Association for Behavior Analysis International

Behavior analysts work closely with a variety of individuals to help implement behavioral interventions with high treatment fidelity. Training these individuals can be highly resource intensive, may require lengthy training, and can be difficult or impossible in some settings. By utilizing smart technology to promote effective training, it is possible to minimize resources needed to train individuals, provide easily accessible instruction, and can be applied in remote settings. Smart technology may have the added benefit of producing training with long term maintenance and high treatment integrity. The current investigations evaluated the use of the smart technology platform Guidance, Assessment, and Information System (GAINS) for behavioral procedures including a multiple stimulus without replacement (MSWO) preference assessment, daily living task, and discrete trial training. The purpose of these investigations was to assess whether treatment fidelity could be increased by using GAINS to train individuals to implement behavioral procedures compared to using traditional training methods.

Registered Behavior Technicians (RBTs), Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analysts (BCaBAs), and Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs)

Behavior analysts work closely with caregivers, teachers, paraprofessionals, and direct care staff to address the needs of clients. This involves supporting them in the implementation of behavioral interventions, which can be very resource intensive and may be challenging in some settings. Further, ensuring sustained procedural fidelity may require additional monitoring and re-coaching of procedures. A smart technology platform that coaches and guides the implementation of behavioral interventions may be useful for minimizing resources required to support caregivers and direct care staff. By utilizing smart technology, more resources can be provided to individuals in remote settings, allowing underserved communities to access behavior analytic services. This tool also may aid in maintaining high, long-term procedural fidelity and maintenance. In a series of studies, we evaluated the functionality of a smart technology platform, Guidance, Assessment, and Information System (GAINS), to support the correct implementation of interventions by staff and caregivers working with children with autism. Specifically, this presentation will showcase evaluation of correct implementation of discrete trial teaching by behavioral technicians who had limited experience was evaluated with listener responding, intraverbal, and imitation procedures. Findings support the utility of the GAINS platform for improving the procedural fidelity with which behavioral protocols were implemented.

Training professionals to implement preference assessments, such as Multiple Stimulus Without Replacement (MSWO), traditionally requires the presence of an expert, involves lengthy instructional time, requires additional training in natural settings, and necessitates follow-up for skill maintenance. Artificial Intelligence, such as the GAINS (Guidance Assessment and Information System) application, may overcome these challenges by providing professionals with easily accessible, consistent instruction. The current study used an alternating treatment design to compare the use of GAINS with pen and paper self-instructional methods in training five preservice speech-language pathologists to implement MSWO. The results demonstrate significant increases in implementation fidelity for two out of five participants and slight increases for the remaining three while using GAINS. Additionally, when using traditional methods, participants collectively scored the results of the MSWO incorrectly nearly half of the time. These errors never occurred using GAINS. Further, the use of GAINS resulted in a moderate to significant reduction in duration of implementation for four participants. During the follow-up survey, all participants indicated that GAINS had a higher treatment acceptability and was more effective at producing socially significant outcomes. Use of technology has the potential to significantly reduce training time and improve outcomes for direct service staff.

A multiple baseline SCED across four paired participants of Direct Service Providers (DSPs) and adults with IDD with a diagnosis of autism (consumers) was conducted. Chimes staff identified the task of doing the laundry as a very useful and challenging task. As part of their job responsibilities, Direct Service Providers (DSPs) are tasked with helping consumers learn to do the laundry. Dependent variables were 1) DSP Program Fidelity Performance, the percentage of teaching steps correctly implemented, and 2) Consumer Performance, the percentage of Independent completion of the 18 steps of a task analysis to sort and wash clothes. The Independent Variable was expert guiding technology to support instructors in providing Task Analysis instruction while collecting data on consumer performance. In baselines, DSP program fidelity was low and consumers failed to learn the task. With the expert guiding technology, DSP program fidelity improved and consumer independent performance improved. Average Inter Observer Agreement (IOA) (> 25% sessions) between primary and secondary observers for both DSP Program Fidelity and Consumer Performance was 91% to 99%. Three of four DSPs completed usability and social validity surveys (average 4.2/5 with 1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree).

Beyond the buzz of AI, the field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) finds itself at a pivotal juncture. Big data has long been integral to healthcare, while technology has bolstered training and decision-making. What sets this era apart? Three shifts have reshaped the landscape. First, exponential increases in computing power, coupled with cost reduction, has unlocked opportunities that make the advent of artificial BCBAs imminent, heralding a reimagination of Skinner's teaching machine. Second, progress in computer vision and wearable sensors allows for increasingly precise automated measurement of behavior and the environment in non-laboratory treatment settings. Third, increasing scrutiny of ABA practices and calls for proving ROI for services rendered. Accusations of abuse, inefficacy, and fraud cast shadows over the field, triggering intensified regulatory oversight. This panel delves into the impact of technology on clinical care in ABA. Experts explore how AI-powered tools and quantitative analyses are elevating clinical training, treatment planning, outcome monitoring, and decision-making. We scrutinize the benefits and liabilities of technology integration, ensuring that ethical, privacy, and regulatory considerations remain at the forefront. As behavior analysts navigate the intersection of advanced tools with ethical obligations, we discuss ways to harness technology's potential while preserving the human-centric insights of behavior analysis.

Entry-level service providers and practitioners that supervise or oversee critical training and compliance systems within behavior analytic practice.

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

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

Applied behavior analysis is concerned with producing socially significant behavior change that leads to improvements in quality of life. Yet, in recent years, behavior analysis has sometimes been accused of being insensitive to client needs and producing more harm than good. As a result, behavior analysts have begun investigating new ways to increase empathy and compassion in their practices (Rohrer & Weiss, 2022; Taylor et al., 2019). However, there are some old (and often forgotten) ideas from behavior analysis that can also give current practitioners new perspectives on how to be more compassionate. This presentation will identify three critical features of compassion and discuss these features in the context of the constructional and pathological approaches to behavior change (Goldiamond, 1974/2002). Next, the presentation will illustrate how the four questions of the constructional approach provide a framework that behavior analysts can use for developing and providing compassionate behavior analytic services. Using the constructional approach allows practitioners to develop personalized programs that consider an individual’s critical reinforcers, find starting points that help the learner succeed from step one, guide learners through programs in a manner that promotes confidence and success, and help their learners find and contact natural communities of reinforcement.

Recently within behavior analysis, there has been increased focus on compassionate care (e.g., Taylor et al., 2019) and expanding our reach (e.g., Normand & Kohn, 2013). Much of this work has been focused on the social justice aspects of applied behavior analysis. Outside of behavior analysis, Catholicism has one of the most well-established and far reaching conceptualizations and practices of social justice (e.g., Aquinas, 2017; Pope Leo XIII, 1891). Historically, some have suggested some incompatibility between behavior analysis and Christian worldviews (e.g., Galuska, 2003). However, this may be more of a misunderstanding than an incompatibility. The misunderstanding may be most apparent in the application of the science of behavior to address socially significant behavior. In this talk, I will compare behavior analytic and Catholic approaches to compassion, dignity, and social justice. I will then focus on major points of overlap, including suggestions for how collaboration could benefit both groups, and expand the impact of effective, evidence-based practices to broader communities by leveraging the strengths of both behavior analysis and Catholic social justice.

Since Taylor et al.’s (2018) call for compassion as well as the addition of “treat[ing] others with compassion” as one of the core foundational principles that behavior analysts use to interpret and apply the standards in the code (BACB, 2020), greater emphasis is being placed on fostering such practices. Further, in light of recent unrest within and outside of the applied behavior analysis (ABA) space, “compassion and “compassionate care” have become forces of both the social and natural sciences (Werntz et al., 2023). According to Taylor et al. (2018), engaging in compassionate services requires us to remove barriers and to relieve suffering for others. But how can this be done when we are engaging in uncomfortable conversations and disputes? While compassionate care is garnering much attention in the field, with an entire Special Issue in Behavior Analysis and Practice dedicated to its proliferation (Abdel-Jalil et al., 2023; Denegri et al., 2023; Rohrer et al., 2021; Reinecke et al., 2023; Tarbox et al., 2023), behavior analysts continue to struggle in professional discourse when perspectives differ. In an effort to resolve this conflict and foster our valued work toward providing compassionate care, a behavior-analytic account of the nonviolent communication (NVC) approach will be discussed. This panel will discuss how adopting an NVC approach can be compassionate in a variety of relationships such as consultant-consultee, practitioner-caregivers, academic instructor-student, supervisor-supervisee, interactions with colleagues, and on social media. The panelists will provide examples and non-examples of NVC and how using this approach can increase perspective-taking and facilitate connections. Challenges of using the NVC will be shared. Furthermore, the panelists will demonstrate that transforming judgment and blame into empathetic understanding allows solutions to be identified, thus meeting the needs of everyone involved (Rosenberg, 2003).

Participants might serve in the following roles: - Supervising aspiring behavior analysts for the BCBA experience fieldwork - Consultants - Academic instructors - Practitioners working with families and other professionals

Millions of individuals experience communication needs that necessitate the use of an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) system; yet advances in AAC have not kept up with the technological innovations experienced by mainstream communities. Moreover, many AAC users indicate their communication device does not adequately meet their communication needs, evident through both self-report and device abandonment. Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have the potential to offer solutions to the barriers AAC users and stakeholders experience. This symposium will include three distinct presentations on the a) limitations of existing AAC as reported by end users and stakeholders; b) the use of AAC and games to foster social engagement with an AI enabled AAC Game Prototype and c) data from the implementation of low-fidelity prototypes to improve the communication of preschool aged children with autism, during social play routines. Finally, a discussion on how we can leverage the state of the art in AI to improve AAC systems will conclude the session.

Intermediate

The incorporation of technological innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) for use with Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) present an enormous potential for the future of AAC design. However, there are numerous examples where AI technology that was designed without considering key stakeholders actually exacerbated problems rather than fixing them. While newer technological innovations such as AI should be included in the future of AAC historically stakeholder and end users. While developers do occasionally incorporate usability testing into their design process, this is described as occurring “too little, too late” within the design sequence. In an effort to include such input from AAC users and stakeholders from the outset, researchers interviewed 90-end users and stakeholders regarding a) their current AAC engagement; b) the barriers they experience in using AAC; c) what dreams they had regarding future AAC development; and d) reflections on AAC innovations. To analyze these data a Rapid Research Evaluation and Appraisal was used. Within this presentation the themes that emerged and their implications for future AAC development will be discussed.

The implementation of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) presents several challenges. Caregivers often struggle with transitioning AAC skills learned during therapy into daily routines, and AAC users often face social barriers, with vocal peers avoiding interactions due to AAC stigmatization. In our exploration of AAC application usage, an analysis of 3,584 reviews from 92 apps on Google Play and Apple Store revealed a key finding: AAC apps primarily cater to communication skills, whereas game applications focus solely on educational and social skills development, indicating an absence of integrated AAC and game tools for increasing social engagement. To gather further information regarding the use of AAC and games to foster social engagement, we interviewed AAC users, clinicians, and caregivers to gain their perspectives on an AI enabled AAC Game Prototype. Finally, we tested a Wizard of Oz prototype of an AI-enabled AAC-integrated coloring game with three participants. This presentation will share the results of our user-centered design method and discuss the future inclusion of single subject research experiments within UX research.

The use of effective strategies and technologies to support the social participation of young, beginning communicators within the context of meaningful social routines is critical. However, social participation for beginning communicators on the autism spectrum is often restricted. This is due in part to the time and effort required for both children and partners to use traditional augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies (grids or visual scene displays) during engaging social play routines. Innovations in artificial intelligence provide the potential for AAC technologies to use linguistic input from partners (i.e., context aware AAC), to minimize the time and effort needed to use AAC technologies for social play participation; however, this potential has been largely unharnessed to date. This preliminary study used an alternating treatment design to compare the effects of a context-aware AAC prototype with automated photo choices to traditional grid-based AAC for supporting three young children who were beginning communicators on the autism spectrum in directing play within preferred social play routines. The context aware AAC condition resulted in increases in linguistic play directives and vocal approximations, and decreases in refusal behaviors in all three participants. While this study was only an initial exploration and results are preliminary, context aware AAC technologies have the potential to enhance participation and communication outcomes for young beginning communicators on the autism spectrum and more research is greatly needed in this area.

Public schools are complex environments housing students with diverse needs and professionals of varying expertise. While around 12% of behavior analysts primarily focus their work in public schools, there is likely a larger percentage of behavior analysts collaborating with public school programs as a portion of their daily work. However, there is a lack of clarity regarding what training behavior analysts receive prior to working within public education. Successful behavior analysts in public schools require knowledge that extends beyond traditional behavior analytic coursework, encompassing areas such as child development, education law, the distinct roles of educational staff, interdisciplinary collaboration, and academic interventions. Consequently, there is an evident need to prepare behavior analysts to develop skills tailored to the specific demands of public school contexts. This panel consists of experienced clinicians who have worked extensively in public education and are united in their dedication to establishing educational frameworks for the preparation of behavior analysts to work effectively in public school settings. Throughout our discussion, we will delve into the essential competencies required for the advancement of our profession in education and address obstacles, whether in applied behavior analysis or the educational realm, that we must surmount to expand our influence.

BCBA's or BCBA trainees seeking greater competence in working in public school settings. BCBA or BCBA trainees are interested in gaining insights into the challenges of working in public school settings and would like to obtain additional knowledge about ways to overcome these challenges.

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

Clinicians and researchers

Operational definitions are a key element in behavioral interventions and the dissemination of our science depends on the consistency and accessibility of researchers’ operational definitions to others, who can adapt and use them with different client populations (Cooper et al., 2020). Although recommendations for developing operational definitions are frequently referenced in behavior analytic literature and textbooks (Johnston et al., 2020), there is no agreed-upon method for developing operational definitions (Kubina et al., 2022). The three presentations in this symposium raise questions concerning the validity of operational definition, discuss issues related to subjectivity and ambiguity of operational definitions and address the implications of these issues to our field. The first presentation will share findings of a survey study in which associations between characteristics of behavior analysts and operational definitions they developed for video recorded behaviors were investigated. The second presentation will share findings of an investigation of the effect varying operational definition components had on interobserver agreement. The third presentation will present findings of a comparison of operational definitions’ and pinpoints’ detection accuracy. Together, the presentations question the utility of operational definitions and highlight the need for empirical investigation of the mechanism responsible for developing them.

The symposium is geared toward behavior analytic practitioners, researchers, and course instructors.

The effectiveness of behavior analytic interventions and scientific investigations rest on the validity and accuracy with which practitioners and researchers operationalize behaviors. Although recommendations for developing operational definitions are often referenced in behavior analytic literature and textbooks (Johnston et al., 2020), a critical examination of issues with the process of operationalization has received relatively little attention (Slife et al., 2016). The current study investigated how behavior analysts operationalize behaviors. A survey which was disseminated across behavior analysts residing in the US and Canada and registered on the BACB© listserv, requested respondents to develop operational definitions for two behaviors displayed in short video recordings. Descriptive statistics found differences in how respondents used components of operational definitions (e.g., a greater proportion of respondents that reported holding a teaching position used more examples than those who did not report holding a teaching position). However, statistically significant associations between respondent characteristics and use of different components of operational definitions were limited. Findings suggest operational definitions were insensitive to various characteristics (e.g., certification level, years of experience, client population) of behavior analysts. Implications for behavior analysts, recommendations for future investigations, and limitations are discussed.

Behavior analytic practices start with objectively defining behavior. Yet, with so many recommendations for what an operational definition contains there is no “best practice” for defining behavior, only that it should ensure good agreement between data collectors. Not only do disparities in what makes an operational behavior definition exist in the literature, but these disparities are also apparent in practice. Current behavior analytic practitioners use a variety of components to define observable behavior (e.g., examples, nonexamples, constraints, directions). The current study evaluated the effect of these varying components of operational definitions on interobserver agreement with a true value using practical and statistical analyses as well as a measure of social validity. For hitting, we found no statistical difference of definition type, but we did find a difference for the order of coding. For on task, we found no statistical difference for definition type or order of coding. Implications are further discussed in relation to the role of definition components and recommendations for practitioners looking to achieve acceptable interobserver agreement.

Submissions must include a description of the type of funding received for this submission, if applicable: Operational definitions have a significant history in applied behavior analysis. The practice's importance stems from the role operational definitions play in detecting an event, human thought, or action. While operationalizing target behaviors has enjoyed widespread practice, some concerns have recently arisen with translation validity and detection accuracy. Additionally, a review of the literature produces few articles assessing the validity of operational definitions. Pinpoints represent an alternative for describing target behaviors. A pinpoint has a formula for construction that includes using an action verb, an object or event that receives the action, and a comprehensibly defined context where the observation of the action verb + object or event occurs. Pinpoints also have few empirical studies demonstrating their validity. The following experiment compared the detection accuracy of an operational definition for self-injurious behavior and a corresponding pinpoint across professionals who worked in a school that served clients with autism spectrum disorder. The results indicate lower accuracy scores for the operational definition when compared to the pinpoint. Additionally, the consistency of scores varied more for the operational definition than the pinpoint.

The Constructional Approach (Goldiamond, 1974/2002) allows for behaviors that empower non-verbal learners to communicate assent for invasive and non-invasive medical husbandry procedures, and behavioral management practices in the zoological settings. Compassion based assent coupled with the Constructional Approach creates a flexible foundation upon which complex behaviors are rapidly developed for both non-verbal learners and their trainers. Employing assent creates a profound shift from the traditional linear and pathological approaches by creating programs designed to serve the needs of a learner across the arc of their life. By training behaviors with assent contingencies, zoological professionals cultivate empathy awareness for their non-verbal learner’s experience in training procedures. Team members develop greater dedication and empathy for their learners, experience enhanced job satisfaction, and programs advance as organizational cultures envelop assent-based practices. In our discussion of case studies, we will explore how compassion, empathy, and the Constructional Approach changes animal welfare decisions and training outcomes.

How do we know if we have a learner’s assent? This question has gained importance with both human and animal learners. To answer this question, it is essential to examine the alternative contingencies available to an individual during teaching. The use of positive reinforcement techniques is often considered non-aversive, and if a learner repeatedly initiates teaching sessions, it is generally assumed that participation is uncoerced. However, participation in positive reinforcement-based teaching may be coerced if the learner has no alternative way to access reinforcement (Goldiamond, 1974/2002). In this experiment, a rat received a positive reinforcer (chocolate pudding) contingent on participation in a training procedure. Results showed that when alternative contingencies were made available (e.g., free pudding, hiding, escape), the rat withdrew assent from the original procedure. Further, it was found that the rat did not engage with some alternatives (free pudding) unless alternatives that decreased the aversiveness of the environment (hiding, escape) were also available. These results support the ideas that assent cannot be obtained when 1) there are limited alternative ways to obtain a reinforcer, 2) available alternatives do not result in the same reinforcer, and 3) available alternatives do not decrease the aversiveness of the environment.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present with delays in the development of play skills. This symposium will describe interventions to teach play skills to children with ASD. The first study conducted a quantitative analysis of published peer-reviewed studies that evaluated interventions to teach toy play skills to children with ASD. The second study replicated and extended Pane et al. (2022) by comparing the acquisition of development-matched and age-matched play targets. The authors extended Pane et al. by targeting different play categories, assessing additional imitation skills, and conducting a caregiver assessment to determine each participant’s common experiences and preferences, as well caregiver’s values and preferences. The third study investigated whether visual aids, such as picture cues, were necessary to teach preschool-aged autistic children to make contextually appropriate play statements while playing with playsets. Participants required picture cues to increase their contextually appropriate play statements. The fourth study examined the effects that a linked digital activity schedule had on promoting cooperative thematic play between children with ASD. Participants demonstrated increased engagement in contextually appropriate cooperative play, and caregivers exhibited support for the goals, procedures, and outcomes. Implications and future directions for research and teaching play skills will be addressed.

Board certified behavior analysts or those studying to be behavior analysts enrolled in or recently completed graduate-level work in behavior analysis.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often present with delays in the development of play skills, requiring intensive intervention. Clinicians commonly target toy play skills with this population, and therefore a current comprehensive review of toy play interventions to inform clinicians about empirically-based procedures and to facilitate future lines of research was warranted. The current paper provides a context for behavioral interventions for play skills by first summarizing theories of play and describing play of neurotypically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder, followed by a systematic quantitative analysis of published peer-reviewed studies that evaluated interventions to teach toy play skills to children with ASD. Sixty-six evaluations met the inclusion criteria and were evaluated across several parameters (e.g., pre-assessment, dependent variable, functional/symbolic play, independent variable, naturalistic teaching components, generalization). A comprehensive summary of the findings is provided, along with recommendations about toy play instruction (e.g., play assessment, toys, play partner, play actions) and future areas for research are recommended.

Deficits in communication and play can affect the quality of life of autistic children. Script training and fading is an evidence-based practice that can be used to teach communication during play. A recent study suggests that script frames can become associated with other supplemental visual stimuli, picture cues. However, fading supplemental visual stimuli can be difficult. If we can associate script frames with other visual stimuli that are a part of the natural environment, such as the toys children are playing with, then fading of supplemental visual stimuli would not be necessary. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether visual aids, such as picture cues, are necessary to teach preschool-aged autistic children to make contextually appropriate play statements while playing with playsets. We began teaching contextually appropriate play statements using only echoic prompts. If echoic prompts alone were unsuccessful at sufficiently increasing responding, we introduced picture cues, with attending and echoic prompts. All three participants required the introduction of picture cues to increase their contextually appropriate play statements. Two participants also required pre-session behavioral skills training with the picture cues to meet mastery.

We will present a systematic review of individual participant data from the published articles on the outcomes of early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) for children with autism. The findings will expand on and be compared with other recent reviews of EIBI. Implications of the findings for general implementation practices will be discussed. The preliminary outcome from an EIBI center in London, UK will be presented and we will describe how a standardised framework for measuring a wide range of effects is implemented in this setting. We will consider the resources and training needed to employ these measures and the possible benefits of it. We will present data on how the quality of EIBI can be affected by measuring and improving the general learning environment in local mainstream pre-schools, where EIBI usually is implemented in Norway. Lastly, a case study demonstrates how behavioral analytic procedures such as functional analysis can be used to assess and reduce seizure-like behavior in a girl with Rett syndrome.

Internediate

We gathered individual participant data on 784 children from 17 clinically controlled studies on behavioral intervention for children with autism. The participants were between 2 and 7 years of age at intake and had received behavioral intervention for a minimum of 1 year. The participants were placed either in a behavioral intervention group or in a comparison group. We analyzed outcome in terms of clinical significance. First, we computed the Reliable Change Index for IQ, adaptive behavior, and autism severity. Significantly more children receiving behavioral intervention achieved reliable change in IQ, adaptive behavior, and autism severity. Second, we computed the proportion. of children scoring within the normal/non-clinical range at intake and after the intervention. A significantly larger proportion of the children receiving behavioral intervention scored within the normal range on IQ, adaptive behavior and within the non-clinical range on autism severity following intervention. The most consistent predictor of outcome was intensity in terms of the weekly intervention hours provided. These findings are compared to the findings of other recent reviews and we make some recommendations for intervention implementation and measurements of outcome.

The centre-based model of service delivery developed over the last 3 years at the First Bridge Centre in London will be presented. Possible pros and cons of a centre-based provision compared to other models of service delivery will be discussed. Also, we will present data on the time and resources needed to implement a broad range of outcome measures and the possible benefits of it. Recently published frameworks recommended standardized measures of autism severity, adaptive behavior, challenging behavior, quality of life and social validity, along with criterion referenced measures. Outcome after 6 months on skill acquisition, autism severity and preferences for social stimuli will the presented for 16 children. Outcome after 12 and 24 months on adaptive behaviors, autism severity and problems behaviors will be presented for 12 children and compared to the published outcome of other EIBI provision models and suggested benchmarks. Lastly, we will present the results on social validity.

In recent years, there have been reports of inconsistent quality in general education and challenges in implementing special education support and Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI). These results indicate that staff training is needed to improve the quality of services for children with special needs attending preschool. This study employs a delayed multiple baseline design to evaluate a staff training program's influence on the quality of general education, EIBI, and learning opportunities (learn units) in three inclusive preschool units. The intervention period was 17 weeks, consisting of a 4-hour post-baseline workshop followed by bi-weekly coaching with the entire staff group in the unit. The results showed an increase in the number of learn units with an effect size ranging from medium to large and improved EIBI quality. The quality of general education, measured by the Autism Program Environment Rating Scale (APERS-P-SE), improved in each preschool from baseline to posttest and on to follow-up. Promising results and assessment of staff social validity indicate that staff training with the entire staff group, using APERS-P-SE, and focusing on learn units may be one way to improve the implementation of EIBI and the general quality in preschools.

Contextual events are recognized to affect seizure-like behaviors, yet there is limited research on procedures assessing contextual control of seizure-like behaviors. This study aimed to examine the utilization of a brief precursor functional analysis (FA) within a clinical team assessment. Also, this study investigated if telehealth supervision could guide a parent administered replication of the FA. The participants were a young female with Rett syndrome and a history of epilepsy as well as non-epileptic seizures and her mother. The main outcome measure was precursor behavior occurrence and condition interval duration. In addition, data on procedure fidelity, inter-rater agreement (IRR), and social validity were obtained. Tau-U statistics were used for statistical analysis. The clinical FA revealed that the seizure-like behaviors served functions of access to attention and preferred activities. The parent-administered FA showed a procedure fidelity of 92 percent and resembled clinical FA findings and statistical analysis showed a large effect size (Tau = 1, p .014. Cl 90% .328 < > 1). Overall IRR was substantial with a mean of 93.3 percent and social validity ratings were high. This study suggests that adapted FA procedures could provide important information in the assessment of non-epileptic seizures.

The effectiveness of behavioral programming is largely dependent upon a behavior analyst's ability to effectively train the people who will be responsible for implementing the protocols. As such, it is incumbent upon behavior analysts to become effective trainers for people in the field (e.g., behavior analysts-in-training) as well as non-behavioral implementers (e.g., parents, untrained paraprofessionals). Fortunately, a substantial literature base exists documenting effective training strategies. Behavioral Skills Training (BST) incorporates the use of specific strategies, such as instructions, modeling/role-playing, and performance feedback, to provide high-quality training. While a strong literature base exists on the topic, there remain important areas in need of extension and refinement. The current symposium will cover several important aspects of effective training, including the use of BST to decrease reactivity and improve treatment integrity in staff members (Reyes), using online BST training to teach paraprofessionals behavior analytic interventions for use in classrooms (English), using BST to teach adult program staff to implement trial-based FAs (Budge), and disseminating behavior analytic content to non-behavioral professionals (Lerman). Dr. Michael Kelley will serve as discussant and provide comments at the end of the symposium.

Attendees should have some familiarity with Behavioral Skills Training

As the rates of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) increase, so does the need to provide high-quality and empirically validated supports across the lifespan. Despite most of an individual’s life taking place in adulthood, it is well-documented that the supports and services for adults with ASD are severely lacking. This is evidenced by outcomes indicating that many adults on the spectrum are unemployed, underemployed, or do not have appropriate services. Challenging behavior is one of the most significant barriers to accessing community participation and employment. Individuals who present with challenging behavior require empirically validated methods that lead to function-based treatment. Trial-based functional analysis (TBFA) is a method of determining the function of behavior that is well-suited to community settings. However, adult services often lack the resources and qualified staff required to conduct specialized assessments. There is a need for empirically validated training methodologies coupled with strategies that reduce resources to improve the outcomes for adults with ASD. The purpose of the current study is to determine if a functional relation exists between: pyramidal Behavior Skills Training (BST) on the training of TBFA conducted by graduate students for center-employed job coaches and the accuracy of implementation of TBFA conducted by job coaches.

Trauma, a reaction to events that people do not have the capacity to cope with effectively, is a human experience that has often been ignored or unacknowledged by behavior analysts, perhaps because it is not directly observable and measurable. However, it is important for behavior analysts to address trauma, as it has a profound effect on behaviors being analyzed when conducting functional behavioral assessments. The presenters in this symposium will address several aspects of trauma. The first presenter will use behavioral principles to explain the effect of trauma on behavior, which will increase the ability of behavior analysts to understand and provide interventions for individuals who have experienced trauma. The second presenter will propose the addition of two additional functions of behavior that seem more common in individuals who have experienced trauma, control and signs of damage, for behavior analysts to consider in their functional behavioral assessments. The third presenters will provide strategies for assisting individuals with intellectual/developmental disabilities in dealing with trauma. The final presenters will describe a behavioral observation system for measuring trauma-informed interactions and provide information about its ability to reliably measure change in the behavior of people who had been trained to use those strategies.

Participants can include BCBAs, teachers, school administrators, psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, counselors, therapists, and social workers. Participants should be familiar with terms including verbal behavior, discriminative stimuli, establishing and abolishing operations, and positive and negative reinforcement, and have experience and examples dealing with those terms.

It is well documented that Individuals with diagnosed developmental and intellectual disability have an increased risk of experiencing adverse events including abuse and neglect. These are also the populations primarily served by behavior analysts. With the emerging interest of behavior analysts in utilizing trauma-informed and compassionate approaches, it is imperative that we incorporate these concepts into our practice while remaining true to behavioral principles and our ethics code. This presentation will discuss the effects of adverse experiences on behavior, how to take those experiences into consideration when developing interventions, engaging with caregivers, and collaborating with a multidisciplinary team The first presenter will also describe steps that should be taken by behavioral providers to remain within their scope of competence while effectively and ethically serving individuals with backgrounds of adverse experiences. The second presenter who is a school psychologist will provide resources, strategies, and a case example of how to use these approaches in schools.

A behavioral observation system was developed to measure school personnel's use of trauma-informed strategies. The verbal behavior of adults toward youth can serve as motivating operations that can either encourage (establishing) or discourage (abolishing) aggressive, violent, oppositional, or defiant behavior. When strong emotional reactions and physiological responses are brought about by underlying trauma, techniques such as reflective listening, reframing, empathy, paradoxical intention, reinforcement, validating, and debriefing can serve as abolishing operations for these challenging behaviors. School personnel participated in a workshop that described and demonstrated these strategies and then practiced these strategies in role-play sessions. Undergraduate students were trained to identify trauma-informed strategies on a checklist using a series of role-play sessions to practice observing and test reliability. Inter-observer reliability was calculated on a series of observations of school personnel by two students. Comparisons of the use of trauma-informed strategies before and after training were made to determine any behavior changes in school personnel. Presenters will report on inter-observer reliability as well as changes in school personnel's behavior and demonstrate some of these trauma-informed strategies.

The use of behavior analytics strategies has been increasingly shown in the literature in novel settings and with novel patients. This symposium will present four novel applications of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) in medical settings or with unique patient presentations. Data will be presented on use of behavior analytic strategies in medical settings related to reducing the use of physical restraint in medical settings by hospital personnel and the acceptability of a crisis management program for use in medical settings. Large sample outcomes incorporating more than ten years of data from over 400 patients of an outpatient clinic targeting reduction of challenging behaviors will be discussed. Finally, strategies related to the treatment of complex motor stereotypy that incorporates times when access to stereotypy is available and the treatment of the understudied and controversial diagnosis of Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders associated with Streptococcus (PANDAS) will be reviewed. Each author will discuss implications for research and practice.

BCBAs. Especially those practicing in medical areas.

Clinics specializing in behavior analytic interventions for challenging behavior commonly restrict their services to children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. However, individuals across all ages, with and without disabilities, display challenging behavior necessitating treatment. The BioBehavioral Day Treatment Clinic at the University of Iowa specializes in behavior analytic intervention for challenging behavior for individuals across the lifespan without exclusion criteria related to diagnosis. Over the past 10 years, this clinic has provided assessment and treatment services to more than 400 individuals exhibiting challenging behavior. This talk will provide an overview of the service model used in this clinic and a detailed description of the patients it serves. Data on assessment and treatment outcomes for patients served over the past 10 years will be presented with additional analyses of outcome data based on various patient characteristics. This talk will also include a discussion on the benefits, limitations, and challenges of a fully inclusive clinic service.

Staff injuries and difficulty managing challenging behavior continue to plague the healthcare setting. As the healthcare setting begins to recognize the need for behavior analysts within the interdisciplinary clinical team, their novice understanding of applied behavior analysis—its conceptualization of behavior, methodology, and generality—persists. Empirically demonstrating the clinical success of behavior-analytic services can increase awareness of the usefulness of applied behavior analysis for patient-level issues. Savvy marketing of these outcomes can facilitate awareness of how the healthcare setting might employ a similar conceptualization and methodology for systems-level issues. In this presentation, we describe several projects related to the application of behavior analysis within a tertiary medical hospital. The first projects demonstrate the usefulness of our science for addressing patient-level issues such as evaluating causal relations between violent media and challenging behavior and reducing the use of physical restraint. The latter project, which came at the request of our hospital leadership following the dissemination of our clinical outcomes, demonstrates the generalization of behavior-analytic methodology for addressing a systems-level issue related to the effectiveness and acceptability of the hospital’s current crisis management program.

PANS/PANDAS is an autoimmune disorder marked by an acute onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder or severe restricted food intake, along with at least two of the following symptoms: anxiety, emotional lability, depression, aggression, developmental or behavioral regressions, deterioration in school performance, tics, or somatic symptoms. The simultaneous treatment of biological and behavioral symptoms is recommended for children diagnosed with PANS/PANDAS (Thienemann, et al., 2017). Accurate data are crucial to ensure adherence to medical and behavioral interventions to improve functioning and decrease suffering. However, due to the simultaneous treatment of bio-behavioral symptoms, accurate data are often difficult to progress monitor. In this presentation, we demonstrate methods of assessing and tracking changes in symptomatology in children diagnosed with PANS/PANDAS. ABA-based data collection methods including scatterplot, multi-element designs, and function-based narratives were used to track intervention variables as well as changes in symptoms over time for 3 children diagnosed with PANS/PANDAS within our multidisciplinary team of professionals (including behavior analysis, psychiatry, developmental pediatrics, immunology).

Applied behavior analysts are increasingly exploring the utility of virtual reality (VR) based interventions. Much of the published research on VR within ABA has focused on training staff and treatment implementers; however, VR also holds promise as an intervention component for clients and consumers of ABA services, including those with ASD. The current study includes young children with ASD and involves measuring acquisition of peer social skills within a VR environment (using Floreo® virtual therapy) as well as generalization to “real world” setting with live peers. Results for two boys (6 and 9 years old) show acquisition of peer social skills (greetings, joining or initiating conversation, and inviting peers to join a group) within the VR environment with minimal experimenter-implemented prompting and reinforcement. Generalization to real-life peers during initial probe measures was variable, but brief in-situ training resulted in mastery-level performance in all cases. Data collection is underway with additional participants.

We conducted a systematic literature review exploring the effectiveness of Virtual Reality (VR) Training, as well as interventions including artificial intelligence (AI) components. Out of the 1,357 articles related to VR and AI, only 18 met our inclusionary criteria, which included measurement of training outcomes that were observable and measurable. In this presentation, I will provide an overview of the articles we reviewed, including the participant demographics, experimental design, the skills taught, the methods of measurement used (including generality measures), the components of behavior skills training (BST) that were commonly incorporated, and the inclusion of components of simulation-based training (e.g., degree of immersion, type of human-AI interaction, multiple exemplars, and data presentation capability). I will also discuss the generality of the results and participants’ reports of social validity in the context of the future of skill development and simulation-based training. I will conclude with a discussion of avenues for future research and implications for practice.

Outcomes of behavior-analytic feeding intervention have important implications because they contribute to reducing child health risks, mental health problems, and increased health care costs. As such, throughout a clinical course of treatment, there are various perspectives from which social validity and caregiver input can be considered. Studies in this symposium will highlight a few of these areas, ranging from indices of child happiness to a caregiver’s role as participants in their child’s feeding therapy. More specifically, the first presenter will show data on child indices of happiness and unhappiness during and outside of mealtimes. Next, data on the agreement between caregiver-reported data and therapist-reported data for child mealtime behavior will be shared. The third presentation will focus on daily social validity ratings during intensive home-based services. Finally, the last presenter will discuss the findings of a manualized feeding intervention during intensive services, including caregiver training and the experience's opinions. Taken together, results of these talks show mostly neutral behavior during and outside of meals, along with high degrees of caregiver satisfaction and involvement across clinic- and home-based services. Important directions for the measurement of how meaningful, practical, and impactful behavior-analytic feeding services are will be discussed.

NA

Interventions focused on the principles of applied behavior analysis are highly effective at treating pediatric feeding disorders by increasing appropriate mealtime behaviors and decreasing inappropriate mealtime behaviors. Treatment effectiveness is usually evaluated with data collected by trained observers. Unfortunately, trained observers may not always be available or present to monitor child behavior. To address this barrier, parents may be able to track their child’s treatment progress. A preliminary study suggested that some parents’ data may correspond well with trained observers and that parents can detect large changes in challenging behavior (Becraft et al., in press). In this study, we replicated and extended Becraft et al. with 8 parents of children receiving treatment for a feeding disorder. Overall, parent data were significantly correlated with observer data for inappropriate and appropriate mealtime behavior for 7 out of 8 parents. These data suggest that parent data may be used to track treatment progress and determine whether there is a treatment effect with little to no formal data collection training.

Current research widely supports the use of behavioral intervention to address a variety of feeding concerns for children with pediatric feeding disorder. These interventions are often delivered as a treatment package that undergoes data-based decision making and is subject to change over time. Previous feeding studies that measured social validity demonstrate mixed results over treatment acceptability and choice, even when considering common treatment components, such as antecedent strategies, escape extinction, and/or multiple forms of reinforcement. However, there are few studies that continuously evaluate social validity during a child’s admission to intensive feeding programs. Researchers of the current study administered a brief, daily measure of treatment acceptability (a modified version of the Abbreviated Acceptability Rating Profile) to caregivers to monitor social validity throughout each child’s intensive in-home feeding program admission. Clinicians were blind to treatment acceptability measure outcomes through the duration of the study. Results revealed overall high ratings throughout each child’s admission regardless of changes in treatment and behavior. Findings related to feasibility of ongoing social validity measurement and treatment acceptability when using escape extinction will be discussed.

The ever-increasing prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) results in a growing demand for competent behavior analysts. Although the field of behavior analysis is growing at a rapid pace, most of the behavior analysts are in the US while the rest of the world still face a huge demand for behavior analytic professionals. The symposium will present evidence-based interventions to teach children with autism and developmental disabilities to enhance their social and verbal behavior development from three different countries, including Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the US. The symposium covers the applications of modified behavioral intervention packages for countries lacking resources for children with ASD and Developmental Disorders and their families. The presenters will present recent research findings on a modified naturalistic preference assessment with autistic children from Italy; decreasing severe avoidance behavior during daily activities and basic health routines with autistic children from Italy; a low-intensity intervention for parents and children with ASD in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and teaching mands through tact instruction for a preschooler with ASD in the US.

basic

Quite often, parents of individuals with developmental disabilities find it challenging to cope with severe avoidance behavior during daily activities and basic health routines. Five male participants with autism and multiple disabilities, aged 3 to 7 years old, were selected for this study because of their increasing difficulties during meals, bedtime, medical examinations, and haircut experiences. Their level of verbal behavior development ranged from emergent listener-emergent speaker (Participants 3 and 4) to listener-speaker (Participants 1 and 2) and emergent reader/writer (Participant 1). We tested the effects of a multiple intervention package, based on systematic exposure to stimuli, with a forward chaining tactic and a change-criterion design for each participant. The independent variable was an individualized intervention with eating healthy snacks, bedtime, blood sample, and haircut routines. The dependent variable was the percentage of tasks independently performed by each child, before and after the intervention, during these experiences in natural environments (lunchtime at home and school, bedtime at home, blood collection appointment at the local hospital, and haircut at the local barbershop). Results showed that the intervention was successful for all participants. Anecdotal information also suggested that prioritizing such highly socially significant target behavior can be an effective choice for behavior analysts who supervise educational programs with low weekly frequency. Emerging data were also discussed based on the construct of “phobia”.

Skinner postulated the functional independence of verbal operants given that different verbal operants are under the control of correspondent variables (Skinner, 1957). However, more and more existing research has provided supporting evidence for functional interdependence. We tested the effects of teaching mands through tact instruction for a preschooler with ASD. Previous research tested the emergence of untrained mands and tacts in children with autism and individuals with language delays and traumatic brain injury. However, to our knowledge, few studies have used such functional interdependence as an independent variable to improve children’s verbal behavior development. The participant was a 3-year-old girl who struggled to learn mands through direct mand instruction. We used a multiple baseline design across sets. Our results show that after the participant demonstrated the transfer of control to mands and acquired the tact operants. The current study provided a novel way to teach children who struggled to learn basic verbal operants through direct instruction.

Due to the lack of resources for children with ASD and Developmental Disorders in Bosnia and Herzegovina and other Low- and Mid-Income Countries (LMIC), we developed and tested a possible first-line intervention to introduce parents to developmental and behavioral principles and pivotal developmental behavioral cusps and capabilities. We tested the effects of the program on the children’s number of skills, developmental milestones acquired, and the severity of ASD symptoms, and for parents, we tested the stress levels, parental confidence, and basic quality of life. Parents were enrolled in the program for ten 2-hour sessions with their children. After listening to the lectures about the basic ABA principles, developmental milestones, verbal behavior development, mands, tacts, the community of reinforcers, and similar pivotal developmental skills, parents got to practice those skills with their child and a teacher mentor. After each session, parents demonstrated the learned skills with their child using Learn Units, while mentors provided feedback. In addition, they had a one-on-one session with the teacher-mentor where they were able to discuss all questions regarding the programs they were doing at home and future steps. Parents reported that learning the basic principles of ABA and understanding the verbal behavior development theory helped them relieve their stress and feel more confident in "helping" their child. A pre-, and post-test group design was used in this study with a total of 30 families with children with ASD and other DD. We also marked an increase in the children’s skills in repertoire according to the developmental screening tools used.

The first paper by ERIK ARNTZEN and Ruta Ezerinyte presents an experiment comparing performance in sorting and matching-to-sample (MTS) tests. In this experiment, untrained stimuli are presented in the sorting and MTS tests, respectively. The main findings were that participants sorted the novel stimuli in a separate class. The second paper by MANISH VAIDYA includes a review of behavioral and non-behavioral research on the notions of class-conflict and class-cohesion, which can be used in the interpretation of several cognitive phenomena in non-mentalistic terms. The third paper by LANNY FIELDS discusses four parameters that characterize the structure of an equivalence class with emphasis on the fourth parameter, the distribution of singles. The fourth paper by Álvaro Silva and GERSON YUKIO TOMANARI presents an experiment showing the emergence of various types of relationships (visual-visual, auditory-visual, auditory-auditory) by using compound stimuli with auditory and visual elements. Findings show that participants demonstrated varying degrees of emergence of visual-visual stimuli.

intermediate

The literature of experimental psychology is replete with assays designed to measure performance interpretable in terms of cognitive mechanisms. The semantic priming and the N400 effect, for example, are interpreted in terms of the target and prime stimuli’s membership in natural-language semantic networks. Sidman’s (1994, 2000) formulation of stimulus equivalence has been shown to provide a naturalistic interpretation of linguistic phenomena. This address will introduce the notion of class-conflict and class-cohesion as organizing principles that facilitate interpretation of a variety of cognitive phenomena in non-mentalistic terms. Cohesion refers to instances of facilitation of a categorization response when the stimuli belong to the same class and conflict refers to instances of retardation of that response when the stimuli belong to different classes. This address will review 1) data from several studies conducted in our lab and 2) review other behavioral and non-behavioral research to critically evaluate the utility of class-cohesion and class-conflict as organizing principles for a naturalistic interpretation of cognitive phenomena.

The structure of any equivalence class is defined by four parameters (a) number of class members, (b) the number of nodes in a class, (c) training directionality, and (d) the distribution of singles attached by training to a node. To date, many studies have shown that variation in the values of the first three parameters influences the likelihood of class formation and/or the relatedness of stimuli in a class. To date, the effects of the fourth, the distribution of singles, on equivalence-based performances have received minimal attention. The only exception is Nedelcu, Fields, and Arntzen (2015). This presentation will consider the fourth parameter in detail, review the findings presented by Nedelcu, et al (2015), indicate how some other published studies might also reflect the effects of density of singles on class formation, suggest how singles density can account for the enhancement of class formation by meaningful stimuli, and finally, suggest some new studies that might show additional effects of density of singles on equivalence class formation.

This study focuses on the significance of identifying conditions that facilitate the development of new abilities through conditional discrimination training. The use of prompts to establish conditional relationships between arbitrary stimuli has proven effective; however, there is a need for a more comprehensive demonstration of the control prompts exert, whether in simple or conditional contexts. In addition, the study explores how training with compound stimuli containing both auditory and visual elements can lead to the emergence of various types of relationships (visual-visual, auditory-visual, auditory-auditory), including verbal skills. The study involved four children/adolescents with autism spectrum disorder and utilized images of painters, their names, paintings, and accompanying colors as prompts. Findings indicated that, initially, prompts had a stronger impact on simple discriminative control than on conditional control. Participants demonstrated varying degrees of relation between the paintings and their respective artists. Additionally, exposure to artists' names alongside their works during training led to the emergence of new behaviors, such as naming the artists when shown their pictures and pointing to the pictures when shown their names, even without direct training for these responses.

Many school-aged children with or without disabilities engage in disruptive behavior that can hinder their academic progress but also negatively impact their teachers and peers (Horner et al., 2002). Additionally, findings from previous research indicate that school-aged children who do not receive adequate support are more likely to drop out of school, engage in criminal behavior, or be unemployed (Janz & Banbury, 2009; Mallet, 2016). This symposium includes four studies completed in school settings that investigated the impact of behavioral interventions on appropriate skills or disruptive behavior. A first study evaluates the effectiveness of music-based instruction in improving attending behavior among elementary-aged students compared to non-music instruction. The second study examines the innovative use of virtual reality and behavioral skills training to enhance interview skills for high school students with disabilities. The third study investigates the impact of contingency mapping on reducing off-task behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder during classroom activities. A fourth study evaluates the effects of a peer-mediated self-monitoring intervention on disruptive behavior and task completion for students with autism spectrum disorder. Finally, the discussant will provide valuable insights into the implications of these research projects.

N/A

Audio and audiovisual cues, when used as teaching tools, result in desirable learning outcomes for young learners when compared to visual cues alone (Havy et al., 2017; Kirkham et al., 2019; Sloutsky & Napolitano, 2003). Previous research has demonstrated that music can be an effective delivery method for teaching math in the elementary classrooms (An & Tillman, 2015; An et al., 2014; Azaryahu et al., 2020). However, the effectiveness of music at increasing attending behavior specifically has not been assessed in these studies. This study evaluated the effectiveness of music-based instruction on students’ attending behaviors compared to non-music based instruction. A reversal design was implemented with four students in the same 1st grade classroom. Although there was some variability across phases, results for all four students showed higher overall levels of attending in the music-based instruction condition. These results indicate that teachers might consider adding music to classroom lessons as a beneficial way in improving attending behavior during group instruction for elementary aged students.

Individuals with disabilities experience lower employment rates compared to the general population, highlighting the need for interventions to enhance their employability. Interview skills are the most crucial skills to develop. Researchers have used behavioral skills training (BST) to improve vocal and non-vocal aspects of interviewee behavior. Additionally, virtual reality (VR) has been used to simulate the interview process and promote generalization of skills across various environments. However, limited research has investigated the use of VR for vocational skills training in students with disabilities, particularly those still enrolled in high school. This study aimed to examine the use of VR combined with BST to improve interview skills for high school students with disabilities. Three students with disabilities in grades 9-10, receiving special education services under the category of emotional disturbance, autism spectrum disorder, or other health impairment at a public high school, participated in the study. A multiple baseline design across students was used to evaluate the impact of the intervention on their interview skills. The results showed that the VR with BST led to increased interview skills for all three students. The students’ improved skills maintained throughout subsequent VR sessions without BST and generalized to interviews with school staff.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit problem behavior in schools, which negatively impacts their educational outcomes. Unfortunately, teachers continue to have difficulty addressing problem behavior in the classroom. Contingency mapping is a visual representation of the contingencies for engaging in a desired and undesired behaviors, which has been found to improve student behavior in the classroom setting. The current study examined the use of the contingency mapping intervention for young children with ASD. Specifically, the study examined the extent to which the contingency mapping intervention result in a decrease of off-task behavior during natural classroom activities. Three young children with ASD ages 6-8 years old served in a self-contained classroom and their corresponding three classroom teachers participated in the study. A nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across participants was used to evaluate the intervention outcomes. The results show that the contingency mapping intervention produced immediate reductions in off-task behavior for all participating students.

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may face several challenges in the classroom. They often engage in challenging behavior that can be disruptive to others in the environment including their peers and teachers (Horner et al., 2002). This can also impede their acquisition of skills and their academic progress (Martinez et al., 2016; Rosenbloom et al., 2019). Many interventions have been used to increase academic engagement and decrease disruptive behaviors in the classroom for students with ASD, including self-monitoring strategies and peer-mediated interventions. However, it appears that few studies have evaluated peer-mediated self-monitoring interventions for students with ASD. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a peer-mediated self-monitoring intervention on disruptive behavior and task completion for students with ASD. Results indicate that self-monitoring with the inclusion of a peer mediator was effective at decreasing disruptive behavior and increasing task completion for three students with ASD.

In the workplace, it is important that leaders can address performance concerns with staff. However, this begins with identifying processes and behaviors that yield desirable outcomes, which is known as pinpointing. Pinpointing is essential to the performance management process, as it provides guidance and direction on what is being targeted. This study evaluated the effects of individual (3 participants) versus group (3 participants) video-based BST on teaching supervisors to pinpoint. First, participants were given fictional scenarios of performance problems to practice identifying pinpoints. After participants met mastery criteria, they went two weeks without meeting with the experimenter and then completed two novel scenarios. Following this, generalization was assessed by asking participants to pinpoint a performance problem at their current place of employment. The results from this study suggest both training methods were effective at teaching participants to identify pinpoints, with group training taking almost half the training time as individual training. Additionally, training was effective at helping participants maintain the skill to identify pinpoints and promoting generalization for participants to identify pinpoints in their current work environment.

Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) interventions are often judged by both immediate effects and the long-term impact on the targeted performance, as well as the likelihood that the organization and/or its constituents will adopt the intervention (Sigurdsson & Austin, 2006). In recent literature, tools such as the Performance Diagnostic Checklist- Human Services (PDC-HS; Carr et al., 2013; Carr et al., 2016) have become popular in ABA service delivery settings with demonstrated predictive validity and reliability in empirical literature (Wilder et al., 2020). One further way to evaluate the PDC-HS is to examine its role in producing durable change. Thus, the purpose of the present experiment is to examine the predictive ability of a common OBM functional assessment tool, and how addressing supervisor behavior might contribute to maintenance and/or institutionalization. Eight registered behavior technicians (RBTs) across 4 supervisors were split into two multiple baseline designs across participants. One group of participants was exposed to a PDC-HS derived intervention alone, while the other group received the intervention in addition to their supervisors receiving a PDC-HS derived intervention to promote supervisor implementation and sustained behavior change. A mixed repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilized to examine the differences between these groups and an untreated control group. Overall, both PDC-HS derived interventions produced measurable behavior change without researcher led support. Ultimately, institutionalization of these interventions was inconsistent, suggesting that maintaining interventions may require support at multiple levels. Limitations and future directions will be discussed.

This symposium presents four exemplars of conceptual considerations and/or methodological approaches to honoring client choice within therapeutic and educational programming. Specifically, two papers explore the meaning of assent within applied behavior analysis (ABA): one presents a potential experimental approach to defining the capacities for providing assent, and the other introduces an ongoing study which seeks to measure the state of the field in terms of assent-based practice. The third paper presents clinical applications of the constructional approach (Goldiamond, 1979; Layng et al., 2021), itself an assent-based system, within a tertiary-level, complex behavior outpatient clinic. The fourth and final paper discusses potential risks of the pathologization of particular types of play exhibited by autistic youth and presents a call-to-action for a more inclusive, flexible, and developmentally-sensitive approach to play. Collectively, these talks explore critical concepts for navigating the pivotal territory at the intersection of ABA and the neurodiversity movement. The symposium will conclude with a discussion of the ways in which behavior analysis can embrace neurodiversity, empower clients, and continue to apply the principles of ABA to promoting quality of life, in an ever-evolving landscape.

Necessary prerequisites include: - an awareness of the neurodiversity movement - awareness of the topic of assent - experience with applying and/or solid conceptual understanding of the principles of ABA - exposure to the BACB ethics code

Families with autistic children demonstrate higher risk factors than families without autism, and that level of risk is further and positively correlated with the severity of behavioral challenges experienced within the family system (e.g., Brassard, 2021; Cheng & Lai, 2023; Davis & Carter, 2008). The constructional approach and non-linear contingency analysis described by Goldiamond (1975) provides a unique lens to assessing complex contingencies and has demonstrated success when applied within clinical contexts across psychiatric populations (Goldiamond, 1979; Layng et al., 2021; Merley & Layng, 1976). This presentation demonstrates case examples of analyses and interventions applying the constructional approach and non-linear analysis to intensive parent interventions of children with severe and complex behavioral disorders served within Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Complex Behavior Program. Clinical data demonstrate that when this case conceptualization and analysis is applied across multiple clients and family systems with various presenting severe behavioral concerns, matrix resolution can be reached for positive, socially valid outcomes for children and their families. The constructional approach applies a compassionate and assent driven case conceptualization that factors in multiple maintaining contingencies within the patient’s learning history and context, and drives change directed by the client and their families (Abdel-Jalil et al., 2023; Scallen & Ruiz, 2023). The constructional parent training program discussed in this presentation works to teach parents to apply and design problem solving strategies using non-linear analyses and intervention to solve environmental challenges associated with their children’s ongoing behavioral needs, increasing confidence and reducing dangerous behaviors, factors also associated with decreased parental stress (Miranda et al., 2019).

Play has been observed across species and cultures (Pellegrini, 2011) and has been theorized to function for a variety of reasons including fostering social, cognitive, and emotional development in children (e.g., Ginsburg, 2007; Tamis-LeMonda, Shannon, Cabrera, & Lamb, 2004; Zhao & Gibson, 2003). While the exact definition of play has not been agreed upon (Sutton-Smith, 1996), most researchers identify play as being spontaneously initiated and naturally reinforcing to the individual (Knox, 2008; Moore & Lynch, 2017). While a child who engages in play is given the freedom to follow what is motivating to them, autistic children are not often afforded the same freedom (Yoon, Goodwin, & Genishi, 2023). In fact, autistic play is often described in the literature through a deficit lens and identified as a behavior that needs fixing (e.g., Lee, Lo, & Lo, 2017), inevitably becoming the target of intervention. In this presentation we will explore the function of play and how practitioners can align treatment goals to match that function, focusing on identifying the strengths and values of the individuals they serve. Topics for future research within the field of applied behavior analysis will also be discussed.

The symposium addresses recent developments related to behavior analyst credentialing. One presentation addresses the educational and supervised experience requirements for behavior analyst credentialing, comparing the varying requirements of certifying organizations. A second presentation addresses opposition to behavior analyst licensure in US states. In one state, interaction of behavior analysts and licensure opponents contributed to establishment of a program of post-certification mentorship of behavior analysts that can serve as a method for states to provide continuing oversight and supervision post certification. The third presentation addresses the New York State behavior analyst licensure law. The original law created unprecedented requirements (e.g., coursework and supervision requirements differing from the BACB's, Licensed Behavior Analysts working only with Autistic individuals, coursework not done in New York not accepted). The law has changed and come more into line with those elsewhere. How and why this happened will be traced, emphasizing the roles of professionals and parent advocates. The final presentation examines the development, changes, and future directions in the practice of behavior analysis both in the US and other countries. Histories of professions indicate that across years they typically change, some ceasing to exist. Implications of such changes for behavior analysis as a profession discussed.

Intermediate Knowledge of the general nature of behavior analysis as a profession and of common behavior analyst credentialing criteria

Many of those involved in the legislative process as it pertains to Behavior Analyst licensure have likely run into opposition from opposing fields or disciplines. This talk will focus on a primary area of opposition to portion of some common behavior analyst licensure requirements. Specifically, opposition has arisen from members of other professions the licensure requirements for which typically involve considerably more hours of supervised experience for independent practice than the supervised experience requirement included in BACB certification requirements and most state behavior analyst licensure requirements. In one state, interaction of behavior analysts and licensure opponents contributed to establishment of a program of post-certification mentorship of behavior analysts that can serve as a method for states to provide continuing oversight and supervision post certification. The talk will look at how some of these disputes have been settled in different states and provide an outline for a mentorship program that can serve as a method for some states to provide continuing oversight and supervision post certification.

Once children begin to learn names incidentally, studies have shown that they learn faster and in new ways that catalyze their verbal development. This has led some researchers to call incidental naming a verbal developmental cusp and emphasize its critical role in teaching language to young children, particularly those with developmental delays. However, the conceptual debate surrounding naming, and the variability in testing and training strategies mean that incidental naming is currently being studied by only a handful of laboratories and classrooms around the world. The lack of clear recommendations regarding the critical variables in incidental naming may further discourage clinicians and applied researchers from approaching this topic. In my talk, I will highlight key challenges in the literature specifically with respect to naming tests, proffer potential solutions, and describe why practitioners and applied-researchers should care about incidental naming. I will also highlight examples of researchers studying concepts functionally similar to incidental naming but using other terminology and advocate for more collaboration between these perspectives.

The current study focused on identifying the behavioural processes that are involved when children learn to name objects by employing the non-simultaneous naming procedure, similar to that used by Sivaraman et al. (2021). Only one published study has used this procedure with children, who were all typically developing toddler participants, but no research has been conducted with adults. Additionally, the current study explored the potential impact of specific relational contextual cues for naming, including pointing, mutual eye gaze, and linguistic terms (e.g., “this is a”). The study thus sought to determine the relative impact of these relational cues on the learning of novel names in human adult participants. In other words, would the learning of specific novel names be impacted negatively when these typical naming cues are absent? Preliminary findings from two of four conditions indicate that such relational cues do indeed play an important role in naming. Overall, the results of this work may inform other research in terms of highlighting the potential importance of contextual cues when adults and indeed children are learning to name.

Numerous teaching procedures have been shown to lead to the acquisition of novel skills by persons with disabilities. However, in selecting teaching procedures, it is important that clinicians consider both the efficacy and efficiency of procedures and consider the implementation of procedures which have the potential to lead to the acquisition of multiple skills. Matrix training, multiple exemplar training, and instructive feedback are examples of empirically validated procedures for teaching multiple skills to individuals diagnosed with intellectual or developmental disabilities and this symposium includes four empirical studies evaluating these teaching procedures. The first study demonstrated that matrix training can be used to teach skills and obtain emergence of untrained adjective-noun tacts. The second study assessed whether multiple exemplar training of tacts led to emergence of mands for target stimuli. The final two studies evaluated the effects of instructive feedback. One study sought to teach tacts of emotions and assessed emergence of tacts of associated bodily responses whereas the other study taught tacts in English and in familial language.

Clinicians, Practitioners

• One essential component of behavior-analytic intervention is generalization (Baer et al., 1968). Matrix training is an intervention that can lead to recombinative generalization, which involves responding correctly to novel recombinations of components. Matrix training includes teaching a subset of responses from a matrix with at least two axes, and then testing for recombinative generalization. In this study, we used matrix training to teach two school-aged children with autism spectrum disorder adjective-noun tacts. A within-subject, multiple-baseline design across stimulus sets was used to evaluate the efficacy of this training on recombinative generalization. Posttest results indicated a degree of recombinative generalization for both participants. One participant emitted seven novel adjective-noun tacts across three matrices. The second participant emitted 22 novel adjective noun tacts across two matrices and cross-matrix generalization probes. Results suggest the use of matrix training may result in varying levels of recombinative generalization for adjective-noun tacts. Possible variables that may affect the idiosyncrasy of these results will be discussed.

Mand training allows children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to access reinforcers (e.g., Albert et al., 2012) and has been shown to lead to a reduction in challenging behavior (e.g., Carr & Durand, 1985). Developing a tacting repertoire enhances the learning of other verbal operants (e.g., Greer & Du, 2010) and substantially improves social interactions (Marchese et al., 2012). In teaching verbal behavior, multiple exemplar training facilitates the acquisition and generalization of operant behavior (Stokes et al., 1974), including the transfer of stimulus control across verbal operants (Shea, 2013). The present study sought to determine whether multiple exemplar training leads to the transfer of stimulus control from tact to mand. Employing concurrent multiple probes across behaviors experimental design, participants experienced tact training for various target stimuli, and the emergence of mands was assessed at distinct stages throughout the training. Both participants acquired the tacts which were directly trained. Moreover, both participants also acquired the mands, without requiring any direct training. Results indicate that, at least for some participants, transfer of stimulus control across tacts and mands is plausible. Future research should include replicate this study with participants of different ages and verbal repertoires to assess generality of these findings.

Identifying other’s emotions is an important social skill. For some individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), this skill may need to be directly taught. Instructive feedback (IF) is a procedure that involves providing secondary targets during the consequence portion of primary target trials. Instructive feedback can increase the efficiency of instruction across a variety of skills. In the present study, a prompt delay plus instructive feedback was used to teach two learners with ASD emotions and the nonverbal behavior associated with those emotions. Learners were required to watch a video model of someone engaging in various emotional responses. Participants then had to tact the emotion, and the instructor provided instructive feedback about facial and bodily actions that related to the emotion. Acquisition of secondary targets was probed by asking “how” after the tact of the emotion. A multiple baseline design across sets was arranged for each learner. Both learners acquired the emotions that were directly taught. In addition, instructive feedback resulted in acquisition of all but one secondary target for one participant and all but one secondary target in Set 1 for the second participant. Further, generalization was assessed to a person wearing a mask for one participant, and that participant showed generalized responding to the untrained person.

Obsessive-compulsive behavior is a term used to describe the topographical overlap between Higher-order Restricted Repetitive Behaviors commonly observed in autistic individuals and compulsions characteristic of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Due to the complex variables maintaining these behaviors (e.g., positive and/or negative automatic reinforcement and other operant functions), specific individualized treatments, such as adapted Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Functional Behavior-based CBT, have been developed to address these behaviors in autistic individuals. The research supporting these treatments is slowly growing; however, there are still significant gaps that need to be addressed. In our symposium, we examine the current body of literature and identify prominent gaps, such as limited extended follow-up studies, a lack of function-based treatment, and minimal incorporation of client voice in treatment. Further, we discuss the potential ethical implications that can arise from these gaps. Finally, we provide practical recommendations for researchers and clinicians providing adapted and Functional Behavior-based CBT to autistic individuals with obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

Working knowledge of basic behavior principles (e.g., functional assessments, function-based treatment) and the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.

Functional Behavior-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an empirically supported, manualized intervention for treating obsessive-compulsive behaviors (OCBs) in school-age autistic children. By using a combination of traditional CBT (e.g., psychoeducation, exposure, and response prevention) and applied behavior analysis (e.g., functional behavior assessment, basic behavioral principles), this treatment has proven to be efficacious; however, few follow-up studies have been conducted. Our study uses a mixed methods approach to evaluate the long-term effects of Functional Behavior-based CBT in reducing obsessive-compulsive behaviors in autistic children. Our quantitative results (Repetitive Behavior Scale–Revised Sameness, Compulsive, and Ritualistic Composite scores) revealed a significant reduction in parent OCB ratings from baseline to treatment (-1.81, SE = 0.16, t[3812] = -11.01, p < .0001), and a small and nonsignificant increase between treatment and follow-up (0.26, SE = 0.25, t[3812] = 1.06, p = .29) conducted 6.31 years later. We corroborate these findings with matched comparison parent and child semi-structured interviews, which provided insight into factors that may have contributed to successful or unsuccessful outcomes. We discuss considerations for improving the long-term effects of Functional Behavior-based CBT for reducing obsessive-compulsive behaviors and the benefits of using a mixed methods approach to evaluating treatment outcomes.

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

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

This symposium brings together three distinctive presentations at the intersection of applied behavior analysis (ABA), health behavior change, and health behavior assessment. The first presentation explores the fusion of health coaching and ABA, uncovering practicality, scope of competence, and ethical considerations in this unique convergence. Attendees will gain insights into maintaining professional boundaries, handling ethical dilemmas, and capitalizing on collaborative opportunities, all while delivering evidence-based practices that foster holistic client care. The second presentation addresses the urgent demand for supervision in the realms of health, sports, and fitness. This presentation delves into the specific challenges and competencies required for overseeing ABA practices in these specialized domains. It provides a guide to ethical and effective supervision, empowering attendees to mentor their supervisees within the distinctive landscape of health, sports, and fitness. The third presentation highlights the novel Health Behavior Assessment Tool (HealthBAT), designed to evaluate contextual influences on client behavior change. Attendees will gain a deep understanding of HealthBAT's development, informed by feedback from certified behavior analysts. Practical applications, intervention recommendations, and usability assessment data will be shared, showcasing the tool's potential to enhance health behavior assessment, inform decision-making, and ultimately improve client outcomes.

Graduate students and behavior analysts interested in health behavior change, health coaching, and/or the application of behavior analysis to health, sport, and fitness.

This presentation delves into the crucial topic of supervision requirements for Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) supervisees operating in the domains of health, sports, and fitness. The Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) mandates appropriate supervision for BCBA supervisees to ensure the proficient application of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) principles and practices. However, there is a significant scarcity of BCBAs practicing in the health, sports, and fitness sectors, and an even scarcer supply of supervisors within this specialized context. This presentation aims to bridge this gap by offering a focused exploration of the supervision prerequisites for applying ABA within the realms of health, sports, and fitness. It will comprehensively cover the distinctive challenges and considerations inherent in delivering ABA services in these settings, outline the essential competencies needed for supervising ABA practices in these fields, and present effective strategies for ensuring supervision that is both ethical and efficient. Attendees will gain a deeper comprehension of the supervision requirements and best practices for supporting BCBA supervisees operating within the unique landscape of health, sports, and fitness. Armed with this knowledge, they will be better prepared to provide high-quality supervision tailored to this specialized area.

All students have access to a free and appropriate education. The latest National Academic Educational Progress (NAEP) Reading Scores revealed that the fourth grade reading scores in 2022 hit their lowest point since 2005. This supports the urgency to make significant changes within the educational system. One solution is to use a science of behavior in public and charter schools to increase student academic outcomes. We present three papers that focuses on using the science of behavior across all aspects of the school environment and instructional practices. The first paper focuses on training teachers to implement components of the Comprehensive Application of Behavior Analysis to Schooling (CABAS) Accelerated Independent Learner (AIL) model at a charter school across three years. The second paper focuses on how to use the science of behavior and teacher training to develop new classrooms. The third paper focuses on how the science of behavior and verbal development can accelerate student learning. Collectively, these papers offer a way to utilize the science of behavior to teach all children.

N/A- Basic

Few randomized controlled trials (RCT) have analyzed evidence-based educational practices delivered through a social media environment. This study used a multi-arm RCT to evaluate the critical components of the Behavioral Education and Social Media (BE-Social) intervention package: self-management skills training delivered through video modeling, cooperative learning, and semi-immediate feedback. We evaluated social media engagement and academic performance among 141 students in a graduate-level applied psychology program. Students were randomly assigned to five groups: control (n = 27), self-management (n = 27), cooperative learning (n = 33), BE-Social without semi-immediate feedback (n = 27), and complete BE-Social intervention program (n = 27). Results indicated that participants receiving the complete BE-Social program showed the highest levels of engagement and academic performance. The analysis revealed that the semi-immediate feedback component was critical to the package effectiveness, whereas the impact of the self-management skills training intervention could not be verified. The conceptual, methodological, and practical implications of the study are discussed.

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

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

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

N/A

The most recent edition of the Ethical Code for Behavior Analysts introduces the term ‘assent’ under 2.11 (Obtaining Informed Consent), stating that behavior analysts are ‘responsible for obtaining assent from clients when applicable’. The glossary provided defines assent as ‘Vocal or non-vocal verbal behavior that can be taken to indicate willingness to participate in… behavioral services by individuals who cannot provide informed consent’. The same Ethical Code requires that behaviour analysts be culturally sensitive and responsive to diversity (1.07). Such sensitivities include working cohesively with culturally-specific parenting values, practices, expectations, and from which the notion of ‘assent’ may be absent in many parenting decisions. Consequently, practicing behavior analysts today find themselves navigating the tension between these potentially conflicting ethical guidelines, whilst also trying to provide effective treatment to populations that often present with significant challenges and resistance to learning. The panelists in this event will explore and explain these tensions, and respond to audience questions about how they navigate them with anecdotes from their own professional practice.

Participants should have already obtained BCBA certification and have independent experience practicing while upholding the Ethical Code of Conduct. This panel is targeted to behaviour analysts who have already developed strong ethical practice skills but who are seeking further development with the changing guidelines.

Empirically based treatment of pediatric feeding disorders include a variety of extinction and reinforcement-based procedures, such as escape extinction, attention extinction, and differential reinforcement. However, there is a lack of studies that have directly compared different components of treatment in regard to their effectiveness in decreasing inappropriate mealtime behavior, mitigation of side effects of escape extinction, or social validity. Given the gaps in the pediatric feeding literature, there is an essential need to further examine these dimensions of behavioral treatments. The present symposium aims to disseminate novel research that evaluates and compares overall effectiveness of different treatment packages in reducing inappropriate mealtime behavior, their mitigation of side effects of escape extinction, and social acceptability. The first presentation will compare the effects of escape extinction with or without a Nuk to open procedure at the onset of treatment, as well as evaluate caregiver acceptability of the procedures. The second presentation will compare and evaluate the effectiveness and social acceptability of escape extinction when combined with three different forms of adult attention, including attention extinction, noncontingent attention, and differential reinforcement of alternative behavior.

Graduate level students and clinicians working with children diagnosed with pediatric feeding disorders.

Approximately 1 in 4 typically developing children and 8 in 10 children with a developmental disability display feeding difficulties (Field et al, 2003; Gouge & Ekvall, 1975; Milnes et al 2013; Palmer & Horn, 1978; Perkse et al, 1977). Feeding difficulties may lead to poor weight gain, dependence on supplemental feedings, dehydration, and even death (Volkert & Piazza, 2012). Treatment procedures conceptually based in applied behavior analysis (ABA) have the most empirical support for treating feeding difficulties (Volkert & Piazza, 2012). Research has shown that removing bites or drinks is the primary motivator for inappropriate mealtime behavior and therefore escape extinction, or non-removal of the spoon or cup, is the most well-established treatment component. Although there is a wealth of evidence demonstrating its effectiveness, escape extinction may initially result in temporary but negative side effects (e.g., increases in crying, running from the table). These may make it difficult for parents to observe or conduct this intervention and clinicians are always seeking ways to decrease these signs of child distress during escape extinction. In addition to escape, attention from the feeder is a common motivator for children engaging in inappropriate mealtime behavior (Piazza et al., 2003), but less is known regarding the impact or efficacy of different applications of feeder attention. Some studies have shown that when combined with escape extinction, including positive reinforcement in the form of feeder attention can mitigate side effects of increases in negative vocalizations and inappropriate mealtime behavior (Piazza et al., 2003). Three forms of attention that are noted in the literature include attention extinction, noncontingent attention, or differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors with attention. There has never been a direct comparison of these function-based interventions and their effectiveness in decreasing inappropriate mealtime behavior and negative vocalizations nor any studies of caregiver acceptability of the interventions. The purpose of the proposed project is to serve as a pilot study for evaluating the effectiveness of three forms of adult attention in mitigating the side effects of escape extinction as well as the social acceptability of each intervention when a child’s inappropriate mealtime behavior is motivated by both removal of bites and drinks and attention from the feeder. Six participants on the waitlist for the Department of Pediatric Feeding at the Munroe Meyer Institute will be included in the study. A multiple baseline design across participants with an embedded alternating treatments design will be used to evaluate and compare the treatments.

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

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

Individuals with developmental disabilities do not always acquire vocal speech and may require an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) modality. Although identifying an efficient and effective communication modality is important for expanding the individuals communication repertoire, oftentimes communication modalities are selected arbitrarily. The studies presented in this symposium highlight different, more systematic procedures for identifying mand modalities for individuals diagnosed with developmental disabilities. The purpose of the first study was to evaluate an assessment package for determining appropriate communication modalities to use in mand training with adults with IDD that have communication deficits (e.g., limited/absent mand repertoires, no systematic/formal communication system, idiosyncratic modalities; Simmons et al.). The second study will describe procedures for assessing child and caregiver preference for communication modalities during functional communication training (Cicero et al.) Finally, the third study will assess the effects of a sequential extinction procedure on preference for communication modalities during functional communication training (Loder et al.). Future research and clinical implications will also be discussed.

Basic

Some individuals diagnosed with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have communication deficits that hinder their interactions with their environment (Carnett et al., 2019). Because communication modalities are commonly selected arbitrarily (e.g., practitioner preference, caregiver/parent opinion), this may further impact the acquisition and persistence of communication (Kunnavatana et al., 2018). The purpose of this study is to evaluate an assessment package for determining appropriate communication modalities to use in mand training with adults with IDD that have communication deficits (e.g., limited/absent mand repertoires, no systematic/formal communication system, idiosyncratic modalities). Specifically, we are replicating and extending Valentino et al. (2019) by conducting a prerequisite skills assessment, as well as implementing a mand training sequence (Gutierrez et al., 2007) to ensure that discriminated manding is either present or established. Following mand training, a communication modality preference assessment is conducted to assess participant preference, if relevant. Preliminary results show participants’ prerequisite skills only sometimes mapped onto modalities acquired, and additional manipulations were sometimes necessary to acquire differentiated responding with modalities.

A behavioral phenotype for individuals with Down syndrome has highlighted strengths and weaknesses related to communication repertoires that can inform the intervention strategies and skillsets addressed within an early intervention framework. Drawing upon weaknesses, salient targets for communication development can be pinpointed while capitalizing on phenotypic strengths, such as social skill development, in the use of reinforcement contingencies. Individuals with Down syndrome have relative weaknesses within communication that begin in infancy. Particularly, infants with Down syndrome tend to generate more nonspeech sounds and show delayed onset of canonical babbling (i.e., repeating consonant-vowel combinations. This study worked with five infants with Down syndrome and their mothers to determine types of interactions that can increase canonical babbling. Previous findings were replicated on the success of operant conditioning with infants to increase infant vocalizations. Expansion of prior work was done by examining the bidirectional relationship between infant and caregiver interactions and to evaluate if the caregiver’s use of one contingent response increases related to infant responses.

Successful learners apply what they’ve learned to a variety of new contexts. Even full grasp of the skills, concepts, and principles taught during one’s K-12 education are insufficient in teaching everything learners need to know. Thus, it’s essential that education settings teach students how to take ownership of their own learning, by teaching specific self-management strategies for application to a variety of classroom learning environments, and for application to real-world contexts. This symposium will feature two presentations detailing how students can learn to be better learners and to use what they’ve learned outside of the classroom setting. First, Ky’Aria Moses will describe a systematic literature review of instruction of self-management strategies with low-income students. Next, Bailee Scheuffele will explain how she used Morningside’s simple generative responding technology to design a year long project aimed at teaching students to apply computation skills learned in math class to meaningful, real-world challenges outside of the classroom.

Professionals interested in behavioral education, direct instruction, Precision teaching/frequency building, Response to Intervention/Multi-Tier System of Supports, executive functioning, self-management, communication, and designing for and teaching towards generalization. Audience should have a basic understanding of applied behavior analysis as applied to academic learning behavior.

Effective classroom behavior management strategies, use of high leverage classroom practices, fidelity and teacher coaching are fundamental for fostering conducive learning environments and improving student outcomes (Simonsen et al., 2008; Caldarella et al., 2019) regardless of disability status. These interventions can be applied beyond a single unit of analysis, supporting students of varied needs across tiers and presentations (Horner & Sugai 2015; Putnman & Kincaid 2015). Yet teachers have reported that they do not feel equipped and prepared to effectively manage the classroom (Begeny & Martens, 2006; Chelsey & Jordan, 2012). This symposium will review published research and bring together three studies completed in school settings that investigated the impact high-leverage classroom practices and their subsequent impact on student outcomes. These studies will collectively shed light on the vital role that effective teaching and classroom management methodologies play in shaping education. The first presentation will provide the audience with an overview of coaching fidelity data from a tri-state implementation of the Modular Approach to Autism Programming in Schools (MAAPS) model. The second study will describe a federally funded grant to develop a class-wide modular approach for assisting teachers in self-contained classrooms with students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD). The third study will review data surrounding common high-leverage classroom practices (HLCPs) to improve overall classroom management in the public education environment. Through the alignment of these studies, this symposiym wil provide the audience various knowledge on coaching, fidelity, and practical insights and suggestions for ABA in Public Education.

n/a

Abstract: Although there are established evidence-based practices (EBPs) for autistic students, teachers often do not implement them as intended in school settings for many reasons, including the lack of coaching support. Modular approaches to intervention implementation provide frameworks that allow teachers, with coaching guidance, to select, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of EBPs. Coaches provide ongoing active support that ensures the intervention is implemented with fidelity and allows adjustments to be made in response to data trends. The Modular Approach to Autism Programming in Schools (MAAPS) is a comprehensive Tier 3 intervention that helps teachers implement EBPs for students on the autism spectrum. MAAPS is in the fourth and final year of a 4-year randomized controlled trial, and all activities, including coaching support, are delivered virtually. An earlier pilot study showed high teacher acceptance of MAAPS, and students who received MAAPS improved in the primary outcomes. The presentation will give participants an overview of the intervention, describe the coaching procedures, and provide preliminary RCT outcomes.

Compared to other students who receive special education services, students with emotional disturbance (ED) demonstrate significantly more social and/or behavioral problems (Poulou, 2015; Wang & Fredricks, 2014). A wide research-to-practice gap exists regarding what works in classroom management for students with ED (Gable, 2014). Modular approaches allow teachers to select and customize evidence-based practices to have contextual fit for their classroom. This project evaluated a modular approach in which teachers completed an assessment and selected specific practices that would be most helpful for addressing class-wide behavior concerns. Behavior skills training and practice-based coaching were used to train teachers to implement the module strategies. Teachers selected the routine or time of day in which challenging behavior occurred most often. Data on class-wide challenging behavior and student engagement was collected using a multiple baseline design across classrooms. Results indicated that student engagement increased for all classrooms and challenging behavior decreased after implementation of the modules by teachers. Teacher fidelity data was high and social validity data from teachers indicated that the modules were feasible to implement and resulted in perceived improvements in class-wide behaviors.

This Presentation will provide behavior analysts a review of the research on evidence-based practices as it relates to classwide behavior support. (Simonsen &; Fairbanks, Briesch, Myers, & Sugai, 2008; Simonsen et al., 2015; Reinke, Herman & Sprick, 2011). These practices include:1) antecedent practices (physical layout, classroom expectations, behavioral routines, teaching expectations and routines, precorrections, active supervision); 2) instructional management (opportunities to respond), 3) reinforcement practices (contingent behavioral-specific praise, group contingencies, and token economies, behavioral contracts) and consequence (planning ignoring, explicit reprimands, differential reinforcement, response cost, and timeout). The presentation will advance the skills and knowledge of BCBAs to apply their applied behavior analytic skills beyond the unit of child/client to larger units of school and district with a focus on the classroom level. Lastly, a case study and data of Gardner Public Schools using the Classroom Observation Tool (Putnam & Handler, 2020) will be reviewed with a focus on student outcomes across three tiers.

There are over seven million people with intellectual/developmental disabilities in the United States. Individuals with intellectual/developmental disabilities are at high risk of co-occurring mental health conditions. However, navigating mental health and intellectual/developmental disability systems can be clunky and burdensome for individuals and caregivers who are simply trying to access quality care. This presentation will cover the common systemic hurdles to integrating services for persons with co-occurring diagnoses and how Missouri is beginning to use applied behavior analysis principles at a systems level to bust these barriers and deliver services when and how they are needed. The authors will share how Missouri Echos are developing collaborative skills across the state. Specific data from Missouri’s Alliance of Dual Diagnosis Echo will be shared covering common recommendations from the Echo hub as well as changes in clinical confidence pre-post Echo participation. The authors will also share Missouri’s Tiered Supports data from provider organizations outlining needs, implementation of systems efforts, progress, and outcomes.

Behavioral treatments help people modify their behavior in order to achieve greater psychological and physical well-being. These treatments can be implemented by a clinician and/or by automated systems. Each type of treatment has its strengths and weaknesses. This presentation considers ways that machine learning, AI, and gamification can partially negotiate these strengths and weaknesses to achieve optimal results. Behavioral treatments for lifestyle modification and weight control are good candidates for such technology because necessary behaviors run counter to biological and environmental forces, and thus require acquisition of specific behavioral skills and accountability normally provided by an expert clinician. Yet, there are a severe shortage of such clinicians relative to the tens of millions of people in needs of such services. In the NIH R01-funded Project ReLearn, we are evaluating an artificial intelligence (AI) system for optimizing the delivery of clinical services of varying cost in a manner that allows for scalability across large populations. Project LYRA, in contrast, is exploring whether a large language model-powered chatbot housed in a self-help behavioral weight loss program can successfully help individuals achieve weight loss without the need for human clinicians. Even when clinical services are being provided, a challenge is that skills and strategies taught in the clinic are not utilized by clients in the moment of need. We have been exploring whether a machine learning-power, smartphone-based just-in-time, adaptive intervention (JITAI) called OnTrack is able to predict and prevent dietary lapses and to facilitate weight loss. People struggle to maintain motivation to engage in the exceptionally difficult behavior changes necessary to achieve weight loss. The NIH R01-funded Project Neurofit evaluates whether gamification and neurocognitive training improve engagement and weight loss outcomes among men (who also reject traditional clinical interventions which they view as “feminine”).

Behavior therapists and researchers

This symposium will review practical tools and models for training and supervision that can be used to directly measure training outcomes as well as identify factors that might affect the outcomes of training. Results from two applied research projects that used a pyramidal (train the trainer) approach to staff training will be reviewed to highlight the direct training, outcomes for service recipients, and the social validity of the tools, approaches to training, and models. The first presentation will review the Teacher Performance and Accuracy (TPRA) measure, a practical tool supervisors can use in their daily practice. It is helpful to ensure training adherence and that supervision goals align with performance outcomes. In the second presentation, we will review the outcomes of the Community Capacity Development Initiative (CCDI). We will share factors that contributed to and impeded training success, which was consistent with the model for fostering community capacity to support adults with intellectual disabilities who engage in challenging behavior (Mullins & Scott, 2022) based on organizational behavior management and knowledge translation. This symposium will help supervisors and trainers measure staff outcomes and gain an understanding of organizational and individual factors that affect training outcomes, generalization, and maintenance.

This presentation is rated “intermediate” as attendees will require basic understanding of three-term contingency trials, mastery criteria, and organizational and individual factors that affect training outcomes, generalization, and maintenance.

One of the goals of training and supervision is to ensure that our supervisees acquire the necessary knowledge and skills as a clinician, which in turn results in client progress (LeBlanc et al., 2020). The Teacher Performance and Accuracy (TPRA) measure is a measurement system for trial-based instruction (Ingham & Greer, 1992) that measures moment-to-moment interlocking three-term contingencies (i.e., Learn Units) between the teacher or instructor and the learner (Greer, 2002). The TPRA has been used to demonstrate accurate teacher performance, an objective feedback method, and the acquisition of clinical skills. In this presentation, we will discuss the use of TPRA in staff training and supervision practices and as a treatment integrity tool and the effects of the TPRA measure on teacher behaviour. We will present a mixture of both reports of their experiences and experimental data to highlight the beneficial use of this measure. The TPRA was found to be an effective tool for teacher training and supervision and leads to positive outcomes for learners.

Effective training in positive behavior support is crucial for direct support professionals (DSP) supporting adults with developmental disabilities with complex needs. The Community Capacity Development Initiative (CCDI) is a pyramidal training initiative which aims to increase community capacity in improving quality of life and decreasing problem behaviors. This sequential mixed methods design aimed to evaluate perceptions of the effectiveness of the CCDI in facilitating this capacity development. Former CCDI participants from nine agencies completed an online survey (n = 20) and follow-up interviews (individually or in groups; n = 12). Results suggest that participants maintained their knowledge and continued to apply the skills with others they supported. Further, the initiative was reported to improve the quality of life of the service users involved in the process. This presentation will review some of the factors that contributed to and impeded success, which were consistent with the model for fostering community capacity to support adults with intellectual disabilities who engage in challenging behavior (Mullins & Scott, 2022). The results of this research study may help improve the effectiveness and impact of training programs within the adult developmental service sector and improve services impacting the quality of life.

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

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

It is an exciting time when presentations and recent publications center around more ethical, humane, and compassionate care, particularly around an assent-based framework (e.g., Anderson, 2022; Breaux & Smith, 2023; Morris, Detrick, & Peterson, 2021). Many of these dissemination products center around establishing buy-in and teaching the audience about assent as a concept. While beneficial, conceptual understanding alone leaves the listener or reader with questions about logistics, procedures, and effectiveness. As the field of applied behavior analysis gains understanding and experience around assent, an opportunity arises to share details and data. As such, the present symposium unites clinical research utilizing an assent-based framework of intervention across different settings. The first paper includes assent in a descriptive functional analysis assessment leading to protocol modification and self-advocacy skill acquisition. The second paper evaluates assent and assent withdrawal behaviors with the inclusion of a token economy and the impact on interfering behaviors. The third paper shows data on a systematic approach for using an assent-based framework of intervention across 3,000 learners and how technology can aid in monitoring and responding to assent or assent withdrawal behaviors. Finally, the final paper sets the stage with helpful uses on how to provide services using this framework across multiple levels of data analysis.

Understanding the concept of assent, fluent with various interventions for skill acquisition and behavior reduction.

Assent is an emerging topic within the field of behavior analysis with more formalized and comprehensive definitions of assent being developed (Breaux & Smith, 2023). Assent is described as observable participation that is given without coercion, and is not the absence of objection. It is a continuous event that can be given or withdrawn at any time, observed through a variety of communicative behaviors that vary by the individual (Breaux & Smith, 2023). Of 23,000 articles that were reviewed with regards to assent in behavior analysis, 28 used a descriptive definition of assent within the literature (Morris et al., 2021). The field lacks descriptive protocols for identification and measurement of assent behaviors within the clinical setting, with empirical data of procedures lacking. To address the gap in the literature, current descriptive functional behavior assessment procedures were adapted to develop topographical and functional definitions of assent behaviors (Hanley, 2012; Hanley et al., 2003; Bijou et al.,1968). All participants were children with formal Autism diagnoses ages four to eleven. Data on these behaviors were analyzed and used to modify protocols to reduce assent withdrawal, monitor client progress and teach self-advocacy skills within a clinical setting while remaining non-coercive.

There is a vast amount of research on the effectiveness of the token economy system on changing behaviors (Ghezzi et al.,2009); however, there is little to no research on what features of the token economy are considered to be effective in producing that behavior change. Learner agency is operationally defined as learners having the ability to be a part of the learning design and take action to intervene in the learning process (Gordon, 2018). In this study, we looked at the effects learner agency has on the effectiveness of token economies. We used an alternating treatment design to compare the effectiveness of two token economies on learner’s assent, learner’s refusal behavior, and the number of programs implemented in a three-hour session. One token economy was created by assessing learner preference for both the token type and the order of token delivery, and one token economy consisted of tokens that were chosen by the supervising clinician. One participant saw a significant decrease in the refusal behavior when using a token board created by learner preference and an increase in refusal behavior with clinician preference; there is insufficient data available for the second learner to formulate an informed conclusion.

Obtaining client assent is an ethical obligation, however, resources on how to effectively define, quantify and track data on assent is limited resulting in a lack of adoption by practitioners (Morris et al., 2021; Breaux & Smith, 2022). Assent has been defined as revocable agreement to participate by those unable to legally consent (Breaux & Smith, 2022). Difficulties include determining assent capacity, defining individualized indicators, and analyzing data. This presentation describes an approach to defining and measuring individualized assent used by an organization with over~3000 autistic clients. Clinicians are trained to identify and define topographies associated with assent and assent withdrawal and technology is used to record this data systematically. The technology provides additional guidance to technicians on how to engage in compassionate responses based on the level of assent or assent withdrawal that is recorded. This approach aligns with our ethical guidelines by providing a decision making model for assent in practice.

Assent-based intervention is a framework that is utilized when providing services with young learners or learners who legally cannot provide consent. This approach places emphasis on seeking voluntary participation in intervention in the absence of coercion (Breaux & Smith, 2023). While the nuances of when and how to honor assent withdrawal behaviors or to solicit for assent have been detailed (Breaux & Smith, 2023; Anderson, 2022; Morris, Detrick, & Peterson, 2021) as well as a list of possible assent-focused measures (Breaux & Smith, 2023), a systematic approach to collecting and evaluating those measures has yet to be presented. As such, the authors seek to discuss different dependent variables in a 4-tiered measurement system to evaluate outcomes of an assent-based intervention. Multiple examples and their implication of data analysis across micro-data, meta-data, meso-data, and macro-data will be provided. This system will prepare clinicians and researchers who are interested in gathering outcome data when an assent framework is applied to intervention.

Individuals who are diagnosed with intellectual and developmental disabilities experience greater health disparities than neurotypical individuals. The research presented at this symposium aims to reduce health disparities by improving health outcomes for individuals who are diagnosed with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Shanker and Simmons studied the healthcare experiences of individuals with autism or their caregivers and developed a digital application to help them meet their healthcare needs. Salvatore and Simmons developed a survey to study physicians’ knowledge of behavioral function and suggested ways to incorporate behavioral principles and training into medical curricula to improve care for individuals diagnosed with intellectual and developmental disabilities. McCafferty et al. studied the efficacy of a tactile stimulus (i.e., TAGTeach®) to improve medical students’ acquisition of procedures learned during medical training. Lehardy et al. developed and evaluated time-efficient training to increase healthcare providers' confidence and competence to conduct physical examinations with individuals diagnosed with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

To effect behavior change with healthcare providers, audience members should be able to communicate and network with healthcare providers and educators effectively.

People diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders experience more frequent health conditions than neurotypical people. This health disparity may stem from healthcare providers reporting that they lack sufficient training to promote the comfort and cooperation of patients with neurodevelopmental disorders. To address this, we trained healthcare providers to use the following behavior interventions during physical examinations to promote a patient’s comfort and cooperation: Providing patients non-contingent access to preferred items, telling patients about and showing them upcoming procedures, offering patients frequent breaks, using graduated exposure to increase patient cooperation during challenging procedures, and offering incentives when patients cooperate during challenging procedures. Before training, a small but representative sample (n = 12) scored a mean of 35% on a proficiency test. After training, their mean proficiency increased to 95%, and the remaining participants (n = 161 in a post-test design) scored a mean of 92%. Participants (n = 121) also reported increased confidence in helping people with neurodevelopmental disorders after the training. The results show that the training can effectively teach healthcare providers to use behavioral interventions in role-play. We suggest ways to evaluate proficiency in vivo and embed the training into medical school curricula.

Research on severe challenging behavior in persons with neurodevelopmental disabilities has seen in an increase in publication of consecutive controlled case series (CCCS). CCCS studies have unique value in that they report outcomes of all cases using single-case experimental design, regardless of outcome, to permit evaluation of the efficacy and generality of common procedures or for individuals with common characteristics. Accordingly, four new CCCS studies will be shared in this symposium. The first presentation describes CCCS methods, and reports findings from a systematic review of CCCS studies in the published literature over the past 30 years. The second paper reports outcomes of a functional analysis screener tool for 15 individuals with severe challenging behavior. The third presentation summarizes differences in functional analysis and treatment outcomes for 34 outpatients, comparing topography and treatment outcome with single vs. multiple functions for severe challenging behavior. The fourth presentation reports treatment outcomes from a comparison of terminal probe vs dense-to-lean schedule thinning procedures. Finally, our discussant will provide comments and implications for research and practice.

Students and professionals with knowledge of/experience with functional analysis and treatment of challenging behavior

Generality of behavior change can be observed when it demonstrates durability across time, environments, and behaviors. Consecutive controlled case series (CCCS) studies facilitate questions concerning the generality and efficacy of procedures by describing the outcomes of all individuals who experienced a specific procedure, regardless of the outcome. We systematically reviewed published literature on the consecutive controlled case series between 1993–2023 identified via SCOPUS, PubMed, PsychInfo, and an ancestral and descendant search. The results of this search identified 44 consecutive controlled case series studies that employed a single-case experimental design with each case, the first of four defining elements of a CCCS (Hagopian, 2020). We also coded the following variables: presence of additional design, data analytic, and reporting elements across studies; methodological variants; application domains; and participant characteristics. In this talk, trends in CCCS research across time will be summarized, and we will propose directions for future research using consecutive controlled case series.

Previous research has sought to enhance the efficiency of functional analysis methodology. Slanzi et al. (2022) assessed whether a hypothesis of behavior function could be generated based on responding during a 15 min no-interaction screener. The authors found correspondence between the hypothesis generated from the screening tool and the behavioral function determined in a brief functional analysis in 77% of cases. The purpose of this study was to (a) extend this technology to populations with long histories of engaging in challenging behavior requiring inpatient admission, (b) determine whether mands emitted during the screener could help inform hypotheses of behavioral function, (c) assesses multiple topographies of challenging behavior simultaneously, and (d) assess the correspondence between hypotheses drawn from the screener and the behavioral functions identified through a multielement functional analysis. We will report on data from 15 consecutively encountered cases. Further, we will discuss the utility, sensitivity, and specificity of this functional analysis screener for individuals with challenging behavior and implications for clinical practice.

Characterizing severe challenging behavior exhibited by individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities remains a crucial area of research. The functional analysis (FA; Iwata et al., 1982/1994) is widely considered the gold standard for identifying underlying reinforcement contingencies of severe challenging behavior. Since the inception of the FA, numerous studies report descriptive information regarding response topography and function. However, few studies have examined the prevalence of specific topographies relative to number and type of functional classes, and the impact of single versus multiple functions in the treatment of severe challenging behavior. This study is the first to employ a retrospective consecutive-controlled case series design to evaluate differences in FA and treatment applications across single and multiple functions of severe challenging behavior. Results indicated that severe challenging behavior is commonly under the control of multiple variables. A single topography of severe challenging behavior with multiple functions was more treatment resistant relative to other combinations (i.e., single function/single topography; single function/multiple topographies; multiple functions/multiple topographies). Additional findings and implications for treatment are discussed.

Thinning multiple schedules during the treatment of problem behavior involves decreasing the duration of the discriminative-stimulus component (FR1 for alternative behavior and extinction for problem behavior) and increasing the duration of the delta-stimulus component (extinction for both alternative and problem behavior). Typically, clinicians and researchers use an arbitrary dense-to-lean approach to gradually introduce longer delta-stimulus durations. In the current investigation we describe a terminal schedule probe method to empirically derive delta-stimulus starting points, and strategies to progress to a feasible terminal schedule while maintaining clinically significant decreases in problem behavior. We analyzed schedule thinning outcomes from two groups using a retrospective consecutive controlled case series design. One group included applications of terminal probe thinning (n = 24), and the other involved dense-to-lean thinning (n = 18). Within and between participant comparisons of results suggest that the terminal probe thinning method produced effective treatments with less resurgence of problem behavior, and leaner, more practical, multiple schedules. We will discuss the clinical implications of the findings and suggest future directions for applied research.

Disciplines establish and enforce professional codes of ethics in order to guide ethical and safe practice. Unfortunately, ethical breaches still occur. It is found that breaches are often perpetrated by professionals who are aware of their codes of ethics and state that they engage in ethical practice. The theory of behavioral ethics, which is most often discussed in business settings, attempts to explain why responsible professionals sometimes engage in unethical behavior. Although traditionally explained through theories of social psychology, the principles underlying behavioral ethics are behavior analytic. When conceptualized as operant behavior, ethical and unethical “decisions” are evoked and maintained by environmental variables. As with all forms of operant behavior, antecedents in the environment can trigger unethical responses and consequences in the environment can shape future unethical responses. In order to increase ethical practice amongst professionals, an assessment of the environmental variables needs to be conducted on a situation by situation basis. Knowledge of discipline-specific professional codes of ethics is not enough to prevent unethical practice. In the current presentation, extended from Cicero (2021), the constructs used in behavioral ethics are translated into underlying behavior analytic principles that are known to shape behavior. How these principles establish and maintain ethical as well as unethical practice is discussed.

Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) is at a crucial point in its development as a field. The number of Master's level certificants has grown from 28 in 1999 to over 60,000 in 2023 (BACB , 2023). There are board certified behavior analysts in every state and most territories of the United States. ABA has become ubiquitous in this country's education system and is considered a standard of care for children with autism (Layden et. Al., 2023; Meyers et. Al., 2007)). At the same time, ABA has come under heavy criticism. Autism and neurodiversity rights groups have pointed to ethical concerns with behavior analysis, and stories of felt harm by former clients and practitioners of ABA services are present across social media ((Latimer, 2019; Ram, 2020; Wilkenfield & McCarthy, 2020). This paper explores this issue through the lens of social justice and how the field may be vulnerable to epistemic injustice by lacking systems and structures to adequately attend to the voices of the vulnerable populations it serves. The authors describe how the framework of cultural humility, the practice of attaining assent, and the science interbehaviorism could be beneficial in moving ABA forward towards greater social validity and decreased potential for harm.

Founded in compassionate care, ABA gives voice to the voiceless and hope to he hopeless. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) has been around for decades. It is considered the premier treatment for ASD, as well as other conditions in which behavioral symptoms can be disruptive to a person’s quality of life. Through this talk, we will explore ways that ABA, in its truest form, is deeply rooted in compassionate care, trauma informed therapies and can be key to helping those in need. Social validity and treating “socially significant” behaviors, as well as individualized treatments are at the core of Applied Behavior Analysis. As our field has transformed over the years and we have used our technology in many and varied ways, it can often be the case that this can be forgotten. Especially as technology, such as AI has become more commonplace. We will explore how ABA i, at its core, fundamentally compassionate an person-centered. Much of the discourse on the "abuse of ABA" can be mitigated by a true understanding of the true foundational nature of applied behavior analysis. This paper will seek to explore that in detail.

With as many as 50% of children experiencing sleep problems at some point during childhood (Center for Disease Control, 2022) and up to 80% of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder experiencing sleep problems (e.g., Furfaro, 2020 and Reynolds, 2019), many Board Certified Behavior Analysts find themselves treating behavioral sleep problems within the scope of Applied Behavior Analysis programming. However, Behavior Analysts do not receive training in the variables impacting healthy sleep such as average sleep needs by age, setting events which delay sleep onset and manipulate the reinforcing value of sleep, or sleep dependencies which contribute to pervasive night awakenings. In the absence of formal training on sleep and sleep-related variables during behavior analytical coursework, ethical barriers may arise. This Continuing Education event aims to unveil the potential for questionable ethical behavior when developing sleep plans for families. Additionally, this event will provide preliminary information about sleep which attendees will be able to use immediately to better evaluate sleep problems and create sleep plans guided by the ethical considerations outlined in the content.

Increased emphasis on client assent refocuses the importance of establishing/maintaining motivation, promoting self-advocacy, and building autonomy. The Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts (2022) challenges us to define and measure assent and assent-withdrawal for all clients. The development of standard practices within a large organization is critical to establish methods to proactively notice, measure, and systematically shape indicators of assent and assent-withdrawal as a point of initiation of therapy and throughout treatment (Rajaraman, Gover, Cammilleri, Donnely & Hanley, 2022). The development of an assent-based treatment standard and 10-step training program will be reviewed. The successes and challenges of implementing assent-based treatment strategies and the necessity for individualization across clients, clinicians, learning environments, and clinics, which may present with diverse needs and cultural contexts, will be shared. Analysis of data on happiness/engagement/self-advocacy (Engagement Scale) and assent withdrawal (Calm and Disruptive Withdrawal of Assent) and the impact on existing clinical quality metrics will be presented.

Despite having a 1 mm3 brain, honey bees exhibit a sophisticated behavioral repertoire. Bees learn and memorize multiple sensory cues related to flowers. Yet, besides being useful models for the study of simple forms of associative learning, they have emerged as attractive organisms for the study of higher-order forms of learning, both in the visual and in the olfactory domains. In the last two decades, our work has indeed revealed that these insects possess unsuspected cognitive capacities, which include category and concept learning, numerosity and the solving of non-linear discriminations, among others. All these phenomena are experimentally accessible via controlled laboratory protocols, which, in some cases, allow uncovering the underlying neural circuits Here I will discuss some of these findings and provide insights into their mechanistic bases, whenever this turned to be possible. In doing this, I will highlight experimental challenges and suggest future directions for investigating the neurobiology of higher-order learning in insects, with the goal of uncovering basic neural architectures underlying cognitive processing.

The talk will be accessible to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to established scientists.

The need for individuals with disabilities to receive access to evidence-based practices and for service providers to receive quality training in implementing these practices indicate a significant need for research examining the efficacy and efficiency of specific training approaches (e.g., behavioral skills training, in-vivo coaching). Behavioral skills training is a commonly used, well-researched method for delivering training that has been shown to generate mastery and fidelity across multiple populations and skills. In this symposium, presenters will discuss various models for consulting with school-based practitioners to ensure treatment fidelity when implementing behavior analytic interventions, including pyramidal training and using in-vivo coaching paired with visual supports and self-monitoring. Presenters will share data outlining the results of studies examining the functional relation between provision of behavioral skills training, embedded in a pyramidal or in-vivo coaching model, and the treatment fidelity of school-based practitioners implementing behavior analytic interventions. Researchers will share multiple tools and discuss implications for future practice and research.

This symposium is beneficial to individuals who have a basic understanding of consultation models when supporting school-based practitioners.

Reading proficiency is a cornerstone of academic and social success. Yet, the national reading proficiency rate for fourth-grade students in 2022 was 32%. Fourth-graders from marginalized groups such as children with disabilities and economically disadvantaged learners experienced even greater disparities. This statistic underscores the critical need for effective approaches to address this issue. This panel discussion brings together reading research and practice to explore how the science of behavior can affect reading outcomes for children with and without reading challenges. Panelists will explore the importance of reading proficiency for beginning and advanced readers while highlighting the impact on children from marginalized groups such as children with disabilities and economically disadvantaged learners. The panel will also discuss common barriers hindering effective reading instruction in today's classrooms. Finally, panelists will share their applications of the science of behavior to the literacy instruction of learners with reading challenges. Panelists will share evidence-based strategies to obtain successful reading outcomes for children with varying academic needs.

This panel discussion is appropriate for behavior analysts and other educators interested in teaching children how to read proficiently. Attendees should have a basic background in applied behavior analysis with some experience with verbal behavior.

Staff training is an important component of high quality service delivery and behavior analysts need to have the ability to implement emprirically derived staff training methods. In the current symposium three papers describe different staff training procedures in three different settings. In the first presentation Anna Marín assessed the effects of the Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Human Service (PDC-HS) in an Icelandic preschool setting. The authors used the checklist to identify the appropriate intervention to improve the teachers performance in implementing Discrete Trial Training, Token economy and Preference Assessment. In the second presentation, Snædís examined the effects of graphic feedback and goal setting on verbal communication between staff and patients in an inpatient psychiatric care unit. Finally, in the third presentation, Margrét investigated the effect of behavior skills training (BST) in teaching effective boundary setting and empathetic responding among staff members in a psychiatric intensive care unit. In all studies, the staff training procedures were effective in improving the targeted skills.

Advanced. Audience should have completed graduate level work and have knowledge on evidence based staff training and experience in training others.

Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Human Service (PDC-HS) is an effective assessment tool to guide intervention selection in human service settings. However, its utility has yet to be investigated in countries with cultural differences and where English is not the first language within the human services. The purpose of this study was to evaluate if the PDC-HS could guide intervention selection to increase teachers' implementation of Discrete Trial Training (DTT), token-system, and Multiple Stimulus Without Replacement (MSWO) preference assessment in two preschools in Iceland. We recruited three special education teachers from two Icelandic preschools who had finished the course Skráning og Þjálfun held by the State Counseling and Diagnostic Center. The dependent variable was the teacher's treatment integrity in implementing DTT, token system, and MSWO. Results showed that the PDC-HS was successful in guiding intervention selection to increase teachers' implementation of DTT, token-system, and MSWO. We discuss the implications of these findings and future directions.

Treatment in psychiatric care involves many components one of which is staff-patient interaction. Communication between staff and patients in an inpatient psychiatric care can increase the chances of developing a positive therapeutic relationship, which is a strong predictor of the treatment’s success. The present study used non-concurrent multiple baseline design to examine the effects of graphic feedback and goal setting on social communication, positive statements and negative statements of four staff working in an inpatient psychiatric care unit. The intervention was effective in increasing the target behaviors for all four participants. Additionally, the participants communicated more with the patients overall following the intervention. Lastly, the intervention indirectly affected the patients who started seeking out communication with the participants more frequently. This study gives an idea of an intervention that is relatively easy to perform, is not time-consuming, and has a significant impact. More research is needed to further disentangle the effects of graphic feedback and goal setting in staff training.

The field of ABA has placed recent emphasis on a more compassionate approach, however little research exists on how to train empathetic skills. Empathetic responding is positively associated with a number of factors, including higher satisfaction of care, trust, rapport, compliance to treatment and clinical outcomes. In addition, patients who have spent time in psychiatric care emphasize structure and social relationships. Specifically, ensuring that structure, safety protocols and clear boundaries are set by staff, is effective in decreasing the likelihood of challenging situations. The present study investigated the effect of behavior skills training in teaching effective boundary setting and empathetic responding in the form of reflective statements among staff members in a psychiatric intensive care unit. Three participants took part in the study and a multiple baseline across participants design was utilized. BST was shown to be effective in training target skills. Reflective responses improved by 26%, 33%, and 38% and the boundary making statements improved by 73%, 30%, and 66% for the three participants from baseline to post-intervention. More research is needed to isolate variables that affect staff´s behavior when communicating with patients.

While there exists a clear history within the behavior analytic literature on use of least restrictive procedures (VanHouton, 1998; Goldiamond, 1975b), affording individual personal liberties (Bannerman, 1990; Baer, 1998; Goldiamond, 1974), and ensuring the dignity of those we serve (Reid et al., 2018; Goldiamond, 1976), there lacks clear evidence of the consistent implementation of these ideals. A call for compassionate care in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) has been the focus of several recent publications. With an emphasis on humane and compassionate care, constructional programs focus on strengthening and building repertoires based on goals developed in partnership with the client, rather than elimination of behavior. With over 40 years of research and practice, the constructional approach and nonlinear contingency analysis focus on constructional rather than pathological behavior change to provide best outcomes for clients. This symposium will provide real world accounts of the application of these procedures, and how genuine, rather than apparent assent may be achieved with both verbal and nonverbal clients. This symposium will discuss the design of constructional clinical and other behavioral interventions informed by a nonlinear contingency analysis.

practicing BCBAs, RBTs, Masters or Doctoral level studnets

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

N/A

In an organization where the training of a large number of behavior technician staff is required, the use of the pyramidal approach of behavioral skills training (BST) is necessary to ensure staff access to adequate training opportunities, while reducing the overall time required for behavior analysts to train them (Parsons & Rollyson, 2013). In the pyramidal approach, a behavior analyst acts as a senior trainer, providing training to middle staff who will train new staff on a larger scale. Although middle staff trained through the pyramidal approach demonstrate increased competence in implementing BST and self-report acceptance of BST strategies, concerns may remain with middle staff fully adopting BST because of the time and effort it requires (Parsons & Rollyson, 2013). As a lack of full adoption may lend itself to a lack of motivation to avoid procedural drift in implementation (Cook et al., 2022), it is imperative to resolve concerns and the possibility for drift when scaling the pyramidal approach to 50 middle staff whose sole function is the implementation of BST with new behavior technicians. To address these concerns and minimize middle staff drift, the pyramidal approach was also used to teach staff engagement techniques based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and organizational behavior management (Pingo et al., 2022). The presenter will discuss BST, the pyramidal approach, and the use of staff engagement techniques of motivation, values identification, and committed action, as they pertain to middle staff adoption, procedural drift, and new behavior technician retention. Data regarding the competency of middle staff and new behavior technicians will be presented.

Contemporary approaches to language instruction acknowledge the value of contextualized and generative learning. Specifically, the manner in which instruction is provided (e.g., context-specific cues, exemplars used) determines the extent to which generalized outcomes can be expected and desired skills occur only under relevant circumstances. Relational Frame Theory (RFT) is a contextual behavioral account that offers a framework to teach relational responses under the control of contextual cues to produce generative language. This symposium will present two applications of RFT in (a) oddity, a foundational skill, and (b) increasingly complex relational responses including deictics and analogy. The authors of paper 1 will describe applying multiple exemplar training to teach three children to respond in accordance with the contextual cues “same” and “different” by selecting identical and nonidentical stimuli respectively. They will highlight specific procedural aspects to promote stimulus and response generalization. The authors of study 2 will present data on using the relational evaluation procedure and multiple exemplar training to teach increasingly complex derived relational responding across various frames, including comparison, analogy, and deictics (perspective-taking). Finally, Maithri Sivaraman will discuss the scope of these RFT-based training programs and review considerations to promote flexibility in derived relational responding.

Intermediate

Identifying similarities and differences between stimuli has been widely recognized as an important skill in early childhood development. This skill has held a prominent place in preschool academic curricula, and early intervention programs rightfully place an emphasis on identity matching in young children. However, previous research with children with developmental disabilities has shown that those with generalized identity matching do not always demonstrate oddity responding. Teaching children to identify identical and nonidentical stimuli along concrete physical dimensions is a key foundation to more complex relational responding involving abstract stimuli. Three young children with language delays enrolled in an ABA centre in India participated in the study. During baseline, all three children always selected identical pictures irrespective of whether the contextual cue presented was “same”, “different”, or a nonsensical cue “blah blah”. We conducted conditional discrimination training across multiple exemplars and found that the intervention was effective. All three children matched identical and nonidentical stimuli based on relevant contextual cues, and did not select any stimulus when the nonsensical cue was presented. These responses transferred to untrained stimuli and were maintained over time. The authors will discuss practical considerations to teach identity matching and oddity responding in early intervention programs.

Relational Frame Theory (RFT) has shown that arbitrarily derived relational responding (ADRR) is operant behavior, and that teaching ADRR produces flexible, functional, and meaningful language development in children with language delays. Furthermore, RFT sees operant acquisition of various patterns of relational framing as crucial to cognitive and linguistic development, and it has explored the emergence of a range of psychological phenomena (e.g., analogy, perspective-taking) in these terms. This talk examines a novel, RFT-based curriculum using the relational evaluation procedure and multiple exemplar training to teach increasingly complex derived relational responding across various frames, including comparison, analogy, and deictics (perspective-taking). Participants included 8- to 15-year-old autistic children who did not demonstrate arbitrary relational responding at intake. All participants successfully generated derived relational responses across frames and levels of complexity. Protocol training sequences from nonarbitrary to arbitrary relations will be described, and data showing the efficacy of the RFT-based language intervention will be shared.

This symposium consists of two presentations. The first will present a systematic review of the literature on exposure therapies, including systematic desensitization, applied to a wide range of medical procedures. Several findings from reviewing 62 articles across 715 participants and 11 medical procedures will be shared. Following the review, a recent approach to addressing phobias and highly reactive patterns, Constructional Exposure Therapy, will be introduced and contrasted with traditional methods. The second presentation will introduce three case studies where Constructional Exposure Therapy was implemented to treat a vacuum phobia with an adult diagnosed with ASD, and extreme refusal of eye-drops and ear-drops in a typically-developing child and a child diagnosed with ASD. The presentation will detail the procedures, and present the associated data. These cases show an alternative to escape extinction, DRO, and related decelerating procedures. A discussion will follow to address CET, the emerging data, and future directions in the area of exposure.

BCBAs.

Allen and Warzak (2000) articulated the importance of analyzing contingencies that control parental adherence to produce durable behavioral treatment plans implemented by caregivers over time. Further, they highlighted that operationalizing and measuring adherence poses distinct challenges for the clinician and applied researcher since, by definition, adherence involves independent implementation of a treatment plan in the absence of direct oversight by the clinician. Over 20 years later, adherence is still reported infrequently in the behavior analytic literature despite growing evidence of the gap between observed integrity and adherence in natural environments. This panel discussion will raise awareness of the problem of nonadherence in our field, and the continued need for establishing an empirically based process to increase and sustain adherence. Primary aims of the panel include a discussion between panel members and the audience around a) the importance of adherence, and the distinction between treatment adherence and treatment integrity; b) caregiver barriers and considerations for developing interventions in a manner that will occasion adherence; and c) leveraging behavioral models of adherence to create treatment plans contextualized in the preferences, values, and capacities that will sustain ongoing treatment implementation.

Experience in the development, and supervising the development, of function-based behavioral treatment plans, conducting treatment evaluations with caregiver involvement, and modifying treatments to create feasible terminal treatments. Additionally, audience members should have experience in caregiver consultation after behavioral treatment plans are transferred from clinical environments to naturalistic settings.

Racial microaggressions are chronic insults and slurs committed against non-White individuals based on their race/ethnicity. This study aimed to expand this literature by interviewing Black Brazilian women living in Australia. Eight participants were interviewed three times each. The prompts inquired about their experiences of racial microaggressions, the contexts they occurred, and how they reacted and dealt with them. All participants declared having experienced racial microaggressions by White Australians on multiple occasions. The most common categories found were "not being a real citizen", "assumptions about intelligence, competency, or status", "second-class citizen/ignored and invisible", "avoiding and distancing", and “environmental exclusion”. Most microaggressions happened in the work environment, followed by daily interactions with strangers, acquaintances, and/or friends. All participants tended to respond to those in a non-confrontational manner (refraining from replying or pointing out that the person was being racist) to avoid conflict, especially in the work environment. Two participants also responded in a confrontational manner at times by telling the perpetrator that their behavior was racist. To deal with the situation, participants: a) do not share those experiences with anyone to avoid making them worry about them, b) share those occurrences with their family and some Black friends, and/or c) avoid going out with people who are perpetrators.

Junior BCBAs, and behavior analysts within their first 5 years of practice, including practitioners, supervisors, etc., individuals currently enrolled in or recently completed graduate-level work interested in race relations and prejudice.

INTRODUCTION: The shifting landscape and the trajectory of the science of Behavior Analysis and its application globally as it impacts the poor nations, is a cause for concern in that “the poor shall never cease out of the land” - the Holy Book. BODY: This paper will share with the audience as perceived, how the developmental milestones of our profession is resonating in practice with some critical segments of the dimensions of the science of Behavior Analysis, the diversity concerns, inclusion expectations, sustainability challenges, professional practice dissonance, demography relating to the relative ratios of service consumers and credentialed behavior analysis professionals for example Nigeria specifically and the enormity of response efforts required by the poor nations to remain as team players in the theater of the profession of the science of Behavior Analysis globally. CONCLUSION: The poor nations may see these signs as pathognomonic of emerging lacuna. From this perspective, there is the potential for incubation and multiplication of the practice of pseudoscience with resultant harmful effects on service recipients as nature does not allow a vacuum to exist. This development calls for a strategic review and change of approach to the advancement and sustenance of the science of Behavior Analysis in the developing nations!

Participants who are members of policy making bodies, committes, Chapters leaders, enterpreneurs who are culturally sensitve and responsive to the shifting landscape of the science of Behavior Analysis globally.

Comparing conditioned motivating operations within uninterrupted and interrupted behavior chains may further elucidate relevant controlling variables in abstract manding and tact-mand transfer. A well-learned behavior chain may proceed unimpeded, be interrupted briefly pending an additional response, or be interrupted in a true “problem situation” (Skinner, 1953, p. 246). When a nonverbal chain is uninterrupted, successive CMOs (i.e., CEO-Ts) occur without evoking manding or problem solving. When the chain is briefly interrupted but the individual is a fluent mander and an audience is present, simultaneous CEO-Ts and CEO-Rs may evoke manding in a slightly lengthened chain. If the individual lacks a manding repertoire, however, chain interruption may constitute a true “problem situation”. If the object needed to perform a chain step is missing, scanning for that item is under extinction and a strong response cannot be emitted, which may enhance the strength of the CEO-R. Whether or not chain interruption constitutes a problem situation, the simultaneous presence of CEO-T and CEO-R may yield a sudden increase in motivation. Like the saltation in response strength in joint stimulus control (cf., Palmer, 2006), this may be a discriminable event that plays an essential role in manding and possible bridging behavior in “tact-mand transfer”.

Audience members should be able to describe essential elements of the MO concept, including conditioned MOs, define a behavior chain, define the elementary verbal operants, and describe the phenomenon of tact-mand transfer.

Given the widespread prevalence of social media and online continuing education programs, it's evident that awareness regarding behavioral problems in companion animals has grown. Nevertheless, there's been a proliferation of uniform case interpretations and standardized treatment and advice within the community of medical providers (e.g., veterinarians) and dog trainers. While these approaches serve as effective preventive measures, they may not always be suitable for treatment. In this lecture, we will delve into real cases, drawing from research papers and study results, in order to enhance our comprehension of the diverse nature of clinical cases. Developing a thorough understanding of case differentiation and the range of choices and limitations in treatment options is likely to contribute to further enhancements of our knowledge.

Animal trainers, animal behavior therapists, dog research scientists

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that the science of human behavior is powerful and that many methodologies stemming from this science have made extensive improvements in almost every area that they have been applied. Freedom, dignity, and the pursuit of a good life have been long-standing topics of conversation in behavior analysis. While it is true that our science has made tremendous growth since its inception, its application to socially significant problems has been far from perfect and is not beyond reproach. The purpose of this panel is to have a constructive, yet critical, discussion of behavior analysis’ promise and potential. Topics will include, but are not limited to, non-coerced choice making, assent, quality of life, human rights, social validity versus invalidity, quality therapeutic environments, and the balance that often needs to be struck between these topics while also providing effective behavioral intervention to the populations we serve.

The target audience for this panel are those practitioners (e.g., BCBAs, BCaBAs) in our field that find themselves struggling with some of the concerns leveled against our science and practice. It would be beneficial, but not necessary, for audience members to be familiar with some seminal works in this area (e.g., Bannerman et al., 1990; Fawcett, 1991; Holland, 1978).

The field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) navigates a dynamic and intricate terrain, where the quest for uncompromising excellence in clinical care and the ethical conduct of both clinical and business operations converge with the imperative of securing lasting business sustainability. This expert panel assembles a distinguished Chief Executive Officer (CEO), a seasoned health care compliance specialist, and an experienced behavior analyst to provide a comprehensive exploration of the multifaceted challenges and opportunities woven into this delicate balance. The panelists underscore the critical importance of both preserving and enhancing clinical quality, fostering collaborative synergy across organizational departments, and harmonizing the collective vision of the ABA enterprise to ensure sustained growth. Drawing from their extensive experiences and the lessons gleaned from their diverse fields, the panelists will demonstrate the multidisciplinary collaboration that underpins success in this endeavor. By the conclusion of this panel discussion, the audience will possess a deeper comprehension of the intricate interplay between quality care, compliance, and the imperative of business sustainability. Armed with pragmatic strategies, they will be better equipped to navigate the evolving ABA landscape while maintaining unwavering adherence to the highest standards of care and ethical conduct.

The target audience should have a basic understanding of insurance-funded service provision models, organizational behavior management strategies, and best-practice clinical practices in the domain of servicing the Autistic community. Basic business terms (e.g., profit margins) would be helpful but not required.

Research consistently demonstrates findings that highlight the essential role of caregiver involvement in the treatment for children with autism and other developmental disabilities. Parent-led Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) places caregivers at the forefront of their child's therapeutic journey. In this approach, clinicians provide structured training to caregivers, equipping them with the necessary skills to incorporate ABA into their child's daily routines. When caregivers take an active role, positive results emerge in individuals with autism, including improvements in communication and social skills, along with a reduction in problem behaviors. This symposium will present the evidence-based foundation for well-structured caregiver training and how fostering this collaboration empowers caregivers, instilling them with confidence to implement their children's treatment plans, ultimately leading to positive treatment outcomes for their kids. It will also review how the model can be implemented via telehealth or hybrid, how to support neurodivergent caregivers in the model, and fidelity checklists or tools currently used to support caregivers.

Individuals who have at least a bachelor's degree in applied behavior analysis or related field and two or more years experience in applied behavior analysis

Imagine a world where ABA starts at home, in the natural environment, with a caregiver building connection with their neurodiverse child for the first time. In this world, caregivers are empowered to use strength-based approaches to behavior analysis by learning ABA strategies and procedures to implement directly with their child and receiving real time feedback on implementation. In the same world, providers can pass on knowledge that allows caregivers to enhance their understanding of ABA, neurodivergence and their role in their child's life. This system is known as Parent-led ABA and has allowed a reimagining of closed-door clinic practices that make it challenging to support caregivers in a culture of belonging. By opening the door to parent-led ABA caregivers are now empowered to share their knowledge, practice ABA skills in applied environments, and work in collaboration with providers to become their own expert in ABA for their neurodivergent children. By placing caregivers as the primary implementers of ABA in the Parent-led ABA model, this system allows a direct access line to the lived experience and places emphasis on caregivers' knowledge and abilities to strengthen all aspects of applied behavioral analysis services.

Staffing shortages at the Registered Behavior Technician (RBT) level and clients residing in an out of service area (OOSA) pose significant delays and challenges to the delivery of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) services. This results in autistic individuals, those with disabilities, and their families, not receiving the medically necessary treatment they need and deserve to build communication, daily living, and social skills. When access to services is constrained, belonging is hindered. At Easterseals our purpose is to foster equity so that people with developmental disabilities can receive services to live independent and fulfilling lives. Breaking down barriers to access and belonging is possible by reconceptualizing ways that effective treatment can be provided. The Parent-led ABA service model is a caregiver-mediated, intensive ABA model for both comprehensive and focused treatment in which the caregiver acts as the direct service provider for their child. Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBA) use Behavior Skills Training (BST) to train parents in ABA concepts and strategies, and provide real-time observation and feedback via telehealth as the parent implements the treatment program with their child. Utilizing BCBAs and telehealth, combats the RBT staffing shortage and allows families outside of service areas to receive ABA treatment, leading to enhanced communication and social skills, and appropriate coping and alternative behaviors as replacement for maladaptive behaviors. This presentation will outline how the Parent-led ABA model increases accessibility through telehealth.

A growing literature is supporting ACTraining (ACTr; Tarbox et al., 2020) conducted by behavior analysts, including its use in training and resourcing ABA practitioners. Beyond addressing immediate organizational contingencies, ACTr attempts to promote psychological flexibility behavioral processes of practitioners to improve public and private experiences. Presenters will discuss experimental research supporting diverse applications of ACTr and Mindfulness with service providers at multiple levels. The first presentation will discuss a virtual peer-group that was successful in increasing self-reported confidence and competence of participants with demonstrable improvements in implementation observed throughout the intervention. The second presentation expands on the first by emphasizing mindfulness as a behavioral process influencing private events of behavior technicians implementing ABA programming. Finally, the third presentation discusses the use of ACTraining to support BCBAs with the potential to improve assessment and intervention outcomes for learners receiving services. Taken together, these studies show how ACTr can be integrated as a flexible approach across multiple service and organizational levels.

Practicing Behavior Analysts and RBTs

"Despite the thousands of studies that empirically support the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), little research has been done on methods for training and developing competency amongst behavior analysts. Brock and colleagues in their 2015 paper “Recognizing common clinical mistakes in ACT: A quick analysis and call to awareness,” discuss the difficulties in transferring knowledge of ACT gained in training to real-world clinical settings. The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of a BCBA peer group to increase confidence and competence in the implementation of ACT skills. The study utilized a single subject design embedded within a Multiple Baseline Across Participants. Each participant entered the study after receiving a 6-week intensive practicum on ACT within ABA. Baseline data were collected on the participants general knowledge of ACT principles and procedures, along with their overall competence and confidence in implementing ACT in their clinical practice (Broadhead, et al, 2018). The participants then participated in a 6-week peer group, held virtually, for 1.5 hours per week. The meetings included a combination of didactic and experiential training including a mindfulness exercise, a brief overview of targeted ACT principles, a group shared Matrix, and case conceptualization with role play and feedback. During the case presentation, the participants were encouraged to privately functionally assess the clients verbal behavior, and then each participant was given the opportunity to implement an ACT intervention with the client. Feedback was provided along with follow up resources. Throughout the study, the participants continued to collect their self report data on their competence and confidence, and then completed the knowledge assessment again upon completion of the group. The addition of the peer group was found to be effective in increasing 60% of the participants overall knowledge of principles and implementation of procedures, and 100% of the participants confidence and overall competence from baseline. "

Organizational behavior management can be used in combination with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to improve employee psychological flexibility and give them tools to deal with workplace stress (Bond, et al., 2006). ? There has been limited research on decreasing the turnover rate of behavior technicians in ABA clinics and while mindfulness techniques have become more popular, behavior analysts have yet to find a way to operationalize how it is effective in changing behaviors. The purpose of the current study is to operationalize present moment thoughts and to increasestaff engagement following being taught a mindfulness exercise. Researchers were able to code and identify present moment thoughts via a talk aloud procedure, while technicians increased their report of these following the exercise. To extend this study, investigators identified direct behaviors to target for increase following the mindfulness exercise: eye contact, proximity to client, and vocal engagement. Results showed effective change in indirect and direct behaviors.

Teaching professionals to use ACTr with ABA clients or caregivers whose behavior is resistant to treatment may help improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and social validity of ABA services. Although studies have shown that interventionists engage with clients more frequently and with greater empathy after exposure to ACTr, training practitioners to use ACTr to help others is relatively unexplored in the literature. Such instruction can be difficult because the practitioner must be taught to discriminate between six inflexible repertoires that could be interfering with direct contingency management and to address the most important of these in client-specific ACTr interventions. Such customization is important because the Behavior Analyst Certification Board’s 5th Edition Task List for Behavior Analysts specifies that ABA practitioners are to individualize treatments for the needs of their unique clients. Additionally, clients in ABA settings often have developmental or intellectual limits that require exposure to frequent, varied exercises. Accordingly, the development of mediator skills for individualizing ACTr treatments that are specific to the needs of individuals is an important next step. The purpose of the current study is to assess the effectiveness of training procedures in ACTr assessment and intervention.

Healthcare systems are driven by a focus on the quadruple aim; enhancing patient experiencing, improving population health, reducing costs, and improving the work life of health providers. Creating hospital environments that promote these goals, and reduce incidence of patient behavioral exacerbations, crisis events and promote workplace safety for staff are of a significant challenge to healthcare systems. Behavior analysts bring a unique ability to complete systems level analyses, consultation, implementation, and training across all of these key area. Regardless, behavior analysts are often not credentialed to work in healthcare or cannot get their foot in the door to a system that has historically not understood the discipline or the role of ABA professionals. This panel will discuss how the four panelists each came to work in academic medicine, and how behavior analysts can be strong collaborators, get their foot in the door, and show alignment with the missions and goals of healthcare across the United States. Participants will get ample opportunity to ask the participant’s questions about their roles, tips and tricks for entering a new area of practice, and how to establish professional connections if interested in pursuing a career in healthcare.

Audience members should have experience in consultation and behavior analysis implementation, mid to advanced level professionals are encouraged to attend this panel discussion.

Situated within the field of Organizational Behavior Management (OBM), the area of Performance Management is a science that is dedicated to assessing and changing employee behaviors. The goal of Performance Management is to bridge the gap between current employee performance and the expected business results (Daniels & Bailey, 2014). This symposium will highlight the application of several performance management strategies across a variety of service areas. The first presentation will focus on the application of task clarification and performance feedback to increase timely submission of state regulated medication administration documents. The second presentation will focus on the use of a treatment package consisting of task clarification, a self-management tool, and performance feedback to increase the integrity of direct service professionals transferring client-specific clinical materials. Lastly, the final presentation will focus on the use of the Performance Diagnostic Checklist – Human Services (PDC-HS) to inform intervention selection to reduce delays in service delivery documentation. Overall, attendees will learn how performance concerns can be assessed, and how simple performance management strategies can be embedded into existing systems to help bridge the performance gap.

Attendees should have a basic understanding of organizational behavior management. Those in supervisory roles or those participating in graduate-level programs will benefit from the presentation.

Human service providers often document the delivery of services in the form of service notes in order to receive reimbursement from funding agencies. To receive reimbursement in a timely manner, direct service professionals are required to complete all sections of the note thoroughly and accurately. Incomplete or inaccurate notes can cause delays in reimbursements and require front-line managers to spend large amounts of time following up with staff. To address this performance concern, managers must assess and select an intervention that best addresses the maintaining variables. The Performance Diagnostic Checklist – Human Services (PDC-HS) is a tool that assesses and informs more targeted support by assessing environmental variables that may be contributing to performance issues (Carr et al., 2013). The current study utilized a reversal design (ABA) to determine the efficacy of a visual aid as indicated by the PDC-HS. Results indicated an increase in service note completeness for 4 out of 9 participants following the introduction of the visual aid. Future studies should evaluate the incorporation of all interventions identified by the PDC-HS to create a combined treatment package.

For thousands of years philosophers and scientists have debated whether humans have free will – are the genuine authors of their actions – or whether their actions are determined by environmental factors (Kane, 2002). Both philosophers and scientists fall into one of three categories in these debates: hard determinists (incompatibalists, like Skinner [e.g., 1971]), soft determinists (compatibilists, who try to combine agency and determinism), and libertarian free willers (cf., Rakos, 2004). This debate has great social and cultural importance when we recognize that a libertarian notion of human agency is the “Core Conception” (Smilansky, 2002) – the underlying philosophical, religious, and legal tenet – upon which Western society rests (Kane, 2002). The case for determinism gained strength from the classic Libet et al. (1983) study that found the neurological onset of a motor response preceded conscious intention to act. Over the past 40 years, scientific investigation of this debate has continued with increased sophistication. Now, two hot-off-the press books by eminent scientists arrive at different conclusions: “Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will” by Robert M. Sapolsky and “Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will” by Kevin J. Mitchell. The arguments and conclusions advanced in the two books will be summarized, critiqued, compared, and discussed by the panelists and then the audience. The discussion will relate the two books to contemporary behavior analytic concepts like relational frame theory and contextual behavioral science (Fryling et al., 2020) and raise pressing social and cultural implications (e.g., artificial intelligence, promoting an equitable and sustainable world; cf., MacAskill, 2022). References Fryling, M., Rehfeldt, R. A., Tarbox, J., & Hayes, L. J. (Eds.). (2020). Applied behavior analysis of language and cognition: Core concepts and principles for practitioners. New Harbinger Publications. Kane, R. (Ed.) (2002). Free will. Oxford. Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. E., & Pearl, D. (1983). Time of conscious intention to actin relation to onset of cerebral activity [readiness potential]: The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain, 102(3), 192-224. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/106.3.623 MacAskill, W. (2022). What we owe the future. Basic Books. Mitchell, K. J. (2023). Free agents: How evolution gave us free will. Princeton University Press. Rakos, R. F. (2004). The belief in free will as a biological adaptation: Thinking inside and outside the behavior analytic box. European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 2004(5), 95-103. Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity. Bantam. Sapolsky, R. M. (2023). Determined: A science of life without free will. Penguin Press. Smilansky, S. (2002). Free will and illusion. Oxford University Press.

Basic

This symposium will review two current studies and share applied experience related to teaching practitioners collaboration and soft skills within our field. These skills are necessary and currently required by the BACB on both task list 5 and test content 6, as well the ethics code. However, current literature reports that the majority of credentialed behavior analysts may not have receive training in these skills as part of their direct education or training (Callahan et al., 2019; Conners et al., 2019; LeBlanc & Marchese, 2020; Sellers et al., 2019). In addition, the BACB fieldwork standards require these skills be taught to competency in supervision. This is particularly important as the number of BCBAs has increased rapidly in the last few years, and more technological skills are often the focus of supervision hours. Our field is often viewed by other disciplines, as well as familes, as uncaring and "business like". To improve the interactions with those we work with, it is imperative that those certified demonstrate both collaboration and soft skills so others want to interact with us.

This event is designed to increase basic, intermediate, or advanced skills in providing supervision related to soft skills and collaboration to practitioners in the field of ABA. Attendees should have experience providing supervision to trainees, BCaBAs, RBTs, or direct care staff, as well as want to increase their own skills in this area. In addition, these more nuanced skills will be explicitly reviewed using objective measures, and concrete ways to teach them will be provided.

Autism spectrum disorder is complex and multifaceted, and individuals with this diagnosis benefit from an interprofessional approach to treatment (American Psychiatric Association, 2022; Cox, 2012; LaFrance, 2019). Unfortunately, many individuals who provide services to individuals with ASD report feeling ill-equipped to provide services collaboratively with one another (Kelly & Tincani, 2013; Friedman, et al., 2022). The present study sought to explore whether graduate students in an occupational therapy (OT) program and an applied behavior analysis (ABA) program demonstrated several key collaborative behaviors that have been identified as being crucial to interprofessional collaboration (IPEC, 2016). The study implemented a training program and demonstrated that these key skills could be taught. This study utilized a combination of interprofessional education and behavioral skills training to teach key collaboration skills to students preparing to practice in the fields of ABA and OT. Participants worked in dyads with participants from another discipline to create recommendations for assessment and treatment for case studies. The demonstration of key collaborative behaviors during these sessions increased for all participants, suggesting that a combination of BST and interprofessional education are effective in teaching key collaboration skills to graduate students in OT and ABA. This provides graduate training programs with a potential format for incorporating collaboration training into their programs to better prepare their students to collaborate on interdisciplinary treatment teams as practitioners.

This symposium will review the effectiveness of behavior skills training (BST) to develop rapport building, interpersonal, and feedback delivery skills in trainees was examined to provide supervisors with a systematic, evidence-based approach to teach trainees soft skills. This is a necessary skill in our field based on the task list 5 and test content 6 requirements, as well as to engage our clients and families in meaningful ways. A multiple baseline across skillset design was implemented with five trainees and included baseline teaching observations, BST rehearsal, post-BST teaching observations, and a generalization teaching observation. The average across participants and skillsets during baseline was 17.1%, BST 91.78%, teaching observations 86.1%, and generalization 88%. There was a significant effect reported using the Tau statistic across participants. Social validity scores indicated that the intervention was valuable to the participants. The interobserver agreement mean was 93.1% across 34.5% of all sessions, demonstrating that the data were reliable. The research study demonstrated that soft skills were taught utilizing BST to trainees effectively.

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

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

The purpose of this theoretical paper is to enhance the behavior analytic interpretation of translation by thoroughly analyzing the role of context in all phases of translation. Translation will be discussed in terms of the behavior of both speakers and listeners, with special attention to the issue of meaning and how this is determined by context. Context, as defined, encompasses the field of interrelated stimuli and events that influence an individual's behavior in the present. The importance of translation across several domains of human activity will be discussed, and the conventional behavior analytic approach to analyzing speaker and listener roles in a verbal episode will be reviewed. Then, special characteristics of translation situations will be analyzed in terms of the role of individual contexts and meaning in acts of speaking/writing, listening/reading, and their interactions during translation. Finally, the role of context and meaning will be considered in three general translation situations: ordinary, technical, and artistic, each with specific aims and implications. The paper underscores the importance of considering context and aims as crucial factors influencing effective translation and communication.

The objective of this symposium is to investigate the developing body of literature concerning the Self & Match System and to present dynamic applications of this intervention within the context of preschool education and staff training. First, a systematic review will be discussed which was conducted to comprehensively analyze the existing literature on the Self & Match System, an organized self-monitoring system characterized by a methodical approach and an integrated accountability component. The systematic review of the existing literature on the Self & Match System aims to explore the potential applications of this system across a range of behavioral categories, diverse settings, various age groups, and different disability categories. Next, the focus is centered on the examination of its implementation and effectiveness in preschool environments and staff training. The review includes two specific studies investigating the impacts of the Self & Match System within preschool settings. A third study utilized a Self and Match system as a training tool to increase the target behaviors of behavior interventionists working with children with special needs in a public-school setting. The comprehensive analysis aims to equip practitioners with a comprehensive understanding of the versatility of the expanding body of literature, thereby supporting the effective use of the Self & Match System to enhance assistance for their clients.

behavior analyst, school psychologists, teachers, school counselors

The Self & Match System, developed by Jamie Salter, Ed.S., BCBA, and Katharine Croce, Ed.D, BCBA-D in 2005, represents a comprehensive manualized self-monitoring approach supplemented with an accountability component. Geared toward teaching self-monitoring in a user-friendly manner, this system aims to facilitate the acquisition of positive behavioral, social, and academic outcomes. Widely employed by educators, therapists, and parents across diverse contexts, the Self & Match System serves as a catalyst for skill enhancement, fostering constructive behavioral changes, promoting self-sufficiency, and cultivating independence. This system has been implemented in various settings including homes, schools, and community setting. Drawing on the existing literature of self-monitoring, this intervention has exhibited efficacy throughout practical implementation. Despite its practical significance, a comprehensive systematic review of the literature pertaining to the Self & Match System has yet to be conducted. Thus, this study endeavors to contribute to the existing body of research on self-monitoring, specifically emphasizing the examination of a manualized self-monitoring intervention.

This research aims to contribute to the expansion of existing literature on self-monitoring, particularly in the context of The Self & Match System, a self-monitoring intervention with an accountability component, while implementing best practices for two specific participants engaging in distress behaviors. The primary objective was to mitigate distress-related behaviors, including instances of aggression, tantrums, and dropping, and concurrently promote the development of self-monitoring skills and self-awareness, encompassing the recognition of both distress behaviors and corresponding replacement actions. The research question under examination is: 'How can the implementation of the Self & Match System effectively reduce distress behaviors in non-verbal learners?' The findings revealed a noteworthy reduction in distress behaviors after the implementation of the intervention plan utilizing the Self & Match System. Moreover, a 'Sharing' program was evaluated and a substantial increase in the participants' accurate responses when engaging with peers and adults was found following the integration of the intervention.

The researchers utilized a Self and Match System, a manualized self-monitoring system that utilizes reinforcement as well as a social accountability component, as a training tool to increase the target behaviors of behavior interventionists working with children with special needs in a public-school setting. The target behaviors were the interventionists use of praise statements, conducting preference assessments and providing mand opportunities for the students. All participants were newly hired behavior interventionists, with less than three months of experience in the field, who had successfully completed a 40-hour Registered Behavior Technician Training course. The Self & Match form consisted of 3-4 target behaviors per participant; each with individualized questions/responses and 30-minute interval check-in times. All the questions were framed positively and had a target frequency goal to be used within the 30-minute interval. The results demonstrated an increase in the target behaviors during the implementation of the Self & Match System intervention. The durability of the increased performance by the behavior interventionists is currently being investigated.

The practical application of behavior analysis to animal behavior and training is almost as old as behavior analysis itself. Shortly after the Second World War, two of B.F. Skinner’s former graduate students, Keller Breland and Marian Breland Bailey launched their own business, training animals for public performances, including livestock feed store advertisements, TV commercials, amusement parks, and more. However, the Brelands were ahead of their time, and it would take several decades before the use of positive reinforcement, shaping, and other behavior analytic concepts really started to take hold in applied animal training. One pivotal event for animal trainers and behavior analysts was the Association for Behavior Analysis Convention in 1992 in San Francisco. ABA president, Dr. Edward K. Morris, invited Karen Pryor to give the President’s Invited Scholar’s Address. In addition, the convention featured two symposia with prominent animal trainers. This presentation will discuss what happened at the 1992 convention and how these events fit within the historical context of ABA. This convention was a pivotal moment for both animal trainers and behavior analysts, creating new connections between the two communities, inspiring behavior analysts to start doing AAB research, and perhaps even giving rise to the birth of the term “clicker training.”

Caregiver-mediated naturalistic developmental behavior interventions (NDBI) are considered an evidence-based practice (EBP) for young autistic children (Sandbank et al., 2020). Caregiver-mediated NDBI result in improved child outcomes across a range of developmental domains, reduced challenging behavior, and improved parental self-efficacy, treatment engagement, and reductions in parental stress. In contrast to university-based studies of caregiver-mediated NDBI, outcomes for children receiving community-based services tend to be poor, especially in low-income communities. Poorer outcomes may be due in part to a lack of caregiver-mediated NDBI in these settings. This symposium will present findings from a series of research studies from publicly funded systems in 3 different states focused on evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of caregiver-mediated NDBI when implemented by community providers. Presentations will provide an overview of training methods, community-informed adaptations to manualized approaches, implementation outcomes, and effectiveness outcomes. Implications for improving the wide-scale implementation of caregiver-mediated NDBI in community-based intervention settings will be discussed.

Audience members should have experience implementing behavioral interventions to young children on the autism spectrum.

Caregiver-mediated early intervention (EI) can improve long-term outcomes for young autistic children. However, studies evaluating caregiver-mediated EI usually involve university-based clinicians working with a select group of families. Few studies examine whether these interventions can be implemented successfully in community-based agencies with culturally and economically diverse families. We partnered with an urban EI system to evaluate whether manualized training procedures are feasible and effective for community-based clinicians. We trained 12 clinicians in a caregiver-mediated intervention and evaluated intervention fidelity and children’s outcomes with 43 families across 6 months. Intervention fidelity was coded from video-recorded EI sessions. Despite training and consultation, fidelity was low. Mean fidelity was 57% (SD = 22%, Range: 11% - 91%), with only 15% of observations above the 80% fidelity benchmark. Higher fidelity was associated with greater gains in children’s social communication skills after 6 months of intervention. The results suggest the need for targeted implementation supports to augment traditional training and consultation models for providers working in community-based agencies, which will be critical for supporting large-scale rollouts in EI and reducing disparities in outcomes.

A growing number of research studies have trained providers to deliver naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions (NDBI). Although providers report being satisfied learning these programs, they also note attempts to adapt NDBIs to fit their delivery context. This study uses the Model for Adaptation Design and Impact (MADI) to characterize the adaptations made to an NDBI, Project ImPACT, and the impact of adaptation on caregiver outcomes. Participants were 48 providers and 45 caregiver-child dyads within Georgia’s Early Intervention (EI) system. Providers completed training in Project ImPACT and submitted video of their Project ImPACT sessions. A sub-sample 15 of providers and 17 caregivers completed surveys and interviews about Project ImPACT adaptation and engagement at the session-level. Results showed that provider fidelity to Project ImPACT was variable (see Figure 1) and that adaptations occurred in 47% of sessions, most often to integrate other therapeutic content. Across 81 sessions, caregivers’ participatory engagement was not associated with Project ImPACT coaching fidelity (r=0.06; p=0.71). Providers’ average coaching fidelity was also not associated with changes in caregiver empowerment (r=0.29; p=0.28). Findings highlight the need to align Project ImPACT with caregiver-initiated priorities. Adaptations were not related to provider fidelity or caregiver engagement which has implications for fidelity measurement.

In 1988, Van Houten et.al.’s seminal publication regarding the right to access effective behavior intervention addressed the challenges, misunderstandings, and the ethical concerns of the times about behavioral methods, which, in turn, often delayed or limited access to effective instructional interventions. A decade later in 1998, both Singer and Blume began using the term “Neurodiversity”, advancing the ethical practice of person-centered services and the consideration of the array of neurological differences as an integral component of individualized instruction. Today, Neurodiverse advocates are strongly critical of the perception that intervention for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) based upon the principles of applied behavior analysis (ABA) is predicated on the notion that Autism is a disease and application of ABA based treatment is an effort to “cure” this condition. It is not unreasonable to suggest that many ABA professionals also share this faulty notion. Until we as a field are able to clearly reject this “curative” therapy model and embrace a right to effective instructional practices model, we will continue to be at odds with these advocates. It is not wrong for a person with ASD to suggest that some of our practices appear at best coercive and at worst barbaric. Many programs appear “cookie cutter” in nature rather than individualized. We have much work to do to improve how we intervene and under what conditions these interventions take place. However, the recognition of the need to reject a “one size fits all” approach to intervention, is not synonymous with a rejection of all that ABA has to offer. This talk will amplify the nuanced phrase “the behavior under what conditions” as part of a process for having difficult conversations regarding interventions.

BCBAs in clinical, educational and/or home settings. Prerequisite competencies include experience with client centered treatment, parent training, supervision on RBTs and BCBA candidates, as well as conceptual understanding of ABA interventions as an instructional vs curative model.

A great deal is known about the behavioral and neural mechanisms that give rise to goal-directed reward-seeking actions. By contrast, we know much less about the processes that enable goal-directed behavioral constraint. In this talk, I will address the importance of inhibitory control to various forms of reward-guided behaviors, particularly drug and alcohol misuse and addictions. I will highlight discoveries that have revealed genetic, molecular and neural processes vital to effective inhibitory control, and I will address the importance of studying diverse populations in these efforts.

Professionals and scientists conducting research on or providing services for behavioral addictions.

Everyone experiences trauma. Whether it’s a specific harrowing event or a series of stressful moments that accumulate over time, trauma can echo and etch itself into our brains. In her lecture, neuroscientist Dr. Tracey Shors will discuss how our brains are inclined to ruminate on negative memories and how this process can interfere with our everyday lives, while making still more memories. She will also present effective tools for reducing repetitive thoughts that reinforce our everyday traumas. By understanding how our brains ruminate on the past, while training them with new mental and physical skills, we are better equipped to leave our pasts behind and live in a brighter future.

This lecture is easily accessible and thus targeted at a wide audience, including laypersons. The content is especially relevant for adult women.

In the pursuit of sustainable practices, three distinct yet interconnected studies delve into critical aspects of environmental conservation. The first study focuses on the intricate relationship between electricity consumption and climate change. Participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of electricity production on heat trapping emissions globally, with a specific emphasis on strategies to reduce fossil fuel usage. The second study explores the alarming connection between increased greenhouse gases and human consumption behaviors, spotlighting the substantial contribution of food waste to global emissions. Participants will evaluate the potential of food waste reduction programs. The third study shifts the focus to water consumption in drought-stricken areas, specifically California. Participants will learn about the effectiveness of visual and textual feedback in reducing household water consumption. The study employs a Flume® Smart Home Water Monitor to monitor daily water usage, implementing a multiple baseline design to discern the impact of different feedback modalities. These three studies collectively underscore the urgency of evidence-based interventions in the face of environmental challenges. Participants will emerge equipped with insights into mitigating climate change through informed electricity consumption, addressing greenhouse gas emissions in the food practices, and implementing effective strategies to curtail household water consumption in regions grappling with drought. This combined presentation provides a holistic perspective on the multifaceted approaches required for sustainable practices, emphasizing the critical role of informed behavior-analytic intervention in mitigating the environmental impact of human activities.

Behavior Analysts, Students Knowledge of feedback

Mental health and chronic invisible illness are issues that many practitioners deal with on a daily basis, yet little emphasis on having a discussion around these occur in the field of applied behavior analysis. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported in 2021, that “57.8 million people in the United States suffer from mental health conditions” and the American Hospital Association says that 133 million American’s suffer from “at least one chronic illness”. Based off this information, we can easily conclude that there are practitioners in the field of applied behavior analysis are not immune from these statistics. Unfortunately, these labels can be stigmatizing on a number of levels. At times, many with mental health and/or chronic illnesses may experience judgement on the ability to practice effectively by employers, clients that they serve, and colleagues. This panel discussion will focus on defining mental health illness, chronic illness and how to navigate removing the stigma around practitioners with mental and chronic illnesses. Concepts that will be explored will be: learning self-compassion by clinician’s with identified mental and/or chronic illness, advocacy in the workplace using the American’s with Disabilities Act to set accommodation’s, creating work-life balance, and boundary setting using tools such as the ACT matrix.

Prerequisite skills should include: foundations in acceptance and commitment therapy and self-monitoring.

This symposium explores different approaches to enhancing cultural responsiveness in behavior-analytic service delivery and research. Zeinab Hedroj from Monroe-Meyer Institute will present a systematic literature review categorizing recommendations and resources for cultural responsiveness in behavior analysis. This comprehensive overview equips practitioners and researchers with practical steps and tools to improve their cultural competency. Dr. Michelle Kelly from Emirates College for Advanced Education will share insights from a bilingual survey conducted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), exploring parents' perspectives on early childhood development training and research. The findings provide valuable strategies to enhance parent engagement and assent procedures in research. Finally, Dr. Daniel Kwak from Kennedy Krieger Institute will present on the implementation of the Values-Centered Assessment Tool (VCAT). This study illustrates how culturally adapted interventions positively impacted families and children. Together, these presentations equip practitioners and researchers with some of the tools needed to foster cultural responsiveness in the field of behavior analysis.

N/A

Taking an individualized approach to cultural responsiveness is essential when collaborating with families to deliver behavior-analytic services. However, behavior analysts lack the resources to initiate this collaborative process by asking caregivers informed and targeted questions. To address this area of need, our previous study involved initial development of the Values-Centered Assessment Tool (VCAT) through extensive review of the literature, in-depth interviews with service providers, and evaluation by an expert panel. The current study involved examination of the actual use of the VCAT by behavior analysts, of cultural adaptations made to services based on the information gathered, and of changes in caregivers’ and children’s behaviors. Results showed that the behavior analysts successfully gathered relevant information from using the VCAT and that they could make cultural adaptations of evidence-based interventions in the areas of interactions with the families, goal development, intervention, and training that that were unique to each family. Implementation of the culturally responsive parent training intervention resulted in substantial increases in parent implementation fidelity and improvement in children’s behaviors. As a result of the process, parenting stress decreased for all parents. The process of using the VCAT demonstrated high social validity, which was assessed with caregivers and children.

The field of behavior analysis is grwing and focusing more on cultural competency and cultural responsiveness in research and practice. with this growing interest comes an increase in the number of articles published on the topic. Clinicians, practitioners, and researchers looking to improve on their culturally responsive practice may find the volume of the literature overwhelming when seeking clear and practical advice. In this systematic literature review, we compiled peer reviewed articles on cultural responsiveness in behavior analysis, extracted the recommendations provided in these articles, and conducted a thematic analysis to categorize the recommendations into distinct themes. We also provide a list of the resources and tools suggested by the authors in these articles. With a comprehensive list of the most recent recommendations and tools, the aim of our paper is to provide a list of steps and resources to practitioners and researchers looking to improve upon their cultural competency.??

This presentation will highlight the tenets of effective instruction as they align to a behavior analytic framework. Direct, explicit, and intentional instruction will be showcased. Further, leaders, no matter the organization, can work more effectively with students, staff, and faculty using the principles of effective instruction and can interpret performance through a behavior analytic lens. Scenarios will be shared.

Behavior analysts, educators, higher education administrators