Association for Behavior Analysis International

For the past several years, my colleagues and I have been developing models for a deeper understanding of factors related to the development and maintenance of severe behavior. The recent passing of my mentor and colleague, Brian Iwata, has set the occasion for reflection on the past decades of behavioral research specific to self-injurious behavior (SIB). I will provide some historical context of research and practice related to SIB, including some perspectives from Dr. Iwata’s lab and publications. I will summarize some of the key findings from the past several decades to date. But, in addition, I will make a case that there is a long path ahead to complete our understanding of SIB, and to continue Iwata’s work in developing effective interventions. I will suggest future research and practice in the following areas: a) a deeper understanding of negatively reinforced SIB, b) a deeper understanding of automatically reinforced SIB, c) translation of basic research on self-biting and aggression that may shed light on functional properties of SIB, d) the need for development of detailed and complex case studies, and e) the need for prevention science (and the conundrum that arises from our traditional methodology).

behavior analysts interested in research, history of the field, and assessment/intervention for SIB.

Vital Behaviors are the select powerhouse actions that propel groups to astonishing success when consistently practiced together. When a core percentage of a population collectively adopts the critical few Vital Behaviors, a tipping point is reached, and the culture shifts – the new habits become "just the way we do things around here." Do you need that to happen for your project, initiative, or organization? Do you want to establish Vital Behaviors as habits on a large scale across your organization or work unit, or maybe even in the populations you serve? This presentation will walk through the foundations for building a Vital Behavior Network and real life stories of how this approach has transformed organizations.

Leaders and influencers in an organization who want to increase behavioral consistency on a large scale.

Over 70 years ago, behavioral pharmacology evolved as a scientific discipline integrating behavior analysis and pharmacology starting with the collaboration of B.F. Skinner and Peter Dews at Harvard. One of the first unifying principles that emerged from early research was the notion of rate dependency – that a drug’s effects on behavior was a function of the baseline rate of responding. This led to decades of experimental analysis in behavioral pharmacology. In this symposium, Dr. Jonathan Katz provides a brief history of behavioral pharmacology and rate dependency. Then others present data from several lines of research indicating that rate or baseline dependency remains a useful framework within a variety of domains including behavioral momentum, Dr. Jonathan Pinkston, impulsive and risky choice, Drs. Raymond Pitts and Chris Hughes, and contingency management of drug use, Dr. Stephen Higgins. Dr. Warren Bickel will be our discussant.

In the 1960s Peter Dews and associates published papers indicating that drug effects on operant responding under reinforcement schedules varied with response rates occurring under non-drug conditions. This so-called rate-dependency effect had precedents in physiological pharmacology, particularly in cardiovascular effects of drugs. It is also related to the Law of Initial Values (Wilder, 1962) which states that effects of any agent depend largely on initial levels of the studied variable. A 1964 paper by Dews using fixed-interval schedules examined the specificity of the effects of amobarbital on suppressed responding and was especially notable as it detailed how an evaluation of moderating environmental influences on drug effects could be conducted with due consideration of rate dependency. That analysis also occasioned critiques regarding how to properly express rate-dependent effects. One of these focused on absolute response rate, rather than change as the critical outcome after drug administration. The other considered that average response rates under fixed-interval schedules are unrepresentative of bimodal distributions of constituent response rates. Each critique can be shown to be of minimal significance. The empirical ubiquity across species, environmental conditions, and pharmacological agents indicates that rate dependency remains critical in consideration of factors influencing the behavioral effects of drugs.

Rate dependency refers to empirical observations that the effects of an intervention depend on the baseline rate of behavior. Early work on rate dependency occurred in the context of behavioral pharmacology. Repeated demonstrations that drug effects depended on the rates of behavior, and accompanying mathematical descriptions, affirmed the importance behavior itself plays in pharmacological treatments. At the same time, behavior analysis has shown behavior to be determined by environmental factors, raising the question of what factors determine the rate upon which rate-dependency depends. Our group has focused on one factor in particular—reinforcer magnitude. In several experiments, pigeons earned food according to multiple fixed-interval schedules, where the components differed only in the magnitude of the reinforcer earned. In examinations of several classes of drugs, we showed rate-dependent effects across the interval varied inversely with reinforcer magnitude, that is rate-dependent effects were reduced as magnitude increased. Thus, it appears that increasing reinforcer magnitude has a protective effect on fixed-interval behavior. The findings are consistent with the view of behavior proposed by behavioral momentum theory, whereby schedules are seen to establish response rates and reinforcer magnitude (density) establishes resistance to change.

Despite substantial progress over the past two decides characterizing drug effects on impulsive and risky behavior and elucidating some of the relevant neurobiological mechanisms, considerable discrepancies remain in the literature, both within and across studies. In our hands, drugs invariably decrease sensitivity to the particular reinforcement dimensions controlling choice, but the degree to which this effect occurs varies both within and across subjects. As such, using these data to predict drug effects on impulsive and risky choice is tricky. In this talk, selected data from our lab investigating drug effects on sensitivity to reinforcement under continuous choice procedures will be presented. These data strongly suggest that effects of a variety of drugs are best described as baseline dependent. These analyses suggest that baseline/rate dependence, an example of the original Law of Initial Values (see Wilder, 1931,1962), remains a viable concept, one that behavioral pharmacologists and behavioral neuroscientists ignore at their peril.

I will discuss how baseline rate of cigarette smoking or cocaine use are strong predictors of response to abstinence-contingent Contingency Management (CM) interventions. Similarly, duration of abstinence achieved during the treatment period is a strong predictor of the likelihood of sustaining longer-term abstinence. Regarding the latter, I’ll share experimental results from a randomized controlled clinical trial testing the validity of these observations in which 100 cocaine-dependent outpatients were randomly assigned to one of two abstinence-contingent CM treatment conditions (Higgins et al., 2007). In one condition, vouchers were set at twice the usual monetary value (maximum of $1,995 during the 12-week intervention) whereas in the other treatment condition they were set at half the usual value (maximum of $499 during the 12-week intervention). All else in the treatment conditions remained the same across treatment conditions. As illustrated in the figure shown below, increasing the value of the vouchers increased the mean duration of continuous cocaine abstinence achieved during the 24-week treatment period twofold, and as hypothesized, point-prevalence cocaine abstinence was consistently greater among those treated in the high-magnitude voucher condition compared to the low-magnitude condition in assessments conducted every 3 months throughout an 18-month follow-up period. This presentation will put particular emphasis the importance of a positive initial treatment response to achieving longer-term abstinence from drug use. remains critical in consideration of factors influencing the behavioral effects of drugs.

Although behavior analysts have seen reinforcement as a basic principle of behavior for over 100 years, its range of application was always narrow. All it explained was the increase when behavior produced desirable consequences. As research advanced, the limitations of reinforcement and the molecular view it depended on—based on discrete responses and contiguity—became more and more apparent. Reinforcement failed with adjunctive behavior, with “misbehavior,” with avoidance, with originating new activities, and even explaining patterns engendered by simple schedules. It did not explain stimulus control. All of these shortcomings dissolve when one adopts a molar view and substitutes the concept of induction, which links behavior directly to evolutionary theory through the concept of Phylogenetically Important Event (PIE). When Segal introduced induction in 1972, she applied it only to non-operant activities, such as adjunctive behavior. When applied also to operant activities, induction explains all the phenomena that reinforcement fails to explain: the first instance, stimulus control, VI and VR performance, avoidance. Induction also offers a new way to think about verbal behavior. The explanatory power of induction far exceeds that of reinforcement.

All behavior analysts

We live in a complex time, socially, politically, and spiritually. Global and disciplinary paradigms are interrogated and challenged; questions about our human response to power, justice, knowledge, ethics, and suffering emerge daily. The science, practice and training of behavior analysis is at the nexus of this complexity. How does a young professor of applied behavior analysis find their place, purpose, and effort in this context? Through a series of examples and drawing on the wisdom of social activists within and outside of the field, as well as her own experience, Shahla shares reflections and advice for young professors, who are often concurrently serving as teachers, researchers, and practitioners. Through stories and data, loving and responsible possibilities are explored and examined.

New professors and advanced graduate students and researchers, and practitioners and advanced professors that are interested in supporting and nurturing the development of new professors in applied behavior analysis

From the viewpoint of a natural science of behavior, language acquisition is a developmental process.. In this paper we present the core principles of behavioral systems theory (BST) combining current developmental systems concepts with behavioral ones. We outline the core principles of BST relevant to early language development. Developmental changes are marked by the transactions between genetic inheritance, interactional history, current physiological and environmental conditions, and behavior dynamics. Contingencies operating in the young child’s current social environment are catalysts coalescing conditions into organized patterns of verbal behavior. Some of these emergent patterns allow verbal behavioral cusps to develop. Early language skills are the result of an intensive, intuitive, and naturally occurring learning process consisting of reciprocal contingent interactions between children and caregivers. This naturally occurring process resembles the use of multiple exemplar training procedures employed by researchers in training language skills in children. We explore the role of basic cusps in early childhood including orienting responses, eye contact, joint attention, social referencing, manding, tacting, naming, intraverbals, autoclitics generalized vocal imitation, and stimulus equivalence. These cusps facilitate the emergence of new and more advanced socio-cognitive skills later in childhood such as perspective taking and complex rule-following.

Behavior analysts, researchers, individuals interested in language development

Martha Pelaez is a Frost Professor of Psychology at the College of Arts, Sciences, and Education (CASE), School of Human Development, Florida International University. Dr. Pelaez teaches courses in Educational Psychology, Child Development, Single-Subject Designs, and directs infant and early childhood research. Her research has been supported by NIH and March of Dimes. Dr. Pelaez research involves mother-infant interactions and early social–learning processes, as well design applied early interventions with infants with developmental delays, child depression, early signs of autism, and language development Dr. Pelaez has published more than 100 articles in refereed journals (including the American Psychologist, Child Development, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Behavior Analysis in Practice, and Perspectives on Behavior Science), dozens of chapters and monographs, and an influential textbook on Child Development (with Novak, 2004, 2022).  Professor Pelaez is the founding editor of the Behavior Development Bulletin (1990-2017) and has been a member of nine editorial boards of refereed journals, including the European Journal of Behavior Analysis and Perspectives on Behavior Science. She has received Fellowship status from the American Psychological Association (APA) and from the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI). Dr. Pelaez is the 2023 recipient of the Nathan H. Azrin Award granted by the American Psychological Association (APA) for her distinguish contributions to applied research with infants. She is a trustee of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and serves as an At-Large Representative on the Executive Council Board of Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) and past member of the Science Board.