Association for Behavior Analysis International

Null Hypothesis Statistical Testing (NHST) was developed to provide an objective way to quantify inference. The result is a ritualized technique that is frequently necessary for publication despite criticisms that it is minimally informative, misleading, and produces unreproducible results. NHST tests the probability of the data given a null hypothesis that is rarely of interest and is often implausible. The result is a torturous statement of whether the data are likely to have occurred. An alternative approach, called Information Theoretic (IT) based inference, does not carry many of these problems because it returns a different probability. IT approaches ask the question of interest in model building: Of a set of models, which ones are best? And by how much? By building upon Akaike Information Criteria, IT inference returns the probability of the models considered given the data, numbers that are readily interpretable. Unlike NHST, the approach actually encourages the testing of many models in order to increase the chances of including good ones. Corrections for multiple comparisons are neither necessary nor appropriate. The tutorial will identify criticisms of NHST, offer a (relatively) nontechnical background for IT approaches, and provide examples of IT-based inference using spreadsheets.

Certified behavior analysts, graduate students, licensed psychologists.

Many children diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disabilities are also diagnosed with comorbid pediatric feeding disorders. Assessment and treatment approaches using an applied behavior analytic model have been associated with successful outcomes for children who display total food refusal and food selectivity. Nevertheless, ABA approaches are often under-utilized by most front-line clinicians and interventionists. More concerning, however, is that most behavior analysts receive little pre-service training in this area and yet are often called on to address feeding concerns. In this tutorial, this issue will be addressed by covering the following four areas: 1) providing a basic ABA framework to assessment and treatment, 2) identify a scope and sequence for treatment, 3) promoting appropriate, measurable goals to establish success or failure of treatment efforts, and 4) when to refer children to programs that have more time, more resources, or simply have more expertise to address a specific childs feeding concern. Implications for the use of ABA approaches in assessment and treatment in feeding problems in young children will also be discussed to help advance an appropriate scope of practice that is ethically acceptable for the typically practicing BCBA who has little to no formal pre-service training in the area of feeding disorders.

Board certified behavior analysts, licensed psychologists, graduate students.

From the effects of the temporal separation of responses and their consequences (as in delayed reinforcement) to the effects on behavior of events no longer present (as in verbal reports), behavior analysts study behavior extended in time. They are therefore either implicitly or explicitly concerned with the phenomena colloquially called remembering and forgetting. These phenomena have also been focuses of attention for those of the cognitive rather than the behavioral persuasion. This tutorial explores some properties of remembering and forgetting as revealed in both the behavioral and the cognitive literatures. What we know about remembering can contribute significantly to both our basic research and our applications. Cases to be considered include, among others: why remembering should be treated as a skill that can be shaped; how remembering varies with what is to be remembered; why remembering is better interpreted as recall of behavior with respect to stimuli no longer present than as recall of the stimuli themselves; how contingencies affect both forgetting and the creation of false memories; and how behavioral criteria can be applied to the distinctions among different varieties of remembering, such as short-term versus long-term memory or recall versus recognition.

The content of this tutorial as relevant to all behavior analysts, whatever their level of training.