Association for Behavior Analysis International

Working effectively and cooperatively with members of other disciplines can prove very rewarding. By coming into contact with the professional repertoires of persons trained quite differently from the way most applied behavior analysts are trained, the repertoires of both the behavior analyst and the member of the other discipline can be enriched and the lives of the clients they mutually serve may be improved. Achieving such salutary results, however, often requires several things including the ability to identify the functional reinforcers for ones own and ones colleagues behavior, the ability to communicate effectively with professionals whose verbal repertoires often differ quite a bit from those of a behavior analyst, and the ability to see both what the behavior analyst might bring to the table in terms of strengths as well as what the professional from another discipline may bring. This symposium will provide three examples of how such successful relationships have been established and the results they achieved in areas as diverse as augmentative/alternative communication device use, data-based decision making in public schools, and improving the verbal repertoire of various youths with disabilities. Throughout the symposium, clinical data will be shown to illustrate various points made within each paper.

Public school special education classrooms are growing in size and student-to-teacher ratios are getting higher each year. Demands for teachers in special education classrooms are significant, and make it difficult for teachers to incorporate intensive, high quality data collection and analysis systems in their classrooms. In addition, recent trends in public education such as the Response to Intervention (RTI) movement place increasing pressure on public educators to employ data collection and analysis systems that allow instruction to change when students fail to progress adequately. Using data gathered across multiple elementary and middle public school special education classrooms within one district in the Seattle area, this paper examines how behavior analysts and public educational administrative professionals collaborated to teach special education teachers the importance of collecting data and making data-based decisions can not only simplify their teaching, but also help guide their practice in working with students with differing myriad needs.

Professionals from various disciplines are assumed to bring different perspectives when collaborating on a clinical case together. Programming for effective communication development for children with autism using Speech Generating Devices (SGDs) is still an emerging practice area. Furthermore, Speech-Language Pathologists and Behavior Analysts tend to speak rather different languages when it comes to explaining language learning and development. Despite these vocabulary and theoretical differences, each has important contributions for helping advance and shape a childs communication repertoire. Careful and respectful communication is required to share ones science with the other while hearing and integrating the perspective their partner brings. This paper will present a review of effective collaboration between one Speech-Language Pathologist and a Board Certified Behavior Analyst for the ultimate gain of the client learning to use an augmentative/alternative communication device. From device selection through planning verbal behavior instruction, these two professionals will share their perspectives on how they have benefitted from the others expertise.

Practicing as an applied behavior analyst involves bringing to bear combinations of antecedent and consequent variables to improve the repertoires of the clients they serve. As behavior analysts we have very powerful interventions that can greatly improve the current and future lives of the clients we serve. However, while our discipline focuses greatly on procedures and combinations of procedures and the effects that those do and do not produce under varying conditions (methods), there is still much to be learned in terms of exactly what behavior change should be achieved. Knowing what should be taught and when (content) when married with effective methods, is a truly powerful combination that maximally benefits the clients we serve. Using the context of a 15-year-long collaborative relationship with a Speech-Language Pathologist, this paper will present multiple examples of how experts in methods (behavior analysts) and experts in content (for language, speech therapists) can combine forces to produce real, lasting good for their clients and learn a bit from one another at the same time.