Association for Behavior Analysis International

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Three different projects using digital technology to improve treatment of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are described and demonstrated. In each project, a treatment or intervention aim was addressed with an application of off-the-shelf, inexpensive digital technology. One project shows how to use iPad for acquisition of manding with an autoclitic, a second compares andrpis and IOS based high and low tech approaches to teaching basic verbal operants, and the third describes an android-based intelligent agent to direct discrete trial training. The three presentations will both describe the treatment aim, the rationale behind developing the digital technology, and demonstrate how the technology works. This latter point is crucial because it seems that too many descriptions of exciting digital technology applications leave people wondering how the technology works, looks and feels. Hence the focus of this symposium is to work through development and implementation issues, with data reporting of secondary concern.

The use of the iPad with the application Proloqu2Gocontinues to provide practitioners with access to high capability speech-generating devices (SGD). There is a growing body of research demonstrating that the iPad and application Proloqu2Go can be used effectively as an Augmentative and Alternative Communication system for young children with autism, in terms of the acquisition of a mand repertoire. There is relatively less research looking beyond the basic mand repertoire to other operants, such as the tact or intraverbal. Comparatively, we have seen even less research on the acquisition of the autoclitic. This study evaluated the use of an iPad based SGD and a five-second time delay with full physical prompts, for the acquisition of manding with an autoclitic (i.e., carrier phrase), in three preschool-aged children with autism. Using a multiple-baseline design across participants, children were exposed to training during a snack-time routine, within a university-based clinical preschool setting. Preliminary results indicate positive trends in the use of the autoclitic "I want." Results indicate that the use of such a device for full-sentence manding is achievable. Further, these results provide additional support for the use of handheld computing devices as SGD.

Effective methods for teaching social and communicative skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have traditionally used low-tech approaches. Recent advances in technology (i.e., mobile technology) have resulted in high-tech alternatives to low-tech approaches (i.e., laminated picture cards), though these newer alternatives have only started to be evaluated more recently. Despite rapid adoptions of high-tech device in social and communicative teaching, there are few guidelines for how to use high-tech devices in this manner. An open-source mobile application was developed for both Apple and Android products to facilitate comparisons high-tech and low-tech forms of AAC. This study aimed to answer the following questions: 1) does the complexity of high-tech methods impact the learning of requesting skills; 2) does the complexity of high-tech methods negatively impact the learning of queried requesting skills; and, 3) does the complexity of high-tech methods negatively impact the learning of queried social responding. School-age children were randomly assigned to one of two types of AAC intervention and interventions were provided in the child's school. Trained clinicians provided participants with either a high-tech (n = 18) or low-tech (n = 17) form of communication training. Participants were assessed prior to, and following, approximately four months of intervention. The results of this trial found that children with social and communicative impairments improved in these areas following intervention with high-tech and low-tech forms of AAC. Additionally, the outcomes from these two approaches did not differ significantly in overall outcomes. Despite encouraging results, additional research is warranted to explore the relative efficacy of high-tech approaches with children who may have multiple, and more substantial, levels of impairment. The software will be demonstrated with a range of commonly-used touchscreen devices. The aim of the project was to develop a platform that could be easily adapted for use with "off the shelf" products at a range of price points. The functioning program, and its use, will be demonstrated with both high-end Apple and medium- to low-end Android products (50-100 Euro cost devices).

This study reviews specific social skills programming and exposure to social opportunities and their effects on problem behavior rates for children diagnosed with ASD and other developmental delays. The setting for the study was a clinic-based ABA program designed to help children with various diagnoses respond in groups, follow instructions, and improve social skills for school readiness purposes. Three participants between the ages of 3-5 were evaluated in this study. Each participant was one of 5-7 children present in the program. Target programming consisted of say-do correspondence, functional play skills and interactive play skills, and engaging in reciprocal play. Problem behavior data was also reviewed and correlated in order to assess weather social skill improvements could correspond to changes in problem behavior rates. The results show that each participant's social target improved significantly. Some are now able to interact with peers in the program setting, and some exhibited a decreased rate of problem behaviors once their specific skill was mastered. Future research should include classroom wide social skill improvement measures and a review of data on how many redirections are given from teachers/technicians once specific social skills are taught.

BCBA in clinical practice, all BCBAs, people interested in social skills, applied professionals.

Say-Do Correspondence was used to increase social interactions and reduce the aggression, and property destruction of two participants diagnosed with ASD. The participants were both male, ages 4 and 5. The setting was a clinic-based ABA program which was designed to work on group skills in order to improve the school readiness skills of our clients. The participants were asked what they wanted to play or do during transitions in the classroom, or during breaks from specific DTT programming. Previously, these participants would engage in problem behaviors during transitions or unstructured time. Once each participant identified what they were going to do, the RBT would prompt them to say "I am going to go ____" or "I am going to play _____" and then allow the participant to engage in the stated behavior. Once this phase was mastered, and the participants were above 80% accurate in doing what they stated, they moved the stated action to a social interaction. For example, the RBT would ask "Should we play _____ or _____ next?", in which each choice involved a peer already engaging in that activity. The participants would make a choice, the RBT would prompt them to say "I am going to go play ______ with _______" and then allow the participant to engage in the stated interaction. Results show increased social interactions and reduced problem behaviors for both participants. Future research should include a larger participant sample as well as varied levels in functioning.

Teaching social skills to children with developmental delays in the community can be difficult as prompting random peers to engage with the child is not possible. Using a developmental setting with 8 peers with similar diagnoses, each equipped with a personal behavior technician, social skills were targeted in this study through both natural and contrived situations that mimic opportunities found in a typical classroom. The child identified for this study is a 3-year-old with no interests in peers, low tolerance of play being interrupted by peers and adults, and no ability to tolerate parallel play with preferred items. The child's treatment plan identified nine social objectives that would enable the child to interact with peers through play by developing reciprocal play and initiating and responding to peer requests. Prompts used in this study included modeling actions performed by peers, modeling appropriate play schemes, and modeling delivering a "stop" or "no" PECS card to a peer to end a non-preferred interaction.

Teaching play skills is a valuable skill to target for kids when working on imitation skills and preparing for beginner social skills. This current study examined the effectiveness teaching individual play actions using various play sets during center-based sessions. The participant is a four-year old male diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and Phelan-McDermid Syndrome. In each phase, the participant participated in a two-minute probe to assess current skills and then spent up to 10 minutes in teaching trials for skills that were not shown. During an initial intake, the participant displayed zero play skills and only engaged in property destruction. Preliminary results indicate that the participant was able to learn new play skills across the first initial playsets introduced to him. A wooden train set was the first playset introduced. This target had to be modified to take into account the participants fine motor skills and additional staff training.

Real-time sensing devices such as fitness trackers and the Internet of Things are beginning to enable the continuous assessment of a large range of health behaviors as well as the physiological/environmental contexts in which they occur. This stands in contrast to the historical, non-dynamic, episodic assessments (e.g surveys, EMAs) typically implemented in health-behavior interventions. Real-time sensing technologies increase the precision of both behavioral observations and the deployment of operant contingencies, thereby more faithfully approximating the experimental conditions in lab-based studies. Insights from applied behavior analysis can thus inform health intervention designs, which is expected to increase their efficacy. This symposium presents results from two large health behavioral trials that used real-time sensing technology and operant contingencies to reduce tobacco and increase physical activity behaviors. The first study will focus on the use of real-time air particle monitors to increase the latency between tobacco use responses and the presentation of contingent, aversive stimuli. Longitudinal methodologies for detecting avoidance versus escape behavior in response to aversive stimuli will also be discussed. The second study will describe the use of wrist-worn accelerometers to explore differential effects of varying schedules of financial reinforcement (e.g. fixed vs. variable magnitude/ratio) to promote daily physical activity over one year among healthy, inactive adults. The discussion will focus on the implications of these technological advances and the opportunities for automated shaping routines designed to engender healthy, targeted behavior.

A secondary analysis of data from one arm of an RCT will be presented in order to explore the effects of six different reinforcement stages, each characterized by a different positive reinforcement schedule, on participants' MVPA. Participants (N=187) wore an ActiGraph GT9X daily (32,632 observations) in a one-year intervention. They were prescribed MVPA goals (i.e., MVPA bout minutes) and could earn rewards daily for meeting goals. As participants met goals, they progressed through four stages, transitioning from one to the next after meeting 24 goals: 1) continuous fixed reinforcement ($1 per goal met), 2) continuous variable magnitude ($0.25 to $2.50/goal met, all goals earned a reward), 3) variable magnitude and probability ($0.25 to $2.50/goal, 8% of goals earned $0), 4) variable magnitude and probability ($0.25 to $2.50, 17% of goals earned $0). Rewards denominations were randomized and total amounts within each stage summed to $24. Participants were paid immediately via electronic gift cards after earning $5.00. We averaged cumulative MVPA bout minutes/day (bm/d) over all participants on each day in each stage to investigate potential differences between stages. Rate of growth in cumulative MVPA bm/d increased across stages, with Stage 1 (continuous reinforcement) having the smallest slope. Linear regression indicated that a slope of 23.8 bm/d in Stage 1 increased to 30.1 bm/d in Stage 2 (? = 6.3, p<.001). The slope increased by an additional 2.1 bm/d at Stage 3 (p=0.23) and increased by 12.5 bm/d at Stage 4 (p<.001). When repeating this analysis with only the highest-performing participants, the ? between Stage 1 and Stage 2 was smaller (2.8 bm/d, p<.001) and slopes for other adjacent pairs of stages were more similar. Progression through both variable magnitude and variable probability reinforcement schedules resulted in higher MVPA than observed with continuous fixed reinforcement alone, with leaner probability schedules producing the largest amount of MVPA accrual. Variance was not constant across subjects and was smallest for the highest performing participants. Implications for behavioral maintenance will be discussed.

Exposure to fine particulate matter in the home from sources such as smoking, cooking, and cleaning may put residents, especially children, at risk for detrimental health effects. A trial was conducted from 2011 to 2016 to determine whether real-time feedback in the home could reduce fine particle levels in homes with smokers and children. Monitors were installed in each subject's home and air particle measurements were collected on a nearly-continuous basis over the course of several months. A subset of homes, designated as the treatment group, received aversive visual and auditory feedback (yellow/red lights and tones) when air particle concentrations exceeded a threshold, representing a punishing contingency. A major feature of this study is a very small latency, defined as the temporal interval between a behavior and the presentation of a contingent consequence. This characteristic is known to strengthen behavioral contingencies. In a separate arm, punishing stimuli were augmented with reinforcing contingencies, with participants being provided with gift cards with a value contingent upon the duration of contiguous low-level measurements. The required duration to activate reinforcement was tailored to participants' baseline measurements. This real-time behavior intervention was successful in reducing both the number of particle generating events and the mean daily particle concentration. Moreover, it demonstrates the ability of real-time technology to more faithfully adhere to applied behavioral principles than a traditional approach and to allow for a level of personalization that is often lacking in behavioral interventions. As real-time sensing technology becomes even more ubiquitous, this capacity will grow and allow other features, such as behavior shaping, to be incorporated into interventions. We expect that this development will have major implications for improving the efficacy of health behavior interventions, particularly concerning the maintenance of healthy behaviors.

The objective of the symposium is to present theoretical discussion and data on transient states of behavior, its controlling variables and applied implications. The field of Behavior Analysis has been paid attention to stable states of behavior, and few studies take an empirical analysis of transient states of behavior and its applied implications. The first presentation is going to analyze behavior dynamics as a field devoted to the fundamental question of what forces drive changes in behavior. Exemplars of different problems and approaches will be briefly reviewed, such as the phenomenon of shaping. Shaping is foundational to all of behavior analysis, yet this has received surprisingly little systematic analysis. The second presentation will show experimental studies demonstrating that the verbal operant called qualifying autoclitic, when presented as an antecedent condition of a response, may have persuasive effects upon it, altering the function of verbal stimuli that accompanies them, producing temporary changes. The applied implications of these temporary changes will be addressed.

The experimental studies presented will demonstrate that the verbal operant called autoclitic, when presented as an antecedent condition of a response, may have persuasive effects upon it, altering the function of verbal stimuli that accompanies them and produce temporary changes. The empirical base is eleven experiments with A-B-A or Pre-Post Test designs. The participants were typical developed children and young university adults. The procedures always evolved a baseline, where it was observed the frequency of a nonverbal response. In experimental phases, one or more verbal manipulations were conducted, evolving verbal antecedent stimuli with the autoclitics topography suggested by Skinner (1957), where one or more verbal responses, previously observed during baseline, were differentially reinforced or instructed. After this, Post-Test measures, under similar conditions of those in baseline, were taken, verifying the reversion or not of the responses observed during baseline. The results in the majority of the studies indicated that the effects of autoclitics verbal stimuli upon nonverbal behavior were transient. Nevertheless, applied implications of transient states produced by autoclitics are highlighted. Transient states produced by autoclitic verbal stimuli on nonverbal response were identified through subtle measures such as latency of a response.

In 2016, the Behavior Analyst Certification Board released a new revised ethical code for the field: The Professional and Ethical Compliance Code for Behavior Analysts. In this revised code, the board has shifted the language of the code from that of a set of guidelines to that of a set of enforceable rules. This important shift has not been well discussed in the field. In this symposium, we explore the potential implications and perhaps inadvertent consequences of such a shift and propose that a focus on a process of ethical decision making, rather than on an increasing set of rules, may be a better way to promote ethical behavior within the field. We propose a possible ethical decision making process and give a case example of how the process would be used in confronting an ethical dilemma.

Practicing BCBAs

Behavioral phenomena both result from and contribute to the workings of natural selection. Phylogenetic selection as a causal mechanism has revolutionized our understanding of the origin of various phenotypes (observable characteristics) within and across animal species. The discovery that behavior also acts as a phenotypes in phylogenetic evolution has greatly enriched a thoroughgoing theory of behavior and afforded the opportunity to discover the relationships between ontogenetic and phylogenetic selection. Ontogenetic and phylogenetic selection require variation from which to select and are constrained by multiple variables. For example, behavioral repertoires are constrained by an individual's neuroanatomy and environment; ontogeny and phylogeny interact to select and constrain response systems. Additionally, variation, selection, and constraints act across populations of individuals, which can result in stable population-level phenotypes despite variation at the individual level. Measures of "personality" in the animal behavior literature exemplify a focus on this population-level consistency by measuring behavioral phenotypes relative to the population's repertoire. Here, we aim to synthesize fieldwork with a theoretical analysis focusing on phylogenetic and ontogenetic selection in order to better understand how a selectionist approach can inform research on and interpretation of behavioral phenomena.

Variation within and across populations is a necessary component of natural selection, and within-subject variation is a necessary component of behavioral selection. In the animal behavior literature, "boldness" is a measure of the propensity of animals to approach novel stimuli. Boldness is considered to be a measure of animal behavior "personality." Personality measures investigate individual behavioral differences in a population and are predicted to be consistent through time. Here, we examined whether wild vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) responded similarly to the presentation of novel food items. Individual responses toward novel food items were recorded for 106 individuals in three troops of free-ranging vervet monkeys residing in a private game reserve in South Africa. Replication trials were conducted for a subset of individuals, and the data were analyzed for consistency at both population and individual levels. Our data indicate that boldness was consistent both within age and sex classes, as well as at the population level (repeatability), while being less so within individuals (replicability). Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to both behavioral and natural selection.

For individuals with autism, effective instructional methods for increasing their communication repertoire is essential for preventing social impairments due to miscommunication or the occurrence of problem behavior. This makes initial instruction in foundational communication skills invaluable for future generalization and maintenance of skills. The first study addresses the impact of discrimination of negatively-reinforced mands by evaluating training methods for teaching participants to reject nonpreferred foods on which they were trained, generalization to novel nonpreferred foods, and maintenance over time. Authors for the second study take a strategy that has commonly been investigated for mands, manipulating motivating operations prior to instruction, to determine what effects presession attention has on acquisition of tacts and intraverbals. With the third study, authors promote early requisite behaviors for skill acquisition by demonstrating the utility of environmental arrangements, differential reinforcement, and demand fading procedures to promote choice allocation to instructional environments when demand requirements are high and schedule thinning occurs. Authors for the fourth study evaluated the effects of echoic prompts to increase mand utterance length from single word mands to more socially clear and acceptable mands using multi-word sentences. The discussant will deliver a synthesized conclusion and present future directions.

Behavior analysts who are clinicians or researchers. Appropriate for graduate students or individuals who already have their BCBA.

In this study, we examined the generalization of negatively-reinforced mands in three young children with autism. First, we used example and nonexample stimuli embedded in mand training to teach a new, socially appropriate, negatively-reinforced mand to reject unpreferred food items while continuously assessing mand discrimination. Second, we evaluated the discriminated generalization of the newly acquired mand by using untrained example and nonexample stimuli. Finally, we conducted maintenance probes to examine if the new, discriminated mand occurred over time in the absence of training. Results suggest that our mand training produced acquisition of a discriminated negatively-reinforced mand in all three children. Data indicate that the newly acquired, discriminated mand generalized to untrained food items and was maintained after training was discontinued. We discuss clinical implications and the conceptual significance of using example and nonexample trials to produce acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of negatively-reinforced mands in young children with autism and language delays.

Children with autism spectrum disorder may engage in a variety of behaviors that influence the efficacy of early intervention programming (e.g., tantrums, disruptive behaviors, etc.). Behavior analysts may utilize a variety of strategies to reduce these competing behaviors and increase appropriate repertoires. However, these strategies may vary in efficacy and caregivers may express concerns when the child engages in problem behavior in a therapeutic setting. The current study describes the findings of a structured intervention protocol on problem behavior and alternative behavior (e.g., compliance, close proximity, etc.) for nine female participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and no vocal verbal behavior. The intervention included the arrangement of concurrent reinforcement schedules, demand fading, and differential reinforcement procedures without the use of physical guidance. Findings indicate that the topography of problem behavior differed across participants during baseline with seven participants completing all stages of the protocol. One participant did not complete the protocol due to high rates of motor stereotypy. For an additional participant, baseline rates of problem behavior were low, thus, progression through the protocol was not necessary. Implications for early intervention are discussed.

Mand training curricula often emphasize the teaching of single-word utterances (e.g., "cookie") to initially provide young learners with an efficient and functional form of communication to make requests. However, as a child's mand repertoire increases, it may be preferable to increase the mean length of utterances (MLU; e.g., "I want cookie"). A total of six children between ages of 4 and 6 years old who primarily manded and tacted using single words participated in the current study. A multiple baseline design across participants was used to assess the effects of a treatment on MLU. Following baseline probes, a treatment involving echoic prompts using two- to three-word utterances (mands) was used to increase participants' mean length of mands. Results indicated the use of echoic prompts was effective in increasing MLUs across all participants. Maintenance probes were conducted with one of the participants and results showed that MLUs maintained over four sessions.

Upon increased awareness for evidence-based treatment in autism among caregivers, needs for ABA service in Korea have drastically escalated. Yet, qualified professionals are scarce and service materials are extremely limited. Our team has continuously worked on establishing an evidence-based assessment and treatment materials for the past 10 years. In this symposium, we are presenting research findings on newly developed assessment instruments for measuring the functions of problem behaviors, and social-perception ability. In addition, results and implications from 2 treatment outcome studies, a behavioral parenting program for decreasing problem behaviors and an app-based application program for improving social ability, will be shared. Specific details on developing and conducting research projects related to this topic will be beneficial to future researchers and clinicians.

BCaBA, BCBA, BCBA-D

Deficits of social communication seen in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be explained by a lack of social skills and the inability to perceive faces. Although ABA can be used to improve social skills of children with ASD, limitations exist in terms of cost, accessibility, and effectiveness. The aim of this study was to develop and test the effectiveness of "Yface," a cost-effective and highly accessible evidence-based program. "Yface" consists of tasks that are designed to improve eye-contact, face perception and social cognition. Fifth-three high-functioning ASD children participated in the study and were randomly assigned to three groups: a social training ("Yface"), a cognitive training ("Ycog") and a control (waiting) group. The two training groups trained through the program for 10-15 minutes per day for 12 weeks, whereas the waiting group received usual care. Computerized cognitive tasks, the Faux-Pas test, behavioral observation, and an interview and surveys were conducted as pre- and post- assessments. A repeated measure ANOVA was used for data analysis. Result showed that the "Yface" group reported enhanced social reactivity, communication and face perception compared to the "Ycog" group and the waiting group. This indicates that the "Yface" program is effective in improving social cognition of children with ASD. Further efforts are needed for the implementation and dissemination of the program.

Autism spectrum disorders(ASD) are characterized by significant difficulties in emotion recognition, but the evidence-based assessment tool for this impairment is limited. Yonsei Mindreading Face Battery(Y-CAM) is developed to test subtle emotion recognition, including 113 facial stimuli video clips which has been modified to match Korean culture based on the Cambridge Mindreading Face Battery. The purpose of this study is to establish differential validity of the Y-CAM in detecting subtle emotion recognition in ASD on samples of adolescents with ASD and typically developing(TD) adults. In experiment 1, 60 adolescents with ASD completed 3 tasks consisting of Y-CAM, the Autism Quotient (AQ), and the Social Skills Improvement System(SSIS), whereas 121 TD adults completed 5 tasks consisting of Y-CAM, AQ, SSIS, Beck Depression Inventory(BDI) and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory(STAI). The results showed a significant positive correlation between Y-CAM and SSIS among ASD adolescents, while Y-CAM was significantly negatively correlated with AQ among TD adults. In experiment 2, youths with ASD were divided into 2 groups upon their ages and the accuracy of Y-CAM were compared. The results showed that children aged 5-10 showed significantly lower accuracy of emotion perception than adolescents aged 11-17. These results suggest that the Y-CAM is a sensitive tool to detect emotion recognition ability in both ASD adolescents and adults.

Problem behaviors such as physical aggression, self-injury, defiance, stereotypy, and disruption are major barriers to the children and adolescents' social development and their parents' quality of life. Behavioral parent training (BPT) is one of the empirically supported interventions for improving problem behaviors and promoting effective parenting. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of behavioral parent training (BPT) on reducing problem behaviors for youths with developmental disabilities (DD). Twenty-five parents of youths with DD participated in a BPT program for 12 weeks. Data on parent's quality of life, knowledge of behavior principles, parenting efficacy, parenting stress and depression were collected before and after the training. Parents also recorded frequency and severity of the target problem behaviors of their offspring. Paired t-test showed significant improvement on all dependent variables after the training. Bootstrapping, a computational nonparametric technique for "re-sampling," enables researchers to draw a conclusion about the characteristics of a population strictly from the existing sample rather than by making parametric assumptions about the estimator. Bootstrapping was used to compare the confidence intervals of the mean severity of problem behavior before and after training. The results showed that 64%(16 out of 25) youth showed significant reduction of their problem behaviors after the BPT training program, suggesting the BPT as an effective method to treat problem behaviors.

The purpose of this study is to compare the identified functions of problem behaviors between teachers and day program staff for persons with developmental disabilities (DD). 15 teachers (aged 23-57; 5 teachers completed two questionnaires; N = 20) and 25 staff members (aged 20-45; N = 25) who works for the DD population (aged 8-43) participated in this study. They completed one or two Functional Assessment for Challenging/Problem Behaviors (FAPB: Chung, Kim & Chung, 2017) questionnaires to evaluate the function of the problem behaviors of clients they work with. The FAPB is a 24-item scale used to identify 6 functions of problem behaviors (demand, self-stimulation, physical state, obsession and control, avoidance, attention) and its psychometric properties were well established. An independent t-test was conducted to determine the differences the FAPB scores of each function between teachers and staff. As a result, there was a significant difference only in the 'obsession and control' function and there were no significant differences in the other functions. This result suggests possible differences in perception of the function of problem behaviors across informants. Further implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

Communication is central to most major life activities. Children with complex communication needs and developmental disabilities frequently benefit from implementation of augmentative and alternative communication interventions, which provide them with means of supplementing conventional communication modes. This symposium includes 4 presentations and a discussant -- renowned, experienced researcher teams spanning the fields of communication science, behavior analysis, and special education and from 5 Carnegie-classified Doctoral Universities, Highest Research Activity. These teams will present findings from their work on topics such as parent coaching interventions for families with children with autism spectrum disorder, functional communication training and schedules of reinforcement, promoting peer interaction in preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder, and using technology to improve language outcomes in young children. Findings will provide researchers with direction to fill research gaps and practitioners with empirically-supported strategies for improving communication for children with complex communication needs, their families, and their peers. The discussant will provide a synthesis of and potential future research directions for the use of augmentative and alternative communication for people with autism spectrum and other developmental disabilities.

Researchers Graduate students Practitioners

Functional communication training is a robust intervention to decrease challenging behavior. The implementation of this intervention often includes a continuous reinforcement schedule arrangement for the targeted appropriate replacement behavior, including mands; potentially impacting the persistence of mands when introduced to the thinned and variable reinforcement schedules often encountered in the natural environment. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of functional communication training intervention delivered with fixed ratio (FR1) and then variable ratio (VR3) reinforcement schedules on the targeted mands with adapted reversal designs with embedded extinction probes (Wacker et al., 2011). During the intervention, parents conducted all functional communication training interventions with remote coaching via telehealth. Both participants improved use of the targeted mands, including with augmentative and alternative communication, and experienced reductions in challenging behavior. Implications from this study support increased responding of the mands under variable schedules. Both participants displayed increased responding of mands in the extinction probes following variable reinforcement schedules; however, one participant also experienced slightly elevated levels of an untargeted typography of challenging behavior.

Purpose: Social interaction has been shown to have a positive impact on relationship development, health, and academic success. For children with autism spectrum disorders who use augmentative and alternative communication, evidence-based intervention to support peer interaction is needed. Method: 5 dyads of children (child with autism spectrum disorder and peer) participated. A multiple probe across dyads design with a partial replication was used to evaluate the effects of intervention on the frequency of communicative turns expressed by children with autism spectrum disorders when interacting with peers. Frequency of peer turns, percentage of turns taken by peers, and joint engagement were collateral measures. The intervention included: (a) provision of a communication app on an iPad and (b) dyadic turn-taking training. Results: For four participants with autism spectrum disorders, the intervention had a strong effect on the frequency of turn-taking. The fifth participant showed increased turn-taking during training, but little change in independent turn-taking. All peers increased turn-taking with no negative impact on the turn balance between participants. Average joint engagement increased for all dyads.

Estimates indicate that more than 4.05 million people in the United States have such severe speech disabilities that they require the use of augmentative and alternative communication. Since the advent of mass market tablet technologies like the iPad, increasing numbers of families and clinicians are reportedly considering augmentative and alternative communication options for preschool-age children with complex communication needs. However, even when early access to augmentative and alternative communication technologies is available, accompanying access to evidence-based augmentative and alternative communication services -- particularly during the critical early language learning years -- often is not. This puts these children at further risk for the poor expressive language outcomes that have been reported in the augmentative and alternative communication literature. This investigation was designed to evaluate the impact of an aided augmentative and alternative communication modeling intervention on: (a) the productive use of a range of linguistic structures by 5 year olds using an augmentative and alternative communication iPad app, and (b) generalization to productive use of non-targeted linguistic structures. Single case experimental design (multiple probe across three participants) indicated that the intervention is effective in increasing participants' expressive productions of the targeted linguistic structures using an augmentative and alternative communication iPad app, and that participants are able to generalize to non-targeted linguistic structures.

This single-case experimental study was to evaluate the effects of coaching the parents in a multimodal communication intervention via behavioral skills training to parents of children with autism spectrum disorder to increase children's social communication skills in natural contexts. The participants included 2 parent-child dyads and 1 parent-child triad. The child participants ranged in age from 5 years to 15 years at the time of data collection and were identied as having autism spectrum disorder, two of whom also had complex communication needs. A multiple-probe design was used and data were collected on the proximal effects of the parent-coaching protocol on the parents' use of the intervention and the distal effects on communication behaviors in children. There were three phases in this study, including baseline, intervention, and generalization/maintenance. After collecting baseline data, the initial parent training session was provided in a group webinar, and the remaining 10-12 coaching sessions were provided individually with the parents and their children. Researchers implemented parent coaching, collected data via video recording, and provided weekly feedback to parents. The multimodal communication intervention was used to promote that each child's communication skills, and developmentally and behaviorally-based strategies were used to expanded new communication skills in children with autism spectrum disorder. The presenters will report results on the parents' fidelity of implementation and children's communication outcomes and will discuss limitations, suggestions for future research, and implications for practice.

The interest in cultural level phenomena has produced a great number of studies. These range from interpretations of social phenomena to experimental studies in the laboratory. This symposium aims to present some of this variety. The first study aimed to establish the best individual baselines for the study of social behavior and cultural practices in the lab using the parameters used in the literature of schedules of reinforcement. Twelve participants worked in a task that established the rate of responses, showing a good baseline for superimposing demands of coordination, helping to study levels of variation and selection. The second study aimed to evaluate differences between schedules of punishment and extinction in reducing the frequency of culturants. The data lead to the discussion of the effects as analogous to operant-level processes. The third presentation is an ongoing research aiming to promote sustainable behavior in children. The researcher present contingencies to increase four kinds of interlocked behavioral contingencies. The last presentation takes the concepts used in cultural analysis to make interpretation of interlocked behavioral contingencies in organizations as organizational culture. The study concludes with a comparison between the culture of public institutions in Brazil and post-bureaucratic organizations like technology and advertisement companies.

Participants worked in individual computers with image of a faucet and a gallon in the computer screen. Clicking with mouse button on faucet produced the filling of gallons according to different reinforcement schedules. Our task permits that the experimenter superimpose additional criteria (spacing responses) for coordinated behaviors from different participants. The aim of the present study was to establish the best individual baselines for the study of social behavior and cultural practices in the lab using the parameters frequently used in the literature of schedules of reinforcement. Twelve university students participated in the experiment. Six participants worked under ratio schedules (FR 40 and VR 40). Six other participants worked under interval schedules yoked to the firsts participants as a way to equalize reinforcement rate. Participants presented low rates in interval schedules and high rates in ratio schedules. Strong effect of programmed schedules indicates that parameters and stability criterion we used can produce a good baseline to test the effects of the demand for coordinated performances. We compare this data with others from our research group when demand for coordination is superimposed to baselines with less stability. This helps to evaluate two simultaneous levels of variation and selection occurring simultaneously.

Previously studies have showed that the culturant's frequency can be reducing by suspending cultural consequence or by providing aversive consequences (as losing bonus). But no study has investigated potential difference of this two ways by exposing the same group at both situations. This work aimed verify if there was different effects of to schedule punishment (characterized by losing bonus) or extinction (characterized by break only the metacontingency, so no bonus were available) in reducing culturants frequency. Six undergraduate students distributed in tow triads. In condition A responses were reinforced by points and culturants by adding bonus. In condition B responses still produced points, but culturants (that attend the criteria in previous condition) would produce withdraw bonus. In condition C only individual consequences were available. The Triad 1 was exposed to ABABACAC design and Triad 2 to ACACABAB design. Results showed that on one hand losing bonus could suppress culturant's frequency. On the other hand withdrawal could decline culturant's frequency slower than losing bonus. The data are discussed concerning different processes of selection in cultural level: strengthening cultural and weakening cultural. They are analogous processes in operant level.

Discussion about behavior management takes into account that organizations maintain patterns of behavioral contingencies. These patterns shape both wanted and unwanted behavior in the work environment. This may lead to behavioral problems and solutions. Cultural Analysis has emphasized the role of cultural consequences in the selection of interlocked behavioral contingencies. Discussion on metacontingencies may be useful in describing and planning interventions for changing that behavior. Organizational patterns of behavior, reinforcement and punishment practices may be conceptualized as an organizational culture in a Behavior Analytic framework. This study presents an overview of the concept of organizational culture: We describe it as interlocked behavioral contingencies and its aggregate product (a culturant) selected by its consequences. These consequences are both by an external environment and an internal environment. The study concludes with a comparison between the culture of public institutions in Brazil and post-bureaucratic organizations like technology and advertisement companies. Thus, we illustrate how environmental contingencies selected different interlocked behavioral contingencies.

The objective of this ongoing research is to promote sustainable behavior in children, members of a new generation who can change the behavior of their family members. Participants were 32 children (approximately 10 years of age), students in the 5th grade of an elementary school in a Brazilian city. The researcher conducted 30 min sessions with the class, three times in two months. In these sessions the researcher addressed topics related to the 17 sustainable development goals proposed by the UN and established contingencies to promote operants related to sustainability. The target operants were related to four topics: 1) use of water 2) use of electrical energy; 3) management of residues; and 4) mechanical control of the mosquito Aedes aegypti. Children were instructed to observe and record operants in these four classes. In a baseline condition, the sustainable behaviors classes were represented by 63,64%, 75,76%, 69,69%, and 60,61% of children's records, respectively. In Condition B, the cultural practices of sustainability will be reinforced, and in Condition C metacontingencies of sustainability will have children in interlocking behavior contingencies (IBCs) producing aggregate products (APs) of sustainability. The cultural consequences will be presented by teachers and managers.

Interteaching is a relatively new behavioral teaching method with a growing body of empirical evidence to support its efficacy. Over the past 15 years, over 25 empirical studies have been published examining the effectiveness of interteaching. However, more research is still needed to examine the influence of different interteaching components and the methods used for instructional delivery. The first presenter will provide a conceptual overview of effective instructional design, along with a review of interteaching, how the instructional method is implemented, and recent empirical research in the area. The second presenter will share results of a laboratory study which conducted a component analysis of interteaching. The third presenter will highlight the findings of a two-study series examining the relationship between content contained in interteaching prep guide questions, quality of discussion, student test scores, and student preference. The final presenter will discuss how instruction and student learning in higher education can be improved upon by combining techniques from behavioral teaching methodologies, such as fluency building, programmed instruction, and interteaching, as well as strategies for demonstrating effective teaching. Together, these four presentations illustrate current interteaching research and practice in higher education.

Training for applied behavior analysts often starts in the classroom. Much like other arenas where behavioral principles are employed to benefit learning rates, so, too, can the classroom become a place for applied behavior analytic intervention. A current goal of many behaviorists is to develop technologies that improve classroom learning, though often in a segregated fashion. Some examples of classroom instructional technologies include programmed instruction, fluency building, errorless learning, spaced rehearsal, stimulus equivalence, interteaching, and personalized systems of instruction. This talk discusses creative ways by which educators, particularly those in the higher education system, can combine these and other behavioral technologies to improve instruction and enhance learner performance in the classroom. Particular emphasis will be placed on methodological issues in demonstrating effective teaching, such as parametric and component analysis. In addition, suggestions for single case design strategies and effect size measures will be addressed.

Since the wars following September 11, 2001, our military service members have suffered from two hallmark wounds: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). Chronic pain and substance abuse have also been common co-morbid conditions suffered by members of this community. While the rate of suicide among veterans of all wars continues to fluctuate between 20 and 22 per day, suicides in the military continue to remain above civilian rates. At no time in our country's history have the military or civilian communities sustained lower suicide rates despite their numerous programmatic and treatment efforts. Resilience is part of the answer to these problems; effective treatments are another. These three talks apply ABA theory to elucidate how resilience, PTSD and other conditions operate. By analyzing some of the evidence-based treatments for these conditions, the authors illustrate how ABA offers helpful explanations and additional solutions to the challenges faced by the military and veteran communities.

This is for members of the behavior analysis community who are interested in continuing education.

Since 2001, American military service members have endured multiple deployments, some lasting up to 24-months in duration. Combat experiences leave many service members living with an unregulated, highly active sympathetic nervous system. For some service members, this degrades their job performance, while others experience sub-threshold or diagnosable sleeping problems, irritability, interpersonal conflicts, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress symptoms (PSTD). Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is one of only two efficacious treatments for treating combat-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). CPT has been shown to be an effective manualized treatment in both the civilian and the military populations, and it has been endorsed as a best practice for the treatment of PTSD by the United States Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense, as well as the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies. Since it works, it must somehow operate via behavioral principles. However, our review of the literature indicates that it is difficult to find a behavior analytic conceptualization of CPT, or a behavior analytic explanation of its effectiveness.

The four presentations in this symposium illustrate how evidence-based practices in instructional design and Precision Teaching can be combined in new ways. The first two presentations focus on mathematics instruction for pre-schoolers and middle school students. In the first presentation, James Stocker will describe research demonstrating the effects of computational fluency on middle school students? higher order math skills and quantitative reasoning repertoires in a public charter school. Next, Kerri Milyko will demonstrate how to adapt a commercially available pre-school mathematics ?app? to increase active responding, reinforcement, discrimination training, individual generalization and application to a wider array of students. The second two presentations focus on teaching executive functioning skills and repertoires to elementary and middle school students. In the third presentation, Shiloh Isbell will demonstrate how so-called executive functioning can be broken down into component learning-to-learn behaviors and taught discretely, and how middle school students can be taught to self-assess their executive dysfunction, and apply the component learning behaviors to promote application and adduction. Next, Vivian Mach will show how teaching elementary aged students (a) the behaviors correlated with executive functioning skills, and (b) how to name the behavior required in a given situation, facilitates their academic gains and ability to successfully complete standardized tests to reintegrate in their former school.

behavior analysts and other education and psychology professionals

Computational and procedural fluency are critical elements that support mathematics achievement. Using curricular materials from Morningside Academy, a frequency building intervention was implemented in a public charter middle school (n=84). Students engaged in 12 minutes of daily practice for 50 days that consisted of three thirty-second timings solving for missing numbers in addition fact families followed by a one-minute timing of related math facts. The same procedure was repeated for multiplication fact families. Students completed a two-minute Curriculum Based Measurements (CBM) on Fridays and self-monitored progress using a computer-based standard celeration chart application. The treatment group outperformed the control group yielding a mean gain of 51 digits correct or 38 correct problems per three minutes on the Woodcock-Johnson IV (WJ-IV) fluency sub-test and 21 correct problems or 28 digits correct per two minutes on weekly CBM measures. The treatment group continued to outperform the control on generalization measures that consisted of reducing fractions, long division, and computing fractions with unlike denominators. Effect sizes from the WJ-IV tests of mathematics achievement will be discussed with emphasis on gains in quantitative reasoning. Teachers found the intervention socially valid, easy to implement, and beneficial to pace of instruction impacting overall mathematics performance.

The growing use of educational apps has helped increase access to fun, yet challenging, learning opportunities for children. Little learners are more inclined to play an educational game filling in the missing letter with a talking robot and shooting stars, rather than studying flash cards. However, these educational apps, while somewhat intuitive, always seem to miss critical features required to fully embrace the educational behavior analytic community's standards. One such app is Native Numbers. Native Numbers is brilliant with respect to the scope and sequence of each "lesson" to conceptually and fluently teach number sense. However, essential barriers make it not conducive to all learners. These barriers include 1) ratio strain, 2) excessive error correction, 3) punitive settings with no balanced reinforcers, and 4) limited modes of responding (e.g. learning channels). The team at Precision TLC adapted Native Numbers into one that was not computer based, required tangibles, vocal responses, motor responses, and flexible discrimination sensitive to the learner. This presentation will describe and demonstrate the app, detail strengths and limitations when working with particular students, and show how Precision TLC's curriculum strengthens the app to help promote individual generalization and application to a wider array of students.

Executive Function refers to both self-regulation and self-direction (Barkley 2011; Delis 2012). Improvement in self-regulatory skills can lead to short and long-term accomplishments in a student's academic career (Dawson and Guare, 2009). Using a behavior analytic approach to acquire skills such as response inhibition, working memory, and goal-directed persistence, students will advance their Language of Instruction. We presented logic problems and retelling activities in small groups of elementary-aged students, while observing and measuring classroom behaviors correlating with the executive skills being enhanced, such as being patient, following one-two step instructions, actively staying with a group member, starting and ending a task. Students conducted the prescribed activities through peer coaching, which involved one partner leading complex see/say directions for the other performer to hear/write directions and hear/do tasks. We measured how many tasks each member of the pair can accurately complete in a fixed amount of time. Improvement in behaviors that correlate with the acquired executive functioning skills enhance students' academic language, which in turn facilitates academic gains and student ability to successfully complete standardized tests to reintegrate in their former school.

Goals in applied settings are to improve client outcome. Frequently fundamental interventions are discounted for more complicated, labor intensive ones. The papers in this symposium will discuss two research projects. Specific data are presented on a specific staff training strategy to teach staff to become proficient group teachers. The second paper presents data on a strategy to increase staff/client engagement across activities in a center-based setting.

Practioners

The literature in applied behavior analysis (ABA) clearly indicates effective strategies to teach staff to successfully teach learners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 1:1 instructional formats. There are few resources available, however, specific to training staff to become effective and efficient group teachers. The current project takes place in a center with 10 learners with ASD ranging from 3-7 years-of-age, and 10 staff. The project evaluates the use of didactic instruction combined with competency-based checklists to teach skills essential to effective group teaching. Dependent measures include teaching skills broken down into sub-categories consisting of environmental arrangement, prompting, reinforcement, and management of problem behaviors, among others, with corresponding didactic instruction. Skills for both group leaders and support staff are targeted. Data was collected using both per opportunity and interval sampling. A multiple baseline design across sets of skills with-in groups was utilized to evaluate the intervention. Preliminary data indicates that the intervention is effective in providing group teaching skills to group leaders (data attached). Results will be discussed well as suggestions for next steps and future research.

Environmental arrangement, client participation, and systematic treatment measures are essential and pivotal in evaluating effecting change in treatment environments (PLA-Check, Doke and Risley, 1972). Interventions require little observer effort, evaluating and comparing entire activity periods or settings using group recording time-sampling procedures. PLA-check measure sample proportions of time a client is observed to be appropriately engaged or participating in the target activity are then evaluated. The PLA-Check has since been applied to numerous treatment settings and has been used as a staff performance feedback system. This is a basic, effective, and easy system to dramatically change both staff and client behaviors. The current project replicates this basic procedure in a center for 10 clients ages 3-8 with ASD, and 10 staff. Preliminary data is presented. Results clearly indicate an increase in staff/engagement.

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder who graduate from the public school system face an uncertain future. It is well known that the amount and quality of services for adolescents and adults with ASD pale in comparison to the supports offered in the public school (K-12) system. However, adolescents and adults face significant life concerns associated with living and working in their communities. Most individuals do not have jobs. Most individuals don't access community opportunities such as restaurants, parks, exercise facilities, and movie theaters. Innovative programming must be developed to increase the choice, competency, and control that these individuals can exert over what they do with their lives. This symposium will provide data-based examples of behaviorally-based programs that focus on unique challenges that these individuals pose. These instructional programs incorporate principles of behavior change that result in improved vocational independence, improved coping of aversive events, and enhanced independence of completing academic activities. More data-based programming must be developed for these individuals who are transitioning into the real world and dealing, often for the first time, with these real-world problems.

Adolescents with developmental disabilities are often unable to navigate single daily tasks without depending on verbal prompts. The purpose of this study was to measure the effectiveness of electronic visual schedules on task completion and independent transitioning from one task to another. Four high school students diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders participated. A single subject multiple baseline design was used for the study. During the baseline, students followed a paper based daily schedule. Independence in task completion and transitioning were measured. During the intervention, an application, First Then Visual Schedule High Definition, on an iPod was provided for each student. Individualized tasks were programmed into each device's app and adjusted for individual academic goals and unique needs at the beginning of the academic day. Participants' independence was monitored during academic lessons and during community based instructions for 20 consecutive days. Applying the principles of behavior analysis, an additional intervention condition was presented to one of the participants. The results showed that task completion and independent task transition of all participants increased when using FTVS HD app on an iPod.

Young adults with disabilities, specifically autism spectrum disorder (ASD), struggle to find competitive employment upon completion of schooling. It is critical to minimize dependence upon other people to assist with tasks to make the transition from school to adult work more successful. The present study evaluated the use of a technologically presented visual schedule, Choiceworks on the iPad miniTM to teach vocational skills to four young adults with ASD. Using a multiple baseline design, participants mastered vocational tasks, maintained, and generalized those skills to community vocational settings, with the use of the technology. Overall, 75% of tasks were mastered across participants, and all participants mastered at least one task. The majority also maintained skills and successfully generalized to known community settings. These findings suggest that the use of portable technology could have implications for teaching vocational skills to adults with disabilities. Future research should expand these findings to other disability groups, and the use of the technology in vocational settings.

It has been well documented in the literature that individuals diagnosed with autism have challenges in developing adaptive skills, specifically the ability to cope with the ever-changing and often unanticipated events in their daily environment. These skills often come naturally to their typically developing peers and are essential to develop relationships, participate in their community, and increase quality of life. A deficit in these necessary adaptive skills can lead to extreme responses and behavioral concerns. The inability to tolerate and cope with a wide variety of unexpected stimuli is suggested to correlate with levels of anxiety which are reported to be far more prevalent in the ASD population. While cognitive functioning does not appear to play a role in the increased incidence of anxiety or lack of coping skills, potential relationships have been found between levels of executive functioning, emotional regulation, and social perception. This study explored these relationships for 3 adolescents with autism. Baseline measures of inappropriate behavior (indicators of anxiety) were taken, and then researchers implemented systematic desensitization while allowing escape to build tolerance and consistent reinforcement to increase the use of functionally relevant replacement behaviors across changing criteria. Preliminary results indicate systematic desensitization can build tolerance to aversive stimuli even with access to escape. Data demonstrate increasing use of coping strategies through reinforcement and explicit instruction across participants.

Misophonia is an understudied but relatively common respondent behavior condition, the effects of which range from annoying to debilitating. Misophonia cannot be classified with DSM or ICD-criteria. Misophonia is known as a condition where commonly occurring innocuous stimuli (e.g. chewing sound) elicit anger and accompanying physiological responses which function as motivating operations for overt aggression and escape. Recent basic research on misophonia as a behavioral phenomenon has identified an immediate physical response (typically a muscle flinch) elicited by misophonic stimuli, which is unique for each person. Although there are some common misophonic stimuli, each person has a unique set of stimuli, which often includes auditory and visual stimuli, but can be any sensory modality. Misophonia is similar to general sensory sensitivity which is common with autism, but the management and intervention for each are quite different. Misophonia was first identified and named by audiologists and has been considered a hearing disorder. Recently misophonia has come to be viewed as an anger disorder and the focus of psychiatrists, psychologists, and neuroscience. Behaviorally, misophonia is a classically conditioned physical respondent phenomenon, and it may be more appropriate to view misophonia as a conditioned behavioral disorder.

Behavior analysts, other professional practitioners, and educators

Misophonia behavior patterns often impair multiple life domains, and once developed may persist indefinitely. Two adult participants with misophonia and no comorbid conditions were treated using a adapted counterconditioning intervention which provided a continual positive stimulus and an intermittent, low intensity misophonic stimulus. During the intervention, the participants experienced a physical reflex consisting of a skeletal muscle contraction, which gradually extinguished. Both participants had a large reduction in their misophonia impairment, and maintenance and generalization of the treatment effect. One intervention was a multiple baseline design, providing some empirical support of a functional relation. The intervention for one participant included live and recorded audio sessions. The second intervention utilized an automated stimulus delivery system (an iPhone app) which gave the participant real-time control of the counterconditioning parameters. These cases provide initial support for a counterconditioning treatment for misophonia, and they show that misophonia may include a physical respondent to misophonic stimuli.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is a behavior analytic approach to intervening on complex verbal behavior, with the goal of disrupting maladaptive control by rules, leading to socially meaningful overt behavior change. The functional analyses that form the foundation of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy are broadly applicable and provide a set of analytical tools that can be used to understand adaptive and maladaptive behavior across a variety of settings and repertoires. This symposium brings together three presentations that adapt conceptual and practical analyses from the ACT literature to novel areas. The first paper, by Megan St. Clair, consists of a behavioral conceptual analysis of "grit." The second paper, by Lauren Servellon, consists of a research review and behavioral conceptual analysis of "resilience." The third paper, by Dr. Thomas Szabo, evaluates an ACT-based treatment program for gender-based violence in Sierra Leone.

Board Certified Behavior Analysts

Across the social sciences, grit can collectively be described as demonstrating single-minded persistence in pursuit of a goal, in spite of various forms of interference such as adversity, plateaus in progress, and even failure. While the construct of grit has received robust empirical attention in mainstream psychology within recent years, it has primarily been regarded as a stable personality characteristic, trait, or disposition which an individual either possesses or does not. This perception is limiting; however, when considering that it does not pave the way for effective behavioral acquisition. Unfortunately, thus far, the behavioral literature has contributed little to the understanding of grit as a behavioral phenomenon by functionally analyzing the behavioral mechanisms involved. This is concerning when considering that related traditional psychological research has widely documented that grit is highly correlated with positive outcomes in academic achievement, professional advancement, and personal ambitions that correspond to one's principal life objectives. Fortunately, a behavior analytic conceptualization supported by relational frame theory (RFT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) would alternatively regard grit as yet another behavior to be explained in terms of its functional, behavior-environment relations. As such, within this context, grit is perceived as a complex behavior that has the potential to be built within one's repertoire by applying the principles of the science of behavior in functional analytic procedures that inform treatment methodology. This presentation will review the strengths and limitations of research on grit, with an emphasis on clinical implications and future directions.

Resilience is a construct that refers to one's ability to continue living and even thrive, despite having experienced significant adversity. For example, veterans who return from war and report good quality of life and satisfaction in their normally daily non-combat lives are said to have good resilience. Veterans who struggle with depression, substance abuse and/or report low quality of life and/or happiness might be said to demonstrate low resilience. As a hypothetical internal causal construct, resilience has little to recommend it. However, response to adversity certainly differs among people and at least some of that difference must be due to learning history and therefore it seems likely that it must be possible to arrange interventions where adaptive responses to adverse circumstances can be strengthened. Research in clinical psychology has begun on treatment approaches designed to increase resilience, however little or no behavior analytic research has attempted to analyze or improve repertoires referred to as resilience. This presentation will review research on interventions designed to increase resilience and present a behavioral conceptual analysis of some of the repertoires that might contribute to adaptive responding in the face of adverse life circumstances.

Gender-based violence and a response class that may serve as its precursor, microaggression, are rarely studied by behavior analysts but likely entail a complex repertoire of physical, verbal and arbitrarily applied relational responding. Microaggression is particularly important to the reduction of gender-based violence because it often goes unnoticed and therefore unaddressed, but it predicts other more serious forms of aggression. Like most other operant behavior, it is reinforced without explicit awareness of its occurrence by the speaker or the listener. We conducted a multiple probe study across married couples in which microaggression and overtly aggressive behavior were recorded during and between sessions of a month-long, four-session behavioral flexibility training that was modeled on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The study was conducted in a small west African nation where gender-based violence is reported to be at pandemic levels. Results showed immediate reductions in microaggression occurring within and between sessions. Subsequent reductions in aggression that occurred between sessions were also recorded and partner reports were endorsed by all participants during private communications when partners were not present. Further, collateral behavior that sometimes occurred before or during microaggression and physical assault (e.g., heavy drinking, drug use, and betrayal) were weakened and replacement behaviors strengthened.

Young adults and adolescents with developmental disabilities are particularly vulnerable to the negative impact of deficits in functional and daily living skills. These skills are essential to an improved quality of life, greater independence, and integration into the community (Gardner & Wolfe, 2015). In addition, many young adults find themselves unprepared to transition into competitive employment after formal education (Hartman, 2009). Several instructional strategies have been utilized for teaching these transition-related skills, including self-monitoring (Rusch & Dattilo, 2012), Behavioral Skills Training (BST; Kelly, Wildman, & Berler, 1980), and video-based procedures such as video modeling and video prompting (Seaman & Malone, 2016; Gardner & Wolfe, 2015). This presentation will examine two research studies and a program evaluation focused on the utility of these instructional tools for teaching daily living, pre-employment, and job-related social skills for young adults and adolescents diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Varied changes in performance levels will be discussed in relation to each of these strategies with the inclusion of a variety of training features.

Practicing BCBAs

An estimated 50,000 adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) turn eighteen annually in the United States, but are unprepared to engage in typical independent adult lifestyles when they graduate, including maintaining employment (Roux, Shattuck, Cooper, Anderson, Wagner, & Narendorf, 2013). Problems in the workplace can be present due to the significant social and perceptual deficits including problems understanding social cues, understanding emotions, inflexibility with change, and difficulty adapting to new tasks and routines (Muller, Schuler, Burton, & Yates, 2003). The current program evaluation is aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an intensive employment skills training program for fifteen adults with high-functioning ASD. Teaching strategies evaluated include self-monitoring, behavioral skills training, video modeling and feedback. Adults with ASD were evaluated by momentary time sampling, percentage of opportunities, and self-monitoring. Soft skills monitored include staying engaged, following directions, self-advocating, respectfulness, independence, peer interactions, assertiveness, and risk-taking. This program evaluation assessed participant growth in self-regulation techniques and increases in socially appropriate behaviors to increase successful pre-employment skills. Results indicated that risk-taking and taking a leadership role are pre-employment skills that need more intervention than other soft skills such as direction-taking and staying engaged.

Despite a growing emphasis on autism-related services, many young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are underemployed and unprepared for employment (Hartman, 2009). Social skill deficits are reported as the reason for 90% of employment loss (Murray & Doren, 2013), and nine of 10 reasons applicants are rejected during a job interview (Elsknin & Elsknin, 1991). One instructional method that has been used to teach social skills is video modeling. Past research on first-person point-of-view (FPPOV) video modeling (shown from the perspective of the performer) has demonstrated changes in behavior only when FPPOV video models are combined with additional intervention. This presentation will focus on a study conducted to examine the effectiveness of FPPOV video models as a stand-alone instructional tool for job-related social skills for four young adults diagnosed with ASD, ages 18 to 26. Results suggest that FPPOV video models alone were not effective for teaching job-related social skills until embedded in the Behavioral Skills Training (BST) package or after the addition of enhanced video features. This presentation serves as an extension of the video modeling literature and will present additional avenues for continued research on behavior-based instructional tools for job-related social skills.

Androids may be based on the behavioral developmental and evolutionary stage model: An Android is "computer based" synthetic organism designed to act like a human. We have created a higher order neural network that thinks, perceives, understands, predicts and manipulates better than insects. Our goal is to emulate the behavior smartest people as measured by their behavioral-developmental stage. Operant conditioning is based conditioning based on four instances of respondent conditioning: 1) respondent conditioning case pairs the reinforcer with the eliciting neural stimulus for the operant response. 2) Pairing of the now salient neural stimulus that elicits the operant with the environment event. 3) Pairing of the environmental event with the reinforcing stimulus.4) pairing of the stimulus elected by the drive with the reinforcement event, changing the strength of the reinforcer. Because of the simplicity of the calculations. These neural networks should be faster and smaller. The first three developmental and evolutionary behavioral stages are Order 1 tasks that are addressed with automatic unconditioned responses; Order 2 tasks include classical conditioning but not operant conditioning. Order 3 tasks coordinate three instances of these earlier tasks to make possible operant conditioning. Neural networks operate at this order as well as some invertebrates and all insects.

People interested in Computer models of behavior, androids and evolution of "smarts" in animals. No experience or knowledge of computer is required. Some background of Respondent and Operant Conditioning is required.

This symposium will present data on applications of behavior analysis to police academy training. The first study involved a class of 54 police academy cadets exposed to training as usual with performance assessed at 7 and 15-week follow-up during the academy. Trainers and cadets were then provided performance feedback prior to a booster training that resulted in mastery-level performance. A post-academy follow-up test was conducted after 4 months of work in the field as a police officer. The second study involved a novel class of 46 police academy cadets exposed to behavioral skills training. Half of the class received video-modeling and the other half did not. Trainers and cadets were then provided performance feedback prior to a booster training that resulted in mastery-level performance. A post-academy follow-up test was conducted after 4 months of work in the field as a police officer. Results of both studies will be discussed in terms of implications for police academy training and the dissemination of behavior analysis to policing.

Behavior Analysts who are interested in working with police.

Self-care is a term discussed scarcely enough in psychological practice, but is rarely discussed among behavior analytic practitioners. Trauma, burnout, and compassion fatigue are widely studied in other fields similar to behavior analysis. These concepts have significant impacts on client care and therapist well-being, so why aren't we discussing this more often? This panel aims to discuss these concepts in behavior analytic practice and further the discussion on a potentially ugly but necessary truth of behavior analytic practitioners.

Our target audience are BCBA's that are seeking to learn more about the important components of self-care in our field and how to embed as part of being a practitioner and supervisor.

This symposium reviews tools, technologies, and methodologies of current and (imminent) future use in treating not only the "traditional" ABA treated illnesses, but as importantly, the multitude of medical/mental/neurologic illness with which patients are afflicted. The symposium also reviews some of the many principles of the "other" Natural Sciences (neuroscience, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics) from which the natural science of ABA were derived. The ABA clinician, and especially the newest generation of those studying and researching ABA (students, faculty, practitioners), will benefit from a greater understanding of the technologies and their applications, as well as the foundation principles of natural science from which much of ABA has been derived.

Previous research suggests that classical conditioning of immune function via kappa opioid mechanisms is possible. The present experiments were conducted to extend previous findings in our lab with the kappa agonist and antagonist, Mu agonist and antagonist the Delta agonist and antagonist Naltraben, Naltrendol, U-69-593, morphine, naloxone, sham, or saline. Forty nine Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into groups of seven and were treated with the above drugs. Determination of levels of Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha (TNF-α) in rat blood serum by ELISA kit analysis then followed. Results indicate the highest levels of TNF-α were detected in rat blood serum following a three day injection period of nor-BNI while levels of TNF-α observed during naloxone conditioning were not different than control values. Elevated levels of TNF-α wer observed following Kappa agonists. Although making accurate predictions of future events is exceptionally difficult, there are none-the-less trends that currently appear evident. Data collected from experiments such as those described above strongly suggests that classical conditioning of the effects of Immunomodulatory drugs may offer a fruitful path for the development of successful treatment strategies for the treatment of drug addiction, the treatment of cancer and other diseases. The opioid receptor is one factor that should be explored as a therapeutic target for cancer drugs.

The natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics) are arguably the home of behaviorism. Some argue that behaviorism IS a natural science, yet ABA practice and education today reflects little of this heritage, nor the ongoing explosion of knowledge in neuroscience. Many tenets of applied behavior analysis (ABA) can be found, and even better understood, thru their analogous principles in some of these other "natural sciences." Terms like reinFORCEment and behavioral MOMENTUM can sometimes be more easily understood in light of their context in other disciplines. Concepts in chemistry, physics, biology, and mathematics will be discussed and utilized by participants until they not only understood and no longer feared, but are readily incorporated into the participant's armamentarium. The session will also review some of the newer findings in neuroscience most relevant to the daily practice of ABA.

The explosion of neuroscience, and related neuroimmunology, neuroimaging, and other related medical specialties and foci continues exponentially, and has given clinicians the ability to "look inside the box." Intervening early in the "chain of behaviors" is a well known axiom and well applied technique; neuroimaging can alert the clinician much earlier in the chain of events, long before any overt signs of behavior are observable. fMRI can be an effective and efficient tool for reinforcer determination, for assessing the impact of the "wiring of the brain" done by the ABA behavior modification plan, and even for drawing inferences about what have been previously described as "private behaviors." Biofeedback has been utilized by behaviorists, and now can incorporate enhanced systems benefiting from the new technologies and understanding of brain function. Paralyzed patients are using brain waves to stimulate electronically driven devices for communication and ambulation. Neuroimmunologic methodologies can be used to assess impact of chemical or "behavioral" intervention, and can themselves have an impact on behavior, on rewiring the brain. The population will continue to age, increasing the incidence and prevalence of diseases/disabilities such as dementia, stroke, Parkinson's disease, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis and many other neurologically mediated illnesses. Fortunately, there is a concomitant increase in the technological and medicinal implements to diagnose and treat such illnesses, as well as the increasing "societal burden" leading to increased societal concern and resource allocation. In all of this, the principles of behavior as outlined by nature stand firm, but are themselves becoming better understood as they apply to the multitude of behaviors, overt, "private," and "neurophysiological." This paper reviews tools, technologies, and methodologies of current and (imminent) future use in treating not only the "traditional" ABA treated illnesses, but as importantly, the multitude of medical/mental/neurologic illnesses with which patients are afflicted. The ABA clinician, and especially the newest generation of those studying and researching ABA (students, faculty, practitioners), will benefit from a greater understanding of the technologies and their applications, as well as the foundation principles of natural science from which much of ABA has been derived.

Behavior analyst working in education research effective and efficient teaching interventions and tactics to increase learner skill acquisition and generalization across areas of development. However, a learner?s ability to demonstrate the skill during instruction is not sufficient; for a skill to be considered truly in one?s repertoire, the individual must be able to acquire the correct source of environmental control over the learned responses and be able to emit these responses in the natural environment or under novel conditions. In addition, behavior analysts are interested in identifying instructional procedures that result in the emission of generative behavior; much research has demonstrated the efficacy of providing certain instructional histories (i.e., multiple exemplar experiences) on the production of novel verbal behavior. In this symposium, we present 3 studies on instructional procedures that have resulted in better acquisition rates or the emergence of untaught behaviors: 1) the implementation of a rule-governed error correction procedure on the acquisition of textual responses to numbers, 2) multiple exemplar instruction across autoclitic frames on the emergence of novel combinations of autoclitics emitted in tacts and 3) a multiple exemplar training package on the behavior of seeking help and resolving conflicts in novel social situations.

BCBA, BCaBAs, educators, or related service providers (e.g., speech therapists) working with individuals with autism, other developmental disabilities, or with language delays

Behavior analysts and educators are constantly looking for more efficient methods of acquiring new skills. Curricula, programs of instruction, and behavioral tactics are all methods by which instructors can facilitate faster learning. Recent studies have begun to look at the effects of different types of correction procedures on rates of learning for different types of skills. Preliminary findings suggest that different correction procedures have different effects depending on the level of verbal behavior of the learner and the presented task. The current study is the first of an intended three part series of studies to look at the effects of a rule governed error correction procedure on the acquisition of numeric textual responses. This study was conducted with seven 2-year old participants, three with a diagnosis and four without. A multiple probe design was used to test for the effectiveness of the error correction procedure. While the study is ongoing, previous results have shown this to be an effective tactic in acquiring this skill. We will discuss results, limitations, and future studies including the relative efficiency of the tactic, and the role of rate training as compared to rule-governed corrections, and “traditional” error correction procedures.

We tested the effects of multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) across relational autoclitic frames on the emergent emission of untaught combinations of autoclitics in speech using a delayed multiple probe design across participants. Participants in this study were pre-school aged children with language delays who emitted high instances of non-functional (grammatically incorrect) autoclitics (e.g., saying "Boy boy dog dog" or "He has a dog" in response to a 2D stimulus of 2 boys walking multiple dogs) when emitting tacts. During MEI intervention, the experimenters rotated instructional trials across the target relational autoclitics: demonstrative pronouns, possessive adjectives, subject pronouns, verb tense, and singular vs. plural nouns. The following combinations and responses were taught to a pre-established mastery criterion: 1) subjective pronoun and verb tense (e.g., they are painting), 2) Possessive adjectives and singular or plural noun (e.g., Her balloons), and 3) Demonstrative pronouns and singular or plural nouns (e.g., Those are backpacks). Post-intervention assessment results for the current two participants showed an overall increase in emission of functional autoclitics, untaught combinations of autoclitics (e.g. she is holding her dog, or, Those are her pumpkins), and decreased emission of non-functional autoclitics across both participants. This study is on-going; we are currently working on implementing the MEI procedure with additional participants.

Many children with Autism lack problem solving skills in social situations as well as in daily life routines. Previous research have implemented video modeling as a tactic to teach a variety of skills in children with Autism, however, some studies have shown that video modeling alone do not facilitate generalization. A multiple probe design across four participants and across two behaviors were used in this study. Participants were preschoolers with Autism who displayed none or a few problem solving skills in baseline. A training package consisted of (1) accurately tacting multiple exemplars of case scenarios in video clips, (2) choosing an appropriate solution to the problem, and (3) demonstrating the chosen solution in active role play was implemented to test its effects on seeking help behavior in daily routine and resolving conflict in social situations. Results showed that after the training package, all participants showed an increase in their correct responding. Generalization probes were also conducted and the results were consistent with the post-training results.