Association for Behavior Analysis International

Although it's one of the biggest economies worldwide, in Germany Organizational Behavior Management (OBM), the application of behavior analysis to behavior in the workplace, is virtually nonexistent. The reasons for this situation are manifold; the nearly complete lack of research and teaching in behavior analysis being the most significant. The background for this situation is a total ignorance of radical behaviorism, the philosophy of the science of behavior. On the other hand, effective OBM applications like Behavior Based Safety (BBS) are attractive to German companies. Consultants without any background in behavior analysis try to bridge this market gap with half-baked or "cognitive" versions of these applications, ignoring their foundations in radical behaviorism. But one cannot have the success of OBM applications without consideration of radical behaviorism and basic behavioral principles. Christoph Bordlein describes his efforts to promote the scientific basis for Behavior Based Safety in an environment that lacks institutions and structures for behavior analysis.

Behavioral analyses of the stimulus control for the phenomena characterized as bi-directional address critical issues in verbal behavioral development, verbal behavior, and relational responding. Laboratories have investigated naming as (a) derived relations, (b) its effects on other derived relations, (c) as well as the identification of experiences that contribute to the onset of naming as a behavioral developmental cusp. We present the perspectives of four laboratories on bi-directional naming.

The target audience consists of all behavior analysts with a theoretical and/or practical interest in the emergence, "generativity," or "explosion" of verbal skills in young children, and in how the basic behavioral principles can be utilized in teaching children with language delays more effectively.

Naming types have been identified as verbal behavior developmental cusps that result from a history of experiences. Different types of naming have been identified according to the stimuli controlling stimuli including: (a) naming involving actions, (b) additional auditory stimuli, (c) exclusion conditions, (d) familiar and unfamiliar stimuli, and (e) additional auditory stimuli. Some children who do not demonstrate naming can do so after several interventions and their educational prognosis improves as a result.

Humans often solve problems by engaging in a variety of strategies, some of which involve talking to themselves. This requires that they speak with understanding. Bidirectional Naming (BiN) is the term used (in behavior analysis) to refer to the ability to react as a listener to one's own speaker behavior. In this talk, I will describe basic, translational, and applied studies supporting the role of BiN in the development of complex skills such as categorization and analogical reasoning. Evidence for the role of BiN as a problem solving strategy comes from positive performances on complex matching-to-sample tasks after the use of verbal behavior training alone, and also from spontaneous vocalizations on the specific verbal strategies utilized by participants during or after task completion.

In the paper that gave rise to the study of stimulus equivalence, Sidman (1971) used the terms name/naming to generically designate responses under the discriminative control of pictures and printed words. In Skinnerian terms, he was referring to tact and textual relations. In Sidman's study, these discriminated operants emerged as a by-product of learning stimulus-stimulus relations. Although the response in a tact (or textual behavior) occurs under the control of a specific stimulus, if that stimulus is a member of an equivalence class, this implies that the response comes under the control of the class as a whole. The class, in turn, involves at least the primary item or environmental aspect, the spoken word/s, which was/were conventionally related to this item by the learner's verbal community [in the tact], and the corresponding printed word/s [in textual behavior]. Consequently, the learning history established listening and speaking behaviors in the same individual. This presentation will illustrate the formation of equivalence classes and the development of listening comprehension, tact, and textual behaviors in a sample of deaf children with cochlear implants.

This session is coupled with, and immediately follows, a SQAB tutorial on Behavioral Economics and Obesity presented by Dr. Erin Rasmussen. 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 has 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 ABAIs 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.

individuals interested in applying the fundamental principles of behavioral economics to reducing caloric intake of increasing caloric expenditure.

Schedule-induced or "adjunctive" behavior may occur related to a time based schedule when an individual produces behavior accompanying a scheduled stimulus delivery. In 1978, Foster exposed a lack of the term "adjunctive behavior" within the usage of JABA, while noting the potential significance of "adjunctive behavior" to applied settings. He had observed "numerous cases where professionals and paraprofessionals devoted strenuous, shortsighted, and futile efforts at directly modifying apparently adjunctive behaviors by imposing medications or consequences on them." Today, despite its contributions to the basic literature and its massive potential significance to applied settings, adjunctive behavior remains a topic infrequently explored by researchers interested in human populations, and may still be unfamiliar to behavior analysts lacking research experience or comprehensive backgrounds. This paper explores using a schedule-related analysis in providing ethical supervision and treatment for populations affected by trauma (for example, young children experiencing court-ordered visits with caregivers previously associated with aversive stimuli). Data are discussed in the context of engineering supportive environments for children with previous schedule related aversive experiences, as well as providing appropriate education and training for such families or others new to the analysis of stimulus schedule effects.

PENDING

This session immediately follows Dr. Tim Shahan's SQAB tutorial entitled "Relapse," which introduces the fundamental principles underlying resurgence, renewal, and reinstatement. 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 arose 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 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.

The target audience is investigators involved with translating or applying the core principles of behavior analysis.