Association for Behavior Analysis International

Up to two-thirds of youth with autism spectrum disorder develop challenging behaviors, which are the most common cause for referral to behavioral health services in this population. While progress in treatment in this area has been made, many youth remain treatment refractory or unresponsive to the work of a single discipline. Specialized acute inpatient psychiatry units can be utilized to bring together the strengths of applied behavior analysis and other disciplines to assess and treat complex challenging behaviors. The service landscape, approach, and treatment evidence for these settings will be reviewed, and emerging novel approaches utilizing detection of physiologic signals in relation to challenging behaviors will be presented.

Practicing behavior analysts, administrators of ABA programs, clinical researchers.

Dr. Siegel is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics of Tufts University School of Medicine, Vice President of Medical Affairs, Developmental Disorders Service of Maine Behavioral Healthcare, and Faculty Scientist II at Maine Medical Center Research Institute. He has developed a nationally recognized continuum of treatment and research for individuals with autism, intellectual disability and co-occurring mental illness and challenging behaviors.

Dr. Siegel attended Amherst College, Stanford Medical School and trained at Brown University in child psychiatry, psychiatry, and pediatrics. He is the Principal Investigator of the Autism and Developmental Disorders Inpatient Research Collaborative (ADDIRC), a network of specialized child psychiatry units performing studies of children severely affected by autism and intellectual disability. Dr. Siegel is nationally recognized for his expertise in inpatient care and the treatment of serious challenging behaviors. He served on the Autism and Intellectual Disability Committee of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry for a decade and is a co-author of the Academy’s Practice Parameter on the Assessment and Treatment of Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Parameter for the Assessment and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders in Children and Adolescents with Intellectual Disability.

This talk will discuss how to induce observing responses for children who are pre-observers. These children typically don’t orient to other’s faces, listen to other’s voices, or attend to educational materials presented in pictures or objects. Without these foundational observing responses, everything else will fall short. It would be extremely challenging to teach them visual match-to-sample, conditional discrimination, let alone derived relations. Traditionally, these students rely heavily on prompts from their teachers and caregivers. They also require substantially more trials to reach their learning objectives. Our CABAS® research labs, which are affiliated with Teachers College Columbia University, have identified a sequence of verbal behavior cusps and developed the intervention protocols for those who are missing any of these cusps. This talk will focus on the recent advances in the study of observing responses and intervention protocols. These protocols are shown to be effective in establishing the conditioned reinforcement and increasing the children’s general awareness of their surroundings. In particular, children learn to select out people’s faces and voices as well as pictures and objects as discriminative stimuli from their environment. In consequence, they require fewer prompts during instruction and their learning rates also increase dramatically. Once these foundational cusps for verbal behavior are established, children will be ready to learn things they are not able to before (e.g., see-do, hear-do, bidirectional naming).

Board-certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students

Dr. Lin Du received her first MA in sociology from Nanjing University, China. She then earned her MA and Ph.D. in applied behavior analysis from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a CABAS® senior behavior analyst, associate research scientist, New York State Licensed behavior analyst, and BCBA-D. Dr Du is a research scientist and program supervisor at the Fred S. Keller school (a R&D lab for master and doctoral candidates in ABA and school psychology programs at Teachers College, Columbia University). She is also an adjunct assistant professor of behavior analysis at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her primary research interests are verbal behavior development of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). She has published two books, several book chapters and many peer-reviewed papers in the behavior analytic journals, including the Psychological Record, Journal of Béhavioral and Brain Science, Behavior Development Bulletin, Behavior Analysis in Practice, European Journal of Behavior Analysis, The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, and International Journal of Behavior Analysis and Autism Disorder. 

This presentation will address the question of effective practices for the treatment of individuals with autism spectrum disorder, from both an epistemological and a therapeutic perspective, and suggest the importance of a synthesis of two paradigms—behavior analysis and general systems theory—as a means of optimizing our assessment of the needs and the services provided to people with disabilities. Despite the development and the use of a wide array of behavior analytic practices that help all children with ASD to reach their full potential, a question that remains under-researched has to do with the effort expected from the child and his/her family and whether this effort can be somehow lessened without compromising the benefits. The answer to that question led to investigating the properties of another epistemological paradigm—general systems theory—its merits, its compatibility, and its complementarity to the discipline of behavior analysis. This presentation aims to demonstrate that the two paradigms are compatible and complementary and that their combination may lead to optimizing the therapeutic and pedagogical outcomes of behavior analytic practices. If we are to adapt a systemic perspective, according to which the joining of two or more systems leads to an outcome that exceeds by far the additive effects of those systems, it will be interesting to assess the potential emergent benefits of the synthesis of two compatible and complementary epistemological paradigms and how those translate into therapeutic outcomes.

Researchers and therapists in the field of autism spectrum disorder.

Functional communication training (FCT) has strong empirical support for its use when treating socially reinforced problem behavior. However, treatment effects often deteriorate when FCT procedures are challenged, leading to the recurrence of problem behavior, decreased use of the functional communication response, or both. Recent prevalence estimates suggest that treatment relapse is common in the clinic. Researchers have accordingly described a number of strategies for improving the long-term effectiveness of differential-reinforcement-based procedures (e.g., FCT), and quantitative theories of relapse (i.e., Behavioral Momentum Theory, Resurgence as Choice) provide falsifiable predications regarding modifications for mitigating treatment relapse. In this presentation, I share recent research on the prevalence of treatment relapse during routine, clinical service delivery and discuss our work on applying quantitative models of relapse to improve treatment durability. Future steps for advancing promising relapse-mitigations strategies will also be discussed, as will clinical considerations that limit the practicality of otherwise effective mitigation procedures.

BCBAs, applied and basic researchers

Access to low-cost, easily implemented behavioral treatments for a range of socially important health issues is severely limited in developing nations. As a case in point, most citizens in developing countries have no access to behavioral treatments for epilepsy. In behavior medicine, epilepsy is defined as the combination of a tendency to seize together with internal and external factors which increase the probability of reacting with a seizure reaction. In this model, epileptic seizures, like any behavior, is amenable to respondent and operant conditioning; thus, it is possible to effect and change the outcome of the seizure process using a behavior analysis and subsequent interventions. This paper aims to present a summary of the main points of clinical research in the behavioral treatment of epilepsy during the past 50 years and show the author's own recent studies done in South Africa and India. A presentation of two such RCT studies of behavioral treatment in the form of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy show promising results.

JoAnne is a native North American who has lived her whole adult life in Sweden. She has her clinical psychology degree, psychotherapy degree, Ph.D. och Docent from Uppsala University in Sweden where she also held a position of full professor of psychology prior to her retirement last year. JoAnne has specialized in behavior medicine and has focused on applying learning theory in practice for many chronic illnesses such as epilepsy, constipation, asthma, obesity, and chronic pain. She is the author and or coauthor of five professional books applying ACT and RFT to both chronic illness as well as Love relationships as well as publishing over 60 scientific studies in these areas. JoAnne is a peer reviewed ACT trainer and an ACBS fellow.

This panel will be a discussion of Dr. Brian Greer’s SQAB Tutorial on using quantitative theories of relapse to improve FCT.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

The rapid growth in computer technology means that nearly anything imaginable is either possible or will soon become possible. Behavior analysts, as specialists in learning and behavior, are uniquely trained to become strong collaborators on multidisciplinary teams focusing on projects to advance machine learning, simulation-based experiences, and much more. In this tutorial, I will discuss how we currently leverage such technology in my lab and integrate robotics, virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI) in our behavior analytic research. I will share the outcomes of some of our current research projects as well as my collaborative efforts on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) grants.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Designing skill acquisition programs requires careful consideration of variables that can affect the speed of learning. For example, the number and type of stimuli to include in an instructional set, sequencing of stimuli during instruction, the number of practice opportunities to arrange, and the selection of mastery criteria are important considerations when designing programs for learners. In this presentation, Dr. Kodak will synthesize research on these topics and provide recommendations for practitioners who are responsible for designing instructional programs. In addition, areas of additional research that can help improve the design and outcomes of skill-acquisition programs will be discussed.

Dr. Kodak is an Associate Professor in the Behavior Analysis program at Marquette University. She is a licensed psychologist, licensed behavior analyst, and Board Certified Behavior Analyst. She has worked with children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder more than 25 years. Dr. Kodak obtained her Ph.D. in School Psychology from Louisiana State University. She formerly served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and Learning and Motivation. She currently serves on several editorial boards including the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, Behavior Analysis in Practice, and Learning and Motivation. Her research interests in the area of early intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder include increasing the efficiency of skill acquisition, treatment integrity, assessment-based instruction, verbal behavior, conditional discriminations, parent training, and computer-assisted instruction.

Human behavioral pharmacology methods have been used to rigorously evaluate the effects of a range of centrally acting drugs in human beings under controlled conditions. Methods like drug self-administration and drug-discrimination have been adapted from non-human laboratory animal models. Because humans have the capacity to communicate verbally, self-report methods are also commonly used to understand drug effects. This presentation will provide an overview of these traditional human behavioral pharmacology methods, as well as more novel measures that have been introduced to the field. Representative data will be shared and the benefits, challenges and translational relevance of each method will be discussed. This session will cover guiding principles in the design of human behavioral pharmacology studies (e.g., using placebo controls, testing multiple doses) along with ethical (e.g., avoiding enrollment of individuals seeking treatment, determining capacity to consent) and safety (e.g., dose selection, pre-screening of participants for exclusionary health problems) that must be addressed when conducting these types of studies.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Researchers in the field of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have made significant progress in assessment of social-communication and other ASD-related impairments. However, there is still a great deal to be learned about profiles of ability and disability characteristic of individuals with different neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), and about the ways in which particular abnormalities manifest at different points in development. Dr. Bishop will present information about behavioral dimensions that are most relevant to assessment and differential diagnosis of ASD and other NDDs. She will also discuss the importance of considering individual factors such as age, sex, IQ, and language level when interpreting scores from standardized measures for diagnostic or other purposes. Integrated assessment across multiple behavioral domains is not only needed to ensure valid diagnostic practices, but more importantly, to generate individualized and meaningful treatment plans. Improved coordination between diagnostic and treatment providers is essential for increasing efficiency and utility of current assessment practices. Additionally, there is a need for increased coordination of measurement strategies across disciplines, in order to ensure appropriate selection of short-and long-term goals and corresponding measures of change. Ultimately, we must toward more coordinated and goal-directed assessment practices that do not place such a premium on diagnostic labels, but instead focus on generating information that directly facilitates treatment for a given individual at a particular moment in time.

We often solve problems by engaging in mediating strategies such as talking to ourselves. In order to accurately use and respond to these strategies, we must understand what we are saying. The term bidirectional naming (BiN) has been used to describe the integration of both listener and speaker behaviors that leads to speaking with understanding. In this talk, I will describe a series of studies showing that in the absence of either speaker or listener behaviors, participants often fail to solve problems in the form of matching-to-sample and categorization tasks. These results suggest that to solve complex tasks participants must be verbal. Thus, I will propose that the BiN repertoire is one of the most important skills learned during language development and must be prioritized in early intensive behavioral intervention.

Basic and applied researchers, clinicians.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a lifelong disorder that affects children and families in several ways. A growing body of research has documented the ways in which racial disparities affect the rate of identification, access and use of services, and relationship with professionals making the diagnoses. In general, Latino children are diagnosed with ASD later in life; usually with more severe symptoms, lower IQs, and more health conditions, compared with non-Latino children. Furthermore, cultural factors can shape how the signs of ASD are conceptualized and how families accept a positive diagnosis, especially how they are affected by stigma. Diminished access to diagnostic services as well as having a caregiver with a non-English primary language can act as barriers to identifying children with ASD, in particular Latino children. This lecture will review current research in health disparities in both early identification and access to services of Latino children with ASD. Research with this underserved population contributes to enhancing diagnosis and identification methods for Latino children with ASD and assessing the unidentified risk factors and barriers to accessing services, hence improving their outcomes.

researchers, allied health professionals, educators

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is one of the most researched conditions within the field of psychology and education. While ABA-based early intervention is considered the most effective evidence-based comprehensive approach to increase skills and reduce problem behaviour in young children affected by ASD, behaviour analysis has yet to provide an analysis of the unique repertoires of children with autism. Instead, the most widely accepted explanations of learning deficits associated with ASD are almost exclusively non-behavioural. In this talk I will discuss the importance of a behavioural account for understanding the unique challenges associated with ASD. At minimum, such an account must be able to address three areas of cognition, widely understood to be compromised in ASD: joint attention, theory of mind, and executive functioning. Developing a comprehensive behavioural conceptual framework that addresses these areas would give behaviour analysis a seat at a table traditionally occupied by other disciplines. Behaviour analysis may then be seen not merely as a collection of techniques to decrease problem behavior or to produce isolated skills.

behaviour analysts, speech and language therapists, education professionals

Mobile phone use is ubiquitous in our society. While some people use it in a reasonable manner, others use it excessively and/or in a problematic manner (e.g., while driving). In this presentation, I will discuss what behavior analysis can do with the societal issue of problematic mobile phone use. From a behavioral economic perspective, problematic mobile phone use is fundamentally a choice controlled by competing reinforcement and/or punishment contingencies that involve a trade-off between multiple consequences (e.g., a smaller-sooner reinforcer vs. a larger-later reinforcer). Based on this conceptualization, I will illustrate how some behavioral economics principles, such as delay/probability discounting and demand analysis, can be utilized to understand, predict, and potentially control some forms of problematic mobile phone use, such as texting while driving, media multitasking, and excessive social media use. I will also argue that this conceptualization of problematic mobile phone use as choice can direct our attention to identifying the environmental/contextual variables that affect the choice, and that this conceptual/philosophical framework, along with strong data, is what behavior analysis can offer to other disciplines in an effort to combat the societal issue of problematic mobile phone use.

basic and applied behavior analysts; graduate students

Yusuke Hayashi is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the Pennsylvania State University, Hazleton. His current research interests lie in understanding basic behavioral processes, such as sensitivity to delayed/probabilistic reinforcers and valuation of reinforcers, as well as translating basic principles to solve societal problems, such as problematic mobile phone use. He completed a pre-doctoral fellowship at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health as well as a post-doctoral training at the University of Kansas. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology from West Virginia University, his M.S. in behavior analysis from the University of North Texas, and his B.A. in history from Keio University in Tokyo, Japan (his unofficial minor was behavior analysis, though). He also enjoyed his carrier as an IT engineer before he crossed the ocean and headed toward Texas. Dr. Hayashi is currently an associate editor of European Journal of Behavior Analysis and an editorial board member of Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. He is active in publishing his work outside of behavior analysis, hoping to maximize the impact that behavior analysis can make on our society.

Many students with autism and other developmental disabilities have difficulty sequencing their own behavior during free-choice situations. Rather, they rely on adults to prompt them to engage in particular activities. Many do not interact appropriately with play materials or may select one activity and engage in it for an extended period of time. Photographic activity schedules have been shown to be an effective tool to teach children to sequence their own behavior and transition smoothly between multiple activities. Children learn to follow the visual cues in the activity schedule to make transitions instead of relying on adult-provided prompts. Activity schedules also provide a context for teaching basic and complex choice-making behavior. As children develop verbal behavior, social scripts can also be added and then later faded to promote social interaction. Activity schedules have been used successfully in a variety of settings with both children and adults with various disabilities. They are easy to use and can be adapted to most environments. In the present tutorial, participants will learn how to use activity schedules with clients/students as well as learn about recent research on using these techniques to promote complex social play.

Practitioners and applied researchers.

Alternating treatments designs can be used to evaluate multiple interventions and compare interventions. This presentation will address common interpretation errors that are associated with standard alternating treatments designs and propose solutions for each type of error. First, the presentation will focus on how researchers frequently conclude that an intervention or multiple interventions were effective, when changes may have been caused by uncontrolled threats to internal validity. A design solution to this problem, including a no-treatments series during the alternating treatments phase, will be described and analyzed. Next, the presentation will focus on misinterpretation associated with cumulative learning data. A proposed solution to this problem focus on supplementing repeated measures cumulative learning figures with figures that plot learning per session data. Discussion focuses on applied strengths of alternating treatments designs, effect size analysis, and how interpretation errors can adversely affect consumers of applied science.

researchers, graduate students, consumers of research

Christopher H. Skinner received his Ph.D. in School Psychology program from Lehigh University in 1989. While at Lehigh, he served as a special education teaching assistant for elementary students with Autism and as a teacher for 10th grade students with emotional/behavioral disorders. After finishing his Ph.D., Skinner was an assistant professor at The University of Alabama (3 years) and coordinator of School Psychology Programs at Mississippi State University (7 years) and The University of Tennessee (15 years). Currently, he is Professor at The University of Tennessee and teaches graduate courses in the School Psychology and Behavior Analysis programs. Skinner has co-authored over 200 peer-refereed journal articles and earned three national research awards including the Fred S. Keller Award for empirically validating interventions. Skinner’s accomplishments can be directly traced to his work with exceptional graduate students and practitioners. He is happiest when he is partnering with his students to work with educational professional to remedy presenting behavior or academic problems, while also conducting applied research. To simultaneously accomplish these goals, Skinner and his collaborators have relied single-subject design procedures.

The difference between curricula and pedagogy is highlighted best when we consider what we teach versus how we teach it. There exists an interaction between development and instruction such that instruction can only be effective if the educator considers the learner’s level of verbal development. The ways in which we teach must cater to the current verbal developmental cusps found within the learner’s repertoire. While the progression of instructional objectives targeted within a curriculum will change as the learner acquires the necessary prerequisite skills to move forward, attention should be placed on modifying the ways in which we teach those subsequent objectives. Research in the field of verbal behavior development has proven time and time again that the acquisition of skills can be accelerated if the method of teaching is consistent with the capabilities that the learner exhibits, i.e. the presence of verbal developmental cusps within their repertoire.

Educators, Practitioners, and Researchers

Basic differences in dogs’ and wolves’ propensity to bond with humans were already detected by early researcher such as Zimen and Klinghammer, especially in relation to the early human exposure needed as puppies to establish stable intraspecific social bonds. Building on this early work, the Wolf Science Centre (Austria) raises wolves and dogs from puppyhood providing intensive human socialization, thereby allowing animals to build strong bonds with their human companions, which last their entire life. Here I will present results investigating wolf-dog similarities and differences in their preferences, contact-seeking behaviours and cooperative inclination with humans. Results will include both behavioural and hormonal aspects, with a particular focus on oxytocin and cortisol, which have been hypothesized to play an important role in the domestication process.

dog research scientists, dog trainers, educators, general interested public

Sarah Marshall-Pescini graduated in Psychology from St. Andrews University and then went on to do her Ph.D. at the same university working with Andy Whiten on social learning in children and chimpanzees. Most of the work was carried out in Uganda, with both sanctuary and wild chimps. After the Ph.D. she returned to Italy, her home country, and worked at Milan University for 8 years, setting up, together with Emanuela Prato-Previde, a small (but lively) dog cognition lab. Since 2013 she has joined the team at Wolf Science Centre and the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology (Veterinary University of Vienna) as a senior scientist. Her research focuses on the social behaviour of wolves and dogs. Since 2016 she co-supervises a fieldsite studying free-ranging dogs in Morocco and another studying wild wolves in the Italian Apennines. She has published over 50 scientific papers in top journals in her field, and co-edited a volume for Elsevier (Kaminski, J, Marshall-Pescini, S. The Social Dog: cognition and behavior).

Increasing attention has been focused on students who have adverse childhood experiences (ACES) and the impact on academic achievement. To address students’ intense emotional and learning needs, trauma informed practices are being implemented in hopes of changing the trajectory of their lives. This presentation will provide an overview of ACES and trauma informed practices that are also culturally responsive that can be implemented in a classroom setting. Special attention will be given to students living in poverty in which ACEs are more prevalent.

In their seminal article, Baer, Wolf and Risley (1968), stated that behavior analytic intervention is expected to result in strong, socially important, and generalizable behavior change which, in this case, should mean more positive adult outcomes in ASD. Unfortunately, despite a nearly three decade-long emphasis on evidence-based, behavior analytic intervention in ASD, adult outcomes remain poor “for almost any outcome you choose.” (Roux, et al, 2015, p. 8). While there may be several reasons for continued poor outcomes (including the challenge of simply defining “good outcome”), the potential of behavior analytic intervention to develop more positive adult outcomes has yet to be fully realized. Such outcomes, however, are well within the reach of our behavior analytic technology. But to do that, the contingencies governing our behavior will, most likely, need to shift. For example, we will need to shift from contingencies that reinforce the technical precision of our classroom-based interventions to contingencies the reinforce the somewhat less technical precision of community-based intervention (assuming the target has a fair degree of social validity). This tutorial will identify a number areas, both internal and external to the field, where a “contingency shift” may be necessary if the power of behavior analytic intervention to significantly improve outcomes for adults with autism is to be more fully realized.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

The use of cannabis for medicinal and recreational purposes continues to expand as legal barriers are dismantled. This leads to a growing need to assess possible health consequences, including with a focus on specific cannabinoid compounds such as Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). Understanding of the effects of CBD by itself, and in combination with THC, are only recently being explored in well-controlled studies. This talk will discuss the effects of CBD and THC along, and in combination, in animal models. Most pre-clinical models of cannabinoid effects use parenteral injections of cannabinoids, while human use continues to be by inhalation via combusted plant material and, now, e-cigarette devices. Models of vapor inhalation in rats will be discussed with a focus on the differences compared with traditional injection routes of administration.

Research has shown that parents of children with ASD are among the most stressed as compared to all other parents, including those who have children with other psychiatric conditions and developmental disabilities (Hayes & Watson, 2013). Parents of children with ASD are chronically stressed because the demands of the family environment often exceed the parent’s ability to cope. There are few evidence-based interventions available for professionals to use with parents of a child with ASD: some use cognitive therapies, such as meditation, some use social support to reduce stress and mental health problems, and others use implement parent training to improve child behavior. Few if any combine both mental health and behavioral approaches, and none of these are designed for implementation by school personnel. This presentation describes findings from a multi-year transdisciplinary investigation into the most common stressors for parents of preschool children with ASD attending a CABAS® model school. Specifically, in two studies we surveyed parents to determine their reported levels of stress and common stressors, as well as parents’ mental and physical wellbeing, self-care, and self-efficacy skills. In the first study we also examined mother-child interactions during free-play and demand situations in order to determine possible target behaviors for intervention. Implications of the findings and suggestions for interventions will be discussed.

Those interested in parent education and interventions to help parents cope with the stresses of parenting a child with ASD. These may include practitioners, educators, researchers, or parents themselves.

In 1892, William James brought Hugo Münsterberg from Freiburg to direct the new, Harvard Psychological Laboratory that James had created in the Philosophy Department. Münsterberg had trained under William Wundt in Leipzig, who had pioneered an experimental method to explore the relationship between mental events and physical experience. The New Psychology banished the old method of introspection. Instead, it relied on highly controlled experiments with equipment borrowed from the domains of physics and physiology. Researchers studied the psychology of the senses, the timing of mental acts, judgement, memory, and attention. Starting with these “prism, pendulum, and chronograph philosophers,” as James called them, this talk will conclude with B. F. Skinner and his experiments on operant conditioning, reinforcement, and learning. Special attention will be paid to early apparatus such as reaction keys, prototype operant chambers, cumulative recorders, and teaching machines. The apparatus, laboratory records, memoranda, and correspondence of James, Munsterberg, and Skinner survive at Harvard University and can be accessed by scholars interested in the development of their thought.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.