Association for Behavior Analysis International

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and epilepsy are both neurological conditions that can significantly impact a child's development and overall well-being. While they may appear to be independent diagnoses, there is a higher co-occurrence rate than chance would predict. This presentation will explore the complex relationship between ASD and epilepsy, equipping therapists with the knowledge and tools to better support their clients who experience both conditions. The presentation will delve into the following key areas: • Prevalence and Risk Factors: We will examine the co-occurrence rates of ASD and epilepsy, exploring potential risk factors and underlying biological mechanisms. • Clinical Presentations: We will discuss the diverse ways in which epilepsy can manifest, including potential challenges in identifying and diagnosing epilepsy in individuals with ASD. • Treatment Considerations: We will explore the evidence-based practices for treating epilepsy to address the unique needs of this population. Here, we will also discuss potential side effects of anti-seizure medications and how they may impact behavior or learning, equipping ABA therapists to collaborate with the medical team for optimal treatment. • Emerging Technologies: We will explore the potential of using new technologies including AI analysis of EEG (electroencephalogram) data for early detection of ASD. This discussion will highlight the promise and limitations of new technologies, emphasizing their role as potential tools to support informed clinical decision-making. • Collaborative Care: We will emphasize the importance of collaboration between ABA therapists, neurologists, and other healthcare professionals in developing comprehensive treatment plans.

Therapists and physicians taking care of individuals with ASD.

Benzodiazepines (BZs) are effective and safe when used appropriately, but their utility is limited by unwanted side effects like misuse and reduced safety when combined with other drugs. Individuals with substance-use disorders (SUDs) misuse BZs as much as 20x greater than the general population, and the rising number of overdose deaths attributed to BZs are largely driven by opioid co-administration. The work I will present is focused on behavioral and pharmacological determinants of BZ reinforcement using preclinical choice models in nonhuman primates. Our overall goal is to identify BZ-type ligands with reduced potential for misuse in naïve subjects as well as in polydrug situations. We have found that nonselective, partial-efficacy BZ ligands or those that lack intrinsic efficacy at α1-subunit containing GABAA (α1GABAA) receptors have reduced potential for misuse relative to traditional BZs. However, our data suggest that the degree to which these BZ-type ligands exhibit potential for misuse depends on the subject’s drug history. A key finding from our choice research is that efficacy at α1GABAA receptors may be necessary for self-administration of BZs in cocaine-experienced subjects but are not required for enhancement of cocaine choice. We currently are evaluating whether this pattern of effects is observed in individuals without prior drug experiences (i.e., in naïve subjects) or with other misused drugs, in particular opioids. The pharmacological mechanisms underlying outcomes based on past drug experience may involve (1) a differential role for α1GABAA receptors in reinforcement enhancing vs. reinforcing effects of BZs alone or (2) differences in overall intrinsic efficacy, irrespective of subtype selectivity.

Basic and clinical students, researchers, and practitioners interested in substance use disorders

Teaching the science of behavior involves teaching with rigor to ensure students conceptualize the study of behavior as a natural science. As the growth of our field fosters the need for additional training programs, educators must consider the current landscape for students in higher education, such as increased financial stressors, lack of work-life balance, physically and emotionally demanding jobs, and familial commitments. Contemplative pedagogy incorporates a variety of practices in the classroom to provide an inclusive and transformative space for students. This presentation will introduce contemplative pedagogy and provide examples of exercises for both brick-and-mortar and online instructors to utilize in their classrooms to demonstrate how to incorporate reflection, contemplation, and mindfulness without sacrificing learning or rigor.

Instructors, supervisors

Clinicians and researchers

This competition is designed to encourage, promote, and reward behavior analytic scholarship on topics and issues in DEI, both in the field of behavior analysis and more broadly. Students (graduate or undergraduate) and post-graduate professionals who have completed empirical or conceptual papers relevant to DEI that are informed, at least in part, by a behavior-analytic perspective were invited to submit.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Racism is the belief that differences in race and ethnicity lead to inherent superiority of a particular race, with other races posing a threat to one's own (Racism, 2023). However, racism is more than an abstract idea; it is reflected in people's differential responses when they are interacting with people from different races. As racism is a persistent global issue with negative impacts on education, mental health, and economic development (Cohen et al., 2006), it is imperative that all related sciences, including behavior analysis, contribute to the understanding of this behavioral phenomenon therefore necessary social actions can be designed to eliminate it. However, a review of the literature (Matsuda et al., 2020) on racism and prejudice in behavioral journals only identified a few studies related to topics, indicating a lack of understanding and a missing importance placed on racism from a behavior analytical perspective. Considering the urgency and difficulty to eradicate this harmful belief system and related discriminating behaviors, behavior analysts should cooperate with scientists from other disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to examine the formation and maintenance of racism from a radical behaviorism perspective, analyze factors that are identified in existing literatures that are related to discriminations based on races, and propose possible solutions that can be implemented in a social level to reduce racism. Key words: racism, radical behaviorism, factors related to racism

Sarah Hayes is a licensed school psychologists in NC who recieved her graduate degree from the School Psychology MA/SSP program at East Carolina University. She is currently working as full-time school psychologist for Durham County Public Schools. Sarah is passionate about working with children in the general education public school setting who have difficult problem behavior. Her hope is to reduce the number of children erroneously diagnosed with behavioral disorders and create effective interventions for students with disabilities through the use of behavior analytic principles within a teacher-school consultation model of collaboration. Sarah received the Project CONVEY (Collaborating to Overcome Needs by improving the Voice of Exceptional Youth) grant where she participated with a cohort of multi-disciplinary school teams to build collaborative practices that meet the needs of students with disabilities.

Precision Teaching, historically applied within educational contexts, has seen its most groundbreaking discoveries, such as the concept of behavioral fluency, unfold within mainstream academic classrooms. This method, however, has not been limited solely to these settings but has also been employed with diverse populations, including those with intellectual and other developmental disabilities. This presentation will delve into an exploration of the current state of the Precision Teaching field while considering the potential for forging new pathways that can extend its reach into various domains and expand our understanding of essential behavioral concepts such as celeration, fluency, and behavioral agility.

Behaviour Analysts/Precision Teachers

After nearly 300 years of Spanish domination of Latin America, the first Venezuelan congress declared independence from the Spanish Crown on July 5, 1811. The declaration led to a series of events that culminated not only in the actual independence of Venezuela 10 years later in 1821, but also in that of Boliva, Colombia, Ecuador, Panamá, and Peru—known as the Bolivarian countries in reference to Simon Bolivar’s leadership in their liberation. Although, the first declaration of Venezuela’s independence initially failed, it constituted a cultural cusp where complex and evolving environmental conditions led to the coalescence of emerging individual behavioral contingencies, organizations’ dynamics and products, and unique non-recurring actions, which together changed the destiny of a portion of Latin America until this day. In this presentation, these independence movements are viewed as historical experiments that shed light on the complexity and selection of cultural phenomena.

Behavior analysts interested in the complexity and selection of cultural phenomena.

In psychology, including in various forms of behaviorism, many once prominent research traditions are no longer active fields of inquiry. While research on stimulus equivalence currently appears relatively vibrant when looking at the number of published articles, historical fields of inquiry proposing to study similar derived or emergent phenomenon have, following a period of research activity, subsequently disappeared from the literature. One such field is research on mediated generalization, a line of research that originated in a branch of behaviorism with somewhat differing theoretical commitments from modern behavior analysis. Lessons may potentially be drawn from the demise of this tradition for current research on stimulus equivalence. By the time of its demise, research on mediated generalization had several interrelated characteristics including: (a) unobservable explanatory constructs guiding scientific activity, (b) reliance of inferential group statistics for analyzing effects on the dependent variable, (c) indirect measurement of the dependent variable, and (d) complete domination by basic laboratory research. While the first two topics will provide context, the current presentation will focus on the two latter issues. Publication trends relevant to these characteristics as they appear in the empirical literature on mediated generalization, modern stimulus equivalence research and research in the related field of relational frame theory will be presented. Several topics arising from this comparison will be discussed. including the use of so-called savings and reaction time measurements and the interplay between basic research and application in stimulus equivalence and related fields.

Persons with an interest in historical and current research trends in behaviorism in general and/or historical and current research trends mediated generalization and stimulus equivalence specifically.

The Matching Law was developed in the early days of behavior analytic research to describe the allocation of behavior across response alternatives as a function of relative reinforcement available from those alternatives. Today, the Matching Law and other quantitative accounts of behavior have surpassed their beginnings as mathematical descriptions of behavior and serve as important conceptual tools that build bridges to other disciplines and solve significant clinical and social problems. In recognition of ABAI’s 50th year, this symposium highlights the history, conceptual advances, and future of the Matching Law with respect to research, application, and the development of public policy.

Researchers, BACBAs, practitioners, and graduate students

Biological organisms are always embedded within a dynamically changing environment rich with stimuli, each potentially influencing one or more behaviors at any given moment. Due to technological constraints, behavior analysts historically had to select which environmental stimuli and behaviors to focus on for data collection. But times have changed. Current technologies enable the collection of extensive data on both behavior and the environment, overcoming traditional limitations. However, managing and analyzing larger datasets necessitates a core set of scalable skills which is the domain of data science. With the right data and skills, however, behavior analysts can begin to explore questions with unprecedented precision, such as: • The exact influence of many variables in the multiple control of behavior; • Detailed, data-driven descriptions and predictions of motivating operation; and • The interplay of molar and molecular contingencies for describing and predicting behavior for a specific individual.

Behavior analytic practitioners and researchers

Information will be updated soon.

The controlling relation between nonverbal environment and verbal response is the central feature of the tact. However, stimulus control may be distorted by certain special consequences that are mediated by the listener under particular circumstances. In a major case of stimulus control distortion, the speaker emits a response under circumstances that normally control an incompatible response, what is called a lie. Inaccurate responding about past events could have detrimental effects on social relationships and also affect children’s safety. Caregivers expect their children to report their past behavior honestly when asked about their routine at school, how they got hurt, and so on. Honest verbal reports are also important, for example, in clinical settings and court proceeding, which may involve children’s eyewitness testimony. The positive relation between past and present behavior, whether verbal or not, has been labeled correspondence. We refer to do-say correspondence when individuals say or accurately report what they have done. Research on do-say correspondence has investigated the role of specific conditions under which reports about past may be accurate (honest) or inaccurate (dishonest). I will describe how basic experimental research on do-say correspondence has identified environmental variables that lead to dishonest reports. Additionally, I will present some behavioral procedures for increasing the accuracy of reporting past events in children, including those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). I will also discuss the role of teaching problem-solving strategies on accurately reporting past events. This presentation will conclude with a call for researchers to systematically investigate the variables and the procedures that may lead to reliable reports of past events.

Behavior analysts interested in the experimental analysis of verbal behavior and, more specifically, in tacts of past events.

Behavior problems are common in companion animals, yet relatively few behavior intervention protocols have been validated for this population. Further, even fewer studies have packaged validated protocols for public consumption or assessed the incorporation of owners as implementers. As a result, owners must turn to unvalidated, publicly available protocols or work with behavior practitioners using procedures with undetermined validity and owner fidelity to protocol. This is problematic, as owners are typically expected to perform the majority of intervention implementation, and ineffective protocols or lack of procedural fidelity can result in poor outcomes. This presentation will discuss previous and current behavior analytic research incorporating owners into behavior protocols for companion dogs, including functional analyses, preference assessments, and a discussion of a recent study to develop and analyze a choice-based, owner-implemented protocol focused on training companion dogs to cooperatively participate in ear cleaning. Across studies, protocols were efficacious and had high social validity and owner integrity. For both the ear cleaning and preference assessment studies, owners implemented the majority of the protocols with both autonomy and high fidelity. However, some owners required individualized support, with the amount required being unique to each pair, suggesting that owner-implemented protocols may require some professional oversight.

junior BCBAs, Behavior analysts within their first 5 years of practice (including practitioners, supervisors, etc.), Currently enrolled in or recently completed graduate-level work