Association for Behavior Analysis International

While adherence with medical procedures and compliance during medical exams are important skills to learn, approximately one third of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and/or intellectual Disabilities (ID) have been found to exhibit noncompliance during basic medical procedures (Gillis et al. 2009). A skill deficit in this area may result in higher risk of injury and in the need of more intrusive procedures or physical and mechanical restraint. This talk will start from a review of Applied Behavior Analysis (A.B.A.) based literature related to the application of non aversive procedures to increase adherence to medical procedures, such as blood draw, dental care, routine exams, ECG etc. Procedures such as differential reinforcement without extinction, stimulus fading, gradual exposure, shaping will be discussed. Clinical applications of such procedures on adolescents and adults with ASD will be discussed, as well, with a focus on teaching students to report pain, preventing emotional negative responses and assure the assent of the participants during the procedures. Results of these interventions will be contextualized in a Quality of Life (QOL, Schalock et al. 2002) frame evaluating the impact of the results on the physical well being domain.

The target audience for this symposium will be students, researchers, and practitioners that are interested in the integration between a Quality of Life model and ABA intervention, especially working with adolescents and adults with ASD and intellectual disabilities

Although the translation of basic research findings to applied practice has been strongly encouraged in behavior analysis for decades, contemporary examples of bridging the two ends of this continuum are somewhat rare. Similarly uncommon are examples of so-called “reverse translation,” in which behavioral phenomena from the clinic, school, or other applied setting are brought into the laboratory for further empirical scrutiny. Indeed, meaningful and productive interactions between basic and applied researchers in behavior analysis appears to be severely lacking. In this presentation, I will outline how the recent increase in research on treatment relapse represents a marked departure from these troubling trends, while commenting on the ways in which this work has reinvigorated bidirectional research in behavior analysis. Specific examples from an ongoing collaboration between basic and applied researchers will be highlighted, as will considerations for developing new lines of collaborative research beyond that of treatment relapse in hopes that others will similarly heed these longstanding calls for greater integration of basic and applied behavioral science.

Clinicians and researchers

Clinical behavior analysis involves applying the principles and methodologies of behavioral analysis to address challenges traditionally categorized as mental disorders. Recent demographic data reveals that clinical behavior analysis ranks as the third most emphasized area of professional focus in the United States (BACB, 2019; 4.36%), following autism and education. Notably, interventions rooted in clinical behavior analysis, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Functional Analytic Psychotherapy, derive from foundational research in behavior analysis. Despite this, the adoption of such approaches in applied settings remains limited. However, in Latin American countries, there exists significant potential for the widespread dissemination of behavior analysis within mainstream psychology, particularly in the realm of clinical behavior analysis. This presentation seeks to explore diverse pathways through which clinical behavior analysts can extend their influence into unconventional domains such as HIV, gender and sexual diversity, anxiety, and depression. Participants will be guided through a research endeavor aimed at integrating behavior analysis into traditional areas of psychology within a Latin American context. Through this exploration, we aim to illuminate novel opportunities for the application of behavior analysis and promote its broader integration into diverse fields of practice.

The target audience includes individuals with a foundational understanding of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Functional Analytic Psychotherapy, including beginners. Additionally, it encompasses behavior analysts who apply clinical behavior analysis in their professional practice, as well as those specifically operating within Latin American contexts.

Behavioral insights represent a policy approach that capitalizes on findings from different fields (e.g., psychology, economics) and tests them empirically. The focus of interest is choice and decision-making among users and consumers, especially insofar as they act in ways that do not meet the rationality assumption. Although there has been an increasing interest in this approach in recent years, contributions of behavior analysts have remained modest when compared to behavioral economists and other social scientists, especially informing public policy. The aim of this presentation is to identify and develop principles and findings from behavior analysis and behavioral economics that may contribute toward the achievement of “better” individual and societal outcomes. For example, nudging and boosting are two freedom-preserving techniques that may contribute to enhance wellbeing in community or organizational contexts. This presentation is concerned not only with the individual level of analysis and intervention, but also with the framework of macrocontingencies and metacontingencies. These frameworks can be particularly informative and useful for scaling and sustaining behavioral interventions, and for embedding them in policymaking.

Academics, practitioners, students interested in the study and application of behavioral interventions in policymaking.

Precision Teaching (PT) has most recently been defined as a system for precisely defining and continuously measuring dimensional features of behavior and analyzing data on the Standard Celeration Chart (SCC), allowing for timely and effective data-based decisions that accelerate behavioral repertoires. The potential for PT to support efficient learning environments presents an opportunity for educators to adopt a well-established system to accelerate student learning, particularly in a post-pandemic era when students have experienced significant learning loss due to extended absences from education during pivotal learning years. This is even more vital for students at risk and in areas of socio-economic disadvantage who experienced the most significant learning loss during this time. The emphasis placed on achieving high frequency performances, or fluency, with pinpointed behaviors aligns well with educators’ goals who are tasked with supporting students to achieve proficiency with literacy and numeracy skills. Although a growing body of literature is emerging that demonstrates positive outcomes associated with PT, there exists a research to practice gap. PT is not used in educational settings to the full extent possible. The purpose of this paper is to present the current evidence for PT in supporting the mastery of academic skills and to discuss the potential that PT has to make an impact in educational settings whilst acknowledging the limits of PT findings to date. Future directions for conducting impactful research in this area are suggested within the context of closing the research to practice gap.

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The “replication crisis” describes recent high-profile challenges in replicating studies across diverse scientific fields, most notably psychology (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). To counter these challenges, open science is a movement towards greater transparency, accessibility, and openness in science and scientific research (Cook et al., 2018; Peters, 2014; Vicente-Saez & Martinez-Fuentes, 2018). The practices of open science align with accomplishing these goals. For example, open sharing of raw experimental data, study materials, and software code in data sharing platforms, such as the Open Science Framework, enables independent researchers to verify and replicate analytic procedures reported in a study (Gewin, 2016). Similarly, publishing scientific papers in open access forums that do not require subscription fees or other barriers, including as pre-prints, enables greater access to research among larger and more diverse scientific consumer groups, including students and researchers otherwise lacking resources for access (Suber, 2012). In contrast to the social and behavioral sciences community at large, ABA researchers rely primarily on single-case experimental designs (SCED) to conduct their scientific experiments. These designs typically employ visual analysis of graphically depicted data and inductive reasoning to derive functional relationships among experimental variables (Ledford & Gast, 2014). Since concerns with data integrity and calls for open science practices based on the replication crisis have largely applied to researchers using group experimental designs based on the null hypothesis statistic testing model, ABA researchers may feel a degree of immunity from scientific integrity concerns identified within the larger scientific community (Tincani & Travers, 2019). Analytic differences notwithstanding, we contend there are excellent reasons for SCED researchers working within an ABA framework to embrace open science practices. First, the contingencies that operate to produce Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) among scientists working within the group research tradition also operate on ABA researchers, although they might manifest in disparate ways given differences in the methodologies. Moreover, there are pathways to QRPs uniquely created by the SCED approach (Tincani & Travers, 2022). Second, although applied behavior analysts have traditionally eschewed inferential statistics in SCED data analysis, these techniques are becoming increasingly prevalent in SCED research, opening new pathways for QRPs. Finally, there are distinct benefits for SCED researchers who embrace open science practices. These include increased visibility for researchers who employ them, new collaboration opportunities, closing the longstanding gap between research and practice, and enhanced credibility conferred on our scientific enterprise, generally. Presenters in our symposium will overview the open science movement, discuss the need for ABA researchers to embrace open science practices grounded in recent empirical work on this topic, and highlight pre-registration of research as one open science practice to address potential concerns with scientific integrity of SCED research.

Stakeholders, RBTs, BCBAs, BCBA-Ds who currently or plan to design, implement, and/or report ABA research.

It has been 50 years since Israel Goldiamond wrote the groundbreaking article, A Constructional Approach to Social Problems: Ethical and Constitutional Issues Raised by Applied Behavior Analysis. In that article he cites a familiar inspirational phrase and rewords it: “‘There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come” translates into the power of an ‘idea which rationalizes contingencies whose time has come’ or increases their probability.” Such is the case with the Constructional Approach and its rapidly rising popularity and application. Recent concern with consent and assent makes the Constructional Approach more relevant than ever. Using the United States Constitution as a referent, Goldiamond explored the ethical and humanitarian responsibilities of behavior analysts. He argued against using procedures whose primary goal was decelerating the frequency of behavior. Instead, he advocated for programs that “establish behavior, the absence of which is the problem.” The client has a right to their disturbing pattern, which is likely maintained by important personal consequences, though at some cost to the individual and those around them. The goal is to find the sense in the disturbing pattern, by identifying the consequences maintaining it, and finding a way to provide those consequences, without the, or at greatly reduced, cost. All of this is accomplished in partnership with the client. Goldiamond emphasized that disturbing behavior could best be understood in the context of alternative patterns or contingencies available to the individual, a Nonlinear Contingency Analysis, showing that a simple ABC analysis is often inadequate. Had the field adopted the Constructional Approach much of today’s criticism of applied behavior analysis, from within the field and outside of it, could have likely been avoided. This presentation will briefly describe the research history behind the Constructional Approach and Nonlinear Contingency Analysis, the major components of the approach, and a range of intervention strategies, both topical and systemic that are being used today. It will describe how such an approach gives greater insight into complex behavior including emotions and other private experience. A series of cases will be provided that demonstrate the depth and remarkable breadth of the Constructional Approach and Nonlinear Contingency Analysis. They will show that no other approach is so universally applicable. These cases include adult psychiatric/psychological interventions, the treatment of autistic children including difficult to treat reactive and phobic patterns, large scale organizational intervention, and even building repertoires in zoo and other animals. The Constructional Approach and Nonlinear Contingency Analysis provide the tools behavior analysts can use to understand complexity and provide interventions that go beyond many currently popular behavioral and “third-wave” cognitive-behavioral approaches restrained by their focus on pathology and the linear analysis upon which they rely.

Behavior analysts who can understand complexity and provide interventions that go beyond many currently popular behavioral and “third-wave” cognitive-behavioral approaches.

The behavior of scientists is a type of human behavior with great impact on the whole system where humans live. It is human behavior and, consequently, it is motivated inevitably according to present moment and personal history. The field of behavior analysis and relational frame theory have been rooted in the sap of functional and contextual approach and promoted the experimental analyses of any kind of behavior. This process always occurs in the context of the particular scientists or clinicians` behavior and has moved from the study of apparently simplest pieces of behavior to those more complex. Examples of the latter might be the identified in natural language as memory, humor, metaphors, suffering, emotion, or even the client-therapist interactions. The relevance of keeping alive the root, the sap of the functional philosophy, that has been present throughout this process, is the focus of this presentation. I will insist on the sap of the functional philosophy, in the parsimony when contacting behavioral variation in experimental or clinical data as much as the behavioral scientist variation when promoting new units of analysis or new terms. Once again, the scientist behavior is the core of science and impacts in the focus of experimental procedures and its presentation as well as its impact in the focus of our interactions with clients, either children, adolescents, or adults.

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Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a relatively novel field of practice internationally. This presentation outlines the evolution of ABA service delivery in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) across the past two decades presented by the first Certified Behavior Analyst registered by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) in the UAE. Unique challenges and solutions are demonstrated in relation to three key areas: service delivery, certification and supervision, and systemic change. Introducing Behavior Analysis to a region characterized by multicultural diversity and establishing a clinical/ educational ABA practice has come with a unique set of challenges, including limited access to resources, overcoming professional isolation, navigating ethical dilemmas, and addressing the diverse origins and cultural complexities of clients and staff. Various strategies for overcoming these challenges will be presented with an emphasis on the importance of ethical conduct by Behaviorists implementing in multicultural settings. The Competent Learner Model (CLM), an implementation system encompassing a tiered model of education and staff coaching with best practice ABA provides a valuable resource for service providers globally. Shaping individual actions to foster behavior-analytic organizational systems is of paramount importance. This offers insights into interventions, family support, training, and competence building across the field of ABA.

The target audience for this presentation include but are not limited to: • Behavior analysts within their first 5 years of practice, including practitioners, supervisors, etc., who are currently enrolled in or recently completed graduate-level work. • BCBAs and BCBA-Ds who have completed graduate-level work, are licensed or certified individuals • Educators or Behaviorists wishing to implement best practice in multicultural settings or internationally.

This presentation summarizes the development of how behavior analysis in Turkiye. During the presentation, the presenter will be sharing the clinical and research efforts that have been realized in Turkiye. The presentation also includes the institutional efforts in higher education to train behavior analyst nationwide. In addition to that the presentation also includes the bariers and challenges in introducing and using behavior analytic techniques and strategies in Turkiye.

Researchers, Clinicians, and International chapter representatives

The threat posed by climate change can be addressed by human behavior. In this symposium, organized in response to the Presidential Scholar Address by Bill McKibben, presenters will examine real and potential contributions from behavior science. Implicit cost-effect calculations and attempts to balance large future benefits and less desirable but more immediate outcomes have climate implications. Brett Gelino will examine how excessive reinforcer valuations and delayed outcomes muddy sustainable preference. Transitioning to climate-friendly policies presents significant challenges to communities with stretched budgets and immediate needs. Tony Biglan will describe the need for more research funding on helping communities address climate change and what such research might look like. Climate change is, of course, both a local and global issue. Susan Schneider will describe small-scale success stories developed from the application of behavior principles while addressing the barriers to scaling these up to larger-scale solutions. Behavior science contributed to the reduction of environmental contaminants like lead and methylmercury. Chris Newland will examine side effects of environmental regulations and show that a cleaner environment is climate-friendly. Finally, Bill McKibben, as discussant, will comment on these developments and offer additional thoughts about where we stand with respect to climate change.

All behavior analysts

One of the challenges of the climate crisis is the epic range of behavior changes needed. On the community level, school districts, businesses, neighborhoods, health care systems, and local governments all need to move faster toward sustainable practices. While there’s plenty of well-documented success stories, these projects often fail to scale, limiting their impact. This talk covers the range of sustainable behavior change interventions - most of them interdisciplinary - then examines barriers to larger-scale adoption. The field of implementation science focuses on this challenge, and analysis of the contingencies and meta-contingencies is an essential part of such efforts. Having a successful intervention is only the beginning of a lengthy implementation process leading to meaningful large-scale change. Given the IPCC goals for climate action, we are rapidly running out of time to scale up.

Behavior Analysis has a history of embracing new technologies to improve research and practice. Recent advancements in biometrics and artificial intelligence (AI) will transform behavioral interventions for health. As we harness the capabilities of AI to predict, analyze, optimize reinforcement strategies, and guide health behaviors, how do we protect the dignity, respect, and autonomy of individuals? How do we ensure that AI complements rather than supplants human expertise? This talk will discuss how to leverage technology to enhance the precision, personalization, and efficacy of interventions for health, especially Contingency Management (CM) interventions. Contingency management refers to interventions that focus on the differential reinforcement of health-promoting behaviors. For example, these interventions may deliver financial incentives contingent upon meeting a physical activity goal or submitting a drug-free urine sample. Biometric and AI technology can help address common problems in CM interventions, such as implementation costs, objective measurement of health-promoting behaviors, adaptability, and the reduction in delay of reinforcement delivery. The talk will include a discussion of how to implement the new technologies within the ethical framework that upholds the tenets of behavior analysis.

Researchers, practitioners, graduate students