Association for Behavior Analysis International

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.

Over the past 10 years, as the prevalence rate of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) increased, applied behavior analysis (ABA) has become the topic of interest in Saudi Arabia. It has drawn the attention of medical professionals, teachers, clinicians, stakeholders, and legislators alike. ABA is increasingly being recognized as the leading evidence-based intervention for individuals with ASD, and with this rising recognition, there is a growing demand for accountability and provision of state-of-the-art services. To respond to this demand, we have established the first verified course sequences in the Middle East on both undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as provided collaborations with schools and clinics. In this presentation, I describe the dissemination efforts made through training behavior analysts, implementation of positive behavior support in schools, and advocating for services and the establishment of a local legislative body. Furthermore, the significant growth in the number of certificants, clinics using ABA, ABA training programs, as well as the current challenges and the future of ABA in Saudi Arabia are discussed.

Dr. Baowaidan is the department chair of the Master of Science Program in Applied Behavior Analysis and assistant professor of special education at Dar Al-Hekma University, Saudi Arabia. She launched the first graduate program in ABA in the Middle East.  In 2016, she became the first Saudi to hold a Ph.D. in Applied Behavior Analysis and a Board Certified Behavior Analyst with doctoral designation (BCBA-Dâ). She earned her MA and Ph.D. in Applied Behavior Analysis from Columbia University under the direction of professor R. Douglas Greer. She has extensive teaching experience with children with and without special needs under the CABAS® model of schooling at the Fred S Keller School, where she also acted as a program supervisor and served as a clinical professor to many graduate students.

Human behavior, especially those behaviors identified as the self, the selfing behavior, are not an easy target for experimental analysis. The functional perspective provided the cues and meaning of such behavior however the analytic conceptualization of relational framing is opening the doors for such an analysis. The aim of this presentation is tracking these processes and let the door perhaps much more opened for experimental analysis and its use in clinical behavior analysis.

All interested in behavior analysis, experimental analysis, relational frame theory, and clinical behavior analysis.

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.

Reading and writing skills can be conceived as a network of equivalence relations between stimuli (e.g., printed words, dictated words, pictures, objects) and between stimuli and responses (e.g., picture naming, textual behavior, transcription, dictation-taking). We have been using this conceptual framework as a foundation for the development of assessment tools and teaching procedures. In this presentation I will describe an instrument for the assessment of basic repertoires involving S-S and R-S relations which characterize the skills of beginning readers. The instrument comprises 15 tasks, organized in blocks of 15 trials each. Some tasks measure identity matching-to-sample (picture identity, printed word identity), arbitrary auditory-visual MTS (picture recognition, printed word recognition), and visual-visual matching-to-sample MTS (picture <--> printed word correspondence). Other tasks measure discriminated operants for which the discriminative stimuli are pictures (picture naming), printed words (copying, textual behavior ["reading'']), and spoken words (dictation-taking). The child performance in these tasks allows the identification of basic perceptual skills (does the student see and hear?), vocal skills (does the student articulate the sounds with accuracy and in the correct sequence?), and the main discriminations required to read and write accurately. Failures in some of these tasks (or in all of them) provide important information about the student's current repertoire and the gaps that need to be developed. The instrument was applied to approximately 2300 students (6 to 12 years old). Individual results allowed the evaluation of selection-based responses (listening and seeing behavior) and topography-based responses (verbal operants in vocal or written modes) and to define a profile of the student's repertoire. Averaged data showed that the matching skills were significantly correlated with textual behavior and dictation-taking. An "integration" index taking into account all the scores showed that, as predicted by the stimulus equivalence paradigm, the interdependence of the operants increased as the entire repertoire developed. The integration index may be a useful tool for the prediction and evaluation of the effects of teaching programs for establishing the target repertoire in non-readers.

Behavior analysts interested in basic (initial) reading and writing repertoires: assessment and teaching procedures

Deisy de Souza is Full Professor at the Psychology Department, Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar), Brazil, where she teaches behavior analysis in graduate and undergraduate courses in Psychology, and in Special Education. She obtained her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at Universidade de São Paulo (USP), under the direction of Carolina Bori, and held a post-doctoral position at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, working with Charlie Catania. She has published articles and book chapters on non-human and human relational learning, including studies applying the stimulus equivalence paradigm to investigate the acquisition of symbolic relations involved in reading and writing, and in developing curricula to teach those skills. She is past-Editor of the Brazilian Journal of Behavior Analysis (BJBA), past-Associate Editor of Acta Comportamentalia, and she is currently a member of the Board of Editors of JEAB. She received the 2015 Distinguished Contributions to the Experimental Analysis of Human Behavior Award  from the Experimental Analysis of Human Behavior Special Interest Group (EAHB SIG); she was elected ABAI Fellow (2018); and she is currently the International Representative in the ABAI Council.

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.

Though the principles of behavior are universal, the specific behaviors, stimuli, and social contingencies impacting our clients are rooted in the cultures in which they live. As behavior analysis grows around the world, the inherent biases and assumptions of our technology becomes more apparent. Assessment instruments need translation, revision, and validation; interventions need to be adapted to ensure social validity and relevance; and the ways in which behavior analysts provide services need to expand to ensure that they are accessible to all clients in need. This symposium will present strategies for behavior analysts to identify biases in their professional practices, minimize such biases when they arise, and learn to practice cultural humility.

Practitioners and researchers. 

The cultural and linguistic diversity that characterizes the world remains a seminal barrier for the global uptake of applied behavior analysis (ABA). Although North America accounts for only 4.7% of the world’s population, more than 95% of BCBAs live in the United States and Canada. While behavioral principles may be universally applicable, this talk will argue for why understanding cultural diversity and avoiding prejudice is important. We will discuss specific challenges for the global dissemination of ABA, with India as an example, and suggest potential training strategies with which to overcome such barriers. Our training protocol may serve as an initial framework for practitioners and researchers to achieve buy-in and positive outcomes internationally. In addition, we will highlight existing frameworks to define and describe cultural adaptations and list previously used adaptations in ABA-based treatments for individuals outside of North America. Finally, we will advocate for a behavior analytic perspective for organizing and reporting potentially relevant variables for the global success of ABA services.

Since the rise of the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements, and especially since the murder of George Floyd, the field of behavior analysis is experiencing tremendous growth in action toward social justice. This growth of action and activism within our field is exciting but many have concerns over how much of this change is actually structural, versus performative, and therefore whether or not it will persist over time. From the perspective of a white man in a position of substantial privilege and power within the field of behavior analysis, I will stand next to and amplify the voices of behavior analysts of color who have offered powerful and practical resources to all of us to create and sustain our roles as accomplices in furthering social justice. This presentation will amplify recent publications by behavior analysts of color on practical strategies for enacting social justice within our own personal lives, within the service provision agencies where we work, and within our graduate programs, among others. In particular, practical strategies from behavioral approaches to self-management, including acceptance and commitment training, will be shared.

Dr. Jonathan Tarbox is the Program Director of the Master of Science in Applied Behavior Analysis program at the University of Southern California, as well as Director of Research at FirstSteps for Kids. Dr. Tarbox is the past Editor-in-Chief of the journal Behavior Analysis in Practice, a Board Member of the ABA Task Force to Eradicate Social Injustice, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Women in Behavior Analysis (WIBA) conference. He has published five books on applied behavior analysis and autism treatment, is the Series Editor of the Elsevier book series Critical Specialties in Treating Autism and Other Behavioral Challenges, and an author of over 90 peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters in scientific texts.  His research focuses on behavioral interventions for teaching complex skills to individuals with autism, Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT), and applications of applied behavior analysis to issues of diversity and social justice. 

The pressing need to engage in compassionate, culturally humble behavior as a field became apparent following the needless deaths of those such as Mr. George Floyd; the world at large recognized the importance of social justice and, as behavior analysts, we are uniquely poised to engage in systems change and create levels of institutional accountability throughout all aspects of our work. This dialogue will discuss culture as a dynamic metacontingency and will focus on understanding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as related to all cultures. We will analyze our own self-bias and will describe ethical problem-solving frameworks designed to increase DEI through the engagement of culturally humble behaviors as practitioners and researchers. Finally, we will review ways to implement measures of institutional accountability to assess whether we are meeting our goals of DEI. We will end by inviting questions from the audience to promote thoughtful considerations intended to further our understanding of the topography of culturally humble behaviors and how we can begin immediately to engage in social justice change.

Nasiah is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, with a Doctorate degree in Education from Loyola University of Chicago. She holds a Master’s degree in Special Education from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a Master's degree in Educational Leadership from the American College of Education. She is a graduate of the Infant Studies Specialist program at Erikson Institute of Chicago. In addition to her BCBA credential, she is an Illinois licensed special education teacher and an Illinois Early Intervention provider and State evaluator. Professionally, she has served as a special educator, clinician, educational administrator, and professor of special education. Her clinical experience spans infancy through adulthood. Currently, she is the CEO & Founder of ULEZI, LLC, Co-Founder of Pivot 2 Inclusion and serves as a court appointed special advocate, for children in the Illinois foster care system. She is also an Advisory Board member for Black Applied Behavior Analysts and a Board member for the Illinois Association for Behavior Analysis. She has assisted school districts in the State of Illinois in developing meaningful educational programs to meet the needs of students with autism. Her research interests include supervision, mentoring, leadership, and culturally humble practice within the field of ABA. She is a champion for diversity, equity and inclusion and is deeply committed to using her skills and experiences, paired with the science of applied behavior analysis, to empower the lives of the people she supports and serves, in positive and meaningful ways.

Noor Syed, Ph.D., BCBA-D, LBA/LBS, (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Applied Behavior Analysis, Clinical Coordinator, and founding Director of the Center for Autism Inclusivity (Research, Education, and Services) with SUNY Empire State College. She is also a Senior International Program Director with Anderson Center International, an Adjunct Professor Advisor in ABA with Endicott College, and Research Coordinator for the Global Autism Project.  She is a certified general and special education teacher in New York, U.S., birth through grade six. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Syed has worked with individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and developmental disabilities from early intervention through adulthood in school and center-based settings as a teacher, therapist, consultant, and administrator. Dr. Syed has consulted for autism clinics around the world, including in Uganda, Antigua and Barbuda, and the Czech Republic, and currently serves as the international and school-based expert on ABAEthicsHotline.com with Dr. Jon Bailey. She assisted in building Lehigh University Autism Services and its corresponding practicum, which is an insurance and university-based program offering services in the home, community, and clinic. Dr. Syed’s interests lie in compassionate care, cultural humility, ethical practices, supervision, the practice of school-based BCBAs, and diversity. She received her undergraduate degree in ABA under Dr. Raymond G. Romanczyk in the Institute of Child Development at Binghamton University and completed her PhD in ABA with Dr. R. Douglas Greer at Teachers College, Columbia University.

This panel will be a discussion of Dr. Ellie Kazemi’s SQAB Tutorial on the utility of computer technologies in behavior analysis.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Experimental behavior analysis has produced a robust literature on the role of bias in matching and choice. Despite its beginnings in the laboratory, this work has extended far beyond simple choice models and operant responses to address how bias impacts social responding. This symposium will present contemporary research on the assessment of implicit bias, translational models of choice, and the ways in which bias can impact the choices researchers make within the laboratory.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students. 

The study of implicit bias in behavior analysis has been dominated by one particular method, the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP). The IRAP could be considered quite unusual as a method for studying implicit bias because it targets verbal relations as defined within relational frame theory (RFT). In contrast, implicit bias in the non-behavior-analytic “mainstream” literature is often interpreted as reflecting the strength of associative links in a mental realm (e.g., a memory store). Despite this conceptual difference, research on implicit bias using the IRAP could be seen as relatively successful, at least in terms of number of published studies and the results of a meta-analysis of IRAP studies. On balance, until relatively recently IRAP research tended to focus on the method as a measure of implicit bias without conducting experimental analyses of the multiple variables, from an RFT perspective, that are brought into play when participants complete an IRAP. Conducting these more recent experimental analyses has served to produce an increasingly sophisticated and complex understanding of exactly what so called “implicit bias” involves from an RFT and a behavior-analytic perspective. The current paper will provide an overview of this research story.

Delay discounting measures a facet of impulsivity and is related to various socially significant behaviors. Researchers suggest that altruism and impulsivity arise from the same underlying mechanism; thus, individuals are less altruistic towards people that are different from themselves (e.g., a different race or ethnicity). However, researchers have yet to analyze the relation between delay discounting and implicit and explicit racial bias. In the present study, participants will complete a delay discounting procedure and several Likert scale surveys: the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS), and the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE). The delay discounting task will assess discounting for two delayed magnitudes (i.e., $100 & $1000) using an adjusting amount procedure. The IRAP measures implicit racial bias by having participants categorize stimuli based on either pro-Latino stereotypes or pro-White stereotypes; the difference in the length of time required to categorize stimuli that are consistent or inconsistent with the stereotypes measures bias. To examine explicit racial bias, we will use the total scores on the CoBRAS and the SEE. We expect participants who steeply discount delayed rewards will be more implicitly and explicitly racially biased toward members of a different race or ethnicity.

Historically, women have experienced bias in science. This bias has affected women as participants in research, as well as women as conductors of research. Although little recognized, another form of bias extends to female laboratory animals. Female laboratory animals, particularly rodents, have long been regarded as more variable in their behavior and other dependent measures and therefore were excluded from experiments. I will describe the inclusion of female laboratory animals in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. I will describe trends over time in the inclusion of female laboratory animals for different types of animals (e.g., pigeons and rats). For studies involving both sexes and in which animals are identified by sex, I will examine the level of variability in the behavior of male and female animals. Finally, I will review published data describing the variability in a wide variety of dependent measures for both male and female laboratory animals. These data show that female laboratory animals have been excluded from research based on bias rather than fact. The exclusion of female laboratory animals precludes learning about genuine sex differences with important health implications and is no longer allowed in NIH-funded research.

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.

Publication bias is the disproportionate representation of studies with certain characteristics, such as strong experimental effect, in the published research literature. Publication bias skews the body of scientific knowledge by overrepresenting studies with specific methodologies, analytic techniques, and data, which distorts the scientific literature and, ultimately, foments public distrust in science. Scholars in psychology and education have documented the presence of publication bias within these broad bodies of research. However, to date, behavior analysts have focused little attention on the possibility of publication bias in basic and applied behavior analysis research. Participants in this panel will reflect on their experiences as researchers, journal editors, and manuscript reviewers regarding issues of publication bias in behavior analysis. Their discussion will explore whether publication bias is a problem in behavior analysis research; how publication bias might manifest uniquely in our work; the potential impact of publication bias on the corpus of scientific knowledge in basic behavior analysis, applied behavior analysis, and on consumers of behavior analytic interventions; and potential strategies for reducing publication bias.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students. 

Dr. Galizio received his BA from Kent State University and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee where he worked with Dr. Alan Baron.  In 1976, he joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where he is currently Professor of Psychology. His research interests include behavioral pharmacology,  stimulus control/concept learning, aversive control, and human operant behavior.  He has published two books, more than 100 articles and his research has been supported by NIDA, NSF and NICHD. He is a Fellow of ABAI and four APA divisions and is a past-president of APA Division 25 (Behavior Analysis) and of the Southeastern Association for Behavior Analysis and served as an At-Large member of the ABAI Executive Council. He has served on numerous NIH study sections and chaired two of them. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 

This panel represents the second annual DEI Board discussion in a series designed to provide the ABAI membership with: 1) updates on Board activities, 2) opportunities for considering specific topics of relevance to advancing DEI efforts within ABAI and more broadly, and 3) a mechanism for input and ideas from the audience. This year’s panel will focus on the potential contributions of behavior analysis theory and scientific research to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in ABAI and, more generally, in society. After a brief review of the Board’s actions over the past year by Carol Pilgrim, Chair of the ABAI DEI Task Force, DEI Board members will share perspectives on how the science of behavior analysis can be brought to bear in designing DEI initiatives and evaluating their effectiveness. Time for questions and comments from the audience will be included to allow for sharing relevant experiences and lessons learned.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Jovonnie Esquierdo-Leal is the Program Development Specialist for the Diversity and Inclusion Office at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). She received her M.A. from California State University, Fresno and is currently a doctoral candidate at UNR. Jovonnie’s scholarly interests include diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); social justice; Behavioral Systems Analysis (BSA); verbal behavior; and leadership.

Dr. Jomella Watson-Thompson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Behavioral Science, and the Director of the Center for Service Learning at the University of Kansas. She is also affiliated with the Center for Community Health and Development. She attained a Ph.D. in Behavioral Psychology and a Masters of Urban Planning from the University of Kansas. She applies behavioral science methods and interventions to improve how communities address issues related to community health and development. Her research has focused on behavioral-community approaches to neighborhood development, substance abuse prevention, and youth and community violence prevention. Dr. Thompson supports community-engaged scholarship using participatory approaches to address social determinants or factors that may contribute to disparities, particularly for marginalized groups and communities. She has researched the effects of community-based processes and behavioral-community interventions to promote mobilization and change in communities. Dr. Thompson has received numerous funding awards and co-authored articles on community capacity-building, youth and neighborhood development, and adolescent substance abuse and youth and community violence prevention.  She is as an Associate Editor with Behavior and Social Issues and serves on the ABAI Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Board.