Association for Behavior Analysis International

Steeply discounting the value of delayed outcomes is robustly correlated with addictions and poor health decision-making. Longitudinal studies suggest that this form of impulsivity precedes and predicts acquisition of substance use, and animal studies reveal a similar pattern. Despite the evidence that delay discounting is a trait, this tutorial will review studies that have discovered methods for decreasing impulsive choice. We will discuss procedures that produce acute, context-dependent effects (e.g., framing effects), and when these may prove useful in positively influencing human decision making. We will also discuss learning-based procedures that have proven effective in humans (e.g., delay fading and working memory training) and nonhumans (e.g., interval-timing or delay-exposure training) in reducing impulsive choice. Finally, we will discuss practicality issues that will need to be addressed if learning-based approaches are going to impact human behavior. We will not discuss effects of drugs or neurological manipulations on impulsive choice.

Licensed psychologists, certified behavior analysts, graduate students.

Single-subject methodology and Skinner's caution against inferential statistics based on group averages have been very influential with researchers in behavior analysis. Here we review recent developments in the philosophy of science and methodology, including the "new statistics," and consider their implications for the quantitative analysis of behavior. We describe an account of scientific methodology—the Abductive Theory of Method (ATOM; Haig, 2005)—which details how empirical phenomena are detected and contribute to theory construction via inference to the best explanation, and show how it is relevant for behavior analysis.

Licensed psychologists, certified behavior analysts, graduate students.

The study of delay discounting, or valuation of future rewards as a function of delay, has contributed to understanding the behavioral economics of addiction. Accurate characterization of discounting can be furthered by statistical model selection given that many functions have been proposed to measure future valuation of rewards. This tutorial will present a convenient Bayesian model selection algorithm that selects the most probable discounting model among a set of candidates chosen by the researcher. The approach assigns the most probable model for each individual subject using an asymptotic approximation to model probability based on the Bayesian Information Criterion. Importantly, effective delay 50 (ED50) functions as a suitable unifying measure that is computable for and comparable between several popular functions, including both one- and two-parameter models. Software to execute the combined model selection/ED50 approach is illustrated using empirical discounting data collected from a sample of 111 undergraduate students with five discounting models proposed between 1937 and 2006. The work this tutorial is based upon was published in the January, 2015, special issue of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior studying experimental manipulations of delay discountingand related processes.

Licensed psychologists, certified behavior analysts, graduate students.

Associative symmetry is one of a number of derived relations that can emerge after explicit training on other conditional relations. Here, untrained but accurate B?A conditional discrimination performances arise from training A?B conditional relations, a finding indicative of stimulus class formation (i.e., the development of sets of disparate but interchangeable stimuli). Recent research shows that human language capabilities are not necessary for associative symmetry; it can also reflect basic reinforcement and stimulus control processes.This tutorial will describe the history of the now-successful search for symmetry in an animal other than humans (viz., the pigeon) and show how this important finding led to demonstrations of other rarely or never-before seen emergent relations in a non-human animal. Central to these demonstrations is the presenter's theory (Urcuioli, 2008) of the origin of stimulus classes in pigeons, specifically, the reinforcement contingencies of training, the nature of the functional stimuli, and the effect of common functional stimuli across different reinforced relations. The theory makes precise, testable and often confirmed predictions about the training conditions that should, and should not, yield emergent relations such as symmetry, transitivity, and reflexivity.

Licensed psychologists, certified behavior analysts, graduate students.