Association for Behavior Analysis International

In the last several decades the use of applied behavior principles has grown in importance and sophistication in the zoo and aquarium world. The modern zoological facility often employs a curator level position to oversee behavior management and enrichment programs. Although the basic principles and theories used in zoos and aquariums are not new to the community of behavior analysts, the practical applications and techniques are just emerging and becoming more commonplace in the zoological world. Early application of training principles was primarily used in shows and educational programming. Skilled practitioners of applied behavior principles have also been instrumental in improving animal health care through training exotic animals to assist in their own medical treatment. Perhaps most notable is the increased used of operant and classical conditioning principles in improving the effectiveness of enrichment practices, expanding research capabilities, and advancing wildlife conservation programs. These examples will be used to highlight the growing role of applied behavior analysis in providing excellent animal care.

The profession of applied behavior analysis has undergone a number of exciting changes in recent years. The demand for our services, growth of the certification program, and development of new graduate programs have all combined to increase the number of new behavior analytic practitioners. In fact, there are currently approximately 8,000 individuals who hold certification in behavior analysis, an increase of several thousand from just a few years ago. Despite historical and ethical obligations to base behavior analytic practice on peer-reviewed evidence, a number of barriers sometimes make this difficult. For example, a number of clinically relevant experimental questions have not yet been answered in the literature. In addition, although the behavioral literature is replete with examples of effective treatment, there is a paucity of peer-reviewed published guidance on how to select these treatments given specific clinical circumstances. Finally, although graduate students in behavior analysis often receive training on how to critically consume the research literature, there are a number of obstacles to their access to the literature after graduation. In this presentation, I will describe several scholarly mechanisms through which behavioral scientists and senior clinicians can influence the behavior of new practitioners. Examples will be provided in the areas of developing clinical decision-making guidelines assisting practitioners in accessing the research literature.

When rats, pigeons, and people choose between immediate and delayed rewards, the subjective value of the delayed reward decreases as time to its receipt increases. This discounting of the delayed reward is well described in all three species by a hyperboloid function. Interestingly, we have observed a magnitude effect (larger delayed rewards are discounted less steeply than smaller delayed rewards) with humans but not with rats or pigeons. In addition, in humans, if an additional waiting period is added prior to both rewards, thus creating a delay common to both alternatives, rate of discounting decreases as the common delay increases. We examined the effect of adding a common delay on discounting in pigeons. When the signals for the time to the sooner and later alternatives were different, the pigeons (in contrast to humans) showed increases in discounting rate with increases in the common delay. When the signal for the common delay was the same for both alternatives, however, rate of discounting decreased as the common delay increased, a result consistent with that obtained with humans. Taken together, our findings demonstrate profound similarities between delay discounting in humans and pigeons, arguing for the importance of conducting both human and nonhuman research.

Obesity is the result of a long-term pattern of a situation in which food is especially reinforcing and exercise is not. The cannabinoid neurotransmitter system plays a role in food reinforcement and obesity, though much of the research on this is limited to free-food intake as a dependent variable. This presentation will review findings from our laboratory in two areas. One, we will describe attempts to isolate behavioral mechanisms involved with food reinforcement in animal and human studies using behavioral economic experiments, including demand analysis, the delay discounting procedure, and choice. Two, we will discuss the role of cannabinoid drugs (e.g., rimonabant and 2-AG) on food reinforcement, food-associated stimuli, and exercise as a reinforcer. Throughout the presentation, we will include data from the obese Zucker rat, a genetic model of obesity, to illustrate genetically-influenced differences in food and exercise reinforcement, as well as behavioral sensitivities to cannabinoid drugs. A pattern from these studies emerges: the more effortful the arrangement of food is, the less genes play a role in food consumption.

Growth creates unique challenges for behavioral consulting firms. As Quality Safety Edge (QSE) has grown from a practice of three friends to a multi-million dollar consulting firm, it has struggled with a number of those challenges. The first challenge for all businesses is generating business. In particular, international sales created a special set of issues. A second challenge, growth meant adding consultants, which created the challenge of "industrializing the service," that is, standardizing the approach and materials so that all consultants used a consistent approach in providing services. The third challenge was a bit more subtle. As consultants have success with an implementation strategy, they tend to adapt that approach, and over time, they begin to have too much consistency and lose the flexibility to modify their plans in ways that might better serve the customer. Finally, implementing behavioral solutions internationally requires a sensitivity to cultural differences. Dr. McSween will describe QSE's experience with these challenges and what has been done to address them.

In the first decade of the 21st century we advanced understanding of how experiences lead to the emergence of verbal developmental cusps and cusps that are new learning capabilities. Protocols for preverbal developmental cusps lead to: listener cusps involving conditioned reinforcement for observing responses and generalized imitation as foundation for the joining of observing and producing. Other protocols (a) induce echoic-to-mands and tacts, join see-do with hear-echo, (b) induce tacts, transform motivational control across mands and tacts, (c) induce autoclitics frames, induce non-scripted social verbal exchanges in non-instructional settings, (d) induce verbal observational learning, induce conditioned reinforcement for tacts, (e) transform stimulus control across the listener and speaker within the skin, (f) induce incidental learning of new words for things (Naming), (g) join Naming and reading comprehension, (h) induce functional writing, and evoke verbal stimulus control in complex problem solving in children and the scientist. Current evidence suggests there is "no poverty of stimulus:" the stimulus control is located in indirect or remote contact with basic principles of behavior made possible by certain experiences, experiences that can be provided by expert behavior analysts. I shall describe how what we know has changed what can be done.

Research into the behavioral characteristics of autism has revealed evidence that this disorder represents a unique form of social learning deficit. Children with autism typically have communicative and social deficits and investigations have detailed how early these deficits appear. At 6 months of age, distinct differences are apparent in the nature of stimuli that are salient to children who will subsequently be diagnosed with autism. This tutorial will review research into early markers of social impairment in individuals with autism. Some of the topics discussed will include attention, joint attention, and social interaction. A review of teaching procedures for establishing these critical social responses will follow. During this review some of the challenges that clinicians face in not only producing and maintaining these skills but in fostering generalization of them will be discussed. Then a conceptual analysis of these social deficits will be presented to coalesce research findings, both structural and functional in nature, into an interpretation of autism as a social learning disorder. The purpose of this interpretation will be to highlight the most pressing matters faced by clinicians in designing effective instruction in social behavior while offering some possible solutions to these challenges.