Association for Behavior Analysis International

Functional communication training is one of the most popular treatment approaches for challenging behavior among children with autism spectrum disorder. However, challenges pertaining to response variability, resurgence of challenging behavior, and overuse of a single mand may inhibit sustained implementation of FCT. This symposium presents three single case design studies on adaptations and extensions of FCT to address these challenges. The first paper evaluates FCT with lag schedules of reinforcement with preschool aged children on persistence and generalization of mands and the reduction of challenging behavior resurgence. The second paper illustrates a procedure for mand discrimination training for children with autism who communicate using augmentative and alternative communication. The third paper demonstrates the utility of comparing different function-based mands, not only in treating challenging behavior, but also in evaluating the validity of synthesized trial-based functional analysis results. Suggestions for further extending FCT in research and implications for practice are discussed.

Board Certified Behavior Analysts and practitioners who design and implement function-based interventions for challenging behavior in applied settings.

Children with autism and complex communication needs often use augmentative and alternative communication systems (AAC) to express wants and needs. When children request something that is unavailable, the denied request can lead to problem behavior. Teaching children to discriminate the availability of reinforcers can decrease the risk of appropriate communication leading to problem behavior. One potential solution is to introduce discrimination training, a strategy frequently used to reduce challenging behavior, within a child’s AAC system. This study adds nuance to discrimination training by signaling the availability of reinforcement within an AAC system. We used a multiple probe across behaviors design to examine the effects of implementing discrimination training through visual cues into a low tech AAC device. Results revealed a functional relation between the use of discrimination training and the child’s contextually appropriate mands for preferred items.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that can cause significant social, nonverbal communication and behavioral challenges. There is often nothing about how people with ASD look that sets them apart from other people. They may, however, communicate, interact, behave, and learn in ways that are different from most other people. Because there is no definitive medical test, diagnosing ASD can be difficult. Research has shown that intervention can improve a child’s overall development and the earlier it occurs, the more effective it may be. In this symposium, we introduce a diagnostic tool designed to improve a very early diagnosis of autism. The tool is informed by extensive research on the Model of Hierarchical Complexity, a behavioral developmental model of tasks. The Model allows for the scaling of behaviors, tasks, reinforcers, stimuli, etc. in terms of their Hierarchical Complexity, a form of difficulty. This kind of scaling explains developmental sequences. The symposium first describes the Behavioral Developmental Autism Instrument, including how it was devised and comparing it to other assessments. The second paper illustrates how the Model of Hierarchical Complexity can be used to generate a developmental sequence of reinforcers. The third paper applies the model to curriculum development.

People who are interested in knowing how the interventions work for instance when to know where to stop, which behavioral developmental stage to intervene at and what behavioral stage the child is functioning.

Operant conditioning procedures are used to investigate various developmental phenomena in infants, including attention, perception, memory, language, and emotional and socialization processes (e.g., Gewirtz & Pelaez-Nogueras, 1992). The choice of what reinforcers to use has been conducted in somewhat of an ad hoc manner. This presentation introduces a way to scale reinforcers in terms of their likely effectiveness for children at different behavioral stages of development. Reinforcers are scaled in terms of their complexity using the Model of Hierarchical Complexity. This model applies a mathematically based scale to different tasks and behaviors (including reinforcing events). A brief example would be that for some children perhaps only a food-based reinforcer would work. For another saying “Good job” would work. Using this model, we have generated an ordered list of reinforcers. This can be used with individual children to ascertain which specific reinforcers are effective for each particular child. Ultimately it will provide a list of a large number of reinforcing events that may be effective when working with a wide range of children.

An organizational approach to psychopharmacology in a behavior analytic residential treatment program is discussed. Our treatment teams and psychiatrist collaborate to reduce psychotropic medications, when clinically appropriate, for individuals with severe problem behavior. Our clients have typically attended previous residential treatment facilities, have been rejected from other placements, and are admitted to our program on a variety of psychotropic medications. We discuss changes in major problem behaviors following medication reduction and discontinuation. In many cases, we are able to successfully discontinue the use of psychotropic medications while concurrently implementing a comprehensive and intensive behavioral treatment program. Effective, program-wide behavioral interventions are reviewed. Several case studies highlight various level and trend changes observed when titrating psychotropic medications. Subsequently, a retrospective analysis examines the impact of clonidine withdrawal or discontinuation on the frequency of aggressive and self-injurious behavior. Aggressive and self-injurious behavior decelerates following clonidine discontinuation for the majority of the sample. Treatment providers should also be aware of temporary increases (i.e., agitation withdrawal) in problem behavior following medication reduction. Ethical considerations surrounding boundaries of competence, consultation, treatment efficacy, and least restrictive procedures are discussed.

behavior analysts, psychologists, behavioral scientists

Objectivity, accountability, replicability, verifiability: these are a sample of the cornerstones of the science of behaviour analysis. As a field, we emphasize developing direct measurement systems to promote accountability. These systems may add value across client services and service delivery models that may not always incorporate direct measurement protocols. For example, my co-investigator and I developed a program evaluation tool, guided by behavior analytic measurement practices, to examine how well services align with respective best-practice recommendations in a government-funded service supporting adults with acquired brain injury. Direct measurement systems may also add substantial value to psychopharmacology in treating challenging behavior in individuals with disabilities (e.g., intellectual and developmental disabilities; acquired brain injury). In fact, recent literature has concluded medication monitoring processes in this context are poor or non-existent. Clients often receive concurrent, but separate, psychopharmacological and behavioural interventions. In some cases, psychiatry and behaviour analysts working together. These relatively rare arrangements present behavior analysts with an opportunity to promote systematic data collection to efficiently identify medication impact on behavior (e.g., adaptive, maladaptive), including side effects. Unfortunately, behavior analysts do not often receive formal training relevant to psychotropic medications. Promoting behavior analysis as a valuable component in the context of psychopharmacological intervention means having behavior analysts well-trained in this area. One step towards this goal may be to establish an evidence-based training protocol enabling behavior analysts to perform effectively when collaboration opportunities arises. I will describe a research project exploring the clinical utility and feasibility of a Medications Guidelines Tool and training for behavior analysts.

Behavioral practitioners; applied researchers

Dr. Alison Cox received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Manitoba. She is also a Board Certified Behavior Analyst – Doctoral. Throughout her Ph.D., Dr. Cox was involved in a variety of research initiatives ranging from developing measures to reliably identify preference in individuals with profound multiple disabilities to teaching children and adolescents with autism to successfully undergo MRI procedures. As an Assistant Professor in the Applied Disability Studies program at Brock University her research interests continue to be diverse. However, her primary interests lay in behavioral medicine, including examining the effects of psychotropic medication on behaviour. Through her current and past research and clinical experiences Dr. Cox has developed specific expertise in assessing and treating severe challenging behaviour in individuals with dual diagnosis and acquired brain injury, supporting skill acquisition in individuals with dual diagnosis and autism, and supervising early intensive behavioural intervention programs. Dr. Cox has presented her work at international and national conferences, is published in several prominent behaviour analytic journals, and serves as a peer-reviewer across a range of journals in the disabilities field. Finally, Dr. Cox currently serves on the Ontario Association for Behaviour Analysis (ONTABA) Adult Task Force and recently co-authored a best-practice guidelines document entitled Evidence-based Practices for Individuals with Challenging Behaviour: Recommendations for Caregiver, Practitioners, and Policy Makers.

The first study tested the efficacy of an intensive blending intervention on the acquisition of blending and segmenting skills as well as the rate of acquisition of new textual response targets. Using a multiple probe design, Hwang-Nesbit & Greer found that the rate of acquisition of new textual responses increased as a function of this intervention, as well as mastery of new blending and segmenting skills. In the second study, Mellon, Greer, Bakaev, and Pedrero-Davila tested the effects of a multiple exemplar instruction across vocal and written response topographies for transparent words. The participants were selected because they did not emit correct responses in one response topography when transparent words were taught in a different response topography. Results indicated that multiple exemplar instruction was functionally related to establishing joint stimulus control across these topographies. These studies have implications for struggling readers as well as different educational methodologies utilized in American education.

BCBAs BCaBAs Educators Administrators

We tested the effects of multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) on the transformation of stimulus function across written and vocal spelling responses for transparent words. Participants were chosen because they demonstrated joint stimulus control for vocal and written spelling with nontransparent words. These participants emitted correct vocal spelling responses for nontransparent words after learning those responses in a written topography, but did not demonstrate correct responses for transparent words from the same instructional practice. A multiple probe design was used to test the effects of the intervention on the spelling behavior of 6 kindergarten students with and without disabilities. During the intervention the participants were taught vocal and written spelling responses for a novel set of 5 transparent words using MEI. The dependent variable was the number of correct untaught vocal spelling responses for a set of 20 consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. All participants emitted correct untaught vocal spelling responses after the intervention and performed the behavior with the same accuracy as written spelling responses before the intervention. Results of this study are discussed in terms of its implications in the different self-dictation responses in spelling transparent and non-transparent words and the application of MEI as an instructional tool to establishing joint stimulus control.

In 1950, Skinner published an article titled “Are Theories of Learning Necessary?” which was widely misunderstood and misrepresented as arguing that theories in science were not necessary. In fact, he was arguing that explanations of behavior consisting of explanatory fictions were not only not necessary, but faulty. Skinner’s choice of the term “theory” in that context was unfortunate. Elsewhere (e.g., Skinner, 1957), Skinner has used the term “interpretation” to refer to his extrapolation of the basic principles of operant behavior from the experimental laboratory to the understanding of complex behavior, including behavior he called verbal. This was also an unfortunate choice because what he called interpretation was nothing less than a theoretical analysis. In this instance, the standard term “theory” would have been more appropriate. In the present talk, I offer one view of what theories in science are and how they originate, and then I discuss what a behavior-analytic theory is and how it has been, and continues to be, applied to understanding complex human behavior. As with theories in the natural sciences, behavior-analytic theory does not posit circular explanations, does not commit the nominal fallacy or the reification fallacy, and is parsimonious. In other words, the statements comprising the theory point to observable or potentially observable and testable events.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Henry D. (Hank) Schlinger Jr. received his Ph.D. in psychology (applied behavior analysis) from Western Michigan University (WMU) under the supervision of Jack Michael. He then completed a two-year National Institutes of Health-funded post-doctoral fellowship in behavioral pharmacology also at WMU with Alan Poling. Dr. Schlinger was a full tenured professor of psychology at Western New England University in Springfield, MA, before moving to Los Angeles in 1998. He is now professor of psychology and former director of the M. S. Program in Applied Behavior Analysis in the Department of Psychology at California State University, Los Angeles. Dr. Schlinger has published 80 scholarly articles, chapters, and commentaries in more than 30 different journals. He also has authored or co-authored three books, Psychology: A Behavioral Overview (1990), A Behavior-Analytic View of Child Development (1995) (which was translated into Japanese), and Introduction to Scientific Psychology (1998). He is past editor of The Analysis of Verbal Behavior and The Behavior Analyst and sits on the editorial boards of several other journals. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and on the Advisory Board of The Venus Project (https://www.resourcebasedeconomy.org/advisory-board/). He received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Psychology at Western Michigan University in 2012, and the Jack Michael Award for Outstanding Contributions in Verbal Behavior from the Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group of the Association for Behavior Analysis International in 2015.

The dissemination of behavior analysis is an essential albeit often challenging piece of practice for a behavior analyst. Successful dissemination of behavior analysis can result in significant gains for the science in research, practice, and beyond. One such benefit is the increased access to behavior analytic services to individuals in need. Several avenues toward dissemination have been suggested, one of which includes collaboration with professionals outside of behavior analysis and those within behavior analysis, yet in varying industries. The current symposium describes three projects that undertook the challenging task of dissemination through collaboration to create something missing from the current environment, yet desperately needed to better serve those requiring applied behavior analysis services. The first paper describes the collaboration with local and county school districts resulting in the creation of behavior analytic non-public school intended to create a learning environment for those unable at access education in their local public schools. The second paper describes the impact of collaboration and dissemination on the creation of a behavior analytic support program within general and special education public classrooms. The final paper discusses how dissemination and subsequent collaboration can address hiring difficulties and access to care when working with local universities.

BCBA's, Administrators in behavior analytic practice, Administrators within public education settings, University professors

Single-case designs have been central to the development of a science of behavior analysis. However, other health and social sciences have not embraced their adoption as widely as behavior analysts. Potential explanations for this lack of adoption include the complexity of analyzing single-case data objectively as well as the limited consideration of group data. The purpose of our symposium is to present recent research that addresses the aforementioned limitations. The first presentation will describe a script designed to automatically analyze functional analysis data based on previously published rules. The second presentation will examine whether artificial intelligence can accurately make decisions using AB graphs. The third presentation will discuss the validity of using nonoverlap effect size measures to aid clinical decision-making. The final presentation will introduce hybrid designs, which involve a combination of single-case and group methodologies. As whole, the presentations will provide an overview of innovations in the use of single-case methodology for both practitioners and researchers.

BCBAs BCBA-Ds

Visual analysis is the most commonly used method for interpreting data from single-case designs, but levels of interrater agreement remain a concern. Although structured aids to visual analysis such as the dual-criteria (DC) method may increase interrater agreement, the accuracy of the analyses may still benefit from improvements. Thus, the purpose of our study was to (a) examine correspondence between visual analysis and models derived from different machine learning algorithms, and (b) compare the accuracy, Type I error rate and power of each of our models with those produced by the DC method. We trained our models on a previously published dataset and then conducted analyses on both nonsimulated and simulated graphs. All our models derived from machine learning algorithms matched the interpretation of the visual analysts more frequently than the DC method. Furthermore, the machine learning algorithms outperformed the DC method on accuracy, Type I error rate, and power. Our results support the somewhat unorthodox proposition that behavior analysts may use machine learning algorithms to supplement their visual analysis of single-case data, but more research is needed to examine the potential benefits and drawbacks of such an approach.

Single-case experimental designs often require extended baselines or the withdrawal of treatment, which may not be feasible or ethical in some practical settings. The quasi-experimental AB design is a potential alternative, but more research is needed on its validity. The purpose of our study was to examine the validity of using nonoverlap measures of effect size to detect changes in AB designs using simulated data. In our analyses, we determined thresholds for three effect size measures beyond which the type I error rate would remain below .05, and then examined if using these thresholds would provide sufficient power. Overall, our analyses show that some effect size measures may provide adequate control over type I error rate and sufficient power when analyzing data from AB designs. In sum, our results suggest that practitioners may use quasi-experimental AB designs in combination with effect size to rigorously assess progress in practice.

Functional analysis (FA) has been an important tool in behavior analysis. The goal of an FA is to determine problem behavior function (e.g., access to attention) so that treatments can be designed to target causal mechanisms (e.g., teaching a socially appropriate response for attention). Behavior analysts traditionally rely on visual inspection to interpret an FA. However, existing literature suggests interpretations can vary across clinicians (Danov & Symons, 2008). To increase objectivity and address interrater agreement across FA outcomes, Hagopian et al. (1997) created visual-inspection criteria to be used for FAs. Hagopian and colleagues reported improved agreement but limitations of the criteria were noted. Therefore, Roane, Fisher, Kelley, Mevers, and Bouxsein (2013) addressed these limitations when they created a modified version. Here, we describe a computer script designed to automatically interpret FAs based on the above-mentioned criteria. A computerized script may be beneficial because it requires objective criteria (e.g., 10% higher vs. ‘substantially’ higher) to make decisions and it is fully replicable (i.e., does not rely on interobserver agreement). We outline several areas where the published criteria required refinement for the script. We also identify some conditions in which the script provides interpretations that disagree with expert clinician interpretations.

Maximizing student learning outcomes is a goal at every level of instruction. For undergraduate and graduate students in behavior analysis, the stakes may be even higher given the clinical implications and leadership roles BCaBAs and BCBAs take on immediately following graduation and certification. Therefore, it is critical to identify evidence-based approaches to engage students with course content, not only to pass the certification exam, but also to enhance client outcomes. The four studies in this symposium describe ways in which to do just that. The first study evaluated the effects of active student responding and competition among on-campus undergraduate students. The remaining three studies were conducted with graduate students in a fully online asynchronous program. This included two intervention studies, one examining choice of practice activity and the second evaluating the effects of self-monitoring on quiz grades. The final study examined academic procrastination using a delay discounting task with the aim of identifying possible interventions to decrease procrastination. Taken together, these research findings expand the scope of effective instructional strategies in both the face-to-face and online classrooms.

Behavior analysts who teach undergraduate and graduate students

Self-monitoring is an evidence-based intervention that has been shown to be widely effective in addressing a range of target behaviors (Weston et al., 2019; Wills & Mason, 2014). In the academic context, it has demonstrated increases in the performance of elementary, middle, and high school students both with and without disabilities (Graham-Day, Gardner, & Hsin, 2010; Wolfe, Heron, & Goddard, 2000), but there is limited information available regarding use of self-monitoring among graduate students. Graduate students struggle with time management given the many competing contingencies they are faced with (Hanshaw, Mason, & Loh, 2019). This study evaluated the effect of self-monitoring on quiz grades among graduate students in a fully online, asynchronous behavior analysis course. There were three conditions that were evaluated including instructions only, instructions with self-monitoring, and control wherein there were no expectations stated for daily engagement with the course content. Students allocated more time across days during the self-monitoring condition and performed better on quizzes in comparison to the instruction only condition. Results will be discussed with regard to social validity and implications for instructors.

Advances in genetics, molecular biology, and cognitive neuroscience offer hope for personalized treatment and improved outcomes in those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the promise of precision medicine is limited by a lack of mechanistic models that explain phenotypic and etiological heterogeneity; instead of using such models to identify subgroups likely to respond to specific treatments, the field relies on service availability, trial-and-error, and clinical judgment to make treatment decisions. In line with the computational psychiatry objective, my research integrates mathematical models of behavior and brain activity to establish neurocognitive models that can successfully predict individual social and nonsocial learning profiles. Specifically, I am formally comparing the suitability of various computational models to capture selective deficits in social learning of individuals with ASD, as well as variability in both social and nonsocial learning across typically developing youth and those with ASD. Identifying how these model-based predictions are implemented in the brain will allow us to identify neural architecture underlying learning in therapeutically relevant contexts. The long-term goal of this research line is to apply these computational models to inform, refine, and individualize diagnosis, education, and treatment of youth with ASD.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

I am an Assistant Professor of cognitive neuroscience in the Psychology department at George Washington University (GWU). I am also affiliated with the Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute at GWU. My research combines computational and neuroscientific methods to understand the neurobiological mechanisms underlying learning in neurotypical and clinical populations, especially autism spectrum disorder. I have expertise in designing naturalistic tasks to assess social decision making in behavior and brain function, conducting longitudinal clinical studies, computational modeling and developmental cognitive neuroscience. I have recently been awarded the Bridge to Independence Award by the Simons Foundation for Autism Research to study learning in autism with a computational neuroscientific approach and its implications for treatment.

Behavior analysts have made an enormous impact in the treatment of autism and related disabilities, but what about other areas? Behavior analysts are trained to understand behavior and the conditions under which is it governed. However, how does this repertoire position a behavior analyst to practice in other markets, such as health, sports, fitness and nutrition? This panel will explore several key questions related to entrepreneurship in health, sports and fitness; such as how to transition into new markets? What skill sets and/or certification are needed to practice? How to network and build relationships with professionals outside of behavior analysis? With a focus on building a business in health, sports, fitness and nutrition, each panelist will contribute their own unique experiences as it pertains to entrepreneurship, networking, education and self-management.

Board Certified Behavior Analysts and Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analysts

The field of Applied Behavior Analysis has experienced tremendous growth since its inception. According to the Behavior Analyst Certification Board®, between the years 2016 and 2018, the total number of certified behavior analysts has increased by over 30%, and the total number of registered behavior technicians® has nearly doubled. An essential component for obtaining and maintaining these certifications include supervision hours. The Behavior Analyst Certification Board® has provided task lists regarding the items and topics required for adequate supervision; however, no components of cultural responsiveness and awareness are included. With the increase of behavior analysis within culturally diverse populations, it is imperative that our field develop new and innovative ways of including cultural competency into the Board Certified Behavior Analyst® and Registered Behavior Technician® supervision experience. Many behavior analysts have reported not receiving sufficient training within the areas of diversity and cultural responsiveness and feel unprepared to serve diverse clients and communities adequately. This workshop is designed to address the gap in formal training specific to the lack of diversity and cultural responsiveness across the supervision continuum.

Registered Behavior Technicians; Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analysts; Board Certified Behavior Analysts

Behavior analysts frequently say "the rat is always right" or "the learner is always right" but do not always focus their attention on the behavior and responding of the student in the moment to determine how to apply the science of behavior analysis. Members of this panel will discuss how behavior analysts can encourage more responsive teaching with their learners by developing more flexible protocols, attending to learner behavior, developing creative protocols for teaching receptive language skills, and how to respond to data using the Standard Celeration Chart to adjust teaching procedures. The panel will concluded by providing ttendees with the opportunity to ask the panel questions relating to attending to learner responding.

This panel is intended for individuals with at least 2 years of certification experience who are responsible for making decisions about their clients in the moment and training others to do the same.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is marked by social communication and interaction impairments and restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRBs), yet little is understood about the etiology of these impairments and there are few successful treatment interventions. The expression and severity of social impairments can vary widely across individuals, so more objective bio-behavioral markers that measure the process of how interactions unfold over time will greatly enhance our understanding and could lead to targeting of interventions to particular subgroups of patients. Engagement in restrictive and repetitive behaviors can compound the social communication and interaction difficulties, so a fuller understanding of the contextual factors that influence the expression of RRBs is also need. In this talk, I argue that social synchrony may be a useful dynamic bio-marker of social ability in children and adolescents with ASD. The relevance of social synchrony and coupled oscillator-based modeling of synchronization for understanding social impairment in ASD will be discussed and synchronization ability for spontaneous and intentional interpersonal coordination in children and adolescents with and without ASD will be compared. In addition, I will present data that evaluates the relationship between synchronization ability and more traditional clinical and social cognitive measures of social ability and evaluate the influence of social and motor context on the presentation of RRBs and language production during conversation. Finally, the promise of social synchronization ability for providing a measure with heightened resolution to identify the essential qualities of social performance in naturalistic situations and isolate underlying neural mechanisms that may be disrupted in ASD will be discussed and directions for future research and potential interventions outlined.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Aggressive behavior can pose serious risks, including bodily injury to others, hospitalizations, and encounters with law enforcement. Some risks can be reduced by responding in ways to keep others safe, such as wearing protective equipment or engaging in personal protective behaviors (e.g., blocking, evading, etc.). This symposium will address various strategies for improving safety-related behaviors of staff and caregivers during episodes of aggression. Specifically, employees were taught to wear protective equipment (study 1), caregivers were taught to respond in particular ways to situations in which precursors to aggression occur (study 2), and caregivers were taught personal protection skills (e.g., blocking and evading) during aggressive episodes (study 3).

Researchers and practitioners (e.g., BCBAs)

Employees working in human service organizations serving individuals who engage in high intensity aggression are more susceptible to sustaining injuries throughout the course of their workday. These types of organizations often require employees to adhere to safety guidelines, which may include utilizing protective equipment to minimize the severity of injuries if client-to-staff contact does occur. Despite protective equipment being prescribed in clients’ treatment plans at a private day school, employees were often observed engaging in at-risk performance by working with clients without the prescribed protective equipment. To assess the variables maintaining at-risk performance demonstrated by direct care staff, we administered the Performance Diagnostic Checklist – Safety (PDC-S) across 3 classrooms. Results from the PDC-S varied by classroom and individualized treatment packages were implemented in each classroom utilizing a multiple baseline design. Results indicated increases in the use of prescribed protective equipment and will be discussed in tandem with lagging indicators and outcomes.

Individuals who engage in aggression often display precursors or agitated behavior, and it is important for caregivers to learn how to minimize risk of injury during these episodes in the event that aggression were to occur. In this study, behavioral skills training was used to teach caregivers of children who engage in aggression to position their body safely (shield others who enter the space and move out of reach of an aggressive individual) and prevent access to dangerous items during agitated states. All caregivers quickly learned these skills and minor feedback was necessary for all caregivers post-training following one or two sessions.

Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of behavioral skills training (BST) to train staff and caregivers to implement various behavioral interventions and to teach young children socially significant skills. Efficacious and efficient training and teaching procedures remain an essential focus of research for scientists and practitioners; especially, for special populations and complex skills. The purpose of this symposium is to discuss evaluations and applications of BST procedures across consumers of behavior analytic services. In the first presentation, Arthur assessed the effects of BST to teach safety skills to children with Williams Syndrome. The second presentation by Plattner, Van Boxel, and Proctor examined a BST protocol to train staff to implement pairing procedures with children with autism. The third paper by Preas and Mathews evaluated and compared the effects of BST versus feedback alone to train caregivers to implement activities of daily living skills teaching procedures with their child with autism. The presenters will include a discussion of future directions for research and applications of BST.

BCBA-D, BCBA, BCaBA, RBT, LP, LBA (researchers, clinicians, and practitioners)

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder affecting 1in 7500 to 1 in 20,000 people. A trademark characteristic of Williams syndrome is hypersociability; being overly friendly and socially disinhibited which puts this population at risk for social vulnerability, exploitation, and abuse. This is a significant concern for parents of children with WS and warrants intervention. The current study used a multiple baseline probe design across participants to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioral skills training (BST) to teach safe responding to strangers in children with WS. The study consisted of three phases: 1) baseline in situ assessments in community settings, 2) BST in the home setting, and 3) in situ assessments in the community following mastery of BST. One participant responded with all four components taught during BST and post-BST in situ assessments by the second probe. The second participant scored low during initial post-BST in situ assessments and required a booster BST session. Following the booster session, the second participant responded appropriately to lures of strangers during in situ assessments. The results suggest that BST can be an effective procedure for teaching responding to strangers with this population.

Recent behavior-analytic efforts to the competent dissemination of acceptance and commitment training (ACT) have dramatically increased. The current symposium seeks to add to the ways in which practicing behavior analysts may more confidently-equipped to use ACT within their practices. The first presentation investigates the extent to which coherence between values and self-management strategies may improve treatment outcomes in a college population.We then empirically explore practical applications of ACT within an ASD population. Finally, we introduce evidence of the success of ACT via the AIM curriculum with a rather unique population. Implications to the overall successes and utility of ACT in daily practices, as well as ways to increase positive outcomes, are discussed.

beginner-intermediate behavior analyst

This presentation describes the development of a custom-made “ACT for Kids” workbook and the initial phases of testing its effectiveness for decreasing challenging behaviors and increasing self-management skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The study is still currently in the data collection phase and initial data suggest it is effective. In this presentation, we will describe in a practical manner the steps that were taken to transform the ACT Hexaflex and Matrix into stimuli that children with ASD would be able to consume and respond to independently. Results from the one participant completed thus far showed that the “ACT for Kids Workbook” decreased the participant’s maladaptive behaviors while consequently increasing his use of ACT-based self-management skills in his daily life. Findings from the social validity interview revealed that parents of this participant saw a significant increase in independent self-management skills across settings and environments, when ABA team members were not present.

Many parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder around the world have limited or no access to behavior analytic knowledge or services leaving them without support or guidance. Training parents with behavior analytic knowledge or skills can potentially overcome this issue. The purpose of this symposium is to present two different parent training programs designed to provide skills and knowledge that parents need to improve the quality of life for their children and families. The first presentation will discuss a program in which parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder learned the steps necessary to implement an early intervention program. The project was conducted in India. The second presentation will discuss four barriers that get in the way of parents’ access to behavior analytic knowledge: time, place, money, and prerequisite skills, and will introduce a web-based parent training program designed to overcome these barriers.

BACB Certificants

The effectiveness of Early Intervention (EI) program is widely documented to increase the behavioural outcomes of children diagnosed with Autism. Studies have demonstrated positive outcomes for parent-implemented EI approaches for skill development. The majority of these evidence-based interventions have been conducted in the US and Europe, there is increasing interest in adapting evidence-based interventions to different cultures. The current study will share outcome data from a 6-week, ABA-based parent-implemented EI program from Bangalore, India. 81 children (range 18 mo.- 60 mo.) and their caregivers enrolled in the program. The goals were adapted from ABLLS-R and included validated instructional procedures. The parents were trained to use errorless teaching for skill acquisition and behaviour management strategies. The result of the program demonstrated significant gains across all domains, supporting the existing literature. Parents reported high levels (M = 28.2 out of 30) of social validity for the program. Further, the outcome for parents demonstrated significant gains in the acquisition of training skills . These findings have implications for cultural adaptations of evidence-based interventions. These findings are timely as there is a growing recognition of the prevalence of ASD and need for EI services in India, yet a limited number of certified behaviour analysts.

There are four areas of primary concern to the military when meeting the needs of their personnel, especially those who have been deployed to war zones and return with various kinds of problems not acceptable in continued military life or in civilian life. Traumatic brain Injury and post-traumatic stress disorder are the two topics addressed in this symposium. Not discussed will be bodily physical injuries and suicide. The presentation will view all branches of service but primarily the Air Force, Navy, Marines, and the Army. Within the topic of traumatic brain injuries will be a review of the important literature and an overview of the problem behaviors. When investigating traumatic brain injury’s problem behaviors, both public and private events of those recovering are important and relevant targets for examination and rehabilitation work. The presentation on post-traumatic stress disorder behaviors will look at the taxonomy of those behaviors. These are usually stated behaviorally but very broadly, for example, stressors, alterations in cognition or mood, or guilt. Each of these and many more behaviors can be defined much more specifically, then examined and researched behaviorally to help ameliorate the needs of returning veterans.

professionals in the field; BCBA at all levels including through BCBA-D

Psychosocial interventions have much to offer youth in medical and educational settings. Administrators need to perceive costs of time and resources being outweighed by health benefits. Being specific and operationally defining terms can aid interdisciplinary understanding and cooperation. Reinforcement can help develop and maintain positive interactions. Feasibility may be enhanced by using a group format, a cost-effective and efficient way for youth to gain information, share common experiences, and learn from each other and from professionals. The benefits of a group format would not be realized unless a psychosocial intervention were accepted by the youth participating and implemented with fidelity. They must share their own experiences and respectfully listen as others share their experiences and be open to information about how they can improve their well-being. Positive reinforcement can make the experience more rewarding and strengthen specific behaviors such as sharing, listening and participating. Group cohesiveness can be increased by establishing and reinforcing clear expectations. Reinforcement can be helpful for motivating youth to participate in every aspect of the program (role playing, completing assignments). The presenters in this symposium will discuss ways in which the addition of behavior management strategies can enhance acceptability, feasibility and fidelity of psychosocial interventions.

At the completion of this symposium, participants will be able to:

1. State the ways in which behavior management strategies can enhance acceptability, feasibility and fidelity of psychosocial interventions.
2. Describe how behavioral strategies were used to facilitate implementation of a stress-management intervention at a camp for youth with Type 1 diabetes.
3. Describe how behavioral strategies were used to facilitate implementation of a mindfulness intervention in high school physical education classes.
4. Describe how behavioral strategies were used to facilitate implementation of an ACT-based intervention in high school physical education classes.

Behavioral Strategies Facilitating Implementation of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in High School Physical Education Classes Universal social and emotional learning curricula have demonstrated efficacy within a framework providing multi-tiered systems of support and represent promising methods for addressing youth mental health with a broad scope. Unfortunately, implementation of social emotional learning curricula presents multiple barriers to implementation and limited understanding of the processes of change, necessary procedures, relevant contextual variables, and differential impact of curricula on positive student functioning with high school students. Traditional models used to address mental health in adolescents often take a deficit-oriented approach. An emerging developmental model of behavior change incorporates principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Positive Psychology, Behaviorism, Relational Frame Theory, and Evolution Science to target functional classes of behavior and facilitate health-promoting behaviors in youth. Students (n = 118) were recruited from 6 Health/PE classes in a rural, underserved high school. Participants in the enhanced Health/PE condition received 6 weeks of a version of ACT as a universal preventive intervention targeting social and emotional learning skills, sleep hygiene, and physical activity. Behavior management strategies in the form of the Good Behavior Game were used to facilitate cooperation and participation of the high school students. The enhanced Health/PE curriculum was feasibly implemented with satisfaction from students and teachers.

Despite the rise of nicotine vaping and its recent public scares, cigarette smoking remains the single most preventable cause of premature death in the USA and for many other parts of the world. Smoking kills over 7 million people a year. Smoking fits well with the principles of applied behavior analysis because it is a highly repetitious behavior maintained by its consequences. Early applications of functional analysis and conditioning led to promising treatments for helping people stop smoking but as group and individual face-to-face therapies they were hampered high intensity, cost, and low scalability. Fortunately, the rise of digital technologies and telehealth has a recreated the ability for provide behavioral therapies for smoking cessation on a broad scale at lower cost. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a contemporary form of clinical behavior analysis based on Skinner’s philosophy of Radical Behaviorism, is becoming a prominent therapeutic approach to digital and telehealth delivered smoking cessation. ACT teaches functional analysis, present moment awareness, and values-based living to help people cope with urges and stay committed to living smoke free. I will show how my research team translates ACT principles into concrete and highly accessible treatment programs on platforms including telephone-delivered behaviorial coaching, websites, smartphone apps, and chatbots for smoking cessation. This translational research is an iterative process of expert clinician input, user testing, and rapid prototyping. Once developed, we test each of these delivery platforms in both small and large-scale randomized controlled trials comparing the ACT program with standard cognitive behavioral programs. I will share the latest results of these trials and how our interventions have already reached over 50,000 people. I will close with highlighting the future directions of our research, including applications to treatment of obesity.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Dr. Jonathan Bricker’s passion is to scale up behavioral therapies into high reach public health intervention programs.  He is an internationally recognized scientific leader in the behavioral therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). He focuses ACT on skills for self-control, particularly for quitting smoking and other addictions. His programs have been developed and tested on many platforms, including apps, chatbots, websites, and telephone coaching that reach thousands of people daily. Rather than encouraging people to ignore cravings, his approach to ACT is to focus on becoming aware of triggers for cravings and choosing not to act on them. His smoking cessation programs have achieved success rates that are double that of other programs—cutting cigarette use by 75 percent. Dr. Bricker has over 85 scientific publication and has received $14 million in US Government NIH grants, predominantly for WebQuit, iCanQuit and the TALK study of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for smoking cessation. His research and expert testimony was instrumental in Washington State passing a law to increase the minimum age of tobacco sales to 21.

He founded and leads the Health And Behavioral Innovations in Technology lab (which goes by the apt acronym: HABIT), which is part of the Public Health Sciences Division, at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. Dr. Bricker’s expertise in his field has led him to his current role of senior editor of the journal, Addiction. His TEDx talk, “The Secret to Self-Control” has been viewed nearly 5 million times, and has been translated into ten languages.

In 2005 Ioannidis proclaimed “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” RetractionWatch has cataloged over 20,000 scientific papers that have been withdrawn since 2010. The “replication crisis” is not the result of a few bad actors but rather is a systems problem. This presentation reviews “replication crisis” from a behavioral systems analysis perspective, identifies the metatcontogencies of the “countability culture” in academia and research that maintain the problem, and proposes solutions based on open science practices, ethical standards and methodological pluralism, noting that OBM research has been a leader in this regard.

Researchers, scholars, scientists, and graduate students.

Donald Hantula earned undergraduate degrees from Emory University and graduate degrees from University of Notre Dame and is currently with the Department of Psychology, Decision making Laboratory, and Interdisciplinary Program in Applied Behavior Analysis at Temple University. He has previously held academic positions in Occupational Health Promotion at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Human Resource Management at King’s College and Management Information Systems at St. Joseph’s University, and also as Director of Decision, Risk and Management Sciences at the National Science Foundation. He is the immediate past editor of Perspectives on Behavior Science and presently serves as Coordinator of the ABAI Publications Board and on the ABAI VCS board. He has published over 100 articles and chapters and his research interests include finding rational explanations for seemingly irrational decisions, quantitative analysis of behavior, consumer choices for sustainable products and practices, integrating behavioral and digital technology and ethical implications of OBM.

This presentation will argue that what might be called “The Nurture Consilience” provides a framework for guiding the further evolution of our societies. E. O. Wilson describes consilience as “the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation.” I will prevent evidence from evolutionary biology, behavior analysis, development, clinical, and social psychology, and medicine about the nurturing conditions that humans need to thrive and the toxic conditions that undermine wellbeing and promote the development of a constellation of psychological, behavioral, and health problems. Research has identified programs, policies, and practices that replace toxic conditions with environments that limit opportunities and influences for problem behavior, richly reinforce diverse forms of prosocial behavior, and cultivate psychological flexibility. However, advocacy for free market economics has corrupted virtually every sector of society; practices in business, health care, education, criminal justice, media, and government have been selected by their contribution to the wealth of a small segment of the population; the majority of people have been harmed. I will describe how we can evolve societies that foster general wellbeing, by creating contingencies that select practices that minimize harm and contribute to the general wellbeing.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

It is 2020 and we are hoping to get online teaching better than 20/20! We are a team of teachers who have one common goal: put good quality behavior analysts in the field. In our own unique way, we strive to create content that is not only best practices, but also tech-friendly. It has to transcend through the opaqueness of online teaching. Our students generally are full-time applied behavior analysis professionals who are preparing for their Behavior Analysis Certification Board's certification. So, we have to utilize teaching tools that only enhance and then sharpen their behavior analysis portfolio. This panel aims to dissect various layers of teaching tools we use to reach this goal. Specifically, tools such as discussion board, open licensing, assignment, and group projects will be featured.

Graduate students, instructors, University faculty

The Practical Functional Assessment and Skill-Based Treatment process has been shown to reduce problem behavior by teaching individuals functional communication, toleration of delays to reinforcement, and contextually appropriate behavior during those delays. Teaching procedures typically involved some form of escape extinction. Some settings and circumstances, however, have necessitated the development of procedures that do not rely on escape extinction for their efficacy. One promising model, called the Enhanced Choice Model (ECM, Rajaraman, et al. 2019), involves the participant having the choice to (a) participate in treatment sessions, (b) leave the treatment sessions and access reinforcers noncontingently, or (c) leaving the treatment context altogether (e.g., going back to their regular classroom). This current symposium highlights extensions of this model to a public-school setting in which three educators learned and implemented treatment components as a means of generalizing treatment outcomes. The second presentation will examine specific mands as a generalized outcome of the public school application. The third presentation describes a distance-based telehealth case in which the caregivers implemented all assessment and treatment components. The final presentation will be a literature review on the tendency for individuals to prefer contingent reinforcement, a potential factor in the efficacy of the ECM model.

The target audience for this session includes practicing behavior analysts who oversee behavior change programs that address severe problem and behavioral scientists who would like to learn more about the extent to which organisms will allocate their responding to contingent vs. non-contingent access to reinforcement when concurrent schedules of reinforcement are available.

Santiago, Hanley, Moore, and Jin (2016) showed that the interview-informed synthesized contingency analysis (IISCA; see Hanley, Jin, Vanselow, & Hanratty, 2014) and skill-based treatment process can result in socially validated outcomes when caregivers serve as interventionists during treatment sessions. However, many families who would benefit from receiving similar functional analytic services do not have access to professionals trained to implement functional analyses or function-based treatments. Advancements in teleconferencing technology may allow families without access to local professional support to receive functional analytic services. For example, Suess et al. (2016) demonstrated that when a BCBA provides implementation support via teleconference, parents can assess and treat their children’s problem behavior in their homes. We taught parents of children with autism to implement the IISCA and skill-based treatment process in their homes exclusively through teleconference support. To address additional safety concerns in the home setting, the enhanced choice model of treatment (Rajaraman et al., 2019) was used with one participant. Parents achieved differentiated functional analyses and a 100% reduction in problem behavior relative to baseline.

The voice and inclusion of people of diverse cultural identities is expanding within the world and within our discipline. This expansion presents both tensions and possibilities. Ideally, applied behavior analysts should be developing increasingly more cultural responsiveness in all aspects of research and practice. That is not the case. Cultural responsiveness is closely yoked with lived experience, social justice, and the kyriarchy. The purpose of this presentation is to explore worldviews in the context of coloniality and to then relate this to our disciplinary and personal responses to power and efforts to contribute to a more socially just world. This includes consideration of global trends, the aims and history of our discipline, womanist and determinist worldviews, and ethics. The presentation will close with a discussion of pathways to cultural responsiveness and social justice.

Behavior analysts interested in culture, social justice, applied research, practice

Derived relational responding (DRR) has a seat at the operant table. The present symposium seeks to extend the reach of DRR and relational training procedures to populations not often targeted using methods not often implemented. First, we explore relational training efforts within an elderly population and discuss implications of DRR as it relates to neuroplasticity. Second, we discuss the novel ocular observing responses and their relation to DRR. Finally, we take an inside look to PEAK-Life by exploring both basic and applied implications of its pending release.

intermediate-advanced

Implicit bias refers to "actions or judgments that are under the control of automatically activated evaluation, without the performer's awareness of that causation" (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998, p. 1464). Related professionals, such as education, mental health, and medical experts, are working to address the topic of racial and ethnic bias, as well as the impact on the communities in which they serve. Though this is the case in surrounding fields, this topic continues to be a less discussed area within behavior analysis. Mental health researchers have shown consequences of racial bias leads to various negative outcomes for diverse consumers. Implicit bias research has also been well studied in the educational field related to its overuse of punishment procedures. Lastly, medical field professionals have discovered the connection between implicit bias and medical intervention used for certain racial groups. Given the amount of pre-existing research, behavior analysts can take advantage of the existing knowledge base to better serve stakeholders of the field, our clients. This panel will discuss methods for behavior analysts to examine their own biases with the purpose of rendering culturally and socially valid services.

BCBA, BCBA-D

In recent years technological progress has made it possible to design more and more modern vehicles that satisfy new safety standards required by society and law. Despite this and the many awareness-raising campaigns aimed at promoting safer driving in line with contemporary society values, the number of driving accidents has been far from zero. One reason is surely because very few have so far considered the matter from a behavioral point of view. The development of an app to deliver consequences to drivers is an essential but small part of a wide-ranging project that must necessarily involve all the relevant stakeholders, if we really want to impact our driving habits.

OBMers, entrepreneurs with truck-fleets, HSE and logistics managers

This talk will discuss learning arrangements – or the combination of instructional components that affect skill acquisition. Often, skill acquisition programming is developed and evaluated by comparing some instructional package to no instructional package (baseline responding). This is useful toward developing technologies that are likely to produce the intended outcomes. Many years of such research has produced a large “toolbox” of applied behavior analysis intervention approaches. But, for an instructor working with a specific learner, what combination of instructional components should the instructor choose? This talk will discuss the comparative effectiveness of different learning arrangements and instructional components that promote both effective and efficient learning. Research that will be discussed includes components such as trial arrangements and mastery criterioa and how these components differentially affect skill acquisition.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Daniel M. Fienup is an Associate Professor of Applied Behavior Analysis at Teachers College, Columbia University. He received his Master’s in Applied Behavior Analysis from Southern Illinois University and his Ph.D. in School Psychology from Illinois State University. Dr. Fienup and his students conduct research on instructional design and educational performance. Dr. Fienup is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Behavioral Education and The Analysis of Verbal Behavior. He also serves on the editorial board for Behavior Analysis in Practice, the Psychological Record, Behavior Analysis: Research and Practice, Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, and Behavior Development. He serves on the Licensed Behavior Analyst New York state board and is a past board member of the New York State Association for Behavior Analysis.

The functional analysis is used to identify the function of problem behavior (Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, & Richman, 1982/1994), which in-turn, is used to develop a function-based treatment to decrease the problem behavior (Hanley, Iwata, & McCord, 2003). The purpose of the current symposium is to present four studies that investigate a variety questions related to the functional analysis and function-based treatments. The first presentation will examine the effects of the functional analysis on problem behavior outside of session. The second will be on the evaluation of the trial-based functional analysis to assess problem behavior evoked by ritual interruption. The third will be on the utilization of an indirect assessment to systematically individualize the initial component durations used during schedule thinning following functional communication training. The fourth will use a translational approach to examine whether the history of reinforcement affects resurgence. Dr. Megan Boyle of Missouri State University will then provide a discussion on each study and provide insight on how research and practice on functional analysis and function-based treatments continue to evolve.

Clinicians and individuals in academia

Indirect assessments are widely used in the development of behavior interventions. To date, there are no indirect assessments that can be used to evaluate the extent to which children who engage in problem behavior wait to receive reinforcement. However, there are effective behavior interventions to increase waiting. Functional communication training (FCT) and schedule thinning have been identified as effective interventions to increase waiting in children who engage in problem behavior maintained by social contingencies. Therefore, we conducted three studies to evaluate the use of an indirect assessment to increase waiting within an FCT and schedule treatment package in children with developmental disabilities. The purpose of the study was to develop the Waiting Assessment Interview Tool (WAIT) and to use the WAIT completed by informants to systematically individualize the initial component durations used during the schedule thinning procedure. A secondary purpose was to use the informants’ preferred waiting times as final waiting targets for all subjects.

This symposium will address how economic demand can be used to understand a variety of issues, with a focus on substance use disorders such as smoking, alcohol use, and non-prescription stimulant use. Results generated using hypothetical, as well as laboratory-based, demand tasks will be described. Although these methods can, and have, been applied to a broad range of topics, some potential limitations will also be explored. The symposium will end with a discussion about the implications of the research presented.

Individuals interested in behavioral economics and how it can be applied to a variety of topics, including substance use disorders.

The FDA has authority to regulate cigarette nicotine content. Reducing nicotine might reduce smoking. In an ongoing study, smokers (n=30) completed operant sessions. Participants worked for cigarette puffs across a range of fixed-ratio requirements (Lindsley plunger; FR-10 to FR-10,000 for 3-puffs), with full- (14.8 mg/g) and reduced-nicotine (4.8, 2.2, or 1.3 mg/g across participants) cigarettes available alone and concurrently. Following initial demand sessions, participants were given reduced-nicotine cigarettes to smoke over a three-week exposure period. Participants returned to the laboratory to repeat demand sessions. Demand did not differ between full-nicotine and reduced-nicotine cigarettes. Similarly, as full-nicotine FR increased, concurrently-available reduced-nicotine cigarette consumption increased. There was a reduction in demand for full- and reduced-nicotine content cigarettes following the exposure period in the single-item but not concurrent demand procedures. Data suggest similar demand across nicotine content; that prolonged nicotine-reduction might decrease cigarette demand; and that reduced-nicotine cigarettes may substitute for full-nicotine cigarettes.

Children are diagnosed with a feeding disorder when they do not eat an adequate quantity or variety of foods, sustain an appropriate weight, or grow (Palmer & Horn, 1978; Piazza & Carroll-Hernandez, 2004). Applied behavior analytic interventions have proven effective in the treatment of pediatric feeding disorders (Volkert & Piazza, 2012). Preference for flavors develop in a variety of ways in typical eating individuals (Capaldi, 1996), however, if and how preference occurs for individuals with feeding disorders is less known. The current symposium includes two studies that evaluated preference for nonpreferred foods and examined shifts in preference before, during, and after applied behavior analytic intervention in children with feeding disorders. An additional study used preferred foods during treatment involving a high-probability sequence with and without escape extinction to increase consumption of healthy, nonpreferred foods. The effectiveness of applied behavior analytic interventions to treat feedings problems may be influenced by treatment integrity. The final study examines various components of behavior skills training in isolation and in combination to increase correct implementation of feeding protocols.

Board Certified Behavior Analysts

The high-probability (high-p) instructional sequence is a non-intrusive procedure that involves the presentation of a series of high-p requests followed by 1 low-probability request. To date, only 9 studies have examined its effectiveness to treat food selectivity in children, and results of these studies have been mixed. In the current study, we used a multielement design to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of 2 iterations of the high-p sequence to increase the consumption of healthy food in picky eaters. One iteration of the high-p instructional sequence consisted of the researcher presenting 3 bites of a preferred food on a spoon to the child and the other consisted of the researcher presenting 3 bites of an empty spoon to the child. Preliminary results show that nonremoval of the spoon may be necessary to increase consumption for some children. We will discuss the results within the context of treatment implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research.

Pediatric feeding problems are present in approximately 50% of the general population and 90% of children with autism spectrum disorder. Much research has been conducted to evaluate behavioral interventions aimed at addressing these problems. In research and clinical protocols, it’s reported that trained staff implement the treatments. However, it’s unclear how much of the variability observed in the results of behavioral interventions for feeding is a result of differences in the therapist's ability to implement the treatment reliably. This study evaluated different training packages containing all of or some of the following components: written instructions, verbal instructions, video modeling, rehearsal, feedback, and task clarification. Three groups were evaluated across staff members and two groups were evaluated across caregivers. It is expected that the use of these treatment components will increase protocol adherences across novel staff and caregivers with varying levels of acquisition conditional to the group they are exposed to.

This symposium presents some of the latest developments in behavioral variability research. The opening paper outlines a comparison of video-modelling (VM) and VM plus lag schedules to increase variability of intraverbal responses to social questions among adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Issues with generalization and maintenance of intervention outcomes and how to measure same will be discussed. The next study used lag schedules to increase variability in toy selections of children with ASD. There was an associated increase in appropriate play and decrease in stereotypy, while multiple generalization probes revealed generalization across people and settings but not stimuli. Next is a long-awaited investigation into the level of variability in activities of neurotypical preschoolers that details a novel measurement system. This study provides important information for those working on increasing variability in play and other activities in children with developmental disabilities; these are increasingly frequent topics of applied variability research. The final paper describes a basic study investigating generalization of reinforced variability in rats. In the applied field, researchers are striving to understand generalization effects of variation across multiple repertoires; this study adds to our understanding of these processes. This set of papers, together with our Discussant, the leading expert in this field, aims to address some of the many interesting questions that have been raised as more and more researchers identify behavioral variability as an important field of study.

BCBAs, BCBA-Ds, anyone interested in variability in basic or applied fields.

This study investigated the effects of video modelling alone (VM) and video modelling plus a lag 2 schedule of reinforcement (VM + lag 2) on the variability of intraverbal responses to social questions for two adults with autism. It used an alternating treatments design with embedded multiple baseline. The questions ‘How are you?’, ‘What do you like to do?’, and ‘Can you tell me something about you?’ were targeted in this study, with different questions being randomly allocated to either VM, VM + lag or best treatment conditions. Variability in responding was measured by calculating, for each session, the mean number of responses from which each one differed. For both participants, variability was higher in the VM + lag 2 condition, hence, this was used in the best treatment condition. Novel responses emerged in both treatment conditions so, while variability did not increase in the VM alone condition, participants did learn new responses from the video models. A one-month maintenance check revealed that responses to questions targeted with VM+ lag 2 were more variable than those targeted by VM alone. During generalization sessions in novel settings, variability was concordant with that observed in the training location for all questions.

Classrooms are complex environments that require teachers to implement a variety of classroom management strategies to minimize problem behavior and maximize learning time. Given the difficulty of implementing behavioral interventions in the school setting, there is a need for teacher training and support. This symposium presents school-based intervention studies focused on teacher consultation to assist public school teachers in creating a classroom context where they use positive, proactive behavior management strategies to foster success for students with behavioral difficulties. Study 1 promoted equity in teachers' use of behavior-specific praise through self-monitoring and performance feedback. Studies 2 and 3 used the Prevent-Teach-Reinforce consultation model to improve classroom behavior of students with behavioral difficulties. Study 4 focused on promoting positive teacher interactions with students and decreasing student off-task behavior through teacher training on using differential reinforcement of other behaviors (DRO) and response cost token economy as a class-wide intervention.

Practitioners

This presentation introduces the results of a study that examined the impact of equity-focused teacher self-monitoring and performance feedback on establishing proportionate praise and discipline practices across students in four elementary school classrooms. A multiple-baseline design across participants was used to demonstrate that training teachers to practice self-monitoring and providing equity-focused performance feedback increased all participating teachers’ delivery of proportionate behavior-specific praise and decrease negative feedback given to diverse students.

The Prevent-Teach-Reinforce (PTR) model presents a useful teacher consultation tool to disseminate evidence-based practices into the classroom setting for teachers to create behavioral changes of students with behavioral challenges. This presentation outlines the impact of using the PTR model on three students with autism spectrum disorders in secondary school classrooms. A multiple-baseline across participants design was employed to demonstrate positive outcomes of using PTR in increasing appropriate classroom behavior and reducing problem behavior of the target students. Social validity assessments indicated both groups of students and teachers were highly satisfied with the process and outcomes of using the PTR model.

This paper presents the outcomes of implementing PTR within the multi-tiered systems of support for three students engaging in high levels of problem behavior served in three classrooms at two public elementary schools. A multiple baseline across participants design was used to evaluate the impact of using the prevent-teach-reinforce (PTR) model on student problem and replacement behaviors. Findings indicated that the classroom teachers effectively participated in the PTR assessment and intervention process, implementing the PTR intervention with fidelity, which resulted in decreases in problem behavior and increases in replacement behavior for all three participating students in both target and generalization academic times.

The presentation describes the outcomes of using differential reinforcement of other behaviors (DRO) and response cost as a class-wide intervention in implementing a token economy in one kindergarten and one 1st-grade classrooms. Using an alternating treatments design with an additional baseline phase, the study compared the impact of using DRO versus response cost on student off-task behavior and teacher positive and negative statements. Results indicated that while both DRO and response cost were effective in decreasing all six target students’ off-task behavior, three students engaged in lower levels of off-task behavior during DRO. One teacher's negative statements slightly decreased during implementation of both procedures.  

Leaders, managers, organizational members, and consumers in human service industry.

Current literature suggests most pairing procedures are used to teach the acquisition of skill, while few studies aim to decrease challenging behaviors through the use of stimulus or verbal pairing procedures. The presentations in this symposium will examine the use of pairing in the form of visual stimuli, as well as pairing specific verbal cues, to target a decrease in challenging behaviors surrounding restricted, repetitive interests and compliance, in preschool-age children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The first presentation will include research on the use of green and red 2D visuals to decrease the presence of inappropriate train behavior and sounds, in a three-year-old male with autism. The second presentation will examine an intervention focused on increasing compliance and flexible responding within a classroom setting for three males with ASD, by pairing specific verbal cues for each expected response. The third presentation will include research on decreasing the frequency of inappropriate door-related behaviors demonstrated by three, three-year-old males with ASD, through the use of 2D visuals located on the doors and specific rules delivered to each participant. Results from all three interventions suggest that using stimulus and/or verbal pairing procedures, along with systematic fading techniques and schedules of reinforcement, are effective in increasing the opportunities for learning by decreasing challenging and repetitive behaviors.

The target audience for this symposium is practicing behavior analysts.

Engaging in highly restricted play or having fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity, is a core symptom associated with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis (DSM-V). This may result in excessive amounts of time spent engaging with, or talking about, items of a specific theme. In the current study, a stimulus pairing intervention was utilized to decrease the presence of train-related fixated interest behaviors as demonstrated by a four-year-old male with autism. Teaching phases included systematically increasing the amount of time the participant was required to refrain from engaging in train-related behaviors or sounds in the presence of a red 2-D picture card. Train-related fixated interest behaviors were encouraged during optional, designated breaks within a specified space, as identified by a green 2-D picture card. This space encouraged cooperative play between the participant and clinician, with train materials present. Results suggest this intervention produced an effective way to decrease the presence of fixated interest behaviors, and to increase engagement with a variety of age-appropriate activities.

For individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), learning to discriminate between stimuli can influence the ability to respond to multiple cues across varying contexts. These foundational skills can lead to larger gains in the generalization of skills, which supports an overall greater flexibility for individuals with ASD. By learning to increase flexibility when responding to multiple cues, individuals can learn to discriminate when inflexibility is acceptable. The goal of the present study was to use discrimination training to teach three children with ASD to comply with negotiable versus non-negotiable demands in a classroom setting, along with the reduction of stereotyped responses. Compliant responses to both non-negotiable and negotiable demands were reinforced on a fixed-ratio schedule. The participants received tokens for compliant responses, and the reinforcement schedule was thinned as each participant’s compliant behavior improved. Non-compliance to negotiable demands was also reinforced by allowing escape from the demand. During instances of non-compliance to non-negotiable demands, researchers utilized escape extinction. Results demonstrate improvement in each child’s compliant behavior to non-negotiable demands, as well as increased compliance with negotiable demands. In addition, data reveal a reduction in stereotyped and/or defiant behaviors for all children compared to baseline levels, for both types of demands.

Individuals with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) commonly engage in high rates of and high intensity restrictive or repetitive behaviors (DSM-V). These may lead to stigmatization, decreased opportunities to learn from the environment, and in extreme cases, may put an individual at risk for injury or even death. The current study examined the use of a stimulus pairing intervention to decrease the frequency of door-related restrictive behaviors as demonstrated by three, three-year-old males with autism. Colored cards were introduced and paired with specific rules to teach the individuals when a door was and was not accessible, and an error correction procedure was put in place. Door-related restrictive behaviors were encouraged with designated doors that did not affect the safety of the individual, as identified by a green 2-D picture card. Results suggest this intervention produced an effective way to decrease the presence of door-related behaviors for all participants. Future research includes determining effective training techniques to allow caregivers to implement similar stimulus pairing procedures in order to promote maintenance and generalization of the learned skill.

The panel session will provide ABAI student members pivotal perspectives from three professionals in navigating and communicating with the professional world of applied behavior analysis (ABA). This 50-minute panel session will allow ABAI members to interact with professionals in a conversation-like format. As well as ask questions regarding effective networking styles. The three professionals, Dr. Ross, Dr. Baker, and Dr. Joslyn, come from diverse backgrounds of ABA, including areas such as special education in PK-12 schools, behavioral gerontology, and crime and delinquency. The panel will address topics such as why networking is an important skill to acquire, how to make a great first impression with big names in the field, and tips and tricks on how to develop and improve one’s skill set. Discussions of interactions will not be limited to interacting with professionals in the field of ABA but also prospective mentors, employers, and clients. This panel intends to address questions we may have when networking with professionals. The panel seeks to aid students in learning how to make strong connections to increase their success as professionals in the field of ABA.

ABAI members, graduate students, and other individuals who want to learn how to network and communicate with other professionals in the field effectively.

Shortly after the development of robust methods to analyze the function of problem behavior, researchers and clinicians began using this information to design function-based interventions. Some of the earliest interventions began with reinforcing appropriate, alternative behavior and providing the reinforcer that maintains problem behavior on a time-based schedule. As these procedures advanced, researchers and clinicians began bringing function-based treatment under stimulus control. The effects of function-based intervention are robust and sustainable. Additionally, function-based intervention allows for a wide-range of adaptations, based on an individual's problem behavior and the current context. More recently, researchers have begun evaluating these adaptations in the context of promoting long-term change for individuals in their everyday environment. In this symposium, presenters will focus on some of the adaptations, including stimulus fading during Functional Communication Training, schedule thinning using chained and multiple schedules, and using differential reinforcement of low rates to increase the time between emission of mands.

BCBAs and Applied Researchers

Stimulus fading has previously been used to increase compliance with an aversive activity or routine. However, there is limited data to support its use to decrease challenging behavior associated with an activity or routine. In this study, the authors investigated the use of parent-implemented functional communication training with stimulus fading to reduce challenging behavior associated with a home routine. One 6-year-old male diagnosed with autism participated in this study. The functional analysis indicated he engaged in challenging behavior to terminate the routine of throwing trash away. The authors then conducted a treatment evaluation to assess the efficacy of functional communication training with stimulus fading in reducing challenging behavior. Results indicated that functional communication training and stimulus fading was effective in decreasing challenging behavior and increasing socially appropriate communication. We plan to conduct the procedures with one to two additional participants. Implications for practice and directions for future research will be discussed.

Functional analysis (FA) methodology and function-based treatment is a constantly evolving science informed by both issues encountered in practice and recent scientific literature. This symposium includes studies on the role of activity transitions, synthesized contingencies, and treatment integrity in the assessment and treatment of problem behavior. The first study illustrates the role of transitions across activities of varying preferences in the maintenance of escape-maintained problem behavior for individuals with developmental disabilities and offers a model for assessing and developing a reinforcement-based treatment. The second study compares outcomes of isolated and synthesized contingency FAs and functional communication training (FCT) based on the outcomes of each FA. In a final phase, experimenters evaluated participant preference for treatment. The third study evaluates the effects of reduced treatment integrity on problem behavior treated with FCT, and then illustrates the use of a booster-style intervention designed to mitigate the effects of reduced treatment integrity during FCT under a multiple schedule arrangement.

Researchers and clinicians working on functional analysis and function-based treatment of problem behavior

In this symposium, the authors will present research on self-control training (SCT) in natural settings. The first presenter will review the literature on self-control training procedures that aim to instruct individuals to make more optimal choices that produce delayed results. To evaluate the effectiveness of SCT, we conducted a quantitative analysis of articles published between 1998 and 2019 across peer-reviewed journals. Findings from the literature review revealed that the four most utilized intervention components are (a) delay fading, (b) intervening activities, (c) rules, and (d) signals. Overall, these four treatment components have been shown to be most effective. The second presenter will discuss her study that evaluated both the presentation of rules and providing a task demand to complete, concurrent with the delay to the larger reinforcer. This study evaluates both of these interventions singly as well as in a combined package intervention. Results indicated that while both concurrent activities and rules had an effect on the majority of children, the package intervention was the most consistent and effective intervention.

The current symposium serves participants interested in learning treatment for impulsive responding.

Behavior analysts work in diverse settings including clinics, centers, schools, hospitals, and other large, community-based "systems". Behavior analysts also work with a diverse population of clients (e.g., those with developmental disabilities, mental health disorders, comorbid diagnoses) and employees (e.g., direct care staff, nurses, doctors, teachers, behavior technicians, behavior analysts, administrators). Providing high-quality orientation, onboarding, and training experiences to employees with diverse experience and education requires significant development, implementation, and evaluation of these "staff training" systems to ensure the best outcomes for clients and their staff. Using a behavioral systems approach, each of the authors in this symposium will describe the orientation, onboarding, and/or training systems within their large systems while discussing the evaluation required to further inform system development.

Behavior Analysts, Supervisors, Administrators

Functional Behavior Assessment is an evidence-based practice used within high-quality ABA therapy programs to assess and help treat challenging behaviors exhibited by individuals. The specific pinpoints associated with performing these skills require training and supervision of clinicians, especially in large agencies providing geographically diverse applied behavior analysis services. Several effective staff training formats exist including behavioral skills training, video modeling, and performance feedback. The efficiency with which large agencies (and even educational institutions with geographically diverse learners) provide effective staff training opportunities is of great importance to our field and the clients we serve. Using a group experimental design, the current study will explore the effectiveness of various staff training formats on the functional behavior assessment skills of clinicians who provide ABA therapy to individuals with ASD. Results will include changes in observed performance of FBA skills across indirect assessments, descriptive assessments, functional analyses, data summarization and analysis, and reporting. Clinician feedback on preference for training formats and client data will also be discussed.

While much of the early research in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) focused on individuals with mental health disorders and individuals with developmental disabilities, more recent history in ABA with individuals with developmental disabilities has flourished while its active role with those with mental health diagnoses has diminished. Additionally, there is a proliferation of comorbid diagnosis of mental health conditions for individuals with developmental disabilities such as ASD. There is also a focus on utilizing psychotropic medication as either a primary or supplementary treatment component for behavioral excesses. The current paper describes an in-service staff training model aimed at orienting psychiatric nursing and support staff to the field of Applied Behavior Analysis, and how ABA can be an integral part of a multidisciplinary approach to assessment and treatment in an acute in-patient psychiatric unit for children and adolescents. Melding a psychiatric nursing model aimed at both acute behavioral stabilization and medication assessment and management with a functional behavioral approach and the resulting barriers to integration will be discussed.

Being sensitive and understanding one’s emotions and the emotions of others is considered critical to social behavior. Some may fail to adequately develop such sensitivity and understanding without direct intervention. One such intervention is to help a learner to tact private stimuli arising from their body as a particular emotion. Such training relies upon inferring what stimuli might be accompanying certain “emotional behavior.” This approach assumes that there are readily identifiable unique private stimuli associated with such behavior. The task is to help a learner identify and name (tact) these stimuli. Another approach is to help children to identify emotions that others are experiencing based upon facial expression. It is assumed that there are readily identifiable facial expressions linked to consistent private emotions. Analysis of data from hundreds of neuroscience studies and thousands of subjects suggest both of these approaches may be flawed. This symposium will first present neuroscience data which challenge the assumption that there are unique private stimuli or brain circuitry associated with emotion, and that suggests there is no evidence that facial expressions reflect emotion. It will then suggest a formulation and interventions consistent with both these data and a consequential contingency analysis.

Professional involved in the teaching or behavioral intervention with those who may be developmentally challenged, and those involved with clinical behavioral intervention.

Credentialed behavior analysts are expected to follow the Professional and Ethical Compliance Code (BACB, 2014). The Code itself provides general and specific guidance on acceptable behavior. As the practice of behavior analysis continues to expand (i.e., number of credentialed behavior analysts, breadth of applications of the science, and depth of application within a practice area), discussion of how the Code applies to various situations and variables is important. An area of need is understanding how credentialed behavior analysts and support personnel (e.g., finance, human resource) perceive the application of the Code in practice. Understanding these perceptions can guide the profession, organizations, and individual practitioners in developing preventive and responsive ethical practices. Additionally, current practice situations (i.e., rural practice and international dissemination) warrant specific discussion and relevance to specific Codes. The purpose of this symposium is to share survey data of employees from a mid-sized human service agency regarding ethical perceptions, discuss practice of behavior analysis in rural areas, and the ethical international dissemination of behavior analysis.

Practice organization administration, practitioners, university personnel responsible for training behavior analysts, supervisors of students completing fieldwork requirements, and students.

The practice of Applied Behavior Analysis in rural communities provides ample fodder for unique situations and ethical code violations. Surveys were sent to Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) in the state of Oklahoma, a state with only 103 certified individuals, regarding ethical codes most observed to be violated. In addition to few practitioners in the state, almost 80% of Oklahoma’s certificants live within a 20 mile radius from two main hubs of service delivery. This leaves a small number to provide services for the rest of the state's mostly rural areas. Results of the survey indicate multiple relationships, poor supervision and boundary of competence as the greatest areas of concern. Aside from the short supply of supervisors putting a strain on the supervisee: supervisor ratio, other possible variables that contribute to these violations include a lack of resources within the schools, physical distance to other BCBAs for referrals, working in tight knit communities, and within a culture that defaults to the use of punishment procedures. Knowing the most violated codes within a particular community allows preventative strategies to be implemented. In this case, having a network of mentors, holiday gift reminders, and strict practices for social media are a few of those suggested for our rural practioners.

The current symposium is a synthesis of efforts at various points in the Relational Training System assessment and curriculum. The first talk provides a conceptualization as to how we might make better-informed decisions relative to program selection and intervention approaches in the context of PEAK using a case conceptualization tool. The second talk investigates relationships between derived relational responding and executive processing deficits in children. Finally, we highlight pre-post change scores relative to the PEAK Comprehensive Assessment for children diagnosed with autism given exposure to PEAK in a special education context. Implications and utility of these findings are discussed.

beginning-intermediate behavior analysts

The PEAK Relational Training System contains a comprehensive assessment and curriculum designed to target global language and cognitive skills in children with autism and related disabilities. Although research on PEAK has grown considerably, more research is needed within applied contexts in which this tool is likely to be utilized. We conducted PEAK at a special education school over the course of 3 months with 5 children with autism. PEAK instructions was systematically embedded within their school day for up-to 2 hours, supplementing other instructional strategies. The efficacy of PEAK instruction was evaluated using a multiple baseline across skills experimental design, replicated across the 5 children. We overview how this design can be embedded within any applied setting, allowing for the on-going experimental analysis of behavior within sacrificing assurance that children are receiving on-going effective education. In addition, we conducted the PEAK Comprehensive Assessment at the onset of the study and following 3 moths of training, where the PCA provides an estimate of global repertiores across direct training, generalization, equivalence, and relational learning skill sets. Results suggested a significant increase in PCA scores across all participants.

Advances in Relational Frame Theory have begun to allow Applied Behavior Analytic treatments for children with autism to focus on higher-order or global repertiores of behavior. Executive functioning deficits are common in children with autism that can severely impact quality of life in several domains. We review three studies that speak to the importance of targeting executive functioning deficits in children with autism using relational training and testing procedure. The first study provides a comprehensive literature review comparing functional neurological activity when completing traditional executive functioning tasks and when deriving combinatorially entailed relations. Results suggest that common neurological processes are involved in the completion of both tasks. The second study provides another systematic review that shows an exponentiation of research utilizing derived relational responding technologies to teach new skills to children with autism within the major behavior analytic journals. The third study empirically evaluates the construct validity of the PEAK Comprehensive Assessment (PCA) as a tool to measure verbal operants and relational operants that may be related to executive functioning processes. Convergent and divergent components of the PCA are discussed in the context of developing treatments for children with autism from a Relational Frame Theory account.

Promoting Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Relational Training System (PEAK) is a four-volume curriculum targeting Direct Training, Generalization, Equivalence, and Transformation. Research to date has shown behavioral skills training (BST) to be effective at training staff to implement PEAK. While timely, little is known about the extent to which staff’s self-efficacy (or verbal behavior about one’s competency) influences implementation of PEAK. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to determine if a thorough case conceptualization model (CCM) can increase implementer self-efficacy. The CCM was developed to establish problem solving opportunities for implementers and supervisors to use during feedback sessions. Three implementer-child dyads were subjected to a multiple-baseline design wherein implementers were first trained how to implement PEAK before starting treatment as usual (baseline). Next, participants were handed the CCM tool during the instruction phase but were not given any specific feedback on how to use it. Finally, during the feedback phase, all implementers were instructed on how to use the CCM and how to derive feedback from it. Throughout all phases, client PEAK scores, implementation scores from staff, and self-reported self-efficacy Likert rating scale was assessed. Overall, all participants showed increase self-efficacy scores following CCM feedback. Implications will be discussed.

This symposium includes three talks describing procedural variations for the establishment of stimulus control and equivalence classes. The first talk describes an applied go/no-go procedure to establish simple discriminative control over selection responses in two children with autism. The second study describes an alternative method for the establishment of conditional relations between auditory-visual stimuli involving a go/no-go procedure with successive matching. Finally, the third study explored a specific parameter of matching-to-sample training in which the incorrect trial was repeated, suggesting that such procedure enhances maintenance of skills. Overall, these data have directly implications for both basic research and clinical practice

Researchers and clinicians

The current study investigated the conditions necessary for stimulus to acquire control of skill acquisition. Two learners diagnosed with autism, ages 7 and 9, both with long history of little to zero rate of skill acquisition in their ABA programs. Skinner’s (1938) successive method, “Go and no-go” stimulus control training was used to teach pre-mand training with the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS). The successive method was then followed by “Go-right/go-left successive procedure” developed by Harrison (1984), and then Go-right/go-left with simultaneous stimulus presentation (Harlow, 1950). The results show that participants acquired initial discrimination of PECS icons in approximately 88 sessions and maintained the skills 3 months after the introduction of first discrimination method.

To train baseline relations during equivalence class formation, match-to-sample (MTS) is commonly used. When an error occurs during training, feedback is provided but an opportunity to immediately respond a second time to the same trial following an error is typically not provided in studies with advanced learners. Although some equivalence studies within the literature incorporated the procedure of immediately repeating an incorrect trial during baseline, none has compared this to not repeating a trial when an error occurs. The present study made such a comparison. Two different sets of two 4-member equivalence classes of abstract stimuli were established with adults of typical development. Results showed that classes were established with similar accuracy, duration, and number of trials regardless of whether incorrect trials were repeated immediately following an error or not repeated. However, maintenance tests showed that the classes from the repeating a trial condition maintained at higher levels than those from the not repeating a trial condition. A social validity survey indicated that participants strongly preferred the repeating a trial condition. The implications of these results may provide clinicians with an alternative way to use stimulus equivalence-based instruction to facilitate maintenance of classes.

Preface. A Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) holds the minimum credential necessary to offer Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) services within the certificant’s scope of experience/expertise. A BCBA wishing to offer services in their own name, by starting a private practice, faces substantial considerations beyond basic clinical competence. Ethical Considerations. Section 1.02 of the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) Ethics Code provides that BCBAs only offer services within the boundaries of available competence. In addition to basic clinical competence, operating a private ABA practice requires expertise in various administrative areas including: insurance contracts and procedure, personnel management, billing and collections, business law, accounting and payroll, cashflow management, and general business administration. Personal/Market Surveys. To evaluate the practicality of establishing a practice, the prospective entrepreneur should survey: (1) personal resources and existing responsibilities, and (2) the ABA business conditions existing in the prospective geographic market (demand for services, competition, funding sources, population density, traffic, technician availability, pay rates, etc.). Business Plan. A business plan typically reflects: specific goals/expectations, timelines, key personnel, defined target market(s), pro-forma budgets, cost-analyses, detailed consideration of in-house vs. outsourcing of administrative functions, personnel recruitment and training plans, definition and assignment of specific management team functions, policy/procedural documentation, and clinical/administrative quality control.

BCBAs interested in starting or participating in the opening and/or operations of an ABA practice constitute the target audience.

First impressions and experiences are everything to BCBAs, and their experience starts when they sign that first contract at a fieldwork or practicum site. When BACB students look for places of both current and future employment, it begins with their practicums and independent fieldwork experience outcomes, which ultimately shape them as an analyst. The response cost (both physical and financial) on a company of taking a student in and training them is high. When those students leave for employment elsewhere once they reach that pivotal point of credentialing, the reinforcement of taking in students is diminished across the company and the supervising BCBA. So, how do we get them to stay? If students feel supported, engaged, challenged academically and practically, and that they have the opportunity to flourish during their student experiences, they are more likely to stay and begin their analytic career at the sites that they do their fieldwork hours. We seek to discuss our current mentor program, both content and structure, and to assess its ability to produce competent, critical thinking, driven, and ethical future BCBAs, and the rate at which those BCBAs ultimately remain to begin employment with our company.

This event targets BCBAs who supervise or are interested in becoming supervisors.

Behavior analysis can bring together multidisciplinary teams responsible for effective programming for diverse clients with concurrent mental health and medical diagnoses. Even so, the early experiences of many ABA program participants and supervisees are characterized by exposure to only a small slice of the many client populations who could benefit from ABA. This panel assembles professionals, professors, and practitioners spanning community practice, medical and university environments to address audience questions on the intersection between behavior analysis and treatment of behavior related to mental health. Discussion points will include answers to recent questions posed by community members and students to university professors and those disseminating behavior analysis on social media, including: What ethical considerations are involved as I treat behavior in a person with concurrent mental health diagnoses? How do we form effective collaborations in mental health and medical hospital settings? How does behavior analysis look in an interdisciplinary environment, and how can I expand my boundaries of competence related to more diverse settings?

Intermediate skill behavior analysis level

Many assessment tools have been developed to assess a specific range of behaviors with specific populations. In addition, they often have a substantial body of research supporting their effectiveness to do so. Two examples of this are Functional Analysis (FA) methodology and the Performance Diagnostic Checklist (PDC), with the former most commonly used with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to assess significant behavioral excesses, and the latter most commonly used with adults in organizations to assess barriers to effective work performance. Such tools may have greater utility outside of these immediate areas and this symposium will present two examples of such expansion. The first presentation will discuss the use of FA procedures with 10 individuals on a simple data-entry task. Results suggest that the various antecedent and consequence variables presented were not differentially effective and that goal setting and rule-governed behavior may be responsible for the maintenance of behavior. The second presentation will discuss the use of the PDC to improve the health behaviors of four athletes. The resulting interventions produced some mixed results and the implications and future directions will be discussed. The symposium will conclude with some comments and thoughts from our esteemed discussant.

Practicing BCBAs, BCBAs who are administrators or supervise others, BCBAs practicing in areas of health behaviors or in the areas of sports performance

Within certain areas of healthcare, it has been documented that treating patients with compassion and empathy can have important benefits, such as increasing patient satisfaction, enhancing adherence to treatment, and improving clinical outcomes (e.g., Beach, et al., 2006; Hojat et al., 2011; Weiss et al., 2017). Treating oneself and others with compassion is also believed to promote individual wellbeing and improve mental health (e.g. McClelland, et al., 2018; Neff, 2011; Scarlet et al., 2017). While current empirical support for these outcomes is mixed (Kirby, Tellegen & Steindl, 2017), there is increasing scientific interest in the benefits of compassion. That broad-based interest notwithstanding, the data-driven field of behavior analysis has only recently begun to advocate for the importance of relationship variables that could positively impact our work (e.g., Taylor, LeBlanc & Nosik, 2018; Leblanc, Taylor & Marchese, 2019). This presentation reviews survey data documenting parent perception of compassionate care by behavior analysts, as well as behavior analysts’ impressions of training in this area. Behavioral responses that may comprise compassionate care will be presented, along with considerations for how compassionate care of our clients and ourselves can enhance our work as behavior analysts and potentially improve clinical outcomes.

BCBAs, BCBA-Ds, BCaBAs, supervisors and trainers of behavior analysts, autism specialists.

Dr. Bridget A. Taylor is co-founder and CEO of Alpine Learning Group and is Senior Clinical Advisor for Rethink. She holds a Doctorate of Psychology from Rutgers University, and received her Master’s degree in Early Childhood Special Education from Columbia University. She is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and a Licensed Psychologist. Dr. Taylor is President of the Behavior Analyst Certification Board and serves on the Autism Advisory Group for the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. She is past Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. She also serves on the editorial board of Behavioral Interventions. Active in the autism research community, Dr. Taylor has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on effective interventions for autism. She is a national and international presenter and serves in an advisory capacity for autism education and treatment programs both locally and abroad. Dr. Taylor was recently recognized by the Association for Applied Behavior Analysis International for her outstanding contributions to behavior analysis and was given ABAI’s Fellow designation.

Behavior Analysis is a fast growing field, not only in the US, where it originated, but also around the world. The Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) has become a widely accepted certification body both within the US and in many other countries. This not only creates opportunities for Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) to find employment in various parts of the world, but also for professional organizations from around the world to standardize basic requirements for individuals who practice behavior analysis. The increasing acceptance of the BCBA certification abroad is reflected in the growing number of BCBAs practicing outside of the US as well as in the fact that the BCBA exam is now offered in an increasing number of languages. In addition to the BCBA certification, there are many other professional organizations who regulate the practice of behavior analysts in countries other than the United States. The profession of Behavior Analysts in various countries is shaped by variables such as local laws, licensure or certification processes, and funding sources. This panel will provide an overview of the field in Poland, Ecuador and Armenia.

BCBAs, BCaBAs, and other certified or licensed professionals

Behavior analytic procedures have been effective at improving various sport skill topographies across many sports (e.g., golf, yoga, football). This symposium will examine four studies which utilize different procedures across sports involving TAGteach and vocal contingencies (dance), a treatment package combining TAGteach with precision teaching and vocal contingencies (dance), a component analysis of behavioral coaching utilizing video modeling with feedback (hockey), and a treatment package including public posting, goal setting with feedback, and text messaging to decrease head injuries (football). Implications for practice will be discussed.

Individuals who are wanting to use behavior analytic strategies in the area of health, sports, or fitness.

This study employs tactics proven effective with multiple sports, derived from the science of applied behavior analysis, to decrease severe head collision in American Football. The study included members of a high school football team that play specifically on the defensive side of the ball. Defenders are specifically targeted as they are 4 times more likely to endure a head injury, compared to their offensive counterparts (Sobue et al., 2018), as tackling results in 67% of the concussion in football (Gessel et al., 2007). Data collection occurred on the team’s designated practice field. The dependent variable in the current study is the percentage of correct tackles exhibited, measured from a predetermined performance criterion. A combination of a multiple baseline and changing criterion design, following a baseline condition visually demonstrate the results of the study. The independent variable was a treatment package consisting of public posting, goal setting and feedback and text messaging to provide additional feedback to participants.

Graduate students and practicing professionals interested in punishment procedures (e.g., BCaBA, BCBA, BCBA-D).

In this study, the use of positive punishment was examined with an individual diagnosed with Arnold Chiari Malformation (Type I), autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, and personality change due to Viral Meningitis who displayed severe forms of self-injurious, destructive, and aggressive behaviors. Reports indicated the participant had a history of unsuccessful behavioral and psychiatric treatments of their problem behavior. The use of a positive punishment procedure involved a court-approved contingent skin shock in combination with differential reinforcement of alternative, incompatible, and other replacements behaviors. Treatment as usual was compared to treatment plus positive punishment. Results demonstrated clinically significant improvements in quality of life through substantial decreases in the monthly frequency of problem behaviors when positive punishment was in place. The evidence provides support for contingent skin-shock as the least intrusive, most effective, efficient, and ethical treatment available for the severe problem behavior of this individual.

In an effort to decrease severe and persistent problem behaviors that substantially impeded the quality of life in an eighteen year old male, diagnosed with mood disorder not otherwise specified and anti-social personality disorder. The participant had a documented history of unsuccessful treatments (i.e., multiple psychotropic medications, changes of treatment locations, programs utilizing differential reinforcement, and antecedent manipulations) of their problem behaviors (i.e., aggression and self-injury that put their quality of life in jeopardy). A positive punishment treatment plan involved court-approved contingent skin shock in conjunction with differential reinforcement of alternative, incompatible, and other replacement behaviors. Through the course of treatment, a reversal design was implemented over a duration of 11 months and demonstrated the effect of the same treatment plan with and without the positive punishment component. Overall, the treatment demonstrated a substantial reduction of all targeted problem behaviors. When punishment was removed, the monthly frequency increased to pre-treatment equivalent levels. The evidence provides support for contingent skin-shock as the least intrusive, most effective, efficient, and ethical treatment available for the severe problem behavior of this individual.

A severe behavior disorder is an umbrella term used to describe constellations of problem behaviors that are characterized by several factors such as the frequency, intensity, form, and treatment refractory nature. The effects of a severe behavior disorder are absolutely devastating. Severe self-injury can cause blindness (because of repeated head hitting, head banging, or eye gouging), deformation (because of biting, abrasions), bone fractures, hematomas, head injuries, infection (because of chronic open wounds), and death. Aggressive behaviors result in harm to caregivers, law enforcement involvement, emergency hospitalization, and can be a primary factor in placing a child outside of their natural home. The continued occurrence of such behaviors have devastating effects on quality of life. Thus, professional to consumer, professional to professional, and other statements about treatment efficacy are of tremendous importance. Here, the presentation of such information in science, government, and media are described. In addition, systematic methods to evaluate various statements about risk and benefit are reviewed.

Early reciprocal interactions with caregivers seem to be critical for later development. Identification of milestones missed during the first year of life and early intervention can mitigate developmental delays. The authors of Study 1 evaluated the effect of a computer-based training program to teach first-time mothers to play a vocal imitation learning game with their 8- and 9-month-old infants. The authors will discuss the role of contingency-learning in early caregiver training. Study 2 will review existing procedures for training joint attention and social referencing. The authors will propose an acquisition model for early social repertoires among children at-risk of autism spectrum disorder and Fragile X syndrome. The authors of Study 3 evaluated the efficacy of an intervention to establish social referencing in young children with autism using multiple exemplar training, prompting and contingent reinforcement. The authors will discuss the interaction between the joint attention and social referencing repertoires in their participants. Study 4 will evaluate the use of social stories to teach social skills in the classroom. The authors will also review evidence-based treatments to teach classroom competence to children. Finally, Javier Virues-Ortega will discuss these studies in relation to the interaction between early social skills.

Practicing behavior analysts

Infants begin to learn important skills, such as contingency learning, social referencing, and joint attention through the everyday interactions with their environment. Contingency awareness is a pivotal behavior in infant development, associated with benefits across developmental domains. When infants learn that their behavior produces a change in the behavior, concomitant changes in infant behavior manifest, including increased smiling and sustained engagement. Maternal contingent responses to infant behavior support infant contingency learning by their infant with experiences of cause and effect. The current investigation evaluated the effect of a computer-based training that aimed at teaching three first-time mothers to play a vocal imitation contingency learning game with their infant (8- & 9-months old) during a face-to-face interaction. The training included observer effect methodology, meaning the mothers engaged in observation and evaluation of other mothers engaging in vocal imitation, but did not include any direct coaching or feedback. All mothers completed the training during one session in less than one hour. Results indicated that all mothers increased their use of vocal imitation and maintained their performance at a 2-week follow-up. We will present training components including embedded observer effect methodology. Considerations for incorporating contingency-learning into early caregiver training will also be discussed.

Deficits in social engagement are among the main developmental problems observed among children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In particular, joint attention and social referencing skills are critical for the development of more complex social interactions. The use of behavioral techniques and brief parent-infant engagement training has shown to be successful in promoting these social skills. We present new data that built on our programmatic agenda that by targeting joint attention and social referencing skills in the natural environment and by using caregivers as therapists we can potentially mitigate and prevent the development of later onset behavior language problems commonly associated with ASD. The current presentation reviews and extends previously published procedures for the training of joint attention and social referencing modeled after Pelaez and colleagues’ (2012) operant learning paradigm with data from toddlers with or at risk of a developmental disorder. Further, a model for expanding previous findings to the natural environment with a population at-risk of developing ASD and Fragile X syndrome is proposed where joint attending skills can be taught first to aid in the acquisition of social referencing. While very similar social behavior chains, joint attention and social referencing have functional differences, which will be explained.

Social referencing is characterized as a chain of behaviors which starts when an infant is confronted with an ambiguous object or event. Although demonstrated by typically developing infants as young as 10 months of age, social referencing is absent or impaired in children with autism. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention to establish a social referencing repertoire in three young children with autism using multiple exemplar training, prompting and contingent reinforcement. The intervention was comprised of teaching trials involving multiple exemplars of standard and ambiguous task materials drawn from experimenter-defined categories of stimuli (e.g., food, art material, toys). Results were evaluated using a multiple baseline across participants design and show a systematic increase in referencing responses with the introduction of treatment for all three participants. We will also present preliminary findings of a randomized control trial with 30 participants evaluating a brief version of the intervention protocol. Pre- and post-training measures of joint attention obtained from all participants will be discussed in the context of the social referencing data obtained herein. The empirical evidence in support of strategies for teaching early social repertoires will be discussed.

Children diagnosed with various developmental and learning disabilities have persistent social deficits in communication and social interactions. These social deficits interfere with classroom social skills and may result in difficulty forming positive relationships with peers and adults. Therefore, it is important to identify evidence-based treatments to teach classroom competence to children diagnosed with various disabilities. The study used Social Stories™ to teach classroom social skills to children in a self-contained setting. A multiple baseline across participants was used to assess changes in classroom social skills. A total of four response categories were taught including please, thank you, pushing in chair, and offering assistance. Generalization probes were conducted using a novel competence scenario for each category. Follow-up data were collected 1-week, 2-weeks, and 4-weeks following the completion of the study to evaluate participants’ maintenance of classroom competence skills.

Compliance programs were formally introduced into the healthcare space only 30 years ago. Historically, the focus of these programs has been mainly on hospitals, insurance providers, and nursing facilities; however, attention is rapidly turning to Applied Behavioral Analysis providers. As the incidence rate of Autism Spectrum Disorder rises, the cost of treatment by insurance companies, state programs, and federal funding sources increases exponentially. The government has several programs in place to monitor fraud, waste, and abuse, and maintains acute interest in those who are misusing funds. Applied Behavioral Analysis providers have recently come under scrutiny in matters of fraud, waste, and abuse; these allegations bring stigma for the industry and necessitate a call to action. Further, as funders become increasingly concerned with assessing value against costs, providers will need to develop increasingly robust systems in order to ensure proper documentation and outcomes-driven processes, in order to avoid devastating payment recoveries. This panel presents a full range perspective, bringing together both providers and funders to discuss healthcare compliance from multiple vantages, in order to provide participants with a path forward to ensuring quality care and upholding ethical standards.

The target audience are providers, funders, and industries associated with the delivery of Applied Behavioral Analysis treatment.

Behavioral medicine is an area of research that integrates behavior analysis and biomedical sciences to change behaviors associated with health and disease states. Behavioral medicine targets may focus on disease prevention, treatment to improve health and disease states, programming to facilitate maintenance of health behavior change, and treatments targeting adherence to medical regimes. As experts in functional analysis and behavior change, behavior analysts are well-equipped to work in the area of behavioral medicine. However, only a small percentage of articles published in behavior analytic journals focus on behavioral medicine research. There is a need for behavior analysts to produce more research in the area of behavioral medicine. One of the goals of the Behavioral Medicine Special Interest Group of ABAI is to provide opportunities for students to disseminate research. The purpose of the current symposium is twofold. First, research in two different areas of behavioral medicine (i.e., increasing physical activity in sedentary adults and improving sitting posture in adults with reported low back pain) will be presented to demonstrate how doctoral students and other researchers may effectively contribute innovative applications of behavior analysis to the field to address behaviors related to pain and wellness. Secondly, a discussion will follow, which will specifically address how to begin doctoral work in behavioral medicine, and provide suggestions and guidelines for future or current students who are interested in working in the area of behavioral medicine.

BCBA BCBA-D licensed behavior analysts

b. Optimal health outcomes are positively correlated with regular exercise, yet nearly one-quarter of adults in the United States reportedly do not participate in physical activity during their free time. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of gradually faded behavioral coaching for increasing physical activity frequency and duration during the study and once the intervention ended. Participants were divided into two groups and matched according to age and body mass index. The Faded Coaching group received behavioral coaching sessions once per week for the duration of the intervention, and the other group participated in gradual fading of behavioral coaching over the course of the intervention. Results for Continuous Coaching group showed increased duration and frequency of physical activity from baseline to end of intervention. During maintenance for the Continuous Coaching group, frequency and duration of exercise decreased. Results from the Faded Coaching group showed participants increased duration and frequency of exercise while they experienced weekly coaching calls, with less of a decrease in duration and frequency of exercise when coaching sessions were faded. Interobserver agreement data were collected on weekly duration goals set during coaching sessions.

You matter, too. It is far too easy to put yourself last, especially when your career is spent putting the needs of others first. Letting this become a pattern can lead to stress, anxiety, depression, or an overall lack of fulfillment in life. Behavior analysts have a unique set of tools to help identify behavioral patterns, hypothesize the function of such behaviors, and determine replacements that produce meaningful change. The purpose of this panel is to foster a discussion surrounding the rationale for self-care, how to engage colleagues and organizations in a self-care practice, and the role behavior analysts can play in this process. By learning essential self-care strategies, not only will you find greater satisfaction in your own life, you will be a greater asset to your field, your organization, and the communities you serve. As the author Dodinsky says, “be there for others, but never leave yourself behind.”

BCBAs, BCaBAs, BCBA-Ds, RBTs

A long-standing focus has been afforded to improving staff performance given the fiscal implications to organizations. To date, however, ABA-based approaches have remained relatively static in the use and conceptualization of behavioral skills training (BST) across myriad performance-based areas. Efforts to improve and increase the efficiency of training is and will remain a significant focus of organizations. To that end, the current symposium seeks to advance staff training practices by including modern behavior-analytic approaches to catalyze increased performance of services providers. The results and implications for said approaches are discussed.

beginning-intermediate

The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of acceptance and commitment training (ACT) to increase the percent per opportunity of behavioral skills training (BST) use in a train the trainer model within an ABA clinic. Acceptance and commitment training exercises are modeled off of the six processes for change consisting of values, present moment attention, acceptance, defusion, self as context, and committed action. This study included three participants, all of whom were RBT trained and had been working in the field for at least 6 months. This study utilized an ABC design embedded within a multiple baseline across participants. Each participant engaged in an initial BST instruction in which behavior skills training was used to teach senior staff how to train using BST. Data were then taken on the percent per opportunity of BST used with new staff in session. ACT training was conducted for all of the participants after BST alone did not produce sufficient results. The addition of ACT was found to be effective in increasing the percent per opportunity of BST used by senior therapists to train new staff, the results generalized to trainees who were not present during ACT training, and maintained after ACT training was terminated.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has been demonstrated as an effective strategy for improving pro-social behaviors including on-task behaviors, social skills, and value-directed behaviors. However, barriers to implementation is access to training in ACT strategies, specifically for behavior analysts. One strategy used by the Learning ACT book (Luoma, Hayes, & Walser, 2007) is the use of videos, which include commentary on therapist actions during role-played sessions. Long and Hayes (2018) utilized these videos to evaluate participant’s application of knowledge gained following training. The purpose of this research was to extend that study to explore the effects of feedback on the quality of ACT sessions, measuring therapist implementation scores and client-specific outcomes. Researchers watched videos of ACT sessions and scored therapist ACT-consistency on a Likert scale. Client-specific outcomes were determined based on their current curriculum (e.g. mindfulness; compliance within the session; challenging behavior), and researchers scored client outcomes accordingly. During baseline, no feedback was provided to the therapist, and ACT sessions were completed as usual. During training, feedback was provided to the therapist specific to the therapist score only, to explore effects of feedback on client measures. Implications for the use of feedback for implementer and client outcomes will be discussed.

Organizational behavior management research has collectively documented that feedback is critical to creating behavior change in staff performance that drives organizational effectiveness (Daniels & Daniels, 2017). Moreover, self-management strategies help structure the work environment, increase self-motivation, and facilitate behaviors that contribute to the achievement of performance standards (Breevaart, Bakker, & Damerouti 2014). Furthermore, an emphasis on improving staff performance may contribute to their overall satisfaction, which is critical, as the effects of staff turnover include variability and decreased consistency for the consumers, perceived threats to company culture, and the financial costs inherent in recruiting and replacing lost staff. Fortunately, previous research has reported that satisfaction with training, supervision, and pay predicted the employees’ intent to turnover (Kazemi & colleagues, 2015). This symposium presents recent research related to the use of organizational behavior management within ABA-based agencies in an effort to improve their performance and satisfaction. The first paper analyzes the effects of a performance development system on the acquisition of direct intervention staff goals using a multiple baseline across behaviors design. The second paper analyzes the effects of a self-management intervention utilizing rules and self-monitoring on work-related organizational and planning skills using a multiple baseline across behaviors design. The third paper analyzes the effects of an intervention on self-reported staff satisfaction, relative to baseline reports, using a multiple baseline across service locations, within the same organization, design that additionally differentiates mediating variables (e.g., employee position and rank, weekly supervision, goal setting).

Individuals working in community-based ABA-agencies who provide supervision to direct intervention service delivery staff, as well as all direct service delivery staff themselves.

Organizational behavior management research has collectively documented that feedback is critical for creating behavior change in staff performance that drives organizational effectiveness (Daniels & Daniels, 2017). However, often feedback is dictated, rather than collaboratively determined. Additionally, direct intervention staff performance is critical to maximizing the quality of services provided. Typically, the more the intervention implementation integrity, the more effective and efficient overall outcomes are likely to be. As such, exceptional supervision entails the application of performance development plans (PDPs) strategically designed to collaboratively (i.e., supervising BCBA and RBT together) identify performance strengths, improvement goals, and current progress, across each supervisory session. A concurrent multiple baseline across behaviors design is being utilized to evaluate the effects of individualized PDPs on the acquisition of direct intervention staff goals. Current data represent baseline performance across six goals, with the initiation of intervention for the first four. Given the significant change in level across goals, data thus far indicates that the PDP effectively increased staff acquisition of performance improvement comparative to baseline. Future data will be collected to determine if intervention continues to yield such promising acquisition via stability across active goals and consistent change in level, increasing trend, and limited variability across novel goals to be introduced. Moreover, two additional goals have been generated, are currently in the baseline phase, may soon be introduced. Finally, any mastered goals are to be monitored in a maintenance phase to follow the PDP intervention.

Employee turnover has many side effects within a service organization. Some likely effects of turnover include variability and decreased consistency for the consumers, perceived threats to company culture and the financial costs inherent in recruiting and training replacements. In the presence of such effects, examination of the factors that decrease employee turnover is an important investigation. It is a logical extension that highly satisfied employees remain and thus organizations with high levels of reported satisfaction are likely organizations with decreased levels of employee turnover. Previous research has reported that satisfaction with training, supervision and pay predicted the employees’ intent to turnover (Kazemi & colleagues, 2015). This presentation will discuss the results of employee reported satisfaction on the aforementioned variables, measured throughout implementation of specific interventions aimed to increase satisfaction. Data were collected on satisfaction throughout baseline and intervention phases and intervention was evaluated with the use of a multiple baseline across service locations within the same organization. Our data will be discussed in the presence of observed trends and position specific variables. For example, this investigation highlighted the need to separate out the data based on clinical position as the highest dissatisfaction was reported by those in the behavior interventionist (BI) position and the highest satisfaction was reported by more senior team members. These results will be discussed in detail while discussing other data that were collected on other measures of interest, such as weekly supervision and goal setting. Future directions for those examining employee satisfaction will also be detailed.

Most people encounter moral dilemmas, or situations in which multiple courses of action seem to be indicated as “moral,” throughout their lives beginning in early childhood. Moral reasoning involves consideration of consequences of possible responses to a moral dilemmas. Without training in moral reasoning, many faced with moral dilemmas fall victim to applying a solution based on generalized, universal principles called moral heuristics to a difficult and unique problem. In this way, moral heuristics often involve faulty judgement and action due to insensitivity to direct contingencies. Considering moral heuristics from a behavioral perspective (e.g., in terms of maladaptive, rule-governed behavior) may foster improved understanding of the manipulable conditions under which maladaptive choices are made. This panel will discuss what specific behaviors are involved in moral reasoning independent of moral heuristics, how ABA currently addresses moral reasoning, and the barriers we face in doing so.

Service providers, behavior analysts, clinicians, higher education instructors, school professionals, teachers, people interested in philosophical issues

Bounded rationality and finite processing capacity result in homo sapiens focusing attention first on the here and now. But many individual and social problems require attention to future costs and benefits, with climate change the most urgent challenge for decisions that fully and justly weigh immediate and certain costs and benefits of business-as-usual or greenhouse gas mitigation efforts against delayed, risky, and often disputed costs and benefits. Psychological theories from prospect theory to hyperbolic discounting and query theory predict that future costs of business-as-usual and future benefits of GHG mitigation efforts will typically get short thrift in such decisions. I present data for three interventions that focus greater attention on future consequences and thus provide entry points for choices that better balance short- and long-term goals and objectives. (1) In trade-offs between immediate and delayed consumption, discounting of future consequences is reduced when choice options with future benefits are made the default and when decision makers are prompted to consider arguments for such choices first (Weber et al., 2007). (2) Individual and country-level data show that citizens may use perceptions of their country’s age to predict its future continuation, with longer pasts predicting longer futures, and longer futures justifying greater investments into sustainability. Thus, framing a country as a long-standing entity can promote pro-environmental behavior (Hershfield, Bang, & Weber, 2014). (3) Finally, individuals’ motivation to leave a positive legacy can be leveraged to increase engagement with climate change and other environmental problems (Zaval, Markowitz & Weber, 2015).

Anyone interested in behavior and behavior change.

Elke Weber is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Her research models decision-making under uncertainty and time delay in financial and environmental contexts from a psychological and neuroscience perspective. Her expertise in the behavioral decision sciences has been sought out by advisory committees of the National Academy of Sciences on Human Dimensions in Global Change, an American Psychological Association Task Force that issued a report on the Interface between Psychology and Global Climate Change, and Working Group III for the 5th and 6th Assessment Report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is past president of the Society for Neuroeconomics, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and the Society for Mathematical Psychology. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Risk Analysis, the Society for Experimental Psychology. She received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Risk Analysis and was also elected to the German National Academy of Sciences.

This PDS features the editors of ABAI journals discussing the peer review process, its importance in science in general, and for consumers of scientific information. Panelists will describe the peer review process from article submission to addressing reviewer comments and understanding editorial decisions. The protections against misinformation that peer review offers are emphasized in this PDS.

All individuals interested in the publication process.

The relationship between a supervisor and supervisee is complex and dynamic and plays an important role in the training of behavior analysts. Supervision provides students with the opportunity to develop their skills as a behavior analyst with the support of someone with experience and expertise. While the supervision relationship is intended to be one of support and guidance, the imbalance in knowledge and experience can create a power differential between the supervisor and supervisee. This power imbalance can lead to an inauthentic relationship and the supervisee disregarding supervisor feedback. In an attempt to address these potential issues within the supervision relationship, supervisors can create a flexible context for supervision by making space for effective dialogue using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Relational Frame Theory (RFT) approaches. By noticing and allowing space for the differences, biases, and experiences that exist between the supervisor and supervisee, the supervisor can foster a bidirectional learning experience which allows the supervisor and supervisee to learn from one another. The panelists in this talk will speak to their supervision experiences and discuss how they have been able to integrate ACT and RFT approaches within supervision. Speakers will also answer questions about how supervisors can begin integrating these approaches in their own supervision.

Graduate students, BCBAs, BCaBAs

Cognitive loss and associated functional decline can reflect many different physiological processes, some of which are progressive and neurodegenerative, others stable or even reversible. Behavior analysts, through their measurement-based practice, are uniquely positioned to detect fluctuations in proficiencies and skill levels that are potentially indicative of decline, and to implement assessment and intervention. The goals of this tutorial are twofold: (1) to provide an overview of neurocognitive disorders, such as those from Alzheimer’s, Lewy body disease, or stroke, and prominent risk factors, such as age and an already compromised nervous system due to prior traumatic brain injury, chronic disease, lifestyle factors, or particular preexisting neurodevelopmental disorders; and (2) to offer a practical step-by-step guide to ruling out reversible conditions, ascertain the appropriate level of social and physical support, and address potential behavioral and emotional changes. Video and audio examples will be provided for training purposes, to illustrate the heterogeneity of individuals’ reactions to functional decline, the difficulties of family members to follow behavioral plans or adapt to their loved one’s loss of skills or repertoires, and the need for medical care navigation. The tutorial will introduce cognitive loss and functional decline as a high-need specialty practice area, amenable to workforce development in behavior analysis.

Students; behavior analysts interested in an introduction to the specialty area or in expanding their practice; behavior analysts encountering individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders and decline; and family care partners.

Claudia Drossel is an assistant professor at Eastern Michigan University, a researcher and a clinical psychologist who specializes in advancing neurobehavioral health, including how to best understand and manage cognitive loss and associated behavioral changes. Claudia holds doctoral degrees from Temple University’s experimental psychology and from University of Nevada Reno’s clinical psychology programs, and she completed post-doctoral training in neuropsychology and rehabilitation psychology at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the University of Michigan. She was the associate director of the Nevada Caregiver Support Center from 2005 until 2010. In addition to journal articles, chapters, and training videos for professionals, she has co-authored a step-by-step manual that guides healthcare providers in working with people who have problems thinking, remembering, or problem-solving. Past and current projects were funded by the Michigan Health Endowment Fund and the Anna Botsford Bach Fund for Seniors.

Research has shown that parent-mediated treatment results in consistent enhancement of parent-child interaction. It also has great potential to improve child communication and behaviors. However, given a wide range of sources, treatment options, and technical procedures, parents may find the decision making and execution rather challenging. Parent training sessions, conducted by professionals in Applied Behavior Analysis, can lead to efficient use of resources and an increase of parental knowledge and practice in evidence based intervention. Participants on the panel include ABA professionals working closely with parents/families of children with ASD in various formats. Included in this panel discussion are three distinct parent-training styles: (1) one-on-one home based consultation in which the professional has designed individualized instruction for the target parent and the child, (2) large group face-to-face training which adapted workshop style, addressing general topics in behavioral treatments, and (3) web-based self-paced classes, supplementary with parental support groups. Success will be shared while challenges unique to training content, parental knowledge, family characteristics, and cross-cultural preferences will be discussed.

Professionals who are currently or consider providing parent training services, particularly those who work with diverse population.

With its growth, the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA) is encountering practice issues ranging from negotiating insurance reimbursement, developing formal treatment guidelines, and gaining the trust of consumers. One controversial practice issue is the use of non-compete clauses (NCC’s) in employment contracts. NCC’s have the potential impact how, when, and who practitioners can serve. NCC's are used in some fields and banned in others (i.e., law practice, some human services/medical fields in some states). Although widely used in ABA businesses, to our knowledge no discussion of NCC's has occurred in our own field. Results of a recent survey and personal experiences of the panelists and audience will be used to engage the attendees in discussing practical and ethical issues related to the use of NCC's in ABA.

All BACB certificants (RBT's, BCaBA's, BCBA's, BCBA-D's), individuals who work in agencies services individuals with autism or other developmental disabilities, and owners of businesses providing services to individuals with disabilities.

Much attention in our field has been focused on examining the effectiveness of possible interventions in facilitating students' learning or improving their performance. In this symposium, we'd like to discuss the importance of evaluating the efficiency of behavioral interventions. We will present weekly system-wide data from three different centers in three different countries (Italy, Korea and US). Our goals is to identify the key elements in efficient learning and teaching for young children with developmental delays. We hope our studies could shed some light on cost-effective interventions for program supervisors and school directors.

Audience with basic understanding of ABA intervention, trials, and short term objectives.

In many European Countries, including Italy, governments are struggling to provide children with ASD with early and intensive behavioral interventions within the free Public Health and Education System. While access to early diagnosis is improving, the lack of criteria in ABA effectiveness is hindering the direct application of the science. With the aim to measure treatment effectiveness and efficiency and share the results with national parents’ Associations and the Health Department, we tested the effects of implementing a CABAS® based educational model for 18 young kids, all enrolled in a learning and research centre in Italy. We collected monthly data on total number of Learn Units and learning objectives achieved by each Participant. Centre-wide data on rate of response opportunities to criterion were also analyzed and compared with those registered for a control group of 24 children with ASD of the same age, who were receiving free behavioral interventions for four hours a week only. Data suggest that the CABAS® model can be successfully adapted for different welfare systems and can provide Public Services’ leaders with easy-to-read data on how intensivity of early intervention could be individualized. Further research should compare different treatment’s intensivity packages and add norm-based data.

In South Korea, the number of the prevalence of children with ASD is comparable to that of the USA, now climbed up to 1 in 38. Our presentation will report data collected from KAVBA center in Seoul, South Korea, as a direct replication of the CABAS model. Pre and post data of 11 students aged 3 to 5 years olds who enrolled in the year of 03/2017-02/2018 were reported. PEP-R were used for pre and post assessments. With the intervention, the mean developmental gain across 11 children was 27.6 months with an average from 16 months to 50 months. More than half of them showed more than a whole year’s developmental gain. A comprehensive curriculum, and staff training and daily based supervision utilizing TPRA and Decision Analysis Protocol were critical elements for bringing above mentioned outcomes. Data from the one- year intensive behavior intervention in this one year time provided for discussion on effective and cost-efficient service for children with ASD in South Korea.

Fred S. Keller School is a behavior analytic early intervention and preschool program for children with and without developmental disabilities from 18 mon to 5 years old. Keller school is the oldest Comprehensive Application of Behavior Analysis to Schooling (CABAS) accredited programs. At Keller school, we strive to increase daily instruction students receive (measured by number of learn units) and decrease the number of instructional trials required to meet an objective (measured by the learn units to criterion). At a micro level, the learn units to criterion show how fast a student learns and how efficient a teacher teaches. At the macro level, it shows how efficient and cost-effective an educational model is. We are going to present the center-wide data on the number of learn units to criterion, cost per learn unit and cost per short term objective over the past 3 years. We propose the relatively low and stable level of all three measures was a function of an evidence-based decision algorithm, system-wide teacher training, verbal behavior development protocol interventions, among others.

Substance use disorders, like many health problems, are concentrated in people who live in poverty. This presentation will review research on the application of operant conditioning to address the interrelated problems of poverty and substance use disorders. Our research has clearly shown that operant reinforcement using financial incentives can promote abstinence from heroin and cocaine in low-income adults with substance use disorders. The use of operant conditioning to reduce poverty is less well-established. However, our research on an employment-based intervention called the therapeutic workplace suggests that operant conditioning could promote behaviors that may facilitate the transition out of poverty. In the therapeutic workplace, unemployed adults with substance use disorders are paid to work but must provide drug-negative urine samples or take prescribed medication to maximize pay. The therapeutic workplace offers a job-skills training phase and an employment phase through which participants progress sequentially. Our research has shown that employment-based reinforcement within the therapeutic workplace can promote drug abstinence, medication adherence, job seeking, and employment. The therapeutic workplace could provide an effective framework for broader anti-poverty programs, but more research is needed to determine whether such interventions consistently reduce poverty, and how best to implement these at scale.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students

The 2019 report of the National Academy of Medicine, Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development in Children and Youth: A National Agenda, calls for a mobilization of the research and practice communities to address the problems of neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage. The report documents the fact that urban and rural neighborhoods of concentrated poverty have multiple problems that contribute to high levels of inter-generational poverty. The report recognizes that efforts to promote healthy development of children and youth in the U.S. will be limited if we do not address the multitude of problems in these neighborhoods. This symposium is intended to advance efforts to study how conditions in these neighborhoods can be addressed both through more interdisciplinary research and through the adoption of policies that foster more nurturing conditions in these neighborhoods. We will describe the nature of these neighborhoods, he state of research on these neighborhoods, and the public policy needed to advance research and practice on this problem.

Researchers

Three data-based papers will be presented on recent research on skill acquisition for children diagnosed with autism and other developmental disabilities. Paper one discusses a treatment package consisting of rules, feedback and multiple exemplar training to teach the emission of disguised mands. Paper two discusses a treatment package to teach children on the autism spectrum to tact past items and events. Paper three discusses percentile schedules of reinforcement to teach children with developmental disabilities to be on task. Applications of the research and recommendations for future research in these areas will be discussed.

BCBAs, clinicians

This study employed a nonconcurrent multiple baseline across participants design to teach three children diagnosed with autism to emit disguised mands. The intervention utilized was a combination of rules and multiple exemplar training, with direct in-vivo feedback. Results indicate the success of the intervention for all participants in emitting and reinforcing disguised mands, though generalization and maintenance results varied. Social validity data taken with participants’ parents and service providers demonstrate favorability of the intervention and its results. Suggestions for future research on complex verbal behavior and social skills are discussed.

Speaking about past events is an important part of a functional verbal repertoire. Social interactions, personal safety, and academic success may be enhanced by learning to speak about past events. Unfortunately, children with language delays may demonstrate deficiencies in speaking about past events. Despite the importance of this skill, few studies have evaluated how to teach children to speak about past events. Experiment 1 evaluated the effectiveness of a treatment package to teach tacts of previously seen items with three children with autism spectrum disorder. The treatment package consisted of differential reinforcement, intraverbal and stimulus prompt fading, and an increasing delay between seeing an item and being asked “What was in the box?" All three participants reached mastery at a delay of 64 min. Two participants demonstrated generalization to novel items and locations. Experiment 2 evaluated components of the treatment package. The add-in component analysis found that differential reinforcement was not sufficient to teach delayed tacts. Two of the three participants in Experiment 2 met mastery criterion and demonstrated generalization after all of the components of the treatment package were implemented. The treatment package in this study provides a potential model for clinicians interested in teaching tacts of past events.

Novice teachers and unlicensed classroom staff (aides or paraprofessionals) may not have sufficient training in evidence based practices to instruct, assess, and engage diverse learners. High teacher and staff turn-over negatively effects students and is costly to schools across the country. There is a high cost associated with finding, hiring, and training a new staff (Milanowski & Odden, 2007). School districts need to identify evidence-based strategies and provide effective training to keep novice teachers in the classroom. Teacher preparation programs provide limited instruction on classroom management strategies and school districts are left with the challenge of providing thorough and on-going professional development. Additionally, there is often limited time or opportunity for paraprofessionals to receive training in evidence based teaching and behavior reduction strategies, which puts time at a premium for any training which paraprofessionals do receive (Giangrecco, Suter, & Doyle, 2010). Schools need efficient and effective means to train classroom staff in evidence based practices. This presentation provides 3 examples of effective and efficient procedures for training school staff novel skills. First, we will review data from a study that used Behavior Skills Training (BST) and alternating methods of objective and evaluative feedback to increase the rate of behavior specific praise with novice teachers. The next presenter will examine the effects of BST for paraprofessionals on prompting and contriving communication exchanges with students who use augmentative and alternative communication devices. Finally, we will share the results of a workshop that included lecture, a card game, and video modeling to teach paraprofessionals how to conduct three conditions of a functional analysis.

Practitioners, graduate students, and teachers

Goal setting has utilized across populations and settings to promote behavior change. An extensive literature documents the effectiveness of goal setting to increase a myriad of desirable behaviors including physical activity, academic responding, vocational task completion and beyond. Relatively fewer studies have involved the use of goal setting to decrease or eliminate responding. Performance feedback has been demonstrated to enhance the effects of goal setting. The current symposium examines utilization of goal setting and performance feedback with varied populations and target behaviors. First, a study examining the impact of goal setting and text message feedback on daily step counts of participants employed by a behavioral health organization will be presented. Next, the outcomes obtained for general education students exposed to a treatment package involving goal setting and daily feedback will be discussed. Finally, an analysis of the effectiveness of goal-setting combined with performance feedback and differential reinforcement of diminishing rates of behavior for decreasing challenging behavior exhibited by students with autism in a school setting will be discussed.

Behavior Analysts and students

This study examined the effectiveness of goals setting, behavioral contracting, performance feedback, and a reinforcement contingency on goal mastery for general education students ranging from the elementary to high school levels. Each of the 13 participants had ended the preceding school year with a failing grade in one more core academic subjects. In addition to a failing grade, participants were identified by school site team administrators as students of ‘concern’ due to poor attendance, limited classroom engagement, and/or failure to complete homework. During the initial intervention phase, participants worked with a ‘coach’ to set a goal related to performance in a specific core academic subject. Participants received daily feedback related to their goal via paper, email, or text message depending on grade level and each attended a brief weekly meeting with a ‘coach’ during which they received feedback via a graph of their performance relate to their goals. Goal specific measures included percentage of weekly assignments submitted, percentage scores on homework submitted, and overall grade percentages. A component analysis was initiated with 3 of the final participants to examine the effects of each component of the intervention package. Overall results indicate that this relatively low-cost and minimally invasive intervention was effective in increasing student performance on goal related tasks.

The identification and implementation of best, evidence-based practices around staff training and performance management is a priority for human service settings. Staff performance directly impacts client outcomes. Thus, organizations must ensure that the highest standards of staff performance are initially achieved and maintained throughout employment. This symposium will provide an overview of two applied studies conducted to inform organizational practices around staff training and performance management. The first presentation will review the outcomes of a comparative study on different training modalities during the onboarding process. Results will be discussed across both knowledge and performance competencies. The second presentation will focus on performance management and monitoring to maintain integrity of an organizational system. Results as a staff performance protocol to increase educational program compliance will be outlined. The symposium will close with a general discussion on staff training and performance management practices as they relate to organizational and the specific studies presented.

Masters students studying BCBA, BCBA and BCBA-D responsible for staff training and/or ongoing supervision

International dissemination of behavior science is important for the continued growth of our field. The spread of behavior analysis potentiates the amelioration of much suffering around the world through enhanced educational practices, environmental conservation efforts and enhanced treatment for those with special needs. However, issues related to technical language have thwarted dissemination of behavior science. Matters such as agency and the tri-polar nature of behavior analytic accounts have made dissemination difficult even amongst native English speakers. This panel will explore the challenges of translating technical language from English into different languages, the impact that various approaches to translation have had on dissemination efforts and advice for best practices going forward.

Behavior analysts interested in international dissemination.

The ways in which Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) is made accessible for individuals within mainstream ABA are predominantly couched in the ACT "hexaflex". The current panel discussion will highlight other, potentially viable conceptualizations of facilitating competence regarding ACT's core processes for practicing behavior analysts. Further, we aim to tether objective process and outcome measures to the core processes such that practitioners may be better equipped to confidently use ACT within their efforts to promote habilitation in the individuals with whom they work. Finally, we seek to demystify stigma around ACT as being unethical in behavior analysis.

Beginning-Advanced BACBs/behavior analysts; graduate students of behavior-analytic programs

Building and maintaining an ethical training company or training department is paramount to the effectiveness and success of any Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) practice. Trainers are responsible for training staff to fluency and mastery and ensuring readiness to work in the field. Supervisors are responsible for ensuring generalization of such skills in the natural environment and maintaining skills repertoires. In this talk, we will discuss the development and growth of a train the trainer program, best training practices such as Behavioral Skills Training (BST), Precision Teaching, acoustical guidance (clicker training), and digital technologies to train and supervise, trainers and Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) staff.

Behavior analysts conducting supervision of applied behavior analysis services and staff training.

The talk will cover training and supervision in an online platform and in-person environments. It will include instructional design segment where attendees will learn how to create an evidenced-based training program and supervise staff utilizing a unique blend of Behavioral Skills Training, Precision Teaching, and digital technology.

In this symposium, the authors will discuss topics related to both private and public verbal behavior. The first presenter compared skill acquisition rates across two different conditions: similar versus different response topographies across operants. Results showed that the participants acquired skills in fewer trials during the similar-responses teaching condition when compared to the different-responses teaching condition. The second presenter will discuss a literature review examining three types of private events--emotions, non-pain sensations, and pain--studied in six behavior analytic journals. Studies were coded according to the publishing journal, a decade of publication, population, dependent and independent variables, nature of privacy, and data collection methods used. The final presenter will discuss mnemonic recognition from a behavior analytic perspective. He will argue that the relevant response is covert, more specifically a discriminated sensory/perceptual response, and that such responses can acquire divergent stimulus functions, both 1) functioning as a reinforcer and 2) changing the probability of emission of subsequent responses.

Clinicians interested in Verbal Behavior

This study compared skill acquisition rates across two different conditions in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The first condition presented similar response topographies across different operants, including tacts, intraverbals, and listener selection responses (e.g., “chocolate” taught as a tact, intraverbal, and listener selection response). The second condition presented different response topographies across the operants (e.g., “tea” taught as a tact, “milk” taught as an intraverbal and “sugar” taught as a listener selection response). Secondary measures included functional independence of the operant classes and children’s teaching condition preference. We used an adapted alternating treatment design embedded in a nonconcurrent multiple baseline across participants to examine rates of skill acquisition. Results showed that the participants acquired skills in fewer trials during the similar-responses teaching condition when compared to the different-responses teaching condition. The participants did not show generalization across the operants, supporting prior research on the functional independence of the operants. The participants showed idiosyncratic preferences for the two teaching conditions.

Many are concerned about the state of the world. The effects of climate change, political polarization, and backlash to social movements that cultivate equality threaten our future. Even outside and within our own discipline, conflict continues. Many of us joined ABAI because we support the vision that the problems of the world can be solved through the principles of behavior analysis. Can they?

Perhaps. Many of the answers to the world’s problems still reside within the discipline; indeed, our own community of behavior scientists and behavior analysts have continued to generate some of the solutions. However, seeking perspective outside of the discipline to understand the complex contingencies of social groups, networks, and organizations is also critical. An integration of these viewpoints is the foundation for a compassionate behaviorism—a philosophy that includes the action and verbal behavior of humility, behavioral flexibility, self-control, perspective taking, and empathy. These terms will be carefully defined and their functions discussed. Compassionate behavioral action can be and should be practiced at multiple levels: toward our earth, towards outsiders of our verbal communities, to those within our verbal communities, and even towards ourselves.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; scientists; graduate students.