Association for Behavior Analysis International

Suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, and traumatic brain injury remain the hallmark wounds of the War on Terror. Common across all of these problems is a degradation in functioning in any of the following areas: occupational, interpersonal, communication, cognitive performance. Although cognitive and behavioral treatments which address these functional impairments have been developed and broadly disseminated across the Department of Defense or the Department of Veteran Affairs, applied behavior analysis (ABA) remains unknown across most mental health and neuropsychological points of care within the Military Health System (MHS). Four research and practice initiatives will be discussed during this symposium including one-minute-timing and standard celeration charting of problematic private events, the development of a verbal operant learning channel instrument for veterans and service members with TBI, using modeling to examine training outcomes of veteran law enforcement officers versus non veteran law enforcement officers, and the application of the single case research design and standard celeration charting to improve suicide prevention program evaluation. Collectively, these projects illustrate how ABA can and will continue to be useful for helping this population.

The law enforcement (LE) field generally accepts video simulation as one of the gold standard methods for teaching officers to handle lethal situations and use of force appropriately. The training relies on video contingencies which LE officers interact with, but the training also relies on rule-governed contingencies, and didactic instruction. Despite the psychological research on training in general, little empirical research exists on simulator training in the law enforcement community (Bennell, 2007). Considering the importance of contingency-governed behavior versus these other methods of learning (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007; Sidman, 1989), this gold standard training method for the LE field warrants some exploration by the field of applied behavior analysis. Since one study found that the greatest magnitude of learning occurs in the earliest stages of simulation training (Justice and Safety center, 2002), the author tested modelling techniques prior to video simulation LE training, and found that modeling yielded higher performance and faster engagement with the training module than teaching as usual. The author expands his analysis of this work to evaluate performance of veterans versus non-veterans in video simulation LE training. Findings and implications for future ABA integration in LE training are discussed.