Association for Behavior Analysis International

A bevy of current methodological topics relevant to psychological researchers working in diverse areas is presented. Many of them are widely misunderstood. Among these topics are: (1) the recent efforts to ban null hypothesis significance tests (NHST), (2) interpretation problems surrounding both conventional (i.e., Fisher and Neyman-Pearson) and Bayesian statistical inference, (3) the relationship between p-values and replication, (4) unjustified hand wringing regarding effect declines (often claimed to cast doubt on scientific methods in general) that appear to occur in many or most areas of science, (5) the increasing salience of single-case research designs and associated analyses, and (6) the stunning effect of complex black-box statistical methods on judgment. The historical context for several of these topics is presented in order to facilitate an understanding how we have ended up in our current state.

Behavioral researchers with a strong interest in research methodology.

In 2009, Congress gave the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to limit the nicotine content of combusted tobacco products. Decades of research suggest that nicotine is the primary cause of tobacco addiction and that reducing nicotine might reduce the rate and/or prevalence of smoking and have a dramatic impact on public health. This presentation will focus on recent clinical and preclinical data that addresses the potential benefits and risks of reducing nicotine as a regulatory approach. Clinical studies indicate that marked reduction in the nicotine content of cigarettes lead to fewer cigarettes smoked per day and reduced nicotine dependence with little evidence of compensatory smoking. Preclinical data from rat models of nicotine self-administration indicate that nicotine reduction would likely also decrease the initiation of use amongst nicotine na?ve adolescent users and that other non-nicotine constituents of tobacco smoke have little effect on behavior. The primary exception is MAO inhibition, which appears to shift the dose-response curve for self-administration to the left when the cost is low (i.e., low fixed ratio). Together, these data add to a growing literature that suggests that regulated reductions in nicotine may have a positive impact on behavior and health. Funding: Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and FDA Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) (U54 DA031659). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH or the Food and Drug Administration.

Licensed Psychologists, certified behavior analysts, graduate students.

Research on a model Therapeutic Workplace has allowed for the rigorous evaluation of the use of employment in the treatment of drug addiction. Under the Therapeutic Workplace, adults with histories of drug addiction are hired and paid to work. To promote drug abstinence or adherence to addiction medications, participants are required to provide drug-free urine samples or take prescribed addiction medications, respectively, to gain access to the workplace and/or to maintain their maximum rate of pay. Research has shown that this intervention is effective in promoting and maintaining abstinence from heroin, cocaine and alcohol and in promoting adherence to naltrexone in heroin-dependent adults. This presentation will review research on the Therapeutic Workplace and summarize major lessons that have been learned in conducting this research. In addition, the presentation will describe three models that could be used to maintain employment-based reinforcement in the treatment of drug addiction: A Social Business model, a Cooperative Employer model, and a Wage Supplement model. Overall, this program of research suggests that employment could be useful as a means of arranging and maintaining therapeutic reinforcement contingencies in the treatment of drug addiction.

Behavior analysts interested in the application of operant conditioning to the long-term treatment of drug addiction.

It is well documented that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) benefit from early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI). The majority of programs for toddlers with ASD have been conducted in children's homes. Although there are some benefits to working in homes, there are a number of drawbacks such as isolation, cost, and lack of appropriate social and communicative models. The purpose of this presentation is describe the current state of knowledge about early intervention for children with ASD, including the results of two recently completed randomized clinical trials on school-based services. Implications of these results will be discussed as they apply to the basic dimensions of applied behavior analysis.

Students, family members, researchers, school administrators, private practitioners providing EIBI to children with ASD.

Sleep problems are prevalent among children, especially children with autism. Sleep problems negatively impact the wellbeing of both the child and their family. The good news is that most sleep problems of children are treatable by applied behavior analysts. Critical features of empirically supported behavioral intervention for sleep problems will be described along with ideas for teaching consumers about the prevalence and relevance of applied behavior analysts for addressing children's sleep problems.

Applied Behavior Analysts, BCBAs, intermediate

Behavior analysis expiates unfair preconceptions in Italy because of the lack of scientific culture and the psychoanalytic approach, both well spread in several clinical, educational, institutional, political and academic environments. Further, there are common misconceptions of our principles themselves and their applications. ABA Chapter of Italy (AARBA) has been committed to disseminating our science since its founding in 2001 and we have challenged all those prejudices. As professionals and members of the ABA community, we tried many ways before getting partially successful: AARBA tried to influence institutions and academics first, but the evidence provided by our experiments was not enough to move them forward their conflicts of interests. So, we changed the direction of our efforts, from top-down (from institutions to clients) to bottom-up (from clients to institutions). The efficacy of our application, especially in organizational settings, developed a community that got benefit from behavior analysis and that yearly have been gathering in our annual conference, since 2004. Invited institutions to our conference could not ignore the audience and have been obliged to endorse us, sometimes under negative reinforcement. It has been a hard work but worth it. This presentation will show the results of our successful applications and experiments and the impact they had on clients in terms of benefits and on institutions, in terms of consensus.

Students and practitioners interested in reviewing a possible application of behavior analysis to business and e-learning, and in understanding how to nurture and value OBM in the civil society.

Observing behavior is an operant behavior that has the production of discriminative stimuli as consequence. This presentation will review the main course of the scientific production in this field, from early investigations up to some of the most recent works. To analyze this quite numerous and diverse literature, the speaker will identify and describe the basic observing-response procedures that employed humans as participants, especially children and adults. The maintenance of observing behavior by discriminative stimulus of extinction (that is, S-) compared to discriminative stimulus of reinforcement (that is, S+) will be addressed and two sets of empirical works involving adults and children with typical and atypical development will be presented. The first work will present the current advances in the study of observing behavior by tracking the participants' eye movements. The second work will focus on the role of observing responses in conditional discrimination processes that lead to the formation of equivalence classes. Based on these recent findings, the speaker will discuss how discrimination is established as the product of the main three-term contingency interlocked with the observing-response contingency.

Basic and applied researchers interested in mechanisms of behavior change. Additionally, it should be of great interest to practitioners in a variety of applied settings.

Quantitative modeling is increasingly common in behavior analysis. Performance on concurrent schedules, timing, delay discounting, behavioral momentum, schedule and stimulus control, variability of inter-response times, and many other aspects of behavior, are often characterized in terms of mathematical equations and computational algorithms. This presentation outlines the advantages, challenges, and pitfalls of a quantitative analysis of behavior. In particular, this presentation is focused on identifying the outcomes that quantitative models may and may not deliver, the assumptions and pre-requisites for quantitative modeling, the risks involved in this strategy, and the tactics that minimize such risks. The presentation will introduce the concepts of model-based inference, parameter estimation, stochastic vs. deterministic models, likelihood vs. probability, parsimony vs. goodness-of-fit, Bayesian modeling, and model selection. This introduction will set the stage for the practical implementation of some of these concepts.

Licensed Psychologists and those interesed in quantitative modeling.

For more than a decade, APOPO, a Belgian NGO headquartered in Tanzania, has used scent-detecting giant African pouched rats (Cricetomys) to detect landmines and other explosive remnants of war and to detect human tuberculosis. APOPO has also explored other potential humanitarian applications of the rats. For several years, my students and I have worked with other APOPO personnel to ascertain how well the rats perform in detecting landmines and in finding tuberculosis, to devise strategies to increase the rats' effectiveness and efficiency, and to extend the range of valuable services they can provide. This presentation summarizes what we have learned.

Licensed Psychologists, certified behavior analysts, graduate students.

While quantitative modeling has become increasingly common in the behavior analytic literature, many researchers have received little formal training in the practical implementation of these methods. The purpose of this presentation is to encourage quantitative analyses of behavior by providing an introduction to modeling in Microsoft Office Excel. Excel represents an advantageous platform due to its wide availability to researchers in various settings and relative ease with which prominent quantitative models may be implemented. This presentation has three major aims: (1)to provide an overview of how to simulate quantitative models commonly encountered in the literature for the purposes of gaining an understanding of the model's behavior; (2) demonstrate how to set up a workbook to perform regression analyses and basic visual analyses to assess the goodness of a model's fit to data; (3) provide an accessible introduction to model selection techniques comparing nested and non-nested models to aid the identification of candidate behavioral mechanisms.

Licensed pschologists and those interested in quantitative modeling.

There is currently widespread concern for effective teaching at all levels of education. A defining feature of teaching—perhaps more than any other profession—is the range of variability in styles and approaches. Unlike the practice of medicine, for example, teaching is still seen as an art. Moreover, few college professors are ever taught how to teach; their only qualification is a Ph.D. and expertise in their subject matter. But nowadays when colleges and universities are struggling to attract and then retain students, it is imperative that instructors take more responsibility for the success of their students. They can do this by designing their courses and classrooms according to existing research and theory in behavior analysis and psychology. This presentation describes (a) the purpose and goals of assessment; (b) the principles of a high-feedback instructional system; (c) the role of assessment in a high-feedback system; and (d) one model of a high-feedback system.

Educators and teachers of applied behavior analysis.