Association for Behavior Analysis International

Revive and refresh from the busy conference with this yoga session open to all. No experience necessary to participate. A certified instructor will take you through this 1 hour long mixed level yoga class. Bring a mat or towel and wear comfortable clothes (no shoes).

One key to the success of our students at the Centro Ann Sullivan in Peru- CASP is what we call the "Power of Two," where families and professionals work as a team. Dr. Mayo founded The School of Families of CASP 39 years ago with just 8 students and their families and now educates more than 450 families each year. At CASP, families are partners in the education of their children. Together with CASP professionals, they work as a team to provide the most comprehensive education for the students. CASP families receive a total of 171 hours of training annually, through group and individual sessions. Each family receives an Individual Educational Plan (IEP), updated annually, that outlines the skills they need to learn to be the best parents and teachers for their child. These skills are then taught in the classroom, in the community, and five times a year individual family training occurs in the home of the student. CASP believes the whole family is important to the success of the student and as such, twice a year more than 400 siblings of our students attend training to learn skills for how to be a sibling and also a teacher. As a result of many years of continuous training, some CASP families are now creating a multiplicative effect by training other families across Peru through the Mother-to-Mother Program and internationally through long distance education.

Behavior analysis has been a translational science almost from the beginning. Even as Skinner warned against the mistake of allowing issues of application to affect the development of a science in its early stages (in Behavior of Organisms, 1938), he was already at work extending to human behavior the principles he had discovered with rats. This work would eventually appear in Science and Human Behavior (1953), Verbal Behavior (1957), and a series of papers on ways to increase the effectiveness of instruction (starting in 1954). At a more practical level, he invented the "air crib" to simplify infant care, a missile guidance system based on the visual acuity of pigeons, and a machine to promote student learning. Because translation is so deeply embedded in the behavior analytic Zeitgeist, it is easy to lose sight of it. In this brief talk, I will outline the development of behavior analysis as a translational science and describe some contemporary examples.

Under the leadership of its Executive Council, ABAI has been crossing geographical borders for more than four decades, disseminating behavior analysis globally. I have had the honor to be part of this dissemination, inspired by the belief that we can change lives all around the world. Although this award is for people or organizations demonstrating significant and sustained contributions to the dissemination/development of behavior analysis outside the United States, behavior analysts in the United States have long been role models for me; I have huge gratitude for these pioneers. Awareness of ABAI and of leading behavior analysts in the United States started early in my career: in 1982 I went to Harvard to meet B. F. Skinner, and in 1990 I was already a contact person in Brazil for ABAI. Brazilian professors in behavior analysis shaped my interest in international development, and Brazil now has one of the largest communities of behavior analysts. One of the ingredients of our success was the constant presence of model scientists and practitioners; North American behavior analysts were invited to visit our country to help build the field there. Fred Keller was the first, and we also benefited from the visiting professorships of such luminaries as Murray Sidman and Charles Catania all of whom made it clear that without science there could be no solid progress in our field; and without practice, no future. With these two elements in mind, we went abroad to convince people of the real importance of behavior analysis.

The Graduate Program in Behavioral Sciences (Programa de Pos-Graduacao em Ciencias do Comportamento, PPG-CdC,) of the University of Brasilia (UnB), Brazil awards both Masters and Ph.D. degrees. It has played a pivotal role in the establishment and development of behavior analysis as a science and as a profession in Brazil since 1964, then under the leadership of Fred S. Keller and Carolina M. Bori and the collaboration of Rodolpho Azzi, John Gilmour Sherman, Robert Berryman and James R. Nazzaro. Faculty members of the graduate program at UnB have a good record of publications in both national and international scientific journals in behavior analysis (including the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, the Brazilian Journal of Behavior Analysis, the Mexican Journal of Behavior Analysis), further attesting to the enduring contributions of the graduate program to the development of behavior analysis.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Rigid and repetitive patterns and/or interests (RRBIs) are a core feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In comparison to social-communication interventions for children with ASD, surprising little is known about the effectiveness, implementation, and current practices being delivered RRBIs. Several analytic practices show a strong evidence-base or promise in reducing RRBIs or other co-occurring maladaptive behaviors (National Autism Center, 2015). There are several areas of imperative inquiry. In this symposium, two studies will be presented. The first study will present data from an online survey of practices implemented by Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) for children (birth to age 8) across a variety of sub-topographies of repetitive behavior (e.g., stereotypy, insistence on sameness). The second study will present findings for a meta-analysis on interventions for vocal stereotypy with a focus on the implications of measurement differences. Discussed will be gaps in extant literature and implications of findings for science and practice.

The target audience for this presentation are researchers and practitioners who work with individuals with autism who engage in rigid and/or repetitive patterns of behavior and/or interests.

The evidence base of interventions to treat rigid and repetitive patterns of behavior and/or interests (RRBIs) in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is growing. Some researchers have asserted that some repetitive behavior can actually be adaptive for infants and young children and are present in typical development. However, as RRBIs are a core feature of ASD, the reduction of these behavioral topographies is often targeted in clinical practice. Yet, surprisingly little is known about what practices are actually being implemented in the field. An online survey was distributed to Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) who indicated that they worked with young children with ASD. A total of 128 BCBAs submitted complete entires. Survey items included BCBAs frequency of use of 15 practices including: antecedent-based embedded perseverative interests, consequence-based embedded perseverative interests, differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior (DRI), differential reinforcement of other or zero rates of behavior (DRO), differential reinforcement of variable behavior (DRV), environmental enrichment, functional communication training (FCT), noncontingent or time based schedules of reinforcement, overcorrection, physical exercise, response blocking, response cost, response interruption redirection (RIRD), sensory extinction, skill enrichment, visual and/or cues and 1 assessment (functional analysis). Additionally, we collected data on age ranges (i.e., birth to three year olds, three to five year olds, and five to eight year olds) with which BCBAs implemented or supervised implementation of each intervention and their perceptions of the effectiveness of each intervention. Finally, we collected a variety of demographic data. Preliminary analyses revealed that the most common practices implemented were: environmental enrichment, skill enrichment, visual and/or verbal cues, FCT, and RIRD. The interventions implemented the least were response cost, overcorrection, sensory extinction, and DRV. The interventions BCBAs rated the most effective were FCT, DRI, RIRD, and consequence-based embedded perseverative interests. The interventions that were rated the least effective were DRV, response cost, overcorrection, and physical exercise. Correlates to usage and perceptions of effectiveness including educational background, training, practice setting, and clientele will be discussed, as well as implications for future research and practice.

Vocal stereotypy (VS) is a behavior of concern for many individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Engagement in VS can be detrimental in that it may be stigmatizing in social settings and interfere with performance on academic and vocational tasks. A first step in treating VS is to determine function through a functional analysis or functional behavior assessment. Interventions can then be developed based on the specific function of the VS. Twenty-seven studies were identified incorporating 78 participants diagnosed with ASD who engaged in automatically-maintained VS. In this presentation the effects of the available treatments for automatically-reinforced VS will be discussed. Interventions include matched stimulation, differential reinforcement, response interruption and redirection (RIRD), and other punishment procedures. Preliminary analyses indicate that there are multiple interventions in the literature which are effective in decreasing automatically-reinforced VS, with Tau-U values suggesting treatment effects in the medium to large range. Results of RIRD were further assessed based on the data collection methodology utilized in individual studies which included whole session and interrupted session data collection. A limitation of the extant literature is the degree to which the groups vary within each intervention, as well as the limited number of participants per treatment. Implications for practice and future research will be discussed.

There are many empirically supported procedures for teaching early verbal behavior to individuals. As the verbal behavior repertoire grows, so does the complexity of targets and teaching procedures. This symposium will present research evaluating assessment and interventions for complex verbal behavior in children with and without autism. The first paper will present a study investigating procedures using multiple exemplar training to teach children with autism to identify the false beliefs of others. The second paper will present data on using multiple exemplar training to teach typically developing children to understand the double meaning of jokes. The final paper will present a review and critical analysis of research on the PEAK Assessment and Curriculum.

BCBAs and BCaBAs

Children with autism spectrum disorder have deficits in perspective taking abilities required to identify false beliefs of others (Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith, 1985). Research has demonstrated that children with autism can be taught to recognize the false beliefs of others using video modeling (e.g., Charlop-Christy & Daneshvar, 2003; LeBlanc & Coates, 2003). The current study extends behavioral research by teaching children with autism to identify false beliefs using a treatment package conducted in the natural environment with live people. Using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline across participants design, this study evaluates the use of multiple exemplar training, prompting, and reinforcement to train identification of false beliefs in two tasks. Thus far, the data from participant one demonstrates that the treatment package was effective in teaching him to identify false beliefs across two false belief tasks (an appearance-reality task and unexpected transfer task). Generalization across people and untrained stimuli was observed. Furthermore, the participant improved from baseline to posttreatment on correct responding to the classic false-belief task known as the Sally-Anne task, which was never trained. Data are currently being collected with two additional participants.

The understanding of complex forms of verbal behavior, specifically jokes with double meanings, is a skill that has been suggested to emerge in typically developing children between the ages of 7 and 11 years. Given that humor has been documented to be an important element in social interactions, it would be beneficial to identify the specific skills necessary to establish the speaker and listener repertoire of humor in order to remediate deficits in this area for specific clinical populations (e.g. autism spectrum disorders). The behavioral literature on this topic is somewhat limited but suggests that such skills are learned operants that can be taught through the use of systematic teaching procedures. As such, the current study employed multiple exemplar training and a three-step error correction procedure, implemented in a multiple-baseline across participants design, to teach typically developing children, between the ages of five and six years, to understand double-meaning jokes. All four participants demonstrated low levels of comprehension of double-meaning jokes in baseline and met mastery criterion for comprehension and appreciation measures in post-intervention. Post-probes and maintenance results were mixed with two participants requiring re-introduction of the intervention before meeting criteria on follow-up measures.

Elopement is a common topography of challenging behavior among individuals with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities. Elopement can lead to exposure to dangerous situations, disrupt learning, limit access to residential services and community activities, and even lead to serious injury or death. A systematic literature search identified 18 studies published from 2009 to 2016 that evaluated interventions to decrease elopement. The studies were summarized in terms of (a) participant characteristics, (b) assessment procedures, (c) intervention procedures, (d) intervention results. Frequent interventions included functional communication training, differential reinforcement, and response blocking. Functional analyses were conducted for each participant with several methodological modifications to address difficulties associated with functional analysis of elopement. Functional analysis of elopement may be challenging as participant retrieval may be necessary for safety purposes, but could serve as a confounding variable providing attention across all conditions. Systematic replication of functional analysis procedures utilized by Lehardy et al. (2013) was implemented with a 5-year-old male diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Results indicated elopement was maintained by access to tangibles. Functional communication training resulted in markedly reduced instances of elopement, confirming the results of the functional analysis. Implications and recommendations for practice will be discussed and suggestions for future research will be offered.

Behavior analysts including clinicians, teachers, researchers, BCBAs, and BCaBAs.

Elopement is commonly occurring topography of challenging behavior among individuals with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities. Elopement can disrupt learning, limit access to residential services, limit access to community activities, and in extreme cases lead to serious injury or death. A systematic literature search identified 18 studies published from 2009 to 2016 that evaluated interventions to decrease elopement. The studies were summarized in terms of (a) participant characteristics, (b) assessment procedures, (c) intervention procedures, (d) intervention results. Across the 18 studies, intervention was implemented across 27 participants with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities, ages four to 47 years. Functional analyses were conducted for each participant with several methodological modifications to address difficulties associated with functional analysis of elopement. The most frequent interventions included functional communication training, differential reinforcement, and response blocking. Implications for practice will be discussed and suggestions for future research will be offered.

Elopement is a frequent problem among individuals diagnosed with developmental disabilities. Elopement can lead to an individual being exposed to dangerous situations. Moreover, elopement can increase stress for caretakers. Functional analysis of elopement may be challenging due to the fact that participant retrieval may be necessary for safety purposes, but could serve as a confounding variable providing attention across all conditions. A review of the literature revealed a variety of functional analysis methodologies to address these difficulties associated with functional analysis of elopement. The current study is a systematic replication of functional analysis procedures utilized by Lehardy et al. (2013). This functional analysis methodology was implemented with a 5-year-old male diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Results indicated elopement was maintained by access to tangibles. Functional communication training resulted in markedly reduced instances of elopement, thus confirming the results of the functional analysis. The results of this study, recommendations for practice, and suggestions for future research will be discussed.

In "The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms," Skinner proposed that the science of behavior needs a contingency analysis of the contexts in which scientists use terms. A term is valid only when it increases the scientist's capacity for prediction and influence, and not merely when it produces socially mediated reinforcers such as the approval and agreement of other scientists. Years later, Skinner continued to evolve contingency analysis in terms of Darwinian theory, which involves variation, selection, and retention. In this talk, I will argue that the pragmatic aims of ABA hinge upon these two conceptual advances and that Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) offers practitioners a way to harness Skinner's conceptual horsepower in service of helping others. In the ACT approach, ABA workers start where folks are at and talk with them about what they value most. About love. Family. Pain. Laughter. Building this kind of connection with stakeholders in ABA is neither unprofessional, nor is using common sense language an invitation to mentalism. It is the catwalk from unworkable essentialism to pragmatic contextualism. In this talk, I will bridge the conceptual with the pragmatic by sharing single case design data from our work with parents and children.

BCBAs, BCBA-Ds, and others interested in bridging theory and practice.

“Paternalism” is a term commonly used to refer to government interventions designed to control people “for their own good”. Although not a new idea, it has been reloaded in recent years: a growing trend in public policy field appeals to the use of behavioral sciences’ insights in the design of social interventions following paternalistic models. Libertarian paternalism is one of the most popular, recently developed approaches on this. Based on behavioral economics, it claims for a kind of governmental interventionism that does not collide with freedom of choice. The idea is to introduce simple designs for contexts of choice that do not alter significantly economic incentives, nor restrict the original range of available options — “Nudge” is the term coined to designate this kind of intervention. The claim for controlling groups of people in non-coercive ways finds its roots in the work of B. F. Skinner: he argued for the deliberate design of the culture, illustrating it in practices described in his novel Walden Two. Both these proposals have been assiduously criticized, primarily regarding ethical issues. Some of the most prominent criticisms denounce a neglect on the perils introduced by subtle, non-aversive forms of control. Lack of awareness provided by the subtle pervasiveness of “nudges”, or the taming of moods made possible by positive reinforcement, could help breed a despotic state, in which behavioral control technologies may be used for the subjection of people. The aim of this work is to explore and discuss some of the main arguments in response to these criticisms. Considering theoretical remarks along with tangible examples of policies based in the aforementioned models, I provide an assessment on the ethics underlying these approaches. While libertarian paternalists claim to provide ways for preventing wrongdoings by prioritizing the interests of the controlled, behaviorists could argue that cultural design may work precisely as an antidote for tyranny, by empowering lay people to exert counter-control. Clarifying the ethical aspect involved in both, “nudge” and cultural design, may be vital for these initiatives to be if not more widely accepted, at least adequately recognized for what they are and able to fairly push their vindications in the political arena.

Comprehensive ABA programming ("ABA therapy") is most commonly associated with children on the autism spectrum, with most states having mandates for insurance coverage of ABA therapy. However, only one state, Florida, has a mandate for ABA therapy for disabilities other than autism (including Down syndrome). The potential for ABA to improve behaviors and skills for children with other disabilities, such as Down syndrome is great, yet there is a dearth of research on such programming. Additionally, because Down syndrome can be known at an earlier age than that of some disabilities (such as autism), there is potential to begin ABA programming in infancy; however, research on ABA and infants is also scant. This paper presentation will review the current literature on programming for infants with DS and present a study that assessed feasibility of ABA programming for four infants with Down syndrome ages 5-18 months. We measured feasibility according to five of the eight criteria outlined by Bowen and colleagues (2009): Acceptability, Demand, Implementation, Practicality, and Limited Efficacy. Results suggest ABA programming is promising for this young population; recommendations will be made for researchers and practitioners.

Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) are at risk for a host of learning challenges (e.g., difficulty with memory, attention, executive functioning, information processing, language, and motor tasks; Kodituwakku & Kodituwakku, 2014) and often exhibit higher rates of challenging behaviors (e.g., disruptive and uncooperative behavior) when compared to children with typical development (Jirikowic, Kartin, & Olson, 2008). Relatively few empirical studies have examined interventions to decrease problem behaviors in this population and almost no researchers have employed ABA strategies with this population. We conducted a series of four single case studies with four children with FASD ages 9 to 12 to study the effects of ABA interventions (self-monitoring, goal setting, and contingent reinforcement) on participants' compliance with home-related routines and academic responding. Studies took place in participants' home at times families identified as having high rates of problem behavior. Implementation of the interventions was associated with increases in compliance and academic responding and decreases in non-compliance and argumentative behaviors across all participants. Social validity assessment indicated participants' satisfaction with the studies' interventions and outcomes. We will present findings across studies and discuss implications for behavior analytic research and practice among individuals with FASD.

The Experimental Analysis of Human Behavior Special Interest Group invites you to formally recognize the contributions of Dr. Michael Perone. Dr. Perone's research interests have long focused on the Experimental Analysis of Behavior with extensions into Applied Behavior Analysis. Two former colleagues will review and reflect upon Dr. Perone's career and his many contributions toward advancing our understanding of complex human behavior. Subsequently, Dr. Perone will deliver comments reflecting upon his career and a topic of his choosing. Please join us to appreciate and celebrate the contributions of Dr. Michael Perone.

Mike Perone's extraordinary contributions to EAHB are rich and translational. They include the adaptation of basic behavior analytic experiments in animals to the human laboratory, extension of basic operant principles to elderly populations, and the development of methodologies that have guided EAHB researchers for over two decades. Although Perone has made important contributions in many areas of EAHB, probably his best known work is in the study of aversive aspects of positive reinforcement and conversely, positive aspects of negative reinforcement. His research paradigm on incentive shifts showed that both past and upcoming ratio size and reinforcer magnitude were important determinants of pausing and emotionality, and that both are greatest when there is a transition from a rich (high reinforcer magnitude, low cost) to a lean (low magnitude, high cost) schedule. Perone originally developed this paradigm with non-humans, but his extension of the analysis to humans in basic and applied settings is an elegant example of translational research. This work, along with his research on basic processes underlying avoidance led to the development of his paper "Negative effects of positive reinforcement" (The Behavior Analyst, 2003), which has had a major impact on how behavior analysts understand both reinforcement and punishment procedures.

Translation from Basic Research to Application and Back Again Requires a Deep Commitment to the principles and methods of the operant research tradition. This is true at both ends of the translation process. Without adhering to the rigorous standards of the animal laboratory when conducting research at the more clinical end of the translation, it is impossible to know whether the same behavioral process are operational in both settings. Without this disciplined approach to use inspired research, the translation will fail. The hallmark of proper translational research is whether the laboratory models predict outcomes in treatment. This cannot happen if we do not adhere to strict research strategies and methods. Mike's career has set gold standard for laboratory research with humans, and the gold standard for translational research in the behavioral sciences.

Precision teaching has historically been used in education to support basic skills, however there is a lack of literature on the use of precision teaching specifically SAFMEDS (SAY ALL FAST MINUTE EVERY DAY SHUFFLED) with main stream high school students. There were multiple aims to this research; first to assess if SAFMEDS could be effectively implemented by the class teacher (putting science into the hands of teachers), second if SAFMEDS would be a more effective revision tool than mind mapping (the students' current revision tool), third would students complete SAFMEDS in their own time as homework and finally would SAFMEDS be an accepted education tool by students and their teacher. The results of this research showed that SAFMEDS were effectively integrated into the psychology course, showed greater improvements across all subject areas when compared to mind mapping. SAFMEDS were effective not just in a class room setting but also in the home setting. Finally, treatment acceptability of the use of SAFMEDS were positively received from both teachers and students. Overall the use of SAFMEDS as an additional educational tool to support learning is a low cost effective accepted method in a main stream school setting.

A lack of preparedness for practice has been observed among new medical graduates. This is detrimental for both these individuals and their patients. These data emphasise the need for novel approaches within medical education. This presentation will describe a series of research studies that share the common aim of assessing interventions implemented to produce behavioral fluency in key clinical and procedural skills among medical students and hospital doctors. Skills targeted include the interpretation of electrocardiograms, venipuncture, and pediatric lumbar puncture. Data collected demonstrate that participants achieved behavioral fluency in the targeted skills across the studies, that behavior retained and was stable, and that learning generalised to novel settings and novel behaviours. Participants trained to behavioral fluency outperformed their peers and, in some cases, their more senior colleagues. Interventions to produce behavioral fluency in clinical and procedural skills have apparent potential within medical education and their use may ensure that clinical and procedural skills competency is improved and persists over time and in difficult conditions, resulting in more skilled doctors and improved patient safety.

In this symposium, we discuss how different behavior analytic schools deal with questions concerning what units of behavior may be said to exist and how such units may be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided. Baum suggests that an ontology or behavior requires two distinctions: between individuals and classes, and between processes and objects. These distinctions allow a workable ontology in which behavior consists of processes—or of activities extended in time. That is, behavioral units are ontological individuals—functional wholes with parts that also are activities. As part of the endeavor to identify what constitutes ontologically and epistemologically sound units of analysis, Simon investigates verbal behavior in conversations through a selectionist lens. Speech is a natural event that comes down to sounds that affect the behavior of conspecifics. Simon's talk explores how Baum's recommendation to regard activities extended in time as ontological individuals may be applied to verbal behavior. Having conducted experiments designed in Baum's ontological framework, which is viewing behavioral units as functional wholes with parts that also are verbal activities, she discusses the conceptual merits and methodological challenges connected to applying Baum's philosophical analyses to experimental work.

Realism, defined as belief in a real world separate from perception, is incompatible with a science of behavior. Alternatives to it include pragmatism, which dismisses the belief as irrelevant, and Eastern philosophy, which holds that the world is only perception. The reason realism is incompatible with a science of behavior is that separating perception of objects from real objects leads directly to subjective-objective or inner-outer dualism. This dualism, in turn, leads directly to mentalism, the practice of offering inner unseen entities as explanations of behavior. Positing unobservable causes (inner entities) renders a science incoherent. Ontology for behavior requires two distinctions: between classes and individuals; and between objects and processes. These distinctions allow a workable ontology in which behavior consists of activities that are extended in time (i.e., processes) and are ontological individuals—that is, functional wholes with parts that also are activities. Such an ontology provides coherence to a science of behavior.

How may Darwinian selection aid our understanding of the selection of behavior during ontogeny? To identify what constitutes ontologically and epistemologically sound units of analysis, I investigate verbal behavior in conversations through a selectionist lens. Speech is a natural event that comes down to sounds that affect the behavior of conspecifics. The talk explores how Baum's multi-scale approach may be applied to verbal behavior. This implies treating larger verbal episodes as wholes, induced by a context and correlating with consequences. Thus, the talk, first, debates theoretical reasons to place verbal behavior in an evolutionary framework by viewing it as shaped by its consequences, through a person's lifetime and through interactions with the environment across many generations of natural selection. Second, the talk exemplifies experimental procedures treating verbal behavior as allocation of time.

The functional analysis provides a means for practitioners to identify the variables maintaining destructive behaviors and, in turn, develop function-based intervention. The current symposium outlines three studies which employed functional analysis to assess and inform function-based treatment of idiosyncratic presenting concerns. First, Simmons, Akers, and Fisher conducted a functional analysis of covert food stealing for a 6-year-old neurotypical individual. The results of the functional analysis informed the application of a function-based intervention and multiple schedule to signal availability and nonavailability of food items. Similarly, Stuesser and Roscoe provided a novel extension of assessment and treatment methods. Authors evaluated medical nonadherence and problem behavior in individuals with intellectual disabilities. Functional analysis results informed a differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors (DRA) treatment alone and in combination with stimulus fading to increase adherence and decrease problem behavior. Last, DeLisle and Thomason-Sassi extended the use of denial-and-delay tolerance training (Hanley, Jin, Vanselow, & Hanratty, 2014) for two individuals diagnosed with autism to automatically-maintained problem behavior. During this evaluation the authors taught the individuals to request permission to engage in the targeted behavior, and to refrain from behavior outside the permitted times. Finally, denial training, delay training, and fading therapist proximity were completed.

Practitioners

Denial-and-delay tolerance training (Hanley, Jin, Vanselow, & Hanratty, 2014) is a treatment protocol that has been used to teach children to mand for socially-mediated reinforcers. Subsequent treatment components include a teaching of tolerance response when requests are denied, and working until a reinforcer is available. In the current study, we extended this treatment for socially-mediated behavior to the treatment of automatically maintained behavior. We utilized an alone screen to determine the function of behavior for two individuals diagnosed with autism. Next, we taught the individuals to request permission to engage in their behavior targeted for decrease, and to refrain from behavior outside of those permitted times. Finally, denial training, delay training, and fading therapist proximity were completed. Results showed that participants engaged in low rates of inappropriate behavior, and were able to tolerate a denied mand by engaging in increasing amounts of work. Interobserver agreement was collected on 30% of sessions for both participants, and averaged at 96.7% (range, 93.3-100).

Medical procedures such as routine physicals and blood work are often associated with nonadherence and problem behavior in individuals with intellectual disabilities. Previous research has shown the utility of behavior analytic interventions for increasing medical adherence. However, these interventions often include a combination of components making it difficult to discern whether all components are necessary. The purpose of this study was to evaluate differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) without extinction alone and in combination with fading for increasing adherence and decreasing disruption during routine medical exams in four individuals with an autism spectrum disorder. An indirect assessment was conducted to identify routine medical exam steps. A functional analysis confirmed that problem behavior was maintained by escape from medical demands. We evaluated DRA alone and in combination with stimulus fading using multiple baseline across participants or reversal designs. DRA with fading was necessary for achieving clinically significant outcomes in three of the four participants. Interobserver agreement was assessed in 33% of sessions and averaged 91%.

The seminal research on equivalence relations by Sidman (1994) and colleagues, which commenced in the early 1970s, led in the mid-1980s to the development of relational frame theory (RFT; Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001). The tutorial will present an overview of this 30 year-old unfolding research story and will consider some empirical and conceptual issues that appear to require focused attention as the story continues to unfold across the coming decades. In particular, the tutorial will commence by focusing on the historical and intellectual roots of RFT, identifying the work of Darwin, Wittgenstein, Skinner, and particularly Sidman as critically important. The basic units of analysis proposed by RFT, as a behavior-analytic account of human language and cognition, will then be considered. The impact these analytic units have had, and still have, on RFT research will also be reviewed. A relatively new RFT concept, known as the multi-dimensional multi-level (MDML) framework will be presented. A recent model of specific properties of relational framing, the differential arbitrarily applicable relational responding effects (DAARRE) model, will also be considered. Finally, a case will be made to integrate the MDML and the DAARRE model into a hyper-dimensional, multi-level (HDML) framework

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

In this symposium, we included three papers related to using behavioral analytic strategies in inclusive settings. The first presentation used peer-mediated strategies embedded in Lego activities to increase social initiation and responses for children with autism in an inclusive preschool setting. The second presentation used social narratives combined with behavioral strategies to improve oral narratives for a child with hearing impairments in various settings and evaluated the generalization effect an inclusive classroom. The third paper presents several behavioral strategies that can be used in inclusive settings for students with different ability levels.

BCBAs, BCaBAs, special education teachers, general education teachers

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a peer-mediated LEGO? play intervention on improving social skills for children with ASD in an inclusive preschool in China. Three boys with ASD and 13 typically developing children participated in this study. A multiple-probe across participants design was used. The intervention consisted of LEGO? construction activities incorporated with peer-mediated strategies for one child with ASD and two typically developing peers. The intervention sessions were conducted two sessions per week with a total of 28 to 31 sessions for each participant. Results indicate that all three children with ASD increased their social initiations and responses following the completion of the intervention. Social validity was also obtained.

Oral narrative ability exerts a major impact on the cognitive development, interpersonal communication and verbal learning of hearing-impaired students learning in regular class. Through a cross-situation multi-baseline research on a single subject, the study employs story grammar instruction based on picture books as the plan for intervening oral narrative ability of the student in communicating with family members, a private tutor and strangers. It is found that the intervention method leads to significant improvements in story length and story grammar concerning the oral narrative ability of the hearing-impaired student in the three communication situations. As for the effect of the intervention on discourse coherence in the student's oral narration, further studies are still needed. In view of those findings, the study puts forward corresponding suggestions on the application of picture-book-based story grammar instruction in actual situation.

Applied behavior analysis is known as an effective way to address the needs of people with autism spectrum disorders. The layperson may also associate behavior analysis with forensic psychology through their experience of crime dramas such as Criminal Minds: Behavior Analysis Unit. However accurate or simplified these portrayals they are a very narrow view of the larger field of behavioral science. Behavior analysis has a host of applications in the real world. Some of these applications include but are certainly not limited to the determination of social policies, advertising, policing, animal training, business practices, diet and exercise regimens and education. In this chapter the authors will focus on how applied behavior analysis can be used as a teaching technology from the behavioral and educational literature that has the potential to help lead the way out of the educational crisis faced in the United States of America and abroad.

The field of behavior analysis has traditionally eschewed the use of statistical tests in the analysis of single-case experimental design (SCED) data. In particular, behavior analysts have argued against parametric statistics (e.g., t-tests and ANOVAs) for multiple reasons. Rather than use statistical tests, behavior analysts have relied upon inter-ocular trauma tests, where the visual analysis of SCED results hits you right between the eyes. The field has, generally speaking, overlooked the fact that parametric tests are only a few hammers in a much larger toolkit of statistical procedures. It is possible and beneficial for behavior analysts to use both methods—visual analysis and statistical tests—in conjunction with one another to analyze their data. In this symposium, the presenters will review three different non-parametric statistical tests that can be used in basic and applied behavior analytic research: Randomization tests, general estimating equations (GEE), and multilevel modeling. Each has its own unique merits and uses within SCEDs, and can function to augment other methods of analysis and replace more commonly used statistical tests.

Master's level and doctoral level BCBAs; Graduate Students in Behavior Analysis; Basic Researchers; Applied Researchers; Scientist-Practitioners

The frequent and repeated measurement of behavior often precludes behavior analysts from making statistical inferences about data obtained from single-case experimental designs (SCED). Parametric tests assume a random sample, independent observations, and a normal distribution. SCEDs violate one or more of these assumptions, and even worse, are considered quasi-experimental because subjects are not randomly sampled from a defined population or randomly assigned to treatments. Recent advances in computing, however, have brought an old and readily applicable test of significance to fore: Randomization Tests (Fisher, 1935; Pitman, 1937). Unlike conventional Null Hypothesis Significance Tests (NHST), randomization tests are non-parametric, distribution-free tests of statistical significance. They are particularly applicable to SCEDs, so long as treatments are randomly assigned to observations. The requirement that SCEDs include random assignment increases their methodological rigor by controlling for unknown variables and addresses the charge that SCEDs are quasi-experimental. While randomization tests cannot supplant the experimental control already built into SCEDs, they can certainly supplement the conclusions behavior analysts might make about treatment effects. The purpose of this presentation, then, is to elucidate the origins of randomization tests, explicate their applicability to SCEDs, and warn against the pitfalls of NHSTs when making inferences.

The field of Behavior Analysis has historically been conflicted over the use of inferential statistical methods in the analyses of data from single-subject designs. Valid concerns with the use of inferential statistics include the suppression of important behavioral variability at the individual level and the over-reliance on and misinterpretation of the p-value. This conflict has commonly resulted in two strategies: first, reliance on visual analyses and the out-right rejection of any inferential statistics, or second, the application of more "basic" inferential tests that may or more not be appropriate for single-subject design data. Multilevel modeling (e.g., mixed-methods or hierarchal regression) is a more advanced statistical analysis that addresses many of the concerns that the field of Behavior Analysis has with inferential statistics including quantifying the contribution of individual behavioral variability to the results and the compression of many data-points into a single comparison. The benefits of multilevel modeling will be demonstrated using several single-subject design datasets. A guide of how researchers can implement multilevel modeling including a priori recommendations before beginning data collection will be offered.

The focus of this symposium will be to present recent research that has focused on improving observational in children with autism and social delays both in-vivo and with video models. The first paper evaluated the effects of teaching children with autism to engage in self-echoic responses during in-vivo observational learning on the learning of tacts. Both participants learned the picture labels faster in the condition where they were taught to engage in self-echoic responses than in the condition where they were not required to use the self-echoic responses. In the second paper, three children with autism learned to engage in sharing responses during play with the successive introduction of observational learning presenting on video plus verbal coaching while viewing the video. Participants in this study also generalized sharing responses to non-teaching conditions including novel toys, in the absence of a teacher, and to siblings. In the third study, participants with social delays showed improved performance with sequencing pictures and learned to tact two and three-digit numbers during in-vivo observational learning but not via video. Participants in the video condition showed improved performance of known tasks but did not learn new responses. In the final study, the authors assessed the direct and indirect effects of training by assessing observational learning before and after instruction across tasks and task variations during both in-vivo and video model probes. All participants acquired the prerequisite skills and demonstrated observational learning during probes of directly-trained tasks, but generalization was variable.

BCBAs, practitioners, researchers, graduate students, teachers

Observational learning is essential for a child with autism to learn academic responses and to reduce reliance on one-to-one instruction. Imitation of the responses observed during observational learning contexts may facilitate OL and research indicates that typically developing children engage in verbal rehearsals (self-echoics)to facilitate recall of responses. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of self-echoic responses on learning picture labels via observational learning. In one condition, participants were taught to engage in self-echoic responses (i.e., repeat the modeled response three times, first out loud, then using a whisper, and finally to mouth the response) immediately after the adult modeled the picture label. In the probe condition, participants did not learn self-echoic responses. Both participants learned the new picture labels faster in the self-echoic condition compared with the probe condition. Areas for future research and practice implications will be addressed.

Children with autism exhibit significant deficits in social responses such as sharing. Past research has demonstrated that children with autism can learn academic responses via observational learning, however to date learning social responses via observational learning has not been demonstrated. The purpose of the current study was to use a multiple-baseline design to evaluate the effectiveness of observational learning via video and verbal coaching on teaching sharing to three children with autism during play. During baseline, no participants shared when they entered a room with others playing. During intervention, participants viewed a video in which a peer earned reinforcement for sharing with the person who had no toys. We also used verbal coaching with rules while the participants watched the video. Sharing increased for all three participants with generalization of sharing responses to toys never associated with training, when the teacher was not present during playtime, and to siblings.

A peer-monitoring intervention in both in-vivo and video conditions, counterbalanced across participants, was implemented with 12 preschoolers to induce observational stimulus control. In the first experiment, only participants who had completed the intervention in-vivo acquired both observational learning and performance capabilities. Completing the intervention in the video condition alone was not effective in inducing observational learning, but was effective in establishing observational performance. Both in-vivo and video pre-intervention probes were conducted in the second experiment; results were similar to those found in Experiment 1. These findings demonstrate that the peer-monitoring intervention led to the emergence of observational performance, however, the presence of a peer audience was the necessary component to induce observational learning. Furthermore, participants who were in the presence of a peer audience emitted higher frequencies of social contact in a free operant play setting than their peers who lacked a peer audience during the intervention.

Observational learning (OL) occurs when an individual contacts reinforcement as a result of discriminating the reinforced and nonreinforced responses of another individual. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may have deficits in observational learning, and previous research has demonstrated that teaching a series of prerequisite skills (i.e., attending, imitation, delayed imitation, and consequence discrimination) can facilitate observational learning. We sequentially taught these prerequisite skills for three young children with ASD across three play-based tasks. We assessed OL before and after instruction across tasks and task variations (for two participants) during in-vivo and video-model probes using a concurrent multiple-probe design. All participants acquired the prerequisite skills and demonstrated observational learning during probes of directly-trained tasks. Generalization results varied across participants. Generalization occurred during the in-vivo probe for both participants for whom we assessed this response. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this symposium is to present data that suggests how clinicians might best organize their programming to produce generative effects in their learners. The first study, Revisiting Verbal Behavior Development: A Two Year Follow Up, is a two-year follow up presentation of a young learner who scored in low level I of the VB-MAPP -- without an echoic repertoire -- and is currently learning relational intraverbals such as the deitics (here/there, I/you), ordinals (first, middle, last) and Crels such as "name/sound". The second study, Establishing Stimulus Control Over Echoic Behavior to Teach the Mand, discusses implementing procedures to effect stimulus transfer control across Mand types. The third study, Teaching Learners Who Use a Speech Generator Device to Mand for Information-Asking Questions About Hidden Objects, is about teaching children who use a speech generator device, to ask questions. The fourth study, Decreasing Echolalic Responses by Teaching a Conditional Response to the Autoclitic OR When Differentially Tacting From Two Options, presents data on a procedure to increase comprehension and decrease echolalia by teaching the appropriate control of the autoclitic "or" to establish differential tacting of available choices. These four studies illustrate different aspects of the organization and management of programming to produce generative speaker/listener competencies.

This symposium has been designed for intermediate level professionals. Preferably for an audience of graduate ABA professionals. Professionals at the undergraduate level will greatly benefit too.

This paper is a two year follow up presentation of a six-year old learner who scored in low level I of the VB-MAPP, and initially did not have an echoic repertoire. His first year of progress was presented at the 2017 ABAI conference. In his second year of therapy the learner made significant gains in all verbal behavior repertoires: tacts, intraverbals, mands and echoics and his listener skills improved as well, positively impacting social skills. His language is becoming more fluent and his mean utterances has increased too. He is beginning to interact more in his natural environment as he independently reads books, plays with puzzles, is beginning to build more complex structures with wooden blocks, indicating that his nonverbal imitation is improving too. He is currently learning relational intraverbals such as (here/there, I/you), ordinals (first, middle, last) and Crels such as "name/sound.? Further relations, such as comparatives, spatials and temporals will be addressed as programming progresses.

Many children with autism do not have an established echoic repertoire. Imitating vocalizations is an important skill for learning to vocally mand. Pairing procedures have been shown to increase vocalizations in some limited research studies, however, there is no evidence to suggest that pairing words with reinforcement reliably establishes echoic behavior. We examined the use of two procedures to establish echoic stimulus control and eventually establish a manding repertoire using stimulus control transfer procedures across verbal operants. We were successful in establishing vocal manding with the participant, a young boy with autism. Both procedures used direct reinforcement for echoic behavior, however, the second procedure included the use of visual cues. Establishing stimulus control over echoic behavior led to an increase in mand and tact repertoires. Results suggest that stimulus control transfer procedures across verbal operants, combined with careful analysis of current skills and barriers may increase success when attempting to establish vocal verbal behaviour. More research is needed to identify which procedures or combination of procedures are most effective for certain profiles.

This study investigated if learners using a speech-generator device (SGD) could learn to mand for information, asking questions about hidden objects. We replicated the study by Williams, Perez-Gonzalez & Vogt (2003) with four learners who attended a program for children with special needs and who used the SGD but never used it to mand for information. The results indicated that learners can learn to use the SGD to ask questions when taught under the appropriate conditions of deprivation and systematic fading of textual and model prompts. We also measured generalization to untaught objects across settings.

It is common for children who present with a dominant echolalic repertoire to respond with an echoic when presented with an autoclitic form of instruction requesting a tact or mand-response, as in, for example, "Is this an apple or an orange?" or "Would you like to eat cake or spinach?" The current study analyzed the effectiveness of a procedure that incorporated already established tacting, matching and reading repertoires to increase differential tacting based on an "or" relation between two options. We measured if this acquired skill decreased echolalia and generalized to untrained settings. The data suggested that the learners in this study learned to tact differentially from two options that were presented with the autoclitic. We also measured if the acquired skill generalized to natural settings.

Children are diagnosed with a feeding disorder when they do not eat an adequate quantity or variety of foods, sustain an appropriate weight, or grow (Palmer & Horn, 1978; Piazza & Carroll-Hernandez, 2004). Feeding disorders are reported to occur in 2% to 35% of typically developing children and 33% to 80% of children with developmental disabilities (Bachmeyer, 2009; Burklow, et al., 1998; Palmer & Horn, 1987). Applied behavior analytic interventions have proven effective in the treatment of pediatric feeding disorders (Bachmeyer, 2009). A multi-component intervention combining differential positive reinforcement and escape extinction has the most empirical support (Volkert & Piazza, 2012). However, escape extinction is not always feasible, and using extinction as a treatment for inappropriate mealtime behavior can be associated with extinction bursts, emotional responding, and extinction-induced aggression (Lerman, Iwata, & Wallace, 1999; Volkert & Piazza, 2012). The current symposium reviews the prevalence of extinction bursts and examines the use of antecedent-based approaches to treat inappropriate mealtime behavior with and without escape extinction. Finally, the current symposium reviews the findings of a trial-based functional analysis of inappropriate mealtime behavior and function-based treatments compared to a traditional functional analysis of inappropriate mealtime behavior (Piazza et al., 2003).

Researchers and clinicians interested in learning more about the assessment and treatment of pediatric feeding disorders.

Extinction bursts are commonly identified as a side effect of extinction when treating problem behavior (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007). Lerman and Iwata (1995) found that 27 of 113 data sets (24%) in studies that included extinction as treatment for problem behavior displayed an extinction burst. In a subsequent analysis, Lerman, Iwata, and Wallace (1999) found that 39% of 41 data sets in studies that included extinction as treatment for self-injurious behavior found an extinction burst. Even though extinction is a well-established treatment for food refusal (Volkert & Piazza, 2012), no studies to date have examined the prevalence of extinction bursts during the treatment of inappropriate mealtime behavior (IMB) for children with feeding disorders. The current study evaluated the presence of extinction bursts during treatment of IMB, using the criteria delineated by Lerman and Iwata, with 88 children with food refusal, liquid refusal, or both. Results of 133 data sets (74 and 59 datasets for solid and liquid intake, respectively) indicated the overall prevalence of extinction bursts was 12%. We will discuss these findings and the results of additional analyses, including limitations and implications.

Substance abuse is a major public health crisis that is costly both in terms of health care expenditures and the resulting poor health outcomes for individuals and their families. In the current symposium, a series of talks will address different behavioral economic approaches to assessing and treating health behavior related to substance abuse. Strategies that will be presented include 1) the use low-risk behavioral economic assessments to predict treatment outcomes among pregnant women undergoing smoking-cessation treatment, 2) improving effective contraceptive use among opioid-maintained women of reproductive age using financial incentives, 3) assessing whether electronic cigarettes are viable behavioral substitutes to cigarettes, and 4) the use of a soft-commitment approach to reducing cigarette use. All presentations highlight the use of established principles of behavioral economics to address serious health concerns.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Cigarette smoking is overrepresented among economically disadvantaged women, and smoking during pregnancy is the leading cause of poor pregnancy outcomes in the U.S. Two common low-risk experimental arrangements used in the study of cigarette smoking among pregnant women are the Cigarette Purchase Task (CPT) and delay discounting (DD). Few studies have evaluated whether combining CPT and DD may enhance understanding of smoking beyond observations with either alone. The current investigation evaluated the interrelationship between CPT and DD performance of pregnant women by examining associations with the likelihood of making antepartum quit attempts, a strong predictor of response to formal smoking-cessation treatment. Data from 114 women enrolled in an ongoing smoking-cessation clinical trial were analyzed. Intensity, Omax, and breakpoint were significantly and inversely associated with antepartum quit attempts. DD by itself was not significantly associated with antepartum quit attempts nor was it associated with the CPT indices. Considering the predictive CPT indices and DD together revealed a conditional relationship wherein associations between DD and quit attempts were conditional on Intensity and Omax level. That is, among those with relatively high demand Intensity or Omax DD was not associated with quit attempts, while among those with relatively low demand Intensity or Omax steep discounting was associated with a lower proportion of quit attempts. These results suggest that the influence of DD among pregnant smokers is mostly limited to lighter smokers or, said differently, heavy smoking appears to override any influence of DD on quitting smoking during pregnancy.

Evidence of climate change is abundant and persuasive, from rising global temperatures, to shrinking snow cover and sea ice, to the increasing frequency and intensity of weather events related to climate change. Evidence that human activities, especially the emission of greenhouse gases, are important contributors to global warming is also persuasive. The founding principles of applied behavior analysis emphasis the importance of behavioral issues that are important to society and the development of effective strategies to manage behaviors that improve quality of life. It is difficult to imagine a behavioral challenge with more far-reaching consequences than climate change yet behavior analysts have been relatively slow to adopt climate change as a focus of research and theory. In this symposium, we will review some of the conceptual and practical contributions, both at the individual and systems level, that behavior analysts (and other social scientists and policy makers) can make to developing an effective strategy and research agenda to address climate change.

This presentation is appropriate for behavior analysts with interest in social issues, climate change, sustainability, evidence based public policy and organizational behavior management. This presentation will cover: a) conceptual issues, such as behavioral economics, b) practical interventions at the individual and system level as well as c) dissemination of behavior analysis to the public and other professionals.

A growing proportion of Americans are acknowledging the danger posed by a warming climate, few are worried that climate change will threaten them personally, and few are taking direct action.��Scholars from various disciplines have explored the psychological processes -- including verbal processes -- that contribute to climate change denial and inaction, and at least three books have been recently published on the topic (Marshall�s�Don�t even think about it: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change, Stoknes��What we think about when we try not to think about global warming,�and Hoffman�s�How culture shapes the climate change debate).��These works examine reasons for climate inaction/denial from an eclectic perspective (e.g., cognitive, social, and evolutionary psychology) and offer suggestions for how to change people�s opinions and induce sustainable actions.��Some behavior analysts have researched ways to increase sustainable behavior, but such efforts have been relatively limited.��Furthermore, behavior analysts have offered little in the way of conceptual analyses of verbal behavior related to climate change.��The purpose of this talk is to review these books with the goal of identifying ways in which behavior analysis might contribute to this discussion.

The United Nation’s 5th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in 2014 that global warming due to increases in greenhouse gases (GHG) caused largely by human activities threatens world populations and requires immediate world action (IPPC, 2014). The report recommended several governmental adaptation and mitigation policies, e.g., building seawalls, reducing GHG. Most world governments have responded positively, whereas the US government has done little and recently denied the existence of any danger. Several books have described this inaction in cognitive terms suggesting ways to change one’s thinking so that people can make more appropriate responses to global warming. An alternate approach is to change behavior directly. Behavior analysis has been quite successful at changing behavior irrespective of verbal behavior. This talk will consider the behavior analytic use of current technology, specifically, gamification to change behavior with respect to climate warming. Recently an increasing number of apps and serious games have been developed to change health and fitness behaviors and to teach language (e.g., Fitbit, Duolingo). However, few apps have been developed to save the planet from GHG. We will suggest possible independent variables (Michie et al. 20??) needed for such an app and dependent variables recommendations to reduce GHG (Hawken, 2008).

Why should Behavior Analysts get involved in changing policy, creating evidence-based policy, and how does policy influence responding of both the individual and the group? Our society evolves when social values and corresponding response patterns, "contribute to the success of the practicing group in solving its problems" (Skinner, 1981). Evidence-based policy, is policy that is empirically supported, and is also sensitive to social concerns. How better to improve society, then to influence policy through applied behavior analytic research, and evidence-based practice? "Better applications, it is hoped, will lead to a better state of society, to whatever extent the behavior of its members can contribute to the goodness of a society" (Baer, Wolf, Risley, 1968). Climate change is a real problem that needs all scientists to contribute to forming policy that best supports our culture's survival. It is hypothesized that policy restricts responding of the group and potentiates certain response classes, likened to that of an instructional stimulus SDi, increasing the probability of certain responses occurring within the context of an individual analysis of behavior. By changing the environment in which our culture responds in, through the establishment of evidence-based policy, behavior analysts may have a significant impact on the survival of our culture and our species.

Effective accommodations for bilingual learners with disabilities are needed in the field of behavior analysis. This symposium includes four studies on how English and Spanish language influences responding, and the accommodations practitioners make to be more effective with bilingual learners with disabilities. This symposium will give the audience tools and techniques to apply in practice with bilingual learners. The purpose of the first study was to assess the influence of language preference among individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or other intellectual disorders who have been exposed to more than one language. This study evaluated language preference during play contexts followed by evaluating language preference within instructional contexts and the individual's compliance with instructions. In the second study, researchers developed a questionnaire for behavior analysts to use as a guide when choosing culturally adapted functional communication response (FCR) for Hispanic children. It was devised and pre-tested to choose FCRs for Hispanic families. Results from the questionnaire and feedback from the experience survey will be presented. The third study builds off the previous study by using the questionnaire identify an FCR that matched cultural values. The subjects were taught to emit a culturally adapted and non-culturally adapted FCR. Parents' preference for each FCR was evaluated after they were trained to implement both FCR responses. Finally, implementation of the preferred FCR was carried out by parents. The final study compared skill acquisition of Spanish-language-dominant caregivers during behavioral skills training (BST) to teach differential reinforcement, guided compliance, and BST by English and Spanish speaking therapists. In the English condition a translator was used, for the Spanish condition a bilingual therapist administered the BST. Rates of acquisition were compared and a social validity survey was administered to the caregivers. Implications of these studies on the practice of behavior analysis will be discussed.

Students, researchers, and practitioners.

Previous research has demonstrated that individuals with ASD who have been exposed to more than one language do not experience any additional language delays compared to their monolingual peers (Hambly and Fombonne, 2011), and of previous studies that have been reviewed, there has been no indication of negative outcomes associated with language abilities among bilingual/multilingual children with ASD (Drysdale et al., 2015). A majority of the research surrounding bilingual or multilingual individuals diagnosed with autism or other developmental disabilities have focused more on conducting communication assessments to assess participant's psychometric performance in these assessments but research on language preferences alone among these individuals is scarce. The purpose of the current study was to assess the influence of language preference among individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or other intellectual disorders who have been exposed to more than one language. The research study consists of two parts: Study 1 evaluates language preference during play contexts and study 2 evaluates language preference within instructional contexts and the individual's compliance with instructions.

The guidelines to conduct functional communication training (FCT) state that functional communication responses (FCRs) should be of low response effort, easily acquired, and easily recognizable by the community (Tiger et al., 2008). They also state that FCRs should be socially significant, meaning they are found acceptable by parents and the community. However, the guidelines do not mention the need to consider the clients’ cultural background when choosing an FCR. In this study, a questionnaire was developed for behavior analysts to use as a guide when choosing culturally adapted FCRs for Hispanic children. It was devised using literature that has identified specific behavioral manifestations of cultural values among the Hispanic population. Additionally, behavior analysts and parents who pre-tested the questionnaire completed experience surveys about their opinions and experience using the questionnaire to choose FCRs for Hispanic families. Results from the questionnaire and feedback from the experience survey will be further discussed.

Disparities in the use, quality, and outcomes of treatments, and the barriers that deter Hispanics from receiving healthcare services have been widely studied. Yet, similar efforts have been slow in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). A way to decrease treatment disparities is to assess the influence of cultural variables in behavior analytic interventions, and to evaluate whether manipulations to these variables improve the overall results of the interventions among Hispanic families. During this study, behavior analysts used a questionnaire to conduct an interview with parents to identify a functional communication response (FCR) that matched their cultural values. The subjects were taught to emit a culturally adapted and non-culturally adapted FCR. Parents' preference for each FCR was evaluated using a multiple-baseline design across participants in which they were trained to implement both FCR responses. At the end of the study, parents implemented the FCR of their choice. These results have important implications for ABA because it will support research in assessing cultural variables in interventions and services, and it will encourage behavior analysts to consider their clients' culture when providing services.

The purpose of this project was to evaluate cultural accommodations (bilingual clinician, translated documentation) and a lack of cultural accommodations (English speaking clinician with video interpreter). We compared skill acquisition of caregivers during behavioral skills training (BST) program for differential reinforcement, guided compliance, and BST with and without cultural accommodations. We found BST with improved cultural accommodations was more effective than without cultural accommodations.

One of the primary goals of applied research is to identify efficacious treatments for problem behavior that relevant caregivers can implement in relevant settings. In this symposium, we will review efficacious strategies for treating problem behavior and specific methods that will assist in training caregivers on the implementation of those strategies. First, an assessment and treatment model for treating feeding problems in the home setting will be reviewed in which caregivers were involved from the initial assessment through a 12-month follow-up. Next, we will review a skill-based treatment for food selectivity in an adolescent diagnosed with autism who engages in problem behavior, without evoking problem behavior throughout the teaching process. Then, an efficacious training program will be reviewed in which parents were taught to implement a comprehensive treatment for socially mediated problem behavior with their child. Finally, the utility of a training rubric will be reviewed as a tool for successfully transferring skill-based treatments to parents and caregivers in the treatment of socially mediated problem behavior.

Graduate students, practitioners, researchers

Multiple reviews focusing on the treatment of severe feeding disorders have recommended an increased focus on caregiver implementation, and nutritional and social outcomes. However, research continues to concentrate on the analysis of specific treatment procedures implemented by trained therapists during treatment admission. In this study, a home-based behavioural assessment and treatment model was evaluated for nine children with tube dependency. Caregivers informed assessment conditions, participated during experimenter-led sessions, and then received sequential phases of training to implement treatment protocols. We monitored caregiver implementation until the child's treatment goal was achieved (tube feeding cessation), then during follow-up visits conducted up to 12 months following the study. By the final follow-up, six of nine children had ceased tube feeding. We discuss the impact of caregiver participation on child performance, training requirements, and procedural integrity. In addition, we highlight barriers to longer-term adherence and recommendations for future research.

Between 67 and 89% of individuals with developmental disabilities have feeding problems (Silbaugh et al., 2016). This study describes a skill-based treatment to address food selectivity in children with autism who engage in problem behavior. An assessment was conducted with the participant's caregivers to identify foods to use in a preference analysis and to identify possible reinforcement contingencies influencing food refusal. Results were used to design a functional analysis of refusal. The reinforcement contingency shown to influence refusal in the analysis was then arranged to strengthen more appropriate food refusal behaviors. A contingency-based delay fading procedure was used to thin the schedule of reinforcement for appropriate refusal while suppressing inappropriate refusal and problem behavior and increasing mealtime requirements prior to reinforcement. By the end of this study, the participant consumed small meals consisting of multiple bites of a variety of foods that he did not eat previously, but that caregivers had reported wanting him to eat. Treatment was extended to caregivers in relevant environments. Interobserver agreement averaged 92% (range, 85% to 100%) for all variables measured. The results of this study suggest that these procedures may be useful for treating food selectivity without evoking problem behavior in children with autism.

Differential reinforcement of low rates (DRL) schedules are designed to reduce, not eliminate, targeted responses. The studies presented in this symposium provide exciting new data showing some extensions of commonly-used DRL schedules in both basic and applied contexts. The first two talks provide data on the use of spaced-responding DRL. Emma Gillespie will describe how avoidance behavior that limited access to positive reinforcement in a human-operant task was reduced and Laura Neal will describe how a spaced-responding DRL embedded within a group contingency reduced excessive requests for attention from children in a Year 4 classroom in South Wales. The next two studies provide data on the use of full-session DRL. Andrew Bonner will describe how severe problem behaviors (e.g., self-injurious behavior) of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities were reduced and Chris Krebs will describe how excessive requests for attention by adults with intellectual disabilities working at an adult-day-training center were reduced. A discussion will follow these four talks to promote an exchange of ideas for future translational research on DRL schedules and similar applications.

Applied Behavior Analysts Practitioners

This study investigated the effects of a spaced-responding DRL schedule on decreasing avoidance in humans. Participants played a game where they could earn or lose points by clicking on different countries on a map. In training sessions, participants could access safe periods by pressing a foot pedal, which turned a red bar (i.e., warning signals) into blue (i.e., safety signals) for 9-s. In test conditions, participants could change the red bar into blue only after 2-s had elapsed from previous presses (DRL-2s). A progress bar initially indicated the time until after pedal presses had an effect on accessing these periods. The bar disappeared after three consecutive correct responses, whereas three additional consecutive correct responses doubled the DRL requirement. Participants completed 4- 5 sessions lasting 20 min each. Responding quickly matched the DRL requirement (up to 64 s) for all participants. Percentage of correct presses varied slightly per participant, and incorrect responses tended to be more frequent as the DRL schedule increased. However, all participants achieved 100% correct responses in their final sessions. These findings may have important clinical implications for identifying strategies to decrease excessive avoidance that limits access to positive reinforcement.

Differential reinforcement of low rates (DRL) is frequently used as an intervention when a behaviour is problematic due to the frequency with which it occurs. DRL schedules are effective as reducing engagement to more acceptable levels. In applied settings, most investigations of DRL have focussed on evaluating session and interval DRL arrangements, whereby limits are placed on the number of responses that will be reinforced in a given time period. Spaced-responding DRL, whereby responses are reinforced only after a specific inter-response interval has elapsed, are much less common. The current study applied a space-responding DRL within a group contingency arrangement to decrease excessive student requests for attention in a Year 4 classroom in south Wales. As requests for attention may include requests for assistance, we also measured whether decreases in requests for adult attention produced corresponding changes in children accessing help from sources other than the teacher (e.g., referring to a book or printed instructions for completing the task). Results showed that the DRL schedule reduced attention seeking to levels deemed appropriate by the teacher, as well as increasing children's independent working skills. Both children and teachers reported liking the intervention and thought it helped them do better work.

Differential reinforcement of low rate (DRL) schedules are reinforcement contingencies designed to reduce response rates. A common variation of the DRL arrangement is known as full-session DRL (f-DRL), in which a reinforcer is presented at the end of an interval if the response rate during that interval is below a predetermined criterion. Prior human operant research involving arbitrary mouse clicks has shown that the f-DRL is likely to reduce target responding to near zero rates. Similarly, applied research has shown that the f-DRL is likely to reduce minimally disruptive classroom behavior. There are, however, relatively few successful applications of the f-DRL to severe forms of problem behavior (e.g., self-injurious behavior). Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of f-DRL on the severe problem behavior of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. For four participants, the f-DRL reduced severe problem behavior by clinically significant levels. Furthermore, results of a contingency strength analysis showed a strong negative contingency strength between target responding and reinforcer delivery for all participants. Key words: differential reinforcement of low rates, severe problem behavior, contingency strength.

Differential-reinforcement-of-low rate (DRL) schedules are often used to reduce, not eliminate, behavior. The current study examined effects of a full-session DRL on the number of requests for attention by two adults with intellectual disabilities working at an adult-day-training (ADT) program. The full-session DRL arranged for the delivery of a reinforcer at the end of a session if the number of requests for attention was less than a specified number during the entire session. Requests for attention, up to a specified number were also reinforced. In addition, a non-targeted behavior, duration of task (i.e., work) engagement, was measured. The full-session DRL reduced the number of requests for attention for both participants, and these effects were maintained during a generalization phase. Future research could extend the generality of these findings to other work-related behaviors and populations.

The four presentations in this symposium illustrate how evidence-based practices in instructional design and Precision Teaching can be combined in new ways to teach and assess core instructional objectives in mathematics, writing, and problem solving to typical learners of all ages, including elementary, middle school, high school, and college students. In the first presentation, Marianne Delgado will describe research that investigated the effectiveness of sentence combining procedures on the syntactical maturity of middle school students' compositions, using a multiple baseline design across classrooms. In the second presentation, Amanda VanDerHeyden will describe a comprehensive, research-based, Response To Intervention (RTI) implementation management tool for monitoring the progress of elementary and middle school students' acquisition and fluency of mathematics concepts and skills. In the third presentation, Nicole Erickson will describe and illustrate a procedure for teaching students to provide delayed prompting with their peers during the course of learning mathematics. In the fourth presentation, Traci Cihon will describe a measurement tool designed to capture the interlocking behavioral contingencies between dyad members, and its application in a research study that evaluated the effectiveness of a procedure to teach college students active problem solving behaviors.

behavior analysts and other psychology and educational professionals

At Morningside Delayed Prompting procedures are used to help students answer questions that require applying concepts taught in reading, writing, and math. During instruction, the teacher asks a question and provides a six-second delay for the student's answer. If the answer does not meet criterion, the teacher provides successive organization, language, content, and definition prompts until the student gives the correct answer. After three prompts the teacher provides a model to imitate. In this innovation, the teacher teaches students to use the delayed prompting procedure to prompt one another as they learn from a new math curriculum. The teacher partners middle level performers with other middle level performers, or middle level performers with high-level performers, allowing for the best results in concept acquisition. The teacher designs a sheet that coincides with the new math curriculum using a series of concrete, pictorial, and abstract prompts. The students use this sheet to identify the error being made and prompt their partner in order to correct that error. This presentation will present both teacher and student delayed prompting data, and videos of the students using the technology.

Whimbey and Lochhead (1999) described how problem solving can be taught if the component repertoires are brought to an overt level. One challenge university instructors face is determining when the desired repertoire has been achieved. The pilot study focused on the creation of an instructional sequence based on the work of Whimbey and Lochhead. The instructional sequence was piloted with one undergraduate student dyad and experimenters evaluated the effectiveness of the instructional sequence with a measurement tool designed to capture the interlocking behavioral contingencies between dyad members. The results suggested that the instructional sequence could be used to develop both Problem Solver and Active Listener repertoires as measured by the aforementioned tool; however, the effects were demonstrated with only one dyad and only one researcher. In the current study, experimenters assessed the generality of the instructional sequence and measurement tool with additional undergraduate student dyads. Two different graduate student researchers implemented the instructional sequence and took data on the resulting repertoires. The results suggest that the instructional sequence was transferable across researchers and that data could be collected using the measurement tool with reliability. Further, undergraduate students acquired the desired repertoires, as measured by our tools.

Clients benefit most when all members of a collaborative team combine their expertise to consider all possible interventions and outcomes (Zarcone, 2008). With increased calls for behavior analysts to participate in collaborative teams for clients receiving psychotropic medications as part of treatment, it is important to identify current training opportunities for behavior analysts in this area, and consider further opportunities that might be needed. It is also important to review how prescribers are making pharmacological treatment decisions, and how the behavior analyst can contrite to that process. This 4-paper symposium will focus on two related areas. First, two papers will review education and training opportunities available to behavior analysts, as well as BCBAs perceptions on training and collaboration opportunities. Second, two papers will summarize factors that influence prescriber decision making, and how behavior analysts can contribute to that process. A case study demonstrating successful collaboration between behavior analysis and psychiatry will be described.

Practicing behavior analysts

In recent years, there have been calls for behavior analysts to become more involved with issues related to psychotropic medication, both clinically and in research (van Haaren & Weeden, 2013), and to specifically consider effects of psychotropic medications during clinical assessment and intervention, to participate in the medication management process, and to participate in pharmacological research. Despite these calls, it has been suggested that the majority of behavior analysts may not have the knowledge or skill to work in these areas (Christian, Snycerski, Singh, & Poling, 1999; Wyatt, 2009). Although informal reports and reviews of behavior analytic training programs support this assertion, there is no known research that specifically seeks to determine what the current state of training may be for behavior analysts, in relation to psychopharmacology. Therefore, the current study sought to examine the medication/pharmacology-related training available within accredited training programs, and identify the rationales for the current state of offerings. Discussion will focus on the training opportunities and how they prepare behavior analysts for collaboration with prescribers.

Understanding the conditions under which novel speaker and listener skills emerge without direct training is paramount for increasing efficiency of intervention programs for children with autism spectrum disorder. This symposium will explore procedures to promote the emergence of novel speaker (i.e., intraverbals) and listener (i.e., following instructions) responses in children with autism. First, Hanne Augland will present a study that evaluated the effects of listener training on the emergence of two types of intraverbal task. Next, Sarah Frampton will examine the effects of instructional feedback during listener training on the emergence of intraverbal relations. Third, Andresa DeSouza will present a study that demonstrated the emergence of multiply-controlled intraverbals after training on a sequence of prerequisite skills. The final presenter, Megan Vosters will discuss the effects of echoic rehearsals on the acquisition and emergence of completing action-object instructions. David Palmer will serve as discussant.

Graduate students in applied behavior analysis programs; practitioners working in early intervention settings; educators in special education and language delayed population.

This study examined the extent to which teaching listener behavior would facilitate the emergence of intraverbal responding in a preschool aged boy with autism. Two types of intraverbal classes were evaluated: Saying the correct category of targets (Study 1) and answering "when" questions (Study 2). We used a multiple-probe-design across three stimulus sets for Study 1 and a multiple-baseline design across three stimulus sets for Study 2. Before starting the study, the participant was able to tact all stimuli involved in the listener training. Listener training consisted of teaching the child to identify correct pictures in response to the same questions used to assess the emergence of intraverbal skills. That is, for category questions, an example of listener training was touching the picture of a hamburger in response to the question "What is food?" For "when" questions, an example of listener training consisted of touching the picture depicting night when asked "When do you go to bed?" Once listener behavior was established, we tested for transfer to intraverbal behavior. For both studies, the listener training resulted in some emergent intraverbal responding. The participant responded to criteria during intraverbal "when" questions but not during intraverbal category questions.

Acquiring intraverbal relations under the control of multiple variables is critical to language, social, and academic development. Sundberg and Sundberg (2011) identified prerequisites that may engender the emergence of novel, multiply-controlled intraverbals. We used a multiple-probe design with both nonconcurrent (across participants) and concurrent (across sets of stimuli) components to evaluate the effects of training these prerequisite skills on the emergence of untrained intraverbals with four children with autism. Specifically, we taught participants to (a) tact multiple categories of stimuli (e.g., tact zebra as "mammal" and "from the desert"); (b) select stimuli when presented with category names (e.g., select zebra and gorilla upon hearing "Point to all mammals"); (c) provide exemplars belonging to categories (e.g., say "zebra and gorilla" after the instruction "Tell me some mammals"); and (d) select the target stimulus when presented with a instruction under multiple control (e.g., select zebra upon hearing "Point to the mammal from the savanna"). Participants showed the emergence of convergent intraverbals at mastery levels after they displayed mastery performance on all of the prerequisite skills identified by Sundberg and Sundberg. We will discuss these findings in terms of operant mechanisms that may facilitate the development of generative language.

Behavioral Economics (BE) and nudging studies have been characterized by increasing interest in the last years, and the Nobel Memorial Prize awarded to Richard Thaler represents a recent example of the rise of this multidisciplinary and relatively young field. Nevertheless, Behavior Analysis (BA) is rarely, if at all, mentioned among its contributing sciences. Therefore, this symposium has the aim of strengthening, meaningful conceptual and empirical contributions between the two fields and feeding further the developments of behavioral insights (BI). The first paper introduces the selectionist perspective and the notion of reinforcement into the field of BE; furthermore, it discusses single-subject research and serves as the overarching framework for the following presentations. The second paper focuses more closely on the mutual conceptual contributions between BA and nudging: definitions, functional relationships in the three-term contingency and group vs. individual design of nudging interventions represent the three main topics of discussion. Finally, the third paper provides a nudging field experiment meant to increase hand sanitization in a Norwegian hospital. This sets the occasion for discussing further context analysis and the adaptability of nudges for maximum effect retention. Following nudging and BI studies may benefit from the findings of BA and vice versa.

Behavior Analysis may contribute in the understanding of Behavioral Economic issues. Behavior principles have successfully been used to interpret consumption behavior (Foxall, 2001). Similarly, other areas may profit from a closer collaboration between the two fields. Yet, economics and cognitive psychology remain the main influences within the broader field of Behavioral Economics. This paper will discuss three features of behavior analysis that are relevant for the development and further understanding of behavioral economics phenomena. These features include (i) the selection perspective, (ii) the generic principle of reinforcement, and (iii) single-subject research. The selection perspective implies that the consequences of behavior and not the intentions of the individual are responsible for an organism’s behavior. Whereas a reward refers to an inherent property of an event, reinforcement refers to the selection of an act among other acts, and thus becomes a generic concept and an important part of the ontogenic selection. Single-subject research provides the means of finding the cause of the behavior by treating behavior as the dependent variable. The focus on the behavior – environment relation has great advantages in the study of behavioral economic issues.

In the rise of a "behavioral revolution," initiated conventionally by Thaler and Sunstein's publication of Nudge in 2008, governmental leaders and international organizations call for a stronger and more unified behavioral scientific approach, to tackle efficiently social problems and global issues. This article debates the relation between the nudging concept and its underlying principles from a behavior analytic viewpoint. We discuss possible reasons of why the science of behavior analysis, which may appear designated to play a central role in the rise of nudging techniques, has evolved largely unnoticed to scholars examining nudging. Furthermore, we acknowledge the contributions of nudging research from other disciplines, such as behavioral economics and public policy analysis, which benefit behavior analytic research practices. We build on the definitions by exploring the need for nudging in light of retaining positive individual consequences and showing how nudges can be contextualized to meet the variability naturally occurring in populations and integrating behavior analytic concepts in the design of nudging field experiments. We conclude with the conceptual validity and feasibility of scaling up nudging studies, and argue whether groups can be nudged in more effective ways, other than as a collection of individuals belonging to the same group.

Infections are a costly matter to both individuals and society as a whole, and improving hygienic behavior is therefore of great importance. Despite decades of evidence based recommendations, getting people to comply with guidelines for infection prevention in hospitals are still challenging. To improve visitors’ compliance with infection prevention the insights from behavioral economics and behavior analysis were used. Three different nudges were developed and tested to increase the use of hand sanitizers at Rikshospitalet in Norway. The three nudges were placement (nudge 1), placement including a red sign with a short descriptive text (nudge 2), and placement including a red sign with an expanded descriptive text (nudge 3). The study comprises of 300 individual choice situations with 100 observations of each nudge. The result shows that the number of visitors using the hand sanitizers were 7% (nudge 1), 46% (nudge 2) and 40% (nudge 3). It is important to analyze the context and adjust the nudge to optimize the effect.

Pinpointing, measuring, and changing behavior that impacts key performance indicators (KPI's) to rapidly grow a human service organization is achievable through the use of behavioral science. In fact, when executed with precision, this can result in massive scaling of services to impact many lives while creating economic opportunity for many employees. This panel is comprised of practitioners that are CEO's and executives that are doing this on a daily basis and provides specific actionable leadership behaviors that achieve massive organizational growth while maintaining the utmost quality through precise measurement of KPI's. Executives on this panel have produced peak employee and organizational performance resulting in employee retention rates exceeding 97% annually and doubling in revenue each year. The principles of organizational behavior management (OBM) that drive successful KPI trends must cascade through the fabric of three levels in any organization. Those levels include the individual employee level, the departmental level, and organization-wide level. Specific KPI's discussed are employee retention, employee engagement, employee recruitment and selection mechanisms, profit & loss, stakeholder feedback, utilization of authorized service units, diversity of funding, social media metrics, staff training and competency, fluency of accounts receivable, cash flow, and adherence to regulatory body compliance standards. Behavior analytic principles run through the fabric of each system to monitor and produce peak organizational performance in all these areas are analyzed.

The target audience for this panel is business owners, C-Level leadership in human services agencies, and those with supervisory and leadership experience. Participants should have, preferably, already taken the 8-hour supervision course. BCBA's, BCaBA's, & BCBA-D's are also encouraged to attend.

Aggression and reproductive interference are forms of behavioral interference that occur commonly between closely related species. Such between-species interactions can, and in most cases probably do, arise as a byproduct of activities that are part of the normal lives of animals, such as defending resources and attracting mates. However, the ecological and evolutionary consequences of behavioral interference between species can be quite distinct from the effects of the corresponding within-species interactions. Behavioral interference can determine whether species are able to coexist, and if they do coexist, how they evolve subsequently in response to each other through natural selection. Behavioral interference was probably part of human evolution, and could help explain why we are the only extant species in the genus Homo, but this talk will focus on what we know, with greater certainty, about the role of behavioral interference in the ecology and evolution of other animals. If behavioral interference is a costly interaction at the population level, why does it persist? In what ways, and to what extent, does behavioral interference affect the geographic ranges of species? How does behavioral interference affect the spread of invasive species, or the fate of endangered species? What is the evidence that behavioral interference has evolutionary consequences? I will use examples from the literature, as well as from my own research, to answer these and other questions, while striving to present a balanced perspective on the subject.

Anyone with an interest in the behavior of wild animals. No prior knowledge of the subject will be assumed.

Professional behavior analysts are expected to refer to the scholarly literature to guide their evidence-based clinical practices. Further, practicing behavior analysts will typically have multiple occasions to seek guidance with ethical decision making throughout their careers. The current symposium will include an overview of research and initiatives to assist professional behavior analysts with these tasks. The first presentation reports on a study of professional behavior analysts' literature search practices. Bank and Ingvarsson implemented an online survey, followed by interviews and self-monitoring with practicing BCBAs. The data suggest many participants search for literature at least once per month. Satisfaction with current literature resources decreased for those participants without a university library. Many professionals report conference attendance as a source of literature access. Juanico, Valentino and LeBlanc describe the development of a literature request service for a large service agency. They report employee literature requests received a response within two days. Valentino and LeBlanc describe a system developed in the same service agency to promote ethical behavior in the organization including an ethics network hotline. They report that ethical requests are frequently related to areas such as client rights and protection, dual relationships, and confidentiality. These presentations help gain insight to the literature searches and ethical needs of professionals in the field and describe the development of organizational supports provided to assist practitioners in both clinical and ethical decision making.

The target audience of this symposium includes all professionals credentialed by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board and those working towards that credential.

The first section of the Behavior Analyst Certification Board's Professional and Ethical Compliance Code (BACB, 2017) refers to the responsible conduct of a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. Included in the code is the expectation that professionals read the appropriate literature. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate how, why, and to what extent professionals access and read the behavior analysis literature. A 22-question survey was sent to professionals registered through the Behavior Analysis Certification Board. The survey respondents were also invited to participate in a follow up interview and self-tracking investigation. The survey results of 398 professionals provided information on their professional credentials, work structure, literature search habits, sources of research, resource satisfaction, and other related activities. Seventeen interviews and four self-tracking participants provided additional insight. A total of 223 respondents did not have access to a university library. Eighty percent of these participants searched for research at least once per month. The most frequently used online sources included Google Scholar, PubMed, and the BACB ProQuest benefit. Thirty eight percent of participants indicated satisfaction with the research resources available to them, while 62% indicated they were somewhat satisfied or not satisfied. The predominant theme related to lack of satisfaction was access. Fifty four percent of participants that had access to a university library reported they were satisfied with the research resources available.

This session is coupled with, and immediately follows, a SQAB tutorial on contextual behaviorism presented by Dr. Dermot Barnes-Holmes. Panelists will be asked to speak briefly about their research program and to bring questions designed to foster discussion with audience members. The goal is to generate ideas and collaborative efforts among basic, translational, and applied scientists. The tutorial and panel discussion have arisen because the Society for the Quantitative Analysis of Behavior (SQAB), an organization that emphasizes fundamental sciences related to behavior analysis, meets immediately before ABAI. The tandem meetings of these two organizations present opportunities for attendees to hear about core sciences related to behavior analysis. The SQAB tutorials have provided an excellent spur for such discussions but we (SQAB and ABAI's Science Board) wish to take this a step further. This panel discussion, which represents a partnership between SQAB and ABAI, will create a setting in which basic and applied scientists, as well as practitioners, can meet to discuss applications of the topics raised in a SQAB tutorial.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

We present three studies teaching social interaction-related skills to children with autism spectrum disorder. The first study used intraverbal training to improve object substitution symbolic play behavior for children who lacked such play skills. The second study used a speaker immersion approach to increase

BCBAs, BCaBAs, special education teachers, applied researchers, autism researchers

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may not develop symbolic play skills so such skills need to be taught specifically. We report an experiment regarding a procedure targeting "object-substitution" symbolic play skills. The "object-substitution" symbolic play behavior occurred when the child labeled a common object with the name of a substitute and used the object to perform a play action (e.g., As she put a bowl on her head, she called it a hat). A multiple probe across behaviors design was employed with five children (four boys and one girl, aged 3 to 6) with ASD. All children had verbal communication and demonstrated functional play and generalized imitation, but no symbolic play skills prior to the study. The instruction consisted of intraverbal training, picture prompts, and modeling of play actions. All children demonstrated object-substitution symbolic play skills after the instruction. The occurrences of response generalization were also discussed.

One of the major characters of children with autism is having difficulty to establish social relationship with others. The basic challenge is to relate self to others, or have difficulty to pay attention to people around. Teaching the children to pay attention to people around,( such as: what color of the person's hair is, tact the person who possessed specific object, and who is looking at you, etc.) are the fundamental skills the children with autism to relate self to others, and later for facilitating social interaction. The purpose of this study is to use behavior analytic approach to teach children with autism to pay attention to people and also to be aware of whether is someone looking at her. One child, age 4, diagnosed with autism, who can tact over 50 items and had basic listener skills, participated in this study. Three behaviors were targeted in order to teach her to pay attention to people around and start to relate self to others. Three target behaviors included:(a) tact a person's name and tact his/her color of hair or clothes, or to touch other's ear or shoulder, upon requested, e.g., when teacher asked what color Mary's clothes is, the child can response correctly; or when presenting two persons, teach would ask the child to touch Jenny's shoulder, the child do it upon request; (b) Observe and tact the person who possessed specific object, e.g., upon requested, the child can tact the person has red toy car on hand, (c) observe and tell who is watching at me (the subject), eg., when presenting two persons, the child can tact the one who is looking at her . Multiple probe across behaviors were used to validate effectiveness of the strategies in this study. The results showed positive results across the three behaviors both in the acquisition level and generalization effects. Parent's report and social validity data also showed favor results. Real life generalization and its impacts on the child's everyday life will be discussed. In addition, future research suggestion will be provided at the end of the paper.

This symposium will include three presentations evaluating the effects of various interventions on problem behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement and a presentation summarizing research on the efficacy of response interruption and redirection (RIRD) implemented at various levels of treatment integrity. The first study evaluated whether a multiple schedule in which a bracelet worn by the participant signaled the availability of praise for appropriate walking and the delivery of reprimands for toe walking was effective in decreasing toe walking. The second study investigated the effects of RIRD and response cost (RC) alone as well as a treatment package consisting of both RIRD plus RC on the level of stereotypy. The third study examined the processes, extinction, punishment, or both, responsible for the effectiveness of RIRD. And the final study summarized research evaluating the extent that treatment integrity impacts RIRD treatment outcome in the clinical setting. These presentations will be reviewed by a discussant.

BCBA and BCBA-D

We evaluated a multiple schedule in which a bracelet worn by the participant signaled the availability of praise for appropriate walking and the delivery of reprimands for toe walking in a young boy with autism. We first conducted a pre-treatment screening analysis to verify that toe walking was sensitive to automatic reinforcement. Next, we conducted a treatment evaluation using the multiple schedule. In the absence of the bracelet, no programmed consequences were delivered for toe walking. Once toe walking decreased to criterion levels with the bracelet on, we increased the amount of time the participant wore the bracelet. We also assessed generalization and maintenance of the effects. The multiple schedule was effective; toe walking decreased to near zero levels. In addition, the effects of the procedure generalized to community settings and maintained at all follow-up assessment dates. The participant's mother also effectively implemented the procedure. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.

The purpose of this study was to expand on previous research by evaluating the effects of response interruption and redirection (RIRD) and response cost (RC) alone in reducing vocal stereotypy and to evaluate whether a treatment package consisting of RIRD plus RC leads to greater suppression of stereotypy. Preference, reinforcer, and competing items assessments were conducted to identify items for the response cost condition. In addition results of a functional analysis indicated that stereotypy was automatically reinforced. During the treatment phase we evaluated the effects of RIRD, RC, and RIRD plus RC on stereotypy using a multielement design. We observed high levels of vocal stereotypy during both baseline and toy baseline conditions. All three treatments led to a substantial decrease in stereotypy for all participants however for one participant stereotypy continued to occur during the treatment intervals of the RC condition. We discuss limitations of the current study and areas for future research.

Response Interruption and Redirection (RIRD) is an effective intervention for reducing vocal stereotypy, an often automatically maintained form of problem behavior that is otherwise difficult to treat. Previous research has suggested that RIRD works through a combination of extinction, punishment, or both. We attempted to examine processes responsible for RIRD's effectiveness by evaluating an analog to interruption consisting of contingent and noncontingent presentation of neutral sounds to suppress vocal stereotypy in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and comparing those effects to RIRD. Neutral sounds were identified through the use of a preference assessment of various sounds. RIRD was effective in all of the participants, but noncontingent presentation of neutral sounds and contingent presentations of neutral sounds ranged from ineffective to not as effective as RIRD. Manipulating the amount of time with a sound playing did not have an effect on vocal stereotypy either. These results expand on previous research that call into question extinction-like explanations for the effectiveness of RIRD.

Response Interruption and Redirection (RIRD) has been shown to effectively decrease automatically maintained behavior. However, its application outside of an experimental setting constitutes an emerging literature base. Research evaluating the extent that treatment integrity impacts RIRD treatment outcome in the clinical setting will be reviewed and compared. In study 1, treatment integrity observations on the consistency and accuracy of treatment implementation were collected in a classroom setting with three participants diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Results showed that treatment integrity varied across participants and across staff members. Inconsistent implementation was the most common error. However, when RIRD was implemented the components were carried out as prescribed with high accuracy. When an analysis of consistency errors was conducted in a controlled setting, RIRD was generally effective at 50% consistency following previous exposure to 100% consistency. Study 2, further investigated this phenomenon by comparing treatment effects when degraded treatment consistency was not preceded by exposure to 100% consistency. Results varied across participants, but generally more rapid suppression occurred during the 100% condition. An evaluation of these results is discussed in terms of treatment integrity considerations when implementing RIRD in a clinical setting.

The symposium features four studies on training undergraduates or caregivers to implement behavior analytic treatments. Hallie Ertel will present on the efficacy of and caregiver preference for differing ratios of low-p to high-p instructions to increase compliance, and the results suggest that caregivers tend to prefer the most efficacious ratio. Elizabeth Foley will present on a self-instruction package on implementation of guided compliance, and the results suggest that this type of training is an efficacious alternative when resources are limited. Mary Halbur will present an evaluation on caregiver preference and acceptability of three prompting strategies prior to and following acquisition of caregiver implementation. These results provide insight on how to improve the accuracy of preference and acceptability measures. Finally, Maegan Pisman will present on an evaluation to teach caregivers to implement multiple evidence-based strategies within a play context. Given the acquisition, generalization, and child-preference outcomes, this intervention seems well suited for caregivers to use when teaching young children with an autism spectrum disorder. We are excited and honored that Dr. Nicole Heal is serving as the discussant given her expertise and passion for these areas of research.

Target audience will include practitioners interested in efficacious training procedures for staff and caregivers

The high-probability (high-p) instructional sequence, which involves the delivery of a series of high-probability instructions immediately before delivery of a low-probability instruction, is a commonly used procedure to increase compliance among children and individuals with intellectual disabilities. Although the modal ratio of high-p instructions to low-p instructions is 3:1, other ratios may be more effective. In the current study, we compared three ratios of high-p to low-p instructions (i.e., 1:1, 3:1, and 5:1) during use of the high-p instructional sequence to increase compliance among three children with autism. Results suggest that the 5:1 ratio was most effective. Although less effective, the 3:1 ratio and 1:1 also produced increases in compliance. In addition, we had each participant's caregiver nominate the most preferred ratio and we then evaluated caregiver implementation of the most effective ratio. In general, the most preferred ratio was also the most effective ratio, even when implemented by caregivers. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Previous researchers have suggested that caregiver participation in intervention can enhance intervention and promote generalization of skills across settings. Thus, parents should be trained to implement behavioral interventions. The purpose of the current investigation was to evaluate caregiver preference for and acceptability of three commonly used prompting procedures. Experimenters trained caregivers of children with disabilities to use three evidence-based prompting strategies (i.e., least-to-most, most-to-least, and a progressive prompt delay). Once the caregiver reached the mastery criteria with each prompting procedure, his/her preference for each of the strategies was evaluated using a concurrent-chains arrangement. Additionally, treatment acceptability of all procedures was measured multiple times throughout the study. All participants met the mastery criteria for each of the prompting procedures and showed a preference for least-to-most prompting. Results suggested that caregivers' preferences for procedures prior to training were different than post-training/post-child practice. In addition, indirect assessment scores corresponded to choice trials during the end assessments. The data obtained during this study support the utility of objective measures for studying preference for behavioral skill-acquisition procedures.

There have been many empirical advances in relational frame theory and the understanding of rule governance with implications in the field of autism treatment. These advances include the effectiveness of relational training on increasing complex skill repertoires in language and cognition. Relational training includes teaching new skills based on contextual cues while promoting emerged, untaught relations. The current symposium will discuss new evidence for teaching relational skills and complex responding to individuals with autism and related disabilities. Methodologies include relational training based on a variety of contextual cues including those of sameness, difference, opposition, comparisons, hierarchy, and perspective-taking. Additionally, case conceptualization and implementation of relational training procedures will be discussed and how these technologies can be used in clinical practice. Finally, conceptual advances in rule governance and its relationship to derived responding will also be evaluated through a theoretical lens. The implications of how derived relational responding impacts complex language development will be explored.

Children with autism often have deficits related to spatial and analogical reasoning. Relational Frame Theory (RFT) may provide a solution for teaching these skills using various contextual cues in order to increase these complex skill repertoires for children with autism. The current study evaluated the impact of relational training on various complex tasks such as block design and responding to analogies presented in a matrix. Arbitrary and non-arbitrary stimuli were trained in a variety of tasks using relational training by teaching one relationship between stimuli and testing for additional, emerged relations. These test probes were also conducted for novel, untrained stimuli. Various relational cues were trained and tested within this study, including cues from frames of coordination, distinction, comparison, opposition, hierarchy, and deictic responding. Following relational training, participants were able to increase their response to relational cues on complex reasoning tasks. Pre- and post- intelligence scores will also be discussed.

Relational Frame Theory (RFT) is a behavioral account of human language and cognition. This theory proposes that human language can be understood through relational frames, which are often divided into "families" of particular forms of relations. These families include, but are not limited to, comparison, opposition, distinction, and hierarchy. Hierarchical responding, a complex verbal operant that is comprised of relations in which stimuli are contained within or made up of, other stimuli. Examples of such relations include part-whole or attribute-of relationships. Existing research has not thoroughly examined hierarchical responding or procedures to promote its development for children with autism. The present studies examined the utility of the PEAK relational training system transformation curriculum in the promotion of hierarchical responding in children diagnosed with developmental disabilities.

Several decades of research have evaluated the effects of say-do correspondence training across a variety of behaviors and populations. Several different procedural variations have been evaluated, including say-do and do-say correspondence. General findings across the studies have shown that reinforcing correspondence between what individuals say they are going to do and what they actually do can be effective for increasing rates of low-probability behaviors and generalization has been documented across multiple topographies and settings. This paper will review highlights of the say-do correspondence literature and conduct a conceptual analysis of say-do correspondence training in terms of establishing generalized repertoires of rule-deriving and rule-following. Implications for future research and practice will be discussed. By examining these complex phenomena in our science, we will be better equipped to understand conditions leading to skill acquisition, as well as those related to emissions of challenging behavior. Implications for a comprehensive account of human behavior will also be discussed during this presentation.

Sexuality education is an often overlooked aspect of education for children and youth with developmental disabilities. However, it is an important aspect of the development of healthy individuals. Without explicit instruction, these individuals are at risk of lack of information regarding sexual development, sexual and reproductive health, interpersonal relationships, affection, intimacy, body image, and gender roles. This lack of information can lead to misinformation about sexuality, lack of development of sexual and gender identities, and leaves these individuals open to abuse. Behaviorally-based strategies can be used to support sexuality education for individuals with developmental disabilities, including the use of task analysis, video modeling, reinforcement strategies, and self-management. This presentation will describe the current research literature on sexuality education as well as results from a practitioner survey on strategies used to provide sexuality education. Future directions for behaviorally-based strategies for sexuality education include a focus on ways in which generalization can be achieved and the ethical parameters practitioners need to consider.

Developmental assessment instruments are used to determine how close a child is to developmental norms when screening for developmental disabilities. While delay in development is a symptom in the diagnosis of several disabilities, it is not a disability itself. Although the literature often treats developmental delay as a disability, there is no consistently recognized treatment (as required in the diagnosis of a disability). Addressing the target behavior is recognized to be more effective in early interventions than addressing the symptoms of the diagnosis. Addressing the target behavior is, therefore, even more appropriate when the diagnosis of developmental delay is not specific. Recognizing the environmental conditions influencing the target behaviors associated with development delay can lead to identification of antecedent interventions and discriminative stimuli. The goal of this study is to suggest means of enhancing interventions by understand the nature of developmental delays that are unassociated with a diagnosed disability. Examining archival data and analyzing interviews with early intervention practitioners will support resolution of problems associated with environmental influences on delays. Recommendations will be presented regarding ways in which parents, educators, and professionals can enrich development in early childhood.

Typically developing children and children without feeding disorders gradually develop and advance their self-feeding skills without any formalized intervention; however, children with feeding disorders are not likely to develop skills needed to self-feed or self-drink at an age appropriate level without individualized treatment (Carruth & Skinner, 2002; Peterson, Volkert, & Zeleny, 2015). Although children with feeding disorders may have met treatment goals for acceptance of liquids and solids, this often does not translate to the child being able to independently feed themselves using those same treatment strategies (Rivas et al., 2014; Vaz, Volkert, & Piazza, 2011). Unfortunately, the literature is limited regarding treatments to increase self-feeding skills, particularly for children with feeding difficulties whose deficits are related to delays in skill development (Rivas et al., 2014). The current study explored the use of errorless learning and prompt fading to increase self-feeding of three children ranging from age 3 to 8 years old; participants presented with various developmental delays and/or medical diagnoses. Results of a multiple baseline and multiple probe study indicated that these procedures increased independence of self-feeding skills of all participants.

Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) often have difficulties developing independent living skills, including navigating their community. Acquiring the skills to use GPS-based mobile applications to navigate the community could enhance opportunities to live independently and to obtain competitive, community-based employment. A multiple baseline design was used to teach seven adults with IDD, ages 18-26, to use Google Maps to navigate their community. Specifically, Google Maps was used to teach walking navigation and public transit (e.g., the bus) navigation in a community setting. Two phases of instruction were implemented. Total task training was first used to teach walking navigation. Once participants reached criterion of 100% independence for two consecutive sessions, total task training was used to teach navigation on a public transit system. In baseline, participants were unable to use Google Maps to follow walking directions or public transit directions. To date, all participants have reached mastery criterion for walking directions and 4 have reached mastery for public transit training. Data are being collected on skill generalization to novel locations. These results provide evidence for the utility of using a GPS-based mobile application to teach navigation skills to young adults with IDD.

Acquisition of operant behavior depends on selection from behavioral variations. As discussed by Stahlman, variations result from two main sources, direct reinforcement of variability itself and induction of variability resulting from such sources as Pavlovian relationships and extinction. Nergaard & Holth describe a novel procedure (with rats) and question the very possibility of reinforced or "operant" variability. They attribute observed variability to cycles of reinforcement and extinction of individual responses. Quite differently, Galizio, Haynes, Frye & Odum continue an extensive line of research showing that response variability is a behavioral dimension controlled by contingencies in many ways analogously to other such operant dimensions as response rate and force. They explore (with pigeons) spontaneous recovery of previously reinforced variable responding. Abreu-Rodrigues and Carmona extend research on how variability contingencies influence preferences. They explore (with pigeons) choices for different run length of varying sequences. This symposium provides innovative research and interpretations of response variability with diverse theoretical views from diverse locales -- Brazil, Norway and the US. Neuringer, as discussant, will attempt to relate the four presentations to additional basic operant-variability research and its application in education and treatment of autism.

Research by Neuringer and colleagues has reliably demonstrated that behavioral variability increases when reinforcement is contingent on it. An alternative summary of the contingencies that typically prevail in variability experiments is that several responses cycle between reinforcement and extinction. The current Experiment 1 tested this by making reinforcement contingent upon predetermined but shifting responses. Resulting U values were similar to those obtained in comparable lag schedules. Second, the details of what happens when reinforcement is contingent on variable responding may be more transparent when the descriptive operant class consists of responding to several different operanda rather than of different sequences of responses on two operanda. In Experiment 2, we also modified the lag n schedule so that reinforcement was contingent on the occurrence of a response to an operandum that differed from the n previously operated operanda rather than just the n previous responses. The results showed that (1) the rats only emitted as many different responses as the lag schedule required, (2) when the lag increased and, thus, required a response to an additional operandum, such an additional response emerged, and next (3) rather than demonstrating reinforced variability, the rats fairly consistently repeated the last reinforced response.

Choice between differing varying contingencies is affected by the variation requirement as well as by the cost of responding (i.e. switching between operanda). The present study investigated whether such choices would also be affected by within-sequence discriminative control. This possibility is supported by numerosity studies which show an inverse relation between sequence accuracy and run length, i.e., number of responses to be emitted on one operandum before switching to the other. Pigeons were exposed to a pre-training phase in which control by numerosity was established. By the end of this phase, the animals had to emit 10-response sequences according to a multiple schedule. To be reinforced, the sequence had to differ from the previous two correct ones and contain run lengths of 1 to 4 responses (Max 4-Lag 2 component) or 6 to 9 responses (Min 6-Lag 2 component). Accuracy was close to 50% in both components. Next, a concurrent-chain schedule in which the Max 4-Lag 2 and Min 6-Lag 2 contingencies operated in the terminal links. Preference for the shorter run length was observed for the pigeon that is already in this phase, despite equal reinforcer probabilities across terminal links, suggesting that discriminative control by numerosity affects choice.

The concurrent operant assessment (COA) has potential as a flexible and socially valid assessment strategy to guide reinforcement-based interventions for students with intensive behavior support needs in schools. In this symposium, we will present a series of data sets illustrating applications of COAs in public education settings. The first two presenters will share results of applied research studies in which COAs were used to inform interventions designed to increase compliance and/or on-task behavior for elementary-age students with or at risk for disabilities. The next two presenters will share data sets accumulated from state-funded projects related to implementing COAs in public school systems. One of these presentations will focus on a series of case summaries from a behavioral consultation model in which COAs have played an integral role. The other will present outcome data from a series of trainings designed to prepare school-based consultants to independently conduct COAs?from assessment design to data analysis and interpretation. Following the four data-based presentations, our discussant will offer comments on strengths and limitations of the works presented, and identify future directions for research and practice with respect to maximizing the impact of these assessments in schools.

Our presentation is targeted to behavior analysts who work in educational settings as well as those who conduct behavior analytic research in educational settings.

Choice assessments have shown promise in a variety of settings for identifying stimuli that may be used as reinforcers within behavioral interventions. One such assessment, the Concurrent Operant Assessment (COA), may be especially promising in educational settings that prioritize safe and efficient strategies to identify potential reinforcers for replacement behavior. Embedded within a behavior consultation model for public school-based teams across our state, we have conducted a series of COAs for students with challenging behavior. The consultations are intended to reduce challenging behaviors that raise safety concerns, interfere with learning, limit student access to the least-restrictive environment, and require high resource usage. Consultants train teams of educators to implement evidence-based treatment programs in the classroom. Within this consultation model, COAs are increasingly used to assess motivating variables and preferences for students and inform treatment decisions related to programmed contingencies of reinforcement for appropriate behavior. Outcome data will be shared on COA results, implications for treatment, and student outcomes.

Behavior analytic approaches in school settings are supported by a large foundation of empirical research. However, approaches for working with at-risk students have historically been underrepresented in the behavioral literature. The current symposium addresses ways to increase academic engagement, improve peer interactions, and decrease disruptive behavior in school settings with at-risk students. Study 1 compared the effects of differential negative reinforcement of alternative behavior (DNRA) and curricular revision (CR) on problem behavior with students diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Study 2 evaluated the effects of positive and negative reinforcement interventions on escape-maintained problem behavior with secondary students diagnosed with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). Study 3 examined the effects of the Good Behavior Game, a well-documented group contingency procedure, on student interactions in primary and secondary classrooms for students with EBD. Study 4 examined the effectiveness of teacher-implemented GBG on disruptive classroom behavior with students in a residential facility for juvenile offenders. Implications, future directions, and special considerations for working with this population will be discussed.

Researchers and practitioners who work in school settings with at-risk students or other special education populations, or those who want to learn more about the implementation of behavioral classroom management would benefit from attending this symposium.

Previous research has demonstrated that positive reinforcement can effectively treat problem behaviour maintained by escape from demands. We evaluated the effects negative and positive reinforcement interventions on engagement with math tasks for three secondary students with a history of math avoidance. A trial-based functional analysis confirmed that all three participants' problem behaviours were maintained by escape. We used an alternating treatments design to compare the relative effects of negative (i.e., removal of math tasks) and positive (edibles) reinforcement on work completion and accuracy. We then conducted a choice phase, in which participants could opt to work for removal of math problems or edibles. Results showed that positive reinforcement increased rates of problem completion and accuracy for two of the three participants. When allowed to choose, all participants opted for the positive reinforcement contingency and reported that they enjoyed completing math problems with the positive reinforcement contingency and disliked the worksheets when the escape contingency was applied. These results bolster previous findings indicating that positive reinforcement interventions may be more efficacious than negative reinforcement strategies for treating escape-maintained behaviour. Our results also raise important questions regarding how intervention approach may alter how an individual feels about engaging in appropriate behaviour.

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a group contingency procedure that is effective in reducing disruptive behavior and increasing on-task behavior in a variety of settings. This procedure has the support of a large literature base, but has not been evaluated with juvenile offenders who engage in severe problem behavior. Further, there are few GBG studies that directly address methods for training teachers to implement the procedure. In the current study, a group training procedure was used to quickly train 4 teachers to implement the GBG in classrooms in a secure residential facility for juvenile offenders. Results indicated that the teachers were able to produce substantial reductions in disruptive classroom behavior following a brief training. Teacher delivery of praise also increased substantially as a result of the intervention. Social validity data indicated that both teachers and students found the game to be effective. Implications, directions for future research, and special considerations for working with this population are discussed.

The standard celeration chart (SCC) has been utilized within the field of precision teaching (PT) to assist with learning both simple and complex skills by utilizing rate of responding, which has been regarded as the most sensitive measurement. However, precision measurement has seen less dissemination in the world of clinical psychology. The present symposia will have four components to address this. First, precision measurement utilizing the SCC will be introduced more broadly, with an emphasis on rate of responding and previous utilizations in clinical psychology settings. Second, an application to the clinician's own behavior as a developmental strategy for therapeutic skills will be discussed and preliminary data will be presented. Following, the utilization of precision measurement in exposure therapy for the treatment of anxiety disorders will be discussed with an emphasis on approach and avoidance behaviors. Finally, the last component of this symposium will present a way to use the SCC in exposure therapy, and demonstrate a technology from a tech startup that allows for in the moment data collection.

Rate of responding has long been recognized as one of the most sensitive targets to assess for the impact of an intervention. The standard celeration chart (SCC) has been used within precision teaching to display rate of responding in a consistent way that allows for repeated contact with the chart. While high rates of behavior have drawn a lot of attention in the academic domain, clinicians have also utilized the SCC for behavior that does not occur, and does not need to occur, at a high rate. The present talk will discuss the role the SCC plays in clinical psychology, and the benefits of using rate of responding as the basic unit of behavior and of repeated contact with a standardized measurement system. The talk will also discuss how precision teaching has contributed to the inner behavior literature, using the SCC with target behaviors in the therapeutic setting, and future directions for utilizing the SCC within clinical psychology.

Deliberate practice is a systematic and purposeful practice technique utilized to master a variety of skills across many domains. This form of practice seeks to examine core skills required for a greater skills and increasing practice in each of these domains. One domain that could benefit from deliberate practice is the development of core therapeutic skills in the field of clinical psychology. While deliberate practice in the form of utilizing video and audio tapes of therapy session and role plays have been utilized, very little work has been done to create precise, actionable measurement systems that may be beneficial for a deliberate practice framework. The purpose of this discussion is to examine the initial stages of utilizing precision measurement and the standard celeration chart (SCC) when viewing therapist behavior in video-taped therapy session. Application to specific clinical component and composite skills will be discussed, as will potential future avenues for the application of precision measurement in the deliberate practice of therapy and barriers that exist within training settings.

Exposure therapy is an early behavioral intervention for anxiety disorders that continues to play a key role in a number of existing psychotherapies. Of note, it provides a powerful treatment method for phobias and panic (exposure therapy), obsessive compulsive disorder (Exposure and Response Prevention [ERP]), and posttraumatic stress disorder (Prolonged Exposure [PE]). While exposure therapy often takes data in Subjective Units of Distress (SUDs), no precise, objective system of data collection and measurement has been applied. The current discussion will provide initial applications of precision measurement to exposure therapy, with an emphasis on recoding in-session approach and avoidance behavior on the standard celeration chart (SCC). Potential future avenues for application of precision measurement to exposure therapy will be discussed, as well as areas for future research in both exposure therapy with precision measurement and anxiety disorder treatment more broadly. In addition, barriers to the implementation of precision measurement in exposure therapy in both graduate training settings and other areas of clinical practice will be address with an emphasis on how to account for them.

A science of behavior brings with it a heavy emphasis on the objective measurement of events. When Skinner discovered the science of behavior by way of rate of response and a standard visual display, the operant chamber was a transformative tool that lead to significant discoveries. Today the application of technology to enrich the science of behavior is reaching a singularity. The confluence of wearable sensors, internet of things, artificial intelligence, big data, will drive the science of behavior analysis rapidly forward. In the near future it will be possible to quantify the value of a reinforcer to predict the occurrence of a behavior through a combination of precisely measured observed behaviors correlated to setting events of the physiological state. Wearable sensors, AI, single subject "big data" analysis will provide the data we need to predict when self injurious behavior is likely to occur or when we have pushed the learning to the point of diminishing returns and its time to take a break. This presentation will explore the history of continuous observation, some of the practical barriers to implementing it consistently in practice, and some potential solutions currently in development by Chartlytics.

Anywhere between 30-50% of individuals with autism do not develop vocal language that is deemed functionally acceptable to meet their daily communication needs. This symposium seeks to address this problem by presenting three studies that use vocal or augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) interventions. The first study sought to extend the evidence base for teaching children with autism who are learning to communicate using speech generating devices by evaluating the acquisition of intraverbal responding in a four-year-old child with autism. Systematic instruction in the context of an activity interruption (i.e., song) was used to contrive the opportunity for intraverbal responding. The second study investigated procedures to teach the mands for information under control of the establishing operation, and examined the extent to which teaching generalized to novel scenarios. The third study evaluated how two commonly used AAC formats, sign language and picture exchange, resulted in access to reinforcement in the natural environment. All three studies for this symposium have important implications that extend previous research using both vocal and AAC language interventions.

Board Certified Behavior Analysts

Anywhere between 30-50% of individuals with autism do not develop vocal language that is deemed functionally acceptable to meet their daily communication needs. As a result, individuals with autism may require interventions alternative to vocal speech, such as augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). However, very little is known about how members of the public may respond to forms of AAC. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how two commonly used AAC formats, sign language and picture exchange, result in access to reinforcement in the natural environment. To do this, we approached naïve adults (i.e., individuals unfamiliar with AAC) and asked questions (e.g., "Where is the bathroom?") that were likely to result in reinforcement. We measured whether or not naïve adults accurately responded to each question, and we collected additional descriptive information about their reaction to that form of AAC. This study has important implications, not only on the social validity of each form of AAC, but also for long-term considerations for using AAC.

Mands for information (MFI) are classified as behavior in the form of question asking that is under control of an establishing operation (EO); the consequence being information related to the EO. This behavior often occurs in the form of "wh" questions, though any topography can serve as a MFI (e.g., "tell me"). Mands for information (MFI) can play a critical role in language development and represent an important skill to enable individuals to successfully learn new information from their environment. Yet, many children with autism do not acquire mands for information without direct teaching. Research has demonstrated effective procedures for teaching all "wh" forms, except for "why." This study investigated procedures to teach the MFI "why" under control of the establishing operation, and examined the extent to which teaching generalized to novel scenarios. The intervention was effective in establishing the MFI "why" in three children with autism within a short number of teaching sessions, and intervention was effective in establishing generalization of the MFI to novel scenarios for all participants.

Children with autism who do not develop spoken communication are often candidates for speech-generating devices (SGDs) as an alternative communication modality. Early language interventions for children with autism often utilize Skinner's conceptual analysis of language by targeting manding, tacting, and intraverbal skills. However, for children learning to use SGDs, research has mainly investigated manding skills. Thus, the current study sought to extend the evidence base for teaching children with autism who are learning to communicate using SGDs by evaluating the acquisition of intraverbal responding in a four-year-old child with autism, using a concurrent multiple baseline across responses design. Systematic instruction in the context of an activity interruption (i.e., song) was used to contrive the opportunity for intraverbal responding. All three intraverbal responses were acquired during a final choice phase, which allowed for the participant to select the song order. These results suggest the value for targeting intraverbal skills to children with autism who use SGDs.

Children diagnosed with autism often display difficulties in social situations, staying on task in group situations, and completing work independently for extended periods of time which adversely may affect their quality of life throughout their day. The three studies which make up the symposium used behavioral interventions to increase independence, social, and on-task behaviors for individuals diagnosed with autism. The results of the first study increased independent work completed using a visual schedule. The student learned to follow his visual schedule and complete all tasks required in the absence of adult supervision. Study two used text messages via Apple watch to increase the appropriate social initiations for two individuals diagnosed with autism. Study three compared on task behavior between traditional circle time and circle time using a smart board. The results of each of these three studies increased the overall independence for individuals with autism across multiple contexts throughout their day.

Frequently, children with autism spectrum disorders become dependent on prompts from teachers or parents to complete tasks, even those that have been previously mastered (Hume and Odom, 2007). The ability to independently navigate through multiple work tasks can create significant opportunities for individuals to become more self-sufficient in less restrictive settings and serve as a brief respite for caregivers. The present study is an example of how a visual schedule increased independent work completion for 15-year-old-aged boy in a private school. Through the use of prompt fading the individual was taught to check the binder which contained pictures of tasks, then to retrieve a bin from a shelf which corresponded to that picture. The individual then completed the task and turned it in to be checked for accuracy and completeness. Verbal praise and an edible were provided once the terminal bin was completed and checked by the staff member. Challenging behavior remained low throughout the treatment even as prompts were faded. Independence in task completion increased and remained high and stable throughout generalization. Generalization included increasing the amount of work bins completed in one session as well as varying environments in which the work was completed.

Students with autism have skill deficits with attempting to interact with typical peers. This is equally true for children with high-functioning autism. In the current study, the researcher used text messages on an Apple watch to increase the appropriate social initiations of 2 middle school student with high-functioning autism in a public high school. The results show the intervention was highly effective for both participants. Recommendations for future research are suggested.

Research presented in this symposium focuses on behavioral innovations in the assessment and promotion of physical activity in children. Patel and colleagues will present on implementing a token system in a combined multielement and reversal design where tokens in one tokens in one condition are delivered contingent on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), and are delivered on a yoked noncontingent schedule in the other condition. Miller and colleagues will present on an intervention consisting on self-monitoring, public posting, and monetary rewards to increase day-long steps in children. And Irwin and colleagues will present on how engaging in varying bouts of moderate and vigorous physical activity influences heart rate measures of MVPA.

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of token reinforcement on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) exhibited by four preschool-aged children, using a multiple-baseline across participants and combined reversal and multielement design. During baseline, no programmed consequences were provided for MVPA. During the contingent token (CT) condition, tokens were delivered contingent on MVPA. During the noncontingent token (NCT) condition, tokens were delivered according to a predetermined time-based schedule, yoked to the previous, corresponding CT session. For three participants, a reversal effect was observed; that is, the delivery of tokens contingent on MVPA increased and maintained higher levels of MVPA compared to baseline and NCT conditions. For one participant, an overall reduction to near zero levels of MVPA was observed across experimental conditions, beginning with the first NCT phase. The token economy procedure was used as a method to increase physical activity and served as an adaptation of the tangible condition. Results suggest that contingent token reinforcement can be an effective way to increase MVPA. Also, results from this study might inform future functional analyses of MVPA for children who do not respond to social positive contingencies in their initial assessment.

In research surrounding increasing physical activity in children, reinforcement is typically delivered contingent upon bouts of, or engagement in, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) such walking briskly, running, skipping, jumping, etc. A bout can be defined as consecutive x-intervals during which MVPA occurs until at least one x-interval has elapsed without MVPA. However, it is unclear what duration of a bout of such behavior is required to reach and maintain beneficial increases in heart rate (HR). The goal of the present research is to evaluate HR as children engage in MVPA behaviors in four different bout intervals. First, an individual heart rate assessment was conducted for each participant to determine personalized MVPA criteria. Next, participants were asked to engage in MVPA behaviors for 50% of 12-min sessions, with active and still periods divided into different length bouts (30 s, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 min). Data analyses included average session HR, percentage of session reaching moderate HR criteria, percentage of session reaching vigorous HR criteria. The results suggest that despite engaging in MVPA behavior for 50% of the session, resulting HR varied depending on bout length.

Basic and applied research in clinical behavior analysis identifies the control of behavior by distal, positive reinforcers as central to psychological well-being. On the other hand, both psychological inflexibility (i.e., dominance of aversive control) and heavy delay discounting are associated with a number of problematic behaviors. Recently developed technologies allow us to study these extended behavior patterns more effectively. This symposium focuses on the application of technology to better assess responding to acute aversive and/or delayed consequences across three studies. The first presentation examines data from the second iteration of a computer-based, behavioral assessment of delay discounting, where participants engage in behaviors that result either in fewer, immediate points or more points awarded after an experiential delay. The second presentation reviews a series of studies examining the relative effects of brief psychological flexibility interventions on behavioral manifestations of body image inflexibility using technology. The third presentation examines the impact of a series of values interventions in the workplace using an ecological momentary assessment mobile application. Implications of methods and consequences of each intervention and the role of technology in behavior analytic research will also be discussed.

Psychological flexibility is of central importance in one approach to clinical behavior analysis—Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Psychological flexibility involves a pattern of responding where verbally-established values are able to influence effective appetitive behavior in the presence of previously aversive stimulation. Body image flexibility is a special case of psychological flexibility that refers to values-directed behavior in the presence of aversive body experiences. The Body Image Flexibility Assessment Procedure (BIFAP) was developed to assess body image flexibility. It is does so measuring the responses to compound stimuli comprised of a derived values stimulus and a derived body stimulus. Previous validation studies have demonstrated convergence between performance on the BIFAP and other assessments of body image flexibility including: self-report questionnaires, established tests of verbal inflexibility, and experience sampling probes. Over the past year, a series of studies have been conducted examining changes in BIFAP performance following different flexibility-based interventions. Results suggest that body image flexibility, as assessed by performance the BIFAP, is differentially impacted by brief interventions. Implications for assessment and treatment will be discussed.

For the past 5 years the Global Autism Project has been providing training to autism centers around the world through our SkillCorps program. This unique volunteer program allows professionals to bring their experience to centers in underserved areas around the world. Our panel of SkillCorps participants will discuss the benefits and challenges of short-term volunteering to both volunteers and service partners as well as how the Global Autism Project has dealt with these challenges.

BCBAs consultants

Behavior interventions often involve several components that can be manipulated across individuals or settings including contingencies of reinforcement, prompting procedures, and establishing operations. While many variations of these procedures exist in the literature, less research has been dedicated to directly comparing the effectiveness of these variations. Even less focus has been given to preferences for treatment components by the individual who is receiving the intervention or the individual who is implementing the intervention. This symposium presents three studies that evaluated modifications to various components of treatment and preference. Diabiase, Schuierer, DeQuinzio, and Taylor extended the research on traditional versus embedded discrete trial teaching to adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. Luck, Lerman, Zey, and Campbell assessed teacher preference for three error-correction procedures and compared these preferences to the effectiveness of each procedure. Miller, Scheithauer, Shirley, Gerenscer, and Muething compared client and therapist preference across three prompting procedures and compared these data to the effectiveness of each procedure at promoting compliance. Together these studies represent methods for evaluating preference across procedures and evaluating for the most effective intervention in within participant models.

Practitioners in educational settings, skill acquisition settings, and those treating escape-maintained problem behavior

Geiger, Carr, LeBlanc, Hanney, Polick, and Heinicke (2012) compared traditional discrete trial teaching and embedded discrete trial teaching (DTT) with children with autism. We extended the results to two adolescents with autism. A multi-element design within a multiple baseline design across two stimulus sets was used to compare the effects of traditional and embedded DTT. Traditional DTT consisted of the instructor presenting a discriminative stimulus to start each trial ("Point to ___"), implementing a prompt (i.e., manual guidance), and providing reinforcement (i.e., praise and token) for correct responding. Embedded DTT consisted of presenting trials similar in structure to the traditional DTT but within an ongoing activity (e.g., shooting baskets). The percentage of correct responses improved with the introduction of both types of DTT. However embedded DTT resulted in faster acquisition (i.e., less trials to criterion). Mean session duration was longer for embedded than for traditional. The results of this study with adolescents with autism is promising because it demonstrates that receptive skills can be targeted during activities away from a desk or table with implications for incorporating instruction during vocational activities.

Within the field of applied behavior analysis, single case research designs are often used to demonstrate treatment effects. However, in order to disseminate these interventions we need larger scale analyses. The current symposium will present three papers focused on the use of meta-analyses and consecutive case reviews as models to help establish interventions as evidence-based. The first paper evaluated the procedures used in 18 previously published meta-analytic reviews on behavioral interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder. Specifically, this study evaluated the decisions rules researchers used to determine if an intervention was effective. The second paper focuses on a multi-level meta-analysis model to help establish if an intervention is effective. The authors describe this approach using two different types of differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate schedules as an example. Lastly, the third paper uses a consecutive case series analysis to evaluate outcomes related to behavioral treatment for enuresis. The evaluation and use of other models, such as these, are needed in order for the field to disseminate evidence-based interventions for individuals diagnosed with developmental disabilities.

Researchers, clinical researchers, and other professionals in the field of behavior analysis

Children with developmental disabilities (DD) are more likely than typically developing peers to have issues with enuresis. Past research has shown the success of behavioral treatments consisting of scheduled sits and reinforcement for continent voids (Azrin & Fox, 1971; Leblanc, Carr, Crossett, Bennett, & Detweiler, 2005). However, this research has included small sample sizes, while studies with larger numbers have lacked key information (i.e., baseline rates and follow-up data to evaluate maintenance and generalization). The current study conducted a consecutive case series analysis of 44 individuals with developmental disabilities who completed a two-week program for enuresis. Results showed significant improvement in continent voids and follow-up data suggested positive results maintained when treatment was implemented by caregivers in a home environment.

Naming across both listener and speaker responses and intraverbal responding may be defined as bi-directional because of the speaker-listener bi-directional relations involved in each of these types of behavior (Miguel, 2016). We report on three studies focusing on bi-directional operants and how, when and under which environmental conditions each may be acquired. In the first paper we present data on 49 participants between the ages of 18 months and 3 years. We investigated when and how these children acquired the listener half (uni-directional) and both the listener and speaker components (bi-directional) of Naming. In the second paper we report on experiments testing the effects of a Multiple Exemplar Instruction (MEI) procedure on bi-directional naming (BiN) and delayed drawing responses as a measure of conditioned seeing for school-aged students with Autism. Our final paper reports on the emergence of intraverbals and speaker-as-own-listener behaviors (Naming, say-do responding and self-talk) in toddlers with and without identified disabilities or delays.

Behavior analyst practitioners, supervisors and school personnel

We tested 49 children between the ages of 18 and 36 month for the presence of the listener half (uni-directional) and full (bi-directional) Naming. Students were provided with Naming experiences which included the presentation of visual and auditory stimuli (participants saw and heard the names of pictures). Tests for uni-directional and bi-directional Naming were conducted after each three sessions of Naming experiences across four different stimuli. The results are discussed in terms of differences across chronological age groups and analyses of other relations are presented.

I conducted 2 experiments investigating the relations between speaker-as-own-listener cusps and responding to reverse intraverbals. Speaker-as-own-listener (SOL) cusps include, Naming, Say-Do Correspondence and Self-Talk Fantasy Play. During a pilot experiment, I found the source of the problem in 2 participants' learning was their deficient speaker-as-own-listener repertoires. Participants in the pilot lacked Say-Do and Self-Talk developmental cusps. Following a Self-Talk Immersion intervention, Say-Do was induced for both participants and coincidentally; correct responses to reverse intraverbals emerged. In Experiment I, I continued examining relations between the speaker-as-own-listener repertoire and intraverbal responding with a statistical analysis of 35 Early Intervention (EI) and Preschool students recruited from CABAS model schools who functioned at listener and speaker levels of verbal behavior. Findings from Experiment I indicated that the presence of Say-Do Correspondence and Self-Talk were significantly correlated to correct responses to reverse intraverbals. Experiment II was a functional analysis, during which 5 participants were selected from an EI classroom due to their similar levels of verbal behavior, deficient SOL repertoire, and because they could not respond to reverse intraverbals. Results indicated a functional relation between the presence of Say-Do Correspondence and Self-Talk and correct responses to intraverbal probes for all 5 participants.

Behavioral consultation (BC), wherein a consultant changes a target client's behavior by working directly with a mediator (e.g., K-12 teacher) who serves as interventionist, has long been an important topic in school psychology and applied behavior analysis. This presentation examines key historical developments in BC, such as the impact of Bergan, Kratochwill, and others' verbal interaction and competency-based training research, and then considers the state of current BC practice in schools and related settings. The presentation concludes with some speculations about how technology will affect future BC practice.

Practitioners who work with school-age clients

Over the last several years, the public has increasingly paid attention to problems associated with suicide and law enforcement. Each presents its own set of controversy, challenges and barriers to progress. This symposium focuses on real world sets of data, using Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to reveal new insights and patterns within the fields of contemporary suicidology and law enforcement. The presentations offer solutions and recommendations using ABA principles while also leveraging ABA to teach the audience about these respective subject areas. One talk elucidates a novel analysis of the Air National Guard's Suicide Prevention Program. It uses recently obtained data and analyses to highlight predictive variables, risk factors and protective factors which have previously been unknown to the military community. It concludes with recommendations for more effective suicide prevention. The second presentation addresses a common source of concern among U.S. citizens pertaining to the use of force by police and the coverage of this issue in the media. This discussion centers around the ways in which ABA can offer solutions for the analysis of these data and the training of law enforcement officers in the future, as that community aspires to prevent the inappropriate use of force.

This is appropriate for psychologists and those in the behavior analysis community interested in continuing education.

Suicides continue to be one of the top ten causes of death in the United States. Among adolescents it is within the top three. Within the military, suicide continues to plague service members, leaving military families torn and leaders baffled and frustrated. Since 2008, military suicide exceeded civilian ones (Army Institute of Public Health, 2011) and have not yet returned below the civilian rates. Shockingly, no civilian or military organization, state or locality has successfully maintained a reduced suicide rate despite a variety of suicide prevention programs (Corso et al., 2017). A recent meta-analysis of risk factors for suicide reveals that the field’s predictive capabilities are poor (Franklin et al., 2017). The authors discuss the results of a program evaluation pilot of Airmen in the Air National Guard (ANG). Unlike the variables the field has historically examined, the authors evaluated system-level factors (i.e., those to which the entire ANG population are exposed) which may be mitigated by military leaders at the population level. System-level risk and protective factors are discussed, as well as an empirical model for predicting suicide in the ANG and suggested solutions for reducing suicide among Airmen.

The insurance mandate in California has led to organizations taking great steps towards hiring and retaining talent. In late 2014 Easterseals (ESSC) Autism Services convened a work group chartered to focus on improving employee recruitment and retention. Over the last two years the group worked to find contributing factors to retention, identify barriers to higher levels of retention, and to define strategies to improve recruitment and better retain the individuals in the organization. The work group developed two questions that prevented them from taking large scale next steps:1) Is the level of retention at ESSC within an acceptable range compared to similar organizations? 2) Are the barriers identified by the work group the ?right ones?, and if so, what are best-practice mitigating solutions? Early analysis found a lack of benchmark data in the industry surrounding acceptable retention rates. As a result, outside consultants were hired to benchmark the level of retention at ESSC against similar organizations across the country. This panel will review the results of the retention benchmark study and discuss strategies surrounding associate retention. Dialogue around best practices will include audience sharing and participation.

BCBAs Organizational Leaders

The "Decimal System" of Behavior and Life Problems (DSBLP) was developed in 2010-2013 for the classification of behavior problems and problems with life circumstances according to behavior-analytic concepts and principles to get a comprehensive and functional tool to guide goal setting and interventions in behavior analysis. DSBLP also includes a "mirror image" of the problem classes defined: respective behavior assets and strengths. DSBLP has nine main problem classes with subclasses and a zero class for non-problems. Seven classes are pure behavior problems of which only one class can be a primary problem at one time. Of the two problem classes, environmental and biological problems ("life problems"), one can be a primary problem simultaneously with one of the behavior problem classes. Consequently, other problem classes can be secondary problems. The DSBLP enables tailor-making individual treatments according to the goals derived from the system. The complaints of a client are first assessed using "chain analyses" of behavior that are formulated based on hierarchical decision trees included in an applied or clinical interview. The interview renders possible different types of functional assessments and analyses including experimental functional analysis. In this presentation, I will go through the different problem classes and their behavioral functions.

A key component of comprehensive behavioral interventions for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the provision of reinforcement. Several methods have been designed and evaluated within the literature to identify potential reinforcing events (e.g., multiple stimulus without replacement; MSWO). Once potential reinforcers have been identified it is common for those to be used within a reinforcement system, such as a token system. The purpose of this symposium is to present three studies that evaluated the methods of reinforcement identification, assessment, and the use thereof. The first presentation evaluated the effectiveness of a magic number token system to increase the frequency of comments during snack for children diagnosed with ASD. The second presentation evaluated the use of a level system to improve synchronous engagement (SE) within two dyads of children diagnosed with ASD. The final presentation compared the rate of responding when potentially reinforcing items were identified using a MSWO preference assessment or through in-the-moment reinforcer analysis.

RBTs, BCaBAs, BCBAs

Token systems are commonly used throughout the course of treatment for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Token systems commonly involve a predetermined number of tokens required to be earned prior to their exchange for a terminal reinforcer. The effectiveness of token systems implemented in this manner have been well documented within the literature. One alternative to a static number of tokens earned, is altering that number based upon learner responding and having the number remain unknown to the learner until the moment of exchange (i.e., a magic number token system). This type of a system requires in-the-moment assessment by the interventionist. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a magic number token system to increase the frequency of comments during snack for children diagnosed with ASD. The results of a multiple baseline across children will be discussed as well as future research and clinical recommendations.

Level systems have been described as a framework which can be used to shape behavior through the systematic application of behavioral principles. Within level systems, an individual moves up and down through various levels contingent upon displaying specific behaviors. While level systems have been evaluated across a wide variety of settings using group contingences, their use on an individual level has received considerably less attention. Furthermore, to date, the authors are only aware of one study that has utilized a level system with individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of a level system to improve synchronous engagement (SE) within two dyads of children diagnosed with ASD. The results of an ABAB reversal design demonstrated that the level system was effective at improving SE for both dyads. Future research and clinical recommendations will be discussed.

The provision of reinforcement to increase the frequency of desired behaviors is a crucial element of behavior analytic intervention for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Formal preference assessments, like the multiple stimulus without replacement procedure (MSWO), are often used to determine potential reinforcers for use during intervention. While these types of assessments have been widely demonstrated as effective, there is little empirical evidence to support that these rigorous methods of reinforcement identification produce higher rates of responding compared to more efficient methods (i.e., in-the-moment reinforcer analysis; IMRA). The purpose of this study was to compare the rate of responding on a sorting task when potentially reinforcing items were identified through the use of a MSWO preference assessment or through IMRA. The results of alternating treatments design will be discussed in terms of rate of responding, efficiency, reinforcer selection, and interventionist rationale. Future research and clinical recommendations will also be discussed.

Beginning in 2009, 28 states in the United States have established licensure for behavior analysts. Not only does the nature of licensure vary across states, the processes and experiences of behavior analysts involved in establishing such licensure has varied greatly. Behavior analysts in some state some experienced little difficulty or opposition with the process being relatively brief while those in other states experienced much difficulty, dealt with opposition from members of other professions with the effort require multiple legislative sessions. In this discussion, the experiences of behavior analysts in 4 states where behavior analyst licensure was established in the last 2 years will be discussed. Information will be presented regarding the experiences in Michigan, South Dakota, Montana, and Texas. The discussion will include comparison of experiences, strategies and tactics of the states as well as recommendations for other states where licensure has not as yet been established. This discussion will be helpful for behavior analysts considering pursuing licensure in other states and will provide important information for persons interested in the history of the profession of behavior analysis.

Behavior analysts interested in establishment of state licensure of behavior analysts and persons interested in the history and ongoing development of the profession of behavior analysis.

This tutorial provides a primer on open-source software designed for behavior analysts and behavioral scientists. The review includes an overview of existing works and highlights software designed to extend the range and precision of behavior analytic work. This tutorial also discusses the emerging role of open-source software and software repositories as necessary adjuncts to peer-reviewed works and evidence-based tools. For researchers, open-source repositories provide an additional means for increasing the transparency, replicability, and extendibility of existing approaches. For practitioners specifically, several open-source tools provide applied behavior analysts with additional clinical information that was previously unavailable without substantial time, complicated data collection, and statistical training. Topics covered will include delay discounting, applied behavioral economics, and severe behavior and the tutorial provides examples of how such software can be applied in both clinical work and research. The specific operations performed by these tools include non-linear curve fitting, model selection, inter-rater reliability, and time-based lag sequential analyses.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Technology is at the forefront of society, including education and research. With almost 100 schools that provide the Behavior Analyst Certification Board course sequence entirely online (BACB, 2017), it is imperative that behavior analysts, educators, and supervisors provide high quality services in the distance format that are comparable to those services provided in person. Many individuals who attend online schools do so for convenience, but there is a question of whether the convenience of online schooling prohibits access to opportunities that might otherwise be afforded in-person, such as research opportunities, interactions and support systems, and development of rapport with peers and professors. Three studies were conducted that either evaluated or utilized some distance aspect. Study one evaluated the effects of a question-present and a question-absent teaching condition on the acquisition of spontaneous mands, with both researchers living in different states. Study two evaluated the effects of student facilitators on discussion forum posting in an online setting. Study three evaluated differences in behavioral resurgence with DRA and DRO utilizing an online lab setting. A discussion of the CABALAB activities and student-professor directed research in the online format will be provided.

It is common in asynchronous college courses for instructors to require students to participate in online discussion forums. However, there is little empirical research indicating the best forum formats in relation to post quality and learning outcomes. Picciano (2002) implemented a system that utilized student facilitators to improve the quality of online discussion forums in asynchronous online courses. While Picciano focused on community building, the present empirical study compared the use of the student facilitators role as opposed to professor directed forums to measure quality of forum posts, generalization across weeks, and learning outcomes. The following study was an indirect replication of Piccianos student facilitator research with 45 masters-level students in an asynchronous online course. The preliminary results indicate that quality of posts increased during and after students role as a facilitator. These results also indicate that the facilitator role did not have a significant relationship with performance on weekly quizzes. Limitations of the study included a small sample size, defining objective measures of post quality, as well as extraneous variables that may have affected learning outcomes. Results suggest that the facilitator role increased responding, quality of posts, during the assigned weeks and in some participants, in future weeks; but did not have significant relationship with learning outcomes.

Skinner (1957) described the tact as the most important of the verbal operants, as a tact repertoire provides foundational building blocks for the establishment of more complex verbal behavior. This symposium presents basic and applied research on variables involved in the establishment of tact control and the effects of tact acquisition on other behavior. The first study compared the the efficiency of most-to-least prompting and error correction procedures in tact instruction for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The second study evaluated the effects of stimulus preference on typically developing children's acquisition of tacts and the subsequent emergence of mands and listener relations. The third study, also conducted with typically developing children, addressed the role of echoic responding in emergent tact control by assessing the effects of stimulus presentation order on control by visual stimuli over vocal responses following contiguous presentation of visual and verbal stimuli.

Behavior analysts; graduate students; scientists; other professionals

In this study we compared most-to-least prompting to an error correction procedure to teach 26 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tact relations. The children were randomly assigned to either a most-to-least prompting condition or an error correction condition. Three sets of two cartoon characters, for a total of six, were targeted for children in both groups. Child responding was evaluated prior, during, fand following intervention. Additionally, the efficiency of the two procedures was evaluated through daily probes. Various statistical analyses were conducted to determine if there were any significant differences between the two conditions. The purpose of this presentation is to describe the procedures implemented in both conditions, the results, implications for future research. Furthermore, the results of this randomized control trial has several implications for clinical practice for those training tact relations for individuals diagnosed with ASD, which will also be discussed.

Previous research has demonstrated that tact training with preferred stimuli facilitated the emergence of mands compared to tact training with nonpreferred stimuli in persons with intellectual disabilities (Wallace, Iwata, & Hanley, 2006). The present study seeks to replicate and extend the previous research by (a) testing typically developing children, (b) mediating some of the limitations of the mand condition and (c) testing for emergent listener responses. We trained participants to tact 3 highly preferred and 3 nonpreferred pictures of different cat breeds in Set 1, and different dog breeds in Set 2. To date, tact training is currently being conducted with two participants. Results are consistent with previous research in which acquisition of tacts is similar across both preferred and nonpreferred stimuli conditions.

Tact control over vocal responses may emerge in the absence of reinforcement after exposure to contiguous presentation of verbal and nonverbal stimuli. The present study examined whether covert echoic responding in the presence of the visual stimulus facilitated tact control. In Experiment 1, four children were exposed to contiguous presentation of nonverbal and verbal stimuli followed by tests for tact control over vocal responses. For three stimulus sets, the verbal stimulus was presented before the visual stimulus. For the other three, the visual stimulus was presented before the verbal stimulus, making it impossible to echo the verbal stimulus in the presence of the visual stimulus. Each participant received one session of exposure to each set. No child tacted more than one stimulus per set correctly, but correct tacts were ususally under appropriate stimulus control. Tacts were equally likely to emerge in both conditions. In Experiment 2, two children received repeated exposure to the same stimuli until tacts emerged to criterion in at least one condition. Again, there was no advantage of verbal-first presentation. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1 while introducing overlap between verbal and nonverbal stimuli; preliminary results indicate increased tact emergence, but no effect of presentation order.

When giving a reinforcer it is important to understand the effects of the "delivery system" for that reinforcer. For example, dogs with little experience with human interaction may react differently to a human delivered reinforcer than dogs more experienced with human interaction. This effect can be predicted by the Disequilibrium Model (Timberlake & Farmer-Dougan, 1991), which states that the degree to which the ratio of instrumental (I) to contingent (C) responding is disrupted from a baseline bliss point (Oi/Oc) results in predictable reinforcement effects. The present study used this model to measure baseline approaches to humans versus a mechanical feeder for two groups of dogs. Using baseline approach rates, the model accurately predicted differences in reinforcer efficacy of human-delivered reinforcers between dogs who were experienced with versus those with little experience interacting with humans. The data support the predictions of the disequilibrium model and demonstrate the importance of assessing baseline rates of both the contingent and operant response to determine reinforcer efficacy.

Jackpots (a 1-time increase in reinforcer magnitude within a session) are widely used in dog training, yet little empirical data exist to support their use. For example, Muir (2010) found no increase in response rate when a jackpot was used within a single-operant setting, but dogs did increase responding to the jackpot alternative during concurrent schedules. Research in behavioral economics, particularly temporal discounting, has investigated jackpots in humans. This research suggests that jackpots given at different times within the session have differing reinforcer value, suggesting a discounting of the jackpot value across session time. To examine the potential effect of jackpot discounting and frequency, the present study examined the time for dogs to complete a 20-trial simple contingency when the jackpot was presented at the end or middle of the session. Study two examined the rate to completion when the rate of jackpots varied from 5% to 100% of trials. Consumption time was subtracted from total session time to prevent a confound of consumption time with increased jackpots. Results showed no significant increase in completion speed for a single jackpot given at the end versus middle of the trials; increasing the rate of jackpots significantly slowed the dogs' response time.

Domestic dogs are trained for a wide variety of services; however, typically, half of dogs that enter training organizations never become certified. The aim of this study was to identify whether a basic measure of behavioral persistence was associated with eight dogs' performance on two tasks relevant to working dogs: a discrimination learning task and a stationary behavioral task. The behavioral persistence task was an automated version of a resistance to extinction task in which we measured the mean number of lever presses made under extinction in two sessions. The discrimination learning task was a standardized two-choice odor discrimination task in which we measured the maximum accuracy achieved across five sessions. Last was a stationary behavior task in which dogs were trained to target to a specified place and remain still for 10 secs in which we scored the percentage of successful trials. We found a trend negative association between behavioral persistence and discrimination learning (R2=.47, p=.06) and a positive association between behavioral persistence and maintaining a stationary position (R2=.55, p=.04). Behavioral persistence appears to be detrimental to discrimination tasks that require response inhibition, but enhances performance for duration based tasks.

Performance horses and working horses are commonly subjected to a hair removal process called clipping. Many horses find this to be unpleasant, which results in the horse engaging in unwanted behaviors and which can endanger the handler (Yarnell, et al. 2013). As a result, horses sometimes must be sedated to be clipped (Glough, 1997). However, the long-term effects of repeated sedation are unknown. The current study evaluated whether a negative reinforcement shaping procedure could be used to teach horses to be calm during clipping so that sedation would not be required. The shaping procedure included three stages: touching the horse with the hand, touching the horse with the clippers while they were turned off, and clipping the horse. Each stage included a series of shaping steps. At each step, if the horse reacted, the clippers or hand stayed in place until the horse emitted a calm response. A calm response resulted in the removal of the clippers for a brief period of time. Preliminary results from four horses showed the procedure to be effective. All horses were able to be clipped after less than an hour without the use of sedatives. Data collection is in progress for additional horses.

Domesticated dogs are responsive to human pointing gestures. Importantly, no prior work has evaluated when dogs might learn to follow pointing gestures through natural contingencies dogs encounter with humans. Shelter dogs have repeatedly demonstrated poor abilities to follow human pointing, although they can be explicitly trained quickly. This study aims to evaluate the time course in which shelter dogs learn to follow points without explicit training. In a longitudinal evaluation, the development of point following will be tracked in eight shelter dogs in a training program (enriched human exposure). Every other day for three months, dogs' point following performance will be evaluated in ten probe trials in which an experimenter points to one of two containers equidistant from the dog. To avoid direct training, dogs will be given a treat for approaching and touching either container; although, correct responses will be recorded for touching the pointed towards container within 30 s. We will further compare dogs' performance to a cohort that has recently completed the training program (shown below), a cohort of naïve shelter dogs, and a cohort of pet dogs. Together, we anticipate the results will highlight when natural contingencies associated with care-taking shape point following.

Invasive weed species (IWS) in Western New York, namely Rosa multiflora (multiflora rose), Lonicera sp. (honeysuckle), and Rhamnus cathartica (common buckthorn), are costly in terms of native plants' displacement, reduced nutrition for animals/insects, and biodiversity loss. Goats (Capra hircus) may be useful to curtail IWS because they are environmentally-friendly and inexpensive. The effectiveness of five goats to combat IWS was evaluated by analyzing behavioral observations of goats' eating behaviors in a 10x10 m wooded plot during two separate exposures of 6-hours each, structured preference assessments, and two years of pre/post measures of plant loss/regrowth. Using individual sampling, 1,066 goat eating behaviors with 72.2% IWS compared to natives were recorded during August, 2015 and 1,742 eating behaviors with 67.62% IWS observed during September. More IWS than natives were originally present in the plot possibly creating a ceiling effect. In general, honeysuckle and multiflora rose were most preferred by adult goats during both structured assessments and field behavioral observations. Overall, the goats reduced the amount of vegetation in the field plot across multiple exposures. Since both invasive and native plant species were affected, training to curb goats' eating native species is necessary.

Modern companion dogs serve various functions in human society, e.g. providing owners with company and engage them in physical activity (Westgarth et al., 2014; Zasloff & Kidd, 1994). Dogs, just like humans, can engage in socially-relevant undesired behaviors (e.g. aggression), and caregivers are an integral part of respective treatments. The current review aimed at systematically investigating the importance of caregiver training in intra- and interspecific behavior-change programs, identifying training strategies showing greatest efficacy with caregivers. This systematic review generally followed the recommendations of The Campbell Collaboration (2017) and utilized the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses (i.e. PRISMA; Moher et al., 2009) for literature selection. This process yielded 56 eligible studies comprising controlled-group, clinical-study, pre-test-post-test, single-case designs, randomized controlled trials, and case studies, (i.e. 7%, 5%, 18%, 43%, 7%, 20%, respectively), involving a total of n=1,707 participants across all eligible studies (see Table 1). These preliminary results highlight a deficit of research focus on canine-caregiver training, and behavior-analytic approaches in general of which single-case designs are a hallmark of. At the time of this abstract's write-up, data analysis was being conducted, and results should be viewed incomplete. References Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., Altman, D.G., The PRISMA Group. (2009). Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement. PLoS Medicine, 6, e1000097. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097.t002 The Steering Group of The Campbell Collaboration. (2017). Campbell Collaboration Systematic Reviews: Policies and Guidelines [pdf]. Retrieved from https://campbellcollaboration.org/library/campbell-collaboration-systematic-reviews-policies-and-guidelines.html Westgarth, C., Christley, R.M., Christian, H.E. (2014). How might we increase physical activity through dog walking? A comprehensive review of dog walking correlates. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 11, 83-97. doi:http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/11/1/83 Zasloff, R. L. & Kidd, A. H. (1994). Loneliness and pet ownership among single women. Psychological Reports, 75, 747–752. doi:10.2466/pr0.1994.75.2.747.

Dogs may be relinquished to shelters and unlikely to be adopted if they engage in problem behavior. A successful way of eliminating problem behavior is through training techniques based on behavioral principles. Obedience training with the use of positive reinforcement has been successful in treating problematic behavior by dogs. In order for this method to work, it is essential that the stimuli selected function as reinforcers. A method used to identify potential reinforcers is through preference assessments. A preference assessment is a procedure used to identify stimuli that may serve as possible reinforcers by yielding preference hierarchies. Equally as important are the reinforcer assessments that evaluate the reinforcing value of the preferences identified. Although preference and reinforcer assessments have been successfully used with humans, research with non-human animals is limited. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to identify the preference assessment that is time efficient and will yield results that correspond with the results of the reinforcer assessment. Each preference assessment (MSWO and paired-stimulus) was conducted with each dog. A progressive ratio reinforcer assessment was conducted following the preference assessments. Each preference assessment was timed to measure time efficiency. Results are discussed.

Large carnivores living in human care have been reported to engage in stereotypic behaviors (e.g., pacing, tail sucking, grooming to the point of causing lesions and hair loss.) At Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens, one adult male jaguar was observed pacing, tail sucking, and over-grooming over a long period of time. Prior interventions aimed at curbing these behaviors included varied feeding schedules/type of food provided, visual barriers, Feliway pheromone spray, enrichment, exhibit access modification. However, the effectiveness of these interventions was never systematically evaluated for effectiveness and often co-occurred with the beginning and end of other interventions. The aim of the present study was to evaluate possible environmental variables that were reported by staff as likely variables maintaining or promoting stereotypic behavior. A five-phase treatment analysis was implemented using an ABCAD reversal design, with the goal of decreasing the frequency, intensity, and duration of these stereotypic behaviors. Data collection occurred during a ten-week evaluation, with each condition lasting two weeks. The treatment analysis consisted of two environmental manipulation phases, two baseline phases and a final phase, where the environmental manipulation that evoked the least amount of stereotypic behaviors was repeated. Behavioral monitoring was conducted via video footage to capture jaguar behavior when care staff were and were not present. Results indicated a slight decrease in stereotypic behaviors during treatment phases, as compared to baseline, however, significant effects were not observed. Potential function-based future assessments will be discussed.

A recent study has proposed the use of a rapid "Natural Odor Detection Task" aimed at measuring the olfactory sensitivity of canines by recording their spontaneous responses to food odors. The aim of the present work was to replicate and extend this task by providing odorants with better characterized concentrations. Eight dogs were presented with serial dilutions of chicken broth and peanut butter spanning from 1.00 x 10-1 to 1.00 x 10-12 volume/volume dilutions. An odor jar was placed in an apparatus that can hold 5 jars, each 30 cm apart. The remaining four jars contained 10 mL of diluent. A handler blind to the position of the odor jar walked the dog along the odor line-up and observed for spontaneous responses such as clawing at the jar or sniffing longer than three seconds on a specific jar. A response to the correct jar led to the dog being able to consume the 10 ml of the respective reinforcer. We found a strong effect of dilution, with all 50% thresholds falling between a dilution of 10-1 to 10-2. These results suggest that slight modifications of the procedure may allow for more quantitative measures of sensitivity.

Integrating Therapy dogs into a Social Skills Group Program for Children with ASD Kirsten Leatherwood, Wesley Dotson, Alexandra Protopopova Texas Tech University Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI) have been shown to increase social behavior in children with ASD; however, the mechanism by which this increase occurs remains elusive. Therapy dogs were incorporated into an established group social skills instruction program for children with ASD, using a quasi-experimental, repeated-measures counter-balanced mixed design (5 weeks with and 5 weeks without a dog) over the course of a semester. Using a single-subject design, we assessed the effect of the dogs on therapists. We predicted that the presence of the dog in the group social skills instruction program would not only improve the quantity and quality of social behavior, but also reduce physiological (salivary cortisol) and behavioral signs of stress compared to the absence of the dog. We further predicted that during therapy sessions with dogs, most of the children's social behavior would be directed towards the dog rather than peers. The successful completion of this project will result in an empirically validated program within ABA and AAI.

Canine anxiety and fear-related problems are the second most widespread problematic behavior associated with pet dogs, with only aggression-related problems yielding higher rates of referrals. Canine behavior researchers and Veterinarians have suggested a behavioral change plan involving low arousal departures and reunions to and from the home to help treat Separation Anxiety in pet dogs. By manipulating the amount of excitement exhibited by an experimenter during a modification of a strange situation test, we hope to illuminate how repeated exposures to a high arousal human can influence the frequency/duration of Separation-related behaviors (SRB's) thereafter, such as time spent pacing, time in close proximity to door (within 3ft), and vocalizations. Participants were brought into a room and left alone for a 10-minute anticipation period, followed by a 10-minute interaction period with a high arousal experimenter, and left alone again for a final 10-minute post-interaction period. Samples of salivary cortisol were taken along with external ear temperatures, activity level measures and heart rate variability measures, as well as video recording of SRB's. After six sessions, our data showed some dogs increased in specific SRB's, while others possibly habituated to the situation and showed decreased SRB's.

Impulsivity has been implicated in a number of disorders and maladaptive behaviors including pathological gambling, substance abuse, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, suicidality, and psychopathology in general. Serotonin (5-HT) and dopamine (DA) are two neurotransmitters that are well documented for their effects on impulsivity and their activity can be altered by other neurotransmitters systems, such as the endocannabinoid system. The endocannabinoid system can be manipulated by agonists such as delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), as well as by drugs that alter the endocannabinoid system's own enzymatic regulatory system, such as cannabinoid enzyme inhibitors. The present study examines effects of two cannabinoid enzyme inhibitors whose effect on impulsivity is relatively unexplored. Eight male Sprague-Dawley rats were trained on a discrete-trials delay-discounting procedure and given a range of acute doses of URB597 and JZL195. Effects of drug administration will be assessed using several measures of impulsivity, including percent of larger-reinforcer choice, indifference points, and area under the curve. Changes in measures of impulsivity following drug administration would indicate involvement of the endocannabinoid system and suggest new potential targets for treatment of impulse-control disorders.

Frequent and uncontrollable vomiting can cause substantial damage to an individual?s health. In this current case, the individual suffered from significant weight loss and was prescribed a feeding tube for all meals, hydration and medication. The feeding provided sufficient nutrients to sustain a healthy lifestyle. Over a four-year period, multiple behavioral interventions, (Differential Reinforcement of Other Behavior, Differential Reinforcement of Diminishing Rates, Differential Reinforcement of Alternative Behavior, Over-Correction, Blocking and Inpatient Treatment at Kennedy Krieger Institute) and behavioral pharmacology interventions (Haldol, Ativan, Propranolol, Atarax, Sancuso, Cogentin, etc.). These interventions did not demonstrate significant reduction of vomiting behavior. The effects of the behavioral treatments eventually subsided or evoked high intensity aggressive behaviors. The most recent treatment, electroconvulsive therapy, although controversial has demonstrated a reduction in the vomiting behavior. Prior to electroconvulsive therapy, rates of vomiting ranged from 139 to 327 and averaged 229 per day. Electroconvulsive therapy was implemented for seven weeks, which included 18 treatments scheduled for three times per week. The most recent data for vomiting rates showed a range of 1 to 14 and averaged 7.9 per day. This case supports electroconvulsive therapy as an effective treatment for life-threatening vomiting behavior.

The glutamate hypothesis proposes that NMDA receptor hypofunction underlies cognitive and perhaps other schizophrenic symptoms. The present study used the odor span task to assess the effects of NMDA antagonists on remembering multiple stimuli in rodents. This task uses an incrementing non-matching-to-sample procedure in which responses to a new olfactory stimulus are reinforced on each trial, whereas responses to previously presented stimuli are not. NMDA antagonists have been associated with memory impairments in a variety of animal models, however, there are inconsistencies across different NMDA antagonists and tasks used. The current study compared the acute effects of phencyclidine, ketamine, and the novel NMDA antagonist methoxetamine on responding in the odor span task and a simple discrimination control. Phencyclidine and methoxetamine impaired odor span accuracy at doses that did not impair simple discrimination in most rats, however effects of ketamine were less selective. Within-session analyses indicated that effects of phencyclidine and methoxetamine depended on the number of stimuli to remember, i.e., impairment only occurred when the memory load was relatively high. These effects of phencyclidine and methoxetamine were consistent with the hypothesis that NMDA antagonists may interfere with working memory, but the basis for less selective results with ketamine are unclear.

Dependence on cannabis can result in withdrawal following abstinence, which increases the likelihood of relapse. The primary psychoactive component of cannabis is δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and behavioral models of THC withdrawal can aid in identifying therapeutics to attenuate withdrawal symptoms. However, the behavioral profile of THC withdrawal has been primarily focused on rodent-specific behaviors (e.g., paw tremors) limiting applicability to humans. The current study used an alternating fixed-ratio (FR) task to assess perseverative responding associated with THC withdrawal in male and female mice. Within each session, an FR-3 schedule alternated between two nose-poke operanda every five reinforcers for a total of 12 alternations per session. Following baseline stability, mice were administered THC (10 mg/kg) or vehicle (n = 9) every 12 h for 6 days. THC withdrawal was precipitated using the selective CB1 cannabinoid receptor antagonist rimonabant (SR141716A; 2 mg/kg). Precipitated THC withdrawal increased perseverative errors, with the error being localized in the first ratio after a left/right alternation, suggesting an attentional deficit during withdrawal. These results extend the behavioral profile of THC withdrawal in rodents to include increased perseveration. Implications of these results suggest THC withdrawal may produce deficits in attention and motivation, as observed in clinical populations.

Statistical inference (including interval estimation and hypothesis testing) is commonly used in the analysis of behavioral data. As with many other fields, statistical approaches for these analyses traditionally use classical methods. Interpreting classical intervals and p-values correctly can be bothersome and counterintuitive. For example, a reported confidence interval for the rate of delay discounting does not have a 95% chance of including the true but unknown discounting rate. Similarly, a p-value of 0.04 does not imply that the probability that the null hypothesis is true is 4%. The correct interpretations are an artifact of the classical (i.e. frequentist) assumption that parameters of interest (e.g. discounting rate) and hypotheses are fixed but unknown quantities. By contrast, Bayesian methods treat data, parameters, and hypotheses as random quantities and use rules of conditional probability to update beliefs about parameters (e.g. discounting rate) given observed study data. Thus, Bayesian credible intervals make direct probabilistic statements about the range on which the discounting rate likely exists, and Bayesian hypothesis tests provide the probability that competing hypotheses are true. To illustrate the use of Bayesian methods on behavioral data, this work re-analyzes data from a recent delay discounting study of community controls, heavy smokers, and alcohol- and cocaine-dependent individuals to assess the impact of non-, mono-, dual-, and trisubstance use. The re-analysis methods are compared with the original analysis for interpretation, and similarities and differences in conclusion are discussed.

Research from neuroscience and pharmacology has led to discoveries about the processes within the organism that are involved with reinforcement of operant behavior. Such findings, to name a few, include information about "motivation", "reward centers", and how various chemicals affect operant behavior under various contexts. These areas of science have complemented the field of behavior analysis by furthering knowledge about potential processes within the organism that influence environment-behavior relations in both human and non-human animals. Each science approaches this topic using a different lens and for different reasons. However, exchange between the fields has produced many advanced discoveries. This poster describes the rich history of the intersection of neuroscience, pharmacology, and behavior analysis and samples some key findings within those intersectional fields. Future neuroscientific and pharmacological directions within behavior analysis are discussed.

For some time, behavioral variability has been proposed as a dimension of operant behavior that is vulnerable to environmental manipulations. For example, it has been demonstrated that variability of 4-lever press sequences can be affected by dopamine drugs such as amphetamines and SKF-38393. In the present experiment, we tested the effects of over-the-counter energy drinks on variability of rats sequential responding. Four rats were trained on a procedure similar to that of Neuringer (1991) and Pesek et al. (2011) where sequences of four level presses were reinforced if they were novel compared to the past eight response sequences, referred to as a lag 8 condition. Preliminary training proceeded systematically and will now be followed by access to 4 different doses of red bull in a counterbalanced order. We plan to explore the effects of OTC energy drinks on variability measured by both U (entropy), and a ratio of reinforced sequences.

In a delay discounting experiment, an organism is subjected to two choices: a small, immediate reinforcer and a larger, delayed reinforcer. Following the delivery of the reinforcer, an inter-trial-interval (ITI) occurs. Despite its delay, the large reinforcer is optimal as it produces the highest amount of rewards, and expressing a preference for the small reinforcer is therefore considered a measure of impulsivity. We tested the Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat, an animal model of ADHD, on a modified version of this approach in a pilot experiment. The rats were split into two groups: in one group, the response-reinforcer delay was increased for each session, while in another group the ITI increased instead, corresponding in length to the delay in the first group. We found that the rats in the Delay group showed a decreased preference for the larger reinforcer as the trial length increased, but the rats in the ITI group did not show this pattern. This suggests that the rats were sensitive to response-reinforcer delays, but not the length of the inter-trial-interval or the trial length as a whole. This suggests that using compensating designs on animals in delay discounting is problematic.

Recent research with adult humans indicates that selfish choice in a social dilemma task is correlated with degree of social discounting (Jones & Rachlin, 2009). The present study extends this research to children and adolescents by modifying both the social dilemma and social discounting tasks. In the social dilemma task, participants were presented with a choice between their wallet and their friend’s piggy bank. A participant who chose the wallet received either (a) 100 yen or (b) 300 yen; a participant who chose the piggy bank received either (a) 0 yen or (b) 200 yen. Choosing the wallet is regarded as selfish, whereas choosing the piggy bank is regarded as altruistic. The amount a participant received (a or b) was determined by their friend’s choice. If the friend’s choice was selfish, amount-a was received; if the friend’s choice was altruistic, amount-b was received. In the social discounting task, participants were presented with a series of choices between hypothetical rewards of their own or sharing with other people. In the delay discounting task, participants were presented with a series of choices between hypothetical rewards of immediate or delayed. Preliminary analysis of 1076 participants, ages 6-14 years, suggests that the selfishness in the social dilemma task, social discounting rate, and delay discounting rate decreased as a function of age. Results of the participants' social-discounting and delay-discounting tasks are also discussed.

College students are exhibiting decreasing patterns of physical activity; and in turn, a greater rate of negative health outcomes after college. Interestingly, the degree to which one discounts the subjective value of delayed rewards (i.e. delay discounting) is related to physical activity and healthy dieting. Efforts to improve one's physical appearance, a subcategory of body image investment, is also linked to greater levels of physical activity and healthy dieting. To our knowledge, no research has evaluated how delay discounting and body image may jointly relate to physical activity. In the current study, forty-six undergraduates reported physical activity, completed a delay discounting task, and indicated the percentage of a hypothetical cash allotment ($1,000) that they would spend on achieving their own ideal body image. Results showed that lower rates of delay discounting and a higher percentage valuation of ideal body image independently predicted PA during the previous week and during a typical week. The current study suggests the importance of examining motivational factors such as body image in conjunction with delay discounting to better understand the initiation and maintenance of physical activity.

Understanding factors that influence impulsivity in young people is important in reducing risky decision making and behavior. Impulsivity can be measured through direct measures (behavioral tasks), and indirect measures (self-report scales). This study investigated the relationship between direct and indirect measures of impulsivity and their association with age. Participants (67 females, 27 males; M= 24.38 years, range= 16-71 years) completed the Barratt Impulsivity Scale (BIS-11), the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS) and a delay discounting task. Data showed that scores on the BIS-11 or the BSSS were not significantly correlated with the indifference points from the delay discounting task at any of the six delays. Age was not significantly correlated with the indifference points, or with the BIS-11. Sensation seeking (BSSS) was negatively correlated with age (r(92)=-.259, p=.013). Thus, direct and indirect measures of impulsivity do not give the same results. The next phase will examine the influence of peers on decisions in the delay discounting task.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the hyperbolic temporal discounting function in university students and to evaluate the effect of stress coping strategies and social skills in the form of the hyperbolic function of the temporary discount. The sample consisted of 98 students enrolled in the psychology program of Health Sciences, with a mean age of 21.5 years (SD = 3.22), 75 women (76.5%). The following instruments were administered: Modified Coping Strategies Scale (Londoño et al., 2006), Reactive and Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (Andreu, Peña and Ramírez, 2009). The adjusting amount discounting task consisted of presenting to the participants two hypothetical rewards options, one immediately available (adjustable condition with initial value of $ 2000) and another larger reward (fixed condition of $ 4000) available after delays that ranged from one month to eight years. Students who employ stress coping strategies such as tolerating the stressful situation through the control of emotions present smaller discount rate. Students who indicate concern about the expression of positive feelings and the initiation of interactions with the opposite sex present a higher discount rate. Similarly, students who are more afraid of expressing positive feelings present a higher rate of discount to future rewards.

Delay discounting refers to the decrease in the subjective value of a reward as a function of the time to its receipt, and steeper discounting rates have been shown to be related to obesity. It has been argued that delay-discounting rates of consumable rewards depend on their caloric value and on the participant's body mass index (BMI) or body-fat percentage (BFP). To assess the contribution of reward type and health indexes, 64 teenagers chose between pairs of various hypothetical amounts of money, water, soda, healthy food, and fast food, one amount of each that was smaller but would be received immediately and another, larger amount of that reward that would be received later. An adjusting-amount procedure was used to determine the indifference point at each of seven delays to each of the larger reward amounts. We obtained participants' BMI and BFP and divided them in low-weight, normal-weight, overweight, and obesity groups, and low-BFP, acceptable-BFP, high-acceptable-BFP and very-high-BFP groups, respectively. Globally, the AuC's were low and similar for money and water, and higher for fast food, healthy food, and soda, for the two lower health indexes. However, the AuC was variable and not related with the two higher health indexes.

Social discounting refers to the decrease in the willingness of an individual to give a reward to another person as the social distance between them increases. As a parametric extension to social discounting, we evaluated the degree of social discounting in which the person can choose to forego a given amount of money in order to give it to one of two persons who are at different social distances from each other and at different social distances from the choosing person. One-hundred seventeen participants were exposed to four conditions of a social-discounting task which consisted of a series of choices between a smaller reward for a socially closer person and a larger reward for a socially farther person. The social distance between both persons, as well as that between the participant and the closer person, was manipulated within and between conditions. Participants showed higher social-discounting rates as the social distance between the nearer and the farther persons increased. These findings extend the study of social discounting and suggest that altruistic and selfish behaviors depend on the social distance between the choosing person and the receivers of the benefit, as well as on the distance between possible receivers.

Previous researchers have investigated how choices change based on the absolute magnitude of an outcome (e.g. Green et al., 1999). However, no studies have investigated how choices change as a function of magnitude relative to the amount in a participant's bank. We investigated how endowing participants with a bank of varying amounts influenced choice within probability discounting tasks. 60 undergraduate psychology students completed four discounting tasks. Each task presented one of two absolute magnitudes for the uncertain alternative (i.e., $3,000 and $500,000). Additionally, each task presented one of four bank amounts (i.e., 1/4 or 4 times the absolute magnitude). This resulted in four magnitude combinations: small absolute magnitude/small relative to the bank (SA/SR); small absolute magnitude/large relative to the bank (SA/LR); large absolute magnitude/small relative to the bank (LA/LR); large absolute magnitude/large relative to the bank (LA/LR). In the ascending condition, participants prioritized the magnitude relative to the bank amount (i.e., discounting small outcomes relative to bank amount less steeply than large outcomes relative to bank amount). In the descending condition, participants prioritized the absolute magnitude (i.e. discounting small absolute outcomes less steeply than large absolute outcomes). Our results suggest endowed bank amounts can influence participants' choices under uncertain conditions.

Delays to reinforcement are often a necessary component during treatments of challenging behavior (e.g., Functional Communication Training; FCT). In the absence of programmed delay training, the utility and generality of FCT may be limited. Despite the importance of delays to reinforcement during FCT, few studies have empirically isolated and investigated the parameters pertaining to the implementation of delays to reinforcement. Results from basic empirical studies have shown that variable delays, or bi-valued mixed delays to reinforcement, are preferred in humans and nonhuman studies. The current research examined response allocation between fixed and mixed delays to reinforcement using a concurrent schedule of reinforcement. Results showed a preference for mixed delays to reinforcement with 2 out of 6 participants and no preference between delay arrangements for the remaining 4 participants. Potential avenues of future research on the use of mixed delays to reinforcement, such as the application within FCT and maintenance of socially appropriate behaviors, are discussed.

To study self-controlled behavior, three main procedures have been used: choice, resistance to "temptation," and delay of gratification. In general, these procedures involve choosing between pairs of rewards of different magnitude and delay of delivery, or refraining from taking an available reward until a predetermined waiting criterion is met. These procedures capture three apparently different aspects or dimensions of self-controlled behavior. Therefore, to examine the interaction between these procedures would be useful to advance our understanding of the dimensions of self-controlled behavior. With this purpose, 18 undergraduate students were exposed to each procedure following different sequences of exposure to them. The participants were exposed to each procedure for three consecutive sessions; the main dependent variable was the obtention of the delayed rewards (SR2). The participants initially exposed to the choice procedure virtually obtained all the SR2 programmed in the three procedures. Participants initially exposed to resistance to "temptation" showed more self-controlled behavior compared to participants initially exposed to delay of gratification. It is suggested that the initial exposure to a procedure may act as a "training" for the following procedure.

Altruism, in a behavioral sense, can be defined as "costly acts that confer economic benefits on other individuals" (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003). One factor that seems to impact the likelihood of an individual behaving altruistically is what is known as social distance. Jones and Rachlin (2006) found that people will forgo an amount of money to keep for themselves in order to give a larger amount of money to another person, with the amounts of money forgone varying systematically as a function of social distance. There is limited research suggesting music could influence altruistic behavior, but nothing that directly examines altruism through a social discounting paradigm. The goal of the present study was to determine if music could indeed have some impact on altruistic behavior, and more specifically, if an individual's particular music preferences could have an impact on their respective rates of social discounting. Participants were undergraduates at the University of Nevada, Reno. To obtain individual music preferences, two questionnaire tasks were utilized. Each participant experienced three conditions: 1) no music, 2) preferred music, and 3) non-preferred music followed by three versions of a social discounting questionnaire. Results indicate that music does seem to have an impact on rates of social discounting. Participants were more likely to confer hypothetical money to those further away in social distance, rather than keep it for themselves, after hearing a song that they indicated as preferred. The order of music presentation was also a factor. Those who heard their non-preferred song first, were less likely to give away money to someone more socially distant than those participants that heard their preferred song first.

Previous research has shown that performing repetitive tasks requiring self-control, such as regular exercise, is an effective strategy for improving impulsivity. This study compared the changes in impulsivity among college students across three fitness classes, which were different in terms of type and total time of exercise. In the high intensity fitness class (n=38), students engaged in muscular exercise at least 3 times a week for an hour and a half per day. In the moderate intensity class (n=25), students had to exercise once a week for 2 hours. In the low intensity class (n=27), students participated in any sports activities including basketball, tennis or squash once a week for an hour and a half. A delay discounting task was administered at the beginning and the end of a semester to measure the changes in impulsivity. The differences among three classes were evaluated by repeated measures analysis of variance. Results revealed no significant difference in changes of impulsivity across three classes. The results suggest that exercise does not improve impulsivity, which is not consistent with early findings. Further studies with larger sample sizes or randomized controlled trials are needed to explore how exercise influences impulsivity.

The purpose of the present work was to study the effects of varying delay and reinforcement magnitude in ascending and descending order on response rate. Three studies were conducted to explore the possibility that varying the order of exposure to reinforcement magnitude and delay of reinforcement modulate self-controlled or impulsive behavior. Two studies included experimental subjects and one with a teenager engaged in problem behavior. Experiment 1 examined the joint effects of delay of reinforcement and reinforcement magnitude on response rate in rats. Subjects exposed to reinforcement delays in ascending order showed greater self-controlled behavior than those in descending order. Experiment 2 showed the well-known effect of delayed reinforcement on the response rate, as delay of reinforcement was greater response rate decreased. Experiment 3 was a study included the participation of an adolescent who had been referred for the functional analysis and treatment of problem behavior (i.e., aggression, disruption and substance abuse). The general procedure included reduce reinforcement magnitude if any problem behavior persists. Response rate for aggression, disruption and substance abuse decreased significantly compared to base line. The findings are discussed in the relevance of interaction between experimental analysis of behavior and applied behavior analysis.

Impulsive behavior (aka, impulsivity) has been defined as a preference for smaller-immediate rewards over larger-delayed rewards. Impulsivity is a hallmark of many behavioral and psychiatric disorders including ADHD, pathological gambling, substance abuse, bipolar disorder, and others. A common variable in impulsive behavior across the lifespan is the inability to forego immediate consequences for delayed consequences. Delay discounting refers to the decrease in the subjective value of a reward based on delays, and provides an empirically-validated framework for assessing and measuring impulsive behavior in humans as well as non-humans. In a typical delay-discounting experiment, individuals are asked to choose between a smaller reward available immediately and a larger reward available after a delay. Effort discounting refers to the decrease in the subjective value of rewards as the effort required to obtain the rewards increases. In a typical effort discounting task, individuals are asked to choose between a low-effort reward and a high-effort reward. The present study assessed impulsive behavior using both the delay and effort discounting frameworks. Preliminary results include similar patterns of responding between the two behavioral measures, and a positive correlation between effort and delay discounting. However, more data will be needed for more conclusive results.

There has been much research looking at various disorders and diseases considered to be "impulse" driven; for example, additions (e.g., alcohol, gambling, cigarette, etc.) or mental health (e.g., depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, etc.). However, there has been less research looking at more-simple characteristics such as home ownership, education, or income level. The current study will evaluate at various demographic factors and their relation to the k-value, or degree of discounting. Based on prior research, it is known that overall degree of discounting decreases with age, but the current study will also evaluate whether this change is due to simple maturation or other variables that correlate with changes in age. Based on preliminary results, there appear to be decreases in the k-value based on additional variables (i.e., income, education, children, and home ownership); however, more data will be needed to make more conclusive inferences. One application of these results includes helping employers to design more attractive benefits package to fit their employees based on relevant demographics.

Delay discounting procedures developed by Evenden and Ryan (1996) were manipulated to examine the effects of food deprivation and extent of pre-training on impulsive choices. Eight rats completed a discounting task both while deprived to 85% of their free-feeding weights and also under ad libitum feeding conditions, in counterbalanced order. Additionally, half of the subjects completed 13 days of pre-training, in which no delays to the larger, later reinforcer were present while the other half completed pre-training once reaching a criterion of selecting the 5-pellet lever over the 1-pellet lever on at least 80% of trials for 2 consecutive days. Subjects met this criterion in 4 days or fewer. Shorter exposure to pre-training did not affect impulsivity as measured by k values during the test phase, suggesting that the extended 13-day pre-training phase may be unnecessary. Individual subject k values were highly correlated across deprivation conditions, r (7) = .74, p = .04. On average, subjects discounted more steeply when allowed to feed freely (M = .034, SD = .045) than when food deprived (M = .012, SD = .013), consistent with the magnitude effect.

Organisms tend to allocate behavior to simultaneously available schedules of reinforcement as a function of the magnitude, frequency, and quality of reinforcement associated with each schedule (DeLeon et al., 2014). DeLeon et al. (2014) suggested that accumulated exchange-production schedules promote increased work completion and are higher preferred than distributed exchange-production schedules despite associated delays to reinforcement. The present study sought to identify whether other variables, such as the schedules of reinforcement associated with token delivery and the unit price (i.e., the work-reinforcer ratio) associated with token-production schedules would influence preferences for exchange-production schedules using a series of concurrent-operant evaluations. Preliminary results indicate that accumulated exchange-production schedules were preferred to distributed exchange-production schedules when the schedules of reinforcement are relatively dense (e.g., FR 1, VR 2), but not under leaner schedules of reinforcement (e.g., VR 5, VR 10) when the unit price associated with each token-production schedule was not held constant. However, preferences for accumulated exchange-production schedules increased across all token-production schedules when the unit-price and the response requirements associated with the token exchange period are held constant (even across uneven unit prices). Applied implications and areas for future research will be discussed.

Basic animal research in choice has shown clear biases toward response options resulting in suboptimal low-rate, high magnitude reinforcement over more optimal response options with consistent, lower magnitude reinforcement when the outcomes are signaled. The present study tested this paradigm in the treatment of three participants (aged 3-18) diagnosed with autism. After completing requirements for reinforcement during a treatment task, participants chose between two cards with arbitrary shapes signaling either optimal (100% chance to earn 50% reinforcement magnitude) or suboptimal function-based reinforcement (80% chance to earn 10% reinforcement or 20% chance to earn 100% reinforcement), and colors as a terminal link. Participants were run on a multiple baseline with a reversal of reinforcement outcome contingencies to account for bias. Preliminary results suggest participants' choices closely mirror the choice models of non-human subjects: choices are biased toward suboptimal choice, extending basic research to this population. Implications for practice and translational science are discussed.

Davison (1988) suggested that "concurrent-schedule preference between different reinforcer durations may not be independent of the overall frequency with which the reinforcers are produced." However, in the experiment that provided the data substantiating this suggestion, deviations from programmed equal reinforcer frequencies resulted in unscheduled obtained unequal relative reinforcement rates. The present experiment replicated Davison's procedure, correcting the programming of dependent concurrent variable-interval schedules. Six pigeons were exposed to concurrent variable-interval schedules with unequal reinforcer durations associated with the response alternatives (10s versus 3s). Programmed reinforcement frequency was kept equal for the competing responses, while the absolute reinforcement value was varied. In order to avoid systematic deviations between scheduled and obtained relative reinforcement rates, the order and number of reinforcers associated with each schedule were predetermined by a computer program. Both response ratios and time ratios showed preference for the larger duration alternative and that preference did not change systematically with changes in absolute reinforcer frequency. Present results support the relativity assumption of the Matching Law. It is suggested that Davison's results were due to uncontrolled variations in obtained reinforcement frequency. Key-words: choice, preference, reinforcer frequency, reinforcer magnitude, pigeons

The current study examined the preference selection of three male and three female Madagascar hissing cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa) using a multiple stimulus with replacement assessment. In the assessment, four types of baby food were used as stimuli, three different apparatuses were used, and the results were compared to determine whether or not the layout of the apparatuses may have had some correlation to the choices that were made. Once an 80% preference was determined, the subject was moved onto another apparatus and the sessions were ran again. Although the data may be variable, the subjects had overall shown a higher preference for carbohydrate rich stimuli as well as the outside bays of the apparatuses. Further implications as well as possible limitations of the study are presented; the knowledge obtained however, can be used to conduct other experiments in which carbohydrate based edible stimuli are used to reinforce the behavior completed by Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

When choosing between options whose payouts differ in both probability and amount, selecting the more frequent but lower-payout option is sometimes the rational choice. When stimuli signal that a risky choice will pay out, pigeons show increased preference for that alternative; removing signals decreases this preference (McDevitt et al., 2016). Two studies were conducted using a similar procedure with human and pigeon subjects. In a replication of a study by Zentall and Stagner (2011), pigeons were presented with a choice between two options. One led to 3 s of mixed grain 100% of the time. The riskier (suboptimal) alternative led to 10 s of grain 20% of the time and no food 80% of the time. Pigeons strongly preferred the suboptimal alternative when stimuli signaled the risky payouts. However, when signals were absent, preference reversed. In study 2, an experiment by Molet and colleagues (2012) was replicated. College students chose between two options in a computer game format. One option was associated with earning 10 points 20% of the time, or 0 points 80% of the time. The other option was always associated with earning 3 points. The students reliably chose the less risky alternative, independent of signals.

This study explored parameters of schedules of reinforcement in human behavioral research to evaluate influences on differential sensitivity to immediate contingencies of behavior. College-student participants played a computer game to ffind ghosts" hiding in a haunted house. Ghosts were available on a Conc FR FI schedule, although participants were not verbally told these contingencies. The FR contingency was operative on the left side of the haunted house, while the FI contingency was operative on the right side of the house. When a "ghost" was found, feedback was provided on the screen. Contingencies were changed across the session to determine if responding correspondingly changed (FR 20 FI 1; FR 35 FI 1; FR 50 FI 1). The ratio and interval based schedules produce different contingencies, but historically humans are the only organism to not show this sensitivity. Although some participants showed sensitivity to the contingencies and/or the change in values, this was not consistent across participants. Most participants responded about equally in both components of the concurrent schedule, with responses increasing as FR values increased.

During fixed-interval (FI) schedules of reinforcement the first response after a certain time makes the delivery of a reinforcing stimulus available. These programs have been classically used to evaluate the adaptation of subjects to environmental events that fluctuate in the range of minutes or seconds. The variables that can influence this adaptation have typically been related to motivational and environmental changes. Recently it has been reported that giving subjects the opportunity to choose can also generate changes in the patterns typically observed in these programs. The present experiment aims to evaluate for the first time the performance during FI schedules of four pigeons (Columba livia) that were exposed to free-choice and forced-choice trials within the same session. The task consisted in 6 cycles of 12 trials. Half of the trials represented a concurrent-chained schedule whereas the rest where a simple-chained schedule. Two trials of each half represented a peak trial. The analysis of timing measures revealed a higher index of curvature, a higher quarter life, and higher start times during free-choice trials than in forced-choice trials. Results suggest that, at least in timing tasks where pigeons experience both type of trials, the opportunity to choose may improve their performance.

This study uses a behavior-analytic, operant conditioning method to directly observe and measure participants' behavior as they respond to systematically varied conditions of reinforcement and punishment. Specifically, participants will play a computer game, Subsearch (Garnica, 2016) in which they unpredictably earn or lose small amounts of money. The purpose is twofold, first, to investigate the capabilities of the experimental design and system to assess behavioral stability of participants' choice behavior in conditions with a range of contingencies, and second. Second, to investigate the conditions under which performance stability is reached, how long it takes participants to achieve it, and once achieved, how durable performance stability is over time. This investigation consists of 3 studies and 10 experimental groups. The participants will all play The SubSearch game which will be programmed to utilize pairs of interdependent, concurrent, variable interval (VI) schedules of reinforcements and punishers that operate conjointly. In each group the following variables will be systematically varied to investigate the goals stated above: length of experimental sessions (exposure), length of subconditions (exposure), rates of reinforcement and punishments within subconditions (ratios and frequencies of distribution), periods of time between experimental sessions (latency, durability of stability). Study 1: N=20, 4 groups, n= 5. Investigate exposure requirements to achieve stability, controlling for exposure to punishers. Reinforcements ratios in choice alternatives will be held constant while length of subconditions will be varied. Study 2: N=15, 3 groups, n=5. Investigate durability of performance stability over time. Exposure to punishers, reinforcement ratios, session length and subcondition length will all be held constant while time between sessions will be varied systematically. Study 3: N=15, 3 groups, n=5. Investigates the effects of varying reinforcement ratios in choice alternatives on performance stability while holding all other variables constant.

In games of chance, a near miss occurs when an outcome approximates win feedback. This happens in slot machines when all but the last reel line up: e.g., cherry-cherry-lemon. Near misses are presumed to reinforce gambling behavior but experimental analyses to date have been inconclusive. Using two concurrently available simulated slot machines, we tested whether the presence of near misses would reinforce people's choice behaviour. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups that varied the rate of reinforcement (RR4 versus RR7) and the presence of near-miss feedback during losses. Each person could choose between two machines that differed in terms of reinforcement rate or the presence of near-miss feedback; one of these variables was held constant depending on the assigned group. Participants began with 2500 points. Betting on machines cost 10 points and wins awarded 38 points. The session ended after 300 choice trials. Participants were paid up to $5 CAD depending on their points at the end. Our results suggest that participants are biased towards the machine that reinforces at a higher rate, but the presence or lack of near misses does not appear to meaningfully influence their behavior.

We extended upon prior research demonstrating that gambling behavior can be verbally mediated through the transformation of verbal stimulus functions of within-game features. In a first study, we conducted a randomized control trial evaluation in which a control group received relational training establishing the color BLACK as GREATER-THAN the color RED, and a treatment group received the same relational training immediately followed by a series of defusion exercises. In an analogue gambling arrangement, participants in the control group demonstrated greater response bias towards the black machine following relational training; however, the experimental group did not demonstrate a response bias, but instead demonstrated responding more consistent with the experiences contingencies. In a second study, we attempted to isolate relational expansion as a component in defusion in decreasing the control of arbitrarily established rules. Our results showed that, although the relational expansion appeared to decrease response bias towards a given target machine, we did not observe overall increases in matching following the exercise. Taken together, our results provide translational support for the use of gambling treatments that target verbal relations that contribute to disordered gambling.

Gambling is a socially relevant activity of interest to behavior analysts and behavioral psychologists. Behavioral approaches to understanding gambling involve a number of strategies. In these data sets, some variables that putatively influence gambling were examined in the laboratory. Social variables (praise and ceasing complaining contingent on betting or progressive betting) and structural variables of gambling games were examined for effects on gambling in single subject designs.

Much of socially significant human behaviour can be considered to be controlled by a combination of direct contingencies and rule governance. The interaction between these processes is especially relevant in gambling behaviour where rule governance may maintain suboptimal responding. Graduate and undergraduate university students participated in the study which included engagement in simulated slot machine gambling tasks on a computer. Two concurrently available simulated slot machines programmed in VB.NET were presented on the screen. The present study involved the manipulation of stimulus relations to assess the possible effects on patterns of responding. Specifically, the effects of stimulus relations and the development of verbal rules along with their subsequent believability will be considered. Other measures of choice behaviour such as response allocation will also be included. The interaction between contingency shaped behaviour and verbal rules as they occur in a gambling context will be discussed, with the current results suggesting that stimulus relations may alter patterns of responding.

The temporal discounting and its relationship with the current state of health were evaluated. We used a temporal discount task, with four questionnaires of hypothetical situations: monetary gains and losses, and health and disease, with five delays (1 month, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years and 10 years), and 20 binary options, in ascending and descending order. To evaluate the current state of health, body composition variables were measured using a bioimpedance monitor scale. We found a larger area under the curve (AUC) in the losses domain compared to gains, as well a larger area under the curve in disease domain, compared to health. The discount model that best fit the data was the hyperboloid. There was no significant correlation between isolated measures of body composition with AUC in different tasks, but there was a significant negative correlation between gains AUC and an index that grouped BMI, metabolic age and body fat, which suggests that participants with a more impaired health status discount monetary gains more steeply. These results suggest that there was a sign effect both in the monetary domain and in health, as well as domain independence. Moreover, isolated variables of body composition may not represent a health state alone.

Literature reviews allow professionals to identify effective interventions and assess developments in research and practice. As in other forms of scientific inquiry, the transparency of literature searches enhances the credibility of findings. This review evaluated the characteristics of search methods employed in literature reviews published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis from 2006 to 2017 (n = 44). Specific aims included determining the frequency of narrative, systematic, and meta-analytic reviews; evaluating author reports of literature search and selection procedures; and identifying methods used to evaluate study quality and results. An additional aim included assessing the influence of the brief review format. Results suggest that evaluated reviews exhibited multiple strengths. Nonetheless, issues involving the reporting and execution of searches may limit the validity and replicability of literature reviews. Reviews infrequently assessed the methodological rigor of included studies or quantified intervention effects. A brief discussion follows an overview of findings.

Practioners have applied the procedure of extinction to reduce the frequency of a wide range of problem behaviors in a variety of settings such as homes, clinics and schools. Extinction as a procedure occurs when reinforcement of a previously reinforced behavior is discontinued and as a result, the frequency of that behavior decreases in the future. Research has shown that when extinction is implemented, the behavior should gradually decrease or completely stop. Most commonly, extinction effects are measured using percentage of interval data or responses per minute in a specified duration of session time. Measurement tools that do not capture behavior across all opportunities to occur may yield misleading results that either extinction has occurred or misidentification of extinction effects. The importance of using better data collection methods such as trial by trial data or the use of celeration charts that may allow more effective data analysis of extinction effects are discussed.

The concept of social validly within applied behavior analysis represents a core construct that connects the values, goals, and expectations of direct and indirect adult consumers with the motivations of the researcher or interventionist (Kazdin, 1977; Van Houten, 1979; Wolf, 1978). However, works by Callahan et al. (2017), Carr et al. (1999), Kennedy (1992), and Spear, C. F., Strickland-Cohen, M. K., Romer, N., & Albin, R. W. (2013) have repeatedly reported a lack of prevalence of the use of social validity methodology in published research within behavior analytic journals and national clearinghouses. This review attempts to continue the inquiry into the state and relevancy of social validity assessments. By combining historical dimensions of social validity: focus, time of assessment, consumer type, method, and outcomes/maintenance of behavior change this research evaluates the inclusion of explicit statements of social validity assessments in published experimental studies of behavioral interventions for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities within the last 25 years. Out of 63 identified articles, eleven met inclusion criteria representing a ratio consistent with historical literature reviews on the inclusion of social validity statements. The majority of identified social validity statements consisted of indirect assessments using Likert-type measures of treatment procedures and outcomes. The implications of the results are discussed.

Emotions have been a problematic area of study for behavior analysts due to their apparent cognitive nature. Lewon & Hayes (2014) suggested that emotions may be understood as motivation operations (MO) due to their observed effect on behavior. Mood induction literature has explored this possibility by manipulating appetitive and aversive stimulation prior to the task. However, the effect of this manipulation is unspecific, and it is difficult to attribute an emotion as the cause of changes of responding in the individual. It is then confusing if the effect observed can be attributed to an emotion or to a different form of MO. The aim of the present paper is to add to the methodology used for researching emotions as MO in behavior analysis. The implications of using traditional procedures for MOs for the understanding of emotions in humans are questioned. Different forms of emotion induction present in the literature both within and outside of behavior analysis are presented as alternatives for the manipulation of emotions related MO.

The fundamental principle of operant conditioning is the occurrence of a reinforcer alters the frequency of the responses it follows. Skinner (1948) investigated responses that were maintained independent from the delivery of reinforcers in pigeons which he described as "superstitious" behavior and argued that human behaviors arise similarly. As the case with pigeons, humans may emit a response that is coincidentally followed by a reinforcer. Superstitious behavior is defined as responses that emerge in the absence of actual environmental contingencies. Two other kinds of superstitious behavior were experimentally examined post Skinner's (1948) study, in which two or more spatially distinct responses were maintained by independent schedules and when the availability of response-dependent reinforcement is differentially correlated with selected stimuli organisms frequently respond differentially in the presence of those stimuli. Overall there is not a lot of literature that investigated superstitious behavior. The purpose of this poster is to discuss why some superstitious behaviors maintained within different cultures are resistant to extinction and is superstitious behavior a rule governed behavior.

Overweight and obesity are a growing public health problem in Mexico; therefore the knowledge about its causes is a need. The World Health Organization points out both the bad eating habits and the sedentary lifestyle as risk factors to develop those problems, and both can be seen as choices in which the individuals allocate their responding among available alternatives. From the behavioral economics view, has been shown that delay discounting is a trans-disease process in a variety of behavioral disorders, such as drug addiction, pathological gambling, obesity and so on. Particularly with overweight and obesity, it seems that not only the decrease in the value of a reinforcer as a function of the delay to its receipt is involved, but also the number of behaviors implicated thru the time (effort) has an impact in the loss of the value of a reinforcer as a function of the increasing effort to get it. Nevertheless, there is limited information regarding the role of effort in the discounting field and its relationship with health problems. It is considering that identify different response patterns of choice base on delays and efforts, can help to guide efficient treatments to prevent and reduce overweight and obesity.

The amplitude of the N400 is sensitive to the semantic relations between stimulus parings that are presented in lexical desicion paradigma (LS). For instance, following the presentation of the pairing "milk-coffee" the amplitude of the N400's will be significantly reduced in comparision to the amplitude of the N400 elicited by the pairing "milk-grease." Analogous N400 effects have been found with arbitrary stimulus-stimulus relations formed by matching-to-sample (MTS) procedures. Thus, smaller N400 effects are elicited by pairings comprised by non-equivalent stimuli and larger amplitudes are elicited by pairings comprised by stimuli that share common class membership. In the current study we reviewed studies on equivalence class formation that used the N400 to determine the semantic status of such stimulus-stimulus relations formed by MTS procedures. Following the analysis of training and testing variables across studies, we observed that MTS procedures and LS paradigm varyed substantially from one study to another. Notwithstanding, the N400 effects were roboust across the studies that we analyzed. This finding lead to inference that N400 effects can be elicited by stimulus-stimulus relations established by the matching-to-sample procedures. Thus, as Sidman (1994) pointed out, stimulus equivalence provide a useful model of semantic relations.

The conceptual systems with which a behavior scientist has come into contact will influence how they interact with any given situation whether it is as a basic scientist, a theoretician, or an applied scientist. In the current scientific climate of Behavior Analysis, it is most common for graduate level students to come into contact with the philosophical system of Radical Behaviorism. For many this may be the only system with which they interact and with this limited exposure to other philosophical systems they may find themselves at a standstill when interacting with complex events with which the constructs of Radical Behaviorism have been depleted. Alternative systems, such as Goldaimond's nonlinear constructional approach, may make available different avenues for the practitioner to interact with the complexity of the conditions. This poster will describe Radical Behaviorism's stimulus control as well as Goldaimond's nonlinear constructional perspective and will provide a number of scenarios, of varying complexity, with which an applied practitioner may interact and will exemplify the benefit of a well-rounded philosophical repertoire that allows the scientist to utilize constructs from various systems in various contexts.

Children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) often exhibit behavioral difficulties, which can impact academic functioning. As a result, parents of children with IDD may struggle with helping their children improve academic performance due to difficult behaviors. Behavioral skills training (BST) is an effective strategy for training evidence-based behavior management techniques. The purpose of this study was to utilize group-based behavioral skills training to improve parents' use of effective instructions to promote compliance in children with IDDs in the context of an academic evaluation and intervention clinic. Participants in this study included four children with an IDD: a 6-year-old female with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a 17-year-old female with ASD and Intellectual Disability, a 10-year-old male with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, an 11-year-old male with ASD, and each childfs mother. Using a multiple baseline design, parents were trained to provide effective instructions via group-based BST (i.e., two or more parents) to promote child compliance in an academic context. Results indicated parents increased integrity of effective instructions following group-based BST, with concomitant improvement in children's compliance. These results are important as they demonstrate group-based BST is an effective method for improving parents' use of effective instructions, resulting in improved child outcomes.

Reactivity, or changes in behavior resulting from observation procedures, is a potential threat to internal validity for studies involving observational measures of socially significant behavior. Researchers have recommended several strategies to minimize reactivity, including exposing participants to data collection procedures before beginning observations and discarding data from the first segment of observation sessions. However, results of studies examining reactivity have been mixed, with several studies suggesting these procedures are unnecessary (Gardner, 2000). In this study, we observed 20 students referred for functional behavior assessment and their teachers in regular education classrooms (Kindergarten–6th Grade). We completed three consecutive 10-min observations across five days. Using continuous timed-event data collection, we measured frequencies of student problem behavior and academic responses and teacher instructional behaviors (i.e., opportunities to respond, praise, reprimands). We evaluated trends in frequencies of these behaviors across time within each session, and across all five daily observations. We found little evidence of reactivity effects across daily observations, but for a subset of behaviors and participants, we identified within-session trends over time. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

In order to prevent the progress of disruptive behavior from childhood to adolescence, programs have been developed to manage children's behavior in the school setting. It has been found that through programas that involve stimulus control, monitoring, modeling, response cost, alternative behaviors and contingency management, the occurrence of the target behavior increases and disruptive behaviors are reduced. The present study has the objective of reduce disruptive behavior in children through increased involvement in academic activities as a function of teacher training in a contingency management program. Participated 8 elementary school class of two public schools in Mexico City (n = 200 children) and their teachers. A plachek direct observation record was applied. A single case design was used. The results showed an increase in the involvement in the task superior to 50% and a decrease of almost 10% in disruptive behavior with respect to the baseline. Teacher training in behavioral management is useful for children to stay involved in academic activity and therefore to reduce disruptive behavior within the classroom.

The purpose of this research was to assess the effectiveness of two interventions used to train after-school instructors to increase Positive to Negative (PN) interaction ratios. The first intervention (workshop training) followed a didactic workshop-training model. The second intervention (coaching) included the components of the didactic workshop model with the addition of modeling, role-play, and performance feedback. In this study four instructors in an after-school program were randomly assigned to one of two groups to participate in training programs. These programs were designed to help them increase PN ratios when interacting with students during homework time in the after-school program. Instructor behaviors were recorded during 15-minute observation sessions, and PN ratios were calculated for each instructor. All observation sessions took place in the context of homework time during regularly scheduled after-school programming. The study used AB/ABC design to assess the success of the two training models. Results are discussed in terms of increases and decreases in the daily frequency of positive and negative interactions as well as the overall increases in PN ratio.

This study examined the effects of training in-service elementary school teachers on using a Structured Self-questioning Strategy (SSS) package to support the reading comprehension of students with mild to moderate reading disabilities within a rural school setting. The SSS package consisted of a combination of reading strategies suggested by the National Reading Panel Report (2000), which included pre-reading strategies (i.e., examining illustration, title, engaging prior knowledge), during-reading strategies (i.e., self-monitoring, questioning), and after-reading strategies (i.e., summarizing). This study sought to answer the following research questions: (a) Can rural teachers be engaged in the development of the SSS reading package? (b) To what extent will teachers’ implement the SSS package with fidelity throughout the duration of the study? (c) What are participants’ (i.e., teachers and students) attitudes towards the SSS package? (d) What were students' reading outcomes when using the SSS reading package? Quiz scores were used to measure students' reading outcomes, surveys were used to gather social validity, and procedural checklists were used to measure treatment fidelity. Preliminary results indicate that teachers who reported enjoyment using the strategy implemented the strategy with higher fidelity. Students' reading outcomes were text dependent. Implications for professional development, research, and practice are provided.

As one component of a functional behavioral assessment, a descriptive assessment (DA) can help determine the maintaining variable of a student's problem behavior in school. School districts often employ board certified behavior analysts as consultants to conduct descriptive assessments by observing a student and recording the environmental variables surrounding problem behavior. However, consultants may have to rely on school personnel to conduct descriptive assessments due to environmental constraints. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which 18 school staff accurately collected descriptive assessment data with two types of recording formats, narrative and structured, prior to and after receiving a group training that consisted of verbal review, modeling, and group feedback. Results based on visual analysis indicate that (a) 4 participants engaged in high levels of accurate, narrative descriptive assessment recording in baseline; (b) 10 of 14 participants reached mastery criteria after training for both narrative and structured descriptive assessment recording formats; and (c) 4 participants did not reach mastery criteria after training for either recording format. Despite sub-mastery performance by some participants, supplemental statistical analyses indicate that the group training improved all participants' accuracy from baseline. These findings have important implications for training school staff members to collect descriptive assessment data.

Teaching transition skills to students with disabilities (SWD) is critical to facilitate and promote positive postsecondary outcomes in a competitive job market (Mazzotti et al., 2016). Positive postsecondary outcomes reach beyond academics learned, and many behaviors influence a student's probability of success as an adult, and in some cases, non-academic behaviors may influence postsecondary success more than academics alone (McConnell et al., 2015). Schoolwide Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (SWPBIS) continues to grow as an evidence-based, effective strategy to provide behavioral supports at all levels of education (Flannery et al., 2009). Current research has yet to explore the potential relationship between implementation of SWPBIS in a high school setting and student acquisition of transition skills. This study explores the potential influence of SWPBIS on transition skill attainment for SWD. This quasi-experimental study involved approximately 60 SWD from two high schools (one having implemented SWPBIS with fidelity over 3 years, and one using traditional approaches to discipline), matched on general demographics, geographic location, and number of students. Students at both high schools were scored using the Transition Assessment Goal Generator (TAGG) assessment--a research validated assessment of identified predictors of positive postsecondary outcomes (Martin et al., 2015). Multivariate analysis of variance was used to test variation accounted for by independent variables over multiple dependent variables with post hoc tests (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). Results on the teacher version of the TAGG demonstrate statistical significance, accompanied by medium-large effect sizes for 4 of the 8 constructs associated with positive postsecondary success. Results suggest promoting a positive school climate through effective SWPBIS implementation may influence the teaching of critical transition skills for SWD in a high school setting. This study adds to the growing body of research on SWPBIS in the high school setting, and raises further research questions regarding transition skill instruction for SWD. Studies have shown getting along with others and appropriate social behaviors are critical transition behaviors (Lemaire & Mallik, 2008). SWPBIS provides schools a cost-effective, time efficient and evidence-based manner in which to increase critical nonacademic skills needed for postschool success.

Computational and Procedural Fluency are key components in mathematics achievement. To meet fluency recommendations set forth by the Core Content Curriculum Mathematics Standards, teachers often rely on technology as a primary practice tool. By applying an alternating treatments design, the researchers compared performance outcomes with four students experience mathematics difficulties using a free popular online application versus a self-managed paper-and-pencil intervention designed to build math fact fluency. Pre-baseline activities included the creation of two distinct sets of math facts using a latency measure and a one-minute timed probe. Students also completed curriculum based measures for complex computation. After five consecutive days of baseline to ensure stability, the students entered intervention. The paper-and-pencil intervention consists of three, one minute timings with feedback provided after each timed trial. The digital application provides feedback directly after each timed problem. Students continue to complete a curriculum based measurement every Friday. Performance outcomes are entered on a standard celeration chart. Generalization to complex computation will be evaluated at the end of the study.

It is important for educators to use efficient methods and ensure skill generalization. The current study was designed to extend prior studies examining the effects of the Cover-Copy-Compare method (CCC) by programming for stimulus generalization. Specifically, differential effects of CCC only, CCC+repetition, and CCC+programming for generalization were examined on six, fourth grade students' fluency, maintenance, and generalization of basic division math facts. An alternating treatment design with a baseline condition was used to measure the effects of the CCC intervention conditions. Findings revealed that across all CCC conditions, all participants improved their performance on division fact fluency and were able to generalize their skills while solving story problems at levels greater than in baseline; however, there was overlap in student performance on fluency measures among all CCC conditions. Results of this study can provide educators with strategies to modify a traditional CCC intervention procedure based upon their needs. Limitations, implications for educators, and additional resources will be provided.

Several factors impact the learning of students. Some of these factors such as learners being off-task, learners displaying undesirable behavior such as the use of mobile phones for non-academic purposes during class may have a negative effect on the learning process being successful. The present classroom research aims at applying practical solutions to overcome these obstacles. One of these solutions is the use of a token economy that will encourage learners to make more advantage of academic learning time and decrease undesirable behavior that may impede their learning. A group of 8 students has been selected for the study. A preference reinforcement analysis was done prior to the implementation of the token economy. Preliminary results showed that a token economy can have psotive results in decreasing undesirable behavior, namely the use of mobile phones for non-academic purposes in class. Data collection will span over a period of 5 weeks.

Recent estimates indicate that one in five children in Ontario under the age of 19 experiences a mental, emotional or behavioral disorder which significantly impacts their daily functioning (Children's Mental Health Ontario, 2016). Many of these children are placed in mainstream classrooms without appropriate supports. Empirical research demonstrates that the Good Behavior Game increases on-task behaviors and decreases interfering behaviors in students of all ages (Barrish, Saunders, & Wolf, 1969; Medland & Stachnik, 1972; Harris & Sherman, 1973). In the present study, a multiple baseline design was used to further the research by evaluating the effects of the game on the percentage of student non-compliance and the frequency of teacher behavior specific praise in two Ontario classrooms. Inter-observer agreement was calculated for 30% of the sessions, and treatment integrity and social validity were also measured. Results indicated a 108% increase in teacher behavior specific praise and a 37% decrease in student non-compliance in classroom one, and a 60% increase in teacher behavior specific praise and a 67% decrease in student non-compliance in classroom two. This research contributes to the literature on effective and efficient ways to address interfering behaviors in general education classrooms.

School behavioral problems correlate with a low academic performance in students, and more occupational wear on teachers. The present study aims to reduce disruptive behavior in children through increased involvement in homework as a function of teacher training in behavioral management. Four First Grade children participated in a public elementary school in Mexico City and their teacher. All children had a low involvement in homework and behavioral problems such as hitting, disrupting, etc. in the classroom. A partial-interval direct observation record was applied with event-occurrence measurement during 8 sessions of 40-minute session, before and after teacher training and contingency implementation. The results showed an increase in the involvement in the task above 50% and a decrease of almost 10% in disruptive behavior with respect to baseline. The implementation of behavioral strategies allows involvement in homework and progress in school planning as well as reducing behavioral problems in the classroom.

The use of group contingencies has demonsFtrated efficacious to manage a variety of behaviors on a class-wide scale for varying populations. Little, Akin-Little, & O'Neill's (2015) meta-analysis of group contingencies from 1980-2010 identified 11 studies specifically investigating dependent group contingencies. The current state of dependent group contingency research after Little and colleague's (2015) meta-analysis, however, is unclear. Therefore, the purpose of this literature review was to investigate the current research using dependent group contingencies from 2010-2017. Results from the current review returned a total of six studies investigating dependent group contingencies published since Little et al.'s meta-analysis, with half of those studies targeting increasing physical activity and the remainder focusing on academic-related behaviors. The current review describes recent applications and successes, limitations of previous research, and provides directions for future research employing dependent group contingencies in educational settings. Lastly, suggestions for procedural modifications that may increase the overall acceptability and effectiveness of this procedure with teachers or other stakeholders will be discussed.

Previous literature supports the use of a variety of classroom behavioral management programs to increase prosocial behaviors and decrease problem behaviors. For example, token economies, placement of classroom rules and guidelines, and providing the opportunity for students to choose the activity or subject to work on, have proven to be effective for many students; however, they can be expensive and cumbersome to manage. ClassDojo®, a classroom management system, is a type of digital token economy system that includes technology to track digital points for teacher-directed behavior. The program is free to download, simple to use, and is easily transferable between teachers and families. The present study evaluated the effects of ClassDojo® for 3 children in a classroom setting that included one participant diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and two neurotypical participants. Goals of the current study included: (1) increasing prosocial behavior, and (2) reducing disruptive behaviors. Results were evaluated within a reversal design, and showed ClassDojo® was an effective system for classroom management across three students. All participants demonstrated improvements in prosocial behavior relative to baseline; however, disruptive behavior persisted, at near-baseline levels. Disruptive behavior decreased to near-zero levels with implementation of a response-cost, while prosocial behavior also showed improvements. Further research should test this finding with a larger number of participants that would represent a typical classroom size.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of a differential reinforcement of low rates of behavior procedure with an interdependent group contingency on the rate of vocal disruptions for children with a developmental disabilities diagnosis in a classroom setting. Participants were male, 7-14-years old and an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis; two participants had additional diagnoses. Results indicated that the treatment package was effective in reducing the number of vocal disruptions for all participants. Mean-count per interval interobserver agreement was collected for 32% of all sessions via video recording, resulting in 86.17% agreement. Implications for applied practice and future research in the areas of DD, ASD, and classroom management will be discussed.

The reasons why we make decisions have been the focus of scientific interest and popular curiosity. Previous studies demonstrated that the presence of preferred events during consequence delay increase self-controlled responses. The present aimed to investigate the effect of choice opportunity and fading out of preferred events on self-controlled responses in children with Attention Deficit Disorder. The studies were carried out with five children aged 5. The experimental task consisted in the choice between two competing stimuli, presented in a monitor, followed by immediate consequences of smaller quantity and delayed ones of greater quantity. Potentially reinforcing events were manipulated along the delay of the consequence. Participants were exposed to the following conditions: a) Baseline, b) Choice between High Preference Events (C-HP), c) No Choice between High Preference Events (N-HP) and d) Fading out of Preferred Event (FO). The results indicated that self-controlled choices increased with the presence of preferred events. Until now, in FO condition, results showed that self-control responses were maintained, in at least 50%.

Compliance during transitions is a difficult task for preschoolers causing for valuable time to be lost during the school day. A high-probability (high-p) request sequence with an embedded fading component was used to decrease off task time and off task behaviors of preschoolers at a Child Care Center. Three typically developing preschoolers participated in this study. The high-p request sequence consisted of using three verbal and/or physical requests from the preschooler followed by the low-probability request of going to the bathroom, the targeted transition. The fading component consisted of the preschooler getting 4 out of 5 data points of a transition = 10 s without aggression. Once that was obtained the number of high-p requests systematically decreased. The results indicated that the intervention for all three participants was immediately effective by decreasing both the off-task time and off-task behaviors. Overall, the high-p request sequence is an effective approach to increasing compliance in preschoolers allowing for them to gain school readiness skills.

Using decreased physical distance to influence another's behavior is referred to as proximity control. Proximity control has been reported to be an effective behavior management strategy for general education students, students demonstrating disruptive behaviors, students with developmental disabilities, to increase on-task behavior, improve transitions, and decrease problem behaviors. Despite its efficacy and seemingly low effort requirement, proximity control is not commonly used by school staff, particularly in unstructured settings with large groups of students. Previous research has examined proximity control in structured classrooms, with small number of students, or in conjunction with other procedures. The current study addresses several gaps in the research literature and in practice. Using an ABAB design, we attempted to isolate proximity from other treatment variables typically implemented in conjunction with proximity, such as pre-correction and increased levels of praise. Also, the study was conducted in a large-group (approximately 100 students) unstructured setting; a school playground. Results show that problem student behavior decreased with implementation of adult proximity on the playground. It was also observed that adult reprimands increased. Finally, the adults did not rate the intervention acceptable relative to their typical practice. Implications of these findings for future research and practice are presented.

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of two teacher-implemented interdependent group contingencies in reducing callouts in two first grade classrooms. Using an alternating treatments design, teachers either removed tokens contingent upon callouts (response cost) or delivered tokens contingent upon appropriate behaviors (token delivery). Both interventions were effective in reducing callouts, but a more immediate decrease was initially observed in the response cost condition for both classrooms. A replication was performed in one classroom, during which similar reductions were observed in both conditions. Following the intervention, teachers reported a preference for response cost and student preference varied. Implications for educational practices and future research are discussed.

This study investigated the effectiveness of video-modeling on the duration of on-task behaviors during the independent writing portion of the writing block. Students were ages 9-11 of varying backgrounds and all were identified with emotional/behavioral disorders. The students were served in the same self-contained classroom, five days a week. The study utilized a multiple-baseline across subjects design with three phases: baseline, intervention, and follow-up. Data were collected as whole-interval recordings where each interval was 30 seconds for a total of 15 minutes for each session. After baseline data was taken, implementation of the intervention began for each student by random selection after baseline data were stable. The effect of the video modeling on the duration was analyzed using visual data analysis. Along with a video model that used a script, intervention involved Video Feedback and elements of self-monitoring. Initial data collection has started, data collection is ongoing.

Feedback is a relevant variable to promote learning, some studies have reported that the effect on learning depends on the content of feedback in programmed instruction. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effect of specific content of feedback on learning in online courses under an programmed instruction task in postgraduate students. Two groups of participants were formed, the groups were distinguished by the application of the programmed instruction task with specific feedback. During the final evaluation the percentage of correct responses was higher for the group with a previous programmed instruction task. The results are discussed in relation to the contribution of programmed instruction with specific content feedback to online education and future directions for research.

Several error correction procedures have been shown to facilitate skill acquisition during discrete trial instruction. Worsdell et al. (2005) compared two error correction procedures, single-response repetition and multiple-response repetition to teach sight words to adults with developmental disabilities. Although multiple-response repetition showed to be more effective in acquisition, single-response repetition resulted in the acquisition of sight words for all the participants. Single-response repetition consists of the experimenter modeling the correct response and requiring the participant to repeat the correct response prior to moving onto the next trial. The present study evaluated the effects of single-response repetition on the acquisition of spelling words using a multiple baseline design across three sets of spelling words for one participant. Results showed that the participant acquired all three sets of spelling words and retained the targets in all three sets during maintenance. The results suggest that single-response repetition may not only be effective in the acquisition of targets, but also in the long-term maintenance of those targets.

Many teaching procedures use positive reinforcement for correct responses and a correction procedure for incorrect responses. Correction procedures can include verbal instructions, modeled responses, and physical prompts. While correction procedures do help elicit the occurrence of the desired response, they can also have unintended side effects. The purpose of this study was to compare a teaching procedure that used just positive reinforfcement and a teaching procedure that used a combination of positive reinforcement and corrections. College students learned sfeveral tasks using the tabletop game PORTL. We evaluated the participant's affect and number of errors for each procedure, as well as the participant's preference for a particular procedure. Preliminary results showed that the procedure that included corrections was less preferred and resulted in a higher number of errors. Participants also reported feeling "nervous," "confused," and "frustrated." fThe positive reinforcement only procedure was highly preferred and nearly errorless. During this procedure, participants reported feeling "good" and "confident."

The purpose of this research was to provide an data-based method of gauging candidate progress through a teacher special education preparation program. A vocabulary assessment was created and is framed with the CBE and RtI models that have a 30-year research base. Curriculum-based measures were used in order to monitor the progress of candidates as they proceeded through the special education program. Further, the technology appears to hold promise for identifying candidates who were likely to need support; the results showed a difference in candidate acquisition of vocabulary from the beginning of the program to the end of the program. The assessments also accurately identified candidates within the program who were experiencing academic difficulty with program content.

Several studies confirm that many applied behavior analysis (ABA) terms elicit unpleasant emotional reactions, and that emotional responses to ABA terms overall are more negative than to English words in general (Critchfield, et al., 2017). Understanding the emotional perceptions of jargon in ABA is important because it is the contemporary gold-standard of treatment for autism developmental disabilities. ABA is practiced in many countries using different languages. To address this development, the professional certification board has developed glossaries of ABA terms in 12 languages. What is not known is whether word-emotion effects that have been documented in English apply to perceptions of jargon in other languages. Critchfield and Doepke (2017) found cross-language similarities for terms in five non-English languages, but their study discussed preliminary results. The current study will present data from a larger sample of terms and will examine similarities and differences in emotional responses to ABA terms in English and Spanish. In addition, data from bilingual speakers (English and Spanish) will be presented because past research suggests that language proficiency and language preference may play a role in emotional attachment to words (Pavlenko, 2008). The results will provide insights for how to enhance communication between clients and therapists.

Students who complete online programs in pursuit of BACB credentials must develop fluency of behavior analytic terms in order to meet demands of practice in the field as well as professional exams at each level (BCaBA, BCBA). The current study was conducted to determine effectiveness of and preference for three popular strategies in online fluency training: Game-based interaction (e.g., Quizlet.com), SAFMEDS, and Interteaching. Eight online students were selected from various online contexts and paired by their level of training (post-bacc BCaBA students, graduate students in a Master's program for ABA, graduate students seeking a Master's degree in education, and post-Master's graduates studying for the BCBA exam). Dyads completed fluency activities in several non-concurrent changing criterion designs. The study involved 40 daily sessions which measured cumulative vocabulary acquisition with mastery criteria set at 100% for 3 consecutive sessions. Random assignments to Interteaching, SAFMEDS, and Quizlet were made for each new vocabulary set. Maintenance probes were conducted at 4, 6, and 10 weeks post-training. A post-study survey of participants examined their preferences and compared preferences with effectiveness.

The use of operant chambers for research and teaching in behavior analysis is in decline due to the expense, maintenance, and ethical considerations of such complex mechanical apparati (Venneman & Knowles, 2005). Other technologies for testing and demonstrating behavioral principles have emerged in the pursuit of creating free operant paradigms that are accessible and effective for students and economical for institutions. One example is a virtual program that emulates the behavior of organisms (Graham, Alloway, & Krames, 1994). Recently, a new instrument has been developed - the Portable Operant Research and Teaching Lab (PORTL; Rosales-Ruiz & Hunter, 2016). PORTL is a tabletop apparatus comprised of various objects and tools that enables students to experience and manage free operant situations. In addition to its instructional benefits, PORTL provides a setting for basic research to be completed quickly and ethically with human participants. One purpose of this presentation is to outline the basic utility and implementation of PORTL in a collegiate setting where students themselves serve as the experimental organisms. A second purpose is to demonstrate PORTL as an alternative to operant chambers and virtual programs that can be easily and inexpensively replicated in any setting involving students of behavior analysis.

For her 5th grade science fair project, the principle author chose to evaluate several behavioral principles, with which she had personal learning experience, in the teaching of skills to elementary school students. Specific targeted skills were the distances of putting a golf ball and kicking a soccer ball into a goal. Materials and Methods: Materials included soccer and golf balls, putters, goals and holes, measuring tapes. Methods: Measurement of pre and post intervention distances; incremental increases in practice distance based upon successful scoring at starting distance; Results/Discussions: Distinct improvements in longer distances were demonstrated for some students The process of conducting a study requires development of skills, and developing and maintaining behavioral momentum Conclusions: Successive approximations and behavioral momentum are constructs/techniques useful for teaching select skills to elementary school students The process of conducting a study is in itself a "successive approximation" loaded with subset "successive approximations," aspects of the study that themselves change from the inception to completion of the study, which requires behavioral momentum to start and complete

Each year greenhouse gases continue to be detrimental factors to the world's atmosphere. Behavior, specifically driving behavior, seems to be one of the direct contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of providing immediate feedback of non-ecologically-friendly driving behavior, (e.g., speeding, hard braking, hard accelerating), to decrease such driving, thereby increasing eco-friendly driving. An "Automatic" device was installed on potential participant's cars to measure specific parameters of driving, including accelerating, braking, and fuel consumption. Eco-Driving was defined as a consistent and reliable decrease in episodes of hard accelerating and braking, relative to baseline. An ABAB reversal design was used, where A represented the baseline, delayed feedback condition and B represented the experimental, immediate feedback, condition. During the immediate condition, feedback was given directly from the "Automatic" device while participants were driving, and this was compared to baseline conditions where feedback was not provided until the participant logged in to the Automatic application on their smartphone. All three participants had an overall decrease in episodes of hard accelerations and brakes during the immediate feedback conditions. The results suggest that immediate feedback is effective at increasing Eco-Driving, when applied.

The digitalization of aggressive behaviors affects the lives of students both locally and internationally. Cases of cyberbullying behaviors continue to increase within and outside of schoolyards, which generates its significance for practitioners to identify approaches to prevent and intervene effectively. Distinctly, the manifestation of digital aggression and its targeted victims impact students of all backgrounds. In addition, the adoptions of technological methodologies permit its instinctive and global effects, which consequently generate a heightened exposure of vulnerability for the students. The presentation examines the manifestation of digital aggression and its effects on the targeted victims, offenders, and bystanders. Collaborative approaches to intervene effectively and strategies to promote positive behavior supports for all affected by cyberbullying will be discussed.

This paper presents the commons dilemma game as a methodological model for analyzing the behavior of individuals and groups when exposed to a situation involving the use of common-pool resources. We conducted a non-systematic review of behavioral analytic literature seeking to map the main features of the game, its use in experimental research and the relevant variables for subsequent analysis. Our key findings were as follows; first, common-dilemma games are presented as simulated situations involving the use of shared resources between two or more people. Second, participants must control the gains achieved individually, with each choice affecting the availability of resources for all participants. Note that the amount of resources are generated following a predetermined pattern. Third, maintaining or increasing the amount of resources available depends on whether patterns of consumption below the regeneration capability. Fourth, resources presented as points to be exchanged at the end of the experiment mimics the accrual of real-world resources, such as catching fish from a lake. Variables investigated with the game included inter-participant communication strategies, the effect of reinforcing and punitive consequences on individual resource accrual, and the verbalized rules involving the sustainable use of resources. Future research possibilities using the game are discussed.

Overuse of renewable natural resources, such as fish, trees, and clean water can lead to catastrophic outcomes. Moderate consumption by individuals may be the only option for the survival of human societies. Investigating the behavioral processes underlying the overuse of common resources can be a methodological challenge. This study proposes the use of a videogame-based task to investigate effects of differential consequences on the consumption of resources shared by multiple individuals. In the game, which simulates an ocean fishery, participants need to catch fish to keep playing, while it is necessary to preserve resources shared with other two players. Participants were 77 college students, distributed in three conditions. In the Bonuses condition, participants received extra points contingent to moderate interresponse times (IRTs). The Fines condition was characterized by loss of points following very short IRTs. The Control condition had no differential consequences programmed. Participants made repeated attempts until they won the game, catching enough fish to stay "alive" without depleting fish resources. Participants in the Fines and Bonuses condition needed fewer attempts to win the game. Detailed analyses pointed to differences in the strategies adopted by participants in each condition, signaling a possible differential effect of reinforcement and punitive consequences.

The energy used to produce electricity contributes to almost half of the total energy used in America. Many individual companies have programs designed to decrease the amount of energy used by homeowners and business owners by providing additional incentives for saving energy each month. It is important to identify an effective intervention to decrease energy usage across a variety of settings, including when the people using the energy do not directly pay for it or when homeowners are not involved in incentive programs. The participants in this study were employees at a residential school. The purpose of this Study 1 was to identify an effective intervention to decrease energy usage in group homes using a combination of incentives, prompts, and feedback. The purpose of Study 2 was to evaluate the treatment package from Study 1 in individual homes. The results of Study 1 indicate that incentives, prompts and feedback were ineffective in decreasing energy usage in a group home. The results of Study 2 indicate that the daily presentation of a rule was effective in decreasing energy usage in two homes. Interobserver agreement was collected for 54% of sessions. The mean agreement was 85.9%.

When examining ethical compliance code guidelines for accepting clients, it is noted that behavior analysts should only provide services commensurate with available resources. The compliance code also notes however, that "behavior analysts do not engage in discrimination against individuals or groups based on age, gender, race, culture, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, language, socioeconomic status, or any basis proscribed by law," (BACB, 2014). Due to the co-variance of social exclusion and poverty (Devicienti &Poggi, 2010), people with marginalized identities may face greater systemic and financial barriers to accessing services. This poster examines the household income and use of sliding scale payment options to access behavior analytic services for 2017 coaching clients who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, or Asexual/Aromantic (LGBTQIA). This poster also makes an ethical argument for the wider provision of sliding scale options for access to behavior analytic services as a goal for the field of Applied Behavior Analysis as a whole.

The purpose of this study was to review trends in research on punishment. Reviews of JEAB (1958-2015), and JABA (1968-2015) were conducted to identify articles that directly examined the effects of punishment on behavior. Basic research peaked in the 1960's and has since declined. Applied research increased steadily from the 1960's-1990's, but then declined, falling sharply in the 2000's. Negative publicity based on misapplication of aversives resulted in subsequent condemnation of punishment procedures as abusive treatment and pushed their use out of clinic practice. These results suggest that public perception of behavioral analytic punishment procedures is entangled with the coercive techniques used in different social and personal contexts. The unintended outcomes of coercive practices in societal institutions are resulting in social discontent with our law enforcement and political systems, worldwide violence and terrorism, and record numbers of persons incarcerated in our prison systems. The decline in research on punishment is counterproductive to understanding how it shapes behavior in relation to reinforcement. Future research should focus on identifying socially acceptable clinical treatments that allow the individual to express preferences, and educating the public to correct misinformation by using examples that illustrate the difference between punishment and coercion.

The ability to live independently, after spending time in the foster care system, is partly dependent on one's capacity to acquire and engage in adequate performance of various life skills. Some of these skills include budgeting, locating appropriate housing, and selecting higher education options, which should all be taught while still in foster care. Research indicates that adolescents who spent time in the foster care system are ill-prepared for independent living at the age of 18, and often experience negative outcomes due to this. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a transitional living course on acquisition of life skills. The participants included male and female adolescents, between the ages of 13 and 17, who all were in the foster care system in Kansas. A natural comparison and control group design was employed. Data were collected by direct observation, with pre-and post-assessment comparisons use to determine skill acquisition. The results revealed that the transitional living course led to an increase in life skills across all participants. This study extends the literature assessing the use of behavioral approaches to improving performance of life skills in adolescents within the child welfare system.

The training and education requirements differ vastly across law enforcement departments in the United States (Roberg & Bonn, 2004). For decades, the education level of law enforcement has been the focus of many studies despite the fact that associate or bachelor's level education is not required in most departments (Roberg & Bonn, 2004). Many rebut formal education and cite work experience as the best mode of training for police officers (Bayley & Bittner, 1997). Bayley and Bittner asserted policing is an art to be mastered only by repeated experience in the field. As Paoline and Terrill (2007) surmised the argument "policing cannot be taught in a classroom but must be learned on the streets over time" (p. 182). However, these two perspectives do not have to be mutually exclusive and effective skills-training procedures can benefit academic programs, as well as on-the-job continuing education for veteran officers. This project examined current police reports as an assessment for skills deficits across a variety of domains in law enforcement and proposes how each area can be handled using fluency and behavior skills training.

While Evidence-Based Interventions (EBIs) for children on the autism spectrum have been clearly identified, there is considerably less research on how to train first line staff to deliver the interventions with fidelity, particularly in group settings such as classrooms and residential treatment facilities. Barriers related to this problem are twofold. First, there is often a lack of adequate training in EBIs for direct service staff responsible for creating a strong instructional environmental. Second, supervisory staff often do not have training in basic organizational behavior management skills. Devereux's Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports-Autism (D-PBIS-Autism) model was designed to address both of these critical issues. The model provides a tiered system of EBIs with an increasing focus and intensity across the broad domains of communication, socialization, independence, and safety. Additionally, the use of organizational behavior management (OBM) technology creates the structure for staff training and supervision. Key OBM elements include on-line and classroom training combined with performance-based checklists, in vivo coaching and performance feedback, and graphed performance monitoring. Following implementation of the model in multiple classrooms and residential units, longitudinal data suggests well-maintained, systemic increases in staff use of EBI's and reduction in client challenging behaviors.

The main objective was to demonstrate the use of the Behavioral Systems Engineering Model in the improvement of the services provided by the Center for Autism and Social Inclusion, (CAIS-USP). The method applied was action research and the participants were the coordinator (1), supervisors (3) and the therapists (11) of the CAIS. The results were the establishment of feedback data from the processor system, which before the study did not exist, such as the results of the discrete trial assessment and data on the frequency in class. The results of the receptor system were information about the alumni, regarding the performance in the autism area and the results of the children's assessments in the VB-Mapp. Another important result was the creation of a specific undergraduate discipline, entitled Applied of Behavior Analysis to Autism, guaranteeing greater visibility and stability of the work carried out by CAIS. The conclusion is that the most fundamental stage of application was the definition of the macrosystem and the mission of the CAIS. From these definitions, several processes had been redesigned and tasks were distributed, allowing the collection of feedback data, fundamental for the planning and decisions taken in each semester.

Social interactions with clients are an important component of rapport building and creating instructional control within the therapeutic environment. Additionally, when working with children, therapists are expected to provide age-appropriate interactions that model positive social skills. The current study assessed the use of mindfulness exercises with ABA therapists to increase the number of positive interactions within a therapy session. The study was conducted with three undergraduate ABA therapists in an on-campus clinic using a multiple baseline design across subjects. Following baseline, each therapist completed a self-report measure on psychological flexibility before their sessions and then listened to a 5-min guided mindfulness exercise. Positive interactions were recorded at the beginning and end of each session for 15 minutes each using partial interval time sampling. Additionally, fidelity for therapeutic interventions and other self-report measures were recorded and assessed. The results of the study indicate that mindfulness exercises may influence the number of positive interactions from therapists to their clients during therapy sessions. These results suggest that even brief mindfulness practices may be of important and effective utility within clinics and when working in the human service field, particularly with children. The next phase of this research will assess how identifying values in addition to mindfulness exercises may impact these same dependent variables.

We developed a delay discounting questionnaire where the manipulated commodity was treatment success that was either immediate or delayed. The delay to treatment success was quasi-exponentially manipulated and in terms of reasonable time estimates that could be expected for a behavioral intervention to achieve successful outcomes with clients. The cost that was titrated in the survey was the amount of time per week that staff would be required to implement a given behavior change strategy. Results from 40 direct care staff from a day treatment program for adult clients, all of whom had prior experience implementing behavior analytic treatment strategies, suggest that the subjective value of successful treatment is discounted as the treatment is delayed. Consistent with prior research in this area, the decay is appropriately modelled using a hyperbolic curve function fit to the obtained data. The results have implications at the organizational level for predicting and influencing staff buy-in of behavior analytic strategies by quantifying estimates of response cost and delay to outcome.

The field of behavior analysis places a strong emphasis on the collection and analysis of behavioral data to make data-based decisions about clinical practices. Community-based residential programs for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities pose a unique logistical constraint due to the behavior analyst often not being able to be on site to ensure data are collected and give timely feedback to staff. The purpose of this case study is to develop a cost-effective performance management intervention to increase the amount of data collected for people who live in a community-based residential program. Specifically, the study aims to increase the percentage of target behaviors for which data are collected across all direct support professional shifts. During baseline, data were only collected during significant behavioral episodes. An intervention consisting of task clarification, staff training, reorganization of materials, and prompts increased data collection to an average of 35.4% (range, 0 to 64.3%) across all shifts each day. Next, ongoing performance feedback will be provided to direct support professionals and their supervisors. Results are anticipated to show that a cost-effective performance management intervention will effectively increase and maintain the percentage of behavioral data collected within the home.

The organizational behavior management literature includes few studies evaluating the effectiveness of various preference assessment methodologies on behavioral staff performance (Waldvogel, J.M., & Dixon, M.R., 2008; Wine, B., Reis, M., & Hantula, D., 2014). The current study evaluates the effectiveness of a survey and ranking preference assessment method in identifying potential reinforcers for staff behavior. The effectiveness of preference assessment method is measured by comparing several staff performance measures before and after contingent reinforcer delivery across 9 months. Staff performance measures evaluated in this study include the number of appointment cancellations, percent of clinical objectives mastered, and frequency of staff caseload changes each quarter.

A significant problem in children with pediatric feeding disorders is packing (i.e., pocketing or holding accepted food in the mouth), which could result in unsuccessful treatment. Prior research has identified effective treatments to decrease packing. However, none have systematically evaluated a model to use assessments to identify conditions under which consumption occurs, to inform treatment selection to decrease packing. In the present study, a multielement design was used to identify conditions under which mouth cleans occurred, and the results were used to empirically inform treatment selection to decrease packing for one child of typical development. Results of the assessment indicated that packing was related to food texture and compliance, suggesting that presenting preferred foods at a regular texture and decreasing the texture of non-preferred foods would decrease levels of packing. When treatment (i.e., decreased texture of non-preferred foods) was implemented, levels of packs decreased and all foods were consumed. During the reversal to baseline, however, levels of packs remained at 0%, suggesting that mouth cleans may have generalized following exposure to the nonpreferred food. These preliminary results suggest this model may be useful in empirically selecting treatment packages for children who pack bites.

Mere exposure to novel foods is often not sufficient to increase acceptance of those foods for young children with a pediatric feeding disorder. Rearranging the mealtime environment or contingencies is usually necessary to increase acceptance of novel foods. Demand fading, in which the number of bites increases across mealtimes following acceptance, is one way to increase the amount of foods a child will consume. While demand fading involves gradually increasing the number of bites, this procedure in isolation may not be sufficient as the requirement increases. In this case study, we combined demand fading and an avoidance contingency such that the child avoided a meal with a target food contingent upon completion of the bite requirement. If the child did not consume the required number of bites, another meal with the same bite requirement occurred. The results suggested that with demand fading alone, we were able to introduce two new foods, but the child did not consume enough bites to meet mastery criterion. When the avoidance contingency was implemented, we introduced a total of eight foods, and the child met mastery criterion for five of those foods.

Most commonly, pica is classified as automatically maintained in individuals with developmental or intellectual disabilities (Ashworth, Hirdes, & Martin, 2009). It is less commonly documented in typically developing individuals. Behavioral approaches are considered well-established treatments (Hagopian, Rooker, & Rolider, 2011), but many interventions for pica represented in typically developing populations include medical approaches such as vitamin and micronutrient supplements (e.g., Chishold & Martin, 1981). The purpose of this case study was to present a behavioral approach to assessment and treatment of pica that was identified in a girl with no psychiatric diagnoses and for whom pica was maintained by social attention. The participant was Kelsey, a 3-year-old African American girl. A multiple baseline across settings design was used to demonstrate the effects of a differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) with a token economy and extinction procedures on rates of Kelsey's pica behavior. Increasing rates of pica were observed in baseline followed by immediate reductions at the initiation of treatment. Low rates of problem behavior were maintained as the DRO schedule was faded in all settings. In addition, treatment was generalized from therapists to three caregivers, who demonstrated high implementation integrity. Limitations, future directions, and implications will be discussed.

Escape extinction, which typically involves blocking behavior that produces escape from demands, is often a necessary treatment component for severe feeding problems. Although escape extinction is a common treatment for feeding problems and is well-documented in published research, response blocking procedures have received very little attention. The present study aimed to review published literature for descriptions of blocking procedures and determine if these descriptions were sufficient for the purposes of procedural replication. We conducted a systematic electronic search of the feeding literature using relevant search terms and combinations (e.g., "escape extinction + block," "feeding + block"). All published English-language manuscripts from peer-reviewed journals that mentioned or described escape extinction with response blocking as a component of treatment were included in the present review. An initial search identified 10 articles meeting these criteria. Of these, five studies described the response blocking procedures used, one was sufficiently detailed for the purposes of replication, one mentioned therapist or caregiver training, and none reported measures of procedural integrity. Future research should identify when response blocking is appropriate and necessary, who should block escape-maintained behaviors during the implementation of escape extinction (i.e., the feeder or a second person), and what these procedures entail.

Researchers have conducted most feeding interventions in clinic settings with highly trained therapists who feed and train caregivers to implement the feeding interventions (e.g., Wilkins, Piazza, Groff, & Vaz, 2011). Research in this area has shown that caregivers can implement feeding interventions in clinic and natural (e.g., home; Tarbox, Schiff, & Najdowski, 2010; Seiverling, Williams, Sturmey, & Hart, 2012) settings with high integrity (Mueller, M. M., et al., 2003). However, there is limited research on caregivers as the initial and ongoing change agents during a child's feeding intervention. Understanding the effects of caregivers as feeders is important because inappropriate mealtime behavior typically occurs when the caregiver feeds the child (Borrero et al., 2010). In the current investigation, we compared the outcomes of therapist- versus caregiver-fed function-based feeding intervention with a 4-year-old girl diagnosed with a feeding disorder. Results showed that the child's caregiver implemented a function-based baseline and intervention with high integrity. In addition, during therapist-fed sessions, inappropriate mealtime behavior did not return to initial baseline rates, despite increasing the response effort relative to the initial baseline and caregiver-fed baseline. We discuss implications the current findings have on function-based interventions and caregiver training.

Extant research suggests behavioral economic assessments of delay discounting (DD) and demand curve analysis may be useful for understanding behavioral processes related to obesity in adults. These assessments often use hypothetical tasks to assess DD and demand. Although sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) are known to significantly contribute to obesity, no studies to date have examined demand for SSB via hypothetical purchase task (HPT) in relation to obesity. The current study sought to develop a novel HPT to assess demand for SSB and examine its relation to obesity (via body mass index; BMI) and DD. DD for money was assessed using the 5-trial adjusting delay task (Koffarnus & Bickel, 2014). These tasks were administered to over 200 participants in an online platform. The HPT of SSB resulted in orderly responding well-described by Hursh and Silberberg's (2008) exponential demand equation (average r2 = 0.89). Relations between BMI and delay discounting (natural log of k), demand intensity (Q0), demand elasticity (alpha), and essential value (EV) were examined. Additionally, relations between ln(k) and these demand parameters were examined. Results indicated that BMI was significantly related to Q0 and EV, but not to ln(k) or alpha. Ln(k) was significantly related to Q0 and alpha, but not EV. Results are discussed regarding implications for obesity assessment and treatment.

As many as 82% of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) experience numerous chronic sleep disturbances and parents report that some sleep disturbances evolve from their own attempts to address other long-standing sleep problems, such as engaging in undesired co-sleeping to reduce night awakenings. Undesired co-sleeping can be a part of the initial bedtime routine or a response to difficulty falling back asleep and disruptive behaviors (i.e., tantrums, refusal to sleep in own bed, or escaping from the bed and bedroom) following night awakenings. Bedtime Fading with Response Cost (BFRC) is a promising intervention that targets a multitude of sleep problems concurrently, however, undesired co-sleeping has yet to be the primary sleep variable in studies evaluating BFRC with children on the autism spectrum. This study evaluated the effectiveness of parent-delivered BFRC in achieving parent-defined sleep goals (e.g., reduction of undesired co-sleeping) for their children with ASD in the home environment. A non-concurrent multiple baseline design across three participants was used. Results indicate that parent-implemented BFRC was effective in achieving parent-defined sleep goals, such as the reduction of unwanted co-sleeping, frequent night awakenings, dependent sleep onset, and related sleep-disturbances. Follow-up data demonstrate that gains were maintained. Parents reported high satisfaction with BFRC and sleep outcomes for their children. This study extends both the clinical practice and science of parent-defined treatment goals and parent-implemented behavioral interventions as treatment options for children with ASD and co-occurring sleep disturbances.

One of the most common pediatric sleep issues is an extrinsic dyssomnia, which includes difficulty initiating sleep. This often leads to behavioral difficulties at bedtime. There is compelling evidence which suggests behavioral interventions are effective for improving behaviors at bedtime (e.g., Kuhn, 2014). An example of this includes the Excuse Me Drill (EMD; Kuhn, 2011). The EMD is a procedure that uses positive parental attention during bedtime to reinforce a child's sleep compatible behaviors, while ignoring disruptive behavior (i.e., differential reinforcement of alternative behavior). Although EMD has received anecdotal support, no published empirical data supporting its effectiveness exists. Participants in this study included three typically developing children: a two-year-old Caucasian female, a six-year-old Caucasian female; and a seven-year-old Caucasian female. A seven-year old Caucasian male with autism was the final participant. A non-concurrent multiple baseline across design across participants was utilized to examine the relative effectives of the EMD for increasing independent sleep onset and decreasing disruptive behaviors at bedtime. Results indicated that the EMD was effective in increasing independent sleep onset, while decreasing disruptive behaviors for all participants. The current study is the first to empirically support the use of the EMD to improve independent sleep onset.

Many students suffer with the sleep problems, such as sleep disruption and excessive sleepiness, which has a negative effect on their study performance and everyday life. As previous studies indicate that irregular sleep pattern, napping and daytime activity can lead to daytime sleepiness, how to cope with sleepiness can be related to sleepiness continuing. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between undergraduate students’ coping skills and daytime sleepiness they experience. Eighty undergraduate student who take a psychology classes will be participated. Participants will be classified as morningness-eveningness, using Horne and Ostberg questionnaire to consider the circadian rhythm preference. In phase 1, coping strategies which can be used when they sleep will be explored via semi-structured interview, including napping/activity, adjusting sleep schedule, promoting health that found in a pilot study. Type of napping will be explored in detail based on the reason of napping. In phase 2, participants will be divided into groups and will apply the strategies that is found to be effective in phase 1 for 3 weeks. Participant will be educated about strategies and report everyday progress during the intervention. Quantity of nap and nighttime sleep will be assessed, based on interview (phase 1) and their sleep diary (phase 2). Also the sleep quality and daytime sleepiness will be measured using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) in both phases. Present study will provide information on the effectiveness of coping skills that can be applied to whom suffer from excessive sleepiness during the day in a non-clinical settings.

Children with a history of renal disease and a kidney transplant are medically required to consume larger volumes of liquid compared to typical same-age peers. When a child takes prolonged durations to consume liquids, it makes it difficult to consume the required volume of liquid by mouth which in turn requires dependency on tube feedings to obtain nutritional and fluid needs. Furthermore, consuming liquid for the majority of waking hours leaves less time for other aspects such as solids and oral motor skill development. The purpose of this study was to decrease the duration of liquid consumption by implementing a behavioral treatment package including a token economy and choice paradigm without the use of escape extinction for a 6-year-old boy diagnosed with pediatric feeding disorder and has a history of end-stage renal disease. A changing criterion design with baseline probes was used to evaluate the treatment protocol. Results found that using a choice paradigm and token economy without the use of escape extinction was effective at decreasing the duration of liquid consumption and increasing overall liquid consumption by mouth as well as avoiding the effects of extinction bursts. Since duration of liquid consumption decreased there was more time for solid intake and oral motor skill development. These data are discussed in relation to the importance of meal duration as a dependent variable and how it relates to overall health.

The investigation of variables related to healthy and unhealthy food intake is important given statistical data showing that a large part of the world population is overweight. To address this question, the present study aimed to investigate the effect of different types of rules on healthy and unhealthy food intake, with ten children. Five of them had normal Body Mass Index (BMI) and five were overweight/obese. In each session, nine small pieces both of healthy and unhealthy food were displayed for each child, in the absence of the experimenter. After a baseline, each child was given a minimum rule (he/she could eat only one piece of unhealthy food). In the next phase, the same child received information about healthy eating and the same rule was presented, and in the next phase, questions about food and health were asked before the rule was presented again. At the end of each session, participants reported to the experimenter the food ingested. In general, the rule showed more effectiveness for the children with normal BMI. The rule was effective for reducing unhealthy food intake for five children at all phases in which it was presented. For three other children, it was effective only at the beginning of the exposure to the rule, whereas it was not effective for two other children.

Unmanaged acute or chronic medical conditions (such as diabetes, asthma, or seizure disorder), sensory loss, discomfort, and pain (e.g., from migraines or acute infections) affect behavior. Many individuals with neurocognitive or neurodevelopmental disorders have comorbid conditions that may disrupt behavior and exacerbate behavioral presentations. These conditions may have to be considered during treatment planning. Because medical providers tend to rely on self-report, there is a high risk that these conditions remain undetected and untreated when self-descriptive verbal skills are insufficient. Using adult cognitive loss as an example, this presentation will provide an overview of comorbidities and their impact from a behavior-analytic lens. Emphasizing the importance of integrative treatment planning, we will discuss how behavior analysts can contribute to monitoring comorbid conditions, indirectly intervene upon them, make appropriate referrals, and advocate with care partners to ensure that clients receive appropriate medical management. Special attention will be given to the prevention of psychotropic prescribing cascades.

Serious mental illness (SMI) is a term used to describe diagnoses that indicate repeated episodic loss of contingent control that affects the interpretation of everyday events. Such a loss of contingent control can accompany diagnoses of schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, and bipolar disorder. As the first-line treatment, individuals with SMI receive prescriptions of psychotropics without an end date; however, as adults with SMI age, they may develop difficulties remembering, thinking, and problem-solving. At present, there are no guidelines for managing the behavior of older adults with SMI and cognitive loss. Indeed, in terms of etiology, it is frequently unclear whether confusion and disorientation are part and parcel with the preexisting SMI diagnosis or due to a neurodegenerative condition. Such a determination would be important as many psychotropics are listed as inappropriate prescriptions for older adults in general and, when cognitive loss is present, the Food and Drug Administration warns of an increased risk of stroke and death related to antipsychotics. This presentation will review the literature regarding interventions for older adults with SMI and cognitive loss. We will discuss the role of behavior analysts in ensuring clients receive the highest quality of care.

Eating is a behavior essential to all humans. While the topography of ingestion is similar across individuals, many factors influence eating behavior and problems in eating are common. An estimated 90% of children with autism have difficulties eating; in the general adult population, eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia have a lifetime prevalence of 1-3.5%; and approximately 22.8% of older adults present with malnutrition. Thus, it is vital to gain an understanding of the physiological, psychosocial, and environmental factors that influence eating behavior across the lifespan and across clinical presentations. This paper will provide an overview of the factors that impact eating and how they may operate as motivating and maintaining operations. In addition to psychosocial processes, sensory loss, alterations in metabolism, and frequent adverse medication effects will be considered. Finally, suggestions for referrals to appropriate providers will be offered. This presentation will provide education with broad relevance to clinical and applied behavior analysis.

Cognitive difficulties are common: In addition to children and adults with neurodevelopmental disabilities, many adults lose their ability to remember, reason, or problem-solve due to a range of neurological conditions, such as traumatic brain injury or Alzheimer's disease. As most people rely on family care partners for assistance, parents and other family care partners must receive skill training to manage behavior in the home and consistently implement behavioral interventions that may have been recommended or prescribed by providers. Among barriers to implementation of interventions by care partners in the home are lack of knowledge and perceived helplessness, competing contingencies, a lack of financial resources to receive coaching, social isolation, lack of coherent sources of information, and difficulties understanding aspects of the interventions. These factors may impede the availability, accessibility, and acceptability of care partner training and thereby effective caregiving. Although steps have been taken at the community level, government care coordination, and health insurance policies to improve family care partner access to trainings, barriers must be addressed directly to ensure that care partners receive adequate support throughout the care process. This presentation will detail barriers to training and possible solutions.

We conducted 2 experiments to test the effects of the establishment of reading governs responding and the writer immersion protocol on the emergence of functional reading and writing repertoires for 2 preschool students diagnosed with autism. In Experiment 1, we implemented read-do correspondence learn units to induce reading governs responding using a multiple probe design. The dependent variable was the number of correct responses to the reading tasks during pre- and post-intervention probes. Experiment 1 demonstrated that Participant A acquired the verbal behavior of reading governs responding through read-do correspondence learn units and Participant B demonstrated the reading governs responding cusp through repeated pre-intervention probes. In Experiment 2, we used a delayed multiple probe design across participants to test the effects of the writer immersion protocol. The dependent variable was the number of accurate functional components of writing, measured through the affect that the participants' writing had on the behavior of an adult reader (i.e., adult reader's correct responses to the directions written by the target participant). Results of the writer immersion procedure demonstrated significant increases in the percentage of accurate functional components of writing for both participants. Moreover, Participant B demonstrated criterion level of functional component of writing.

We used a multiple probe design across dyads to test the effects of an accelerated auditory match-to-sample (AM) procedure on the echoic responses emitted by 6 preschoolers with language delays who emitted faulty echoics. The dependent variables were the numbers of full, partial, and incorrect echoics emitted to 100 English word. The independent variable was the accelerated procedure of AM instruction implemented using Sounds the Same software application that teaches fine discriminations between words and sentences. Following pre-intervention probes, participants were assigned into 3 dyads based on the number of full echoics they emitted during the pre-intervention probe. We randomly selected 1 participant from each dyad to receive the accelerated AM instruction, and the other participant to receive the standard AM instruction as a control group. The participants in a dyad were yoked as we conducted post-intervention probe when either participant in a dyad mastered 4 or 8 phases of AM instruction. Five participants emitted increased number of full echoics regardless of the procedure. Thus, both procedures were effective in improving echoic responses. However, the accelerated procedure was more efficient in educational setting since it allows students to finish the intervention in a shorter period of time.

This study examines discrimination training of sign-language cues via operant-conditioning in two preschool-aged children. The study expands on existing literature on social referencing (Pelaez, Viru's-Ortega, & Gewirtz, 2012) by using American Sign Language as the discriminative stimuli to evoke appropriate differential responding in young children in an ambiguous/unfamiliar context. Two 3- and 4- year old preschoolers and a familiar adult participated in a discrimination training procedure using a single-subject, repeated withdrawal design. Different consequences followed the preschoolers reaching toward an unfamiliar object. During the training phases, a familiar adult experimenter used the sign expression for 'grab' and 'play' to signal positive reinforcement for the participant reaching for an ambiguous object. The sign expression for 'no' and 'play' signaled aversive stimulation for reaching. The pattern of change in performance between the baseline and the two treatment phases suggests that the participants learned to discriminate the cues and that they learned to reference the meaning of those signals. Interobserver agreement was 100% and was calculated for 35% of all trials. This presentation informs on methods to improve social communication deficits using discrimination training procedures in applied settings.

Worldwide prevalence rates of cavities range between 60% to 90% of children and approximately 100% of adults (WHO, 2012). Given this widespread prevalence of cavities across the lifespan, the Canadian Dental Association recommends that, on average, people visit their dentist every 6 months (2017). However, for those fearful of the dentist, regular visits can be quite problematic. The current presentation will provide an overview of the existing literature on treatment of dental fear and dental noncompliance. Over 85 articles were identified and results showed that 39 unique interventions have been evaluated across children, adolescents, and adults with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities. These 39 unique interventions were classified according to the theoretical underpinnings of their interventions as: (a) strictly behavioral, (b) combined behavioral and non-behavioral, and (c) non-behavioral. Results will be discussed within the context of future areas of research that can be carried out to produce lasting effects that are socially meaningful to patients, caregivers, and dental staff.

Writer Immersion is a protocol that is utilized to teach the function of writing in children by arranging for students to communicate only via writing and observe the effects of their writing on naïve readers. The study sought to determine the effects of a protocol on the number of accurate 1) structural and 2) functional written components emitted by 2 elementary school-aged participants from a self-contained classroom in a public school. The participants were selected because pre-intervention results showed that they emitted technical structural errors and did not have the function of writing in their repertoires. We used a delayed multiple probe design across participants and the dependent variables were the numbers of correct structural components produced by the participants (i.e. capitalization, spaces, spelling, and punctuation) and the number of correct functional components drawn by a reader as a function of the participants' writing. The independent variable was a protocol in which the participants (writers) received feedback for their writing primarily through a naïve reader's response. The results indicated that the participants' accuracy in structural and functional components significantly increased after the intervention.

Children with emotional and behavioral disorder (E/BD) are more likely to show a variety of problem behaviors that affect learning process of students in general education classroom, and teaching capacity of teachers to students (Hansen et al., 2014). Previous studies showed that communication interventions are effective method for different types of problems in school settings (Billy et al., 2010). Moreover, some studies demonstrated efficacy and effectiveness of the building communication interventions based on the functional behavioral assessment (FBA) (Stahr, Cushing, Lane, & Fox, 2006). Because children with E/BD are more likely to show a variety of problem behaviors in school settings, a building communication interventions based on the FBA may be effective treatment for these children at universal, targeted and individual levels. This paper presents an overview of the application and evidence base for the building and using communication interventions in the treatment and prevention of problem behaviors in children with or at risk of EB/D. We then will provide short summary of the multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) and an overview of the FBA. At the end of the study, we will illustrate communication interventions at three tiers of school-based intervention levels with the FBA. Implications will be discussed.

Abstract Deaf high school graduates average five reading grade-levels behind their hearing counterparts. Literacy is a predictor of access to higher education and employment. Current research suggests that Phonemic Awareness is pivotal skill for all readers, necessary for decoding reading. Specific instruction in Phonemic Awareness is not currently an integral part of reading instruction in most manual-based educational programs (those using ASL) for instruction for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students. Precision Teaching, a behavior analytic instructional approach, has proven effective in remediation education for DHH students. The purpose of this study was to examine, the effects of using SAFMEDS, a Precision Teaching technique, to teach six 4-to-6-year-old DHH children to match visemes and printed letter patterns to English phonemes fluently. The experimenter employed a multiple-baseline-across-dyads experimental design. The data demonstrated all participants achieved or exceeded rates comparable to those of an expert responder on some or all learning sets, and that response rates increased significantly under the intervention in comparison to the baseline condition. Four participants also demonstrated clinically significant increases in phonemic awareness in pre-test post-test comparisons, averaging 26 percentage-point gains. Reading scores on pre/post standardized tests improved slightly for all participants who were tested.

Applied behavior analysis is on the basis of behaviorism which stems from western philosophies, and was developed in the Anglo-European context. The principles of behaviorism themselves, could be challenging to understand for some families from different educational and cultural backgrounds even if professionals explain them with everyday language. Behavioral consultation involves technical jargon that are not commonly used by families, such as antecedents, reinforcement, or positive punishment. Some of the terms used in this field are not utilized in the same way as our typical usage. Additionally, parenting styles and family values vary depending on cultures and they may not feel comfortable asking for clarification due to cultural differences due to fear of authorities or sense of shame of ignorance. Thus, professionals delivering ABA services should be culturally competent to work with Asian families and their children. Ethical issues and suggestions will be provided when professionals work with Asian families, thereby enhancing multicultural competencies for professionals.

Direct preference assessments have been well-documented as evidence-based methods of identifying reinforcers to occasion desired behavior. The multiple-stimulus without replacement (MSWO) has been shown in the extant literature as producing stable and valid results. MSWOs begin with an array of items presented to the consumer. This stimulus array is typically chosen through structured interviews, experimenter selection, observation, informal interview with caregivers or teachers, or self-report. However, informal report may not be congruent with the consumer's true preferences, and thus do not identify appropriate reinforcers. While MSWO preference assessments are efficacious, the methods by which the initial items selected for an MSWO array are identified are less clear in the extant literature. This systematic literature review explores the various methods of identifying items for the MSWO stimulus array for adolescents (ages 10-21) with autism and other developmental disabilities. Out of 277 studies identified, 30 met inclusion criteria. Results indicate that item inclusion is typically derived from informal report, although most do not report how items were included. Structured interviews were done primarily in the context of evaluating the MSWO itself. Self-report of preferences was found in only 2 of 30 studies. Future research and implications are discussed.

Staff training is an essential component when implementing an effective behavior change procedure to children with autism and developmental disabilites. Unfortunately due to the lack of resources and time constraints many institutions or schools may not be able to sufficiently train staff. Virtual Reality is a viable alternative to train various skills. In a VR environment one can both actively practice skills as well as receive feedback while engaging in the activity. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a VR environment in training staff to implement steps in Discrete Trial Training (DTT). Participants were teachers in a school for children with developmental disabilities. Performance in DTT was compared and evaluated after baseline, lecture, and VR training in a multiple baseline design across participants. All participants mastered the steps of DTT after VR training. This study is the first in examining the effectiveness of VR environment in training DTT skills. We discuss implications as well as future research in the area.

Behavioral fluency is that combination of speed plus accuracy that allows competent individuals to perform effectively and efficiently in their natural environment. Frequency building is a commonly used practice method for developing behavioral fluency. Accuracy building is a procedure used frequently in classic discrete trial training paradigms. The present study compared the impact of a frequency building procedure to that of an accuracy building procedure on the emergence of stimulus equivalence relations. Using a match-to-sample procedure within an alternating treatments design, the frequency building condition consisted of 10, 4-minute practice blocks with 1-minute of error correction directly after each 1-minute practice trial. The accuracy building condition consisted of 10, 5-minute practice blocks with error correction following each incorrect response. A control condition (no feedback) consisted 10, 5-minute practice blocks. Findings from alternating the conditions demonstrate mixed results. However, when evaluating cross-phase measures, the frequency building condition resulted in the desirable change in learning, in terms of correct incorrect deriving of equivalence relations for four of the five participants. The findings for the four participants support the conclusion that frequency building promoted more robust accuracy plus speed and decreased the likelihood of responding.

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a decision making model for Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) to implement when selecting treatments for clients. Because BCBAs are faced with the difficult task of selecting appropriate treatments for their individual clients, they must often use their professional judgment to integrate the best available evidence with relevant client variables in order to select, retain, adapt, and/or reject a treatment (Wilczynski, 2017). Our survey asked BCBAs to rate how often, based on percentage of time, they used different sources of evidence before selecting a treatment. Relevant sources of evidence to consider before selecting a treatment include: narrative reviews, systematic reviews, client history, and current client data (Wilczynski, 2017). Results indicate significant differences (p <.01) in the use of client data, historical or current, among male and female BCBAs when selecting a treatment. EBP practitioners are data-driven and historical or current client data is an invaluable source of evidence that when combined with other sources of evidence (i.e., narrative or systematic reviews, or client history) can lead to selecting a more appropriate treatment for the individual client (Wilczynski, 2017).

A treatment package was developed targeting physical education sessions for individuals diagnosed with emotional behavior disorders, in an effort to increase on-task behaviors and decrease challenging behaviors. The setting was a residential facility for individuals with intellectual disabilities and emotional behavior disorders, and the treatment package was developed in collaboration with the APE Teachers and Clinicians. The initial challenge expressed was that students would have excessive latency getting changed during a 30 minute session, and would impede both their personal and classroom performances in PE class, as it would prevent the staff from running the class. The treatment package included establishing rules for the classroom, including verbal cues, visual cues, and ultimately running the contingency twice (once at the beginning of class and once at the end). This was done additionally as a generalization of a behavioral economic system that was currently in place within the classroom. The conditions to pass the contingency were established at the individual level. Data will be provided for the individual as well as overall classroom performance. Although in the initial phase of service delivery implementation, the initial results appear positive and the APE Teachers are reporting an increase in overall performance across their sessions.

Supporting development and learning of young children with disabilities in inclusive early childhood settings is a priority for the field of early childhood special education. Purpose of this study was to investigate impacts of a professional development package consisting of training+implementation support on preschool teachers' implementation of embedded learning trials (ELTs) within context of naturalistic teaching and examine corollary relationships between teachers' implementation and child learning outcomes. A multiple probe across participants design was used with four preschool teachers and four children with developmental disabilities. Following baseline phase that lasted 5 sessions, teachers participated in two training sessions on naturalistic instruction. Next, the first teacher entered into intervention phase and began receiving implementation support from a trained coach while others remained in post-training phase where they implemented ELTs based on what they learned in trainings. Once the first teacher reached criterion performance, the second teacher entered into intervention phase and same procedure were applied until the last teacher reached to criterion and two sessions of maintenance data were collected from all participants. Findings showed that for all four teachers, training+implementation support was effective in increasing their correct implementation of ELTs; as teachers' implementation increased, children' unprompted correct responding also increased.

Shaping may be an effective intervention for individuals that engage in very little behavior, such as those with catatonia or selective mutism. This intervention evaluated the use of a shaping procedure to increase duration of training sessions and spontaneous verbal behavior for a patient who routinely responded to all interaction attempts by saying, "I would rather not participate." A preference assessment indicated that being told a joke was a potential reinforcer. Thus, for phases 1 and 2, jokes were first used to reinforce increases in duration and then for answering simple questions. Session duration and questions asked gradually increased across sessions, but responses were limited to one or few word answers. Eventually, the goal shifted to increase instances of spontaneous verbal behavior, or those not prompted via questions. As the individual sustained interaction without the jokes, jokes and questions were removed. As a result, instances of spontaneous verbal behavior increased as a function of the removal of jokes and questions, and an increase in the duration of sessions. Generalization and maintenance sessions are currently being conducted. Results indicated that shaping may be an effective intervention for individuals with catatonia or selective mutism to increase behavior such as social interactions.

Determining relationships between disruptive behaviors and their consequences is important when developing behavioral interventions for psychiatric patients. This project evaluated variables maintaining a patient's disruptive behaviors using the Questions about Behavior Function; Mental Illness and a new Functional Assessment of Behavior (FAB). The attention function ranked first as a maintaining variable for this patient's disruptive behaviors on both questionnaires. This information was used to create an intervention to increase the instructor's frequency of interactions when the patient was not engaging in disruptive behavior. As the frequency of appropriate interactions increased there was an overall decrease in disruptive instances across sessions. The similar results of the two functional assessments suggest the FAB's validity. The decreasing trend of disruptive instances as a function of increased interactions suggests that the attention function was a valid result of the FAB. These results suggest that the FAB is a promising assessment tool for psychiatric patients.

Functional assessments are used in the field of behavior analysis to aid in the development of behavioral interventions based on the identified function(s) of problem behavior. Numerous assessment tools have been used, including the Questions about Behavioral Function for Mental Illness (QABF-MI). The QABF-MI is a questionnaire with acceptable psychometric properties containing questions related to attention, tangible, escape/avoidance, and nonsocial/sensory functions. Central Regional Hospital developed its own functional assessment questionnaire called the Functional Assessment of Behavior (FAB). The FAB uses language familiar to those in the psychiatric hospital setting to identify the possible function of problem behavior. The FAB and QABF-MI were administered via staff interview for eleven patients. The results from the assessments were compared to determine if they resulted in similar functions of problem behavior. The results from the FAB followed closely with the QABF-MI. Based on the findings, the FAB appears useful for identifying the potential function of problem behavior in a psychiatric setting. Further assessment should occur to determine whether interventions based on FAB results have the expected effects.

Behavioral skills training (BST) as a treatment package has been shown as an effective teaching strategy; however, the influence of individual components within BST (e.g., instruction, feedback, etc.) is less well known. The purpose of the current study was to determine if components of BST could be used in isolation to increase appropriate proactive responses and decrease inappropriate reactive responses within a classroom setting. Data indicate the component that resulted in the greatest changes in behavior was feedback for both proactive and reactive responses. Follow-up probes indicated low maintenance of proactive responses but stable maintenance of reactive responses for both teachers. Overall, the results of this study suggest individual components of BST have the potential to create behavior change, independent of the application of the entire, standard sequence of training components. However, conclusions are limited due to lack of replication.

The echoic is a verbal operant in which the topography of the behavior has point-to-point correspondence and formal similarity with the antecedent verbal stimulus that controls it and for which the reinforcement is not specific to the topography of the behavior (Skinner, 1957). A child's ability to imitate actions at 18 months old was a better predictor of his language skills at 36 months old than even gestures. (Child Development 2013). We cannot do anything with words until they are build on what was there before words existed (Catania). Imitation is a behavior cusp for the learner to produce generative responses. Echoic Training involves bringing verbal responses under the functional control of verbal SDs that have point-to-point correspondence and formal similarity with the response. Instructional Control and Joint attention were also established before presenting the target tasks. Teacher's proximity has to be tolerated by the learners. Learners must at least sit for 5 minutes to complete 5 parts of a task; Learners must at least follow a series of 3-5 Firm single-step directions in a playful context. Using the CLM Tools, the non-directed (play skills) and problem solver-mand repertoires (asking) were first established to strengthen the learner's participation and as replacement of undesirable behaviors before introducing imitation training. The present research will also give information about the pace of learning for NAÏVE Learners concerning to their limited echoic repertoire. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the importance of motor imitation as pre-requisite skill and/or in teaching vocal imitation/ echoic for learners with apraxia, autism, speech delay and other developmental disorders using Competent Learner Model Curriculum (Observer-imitate; Problem Solver and Participator). This study will enable the learners to repeat the teacher's vocal distinct sound (i.e. "ahh"), generally to transfer the response form to other more advanced verbal operants as the end goal.