney & Dworsky, 2005). During this presentation, findings from both a pilot study and a federal grant from the Institute of Educational Sciences will be presented that focus on ways to assess and intervene with youth in foster care who run away from placements. Focus groups with child welfare personnel, youth, and school personnel were conducted to gather data to assist in modifications to an instrument to assess the functions of runaway behaviors and to determine the current strengths and challenges between both the child welfare system and the educational system in serving these youth. The methods used and preliminary findings from focus groups will be discussed, including reasons why youth run, how child welfare and schools respond to support youth when they return from a run, and how schools and agencies can collaborate more effectively to serve the needs of these youth.

The purpose of the present study was to compare continuous and discontinuous data collection systems on skill acquisition, generalization, maintenance, and on-task behaviors in learners with autism during discrete trial teaching. Additionally, procedural integrity of experimenter behavior was assessed during teaching sessions. A progressive prompt-delay procedure was used to teach expressive picture labels to three participants. Performance across data collection systems was compared using continuous measurement collected daily in the presence of teaching (CDPT), discontinuous measurement of the first trial only (FTO), and discontinuous measurement collected weekly in the absence of teaching (i.e., probe data, DWAT).Interobserver agreement data were collected across 50% of sessions for all dependent measures.An adapted alternating treatments design was used and replicated across two additional participants. For two of the three participants, expressive labels were acquired most rapidly in the CDPT condition. For all three participants, minimal to no differences were found among data collection systems in generalization, maintenance, and on-task behavior scores. Additionally, the experimenter’s procedural integrity scores remained high and comparable across all data collection procedures. Overall, the study supported the use of continuous data collection in teaching expressive picture labels to learners with autism.Implications and future research suggestions are also discussed.

Baer, Wolf, and Risley (1968) delineated the core dimensions of applied behavior analysis in their seminal article. The dimension of analytic, emphasizes the importance of taking data on the target behaviors that we are attempting to change, and empirically determining whether or not they have changed due to the independent variable being manipulated. Behavior analysts have this as a fundamental requirement for their practice in our field. The collection of data, and its analysis in a timely fashion to make databased decisions on clinical issues, is fundamental to delivering effective and state-of-the-art behavior analytic services. Data collection can be accomplished in widely varying ways, including paper pencil, technology applications, and complex data collection systems. With the increasingly ubiquitous technology, it is now possible to take real-time data on a large number of variables in an efficient manner. This presentation will preview a new software program for collecting clinical data on tablet PCs. We will demonstrate the programming of the tablet, the components of the data collection system software, and how it can be used with several examples of learners and target behaviors. We will then present data on a comparison of the tablet-based data collection with some traditional low-tech methods.

With investigations on interteaching moving from establishing its effectiveness to component analyses (e.g., Saville, Cox, O'Brien, & Vanderveldt, 2011; Saville & Zinn, 2009), the presentations included in this symposium provide further discourse on the utility and effectiveness of this behavior analytic method of classroom instruction. To begin, two component analyses will explore different components in interteaching. The first examined the effects of the interaction component (i.e., student pairs) by alternating whether each of two classes received a traditional interteach, including the pair discussion, or an interteach control in which there was no interaction, on student test performance. The second study examined the relationship between the degree of completion of the preparation guides and performance on weekly tests. Finally, the effects of interteaching on higher-order thinking will be presented. This is an important investigation as many studies on the effects of interteaching have used more basic and simple measures of student learning (e.g., rote responding and multiple choice questions).

Interteaching is a behavior-analytic teaching method in which students take an active role in learning as well as teaching course material. A typical interteaching class consists of a short clarifying lecture by the instructor, followed by a period of time in which student dyads interact to discuss and teach course material to one another. Research has shown that interteaching produces better student-learning outcomes than more traditional teaching methods such as lecture (e.g., Saville, Zinn, & Elliott, 2005; Saville, Zinn, Lawrence, Barron, & Andre, 2008). The current study was conducted in an inaugural class using the interteaching method. The researchers examined the relationship between factors related to interteaching, namely, pre-class preparation guide degree of completion and weekly test grades. The relationship of these factors will be discussed, as well as potential methods for instructors to intervene on the components.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the use of a micro level decision tree protocol and an intervention matching strategic analysis to instructional problems during reading intervention instruction. The participants were 24 second grade students from four public elementary schools receiving small group reading intervention as a result of low levels of responding to grade level assessments. There were four different groups in the study. Three groups were incorporated into the treatment and one group served as a control. Treatment included a variety of research based tactics and strategies such as increasing opportunities to respond, fluency training and implementing verbal developmental cusp-inducing protocols. The dependent variable was oral reading fluency for each student as measured by weekly progress monitoring probes. Results from the multiple baseline design across all four groups showed that when students received the micro level analysis they emitted higher rates of correct responding.

Radical behaviorism makes the claim that private events are different from public events only in the number of individuals who can observe them. However, behavior analysts have yet to agree on if it is important to study private events or how to study them. The purpose of this event is to discuss the role of private events in behavior analysis and to determine the direction the field should take to further explore "the world within the skin" (Skinner, 1974, p. 24). This is a student committee organized event.

This presentation will describe research on the therapeutic workplace, an employment-based intervention to address the interrelated problems of poverty, unemployment and drug addiction. Abstinence reinforcement, in which patients receive desirable consequences contingent on providing objective evidence of abstinence, can promote abstinence from abused drugs, but they must employ high magnitude reinforcement to promote abstinence in treatment-refractory patients and they must be maintainedin time to prevent relapse. The therapeutic workplace was developed to provide a practical way to arrange high magnitude and long duration abstinence reinforcement. Under the therapeutic workplace intervention, individuals are hired and paid to work. To reinforce abstinence, participants are required to provide objective evidence of drug abstinence to maintain workplace access. Because many poor individuals lack job skills, the therapeutic workplace offers a training phase before formal employment, and incentives are strategically used to promote engagement in computer-based vocational training on-site. Controlled studies have shown that the therapeutic workplace can retain low-income unemployed adults in training and in employment, promote the development of job skills, initiate and maintain abstinence from heroin and cocaine, and promote adherence to addiction medications in chronically unemployed adults.

Forthcoming.

Behavior Analysis has a long-standing history with regards to sports and athletics. Behavior analytic technologies have been shown to produce successful changes in numerous areas of athletic performance. These tools are used in both the development and refinement of technical proficiency and psychological skills. Interest in behavior analytic technologies as applied to sports is increasing. Many athletes looking for a competitive edge are recognizing the benefits of incorporating behavior analysis into their training. This symposium will offer conceptual directions for the integration of behavior analysis and data collection technologies into competitive health and fitness arenas. The application of behavior analysis in the teaching of rock climbing skills to beginning climbers using discrete trial training will be presented. And a behavioral approach to defining and researching the highly valued notion of �mental toughness� within traditional sport psychology literature will be included in this symposium.

Among researchers interested in Behavioral Gerontology, there is a growing interest in evaluating the principles of operant conditioning among older adults with dementia, who are typically classified within the broader field of gerontology as unable to remember and therefore unable to learn. However, recent literature in both basic and applied studies have shown that older adults with dementia do respond to operant contingencies. The purpose of this symposium is to discuss both published works and works in progress evaluating aspects of reinforcement among older adults with dementia. Talks will include data on identifying reinforcers using stimulus preference assessments, evaluating the predictive validity of different preference assessments using reinforcer assessments, evaluating momentum and extinction, evaluating different schedules of reinforcement, and evaluating generalization and derived relations.

The World Health Organization and Alzheimer Disease International Organization have published reports on the increasing prevalence of dementia worldwide. For example, in the last World Alzheimer Disease International Report for 2012, the predicted prevalence of dementia cases worldwide in the next 40 years is estimated to be near to the size of the total population of Europe. Hence, it is extremely important to put the focus on this client group within behavior analysis. Current presentation will describe different types of dementia briefly, and introduce common diagnostic tools used in Norway and Iceland. Then we will discuss those experiments that have been published and those that are still in progress from the Experimental Studies of Complex Human Behavior lab at Oslo and Akershus University College. In these studies the conditional discrimination procedures were used, either identity or arbitrary MTS with healthy older adults and dementia patients.

Due to the level severity of impairment, previous research has not been able to show whether older adults with moderate to severe dementia respond to reinforcement, extinction, the level of response persistence or recovery during extinction. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of reinforcement and extinction on the behavior of older adults with moderate to severe dementia. This research involved presenting participants with a touch screen with either one large button or two buttons. During some conditions, pressing the one button resulted in a preferred picture, song, or video on an FR 1 schedule (reinforcement phases). During other conditions (extinction phases) pressing the one button resulted in no change. Similarly, when two buttons were present, pressing one of the buttons resulted in reinforcement (FR1) and the other resulted in extinction. During other conditions, the contingencies on the buttons switched. Results of the study show that for at least one participant, when a single button was used, extinction never occurred. When two buttons were used and contingencies changed, responding changed accordingly. However, when both buttons resulted in extinction, responding recovered and maintained.

This research evaluated principles and technologies in behavior analysis to promote skill acquisition with five participants with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD). First, the brief multiple-stimulus without replacement method (MSWO) was used to identify reinforcers using a concurrent operants design. Second, the effectiveness of errorless learning for teaching novel behavior using a multiple-baseline-across-participant design was examined. Third, the study compared variable ratio (VR) and fixed ratio (FR) schedules to continuous schedules of reinforcement using a withdrawal design to evaluate: (a) under what arrangement responding maintains when schedules are thinned, (b) which schedule produces highest and/or most stable response rates and (c) whether there are differences in post-reinforcement pauses (PRPs). The results show that the brief MSWO and errorless learning were effective procedures to; (a) identify reinforcers and (b) teach a novel behavior respectively. Further, intermittent schedules were appropriate for maintaining rates of responding with all five participants with higher or more stable responding under VR schedules. All five participants had shorter PRPs under the variable ratio in comparison to the FR schedule. Responding maintained during 1 to 3 week maintenance probes. The results are discussed in terms of their application to the treatment and rehabilitation of elderly with moderate to severe ADRD.

Older adults with dementia often engage in few activities, for short periods of time, and typically engage with one item without switching to other items. The purpose of this study is to look at the possibility of using the single array MSWO and the free-operant procedures with older adults with dementia to obtain activity preferences. After obtaining a rank order of their preferences, a reinforcer assessment (and a concurrent engagement analysis for some participants) will determine if the results are true representations of preference.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that Applied Behavior Analysis and explicit behavior analytic teaching methods are effective in strengthening, weakening, maintaining, or generalizing behaviors of significance. However, is explicit teaching the always the best or most efficient way to develop independent functioning and generalized responding, and can this approach target all the skills learners require for success in schools, homes, and community environments? Can we arrange or engineer instructional conditions that occasion novel behavior without explicit instruction? This panel will discuss applied, theoretical, and conceptual topics related to generativity, adduction, application, discovery learning and behavioral cusps, and methodologies such as fluency that promote these topics. Engineered generativity and complex responding examples will be provided across species, learner characteristics, and skills. Research opportunities will also be discussed.

The following topics will be among those discussed: (1) implications of Darwinian thinking (selectionism) for selection by reinforcement, (2) the problem of "circularity" and its treatment by the probability differential (Premack) and response-deprivation (Timberlake & Allison) hypotheses, (3) the Rescorla-Wagner model of conditioning and its conceptual problems, (4) experimental evidence relating to the Unified Principle of Reinforcement (UPR), (5) the operant-respondent distinction as viewed by UPR, (6) implications of UPR for phenomena such as those identified in studies of behavioral momentum, conditioning of behavior-systems, and temporal coding, (7) issues in the experimental analysis of the free-operant procedure and their implications for the molar-molecular debate, (8) neural-networks as a means of interpreting the effects of reinforcement, and (9) the role of neuroscience in the formulation of the reinforcement principle.

Joint control is a process identified and named by Lowenkron in several papers from 1984-2004, in which the same verbal topography is emitted under two different operant contingencies, for instance a tact and an echoic. Emission of these matching topographies then facilitates an additional response, such as a selection response or some other form of identifying an additional stimulus. The value of this process can be easily seen in the case of teaching a child with language deficits to do something relatively complex, delayed, or both. Let's say you're teaching a child to go to another room to get something. The stimulus "Go to the office to get a ruler" is completely gone immediately after it is said, unless it is preserved by repeating it. The repetition, an echoic, then self-echoic provides the means for a joint control event upon tacting the item, "ruler." Joint control thus provides an explanation for listener behavior using Skinner's verbal operants. This requires the "listener" to actually function as speaker. This tutorial will describe the workings of the joint control model, the verbal operant processes that underlie the model and applications of joint control in applied behavior analysis contexts. Current research findings in this area will be presented.

Although this is an intermediate to advanced topic, there will be an emphasis on making joint control both approachable and useful to the practitioner. It will be helpful if participants have a working knowledge of Skinner’s verbal operants.

This address will be targeted to bright, enthusiastic behavior analysts who have an interest in making use of the concepts from verbal behavior. It will be of special interest to students of verbal behavior, master’s and doctoral-level clinicians.

This paper examines the notions of illusions and beliefs, discussing some advantages offered by the study of these phenomena based on the concepts of superstitious behavior, superstition and superstitious rules. Among these advantages, the study highlights the possibility of researching these relationships in different levels of analysis, not only at the individual level, focusing on cultural level, this paper presents Cultural Materialism as an anthropological proposal for the consideration of these phenomena on the cultural level and based on adaptive principles, besides it discusses the experimental analysis of cultural practices and points out how they can help to understand how people in groups behave such as they are being effective in the control of the surrounding environment (when, sometimes, in fact, they are not). The paper offers an integrative proposal which makes easier behavior analysts dialogue with social psychologists and offers some routes from cultural analysis of illusions and beliefs.

Selection at the level of cultural practice has been of interest to behavior analysts and others since the publication of Walden Two. Sigrid Glenns introduction of Marvin Harriss cultural materialism and cultural functionalism allowed a more precise framework for research in this area. Any selection process requires variations of the units of selection to be relatively broad. If changes occur in environmental or social conditions of a culture, whether internally or externally generated, variation in practices is essential. One source of variation of superstructural practices is the Trickster, an entity who, through bizarre and amusing behavior, pushes boundaries, breaks taboos and critiques convention. Trickster stories allow individuals and groups to explore alternative ways of responding to new pressures. Subsequent changes in superstructural practices may then allow needed changes in structural and infrastructural practices. In contemporary society, comedians often take the roll of the Trickster. Comedians are allowed special leeway in breaking cultural norms of subject matter, language use, stereotypes, and critiques of power. Well-known examples of Comedian-Tricksters who have changed culture include Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin and Jon Stewart. How the work of these and other comedians was translated into infrastructural changes is examined.

The analogy between evolution over generations of organisms and learning over the lifetime of a single organism has been noted by a number of behavior analysts. But the existence of altruistic tendencies poses a problem for both biological and behavioral evolution. If altruistic acts decrease the fitness of the altruist, how could altruists survive within a population? One explanation is group selection: environmental selection is more likely to favor groups with altruists than groups without. A corresponding process may occur in behavioral evolution. Patterns of altruism (or self-control) could be selected despite the ontogenic selection pressure against individual acts of altruism (or self-control). A series of studies with both humans and pigeons were conducted to test the phenomenon. For example, in one study with pigeons, the magnitude of food reinforcement was directly related to the complexity of key-peck patterns. The transition of patterning from simple to complex involved the transition of a changeover response from early in the session towards the midpoint of the session - the opposite of what would be expected from the chaining of individual responses. These results suggest that response patterns can be shaped directly without building them up from a sequence of individually reinforced responses.

As newly certified behavior analysts working with individuals with autism, it is clear that one of the responsibilities is to train parents to collect data and carry on treatment plans outside of therapy. Sanders (2008) stated that the quality of parenting that a child receives has a major effect on his or her development and poor parenting increases the risk of the child developing conduct or behavioral problems. Considering the critical role caregivers play in teaching and managing problem behavior exhibited by individuals with autism and other disabilities, as well as the effectiveness of incidental teaching also demonstrates the importance of parent training (Hsieh, Wilder, & Abellon, 2011). Finally, with the effects of intermittent reinforcement on the maintenance of behavior, it is extremely important that parents are trained to follow through with extinction procedures to ensure the problem behavior do not become more resistant to extinction (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007). The purpose of this professional development series panel is to educate newly certified or future behavior analysts on the importance of parent training as well as important factors to take into consideration when working with parents. Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2007). Applied behavior analysis. (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. Hsieh, H., Wilder, D. A., & Abellon O. E., (2011). The effects of training on caregiver implementation of incidental teaching. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 44(1), 199-203. Sanders, M. R. (2008). Triple p-positive parenting program as a public health approach to strengthening parenting. Journal of Family Psychology, 22(3), 506-517.

Oftentimes discussing behavior analytic principles and techniques can sound like a foreign language to the lay individual. Using this language and terminology is useful in conducting precise research and interventions. However, it can be counterproductive in other contexts, namely speaking with teachers, parents, administrators, or other professionals who lack a behavior analytic learning history. This panel is designed to provide young professionals with an opportunity to learn how to effectively communicate their research and clinical findings to individuals from nonbehavior analytic contexts. Panelists will discuss essential components for effective communication as well as specific behaviors that attendees can target to improve their own communication repertoires. In addition, attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions and interact with the panel.

Animal shelters have become a necessary institution in our society. They are complex systems involving animals, volunteers, animal control officers, and future adopters. Understanding the combination of these factors is crucial to save lives at shelters. What are the best practices to keep animals healthy and active? How can we effectively deal with fear and aggression? What social behavior do animals need to learn? What do owners look for in future pets? This symposium will provide some answers to these questions. The first presentation will discuss the reinforcing function of human attention for shelter dogs. The second presentation will evaluate volunteer training programs. The third presentation examines existing behaviors that lead to faster adoptions. The fourth presentation outlines a new procedure for using affection as a reinforcer for decreasing fear and aggression.

Shelter dogs provide a unique population in which to investigate human-dog interactions: shelter dogs are relatively deprived of human interaction and are required to regularly interact with novel humans during potential adoptions. To investigate how shelter dogs respond to novel humans and the effect of deprivation, we assessed shelter dogs interaction using three measures and compared our results to owned dogs. First, we measured the degree to which attention of a novel human would function as a reinforcer for an arbitrary response. Second, we compared the duration shelter dogs remained in proximity to a novel person when the person petted, vocally praised, or did not interact with the dog. Third, we measured dogs preference for different social interaction in a concurrent choice paradigm. Despite shelter dogs relative state of deprivation, brief social interaction did not function as a reinforcer, nor did dogs remain in proximity to the experimenter for vocal praise or no interaction, although dogs did remain in proximity for petting.

Approximately 5 to 7 million companion animals enter animal shelters nationwide every year (ASPCA, 2012). To assist with animal care and day-to-day operations, many shelters utilize the help of volunteers. Results of a landmark study (UPS Foundation, 1998) indicated that people would be more likely to volunteer if the volunteer organization made good use of time, had a reputation of being well managed, made better use of talents, made tasks more clearly defined, offered experience that helped career, and offered thanks. Animal Allies Humane Society (AAHS) in Duluth, MN, is the largest regional animal shelter, taking in over 2,000 dogs and cats in 2011 and having approximately 440 active volunteers. In order to attract and retain high quality volunteers, AAHS has taken recent steps to improve the management of their volunteer program, beginning with its 200+ Dog Buddy volunteers who contribute over 675 volunteer hours per month. This presentation serves to provide an overview of the process we used to redesign the "Dog Buddy" training program, which is being implemented in Fall 2012. Program effectiveness will be assessed, along with social validity with regard to trainer, staff, and volunteer satisfaction. Data collected and available for dissemination will be presented.

The issue of canine overpopulation in the United States is evident as animal shelters euthanize close to 250,000 adoptable dogs each year. The first study was an unsuccessful attempt to increase adoptions through the training of shelter dogs to emit a social response: gazing into the eyes of adopters. A follow up study suggested that physical attractiveness, and not behavior, may be most important to adopters. A third study directly evaluated this assertion by examining which, if any, behaviors emitted by shelter dogs correlated with faster adoptions. We correlated 42 in-kennel behaviors of dogs housed in a county shelter and length of stay. Several behaviors, such as oral contact with the kennel walls, jumping, grooming behaviors, and leaning on kennel walls positively correlated with length of stay. Surprisingly, other behaviors such as sitting, gazing, and being at the front of the kennel did not correlate with length of stay. We hope our data will directly lead to the development of targeted interventions and will, therefore, provide the necessary first step to a systematic study of increasing shelter dog welfare through faster adoptions.

Animal shelters around the world struggle to get dogs adopted and to ensure dogs have a high quality of life while at the shelter. Shelter dogs ideally should receive proper medical care, accurate temperament assessments, appropriate environmental enrichment, and individualized behavior programs. This presentation will describe a sustainable behavioral system that addresses the job needs of staff and volunteers and the care of the dogs. A four-level volunteer training program teaches volunteers to use job aides to insure the shelter is a healthy and enriched environment for the dogs, conduct behavior assessments, and implement individualized training programs for each dog. Dogs receive training in one or more of the following areas based on a behavior assessment: fear, aggression, and how to politely and patiently solicit and receive attention from humans. The ultimate goal is for all dogs to approach humans and appropriately ask for attention. Individual dog data, data of the efficiency of the shelter, and data of adoptions and returns will be presented and discussed. Further results pending.

Translational research has been characterized as part of a bidirectional continuum in which an emphasis is placed on the process of applying laboratory-based discoveries and concepts to applied research (NIH, Acad Med, 2010). In this symposium, three papers will be presented describing translational evaluations that employed basic findings and concepts including motivating operations, the re-emergence of previously extinguished behaviors, and preference within more applied circumstances relating to autism. In the first paper, Mirela Cengher and colleagues use progressive ratio schedule of reinforcement assessment to evaluate the effects of motivating operations associated with social interaction on verbal behavior in the form of tacts. In the second paper, Katherine Hoffman and colleagues present data on the role of discriminative effects of reinforcement stimuli on the reinstatement of challenging behavior. In the third paper, Soyeon Kang and colleagues present data on the extent to which traditional reinforcement assessment procedures predict the reinforcing effects of various stimuli under more complex and varying contingencies.

Reinstatement is the recovery of previously extinguished responding during response-independent delivery of previously reinforcing stimuli. In this translational study, we investigated the reinstatement of challenging behavior while specifically evaluating the discriminative properties of reinforcement stimuli. First, we replicated previous studies by demonstrating the reinstatement of challenging behavior using the basic reinstatement experimental arrangement (i.e., FR schedule for challenging behavior; extinction; FT schedule). Next, we compared conditions by specifically varying the contingencies present during the third component of the experimental arrangement by either a) providing the reinforcement non-contingently, or b) making the reinforcement stimuli visually available only. Variability was observed both within and across participants suggesting that although a discriminative effect of the reinforcement stimuli likely affected reinstatement, other mechanisms (e.g., establishing operations) likely impact the reinstatement of challenging behavior. Interobserver agreement was collected on at least 30% of all sessions and averaged above 90% for all participants. Applied and conceptual implications will be discussed.

Research has demonstrated that deprivation and satiation of social interactions results in differential responding for numerous topographies of behavior maintained by social reinforcement. To date, this effect has not been confirmed with verbal operants controlled by social reinforcement. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess the effects of deprivation and satiation of social interaction on tacting. The participants were three typically developing children (age range, 3-5). The experimenter conducted language training to create a functional class of spoken words with a controlled history of nonverbal discriminative stimuli and social reinforcement. Language training was conducted in a discrete trial, followed by a free operant format. Once participants reached mastery criterion for the language training, a functional analysis of language demonstrated that the newly acquired words functioned as tacts. Next, pre-session periods of deprivation and satiation of social interaction were followed by a progressive ratio assessment where the number of tacts was measured. For two participants, deprivation resulted in increased tacting as compared to satiation. The third participant showed no differential responding. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Many researchers have evaluated the reinforcer potency of various stimuli using reinforcer assessments. To assess the extent to which specific stimuli are reinforcing, reinforcer assessments employ controlled conditions of low response requirements including simple responses and fixed-ratio 1 schedules of reinforcement. However previous studies have shown that reinforcer potency can be impacted by other variables such as varying schedules of reinforcement, the availability of alternative reinforcers, and/or response effort. Therefore, the effectiveness of simple experimental conditions in accurately predicting the reinforcing qualities of various stimuli in the applied settings (i.e., instructional environments) may be in question. Thus, it may be worthwhile to examine the extent to which the results of reinforcer assessments will by replicated in applied settings under various conditions (e.g., varying response effort; varying schedules of reinforcement). The present study was a preliminary evaluation of the predictive abilities of simple reinforcement assessment procedures with regard to more complex behaviors under varying conditions (i.e., response effort, schedules of reinforcement). The participants were three children, aged 3 to 5 years old, with autism spectrum disorders. Two types of reinforcers (i.e., highly preferred tangible items; social interaction) commonly used in practice were examined. Reinforcer assessments were first conducted to assess reinforcing effects of the high-preferred tangible items and social interaction within a simple experimental arrangement. Next, the effects of each reinforcer were evaluated during teaching sessions in terms of skill acquisition and task engagement. The results will be discussed in terms of practical strategies for identifying and using reinforcers efficiently across varying environmental conditions. Conceptual issues relating to preference, reinforcement, and response allocation will be discussed. Considerations when applying clinical findings for reinforcer effectiveness in practical settings will also be discussed.

Four studies evaluating methods of improving verbal behavior among children with autism will be presented. In the first study, video modeling was used to teach intraverbal responding and to decrease echolalic behavior. The second study evaluated a procedure to teach a generalized mand for negative reinforcement. The third study investigated the effectiveness of differential reinforcement for correct answers when responding to another person's verbal behavior (i.e., verbally providing the correct answer to a question asked). The fourth study compared massed trial instruction, distributed trial instruction, and task interspersal to teach tacts to children with autism.

Echolalia, a language impairment characterized by the repetition of words or phrases recently spoken by another, interferes with normal language development and is often used as part of the diagnostic criteria for autism (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). In the current evaluation, the instructor used a constant-time delay procedure for teaching intraverbals. However, participants did not acquire correct intraverbal responding but continued to engage in echolalia. The instructors then presented participants with a video of a typically-developing peer engaged in correct intraverbal responding followed by re-presentation of instruction using the constant-time delay procedure. Following the introduction of video modeling, participants echoic behavior decreased and correct intraverbal responding increased. The current evaluation expands the literature base by extending the utility of video-modeling technology to effectively decreasing echoic behavior in individuals with autism.

Everyone encounters stimuli they find aversive every day (e.g., the sound of a classmate tapping their pencil). For children with autism, these stimuli may become problematic if they do not have the communication skills necessary to request the termination of those stimuli (i.e., mand for negative reinforcement). For these children, it may be useful to acquire a general mand (e.g., saying, "No, thank you.") which could be used to terminate a variety of aversive stimuli. In the current study, two boys with autism participated, who engaged in problem behavior when they encountered nonpreferred stimuli, and did not use an appropriate mand for negative reinforcement. We first employed a nonpreferred stimulus assessment to identify stimuli for subsequent use in mand training. Next, we conducted mand training sequentially across nonpreferred stimuli until sufficient exemplars were trained for generalization to untrained stimuli to occur. Finally, probes conducted in nontraining contexts provided evidence that the mand response generalized outside of the experimental setting.

Three children with autism, who often responded inappropriately to questions, participated in the current study. Pretest results were used to create two sets of questions labeled known and unknown, that the children either did or did not answer correctly. Participants were taught the response "I don't know" (IDK) to the unknown questions using echoic prompting and constant prompt delay. Non-differential reinforcement (i.e., verbal praise for IDK responses and correct answers) was applied to set 1 known and unknown questions. Differential reinforcement (i.e., verbal praise for IDK responses and access to preferred tangible for correct answers) was applied to set 2 known and unknown questions. Following IDK training, all participants acquired the IDK response, however, undesirable generalization of IDK to previously known questions occurred more frequently during set 1 (i.e., non-differential reinforcement condition) than set 2 (i.e., differential reinforcement condition) questions for two participants. For all participants, new correct answers to previously unknown questions were acquired more rapidly in the differential reinforcement condition compared to the non-differential reinforcement condition. In addition, two participants who demonstrated immediate echolalia during baseline had significant decreases echoed responses and increases in IDK responses during training. This study provides evidence supporting the use of differential reinforcement during intraverbal training to avoid unwanted generalization of the IDK response as well as to promote correct answer acquisition.

Massed-trial instruction, distributed-trial instruction, and task interspersal are all effective methods for teaching skills to children. However, these three teaching methods have rarely been compared. In the current study, we taught three children with autism different shapes of countries using these three teaching methods to see which method would result in the quickest acquisition to mastery, and also which method would allow skills to be maintained over time. We used a multiple-baseline across participants design with an embedded alternating treatments design to compare the three teaching methods. Results showed that two participants met mastery criteria in few sessions in the massed-trial condition, whereas one participant met mastery criteria in fewest sessions in the distributed-trial condition. During follow-up, one participant maintained 100% correct responding in the massed-trial condition, one participant maintained targets best in the task interspersal condition, and one participant maintained the learned targets in all the conditions.

The literature in the area of applied behavior analysis has provided educators of students with autism a plethora of effective teaching strategies. As the incidence of the population has increased, however, challenges for practitioners have as well. It is paramount that skills necessary to function at the highest level of independence are identified and systematically taught. Areas of particular concern include identifying effective strategies to fade staff support, teaching children to learn in a group instructional format, increasing and generalizing of social skills, and innovative and low cost techniques to increase language production. The papers in this symposium will discuss three research projects. Specific data are presented on generalization strategies for social skills acquired in small group formats; a comparison of group vs. 1:1 instructional formats; and an innovative strategy using videos to teach mands.

The literature indicates that students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) learn best 1:1 with teaching practices based on the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis. This however may not continue to be functional for all students across settings and time. Although there is a growing body of literature to support group instruction as an effective teaching format, research comparing 1:1 and group instructional arrangements as well as indices for best clinical practice and skills required to "group-teach" is minimal. The current project compares 1:1 vs. small group instructional formats. An alternating treatment with initial baseline and final best treatment phase design was used to compare rates of skill acquisition across the two teaching formats. Data was also collected across content areas, observational learning, rates of interfering behaviors, and skills required to teach groups. Preliminary data indicates little difference between rates of skill acquisition in 1:1 and group settings (data attached). Results between teaching formats as well as suggestions for next steps and future research are discussed.

As the only verbal operant that allows an individual to control delivery of reinforcement, the mand is a top instructional priority in early intervention programs for children with autism. Procedures that rapidly increase mand repertoires are important as low levels of manding are associated with decreased social interaction and increased problem behavior. Despite a large body of research demonstrating efficacious practices for teaching mands, minimal research has compared procedures to evaluate the comparative efficiency of the various practices. The present investigation sought to compare two methods of mand training, each involving modeling and prompt fading, on the acquisition and mastery of mands by 4 preschool children with autism. An alternating treatment design was used to compare traditional mand training procedures with video-based instruction on targeted outcomes. Results suggest that video modeling led to slightly faster acquisition and doubling of mand mastery rates when compared to traditional mand training procedures. The results were replicated across all participants, suggesting a strong functional relation. The potential benefits of using video modeling during verbal behavior programs for children with autism will be discussed.

Individuals and agencies providing ABA autism intervention services are routinely in the position of having to make decisions about treatment interventions, data collection and data analysis systems. However, the basis for the selection and use of one intervention procedure over another or the rationale for using a particular criterion to determine mastery of a skill may not always be clear. As a result the use of one intervention over another may be a function of habit or training rather than the empirical evidence. This symposium presents three direct comparison studies that attempted to determine if or in what way procedural or criterion level differences affected the outcomes in ABA based interventions for individuals on the autism spectrum. The first focuses on procedural variations in the context of preference assessments, the second looks at rate of acquisition and maintenance when differing criteria for mastery are used, and the third compares continuous and discontinuous measurement and its impact on meeting mastery criteria.

Response contingent reinforcement is used by behavior analysts to alter the frequency, topography, and magnitude of behavior (Trosclair-Lasserre, Lerman, Call, Addison, & Kodak, 2008). The process used to discover reinforcers for a particular individual can take many forms and one such method is stimulus preference assessments. There is a gap in the literature with respect to the response topography used to select stimuli presented. The present study examined preferences expressed in the Multiple Stimulus Without Replacement (MSWO) assessment method when the response selection topography was either verbal or motor. Results showed that response selection topography did not affect the identification of the most preferred item. A subsequent assessment of the reinforcing effects of the identified most preferred items was then conducted across two tasks, one verbal response task and one motor response task, to confirm that the item identified as most preferred in the MSWO functioned as an effective reinforcer. In the verbal response task, the item identified, as most preferred was confirmed as an effective reinforcer in three out of four conditions across participants. In the motor response task the item identified as most preferred was the most effective reinforcer in only two of the conditions across participants.

In recent years, the question of evaluating skill acquisition by children with autism has been considered by applied researchers (Cummings & Carr, 2009; Nadjowski et al. 2009; Lerman et al. 2010). In an effort to streamline data collection some practitioners have adopted discontinuous measurement systems to measure progress. Using this method, a skill has been considered mastered when the individual achieves either 2 or 3 consecutive days of successfully completing the first response opportunity in a session (Lerman et al. 2010). Previous analyses have touched upon several skill domains (Cummings & Carr, 2009) and yielded mixed results. One finding is that first-trial recording can lead to premature determinations of skill acquisition (Lerman et al. 2010), however this result can be negated by increasing the criteria for mastery. The current study examines these questions from a different approach. Taking a survey of a large amount of pre-existing data, we examined whether the first-trial mastery criteria yield the same results as the continuous percent-based mastery criteria used by the practitioners collecting the data (80% correct responding across three consecutive days). Results indicate that firsttrial mastery criteria disagree at a high rate with the multi-trial system that was actually in use.

Najdowski et al. (2009) assessed multiple data collection procedures used during instruction of individuals with developmental disabilities and suggested that more research was needed to determine the impact of different criterion levels on evidence of mastery. Researchers in the current study assessed the acquisition of spelling across two sets of equivalent words using a less and more restrictive mastery criteria. The participant in the present study had a history of learning to spell with the use of visual prompts; however, acquisition of the target words was very slow. The participants rates of acquisition were compared and the maintenance of spelling was evaluated to determine if either criterion resulted in more rapid and more durable responding.

Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior laid a critically important foundation for a cogent account of human language as a unique behavioral phenomenon. Relational Frame Theory (RFT) expanded upon the verbal behavior foundation and broadened the range of behavioral application to helping others. Research in both Verbal Behavior and RFT has provided empirical support for significantintervention outcomes: Building verbal/vocal imitation, joint attention, mands, and tact repertoires (e.g., frames of coordination) is important for building basic language skills in early or delayed learners. Reading, reading comprehension, and spelling is efficiently trained in match-to-sample/stimulus equivalence procedures, and building hierarchical relational frames. Techniques for synthesizing contextual control facilitate building syntax and grammar skills. Similarly, stimulus equivalence procedures are useful for building math skills and mathematical reasoning. Finally,perspective-taking techniques facilitate social conversational skills and may increase "empathy" behaviors. This presentation provides an overview of research and strategies developed from RFT to aid the clinical practice of Applied Behavior Analysts.

Behavioral interventions have been shown to be effective at addressing a wide range of behavior excesses and deficits in a wide range of contexts. Though weve had many successes, behavior analysts often experience difficulties setting the conditions for individuals responsible for managing key contingencies to implement the behavior plans we create. This may be attributable to the dominance of aversive control for the behavior analysts and all participants in the behavior plan. Emerging evidence in contextual behavioral approaches suggest that shifts in context can foster the transformation of function from aversive to valued. The challenge to the behavior analyst is thus to foster transformation of values functions in the context of the behavior plan, such that implementation of the plan is part of the functional class of valued behaviors. This paper will propose a role for values work in applied behavior analysis which will involve creating the context for individuals to 1) choose a superordinate value for their behavior, 2) practice discriminating behaviors as part of a class of values-consistent behavior, and 3) practice engaging in values-consistent behavior. Specific tools which might be incorporated into the early stages of behavioral assessment and intervention will be introduced.

Research has shown that strategies based on the principles of behavior analysis are effective for assessing and treating pediatric feeding disorders. However, there are some areas that have received little attention in the literature and warrant further evaluation. The purpose of this symposium is to share and discuss three innovative procedures for the assessment and treatment of varying feeding disorders. The first study evaluated the effects of modifying functional analysis procedures for inappropriate mealtime behaviors and the second and third study evaluated innovative interventions to treat pediatric feeding disorders. Areas for future research and clinical implications will be discussed.

An understanding of the functional variables associated with inappropriate mealtime behavior is critical to developing an effective and efficient treatment for food refusal. To this aim, functional analysis methodology has been modified for the meal context and previous research has shown that multiple sources of reinforcement maintain inappropriate mealtime behavior. However, the role of noncontingent access to preferred stimuli during conditions has not been evaluated. We conducted functional analyses of inappropriate mealtime behavior with the specific goal of evaluating the role of noncontingent access to preferred stimuli. In many of these cases, the provision of noncontingent access to tangible stimuli was necessary in order to achieve stable levels of inappropriate mealtime behavior in the control (play) condition. Similarly, the effects of noncontingent tangible access were examined during test conditions (escape and attention). In several cases, levels of inappropriate mealtime behavior varied greatly based on the inclusion/exclusion of noncontingent tangible access. Previous research has found that noncontingent reinforcement may result in suppressed levels of the target behavior via competition, satiation, or extinction. Possible implications of these findings on functional analyses of inappropriate mealtime behavior will be discussed.

Choice arrangements have previously been used to target food refusal (e.g., Cooper et al., 1999; Vaz, Volkert, & Piazza, 2011). The goal of this experiment was to extend choice arrangements to food refusal related to utensil and variety. Two children, ages 5 and 6 years, receiving treatment in an intensive day treatment feeding program participated. Both children engaged in food refusal when non-preferred foods were presented on a spoon, but accepted preferred foods on a spoon and non-preferred foods when presented on a NUK. Choice arrangements were implemented for both children to increase acceptance of the non-preferred foods on a spoon. The children were provided with two choices while two variables were manipulated food variety and utensil (i.e., spoon versus NUK) were manipulated for one child, while food volume and plate color were manipulated for the other. If the children did not make a choice, both bites were presented. If the children engaged in food refusal after making a choice, an individualized treatment protocol was then followed that included non-removal of the food. Both childrens acceptance of non-preferred foods off of a spoon increased. These results support the effectiveness of choice arrangements in the treatment of food refusal.

Owed to its parsimony, focus on observable responses, and single-subject approach to experimental design, behavior analysis may be a suitable interphase between socially significant behavior and neuroscientific and genetic research. Applied behavior-analytic interventions have rarely incorporated neurophysiological dependent variables. This approach may help to identify patterns of neurophysiological activity that are specific to operant processes. Also, behavior-analytic methods may help to establish disease-specific behavioral characteristics of genetic syndromes including autism and Prader-Willi syndrome. Finally, cross-disciplinary applied research may impact favorably the biological plausibility and facial validity of behavior-analytic interventions to broader scientific audiences. During this symposium we will present a range of empirical studies illustrating various methodological approaches to gene-brain-behavior relations in the context of applied research. Hammond et al. will present a study examining the environmental factors and neurophysiological correlates of problem behavior in Prader-Willi syndrome. Caruso-Anderson et al. conducted a study on the distinctive behavioral characteristics of individuals with autism in terms of their preference toward social stimuli. Finally, Virues-Ortega et al. will present an intervention study on the establishment of head steadiness in children with autism undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Dr. David Schaal, a behavior analyst with extensive training in behavioral neuroscience will serve as discussant.

The concept of automatic reinforcement has been described as somewhat elusive (cf. Iwata et al., 1994) and may present particular assessment and treatment challenges. Can brain imaging methodology help us? In this study, we assessed the feasibility of utilizing functional magnetic resonance methodology (fMRI; subtraction method) to help identify the determinants of skin- picking behavior exhibited by individuals diagnosed with Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS). Eleven individuals (8 male; 3 female), who ranged in age from 12 to 24 years, participated. Functional analysis results indicated that the participants skin picking was maintained by automatic reinforcement. fMRI evaluations were conducted under a free operant arrangement and 9 of 11 participants engaged in skin picking while in the scanner, with only limited movement artifact occurring during the scans. To obtain sufficient samples of picking and non-picking bouts for fMRI data analysis, other methods (e.g., response blocking) also were implemented. We conclude by suggesting that it may be possible to use fMRI methodology to augment our understanding of behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement. Investigators undertaking fMRI evaluations of problem behavior must be aware, however, that movement and physiological artifacts, as well as sampling issues, are important factors that need to be considered.

Preference assessments have been used extensively with individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in clinical and research settings to determine relative preference among tangible items such as toys or food and activities such as watching television. Despite the presence of social withdrawal behavior and debilitating deficits in social interaction skills, no studies have examined preferences for social interaction in individuals with ASDs. The purpose of this study was to determine relative preference for social interaction by the amount of time children with ASDs and their typically developing peers allocated to social and non-social stimuli when both were available simultaneously. A brief preference assessment was conducted to identify preferred toys and a modified preference assessment was conducted to examine preference for solitary versus interactive play. Results will be discussed in terms of amount of time allocated to social versus non-social conditions as well as social escape and avoidance behavior.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive medical procedure that supports the diagnosis of numerous medical conditions. MRI scans require the individual to remain still throughout the procedure, which can last from a few seconds to several minutes. The procedure is particularly challenging for children with autism due to sensory sensitivities and limited instructional control. A few research studies have shown success in teaching tolerance and promoting steadiness during MRI scans using exposure-based techniques. However, reinforcement-based interventions have not been tested in individuals with autism. We used an exposure procedure and differential reinforcement of other behaviors (DRO) to establish steadiness in children with autism undergoing MRI scans. First, we implemented an exposure-based component to facilitate tolerance to the scanning environment. This procedure was followed by a DRO schedule reinforcing head steadiness. The DRO schedule was gradually increased from a few seconds to five minutes inside the scanner bore. A purposely-developed movement tracking system was used to monitor head movement. The preliminary results show that an exposure-based procedure combined with progressively thinner DRO schedules can be used to establish head steadiness in children with autism undergoing MRI scans.

Resistance to dental procedures remains an important topic in the treatment of individuals with developmental disabilities. Several researchers have investigated procedures to increase compliance with dental treatments including stimulus fading, escape extinction, visual schedules, systematic desensitization, and differential reinforcement (Cuvo, 2010). Some behavioral interventions, such as escape extinction may be inappropriate for teaching compliance with dental procedures because there is an increased risk of injury when attempting to place dental tools in the mouth of a child who is actively resisting. Similarly, systematic desensitization may require additional instruction in relaxation techniques, potentially prolonging intervention for this population. Alternatively, stimulus fading interventions involve gradually increasing the size, proximity, and/or duration of a stimulus while reinforcing compliance; thereby reducing or eliminating the need for escape extinction. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of a stimulus fading procedure in a simulated dental environment in the childs home for increasing compliance with dental procedures including, brushing teeth, placing a mirror in the mouth, placing fingers in the mouth to count teeth, scraping teeth with a dental instrument, flossing, and x-rays. Each dental procedure was divided into 30-34 smaller steps starting with showing the dental instrument or fingers to the child, placing the dental instrument or fingers in the child's mouth, moving the dental instrument or fingers around the mouth, and ending with the terminal goal of compliance with a full cleaning and exam. Results indicate that the stimulus fading procedure was successful at increasing compliance with dental procedures which maintained over time and generalized to implementation by the childs dental professional in the dental office. A discussion about the practical implications of stimulus fading interventions and their application to dental procedures will be provided.

Problem behavior during dental visits can impede thorough treatment and often requires invasive approaches to deliver even basic care. A modified functional analysis was conducted for 4 participants to confirm the function of problem behavior in this context. For all 4 participants, the analyses confirmed problem behavior was maintained by escape from dental demands. These outcomes were then used to develop function-based treatments. Specifically, demand fading procedures were evaluated in which participants were gradually exposed to components of a typical dental exam as problem behavior remained low. For those participants for whom demand fading was not sufficient to decrease disruptive behavior, extinction procedures were added. The results and their implications will be discussed. Reliability data were collected during a minimum of 30% of sessions and averaged over 80%.

Functional Communication Training (FCT), although an efficacious treatment to reduce occurrences of maladaptive behavior, may result in unmanageable rates of the communicative response. Research has shown that gradually introducing a multiple schedule of reinforcement can ameliorate these high rates. To date, no studies have attempted the gradual introduction of a multiple schedule with behavior sensitive to negative reinforcement. Moreover, although evidence exists in the basic literature for the use of auditory stimuli as discriminative stimuli for the components of a multiple schedule, there is a paucity of applied research on multiple schedules with auditory signals. In the current study, two participants with developmental disabilities and intact vision and hearing received FCT to teach a functionally communicative response (e.g., touching a break card). Once the participants acquired the response, they were exposed to a multiple schedule condition, in which either auditory or visual signals were arranged to signal the components, and a mixed schedule (control) condition in which neither component was signaled. Interobserver agreement (IOA) was collected for a minimum of 33% of sessions across phases and participants. Mean IOA was 97% (range, 93% to 97%) across participants.

The intensity of early intervention may greatly impact outcomes for young learners. Intervention intensity often refers to the number of hours/time (e.g., Lovaas, 1987). Intensity also reflects the environment in which intervention occurs, number of opportunities provided, frequency of sessions, duration of intervention, etc. How do these other aspects of intensity affect learner skill acquisition and overall functioning? I will overview our approach to examining intervention intensity by manipulating one aspect of intensity, such as number of opportunities, session duration, and spacing of opportunities (intertrial interval), measuring the effects on skill acquisition in young children with Down syndrome. Responses (e.g., head, tummy, legs, within the area of identifying body parts) are randomly assigned to either high or low intensity intervention. To demonstrate the effects of intervention, we use a multiple baseline probe design across three responses within a skill area for a given intensity level. To examine the effects of intensity, we compare acquisition (occurrence, sessions to mastery, maintenance) across levels of intensity. Through this series of studies we may begin to tease apart the relative contributions of different aspects of intensity on skill acquisition and determine the most effective intensity of early intervention for children with Down syndrome.

Using the approach described in the previous presentation, we are examining the effects of intensity in terms of the number of opportunities, session, duration, and intertrial interval. Participants include 4 children with Down syndrome ranging from 10 months to 6 years (children participated in more than one study). During intervention, the interventionist presents an opportunity, prompts, and provides reinforcement for correct responses with only the intensity varying. In the first study, we examined number of opportunities (20 vs. 5) holding session duration constant at 10 minutes, but allowing intertrial interval to vary. Data from one participant (the other participant showed similar performance) are attached showing generally faster acquisition with 20 opportunities and fewer times the interventionist had to revert to a more intensive prompt. In a new study we are examining session duration (10 minutes vs. 2.5 minutes), holding intertrial interval constant at 30s, but allowing number of opportunities to vary (20 vs. 5). Baseline data to date are attached. In a third study, we are examining the spacing (intertrial interval) of instructional opportunities (30 seconds vs. 2 minutes), holding the number of opportunities (20) constant, but allowing session duration to vary (10 vs. 40 minutes).

In everyday practice, insurance companies, parents, teachers, and human service agencies emphasize the need to provide X number of hours of EIBI (early intensive behavioral intervention) per week. The present paper argues that teaching children on an individualized basis to rapidly acquire three term contingencies using mature scientifically-validated stimulus control procedures is critical in making early intensive behavioral interventions as successful as possible, and the "intensity" or duration of intervention is secondary. Eldevik et al. (2009, 2010) have reviewed a number EIBI studies to determine the level of effect following various durations per week of intervention and found that there was a modest improvement in performance on intelligence tests when a minimum number of hours of EIBI per week were carried out. Williams and Pearlberg (2006) have argued that performance on intelligence tasks in intellectually bright college students is very highly positively correlated with performance on three term contingency tasks, and thus, the ability to learn three term contingencies is critical in the development of intelligence, per se. Thus, given the oft-stated goal of improving the intelligence of children who have neurodevelopmental delays, the emphasis on EIBI should be upon using the most effective three term discrimination procedures possible, rather than simply specifying the duration of interventions. The present paper will review several auditory discrimination training procedures which have been validated in basic research on rat, monkey and humans with developmental disabilities, and which have proven extremely effective in training normal and neurologically impaired mammals, including those on polypharmacy treatments, to rapidly acquire three term contingency discriminations and decrease maladaptive behavior patterns (cf., Neill et al., 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1989, 1995, 1996, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008).

Over the past several decades, the field of special education has emphasized preparing students with disabilities for successful transition into adult roles. Despite numerous research efforts examining effective secondary transition strategies, it is becoming increasingly clear that the field still has much more work to do if youth with disabilities are to realize their potential in employment, postsecondary education, and independent living. Behavior analysts are well positioned to play a critical role in improving the outcomes for youth and young adults with disabilities. This symposium will address where the field currently is by highlighting post-school outcome data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2. Poor post-school outcomes for youth and young adults with disabilities underscore the need for improved approaches to intervention.One such approach may involve developing a multi-tiered system of support for students in transition so that each student receives the intensity of support needed to facilitate smooth transition. Another approach may be to consider developing specialized transition-focused curriculums for certain populations, such as children with autism spectrum disorders. Finally, practitioners need effective interventions designed to promote youth involvement in educational planning processes. Such interventions have the potential to improve outcomes across all transition domains. . This symposium will address these topics, highlighting the need for behavior analysis at each step of the process.

Although Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS; e.g., PBIS, RTI) do not explicitly include secondary transition as a focus of assessment in intervention, the implicit assumption in MTSS is that students who perform better academically and exhibit more pro-social behaviors in high school, are more likely to have better post-school outcomes (be more college and career ready). These assumptions align well with secondary transition outcomes and provide a starting point for linking the two together. PBIS and RTI will help get students to graduation, but do not help student learn other valuable transition skills. Therefore, the purpose of this paper will be to propose a model MTSS focused on secondary transition that can be used for all students. However, in order to meet the definition of a MTSS, a reliable and valid measurement system is needed. Applied behavior analysts are well-positioned to help with this important task.

The Center on Secondary Education for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (CSESA) is a multi-site research and development center developed to create a high school curriculum students with ASD and to conduct an efficacy study of the impact of the curriculum on multiple student outcomes and transition to post-school settings. This session will provide an overview of two of the components including the transition and families component and the academic component for students with autism who access alternate achievement standards. Topics will include community and school resource mapping, procedures for providing work-based and post-secondary education opportunities, and using adaptations, systematic instruction, modifications, and technology to promote comprehension of academic and functional texts.

Poor post-school outcomes for youth with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) indicate the need for improved school-based practices. In special education, recent emphasis has been placed on self-determination skills as a way to improve these outcomes. Self-determination interventions, particularly for older students, may include involving youth in the planning and development of their own IEPs. Although a substantial body of literature exists in this area, youth and young adults with EBD are underrepresented in the research. The authors will present findings from a comprehensive literature review of intervention research focused on teaching youth and young adults with EBD to become more involved in their education planning processes. Authors will discuss implications of these findings for practitioners and outline directions for future research. In particular, the authors will suggest ways behavior analysts may improve outcomes for youth with EBD through promoting involvement in education and transition planning, functional behavior assessment, and behavior intervention plan development.

The experimental literature documents the effectiveness of behavioral intervention across a wide range of teaching procedures, settings, populations, and target behaviors. Although empirically supported, slight variations in procedural details may impede or promote learning. The purpose of this symposium is to highlight four studies evaluating slight changes to teaching procedures and the impact on learner outcomes. The first presentation will share findings from an evaluation of the efficacy and efficiency of two prompting procedures on receptive labeling skills of three children with autism. The results of an analysis of the efficacy and efficiency of inter-trial interval length during discrete trial teaching on acquisition of three children with autism will be shared during the second presentation. The third presentation will summarize the results of a parametric analysis of treatment integrity level (i.e., feedback accuracy) on learner acquisition. Finally, the symposium will conclude with a summary of a review of the experimental literature on treatment integrity and highlight the variables influencing maintenance and generalization of staff performance.

A variety of prompting procedures have been used to teach children with autism new skills. This study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of a criterion-based graduated guidance prompting to a simultaneous prompting procedure for 3 children with autism (ages 4-8). Using a parallel treatment design, researchers taught each participant 6 pairs of receptive labels, 3 with simultaneous prompting and 3 with graduated guidance. Results indicated that the criterion-based graduated guidance procedure was effective in teaching 2 pairs of skills to each participant. The simultaneous prompting procedure was effective in teaching 2 pairs of skills to 1 participant and 1 pair of skills to the other 2 participants. On average, the graduated guidance procedure required slightly fewer teaching trials than the simultaneous prompting procedure to teach skills and produced fewer child errors during daily probe trials. Although the findings indicate that a criterion-based graduated guidance procedure may be slightly more effective and efficient than a simultaneous prompting procedure, the choice of prompting procedure for teaching children with autism must be made on an individual basis.

Discrete trial teaching has been widely used to teach children with autism. Several studies have looked at inter-trial intervals during discrete trial teaching and the relationship inter-trial intervals have on the speed of learning and have indicated that the duration of the inter-trial interval may have some effect. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of inter-trial intervals on receptive labeling by three children (ages 4 to 7 years old) diagnosed on the autism spectrum. An alternating treatment design was used to compare the effects of short inter-trial intervals (5-10 seconds) to longer inter-trial intervals (15-20 seconds) during discrete trial teaching. Participants were taught to point to pictures of objects, numbers, or people. The results were mixed. One participant learned all of the pairs in roughly the same number of trials using both lengths of inter-intervals. The other two participants sometimes learned a pair of pictures with fewer trials using the short inter-trial intervals and sometimes using the long inter-trial intervals. While participants appeared to learn the tasks in a similar number of teaching trials, all participants learned the tasks in a shorter amount of total teaching time when the short inter-trial intervals were used.

In educational settings, feedback plays a significant role in learning. However, in these settings, teachers do not always follow prescribed procedures with high integrity and research has shown a reliable negative impact on measures of outcome. Although the relation between fidelity of instruction and learning is becoming clear, there is no substantial body of evidence examining the implementation of feedback procedures. Human operant research has shown that participants are likely to follow inaccurate instructions even when doing so fails to maximize reinforcement. Feedback has been interpreted to serve a similar function as instructions. A logical empirical question is whether the accuracy of feedback will influence behavior in similar ways. To that end, the present study examined the effects of 4 levels of feedback accuracy on the acquisition of a simple academic task. Four typically-developing children, 4-5 years old were taught four discrimination tasks, each associated with a level of feedback accuracy in a multi-element design. The results suggest that learning only occurred when the feedback provided was 100% accurate. Additionally, during a second condition where only accurate feedback was provided, a consistent delay to acquisition was obtained for the tasks previously associated with inaccurate feedback.

Performance management strategies have been used in a variety of businesses and organizations, however for a field that shares a stage with many autism agencies, it might be considered underrepresented in demonstrations to assist these organizations specifically. OBM literature is also practically void of studies conducted in government or state agencies. Three papers will discuss interventions that produced improvement in human service and government agencies.

Human services agencies struggle with many issues not least of which is training and managing personnel. In collaboration with a leading OBM provider, a center based autism agency. Several strategies to improve workplace performance were implemented and tracked. The assessment process will be discussed as well as results from various interventions. The success of strategies such as prioritizing projects and getting buy in from staff will also be examined. Data indicate a moderately beneficial effect when results are taken as a whole. Considerations for improving and continuing such work will conclude the presentation.

People are becoming more involved in attempting to reduce human-made pollutants and a widely encouraged method is to recycle. To do this efficiently there is a need to develop low-tech methods that are affordable and that will continue to produce widespread results in the future. Socially significant problems requiring behavior change are of interest in applied behavior analysis, a field that has successfully applied basic principles of behavior to complex human problems. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of one such technique, visual prompts, on litter control and recycling in a natural environment. The current study will take place in two small towns in Central California in an outdoor market and a human service agency main entrance. The research question is: can specific visual prompts influence litter control and recycling at an outdoor market/flea market and a human service agency? Visual and statistical analyses will be used to analyze the effects visual prompts can have on the pounds of litter and recycling material properly disposed of.

The OBM literature has a lack of studies conducted in a state or government work setting. The variables in these settings are different in many aspects to those of the public sector. A lottery prize served as a tool for the implementation of a strategy aimed at decreasing unexcused absences and creating better adherence to policy. Results were favorable. Factors such as employee buy in and group contingency dynamics will be discussed.

Behavioral Safety has been a success story of the successful application of behavior analytic principles in the workplace. This symposium focuses discussion on behavioral safety programs that achieve reductions in at-risk behaviors that lead to injury through data-based reviews of case studies and expert evaluations. The first presentation by Timothy Ludwig reviews a class of undesirable behaviors that can be reinforced in a typical behavior-based safety (BBS) program that uses incentives or other quotas to influence participation. The second presentation by Chris Goulart argues for the consideration of the full safety culture though the use of valid and reliable survey as an important first step in implementing a BBS process. The final paper by Judith Stowe will contrast the role of leadership when implementing a BBS process with the pressure managers put on employees emphasizing production.

Its time to point to the elephant in the room and acknowledge Pencil Whipping within Behavior Based Safety. Pencil Whipping is a euphemism used to describe when workers, supervisors, and, yes, safety managers fill out observation cards, sometimes in great numbers, without actually conducting the observation (much less providing the critical feedback). This session will seek to understand and provide solutions for the environment that causes pencil whipping by reviewing research data and case studies for clues into this potentially deadly practice.

Safety Culture is generally defined as the shared assumptions, beliefs, and values with regard to safety for the employees of an organization. It is often considered a constituent component of the larger organizational culture picture. Safety Culture is generally measured using employee perception surveys. These surveys can be developed internally or used from an external source. The key consideration for a Safety Culture survey is to ensure that it is valid and reliable. Behavior Based Safety (BBS) is a well-known, often applied, and robust safety process founded on the principles of operant conditioning. At its core, BBS involves front line employees, engages management, and generates viable leading indicators to manage a safety process effectively and efficiently. BBS has a long history of documented success. This paper will provide a case-study based on data obtained from an agricultural cooperative in South Dakota. This organization undertook efforts to improve safety performance from both a safety cultural perspective and by implementing a BBS Process. This cooperative evaluated their safety culture prior to the inception of the BBS Process and has done so annually. As a result of these efforts, this organization has experienced a significant improvement to their baseline safety culture scores, established a viable BBS Process, and experienced a notable reduction in workplace injuries and incidents. This session will provide a review of this comprehensive approach to safety management and will express data relating to safety cultural improvements, BBS observation performance, and injury reductions.

This paper will provide an overview of a typical BBS process and the ideal role of leadership in a successful process. Data will be presented from a two manufacturing and oil & gas companies where the level of Leadership participation varied across time. These data will also show from one of those companies how participation pressure from management and financial incentives impacted observation data and subsequent incident rates. Following changes in the incentive system and removal of management pressure, BBS process results improved.

The fidelity with which a treatment is carried out depends heavily on effective supervision and training practices. Therefore, researchers have developed various effective and efficient antecedent and consequence-based training strategies to teach inexperienced staff to implement a range of behavior change and assessment procedures. A few examples in the literature include training participants to manage classroom behavior using a token economy system, teaching new skills using least-to-most prompting procedures and task analyses, and selecting highly preferred stimuli during intervention sessions by conducting stimulus preference assessments. Many of the training strategies have included a combination of verbal or written instructions, modeling, rehearsal, or feedback to teach staff to implement the aforementioned procedures with a high degree of procedural fidelity. In this symposium, we will review existing literature on training and discuss current evidenced-based training strategies, their individual components, and their modes of delivery. We hope that our review and discussion will help behavior analysts identify effective training strategies to incorporate into their staff training and supervision procedures.

Effective training and supervision of staff is of utmost importance to behavior analysts who conduct assessments and develop behavior intervention plans but must train relatively inexperienced staff to carry out their plans with high treatment integrity. Therefore, it is socially significant for researchers to examine methods to improve training procedures as well as methods to measure training effects. In this presentation, we will review the literature on training and supervision with a focus on the measures researchers used to capture the effectiveness of their training. We will discuss the use of direct and indirect measures, such as in-vivo observations, videotaped sessions, checklists, task analyses, surveys and questionnaires, as well as provide in-depth examples of the commonly used methods by the majority of researchers. We will highlight how researchers include various social validity measures to obtain data on training satisfaction and conduct maintenance and generalization probes to determine training outcomes. We will end our presentation by discussing the value and feasibility of the commonly used measures and their relevance to practice in applied settings.

In this presentation, we will introduce the use of a human analogue, a robot, as one method by which we can potentially extend the current supervision and training literature. We will begin the discussion by reviewing our findings regarding the difference between the use of a simulated client and a robot during training. We then will discuss the use of a robot in the context of addressing some of the previously mentioned methodological restrictions of applied research in staff training. To illustrate how a robot can be used to isolate the effects of certain training variables, we will outline the methods and procedures of a study currently in progress. In this study, we plan to conduct a parametric analysis of schedules of feedback delivery to participants who will be instructed to work (i.e., conduct therapy sessions) with a human analogue in place of a simulated client. We will end the presentation by discussing potential benefits and limitations of such translational research and possible implications for practitioners.

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which improvements in an English only intervention transferred to improvements in Spanish. In a quasi-experimental group design 76 bilingual (English/Spanish) Latino school-age children with and without language disabilities served as participants. Children were assigned to one of two groups: an English narrative language intervention treatment condition (TC) and a no-treatment control condition (CC). Prior to intervention and following intervention, narratives were elicited in English and Spanish and analyzed for length, story content, and presence of complex autoclitic structures (e.g., when, after, because). Only children in the TC group participated in the English narrative intervention. The narrative intervention was conducted with each child individually in 8, 10-minute cycles over two days. Results indicate that English intervention led to statistically significant increases in length, story content, and autoclitic structures of English narratives for the TC group when compared to the CC group. Additionally, increases in length, story content, and autoclitic structures transferred to Spanish narrative production, providing evidence of derived relational responding. Stark differences in relational responding were observed between children who were typically developing and those who were language impaired.

An alternating treatments research design was used to compare and evaluate the effects of traditional discrete trial therapy (DTT) and language intervention embedded in storybook reading. DTT involved a set of stimulus cards and predetermined verbal stimuli. In the storybook embedded intervention, a variety of verbal stimuli were presented in the context of a story to evoke production of irregular past tense verbs. Participants included two children diagnosed with expressive language disorders (an 8:6 male and a 6:7 female). Participants were taught two separate lists of irregular past tense verbs following alternating treatment conventions. Traditional DTT was used to teach one list, and DTT embedded in storybook reading was used to teach the other. Results showed both methods to be effective. Traditional DTT produced slightly more improvement in both participants, but there was little difference relative to the method used in the degree of generalization during intermixed, pure, and conversational probes at the conclusion of treatment.

The concept of reinforcement is at least incomplete and almost certainly incorrect. An alternative way of organizing our understanding of behavior may be built around three concepts: allocation, induction, and correlation. Allocation is the measure of behavior and captures the centrality of choice: All behavior entails choice and consists of choice. Allocation changes as a result of induction and contingency. The term induction covers phenomena such as adjunctive, interim, and terminal behavior—behavior induced in a situation by occurrence of food or another Phylogenetically Important Event (PIE) in that situation. If one allowed that some stimulus control were the result of phylogeny, then induction and stimulus control would be identical, and a PIE would resemble a discriminative stimulus. Much evidence supports the idea that a PIE induces all PIE-related activities. Research also supports the idea that stimuli correlated with PIEs become PIE-related conditional inducers. Contingencies create correlations between "operant" activity (e.g., lever pressing) and PIEs (e.g., food). Once an activity has become PIE-related, the PIE induces it along with other PIE-related activities. Contingencies also constrain possible performances. These constraints specify feedback functions, which explain phenomena such as the higher response rates on ratio schedules in comparison with interval schedules.

People discount the value of delayed or uncertain outcomes, and the same mathematical function describes both delay and probability discounting. The degree to which individuals discount is thought to reflect how impulsive they are. From this perspective, steep discounting of delayed outcomes (which fails to maximize long-term welfare) and shallow discounting of probabilistic outcomes (which fails to adequately take risk into account) reflect similar decision-making processes and also the same trait of impulsivity. However, several manipulations selectively affect delay and probability discounting, and correlational studies show that how steeply one discounts delayed rewards is relatively independent of how steeply one discounts probabilistic rewards. Thus, referring to both delay and probability discounting as measures of "impulsivity" may serve only to indicate that real behavioral problems can involve either kind of discounting. This tutorial will highlight the similarities and differences between delay and probability discounting as well as the implications of both experimental and correlational findings on discounting and impulsivity.

Consumer behavior analysis is concerned with the application of behavioral economics to the marketplace of human purchase and consumption activities. Operant choice is economic behavior: the allocation of limited responses among competing alternatives. Both matching analysis and behavioral economics, which are at the heart of this tutorial, lead to the conclusion that all behavior is choice and can be analyzed in economic terms. Consumer behavior analysis has a more restricted sphere of application: human economic and social choices which involve social exchange. In examining this contribution in its potential to illuminate consumer behavior in situ, the tutorial rangesfrom broad economic psychology that derives from Herrnstein’s discovery of matching, Baum’s formalization of laws of matching,to the ensuing interaction of behavioral psychology and experimental economics pioneered by Hursh, Rachlin and others. The unifying framework of the research presented is the Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM), a critical elaboration of the three-term of contingency of behavior analysis, as it embraces complex economic choice in the marketplace, as well as behavior analytical interpretations of such aspects of consumer choice as attitude-behavior relationships, the adoption and diffusion of innovations, so-called "green" consumer behavior, and addiction as consumer choice.

Post-master's behavior analysts, BCBAs

All behavior analysts conduct research--whether it leads to publication or not. Being a behavior analyst means generating hypotheses, collecting data, and making decisions based on those data. As students of behavior analysis, we are thoroughly familiar with research in a university (or university-affiliated) setting. However, we rarely have opportunities to learn about research conducted without the programmatic support of a university, despite the fact that such work can be crucial to developing our field and making real differences for society. Panelists are productive researchers working in the following nonuniversity settings: a nonprofit autism education center, a comprehensive agency for individuals with disabilities, and the animal husbandry unit of a large theme park. They will describe their personal experiences in nonuniversity research, and provide practical advice for those interested in developing similar careers. Attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions and interact with panelists.

A growing body of research has provided experimental support for Skinner’s (1957) account of Verbal Behavior and has led to the development of a technology for teaching verbal behavior. Three studies expand the literature by evaluating conditions under which verbal behavior can be brought under the control of complex stimuli, auditory and tactile stimuli, and stimuli accessible only to the learner (private stimuli). One study examined the emergence of intraverbals following listener training. Participants included both undergraduate students and children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Researchers employed a variety of teaching strategies including differential reinforcement, trial blocking, visual cues, and requiring a differential observing response. These studies identify teaching conditions under which verbal behavior was brought under control of target stimuli and those conditions that produced undesirable sources of control. Taken together these studies advance our understanding of the development of verbal behavior and contribute to our technology for teaching tacts and intraverbals.

A number of contemporary investigations have examined tact-training procedures with a number of different populations, specifically with children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (e.g., Barbera & Kubina, 2005; Kelley, Shillingsburg, Castro, Addison, & LaRue, 2007; Stevens, Sidener, Reeves, & Sidener, 2005). All of the studies, however, have focused on teaching individuals to tact visual stimuli (2-D and 3-D), despite clinical recommendations to teach tacts of stimuli in other sensory modalities (Sundberg & Partington, 1998). In the current study, two children with autism were taught to tact auditory and tactile stimuli. The effectiveness of teaching the stimuli in isolation (e.g., auditory and tactile stimuli presented with no visual cues) and as compound stimuli (i.e., a toy that produced the auditory stimulus and an object covered in the tactile stimulus) was compared. Results indicate that while both teaching methods may be effective, using compound stimuli when teaching auditory and tactile tacts interfered with learners prior tact repertoires.

Our current understanding of the role of private events in a science of behavior is based largely on Skinners (1953) natural science interpretation of private events. Skinner (1945) described public accompaniments as one way that a verbal community might differentially reinforce verbal behavior regarding private events. In this study, we developed an experimental analogue to study variables influencing tacting of private events. The participant had exclusive access to one set of stimuli (the private stimuli) and the experimenter attempted to teach tacts for private stimuli based on their correspondence with public stimuli accessible to both the experimenter and participant. Accuracy of participant verbal reports of private symbols was shown to be a function of private-public correspondence, reinforcement contingency, and audience member. The orderly patterns of data obtained suggest that analogue arrangements might be a useful, and even necessary, starting point for experimental investigations of how private events may enter into the analysis of behavior.

We evaluated the effects of teaching listener responses pertaining to functions of objects (e. g., point to what you sleep in) on the emergence of untrained intraverbal responses (e.g., you sleep in a). Prior to and during the study, the participants were able to tact and respond as listeners with respect to object names, but not object functions. The participants were two children with autism, who had relatively strong listener and tact repertoires, but limited intraverbal repertoires. With one participant, all intraverbal responses emerged after the listener responses had been taught to mastery. With a second participant, some untrained intraverbal responses emerged following listener training, but this result was not reliable. Direct intraverbal training was therefore conducted. Vocal prompting was necessary to teach the first intraverbal response in each set. However, we were able to teach the remaining intraverbal responses using a procedure in which the stimulus control over vocal responses (e.g., bed) was transferred quickly from nonverbal stimuli to verbal stimuli without the use of vocal prompts. Further evaluation with additional participants is planned.

Reciprocal conversations, instructional activities, and other social interactions are replete with complex intraverbals, many instances of which involve conditional discriminations (Axe, 2008; Sundberg & Sundberg, 2011). Conditional discriminations have been examined extensively in the literature on stimulus equivalence and match-to-sample (MTS) performance (Green, 1991). However, it is unknown whether strategies from the conditional discrimination-MTS literature might be relevant for establishing intraverbal conditional discriminations with people who do not succeed under standard (i.e., trial-and-error) teaching conditions. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effects of trial-and-error teaching, a differential observing response (DOR) requirement, and a DOR plus trial-blocking procedure on acquisition of intraverbals with children with ASDs. Interobserver agreement was assessed for at least 34% of sessions for all participants and averaged 99% (range, 80-100). Results indicate that a) trial-and-error teaching was sufficient to increase accuracy of intraverbal performance for 3 of 7 participants, b) 4 of 7 participants required additional teaching procedures, and c) when additional procedures were necessary, at least 75% of errors were consistent with restricted stimulus control. Based on these findings, procedures from the conditional discrimination literature may be effective aids to complex intraverbal instruction for children with ASDs.

Behavior analysts have called for colleagues in the field to further the promotion of socially responsible behaviors. Sigrid Glenns introduction of the metacontingency provided a natural science framework for research in this area, and important subsequent contributions have furthered our understanding of selection at the sociological level. According to this literature, if the cumulative product of a cultural practice is detrimental to the environment, individuals, or the culture itself, it could constitute a social problem. Within ABAI, a number of special interest groups focus on various social problems and the behavior analysts role in relation to them. This symposium examines socially significant behaviors, cultural practices, social problems, and the contingencies, metacontingencies, and macrocontingencies related to those practices and problems in existing organizations. We place special emphasis on leadership, decision-making, and why shifting emphasis from individuals behaviors to cultural practices may help speed progress toward interventions which bring us closer to understanding social problems.

Collectively, the news media are undergoing a dramatic shift in how and why news stories are reported. Some of these changes are correlated with changes in technology while others correlate with changes in media ethics. In the United States, millions of people contact stories, articles, shows, and reports produced by news media personnel each day. Information contained within those products not only reflects macrobehaviors but also influences the cultural milieu in which humans operate, posing ethical issues which deserve examination. The authors propose our understanding of this phenomenon can benefit from a systems analysis approach. This paper identifies variables present in news media settings and examines possible relations between those variables and at-work decisions by news personnel with respect to two general types of news presentation contexts or frames: objectivist and advocacy. We also consider how ethical and social responsibility issues are handled with respect to media ethics and the influence of scientific knowledge.

Since the 2009 ABAI Conference in Phoenix, some behavior analysts have focused on research to alter behavior leading to increased greenhouse gases and other environmental problems. Students in the Ethics and Philosophy of Behaviorism graduate course at Fresno State have conducted research on individuals behavior in relation to climate change since the spring of 2010. In 2012, only two of the four projects conducted resulted in positive outcomes: reusable water bottle use and recycled paper products use. Unfortunately, the dozen projects conducted over a total of three years have resulted in few long-term effects. Given the ethical requirements for behavior analysts and the urgency of intervention efficacy, we have shifted emphasis from directly changing the behavior of individuals to changing institutional practices. In collaboration with university administrators, we have developed initial procedures to strengthen the universitys green-campus ratings. Our first targeted changes include campus-wide increases in recycling, composting, and water conservation.

Gamification is a trending method that many organizations are beginning to use to change large amounts of human behavior. This piece will describe gamification, identify the behavioral principles at work and illustrate how it could be used to revive one of Ogden Lindsley's projects from the 1960s, the Behavior Bank. This project was well ahead of its time in the 1960s. It was set up to be an international computer bank containing a large amount of information on a myriad of human behavior and performances. At the time, it was extremely costly (they had to rent time on a mainframe to input records) and did not gather the momentum needed. Given today's technology and global connection, it is time that we examine how such a project might be feasible and the implications it might hold for education, behavior analysis, and the human condition.

Percentage is a ubiquitous dependent measure in behavior analysis. A common data collection method is a partial interval (PI) recording system where the observer marks an interval (e.g., 15) if the behavior occurs at least one time. The marks are then converted to percentage of intervals and charted. One benefit of using a PI data collection system is the ease of use for the end user the direct-care staff. One argument for the use of percentage as a primary dependent measure is it results in a smoothing of the data by eliminating variability (i.e., bounce) making it easy to interpret the data. A case against both practices will be presented and the benefits of using rate will be discussed. Methods of collecting rate data and an example of setting up rate data in Excel will be presented.

Although punishment is a common feature in programs designed to suppress inappropriate responding, the delivery of punishment may be delayed in clinical situations for a variety of reasons. When punishment is delayed, the result may be a decrease in response suppression. This, in turn, may lead to further application of an ineffective delayed punisher, which presents ethical concerns. As punishment is common in many behavior programs, and as the delivery of punishment is often delayed, it is important to identify strategies to increase the effectiveness of these delayed consequences. The basic and applied research on delayed punishment was reviewed and several potentially effective strategies were identified to increase the suppressive effect of a delayed punisher. The various strategies, along with the supporting research, will be discussed. In addition, for each strategy identified, a conceptual account will be provided describing how the strategy enables a delayed punisher to exert a suppressive effect. Further, additional uninvestigated but potentially effective strategies will be identified as will problems with current research on the topic of delayed punishment. Finally, recommendations regarding future research into delayed punishers will be provided.

There is a current deficit in efficient braille training methods for instructors of the visually impaired. In the case where instructors are sighted, they have the advantage of learning the braille code visually and this can be capitalized on in instruction. The current study replicated the efficacy of a computer-based program intended to train the relation of braille characters to English letters with 81 sighted college students. Participants completed the program in only 23 minutes and posttest braille letter identification averaged over 99% accuracy. In addition, rudimentary reading ability, an untrained skill, emerged following training. Both letter-identification and reading ability showed adequate maintenance at 7-14 days. In addition, the study conducted a direct comparison of two instructional techniques differing by the size of the selection array used (4-5 multiple choice options or a selection array of all keyboard items) to assess differences in training time, instructional errors, skill acquisition, and maintenance.

Behavior intervention plans based on the function of problem behavior are more likely to be effective than non-function-based plans. However, plans developed by teachers often do not address behavior function. In addition to ensuring that teachers can write function-based behavior intervention plans, it is also important to ensure plans are implemented with a sufficient degree of fidelity. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate a multi-component training package to train teachers to write function-based behavior intervention plans and to accurately implement differential reinforcement of alternative behavior for escape-maintained problem behavior. Twenty public school teachers of children with emotional and behavior disorders participated in a 7 hr training. The training package consisted of video-modeling, didactic instructions, self-monitoring, and rehearsal. Data were collected using the Behavior Support Plan Qualitative Evaluation Guide on the quality of written plans produced by teachers during the training. Experimenter-developed treatment integrity checklists were used to collect data on the accuracy with which differential reinforcement of alternative behavior was implemented during role-plays. A pretest/posttest control group design was used. Statistical and visual analysis indicated increases in the quality of the written behavior plans and in the accuracy with which they implemented differential reinforcement of alternative behavior.

Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder often require early intensive behavioral interventions (EIBI) to learn new skills and decrease maladaptive behaviors. Discrete trial instruction (DTI) is a strategy behavior analysts often incorporate in EIBI programs. Researchers have demonstrated that DTI is effective, but it requires intensive training for teachers to implement the strategy with high fidelity. Therefore, researchers have recently begun to investigate time efficient methods to train instructors. One method, e-learning, is a multi-media, computer-based training that typical includes audio narration, videos, and graphics. Although e-learning is a low-cost, time-efficient alternative to the traditional face-to-face training method, very little research has been conducted thus far to evaluate the effectiveness of e-learning for teaching behavioral intervention techniques. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the use of an e-learning course to teach university students to implement discrete trial instruction with children with autism. Four participants completed the e-learning training package and we found that all participants' fidelity when implementing DTI increased in role plays with an adult. All participants also were able to accurately implement DTI when teaching a child with autism and we observed generalization to untrained instructional programs. All participants were able to complete the training in an average of 2 hrs and ratings on the social validity questionnaire indicated that participants felt the training was interesting and useful when learning to implement DTI.

The focus of this symposium on interteaching is twofold; authors will present outcome data from different experimental manipulations in interteaching as well as highlight challenges and considerations for implementing interteaching and conducting applied research in the classroom. Lead by two highly published researchers in this area, the following investigations will be discussed. In the first presentation, the order of interteaching activities (e.g., preparation guide, pair discussion, clarifying lecture) was manipulated. That is, investigators assessed the timing of the clarifying lecture on student exam performance. Authors of the next presentation assessed the effects of submitting written responses to preparation questions on student quiz performance. Finally, in the third presentation, authors measured long-term retention of course material across three experimental conditions and found that interteaching lead to better retention than the other two conditions. Included in each presentation, these highly experienced authors will discuss implementation and research challenges in the context of their respective outcomes.

In the current study, we compared two versions of an interteaching course: one in which students engaged in pair discussion before hearing a lecture on the material (as proposed in the original conception) and one in which students listened to a lecture before participating in pair discussion. Students from two different psychological statistics courses participated. In both classes, we used the same instructor, prep guides, time allotted for pair discussions (35-40 min), lectures (about 20 min long), and exams. The classes did not differ on GPA, number of credit hours, or number of credit hours in psychology at the beginning of the terms. Regarding test performance, all of the tests for students who received the traditional method of the means of the raw test scores were higher on interteaching. The differences between the individual tests did not reach statistical significance; however, the total scores at the end of the semester were different between the two groups.

Often times when we behave, our behavior produces aversive consequences, consequences that leave us in an aversive state long after the consequence has already ended. In the presence of aversive conditions we have learned that continued responding leads to the termination of the aversive condition or the "solution" (i.e. problem solving). As this enduring aversive condition proceeds, we engage in various responses related to the event such as talking to others, talking to ourselves, and thinking related to the event. We finally come to emit a response that terminates this aversive condition and usually it is in the form of justifying our behavior. We will justify failing on a diet due to a bad day and smoking a cigarette when trying to quit smoking due to stress. As a result, the punishing effects of the consequence of the original event are diminished and therefore we are more likely to repeat the response. Therefore, continued responding related to an event alters the effects of the consequences of the original event. In this presentation, the author will explore the behavioral processes that lead us to engage in justification responses as well as the potential effects this process has on learning.

Behaviorism is the content area of the science of behavior that focuses primarily on theoretical and conceptual development of the science of behavior (Skinner, 1957; Day, 1980). Jacobs presents a case that the conceptualization of affordances deserves a home in behaviorism. When making this argument however it must be stated what the construct of affordances introduces to behaviorism that is not already inherit within the system. This becomes difficult given the multiple conceptual systems that are placed within the category of behaviorism (Skinner, 1974; O'Donohue & Kitchner, 1999). In this presentation, the author will focus on three behaviorisms: Radical behaviorism (Skinner's system), interbehavioral psychology (Kantor's system), and radical behaviorism/ probabilistic epigenetic psychology (Kuo's system) (Smith, 2001). Using these three approaches to behaviorism the author will demonstrate how the conceptual clarity provided by affordance is already inherit within these systems.

Skinner is known for being critical of pseudo-physiological theories of behavior. Those theories were described as being about a conceptual nervous system, in contrast to the real one. According to Skinner, some theories of the nervous system were being constructed on the basis of hypothetical entities inferred from behavioral data and not from physiology. One of the main targets of the conceptual nervous system criticism was Sherrington. Skinner believed that Sherringtons proposal of the synapse was made only on the basis of data about reflexes. In addition, for Skinner, Sherrington was also proposing that some properties of reflex relations were, in fact, properties of the synapse. However, Sherrington was right is his assumption: synapses are real, and the proposal of the concept was paramount for the development of neuroscience. Therefore, was Skinner justified in criticizing the way that Sherrington conducted his researches and developed his hypotheses? In order to answer this question I analyze the history behind Sherringtons proposal; that is, the elements that conducted him to the synaptic theory. I will argue that, although the conceptual nervous system criticism still remains valid, Skinner was being unfair, and simply wrong in some points, in his criticisms of Sherringtons work.

In his 1913 paper, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, John B. Watson argued that only observable behavior was suitable for study in a natural science. While in general agreement, many now believe this broad admonition was too restrictive and left out the investigation of private events. But, does it? If we tie one hand behind our backs and refuse to give causal status to private behavior, can we actually do a better job of accounting for private events? This paper will argue that this may indeed be the case, and provide some evidence from instructional programs that result in uniformly reported private experiences to support this contention. While acknowledging that there are indeed private events, perhaps the best way to understand them is to look at the programs required to establish the contingencies responsible for both the behavior and any accompanying private events. This would include both emotions and thought, and would be distinguished from behavior categorized as emotional or verbal.

Clinical Behavior Analysis (CBA) is the application of behavior analytic principles in attempts to understand and address forms of human suffering commonly labeled and treated as "mental disorders." Clinical behavior analysis differs from many dominant approaches to such difficulties by relying on functional analysis as the foundation of assessment, conceptualization, treatment planning, and treatment evaluation. This focus on identifying and intervening on the context in which problematic behaviors, and the relations among those behaviors emerge, has proved largely successful both in terms of effectiveness and in terms of the research program generated. For this reason, a number of "third wave behavior therapies" are becoming increasingly visible in non-behavior analytic circles. Still, many of the front line providers in traditional mental health settings struggle to consider psychological difficulties from a functional perspective. This panel will briefly discuss the history and current status of clinical behavior analysis. Then the audience and panelists will watch video footage of a therapeutic interaction and discuss possible functions client and therapist behaviors with a focus on how these might contribute to the development of an overall treatment plan.

Impairment in social interactions is one of the primary features of children with autism spectrum disorders. Research has demonstrated the importance of teaching skills associated with social development as well as the negative consequences that can persist if behaviors such as social skills are not addressed. The present study evaluated the effects of behavioral skills training (BST) on teaching four parents of children with an autism spectrum disorder to be social skills trainers. A nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across parent-child dyads was employed and direct-observation was used to assess both parent and child behaviors. Results from the current study demonstrated that all parent participants met criterion and improved their ability to correctly teach their children both trained and untrained social skills. Child participants also displayed an increase in the number of correctly performed steps associated with both the trained and untrained skills. Participants continued to display higher rates of correct responding at one-month follow-up sessions. The BST intervention used in the current study was highly accepted by participants and is likely to be viewed as a helpful, low-effort strategy that can lead to changes in the ways parents work with their children toward improving their social skills.

Parents of children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder face significant stressors and challenges; however, little research has investigated ways to effectively address their psychological distress and adjustment issues. This study used a between-subject and within-subject repeated measures design to test the effects of an 8-week Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) or treatment as usual (TAU) group. Treatment completers included 13 mothers in the ACT condition and 4 mothers in TAU. They were assessed three weeks before the intervention, one week after, and three months post-intervention. Limited data for between-group comparison demonstrated only a significant difference on the frequency scale of the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ), in which frequency of automatic thoughts increased for mothers in the TAU condition. For mothers in the ACT condition only, repeated measures ANOVAs revealed significant decreases from baseline to post-intervention on the Parental Distress Index of the Parental Stress Index-Short Form. Baseline to post-intervention decreases were seen for the GSI of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18), with some regression to baseline at follow-up but overall reductions maintained. Similar significant findings were also demonstrated with increases in the Positive Aspects of Caregiving and decreases in the ATQ total score and the believability scale. No statistically significant changes were seen on the Depression Index of BSI-18, the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire II, or the Five Facets of Mindfulness Questionnaire. In exploratory analysis, experiential avoidance correlated positively with multiple scales of a self-administered measure of executive functioning, including a measure of ones ability to shift attention rapidly. Additionally, mothers who reported significantly greater levels of externalizing problem behaviors also reported significantly higher degrees of parental distress. This research suggests that an ACT-based treatment delivered in group format may be of assistance in helping parents better adjust to the difficulties in raising children with autism.

More than 45 years of research in behavioral pharmacology has shown quite clearly that environmental variables are powerful determinants of the behavioral effects of drugs. Unfortunately, providing a coherent, behavior-analytic framework within which to characterize the roles of environmental context, behavioral history, schedule of reinforcement, type of reinforcer, and deprivation level (to name a few) has proven to be quite a challenge. It has been suggested that effects of these and the myriad other environmental determinants might be viewed within a conceptual framework referred to as "behavioral mechanisms" of drug action. This tutorial will describe the notion of behavioral mechanisms of drug action and review some of the sorts of data that have been said to illustrate them. The focus will be on the potential for quantitative models as a set of tools for elucidating behavioral mechanisms. The presentation will conclude by exploring the applied/translational implications of the concept.

Upon completion of a doctoral degree, many graduate students looking to further enhance their research or professional skills seek postdoctoral fellowship (postdoc) positions. Many sites offer these types of advanced training opportunities in applied behavior analysis and can provide critical training. Postdoctoral fellowships can offer invaluable supervision from experienced and licensed psychologists in the field. In addition, individuals are given additional time to refine specialized skills sets (e.g., grant-writing, research, teaching) before applying for a full-time position. However, the goals and expectations of postdocs are not always clearly understood and differ widely across programs. Some individuals pursue a postdoc position to enhance their clinical skills while others seek out additional research opportunities. The current panel will discuss and review important aspects of being a postdoc. Panelists will discuss their personal account of working as a postdoc or working as a training director within the field of applied behavior analysis. They will provide recommendations and advice to those looking to pursue a position as a postdoc. Panelists also will discuss experiences, goals, and the primary expectations involved in completing a fellowship.

Many of us are involved at one time or another in the process of developing training. Sometimes training is the right solution, and in other situations, another solution may have more impact. In this session, Innovative Learning Group's CEO Lisa Toenniges will pose two questions: (1) If training is the right solution, how do we build performance-based training? (2) If we are involved in a training project where a nontraining solution may help improve performance, how do we share these ideas throughout the instructional systems design (ISD) process? This interactive session will be based on a robust job aid that includes more than 100 best practices for infusing human performance technology into the ISD process.

Individuals involved in the process of developing training

Assessment and treatment of children with feeding issues has been a more frequent area of research in the behavioral literature. In the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, there have been over 40 articles published using experimental data, with nearly half of the publications a appearing within the last 8 years. A hallmark of the main figures presented include the use of nonstandard line graphs detailing a variety of dependent measures including: bites accepted, inappropriate mealtime behavior, problem behavior during meals, volume consumed and caloric oral intake. The current study evaluates the use of feeding data using nonstandard line graphs and Standard Celeration Charts (SCC) to ascertain differences in measurement and visual display systems that would be advantageous in the data analysis for children with feeding issues. The panel will focus on sharing published studies and the differences between these graphical displays. For one study data was also recoded for frequency analysis. The outcome of the comparisons as well as future extensions and applicability of the SCC in the area of feeding disorders will be discussed.

The effects of varying reinforcer rate and quantity on group and individual choice behavior was examined in three separate experiments. In each, five male Long Evans rats were tested in a free-ranging foraging procedure where food was delivered from two locations according to variable-time (VT) schedules. Relative rate and quantity varied over five ratios in each experiment either across components within a session, or across whole sessions. The Generalized Matching Law and the Ideal Free Distribution provided a good account of individual and group behavior, respectively. Individual and group sensitivity values tended to be similar and varied depending on the reinforcement dimension manipulated and level of variability in reinforcement contingencies. Competitiveness was assessed independently in two of the experiments and correlated with individual reinforcement rate and sensitivity. This paradigm provides a valuable tool for investigating determinants of group and individual choice and the relation between behavior at these different levels.

It is proposed to study the effect of the discriminative stimuli (DS) on rats foraging behavior in the radial arm maze on the floor. As a pilot study, it be used a T-maze to identify whether the DS and spatial changes (T-maze with two arms and without one arm) affect the choice of rats. After that, in a six arms radial maze on the floor, it will test whether DS and spatial changes (remove arms of the maze as condition of the study) affect the rats foraging behavior. In the pilot study the establishment of the lighting stimulus as DS was using a standard chamber of conditioning. The results of the pilot study in the T-maze with two arms, show an increase in the choice of the arm with the DS. However, in the T-maze without an arm, the choice of the arm with the DS decreases. Its possible that the T-maze configuration is the main factor for the choice of the rat. Those results are consistent with those obtained by Timberlakes research on locomotor search tactics. Those results suggest that the rats foraging behavior in the radial arm maze will be affected by the DS only if the radial arm maze has all arms, but if the maze does not have any arms the DS wont have effect and configuration of the maze could be the main factor for the rats foraging behavior.

An adaptation of the Sidman avoidance procedure was used with two male Betta splendens. The aversive stimulus consisted of 10 s of water flows delivered at regular intervals. The time elapsed between the presentation of consecutive water flows when no responses occurred was termed the flow-flow (FF) interval. The time elapsed between a response and a water flow was termed the response-flow (RF) interval. A response was defined as changing compartments in a shuttle tank. Avoidance responses were defined as changing compartments prior to the presentation of water flows, and escape responses were defined as changing compartments during the presentation of water flows. Data collection was carried out daily and sessions lasted 20 min. One fish received a number of sessions in which both the RF interval and the FF interval were 30 s; however, although escape behaviour occurred consistently, avoidance behaviour did not develop. Decreasing the FF interval to 5 s also did not produce consistent avoidance behaviour. However, when escape responses were punished with water flow there was a slight but consistent increase in avoidance behaviour. Currently, the second fish is receiving training with RF interval of 30 s and FF interval of 5 s. Results obtained up to this point show consistent escape, but very little avoidance responding. Thus, for both fish, shortening the FF interval produced no appreciable changes in avoidance responding. In the next stage for the second fish, escape responses will be punished with water flows. It is predicted that, as with the first fish, this will result in an increase in avoidance responding. In the final stage, punishment will be removed for both fish. Results will be discussed in terms of the interaction between escape and avoidance behaviour, and the effect of punishment of escape, on both of these types of behaviour in this species of fish.

Percentile reinforcement contingencies hold much promise as a tool for systematically shaping behavior in applied settings. When used to increase response duration or effort, however, percentile reinforcement contingencies may result in decreases in overall reinforcement rate as the duration of the response or the latency to respond increases. The decrease in overall reinforcement rate may undermine the effectiveness of the contingency. We are exploring if the effects of decreasing reinforcement rate can be offset by increasing reinforcement magnitude. Hold durations were reinforced with sucrose solution (10% vol/vol) if the duration of the response exceeded 16 of the previous 20 responses. The volume of sucrose solution delivered varied by condition over the following values: 56, 100, 300, or 560 l/presentation. The order of conditions was arranged according to a quasi-Latin square design and conditions were changed upon steady state performance. Preliminary data suggest that the magnitude of reinforcement has little or no systematic effect on hold duration, but has large effects on latency to respond. When shifting from a high magnitude condition (300 or 560 l) to a low magnitude condition (56 or 100 l) latency to respond increases drastically. Conversely, when shifting from a low magnitude condition to a high magnitude condition, latency to respond decreases drastically.

The Iterated Prisoner`s Dilemma Game is an instrument used in the study of social behavior. The game involves a situation in which two participants must simultaneously choose between two alternatives in each trial: cooperate and compete. The arrangement of the participants` responses generate different individual outcomes. This interdependency between the individuals` responses characterizes the social behavior. For the study of metacontingencies the INPDG has been used with the addition of a cultural contingency contingent on the emission of certain arrangements of responses. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of the cultural contingency on the selection of different arrangements of responses. The role of communication between participants and of sequential or simultaneous choices in the acquisition of the target arrangement has also been verified. For this purpose, four groups of three participants were formed: Group with Communication and sequential choices (CC-SQ), Group with communication and simultaneous choices (CC-SM); Group without communication and with sequential choices (SC-SQ), and Group without communication and with simultaneous choices (SC-SM). The results indicate the selection of the different culturants by all groups. It suggests that communication is the most important factor in facilitating the acquisition of the target culturant in all conditions.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the relationship between the hyperbolic curve and preference reversal using the discounting account, in which several equal delays have been added to two outcomes. The scope of this experiment was mainly to investigate preference reversal in a singular concurrent choice setting, in order to look at the actual delay-difference (in addition to the relative delay-differences), and relate it to the shift between rule-governed behavior and contingency-shaped behavior. The participants were grouped to 3 conditions, and tested individually on a portable PC. Their task was to collect points. Initially the participants received 1 point for a response to A, and 20 points for a response to B, either reward received after 0.3 sec. For every additional B-response the B-delay increased by an additional 0.3 sec. Hence, A represented a smaller-sooner alternative, and B a larger-later alternative. 14 out of 17 participants displayed a clear abrupt preference reversal as B reached a sufficiently large delay. The results support the idea that hyperbolic discounting in human subjects is related to preference reversal and a shift between rule-governed behavior and contingencies. Preferences seem to reverse as the delay difference between the options increase, regardless of the conditions of added delay.

Interest in temporal discounting (devaluation of future reinforcers as a function of delay) among researchers and clinicians is growing with the increasing recognition that a high rate of temporal discounting is associated with a range of unhealthy behavior patterns including, but not limited to, drug abuse, overeating, and gambling. However, the time required to accurately assess temporal discounting rate is limiting in some contexts. We developed a novel, flexible, and easily administered Abbreviated Temporal Discounting (ATD) task that accurately measures temporal discounting rate with just five questions. This task was administered to college undergraduates along with a more traditional adjusting amount task. We found high concordance between the two tasks and no significant difference in overall discount rate obtained. The ABT was much faster than the adjusting amount procedure with an average completion time of around 25 seconds. We also used the ABT to replicate the amount effect often seen with temporal discounting, finding that $1,000,000 was discounted at a significantly lower rate than $1000, which was discounted at a significantly lower rate than $10 (both p < 0.001). These data indicate the ATD task is an accurate and rapid measure of temporal discounting.

A stimulus can belong to two or more different classes according to the context. Sidman provided a theoretical account on how this process can happen in conditional discriminations. So far, there are little evidence that a stimulus can belong simultaneously to two classes according contextual stimuli. We provide a theoretical analysis of how this can happen and provide some data that show this phenomenon. Several adults learned contextually controlled stimulus classes in which a contextual stimulus indicated some stimulus relations (e.g., A1-B1-C1) and another contextual stimulus indicated different stimulus relations (e.g., A1-B2-C3). Subsequent emergent probes indicated whether the participants had formed simultaneously two classes. Some participants did, but other participants did not. Thus, the results indicated that the process is possible, but the outcome is due very likely to specific learning factors. We discuss how the learning procedures may result in contextually-controlled equivalence classes and how to improve the procedures to facilitate this phenomenon.

There are only a few studies on stimulus equivalence and short response latencies. All of them start baseline training without restrictions in available time. In the present study, three adults received initial training with rapid responding. Limited hold (LH) for both sample and comparison were titrated down to an asymptotic level in an identity matching-to-sample task. Afterwards, these short LH time windows were used in conditional discrimination training with arbitrary stimuli. A concurrent one-to-many training structure, three classes with three members, with 0 s delay was employed. This phase was terminated after 720 trials. The next phase was another titrating phase where errors below 90% increased the LH with 100ms to an asymptotic level. All calculations of LH and changes in LH during the experiment were done automatic by the software. All three participants reached steady state as defined by the software. One participant reached the asymptotic level. Results showed that none of the participants were able to form conditional discriminations with short response latencies conditions. When given more time to respond all participants established conditional discriminations. As can be seen in Table 1, only one participant passed the test for derived relations on the first test. One participant required two tests. And the last participant failed three tests for derived relations

Recent studies used a semantic differential (SD) to verify transfer of meaning across equivalence classes, each containing a meaningful stimulus, a face expressing an emotion. These studies provided additional evidence that stimuli in equivalence classes may differ in their degree of relatedness. The present study used an SD to verify relatedness as a function of amount of training and response topography. Participants learned AB, BC, CD, and DE conditional relations, with three sets of stimuli, where the B stimuli were pictures of faces expressing happiness, anger, and neutrality, respectively, and the remaining stimuli were abstract pictures. Seven college students selected stimuli using a mouse and six responded pressing keys on the keyboard. Three participants with the keyboard and four with the mouse had the number of training trials doubled. After showing equivalence class formation, they evaluated the D stimuli with an SD. Data confirmed previous results from our laboratory showing that overtraining increases relatedness for participants responding with the mouse. Surprisingly, however, results appeared to be reversed for participants responding with the keyboard. Further research is necessary to confirm the role of response topography in modulating effects of amount of training on relatedness of stimuli in equivalence classes.

The Responding by Exclusion (RE) may result in rapid acquisition of new arbitrary stimulus-stimulus relations and have important educational relevance. This study aimed to verify the occurrence of RE and learning outcomes of new relations between signs of the Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) and pictures in deaf individuals with low verbal repertoires. Participants were seven prelingual deaf persons, 5-27 years old, enrolled in a program aimed to teach a conventional language (LIBRAS). An initial assessment evaluated receptive sign vocabulary trough a validated Brazilian test and several types of stimulus-stimulus relations through matching tasks. The main procedure was teaching a baseline of conditional relations between signs and pictures, followed by blocks of probing trials in matching format that evaluated RE, learning outcomes, and control trials. Probe trials also evaluated the emergence of gestural naming. All participants showed emergent matching in most exclusion trials. They showed high percentage of responding consistent with learning outcome in one type of learning trials (Type 1), but showed chance responding in the other two. For some participants, the performances in the naming probes indicated functional independence of both matching and verbal responding. These results extended previous findings on emergent mapping to deaf persons and sign-pictures relations.

It is relevant to determine the best training structures to teach concepts or categories to humans with special learning needs. One important parameter that determines the training structure is the number of nodal stimuli. A node is a stimulus that is linked to at least two other stimuli during training; as the number of nodes increases the relatedness between emergent transitive relations decreases. Several studies have reported this effect by analyzing reaction times and accuracy; participants require more time to respond to more distant stimulus relations and more trials to master criterion during testing. We analyze different training structures with a neuro-computational model that works with one cortical layer and one hippocampus module to produce a mapping of the relatedness between the members of a class. The study by Spencer and Chase (1996) was simulated to evaluate the model fitness. The model simulated human performance by taking more cycles to respond to more distant stimulus relations, and provided a quantitative description of the relatedness inside equivalence classes. Lesioning the model produced a decreased capability for learning stimulus classes. The model can be used to predict the training structures that generate class formation with the highest relatedness between the class members.

In The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis (1938), Skinner stressed correlation as a substitute for cause. Skinner promoted a descriptive (a running account of a sample of behavior as it unfolds itself in some frame of reference) and experimental science of behavior. He recognized that prediction and control of behavior requires finding variables of which behavior is a function (functional relationships), that is, controlling variables. We use the mathematical distinction between relations and functions to illustrate the logic of experimentation and behavioral control and show how correlational data are indeterminate as a foundation for selecting behavior change conditions. Experimentally obtained functional relations, on the other hand, identify treatment conditions that yield more predictable outcomes and superior behavior control. We address implications for descriptive and experimental clinical behavioral assessment and stress that the purpose of functional assessment is to determine the probability of behavior and is not a guarantee that behavior will occur.

Accreditation, certification, and licensure are three ways to place and gauge certain standards on a program or individual. Often these standards are minimum requirements of education in a classroom or field setting. Educational standards strive to create consistency and transparency across programs and people, providing a way by which a discipline can assess its members and itself. Within the field of behavior analysis, there exists many accreditation, and certification standards for education. This study limits its scope to ABAI program accreditation, specifically education standards for behavior analytic theory and philosophy. Of the 25 ABAI accredited programs, six did not report requiring a course in theory or philosophy to earn a degree. To better understand what type of education behavior analysts are receiving and how this education is related to an overall interest and knowledge of this subject, an online survey was distributed to behavior analysts holding graduate degrees. The results of this survey have helped to elucidate the contact that graduate students have with theoretical and philosophical principles of behavior analysis. It remains to be seen if there is an association between academic standards and overall knowledge or interest in a subject.

John Broadus Watson promoted great changes in the psychology of his time and outlined the behaviorist approach, which remains until today a fruitful field in experimental psychology. The relevance of this research is based on the historical relevance of the work of John Broadus Watson and lies, more specifically, in a better understanding of his appropriation of the conditioned reflex and its impact to his theoretical propositions. Although introductions to John Broadus Watsons behaviorism may describe it as the psychology of conditioned reflex, it had not been so from the beginning. At the time of the publication of his 1913s treatise and in the next years, there were two major categories which accounted for the behavior of an organism: instinct and habit. Instincts were philogenetic (hereditary) modes of response, whereas habits were ontogenetic (acquired) modes of response. At first, Watson proposed that evolutionary mechanisms explained instincts and two factors called frequency and recency explained habit formation. The concept of conditioned reflex, which was first mentioned by Watson in 1914, was incorporated only gradually: initially as one among the existing experimental methods of investigation, then as the main method and finally as a more solid explanation to habit formation. As the conditioned reflex gained space, the proportion of behavior which Watson considered to be instinct decreased and he became much closer to the environmentalist position which behaviorism was and sometimes still is criticized of. This will be illustrated with a chronological comparison of Watsons quotations regarding conditioned reflex and themes which give rise to the debate nature versus nurture (such as talent and vocation).

Behaviorism is often regarded as the philosophy of the science of behavior. With this loose definition there is room for multiple systems to develop. In the current theoretical realm of the philosophy of the science of behavior there are several such systems. The current paper will address the critical features of each system and how they interact with the various other systems. The core features that are evident in each system will are presented and a demarcation line between behavioral versus non-behavioral philosophy is chased. A graphical display that outlines each system is presented; it is the hope of the authors that this graphic will become a tool for future students of behavior to interact with the theoretical/conceptual approaches that have shaped modern behavior analysis.

The purpose of the project is to conduct a multi-site efficacy trial of the Class-wide Function-related Intervention Teams Program (CW-FIT) for elementary school students including students with and at risk for Emotional/Behavior Disorders (EBD). The CW-FIT Program includes four elements designed from hundreds of empirical studies: (1) teaching socially-appropriate communicative skills, (2) differential reinforcement using an interdependent group contingency, (3) extinction or eliminating potential reinforcement (attention, escape) for problem behavior, and (4) Tier 2 using self-management, help cards, and functional assessment. The current study is based on strong prior evidence of the efficacy of the CW-FIT intervention in seventeen schools. Schools in Missouri, Utah, and Tennessee are participating. Initial findings from year 1 are similar to prior CW-FIT studies, and indicate improved on task and decreased disruptive behaviors for classes and students. Figures present data for classes at the Missouri site for four third grade, two first, and two kindergarten students during baseline and during the CW-FIT intervention. Data will be presented from the three national sites for fifteen intervention classrooms and for individual students.

This poster presents the effects of video modeling with iPod touch on verbal, play-related statements of four children with autism. Participants were three boys and one girl, aged four to five years, attending public preschools in Iceland. During video-modeling, participants were shown a one-minute video-clip on iPod touch where a peer model played with two peers using toys that typically were associated with frequent verbal play-related interactions in preschool children. Subsequently, participants were observed for 5 minutes in the same settings as shown in the video-clips. Single-subject-multiple baselines across participants showed that video modeling increased the frequency of play-related statements. When using video modeling the frequency of words increased on average from 8 to 49 words per five minute play session and the frequency of playsounds increased on average from 4 to 15 per five minute play session. Increased play-related statements generalized to play with other peers, to playing with a larger group of peers and to the typical preschool environment. Increases in verbal play-related statements were maintained six to seven weeks after the end of intervention. Results indicate that video modeling can be an effective and relatively simple way to increase verbal play-related statements of children with autism toward their typically developing peers.

Student problem behavior probably presents the biggest obstacle to inclusion in Iceland. In this study, a function-based behavior support plan with increasingly higher performance goals was used to resolve persistent disruptive behaviors of an 8-yrs-old student in a general education classroom. Despite previous interventions, his behavior was so disruptive that he was spending an increasing amount of time in a segregated special education classroom and was to be placed there altogether. Several versions of the behavior support plan were implemented by the general education teacher, following of which the frequency of disruptive behavior decreased from an average of 43 to 2 per 20 minute observation intervals and on-task behavior increased from an average of 69% to 95% in the general education classroom. Interviews with student and teacher 6 months post intervention revealed great satisfaction with the process and that the student was nearly completely in the general education classroom, displaying few disruptive behaviors.

The current study evaluated the relative effects of two instructional design technologies on student performance in an introductory psychology class. The manipulation compared the effectiveness of two types of supplementary weekly quizzes, graded based on completion, on student performance during weekly chapter quizzes and the final exam. The supplementary quizzes were given in WebCampus or Learning Curve. The publisher of the psychology textbook developed the latter and the study was conducted under a contractual agreement to provide data-based recommendations on its effectiveness in improving student performance. Learning Curve was designed as an adaptive learning system, whereby questions were selected during the quiz based on student performance. Using an AB/A design, wherein section 001 received A (WebCampus) during the first half of the semester before exposure to B (Learning Curve) during the last half of the semester. Moreover, section 002 received A (WebCampus) throughout the entire semester as a control group. Results indicate that, though a fewer percentage of students utilized Learning Curve, the latter program seems to differentiate performance on weekly quizzes more than WebCampus. Learning Curve, though aesthetically appealing and adaptive in nature, marginally improved the weekly quiz performance of students when compared to WebCampus.

Behavior analytic research in Day Cares and Preschools and with Preschool-aged children has been conducted for over 40 years. While much of this research focuses on individual interventions and/or interventions targeted at children with disabilities, there is a subset of this research that targets the behavior of the entire classroom and attempts to improve the service delivery for young children receiving care outside the home. However, there is very little research to be found on how to transfer these technologies to the Day Care and Preschool providers and staff that could actually implement them in their classrooms, and by extension, very little data on the long-term effects, maintenance, and generalization of the skills taught using them. As an example, a search for Day Care or Preschool-based research in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis will be analyzed by topic, target population, year of publication, and dissemination and maintenance using mediators. This will illustrate that the breadth of knowledge regarding effective ways to run a classroom for Preschool-aged children is currently being either under-utilized or under-reported, and that steps should be taken to disseminate these technologies to those that can apply them.

The present study used a multiple baseline design across 5 participants, who are wards of the state, to determine if language skills would be increased by implementing Headsprout, an internet-based computer program for teaching reading. Participants experienced baseline conditions for varying amounts of time. Baseline included the Preschool Language Scale- 4th Edition (PLS-4) and the Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS). Three participants were exposed to the Headsprout program for early readers. The PLS-4 was administered before intervention and at the end of intervention, and the DIBELS was administered before, during, and after intervention. Two participants only did the assessments without Headsprout intervention. The results of this study suggest that exposure to Headsprout reading programs may contribute to increased language skills in the areas of DIBELS percentile, correct initial sounds per minute, and number of words used per minute. The two participants exposed to baseline only showed little or no improvement in their DIBELS percentile, and little or no improvement in the correct initial sounds per minute and number of words used per minute.

Noncompliance is one of the most serious and frequent behavior problems to affect children (Christophersen, Barnard, Ford and Wolf, 1976). The role of compliance in the classroom is particularly important to ensure effective learning (Martens, Kelly, 1993). One's inability to comply can limit instructional opportunities (Martens, Kelly, 1993) and decrease academic learning time (Fisher et al., 1980), which can negatively influence academic achievement. One proven method to increase compliance is an 'errorless compliance' approach which is a systematic way of introducing daily classroom requests based on their probabilities of completion (Ducharme, Sanjuan & Drain, 2007) . High probability requests are introduced, and compliance to those requests are reinforced. As compliance with high probability requests improves more difficult tasks are introduced until the subject is able to comply with all given requests. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of an errorless compliance approach within a classroom setting and determine if compliance will generalize to untargeted requests by conducting multiple probes prior to the initiation of each intervention phase. Participants were two boys with developmental disabilities in a transitional second/third grade classroom . Results showed that both participants were able to increase compliance from baseline to intervention phases. As successively lower probability requests were introduced across four phases, compliance remained high for both participants. Results from probes showed that generalization of compliance from targeted to untargeted requests were successful for participant 2, but not for participant 1.

The majority of children with autism receive skill acquisition programming through educational systems provided by professionals who are not trained to implement structured, behavior analytic teaching procedures. Behavior analysts working in schools often spend their time training special education personnel to implement these teaching procedures in order for students to receive quality programming to address skill deficits in language, communication, academics, and adaptive skills. Various training methods are employed to ensure high levels of procedural fidelity that will in turn result in efficient skill acquisition for students. In this study, public school teachers and paraprofessionals without prior training in behavior analysis received didactic and in-vivo training and consultation. A multiple baseline across skills design will be used to show procedural fidelity for each aspect of structured teaching trained in isolation. Data show that procedural fidelity with all aspects did not meet mastery criteria following didactic training alone; with in-vivo consultation focused on individual aspects of the teaching strategy teachers as well as paraprofessionals implemented the strategies with over 90% fidelity across skills. With all classroom staff effectively trained, including paraprofessionals, students received increased structured teaching time within their community educational system to address critical skill deficits.

As the rates of Autism Spectrum Disorders rise, so does the demand for trained treatment providers of behavioral intervention methods, yet few formal training programs are available for paraprofessionals. This study evaluated portions of an online training program that included video demonstration of discrete-trial training methods, as well as simulation exercises that allowed practice with a virtual onscreen child. The objective of the study was to determine whether online-training knowledge acquired by seven experimentally naive college-student participants would translate into proficient live skill performance. During baseline, participants were required to teach an object identification task through several simulated discrete-trial training sessions, with an experimenter acting as a confederate child. Following baseline, participants completed online training that focused on the key components of discrete-trial training methods. During the post-training phase, participants conducted six more simulated discrete-trial training sessions. The dependent measure was the percentage of correctly performed components within each discrete-trial training session. The results showed dramatic improvement from the baseline to post-training phases, as evaluated with a multiple-baseline-across-participants design. This study suggests that video- and simulation-based instruction may be an effective tool for establishing skill-based performance in those learning to implement discrete-trial training.

Many human service agencies incorporate methods, and procedures of applied behavior analysis (ABA) due to its effectiveness in reducing disruptive behaviors (Eldevik et al, 2009; Jahr, 1998; Lindsley, (1996); Newsome, & Rincover, 1989; Rogers, & Vismara, (2008). However, staff members working with persons with intellectual disabilities may resort to applying a wide variety of treatments to reduce their client's self injurious behaviors or other undesired behaviors without the integrity, or accuracy of the required skills (see Austin, Carr & Agnew 1999). In spite of the recognized increase advances in staff training techniques and methods, shortcomings are revealed when staff members are observed in their regular work environments on regular basis (e.g., Crow & Synder, 1998; Parsons et al 1993; Richman et al 1988; Repp et al 1987). Too often, staff may start their jobs with minimum or in some cases without sufficient training preparing them to perform their jobs with integrity and reliability (e.g., Demchak & Browder, 1990; Wolery, 1991; Wareen et al., 1986). Consequently, several researchers (e.g., Lovaas, & Smith 1998; Dibs , & Sturmey, 2007) have suggested a greater emphasis on developing more effective staff training programs. Jarr,. (1998), Reid and Green (1990) and, Reid, Parsons, Green, & Schepis, (1991); have stressed that the importance of staff training is "one of the most critical determinants of the effectiveness of human service systems" (1991, p.71). Discrete trial teaching (DTT) is an example of one common ABA procedure that has been shown to be an effective teaching method for children diagnosed with autism or other developmental disability (see Leaf, & McEachin, 1999; Smith, 2001; Sundberg, & Partington, 1999). However, training programs and protocols that are time and cost consuming, or labor intensive and require several hours of oversight are unlikely to be adapted by most human services. This requires a constant search on the part of some of human agencies to find efficient training methods that are cost effective and at the same time attain rapid changes and results. Therefore, to achieve the best results, training should be practical, effective and efficient for both the trainer and trainee. This poster will evaluate the conceptual concerns addressing the integrity of discrete trial training, and will propose some potential avenues for future investigations.

The development of equivalence classes and the role of the echoic repertoire were tested in pupils with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. The study tested whether participants could pass match-to-sample stimulus equivalence tests using contrived stimuli. For those who failed to demonstrate match-to-sample relations (that is, demonstrate the emerging relation without direct instruction), the role of the echoic repertoire was reviewed (the participants were taught to tact a common name to each member of a stimulus class outside the match-to-sample format, then were required to echo the name of the stimuli whilst matching to sample). Upon mastery of the echoic responding the equivalence relations were tested. All participants were tested for symmetry of the contrived stimuli (B to A and C to A); some participants were tested for transitivity (B to C and C to B). The role of the echoic within the area of stimulus equivalence and the development of untrained conditional relations are discussed.

Relational Frame Theory provides a modern, data-driven account of human language and cognition that stems from the concept of derived stimulus relations. In order to bolster the claim that the act of framing events relationally is generalized operant behavior, the current study utilized multiple exemplar instruction implemented intraverbally with typically developing children. Comparative frames of faster-than/slower-than and bigger-than/smaller-than were probed during the pretest. During the instructional phase, only comparative frames of faster-than/slower-than were trained. Posttest probes tested for the emergence of novel responding with bigger-than/smaller-than comparative frames.

Multiple exemplar training involves teaching one exemplar to mastery and probing for generalization across untrained stimuli. Training with additional exemplars continues until the results of generalization probes indicate high levels of correct responding across all untrained exemplars. Pervious research shows that multiple exemplar training produces stimulus generalization after teaching just a few exemplars. However, it remains unclear whether this procedure is more efficient than teaching multiple exemplars at the same time. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the most efficient instructional method that produced stimulus generalization. In one condition, we trained three exemplars of a stimulus simultaneously and probed for generalization to three untrained exemplars. In a second condition, we trained one exemplar at a time and conducted probes to measure generalization to not-yet trained exemplars (i.e., multiple exemplar training). We compared mastery and generalization across conditions within an adapted alternating treatments design embedded within a modified multiple probe design with on child diagnosed with autism. The results showed that training multiple stimuli simultaneously was more efficient instructional strategy than multiple exemplar training.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of escape extinction on the number of bites accepted by a two-year old boy with acid reflux. The effects of escape extinction on oral intake and refusal behavior was compared both pre- and post-fundoplication. The results indicated no significant difference in the effects of escape extinction pre-fundoplication compared to post-fundoplication. Escape extinction was effective at increasing the number of bites consumed by the participant while simultaneously decreasing the participants refusals and negative behavior. Escape extinction was conducted along with texture fading. We began with pureed food and moved to fork-mashed foods. Results will be discussed in terms of conducting this type of feeding intervention in different environments with the parent as the therapist. Interobserver agreement was collected for 54% of the sessions with an average of 99.2% agreement.

Food selectivity has been reported in individuals diagnosed with autism. Food selectivity can lead to decreased food consumption during mealtimes. Differential reinforcement and escape extinction are common behavioral treatments used to decrease food selectivity (Allison et al., 2012; Anderson & McMillian, 2001) and increase food consumption. Although, the use of a visual cue, to increase or decrease a variety of behaviors, has been well-documented in the literature (Waters, Lerman, & Hovanetz, 2009), the use of a visual cue to increase food consumption and decrease food selectivity has been under reported in the literature. A changing criterion design was used to decrease food selectivity and increase food consumption in an individual diagnosed with autism. A reinforcer following consumption of a specified number of bites and bite board signaling the required number of bites, to be consumed comprised the treatment package. Following stable and increased bite consumption, a component analysis was conducted to determine whether the reinforcer, visual cue, or both were the active components in the treatment package.

Delayed introduction of regular texture solid foods may compromise the development of a child's oral-motor skills. The opposite may also apply: a child's ability to consume higher texture foods depends on her oral-motor skills level (e.g., strength of chewing, tongue lateralization, swallowing ability), and children with poor oral-motor skills may not be able to consume regular texture solid foods. In this presentation, we will discuss data from 2 children that were solely consuming liquids and pureed foods prior to treatment. Janie was 2 year and 7 months old at the onset of treatment. She had a history of severe gastroesophageal reflux and most of her caloric intake was from a high calorie beverage (Bright Beginnings®) and a calorie booster (Duocal®). Janie also consumed a few stage 1 jarred baby foods and smooth yogurts. Janie engaged in packing behavior even with smooth foods and liquids. She also retracted her tongue at the presence of the spoon. Samuel was 3 years and 8 months old when treatment was initiated. Most of Samuel's caloric intake was from a high calorie beverage (Ensure® Plus). He also consumed pureed oatmeal, pudding, and yogurt. Samuel had a history of severe gagging and gagged frequently with these 3 foods he consumed. Furthermore, he was not able to perform multiple swallows prior to treatment. Both children consistently consumed all regular texture foods (including mixed textures) at the end of 18 months (Janie) and 17 months (Samuel). Foods were introduced using a developmental progression and oral motor skills were increased by various oral motor exercises. Foods introduced per month per child will be displayed.

Job training for adults with disabilities to become competitively employed is a growing field of interest for behavior analysts and other professionals who support individuals with disabilities. Within the field of job development there are several approaches to assisting and training consumers to attain jobs. Many programs attempt to train job searching skills to their consumers. The current project aimed to train job searching skills to the consumers in the context of a 30 hour per week job training program that lasted for 12 weeks. A self-management program was used to assist the consumers in learning how to manage their own job search. The data and limitations to the current program will be discussed. The importance of empirically addressing the benefits of self-management for the population of developmentally delayed adults and future directions will also be discussed.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders have a higher prevalence of comorbid sleep disturbance as compared with non-disabled children of the same age (Liu et al., 2006). Although evidence-based behavior-analytic interventions can be readily implemented by parents and caregivers in the home setting, direct observation data is often difficult to capture for a variety of reasons. Caregiver sleep-checks are not only demanding on their own sleep schedules, but can inadvertently cause sleep interference for the child. Video monitoring and recording via an internet-integrated webcam system offers the potential for non-intrusive real-time data-collection for intervention evaluation and progress-monitoring. In this study, an infrared webcam programmed to detect motion and sound was utilized to monitor the sleep behavior of an eight-year-old child with autism with frequent night wakings, including disruptive behavior (e.g. screaming, throwing items, leaving bed, leaving room). A multi-component treatment package including sleep hygiene supports and a bedtime pass was implemented by her parents through a conjoint behavioral consultation model. Implications for the clinical utility as well as the experimental rigor of using web-based video monitoring to evaluate behavioral treatment of sleep disorders will be discussed.

People diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) typically have deficits and delays related to cognitive function and language, both receptive and expressive (DSMIVTR; 2000). A number of interventions based upon the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) have been shown to be effective in the acquisition of communication skills and developmental improvement (Jensen & Sinclair, 2002. In some children, the difficulties in acquiring communications skills may be exacerbated by the fact that the family may speak more than one language in the child's home. The present study sought to determine if there are differences in acquisition of receptive labels when taught in Spanish, English, or using a combination of the two languages. An errorless teaching strategy was used in all conditions and data on the acquisition of target responses were evaluated in two children with autism (ages 2.7 & 2.10). Results indicated that the language targets taught separately (one language) were acquired at roughly the same rate. However when targets were taught across languages (both English and Spanish), nearly twice as many instructional sessions were required to meet mastery criteria.

This presentation will explore a model that utilizes single subject methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of medications on behaviours commonly associated with ASD including aggression, self-injury, stereotypy, and disruption. The model presented is the outcome of multiple case studies over the course of 12 months. Successes and pitfalls will be highlighted with an eye toward improving collaboration between ABA providers and physicians.

The effectiveness and acceptability of applied behavior analysis (ABA) for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has not been systematically examined in African American (AA) families, leaving generalizability to this group largely unknown. In this study, three AA mothers of children with ASD and difficult behavior were taught to implement behavior management strategies based on differential reinforcement (DR) at home during a difficult daily routine. Children were ages 7, 15, and 17 and behavior problems included tantrums, off-task behavior/prompt dependence, and rapid eating. Each mother was taught to implement a DR-based intervention with her child. The effectiveness of the interventions was assessed in a multiple-baseline-across-participants design, while acceptability of interventions was assessed through rating scales and qualitative interviews. The data indicate that the DR-based interventions were effective in reducing problem behavior; however parents maintained interventions with varying degrees of fidelity. Interviews generally support the acceptability of the interventions from the perspective of AA mothers of children with ASD with some feedback for how the interventions could be made more acceptable to families.

A Peer Model Education Curriculum (PMEC) has been developed to teach neurotypical peer models strategies for coaching social skills in peers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The aim of the curriculum is to increase interactions with peers with ASD, prompt targeted skills, and praise successful application of these skills. This study examines the relationship between the use of the PMEC and corresponding changes in targeted skills for middle school peer models. The skills include initiating verbal interactions, prompting, and delivering verbal praise. The peer models learn the skills during small group instruction and then have opportunities to interact with peers with ASD during periods of unstructured playtime. A consolidated score of peers behavior is tracked using direct observation with a multiple baseline design across target behaviors. Peer models receive performance feedback based on their performance in the three behaviors. In addition, the participants scores on the Social Skills Improvement System are assessed at the beginning and the end of the study. Implications for practical application in schools and clinical settings and directions for future research are discussed.

This paper described a six months' action research of applied behavior analysis for 4 prekindergarten children with ASD and a 11-teachers team in Chongqing, China, and a professional team in Taiwan. The research presents an operation model which a professor and 3 senior specialists from Taiwan support to promote ABA to the autism research center in Mainland China. The purpose of this action research was to explore the problems occurred during the process of development of ABA in mainland, China, and to find out scientific-based strategies to solve the problems. The results of this research were discussed in five perspectives. And the training skills improvement of the team in Chongqing Normal University, and the achievement gains of four children would also display in this research.

The aim of this study was to show the effect of using video modeling and reinforcement procedures to train perspective-taking skills to adolescent whit autism. We replicated and extended Leblanc, Coates Daneshvar, Charlop-Cristy, Morris, & Lancaster (2003) study. Particularly we trained generalization skills using multiple exemplar training. A pre-post design was implemented. Initially a pre-assessment with the Basic Language and Learning Skills Revised (ABLLS-R) was conducted to select the participant. During the pretest phase the Sally and Anne task was conducted to evaluate the perspective taking skills. Then participant was trained on the perspective-taking using the hide and seek and smarties tasks with different stimuli followed by generalization training and posttest. The dependent variable was perspective taking skill as measured by the performance on different trials with the two experimental tasks presented randomly. During training the participant was exposed to the video that contain the two tasks with the different stimuli; then the correct response was modeled by the experimenter followed by participants independent response. The criterion for training was 80% in both tasks. Immediately after the participant was exposed to the generalization test with a new set of stimuli. Finally a posttest was presented to evaluate the perspective-taking skills. Preliminary results replicated LeBlanc et al. (2003) study. In the conclusion we discuss the findings of the study and the benefits on multiple exemplar training for perspective-taking skills.

There are a variety of communication devices shown to be effective for increasing the (functional/adaptive) communication of individuals with developmental disabilities. However there is little research investigating how to identify an individuals preference for a specific communication modality. The current study examined methods for determining preference between three picture-based communication systems (i.e., pictorial communication board, electronic communication system, and functional communication cards) for an adolescent diagnosed with autism; the participant had no prior history of communicating independently with the devices. Initially, a multielement design was used to evaluate the participants levels of independent responding for each modality; following communication training sessions the devices were offered concurrently to evaluate preference when response effort was low (i.e., required only one step to receive reinforcement). After the participant showed variability in responding for selecting each device, the level of response effort was increased (i.e., required two steps to receive reinforcement) for each device, and the communication devices were again offered concurrently to evaluate how the participant distributed his responding. With the response effort increase the participant showed a clear preference for one communication device. Findings and limitations as they related to identifying preferences for communication devices among individuals with disabilities are discussed.

We evaluated the effects of a punishment based behavior intervention to reduce the frequency of oral self-stimulation including various topographies (i.e. mouthing non-edible objects and body parts) with four children diagnosed with severe developmental delays. Prior to the intervention, baseline data indicated all four subjects were engaging in a high frequency of mouthing behavior. This study used an oral taste aversion behavior intervention to reduce the frequency of oral self-stimulation. The punishment procedure included swiping the inside bottom lip with natural taste aversive substances- using a multiple baseline across subjects design. The data shows that with the intervention in place, the frequency of the mouthing behavior significantly decreased to lower levels. This gave evidence to suggest that the taste aversion intervention effectively functioned as a form of punishment, reducing oral self-stimulatory behavior in the form of mouthing. This study did not take into account the systematic altering of the natural taste aversives or alternative methods of delivery.

Students with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) showed some difficulties about social interaction especially the emotional expression. In recent year, some researchers argued that no difference between students with ASD and students with typical development in the emotion understanding tasks. We thought that students with ASD were not reinforced to express emotion words in daily situation. In this study, two students with ASD participated, who had difficulties to express emotion words. We developed some four-frame cartoons included change of feeling situation. These students were required to tact each frame as many as they could. In training phase, we introduced (1) the list of emotion words as prompt, and (2) the graph that shows the number of emotion words they said. As results, all students said more emotion words about four-frame cartoon in probe than baseline. Moreover, the number of new emotion words that are not included in the list was increased.

This multiple baseline design across participants study uses a prompting hierarchy intervention to increase responses to protodeclarative joint attention bids in young children with autism. The discrete trial intervention, as described in Whalen and Schreibman (2003), occurs during unstructured time where the childs attention is directed toward an object with which they are not currently engaged. Ten prompting levels are utilized, including putting the childs hand on object, tapping object, showing object, pointing to object and having the child follow a gaze toward the object with and without a verbal prompt. Baseline data were collected for two weeks prior to intervention, and a minimum of 8 data points for each prompting level was collected for each participant. During baseline, rates of responding ranged from 63-100% accuracy, with a mean of 90.6% accuracy across all participants for the highest-prompted condition. For the gaze-directed, least-prompted condition, rates of responding ranged from 0-25% accuracy, with a mean of 2.7% accuracy. Preliminary analysis of intervention data shows increased successful joint attention across prompting levels when reinforcement is incorporated. Interrater reliability and generalization with the childs natural caregiver data will be obtained prior to the conclusion of this study.