Association for Behavior Analysis International

As the defining feature of his professional life since his junior year of college, behavior analysis has imparted many gifts to Dr. Kennon Andy Lattal. These simple gifts cover the breadth of his experiences with the conceptual foundations, empirical database, methods, and people with whom he worked and collaborated with throughout the years. In this brief talk, Dr. Lattal will reflect on some of those experiences and the people responsible for them—how they have shaped his behavior in and out of the classroom and laboratory; what he has learned (and has not learned) as a result of these broad, diverse contacts; and what he would have others take away from his accumulated history of being a researcher, teacher, observer, participant, and fellow traveler with colleagues, students, and many friends in our fine discipline.

SEEK Education, Inc. will be represented by Sharon Chien, SEEK founder and chair, as it receives this award. An 8-minute video of SEEK Education’s record will show its dedication and commitment toward advancing the study and training of applied behavior analysis throughout Asia, and to introduce the organizations and the people who have been benefited from the science of ABA through SEEK’s dissemination work and its enthusiasm of learning and applying ABA. Organizations SEEK works with include the Wuhan Hospital, Autism Society of China, Central China ABA Association, Taiwan ABA Association, and Shenzhen Autism Society. SEEK also expresses gratitude and excitement about bringing ABA into its educational system.

Drugs of abuse are powerful positive reinforcers that promote and maintain substantial and often escalating amounts of drug seeking and drug taking behavior. Our pioneering research showed that behavioral principles could be usefully applied to the study and treatment of substance-use problems and that drug-taking behaviors could be readily influenced by appropriate scheduling of consequences. We specifically demonstrated that alternative positive reinforcers, including treatment clinic privileges and cash payments, could be used effectively in an operant conditioning paradigm to compete with powerful drug reinforcers and support drug abstinence versus drug-seeking behaviors. This early translational research has led to a substantial and growing body of work clearly supporting utility of the operant behavior analytic approach to substance-abuse problems. It also has led to development of incentive-based contingency management interventions that can effectively compete with drug reinforcement and that have been widely studied and adopted as an evidence-based treatment intervention.

The Behavior Analysis Area of the Experimental Psychology Graduate Program of the University of São Paulo in Brazil strives to strengthen the theoretical and experimental research in behavior analysis, train new researchers and teachers, play a role in the training of behavior analysts, promote the participation of students in supervised systematic investigations, and function in the context of multidisciplinary integration with the neurosciences and ethology branches of research in the program. The program was created in 1970 and was approved by the Brazilian Federal Government to operate at the master’s degree level in 1970, and at the doctoral level in 1974. Its creation evolved from Fred Keller’s first visit to Brazil in 1961 after he created the first cohort in Experimental Analysis of Behavior at the university. The program has received support in the form of scholarships for master’s, doctoral, postdoctoral, and research productivity, and project financing from Brazilian FIPSE (CAPES), National Council for the Development of Science (CNPq), National Foundation for Education and Research (FINEP), and São Paulo State Foundation for Research Support (FAPESP). It also was part of the only research group in Brazil in psychology and behavior analysis to receive a national project grant from the National Institute of Science and Technology. Also, the program has received the highest government national grade (7 on a scale of 3-7) for the most recent 3-year evaluation periods. The program faculty collaborates with many foreign institutions and researchers, and has worked on journals such as The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, The Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior, and The Brazilian Journal of Behavior Analysis as peer reviewers. Faculty members also hold leadership positions in scholarly and service organizations such as ABAI, the Council of Brazilian Society of Psychology, and the Brazilian Association of Psychology.

Can Behavior Analysis Be “Funalicious?”: It is a myth that if you “build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door.” Everyone here believes that we have a better way to deal with most of the world’s problems because all of them require, in the beginning, middle or end, someone’s behavior to solve them. With a technology that is able to address the pressing problems of the world you would think that some of us would be inundated with requests to appear on the morning talk shows, Oprah, TED Talks, The Tonight Show, hounded for interviews, and be quoted by bloggers daily. However, that is far from the case. Dr. Aubrey Daniels has said for many years that we have the best kept productivity secret in the world; not that we planned it that way but that is the way it has worked out. The best that we can say is what the Marines say, “We are the proud, the few, the Marines.” Let’s face it. There are almost no marketing people among us. That is certainly our “sweet spot.” By training we expect our results to speak for themselves. They may, but not fast enough to reach Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, at least in my lifetime. It is time for us to spread the word about our technology in a way that we will impact many of the daily problems of living that prevent billions of people in the world from living productive and happy lives. It is a noble undertaking worth pursuing. Not that I have all the answers, but I do have a few.

Aubrey C. Daniels, Ph.D., is the world’s foremost authority on applying the scientifically proven laws of human behavior to the workplace. Daniels helps the world’s leading organizations employ the timeless principles of behavioral science to re-energize the workplace, optimize performance, and achieve lasting results. His management consulting firm, Aubrey Daniels International (ADI), works with business leaders in more than 20 countries to develop management strategies that reinforce critical behaviors vital to their long-term success. Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, the firm was founded in 1978. Daniels is the author of six best-selling books widely recognized as international management classics: Bringing out the Best in People, Performance Management, OOPs!, Other People’s Habits, Measure of a Leader with James E. Daniels, and Safe by Accident? co-authored with Judy Agnew, Ph.D. His books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish and French and have been licensed in China, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Romania, and Saudi Arabia. He lives in Tucker, GA, with his wife, Becky. He has two daughters, two grandsons and one granddaughter.