Association for Behavior Analysis International

On behalf of all of us working to develop behavior analysis throughout Europe, Dr. Hughes said it is his great honor to accept this award. He said he has been lucky enough to work with a host of talented and motivated colleagues from all over the globe who have shared the common goal and value of promoting behavior analysis. In the United Kingdom, they focused on developing training programs that will build a critical mass of competent behavior analysts who are able to contribute across a number of areas to help improve lives. In 2003, Dr. Hughes and Dr. Steve Noone started the first BCBA accredited course in ABA in Europe at Bangor University. The course currently enrolls about 60 students a year, and now 18 similar courses across Europe are training the next generation of behavior analysts. The BACB was an important catalyst to this growth, and Dr. Jerry Shook in particular was instrumental in supporting the efforts in Europe. In this talk, Dr. Hughes describe the conditions that helped bring this about, some of the lessons they learned, and thank some of the people who helped make this happen. Behavior change has become the buzzword for politicians, policymakers, and nonbehavioral psychologists. Recently, Dr. Hughes received almost $3 million (U.S.) in funding from the Welsh European Funding Office to develop the Wales Centre for Behaviour Change. The center will bring together designers, sustainability expertise, neuroscientists, behavioral economists, and crucially, behavior analysts. This represents an exciting area for behavior analysis. However, behavior analysts remain in the minority, and there is much still to do. If we are to continue to grow we must work together, clarify and communicate our values and mission, be nice (especially to those who do not share our perspective), and think bigger in terms of where behavior analysis can have influence, Dr. Hughes wrote.

Georgia was a Soviet Republic from 1924 to 1991, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin and of Eduard Shevardnadze. The Soviet Union’s collapse threw Georgia into civil war and, eventually, a break from Russian influence. Introducing applied behavior analysis in Georgia in 1997 resulted from an invitation to teach “modern Western” clinical psychology at Tbilisi State University. Our clinical training was behavioral, and our Kansas Ph.D.’s supervised by Donald Baer, with influence from Risley, Wolf, Sherman, Sheldon, Spradlin, and Morris, prepared us to apply behavior analysis in its widest sense to systems, organizations, programs, training, and individuals. Teaching ABA Practicum led us to institutions where children languished without proper care, food, or education. We saw a need, we had the knowledge and skills, and we had to challenge and change the system at government, university, and grass-roots levels. Courageous Georgian colleagues and cooperation of other organizations helped overcome hurdles. The closure of institutions, the emergence of inclusive education, the training of foster parents, caregivers, and teachers, and the support of families with children with special needs all required ABA skills, which we provided. The future is in the hands of a new generation of Georgian psychologists keen to apply behavior analysis widely and effectively.

For more than 35 years, the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit (BPRU) at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has been a leading clinical research and research training program applying behavior analysis methods to the study and treatment of substance use. BPRU research has used the perspective and methodology of behavior analysis to study substance use and abuse as operant behavior that is influenced and/or controlled by its context and consequences. Human laboratory studies have examined the discriminative and reinforcing effects of drugs, examining influences on drug self-administration, choice behavior, and other indices of drug abuse liability. Outpatient therapeutic trials have integrated incentive-based behavior therapies with pharmacotherapies to assess their individual and interactive contributions to outcome. The most enduring contribution of the BPRU program is from its National Institutes of Health-supported postdoctoral research training program. With more than 100 graduates, the program has provided a research training and scientific productivity foundation for subsequent generations of scientists in the substance use and human behavioral pharmacology fields. This presentation will summarize and illustrate several areas of research from BPRU’s history.

Forthcoming.

Psychologists, behavior analysts, graduate students, and anyone interested in learning about the winner of the SABA Award for International Publication.

In this presentation, the construct of motivation will be explored. A motivated animal is operationalized as one who engages in the training dialogue with quick response to discriminative stimuli. Historically, force and coercion were the tools used to motivate animals in zoological settings. Fortunately, those methods are being replaced with more positive approaches. But, even with the current groundswell of positive reinforcement training in zoos, much mythology and poor training practices surround the need to motivate animals. These include putting the blame on the animal, misrepresenting scientific principals, as well as lowering animals' weights to unacceptable levels. Mr. Martin's experience has shaped a training technology, based on antecedent arrangement and positive reinforcement that allows him to successfully work with highly empowered animals. This success depends on approaches such as sensitive reading of body language, high rates of reinforcement, and clear communication of criteria. With these approaches, welfare is increased as animals learn to use their behavior more effectively.

Behavior analysts working with or interested in animals in any training or management capacity.

The earliest identification of atypical development among very young infants at risk for a later diagnosis of an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is important to facilitate the earliest possible intervention. Existing literature generally presents that anomalous development is not identifiable until the end of the first year of life. However, this is discordant with clinical anecdotes supporting the premise that, in at least some infants, consistent anomalous behaviors may be identified very early, as early as at ages 3-6 months or even before, that may reliably predict an eventual determination of ASD. Dr. Filipek will first present the course of typical development in the first year of life through video segments to focus on the development of social communication as the hallmark target of atypical development. The existing literature pertaining to findings of anomalous development in the first year of life will be briefly reviewed, with specific attention to study designs focusing on infants who are or are not "at risk" versus infants who eventually are or are not diagnosed with ASD. The newest findings will be presented to document the existence of anomalous development as early as at 3 months of age.

Psychologists, behavior analysts, graduate students, and anyone interested in autism.

Inclusive school settings for young children with autism spectrum disorder are increasingly the norm. However, we know little about how to ensure a successful transition from early intervention to public or nonpublic schooling. All too often disputes about where and how a child with ASD will be placed when beginning school lead to mediation, fair hearings, or even court. It is important to obtain empirical evidence on aspects of the classroom, the teacher, the family, and the child that could affect these placement decisions and maximize a successful transition. This presentation will draw on data from two longitudinal studies (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Institute of Education Sciences) that specifically address the role of student-teacher-relationships (STRs) in positive school outcomes for children with ASD. Predictors of STRs will be identified for children with ASD as well as for two comparison groups (typically developing children and children with intellectual disabilities). For the ASD group, the role of parent involvement and parent-teacher-relationships in determining STRs also will be highlighted. New data on the role of STRs, child characteristics, and parenting behaviors in children's emergent literacy skills will be discussed, and implications for school practices identified.

The nature of clinical practice, biomedical research, and medical education in a medical school rewards independent, entrepreneurial, risk-taking behavior by its faculty. These behaviors, while successful in many regards, also result in a fragmented, nonhierarchical, “flat” faculty structure and culture that is somewhat peculiar to medical schools. These cultural forces have been magnified at the University of Nevada School of Medicine (UNSOM) by years of economic and political assaults that left UNSOM with a particularly high level of disengagement, reduced faculty satisfaction anda highly centralized leadership structure that disempowered department chairs and detracted from faculty ownership and investment in UNSOM missions. The speakers will describe strategies used to assess and transform the culture of UNSOM using behavioral systems approaches in order to adapt to changing social demands on the organization (e.g., culturally competent physicians and community engagement). The goals are greater faculty engagement, an emphasis on faculty career development, explicit commitments to achieving individual career and institutional objectives, more decentralized leadership, and a focus on communication, investment, accountability, transparency, and partnership. The use of behavioral assessments will drive socially significant practices within and external to the organization.

Psychologists, behavior analysts, graduate students and anyone interested in how a culture can be changed by behavior analysis.

Verbal Behavior approaches to language acquisition have primarily focused on the basic operants described by Skinner. Despite the utility of these conceptualizations in establishing functional communication skills in individuals with ASD and other language delays, difficulties in applying the concepts of mands, tacts, echoics, and intraverbals to more complex language have been observed. While Skinner's own analysis of verbal behavior extended beyond these four concepts, few training protocols include the more advanced conceptualizations included in Skinner's analysis. Furthermore, the now traditional Skinnerian approaches to verbal behavior therapy generally fail to include contemporary behavior analytic approaches to verbal behavior such as rule-governance and arbitrarily applicable relational responding. The present symposium seeks to extend current training and assessment trends beyond the basic verbal operants with investigations into contextually controlled relational classes to train responses to "WH" questions, to examine the utility of establishing perspective-taking frames, and to analyze the validity and reliability of assessments and training curriculums that incorporate Skinner's other verbal concepts. Specific emphasis will be placed on how these approaches affect treatment outcomes, such as generativity and flexibility, in children with ASD.

Establishing social skills in Autism through perspective-taking is a pivotal behavioral repertoire essential for social interaction and basic reciprocity. These behavioral deficits are the hallmark of Autism Spectrum Disorder and can greatly impact the development of meaningful relationships. Mainstream cognitive developmental literature asserts that the social impairments characteristic of ASD result from an underlying inability to appreciate the viewpoint of others due to biological impairments; however, recent advancements in the behavioral analysis of language and cognition under the rubric of Relational Frame Theory have led to the development of a language based view of perspective-taking based on establishing deictic relational responding in typically developing children. Individuals with autism perform with less accuracy on this protocol, the scores of which correlate with some aspects of social functioning. This paper will present a functional contextual method of training perspective-taking as an alternative to the nativist model of Theory of Mind and discuss its implications for addressing a number of social behavioral deficits present in autism.

Criticisms of the verbal behavior approach to language acquisition therapy have often centered on the narrow and non-generalized repertoires produced by such trainings. In particular, the difficulty with which children acquire more complex language skills, such as those necessary to respond to non-polar interrogative questions, i.e. "Wh" questions, is an indication that the common methods used to teach these skills does not adequately convey the necessary relational or contextual functions required to form generalized responding. The present paper will review deficits in the general verbal behavior therapy approach to teaching "Wh" questions, provide a conceptualization of responding to such questions from a contextual behavioral approach, and provide a paradigm for teaching generalized responding to interrogative questions that involves the application of contextually controlled equivalence classes of noun-word and community associations. Related treatment data gathered while working with children diagnosed with ASD will be presented. Implications for future research and limitations of this approach will be discussed.

The Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Relational Training System (PEAK) is an assessment and curriculum protocol which utilizes behavior analytic principles to train academic, social, and daily living skills. The PEAK program is based on research in behavior analysis and includes technologies ranging from basic developmental skills to Skinner's Verbal Behavior to modern approaches to language such as Stimulus Equivalence and Relational Frame Theory. PEAK is designed to be used with children and adults with a wide variety of functional capabilities ranging from skills required to begin the learning process to advanced language and social skills. The current study sought to investigate the relationship between scores on the PEAK Assessment and the IQ scores of individuals with developmental disabilities. Participants were administered both the PEAK Assessment and IQ tests and results were compared. The results indicated a significant, positive correlation between scores on the PEAK Assessment and the IQ scores of participants.

Everyday activities as well as great creative achievements such as those that occur in science, mathematics, and art arise from complex repertoires. Generativity and language-pervading topics in areas such as psychology and education-often lie at the heart of both everyday activities and more complex, novel performances. Within behavior analysis, a multitude of studies has derived tool and component skills that should be established in order to arrive at terminal desired performances, such as holding a conversation, reading and comprehending complex written materials, thinking mathematically, and conducting scientific experiments. Analysis of the components can also suggest promising instructional interventions for developing these terminal repertoires. This symposium will present an analysis of components involved in verbal behaviors described in the Assessment of Basic Language and Learning Skills (ABLLS) and in mathematical thinking. These components will be classified in terms of the learning type model developed by Tiemann and Markle (1990) and further refined by Layng (2005, 2007). Additionally, based on these analyses and on the research literature, suggestions for teaching these different verbal and generative repertoires will be offered.

Service providers for children with autism and other developmental disabilities rely on behavioral assessments to determine not only clients initial repertoires, but also to develop effective treatment. The ABLLS is among the behavioral assessments that are used frequently by professionals to evaluate existing repertoires and support treatment decisions in terms of target behavior choices. This conceptual paper will present an analysis and classification of different verbal repertoires that are defined in the ABLLS according to the different Types of Learning described by Sota, Leon, and Layng (2011) and Tiemann and Markle (1990). The ABLLS areas that will be analyzed and classified include receptive language, vocal imitation, requests, labeling, intraverbals, and syntax and grammar. Within each one of these areas, tasks will be classified according to the following general Types of Learning: psychomotor, simple cognitive, and complex cognitive. Each one of these Types of Learning will be subdivided into more specific categories, and these categories will be operationally defined as a means to develop systematic criteria for classifying the different target verbal behaviors. Additionally, we hope to provide a tool that can be used for the analysis and classification of other verbal behaviors not directly addressed in this analysis.

The search for evidence-based practices to teach language for children on the autism spectrum is a growing endeavor given the number of children who are diagnosed each year. Suggestions regarding best practices for teaching language to children with autism and other developmental disabilities can be found in a myriad of scientific articles, newsletters, blogs, among other means of communication; however, only a few practices are evidence-based. The choice between different language-teaching procedures depend on the clients existing repertoire, the amount of time and resources available, and the terminal goals described in individualized educational plans. Once terminal repertoires are described, it is necessary to match teaching procedure choices to student needs. The different types of learning described in the instructional design literature can provide guidelines on how to make choices among existing language teaching procedures, since they point to stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response relations that need to be taught. This conceptual paper will propose practices for teaching receptive language, vocal imitation, requests, labeling, intraverbals, and syntax and grammar based on (a) the literature on language teaching evidence-based practices and (b) an analysis and classification of ABLLS verbal repertoires according to the types of learning.

Proficiency in mathematics entails much more than being fluent in math facts and procedures for solving equations. Proficiency involves thinking mathematically, and includes a number of component skills that span a variety of learning types. Designing instruction to help learners develop the full range of components that make up mathematical proficiency can be challenging. This presentation will discuss an analysis of mathematical proficiency based on the K-8 Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the National Research Councils report Adding It Up. This analysis will be presented in terms of the learning type model developed by Tiemann and Markle (1990) and further refined by Layng (2005, 2007) and discussed with a focus on mathematical thinking as verbal behavior. Suggestions and considerations for the design of math instruction based on this analysis and incorporating what we know from research on learning and performancefor example, problem solving, stimulus equivalence, and the development and transfer of stimulus controlwill be presented.

Function-based interventions, such as differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA), are often found successful in treating problem behavior when implemented at full integrity. However, intervention effects may not maintain when treatment integrity is impaired. This symposium will include four papers on procedural refinements of function-based intervention components to enhance practical implementation. The author of the first paper will describe an evaluation comparing two differential reinforcement schedules and a fading procedure for treating automatically reinforced stereotypy. In the second paper, the author will present data on a multiple-schedule procedure for establishing stimulus control over stereotypy. The author of the third paper will describe an evaluation of demand fading without extinction, with and without DRA, for treating escape-maintained problem behavior. In the forth paper, the author will describe a comparison of different stimuli in the context of a multiple-schedule thinning procedure for attention-maintained problem behavior. Gregory Hanley, who will serve as discussant for this symposium, will comment on the symposiums topic area, integrate the speakers contributions, and offer feedback on the presented papers.

Children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often exhibit stereotypy that can be socially stigmatizing and interfere with learning objectives. Although differential reinforcement procedures have been found effective for treating stereotypy, they are often combined with multiple treatment components, making it difficult to determine their independent effects. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate two differential reinforcement interventions, differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) and differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO), when they are implemented independently. Two individuals with an ASD diagnosis, who exhibited high levels of motor stereotypy, participated. In all conditions, task materials required for completing an educationally relevant task were present. No reinforcement baseline, DRA, and DRO conditions were evaluated using multielement and reversal designs. Results indicated DRA was more effective than DRO for decreasing motor stereotypy, increasing productivity, and increasing engagement for both participants. Systematic schedule fading was implemented for one participant. Interobserver agreement data were collected for over 33% of sessions and averaged at least 80%

Self-stimulatory play is problematic when it competes with acquisition of important learning activities; however such play will be non-problematic if it occurs during other times. In the current study, home care staff brought the self-stimulatory sock play of a 10-year-old boy with autism under stimulus control by arranging a multiple schedule. During continuous reinforcement periods, signaled by the presentation of a bracelet the subject wore, sock play would be allowed; during extinction periods, signaled by the removal of the bracelet, sock play was manually disrupted. The durations of these components were faded such that sessions consisted of 1 min of reinforcement and 10 min of extinction with low levels of attempted sock play during extinction periods.

Demand fading without extinction was evaluated for children with problem behavior maintained by social negative reinforcement. Initially, demands were eliminated and gradually reintroduced across sessions, and problem behavior continued to produce reinforcement in the form of a break from tasks. If demand fading without extinction was ineffective in suppressing problem behavior, differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) was added to treatment. Results suggest that extinction was not a necessary component of demand fading, and DRA plus demand fading without extinction was an effective alternative when demand fading alone did not suppress problem behavior.

Functional communication training (FCT) is a widely used and successful intervention for treating problem behavior. However, the intervention may be limited when implemented in natural contexts (e.g., family home) because high rates of communicative responding may occur, which can compromise treatment integrity. The current study extended previous work on the effects of a FCT intervention and schedule thinning procedure implemented in clients daily environments. Specifically, this study evaluated the effectiveness of using natural versus artificial stimuli associated with multiple-schedule components for thinning the schedule of reinforcement. Results demonstrated that both types of multiple schedules were effective for thinning schedules of reinforcement to clinically relevant levels. Artificial stimuli were found to be more effective than natural stimuli for reinforcement schedule thinning for one participant, whereas no discernible difference was observed with the second participant. Follow up phases demonstrated that results were upheld over brief periods of time (i.e., 3 weeks) without intervention.

Mindfulness is generally defined as the non-judgmental attentive awareness of the present moment. Practicing mindfulness results in significant improvements to both mental and physical well-being, even in small doses. Though mindfulness has its roots in ancient spiritual traditions, it has a number of empirically-supported applications in modern behavior therapy and everyday life. The development of assessment and intervention methodologies, however, remains in early stages. The papers in this symposium aim to contribute to the body of knowledge on mindfulness by exploring the shared perception of mindfulness, the effectiveness and feasibility of interventions on mindfulness, and the impact of mindfulness for effective communication. The first paper will explore the perception of mindfulness in the moment in untrained observers. The second paper will examine the effect of mindfulness training on stress in graduate students. The third paper will explore the effects of a mindfulness meditation intervention on attention in undergraduate students. Finally, the fourth paper will examine the impact of perceived mindfulness on public speaking behaviors. Implications for future research will be discussed.

The initial Azrin-Foxx self-initiation training protocol was both a gift and a challenge to the field of behavior analysis. It provided a robust, highly-effective, and easily replicated treatment package with broad applicability to other populations, as evidenced by results obtained in institutional, school, and community settings across the United States and in other countries. However, it also raised expectations about the range of learners who could learn to self-initiate and challenged us to create environments that accommodated these newly acquired skills. Our symposium will consider the evolution of self-initiation training protocols since their initial applications in terms of developments in the field which have required overcorrection procedures to be dropped and request procedures to be added. Data from the original Willowbrook Cohort will be contrasted against those from two present community agencies; and a data collection tool for coding these data will be presented, together with reliability and validity data. We will discuss implications for practice.

Psychologists, behavior analysts, graduate students and anyone interested in self-initiation.

The Willowbrook Sate School was an institution for individuals with developmental disabilities located on Staten Island and run by New York State. Willowbrook was made infamous as a snake pit and an incompetent environment through the reporting efforts of Geraldo Rivera and litigation and legislation by Senator Robert Kennedy and others. One of the many stipulations of the Willowbrook Consent Decree was that individuals residing at Willowbrook were to receive comprehensive toilet training. This talk will describe what conditions were like at the time of the Willowbrook Consent Decree and immediately thereafter; the presenter's experience as a team member administering and training others to administer the original Azrin-Foxx toileting protocol as part of the original intervention team; and outcome data from these efforts.

Reasonable people, even or perhaps especially professionals, can and do disagree (often vigorously, and usually beyond the available data) about the number, order, and necessity of various prerequisite skills for teaching toileting. This presentation will provide participants with a simple 16-item toileting survey that may be used to obtain a cross-section of toileting-related skills for groups of learners of any age (e.g., classes of students in schools; groups of individuals in residences or habilitation programs). Each learner is assessed for Self-Initiation, Requesting, Scheduled Elimination, and Accident Rate using a 4-point scale which is descriptive in nature and written in plain language in order to be equally accessible to paraprofessionals, direct-care workers, or professionals. Administration instructions, anecdotes about administration, inter-observer agreement data, and construct validity data will be presented, along with implications for practice.

The importance of play and leisure skills has been documented in both the behavioral and non-behavioral literature. Children without sufficient repertoires of play and leisure skills are less likely to succeed in school and more likely to engage in atypical rates of inappropriate behavior. Physical play and exercise have been specifically noted in the literature to result in global benefits, improving health and wellbeing as well as interpersonal social skills. However, cultural changes in the United States have led to a decreased emphasis on physical play and exercise in children, resulting in deficits in these repertoires. In this symposium, variables affecting children's engagement in physical exercise and play will be discussed, specifically 1) teaching water tolerance as a prerequisite skill for swimming, 2) assessments of young children's engagement with specific environmental features on playgrounds and in natural play settings and interventions to increase the intensity, variety, and total amount of time spent in physical activity, 3) the utility of and effectiveness of peer tutoring models in physical education classes, and 4) the growing body of literature citing the positive benefits of exercise for school age children with ADHD or emotional and behavioral disorders.

Swimming is an important life safety skill that children should learn for drowning prevention. Statistics provided from the Centers for Disease Control reveal that more than one in five fatal drowning victims are children 14 and younger. Some children may have difficulty learning to swim, presenting as having a fear of water, or simply refusing to get their face wet. Problem behavior associated with the water may create multiple barriers to learning to swim. There are only two main strategies for dealing with children's water avoidance. A "gentle" method associated with classical conditioning and desensitization, and a "safety first" method, which is associated with flooding and extinction. This study evaluated the "gentle" method, and introduced a third strategy that uses differential reinforcement as an effective approach for water-avoidant children. The participants included three children who demonstrated problem behavior associated with having water on their faces. The dependent measure was the child's performance of successive approximations to the final target behavior which was defined as pouring a cup of water over his/her head three times without problem behavior. Treatment results showed the differential reinforcement condition was more effective than the gentle method alone for two out of three children.

Social skills are foundation to any interaction among people, whether learning, playing, or working. Physical education, like a mirror of life, invites a myriad of social interactions children do not always know how to handle, and are only rarely formally taught to navigate. Peer tutoring is a pedagogy that can provide critical social learning opportunities, in addition to academic learning. Classwide peer tutoring (CWPT), a peer tutoring variation, is an evidence-based pedagogy initially designed for elementary students in core subjects such as reading, spelling and math, but has successfully generalized to the improvement of motor and physical activity performance in physical education settings. Despite its inherited social orientation, CWPT's contribution to students' social competence in these settings has not been fully explored to date. The purpose of this presentation is to illuminate the potential need and value of CWPT to enhance social competence in physical education. Examples of CWPT applications in physical education will be shared along with its effects on students' motor performance. Rationale for the need in a socially-based pedagogy in physical education will be discussed, and preliminary data examples of social performance gains will be shared.

College-level learners need to master complex and voluminous material in an efficient and effective manner, and to express mastered material across a variety of modalities (e.g., multiple-choice, written short-answer, and oral responding). Research has evaluated the use of equivalence-base instruction (EBI) with advanced learners (e.g., college students) across a variety of academic content domains (e.g., Fields, Travis, Roy, Yadlovker, de Aguiar- Rocha, & Sturmey, 2009; Fienup et al., 2009; Fienup et al., 2010; Ninness et al., 2005; Walker, Rehfeldt, & Ninness, 2010). However, the technology of stimulus equivalence instruction requires further empirical refinement and broader-based dissemination (Fienup, Hamelin, Reyes-Giordano, & Falcomata, 2011). The first paper in this symposium evaluated the use of EBI to teach contingencies of reinforcement and punishment to graduate students. The second paper taught graduate students to form derived relations among representations of prominent behavior analysts. The third paper used EBI to teach the concept of statistical variability to college students. The final paper investigated the influence of mastery criterion on the number of college students who successfully formed equivalence classes consisting of neuroanatomy stimuli. Collectively, these studies suggest procedural refinements in EBI and additional support for the use of EBI to teach complex academic material to advanced learners.

Bailey and Burch (2010) describe competence in identifying prominent behavior analysts among their essential skills and responsibilities for behavior analysts. The present study applied the stimulus equivalence paradigm to establish relations among the name, photograph, professional affiliation, and research interest of six prominent behavior analysts (3 men and 3 women). Participants were 15 graduate students in a Master of Arts applied behavior analysis program. A pretest-training-posttest design was used. First, three, 4-member equivalence classes (either men or women) were established using a match-to-sample software program. Selection-based responding was used during training and testing. Three relations were trained and nine additional relations emerged without additional training, thus demonstrating the emergence of equivalence classes. Participants also demonstrated response generalization by responding correctly during oral posttests. After learning the first set of behavior analyst classes (either men or women), the results were replicated within-subjects with another set of three, 4-member equivalence classes. The results were maintained in a two-week follow up. The present study extends the stimulus equivalence literature to a novel content area while also expanding research that is relevant to the field of behavior analysis (Walker & Rehfeldt, 2012).

The stimulus equivalence paradigm has been applied to teach numerous college-level academic topics, such as algebra (Ninness et al., 2006), statistics (Fields et al., 2009; Fienup & Critchfield, 2010, 2011), neuroanatomy (Fienup, Covey, & Critchfield, 2010), and disability categorization (Walker et al., 2011). A review by Fienup, Hamelin, Reyes-Giordano, and Falcomata (2011) identified several technological variations among protocols found in the research literature. This study examined the influence of mastery criterion on the number of learners who successfully formed equivalence classes. All participants learned neuroanatomy concepts using match-to-sample training and the simple-to-complex protocol (includes learning baseline relations and derived relations probes). Researchers randomly assigned participants to a particular mastery criterion that consisted of blocks of training (e.g., Fields et al., 2009), or either of two consecutive correct responses (6 or 12) (e.g., Fienup et al., 2011). All mastery criteria resulted in equivalence class formation; however, the 12 consecutive correct criteria was most successful. The block mastery and 6 consecutive correct criteria produced more failed derived relations probes and resulted in participants spending more time completing remedial training prior to the formation of academically relevant equivalence classes. Implications for developing an effective and efficiency technology of equivalence-based instruction will be discussed.

Effective new techniques are needed to assess auditory discrimination in individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities such as autism spectrum disorders, epilepsy and intellectual disability. This symposium will present effective behavioral methods for assessing a variety of auditory discriminations in humans and animal models. John C. Neill (Long Island University) will show how seizures early in life predispose mammals to long term and acute impairments in auditory location and quality discrimination, and how these impairments can be remediated using effective auditory discrimination procedures developed in basic research. Neill will also present a paper that shows significant dose-dependent deficits in auditory discrimination in rats exposed to cosmic rays, similar impairments in neonatal seizure models, and discuss the implications for the developing brain. Bertram Ploog (College of Staten Island, CUNY) will discuss studies using a computer game to assess stimulus control involved in receptive prosody of children with autism (including lower functioning children) also with potential for remediation. Richard Serna, (U. Mass. Lowell) will describe non-verbal methods used to assess pitch discrimination in individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Data will be presented from an ongoing research project aimed at better understanding the auditory discrimination capabilities of children with ASDs and intellectual disabilities. Behavior analysts will learn some determinants of atypical behavior associated with neurodevelopmental disabilities and potentially effective remediation approaches to normalize auditory perception. A discussant, James MacDonall (Fordham University) will add insightful commentary.

The use of computer technology has been prevalent in autism research and treatment. However, many studies have not employed a systematic and rigorous behavior analytical approach, therefore proper assessment of treatment efficacy is often lacking. In this talk, I'd like to discuss the findings of three studies using a computer game to assess stimulus control involved in receptive prosody of children with autism (including lower functioning children who represent an understudied and underserved population in language research). I would also like to introduce a new game to assess stimulus control involved in emotion recognition of children with autism. This game also has the built-in potential to serve as a remedial tool for atypical attention possibly involved in emotion recognition.

We hypothesized that heavy ion irradiation causes severe impairments in auditory stimulus control and changes in the Brainstem Auditory Evoked Potential (BAEP) in rats. Subject: 30 adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided randomly into three groups: brains of rats were exposed to either 0, 120 or 240 cGy accelerated iron ions (56Fe) of 600 MeV per nucleon at the National Space Radiation Laboratory. Eight months later, rats were deprived to 80% of ad lib, given preliminary training on a VI 22 s schedule during silence in half hour sessions until lever presses occurred at steady rates. Two auditory cues (half S+, half S-) were then introduced to signal consequences using a discrete trial procedure. S+ and S- alternated semi-randomly on a silent ITI (inter-trial interval) of 22.5 s, (range: 5 - 45 s). Controls acquired the S+/S- discrimination significantly faster than irradiated rats in a dose-dependent function. There was a dose-dependent Increase in S- response rate in all conditions. BAEPS: Fe 56 irradiation caused a dose-dependent decrease in wave I-IV latencies. Performances were compared to animals exposed to seizures early in life and similar functions were obtained. Cosmic rays are neurotoxic, causing behavioral and neurological changes in humans.

Although behaviorists often seek to generalize the principles of behavior to a diverse range of species, invertebrates seldom receive much attention in behavioral research. This is unfortunate as invertebrates are excellent candidates for research in behavior analysis for several reasons. First, invertebrate research is often less expensive and less restrictive in methods than research conducted with traditional vertebrate organisms. Second, invertebrates are practical subjects for classroom experiments and hands-on student exercises due to small size, low cost and low maintenance. Finally, many species, such as the honey bee, have significant roles in agriculture and the ecosystem. In this symposium, four presentations will discuss operant conditioning in invertebrates. The research will discuss the sensitivity of honey bees to delays of reinforcement, distinctions in drone and worker honey bee performance in avoidance and punishment tasks, spatial learning in lobsters and positive reinforcement in hissing cockroaches. The presentations will relate the findings to the behavioral ecology of the subject species, and compare and contrast the trends in invertebrate learning with what is commonly observed in traditional vertebrate organisms.

In two experiments, free-flying honey bees' (Apis mellifera L.) hole-entering responses in an artificial flower apparatus were exposed to two forms of reinforcement delays. The first experiment implemented a post-reinforcement delay by locking the bees within the apparatus and preventing them from returning to the hive after receiving sucrose reinforcement. The bees received either a 0s, 300s, or 600s delay following an A-B-C-A design. The delay produced distinct patterns of inter-session intervals but did not impact inter-response times. Generally, longer delays produced longer inter-session intervals and many bees exposed to post-reinforcement delays "dropped out" of the experiment. The second experiment implemented an inter-reinforcement delay via a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement of either 0s, 15s, 30s, 60s, or 120s. The FI schedules produced lower response rates compared to performance on continuous reinforcement schedules and also decreased inter-response-times for some subjects. However, no "scalloped" or "break-and-run" patterns of responding were observed, and no evidence of temporal control by honey bees was produced. As with the first experiment, honey bees exposed to longer delays (FI 60s and F1 120s) "dropped out" of the experiment.

Honey bees provide a model system to elucidate the relationship between sociality and complex behaviors within the same species, as females (workers) are highly social and males (drones) are more solitary. We report on aversive learning studies in drone and worker honey bees (Apis mellifera anatolica) in escape, punishment and discriminative punishment situations. In the escape experiment, individuals could terminate an unavoidable shock triggered by a decrementing 30-second timer by crossing the shuttlebox centerline following shock activation. Across all groups, there was large individual response variation. When assessing group response frequency and latency, master subjects performed better than yoked subjects for both workers and drones. In the punishment experiment, individuals were shocked upon entering the shock portion of a bilaterally wired shuttlebox. The shock portion was spatially static and unsignalled. Only workers effectively avoided the shock. The discriminative punishment experiment repeated the punishment experiment but included a counterbalanced blue and yellow background signal and the side of shock was manipulated. Drones correctly responded less than workers when shock was paired with blue. However, when shock was paired with yellow there was no observable difference between drones and workers.

While numerous demonstrations of behavioral principles have been observed in a variety of model organisms, few studies have attempted to replicate such phenomenon using the relatively cheaper and regulation free options available in invertebrate organisms. The following study sought to demonstrate positive reinforcement in the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach (Gromphadorhina portentosa) by exposing 5 subjects to an apparatus that provided highly preferred edible stimuli as a consequent of antennae waving on a FR1 schedule. In order to account for the presence of motivating operations, each subject was exposed to a 5min free-operant preference assessment including 4 edible stimuli prior to each session. After selection of a stimulus, the subjects were placed in the apparatus for 20min. If no stimulus was selected, the subject was returned to the colony enclosure. An ABAB design showed greater frequencies of antennae waving during FR1 (B) conditions than in baseline (A) conditions. Patterns suggesting delayed extinction bursts were observed during the return to baseline. Implications and limitations of these methodologies and in the use of hissing cockroaches as model organisms are discussed.

The present study examined spatial learning patterns in juvenile Red-Clawed lobsters (Cherax Quadricarinatus). In the present study a group of 14 Red-Clawed lobsters were trained to run through a T-maze; the number of errors and latency to complete the maze was measured. The experimental group was exposed to daily trial blocks, which consisted of 3 sessions per day, whereas the control group was exposed to the task on day 1 and day 12. Results suggest that after repeated exposure to the task, the experimental group maintained an average of 100% maze completion during the last trial block, making no errors. The control group however had an average of 52% during the last trial block. After the responding pattern in the maze was reversed, the experimental group averaged 743.75s to complete the maze compared to the control group completing the maze in 273.5s. The results suggest that a stronger learning history effects adaptability in responding with the experimental group being less adaptable in their responding after repeated exposure to the maze task.

Treatment integrity, also known as procedural fidelity, is the degree to which intervention steps are implemented with accuracy. Behavioral skills training (i.e., instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback) is an effective procedure used to train staff across a range of repertoires (e.g., implementing skill acquisition programs, verbal behavior programs). The purpose of this symposium is to highlight four studies evaluating training procedures to implement interventions with high levels of integrity. The first presentation will share findings following the training of three parents to implement variations of discrete-trial instruction (DTI) with their children with autism and parent preference for DTI variations. The second presentation will describe how the authors identified variables impacting special education teachers selection of academic interventions and discuss variables impacting integrity in classroom settings. The third presentation will describe the use of video modeling with voiceover instruction when training teachers to implement token economies with children with autism. Finally, the fourth presentation will describe the devleopment of a cost-effective pre-service training package to teach three animal shelter volunteers to implement a dog walking and enrichment protocol (DWEP) through a video training package.

Special education teachers may select interventions for their students for a variety of reasons (e.g., familiarity with an intervention) that are not yet well understood. Once the teacher selects an intervention, it remains unclear whether the teacher and classroom staff are implementing the intervention as it is described in the literature. The purpose of the investigation was to identify variables impacting special education teachers selection of academic interventions and examine whether teachers implemented the intervention with integrity. We collected survey data and conducted observations of conditional discrimination training procedures in special education classrooms in Oregon. We examined the level of integrity that classroom staff implemented trial-based instruction, with most observations including instruction delivered by instructional assistants instead of special education teachers. Results indicated that educators implemented 50% of the components of trial-based instruction with integrity at or above 80%. Variables such as the mastery level of the task being presented impacted levels of integrity. We will further discuss variables impacting integrity in classroom settings and provide recommendations for future research and practice.

The use of token economies is frequently recommended in early intervention manuals and is reported to be commonplace in clinical practice. However, limited research is available to help guide clinicians in how to best train staff to implement token economies. To help address this void, the present study evaluated video modeling with voiceover instruction to train four staff trainees to implement a token economy. Initially, we evaluated the staff trainees integrity with a simulated consumer (i.e., an adult acting as a child). Generalization was programmed for and assessed with an actual consumer (i.e., a child with autism). The results demonstrated that video modeling was an effective approach to training. Staff trainees also demonstrated high levels of integrity up to 2-months following the completion of training. Multiple measures of validity were also completed and provide evidence for the content validity of the training video and the social validity of the goals, procedures, and outcomes. Together, these results support the usefulness of video training and suggest that performance feedback may not be a necessary component of training. We will discuss these findings in light of previous research and provide suggestions for future research.

Volunteers are ubiquitous to non-profit service organizations, yet methods to efficiently and cost-effectively train volunteers are relatively underexplored in the literature. The current study aimed to develop a cost-effective pre-service training package to teach three animal shelter volunteers to implement a dog walking and enrichment protocol (DWEP). Following the shelter's traditional live training, volunteers implemented just over half of all DWEP steps correctly (M = 55.2%). DWEP integrity improved when participants completed a video-based self-training package (M = 75.3%), but did not reach the pre-established mastery criterion of 85% fidelity with zero safety errors. During coaching, which consisted of modeling and positive and corrective feedback, integrity improved (M = 90.6%), yet only two of three participants met criterion performance. High integrity performance was observed for two of three participants at 1- and 4-week follow-up observations. Though creation of the video-based training package used in the study required approximately 13.25 hours longer than preparation of live training, live training required between 30-50 minutes with a shelter staff member with wide variability and safety of content observed. When used in place of life training, the video training package could save money for the organization in as few as 13 volunteer training sessions.

The Symposium brings together a variety of international dissemination efforts. A goal of the symposium is to illustrate some of the ways Behavior Analysis is currently being offered in areas that have traditionally had little to no contact with the discipline. Furthermore, the event brings together speakers from varying backgrounds to share their perspectives on how behavior analysis can continue to bring its offerings to populations that have had limited contact with the discipline. Papers presented will concentrate the efforts currently being done in India, China, Taiwan, Russia, Belarus, and the Middle East region.

Presentations to 75 of the top Moscow psychologists included information on an introduction to behavior analysis, changing inner behavior, verbal behavior, quality assurance, employee satisfaction, and competition in industry. The presentations in Belarus also had the above areas plus a lecture on precision teaching’s standard celeration chart. The Belarus audience consisted of psychologists, teachers, and special education personnel. A part of our task was to present behavior analysis to people whose historic roots lie with Pavlov, but whose current philosophy and approach to treatment of all people lie more within the roots of mentalism. The two weeks of presentations, smaller meetings, and tours of schools were behavior analysis’s introduction to its principles and practices to this portion of the world. People from ABAI had previously spent time in St. Petersburg.

Till as late as 2004, there was no knowledge of the science of ABA in India. A large country of one billion people and nearly a million children with autism. In 2013 we have 12 Behavior Analysts, various ABA based special needs centers, a BACB approved course sequence, and innumerable parents of children with autism asking for ABA. The 9 year journey in India has been full of challenges and made possible due to various strategic & bold decisions & campaigns. The impact on the development of ABA in India is irreversible.

This paper discusses the development of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) in China and Taiwan. In 2000 and 2008, the first international ABA conference sponsored by SEEK Education, Inc. was held to disseminate behavior analysis in the area of education and treatment of children with autism in Taiwan and China, respectively. Following this, there has been an increasing number of parents of children with autism looking for effective treatment based on a behavioral approach. In addition, teachers and practitioners providing direct services to this population are finding ways to receive systematic training and education in behavior analysis. These developments have been fostered by additional support from the governments of China and Taiwan for the establishment of educational programs to serve the vast populations in these regions. This paper aims to discuss the progression and challenges of ABA development over the past decade. The development of ABA intensive intervention programs, systematic training sequences, BCaBA and BCBA course sequences, and the future development of behavior analysis in China and Taiwan will be discussed.

This paper discusses the current training efforts occurring Saudi Arabia. The training efforts are predicated on the work that had been done in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Building and refining a program of behavior analytic instruction in coordination with service providers in the region will be presented as well as a hybrid supervision structure that is being employed. The paper discuses the scope and sequence of behavior analytic instruction along with how students contact ongoing supervision of clinical activities. A model of how this type of training can be replicated in other locations will be offered as well as lessons learned from attempting to bring behavior analytic training to a region that has had limited contact with the discipline. Particular considerations discussed include: cultural & language barriers and solutions, as well as distance based instructional methods and how they are being employed to solve limitations of previous attempts to bring a sustained model of behavior analytic training to the region.

Individuals who manage the welfare of zoo animals seek practical approaches to caring for a diversity of species. In general, animal managers hope to understand animals' behavioral needs, how animals express their experiences of positive welfare, and how to ensure that positive experiences balance any negative ones. Research findings in several fields, including psychology, neuroscience, animal behavior, and zoo biology, indicate core behavioral needs. Combined, the evidence suggests that animals who can express these needs are psychologically and emotionally enriched. Here, Dr. Watters will describe the core behavioral needs of investigating, acquiring reward and exerting control. He will describe a developing "balance-based" approach designed to ascertain the frequency with which these needs are met and not met in an animal's life through behavioral observation. Various behaviors indicate the presence or absence of opportunities to meet the core needs and Dr. Watters will challenge the assumption that the behavioral repertoire of zoo animals should mirror that of animals in the wild. He will emphasize that animal welfare depends upon the balance individuals can obtain between meeting and not meeting their behavioral needs. Animals that are out of balance in the simple sense that they have few opportunities for positive experiences are in a state of welfare that can be improved.

Behavior analysts who have an interest in zoo animal behavior and welfare

Although a great deal of research has focused on factors that contribute to progress in early intensive behavior therapy (EIBT), few studies have refined this examination to those variables that most contribute to progress in the first six months of beginning a EIBT program. This symposium will feature three papers that examine this early progress. The first study will provide an analysis of the variable of team consistency and training of behavior therapists assigned to a case and it's correlation to child progress. The second paper examines the degree to which a child demonstrates attending skills across different stimuli arrangements. The final paper in this symposium will discuss types of stimuli classified by categories used to describe art, and measures the length of time each child spent looking at each kind of painting. These results were used to manipulate the type of stimuli used in programming and results on the effect of progress will be discussed. Several factors can effect initial progress in EIBT programs. These three papers will present findings that suggest some strategies to maximize progress in the very initial months of EIBT to shift a child's acquisition rate, which, in turn, can effect the overall developmental trajectory. A second point is that some mistakes that may be common in the early stages of behavior programs with children with autism, can be avoided if careful evaluation in consistently applied to specific factors.

Children with autism can demonstrate preferences for particular kinds of stimuli. The visual characteristics of such stimuli have rarely been studied. One approach to classifying types of visual stimuli is to use categories used in the field of visual art. The purpose of this study was to determine if children diagnosed with Autism have a visual preference for certain types of art paintings from different categories of art. Another purpose of this study was to see how the introduction of art paintings in a controlled versus a free operant environment affected the rate of stereotypic behaviors. This paper will present two different experiments. In experiment one, art paintings varying in feature intensiveness were presented to participants in a controlled environment. Experiment one, required the use of a projector, which the art paintings were displayed through, and video cameras, which helped determine where participants were directing eye contact. In experiment two, art paintings, from seven different categories, were displayed in a free operant environment where the participants had free access to roam the room and orient to the paintings of their choice. The dependent variable for each experiment was the duration spent orienting towards different visual art categories, and the frequency of visual attendance towards each art painting. Stereotypic behavior was measured during the waiting period, or therapy session, and during each trial for experiment one and two. Preliminary data from experiment two, provides evidence that some participants preferred attending to their own image relative to all other categories.

It is common that children with autism have trouble generalizing what they have learned from a specific person to other people. Having a team of therapists work with a child with autism is the primary method used to program for generalization across people during clinical intervention. Team variables impacting progress are often under analyzed and changes in team variables during the intervention are often not closely monitored to access immediate effects on the learning rate and measures of the child's inappropriate behavior. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of team stability on the levels of inappropriate behavior in children with autism during EIBI treatment. Therapy sessions were sampled via video recording and coded for frequency and/or duration of a variety of inappropriate behaviors observed during treatment. Team Stability was gathered from center records. General trends were analyzed between dependent and independent variables to conclude general correlations. Preliminary results showed a negative relationship between team stability and level of inappropriate behavior during therapy, in most, but not all teams. Overall findings suggest significant positive clinical relevance to monitoring team variables throughout different stages in early intervention in children with autism, especially team stability.

Measuring attending levels during early intensive behavior intervention for children with autism can be difficult. The purpose of this study was to measure specific visual attending skills in children with autism. An analysis of the effects of environments with differentiating distraction levels on participants attending during discrete trial training (DTT) was conducted. Children with ASD were evaluated to see if they would habituate to the varying degree of distractors placed into their environment, and if it would later generalize to a typical environment. Trend lines of correct responding for each target item were compared during each stage of the study. The Wide Range Assessment of Memory & Learning Second Edition Assessment Tool was used to measure changes in clients attending level, as well as data collected of time spent gazing off-task, and measuring the number of correct responses during DTT.

Researchers and practitioners have been challenged to address three key areas of deficit identified with autism: language, play, and repetitive behavior. In this series of papers, each of these areas were investigated in unique ways, making a contribution to the applied research and aiding in our understanding of some of the features of autism. Each paper describes a particular tactic and its effects on the participants in the study, using a single case design research methodology. One paper taught divergent intraverbal responding through the use of convergent verbal prompts. One paper taught creative use of common objects for play through a combination of intraverbal responses and reinforcement for play actions. And, finally, one paper expanded the community of reinforcers through conditioning of new items and activities. These tactics contribute to the evidence-based practices available to teachers and staff who work with children with autism. And they reframe some applied research questions to engage the audience in a dialogue about how our assumptions might drive our research interests and findings.

The purpose of this study was to teach divergent intraverbal responding using verbal prompts involving convergent multiple control. The participant was a 7 year-old boy with autism. A multiple probe design across behaviors was employed. The behaviors involved categorical questions across 5 different colors (e.g., Name some things that are green). The verbal prompts used to teach divergent intraverbal responding consisted of verbal descriptions on feature, function, and class (FFC) of each target item. The objective was to increase the number of divergent intraverbal responses for each categorical question. The results showed that verbal prompts using convergent control with FFC were effective in increasing the number of divergent intraverbal responses to categorical questions. Generalization effects across people, settings, and spontaneous novel responses were also assessed.

One of the major deficits for children with autism is a lack of creative symbolic pretend play skills. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether a verbal prompting procedure can increase the number of intraverbal responses on pretend uses of common objects. The goal was to teach children with autism creative ideas of using common objects for symbolic pretend play activities, thereby expanding their pretend play repertoires. The training procedure involved (1) presenting a target object, (2) having the child tact name and function of this object (e.g., a ring for stacking), (3) intraverbal responding on pretend uses of the object (Q: What can you pretend with this bowl? A: a hat, a bath-tub.), (4) the child engaging in pretend play actions with the object. In the pilot experiment, a 6-year-old boy with autism served as a participant. An ABAB design was originally planned to assess the effectiveness of the proposed teaching procedure with two sets of target objects. However, after the completion of training on the first set of three target objects, the child's ability for creative uses of common objects emerged and generalized to the second set of untaught objects, not allowing the return to baseline. Despite a positive training effectbeing achieved for this child, the experimental control was not demonstrated in an AB design. In experiment II, the procedure was replicated with a multiple probe across behaviors design for two preschool children with autism. Data showed that the procedure effectively increased the number of pretend uses for target objects for both children in Experiment II. During generalization probe sessions, both children were able to provide intraverbal responses of pretend uses for untaught objects and engage in play actions, suggesting the possibility to teach children with autism creative use of common objects to expand their pretend play repertoires.

Implementation of various sensory integration interventions have been observed across many types of school settings. Variations of these procedures have encompassed sensory diets which are based on the premise that individuals with autism and related disorders have an underlying deficit in sensory processing. The assumption is that this deficit results in high rates of stereotypy or self-injurious behavior due to the individual attempting to regulate its sensory input. Thus the deficit is ameliorated by providing ample opportunities for sensory-based activities. There appears to be an inverse correlation between excessive stereotypy and self-injurious behaviors and the number ofknown reinforcers for the individual. For most individuals, having a limited number of reinforcers will likely have an adverse impact on the rate of learning new skills and has social implications. By using a multiple baseline design across three participants, we tested the effects of conditioning items and activities on the selection ofsensory based items as preferred activities by the participants and the impact on the number of episodes of self-injurious behavior. Results are discussed in terms of the amount of time individuals engaged with non-sensory based stimuli in a free play setting.

Precision teaching is an underused technology for measuring behavior and making data based decisions. While research indicates a wide array of applications for improving learner performance using precision teaching, behavior analysts and educators often do not make use of this research or limit the use of precision teaching to certain skills. When reviewing literature published in popular behavior analytic journals, very few include research using precision teaching technologies. Additionally, within the Journal of Precision Teaching, there is a lack of recent research related to a variety of populations or aspects of precision teaching. Most of the research focuses on typically developing children or learning disabilities and fails to include more significant disabilities or novel aspects of precision teaching such as endurance. In this symposium, the presenters will share their experiences with broad applications of precision teaching. The presentations will specifically focus on reading endurance for at risk children and improving fluent body movements for moderate to severe students to improve performance on daily living skills.

Precision teaching has a wide range of applications (Kubina & Yurich, 2012). Earlier researchers in the field of precision teaching such as Eric Haughton focused on teaching students with intensive disabilities to fluently perform compound motor movements. However, current research within the field focuses more on academic skills and learners with mild disabilities. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the need to focus on bringing component motor movements to fluency for students with intensive disabilities and the impact this can have on their ability to perform daily living skills, academic tasks, and/or indicating preferences. Students with intensive disabilities often have limited range of movement and long latencies to respond during instruction that requires motor movements. Based on the existing research regarding the Big 6 movements (Twarek, Cihon, & Eshleman, 2010) and increasing fluency on component skills for task analyses, the presenter will discuss the benefits of including more of a focus on motor movement fluency within this population.

School mental health programs and services reflect a "shared agenda" involving schools, families, and other community systems working together to promote student health and wellness and reduce nonacademic barriers to learning. With its emphasis on research-proven intervention strategies and low-inference decision-making, behavior analysis (and behavioral psychology more generally) plays a key role in school mental health. A main focus of school mental health programs is to help schools adopt and sustain evidence-based practices with a focus on prevention and intervention. School mental health has received increased attention in recent years, because of wider recognition of difficulties students can face and policy changes reflecting renewed interest in social behavior interventions and data-based decision-making. In this presentation, key themes facing the school mental health movement will be described. In addition, strategies for assisting schools in the identification, adoption and high fidelity implementation of evidence-based interventions will be described. Dr. Weist will review prominent policy directions and describe the National Community of Practice and its initiatives and resources.

Master's and doctoral level behavior analysts conducting research or practice supporting typically developing students in school settings.

An emerging convergence in the human sciences can guide the evolution of more caring societies. Biological and behavioral research has produced an integrated understanding of the biological and social conditions needed to ensure the successful development of children and adolescents. A growing body of experimental evidence has identified family, school, and community interventions that are capable of nurturing development from the prenatal period through adolescence. Increasingly research is turning to how these interventions can be widely and effectively implemented. At the same time, research in economics, political science, and sociology has delineated key features of the larger social context, including especially the recent evolution of corporate capitalism, that are more distal, but nonetheless critical influences on the wellbeing of young people. This converging understanding provides a framework for intentional efforts to evolve societies that have fewer psychological and behavioral disorders, less crime, less academic failure and much higher levels of prosociality. This session will focus on how we can organize the educational, nonprofit, for-profit, and governmental organizations to evolve cultural practices that achieve a society that sees to everyone’s wellbeing.

Psychologists, behavior analysts, graduate students, and anyone interested in

Don Baer was a master at viewing applied behavior analysis as a philosophy of life. This was exemplified in his writings, in the manner in which he mentored students, and in his discussion of its application to varied topics, some of which were well outside the common behavioral realm of investigation. His model has guided Dr. Judith R. Mathews’ clinical practice and opened her to looking beyond the strictly behavioral literature to learn from other disciplines. This paper will discuss practical applications of applied behavior analysis in the field of pediatrics. It will present unusual clinical cases, including, problems of attachment and parenting skills, and unique challenges in medical adherence, habit reversal, pain management, and feeding disorders. More recently, this curiosity for the intersection between ABA and other disciplines has led Dr. Mathews to investigate the field of public health, in terms of social determinants of health, community-based participatory research and global public health. In this context, applications of ABA in the field of public health will then be discussed. The paper will conclude with discussion of the difficulties that practitioners and public health providers face in conducting practical research and finally will propose ways to disseminate unique ideas in need of empirical validation.

ABA practitioners.

Given the growing diversity of the individuals receiving behavior-analytic services in the United States and abroad, a behavior analysis of cultural competency is becoming increasingly important. In this presentation, we will discuss the role of cultural values and the influence they may have on language acquisition and the overall quality of behavior analytic services. The first presentation will describe the role of cultural values in applied behavior analysis. Then, we will expand upon this idea and discuss the verbal aspect of culture, with particular attention to rule-governed behavior and Skinners third level of selection. Then, based off a review of the last 10 years of language acquisition research, we will provide conceptual, research, and practical applications of, and describe the importance for, understanding the role of cultural and linguistic diversity in language acquisition research. Finally, we will end with a discussion about how an increased understanding of cultural variables that affect human behavior will allow behavior analysts to further enhance the quality of services they provide.

As Skinner indicated, the third level of selection occurs at the level of culture and includes the construction of repertoires of behavior via a verbal community. While progressive in looking to verbal behavior in the maintenance of cultural practices, we must continue the discussion to the level of understanding how those cultural practices my influence the behavior of individuals--especially those with whom we may be charged with influencing their behavior or the behavior of significant others. This paper will address how verbal behavior may affect delivery of services to those of other cultural backgrounds.

In language interventions for children who have severe language delays due to autism or other developmental disabilities, clinicians must often make decisions regarding an appropriate verbal response modality (e.g., vocal speech, manual signing, or picture-based communication). Establishing vocal speech has obvious advantages, but may be complicated by limited prerequisite repertoires, such as low frequency of speech sound vocalizations and lack of echoic control over vocalizations. Thus, the benefits of vocal communication may, at least initially, be outweighed by a need for quickly establishing efficient mand repertoires for minimally verbal children. The first two studies in this symposium describe assessments developed to identify an optimal response modality for early mands on an individual basis. The third and the fourth study addressed prerequisites for vocal communication by comparing procedures for increasing free-operant speech sound production and establishing echoic control over vocalizations, respectively.

Mands have been successfully taught to children with autism and intellectual disabilities using many response modalities. A few studies have compared the effectiveness of modalities such as the Picture Exchange Communication System and sign language. Some of these studies have found that the usefulness of either modality varied across students without a clear indication of the relevant child characteristics that might predict effectiveness. Thus, one modality is unlikely to prove optimal for all children. This study examined the utility of an assessment of prerequisite skills for three response modalities (i.e., vocal, sign language, exchange based communication) to determine if performance on the skills assessment predicts the rate of mand acquisition in each modality. The three pre-requisite assessments (motor imitation, vocal imitation, matching) each consisted of 20 trials. Subsequently, three equally preferred items were selected from a preference assessment and one item was assigned to each condition. The speed of acquisition during mand training was evaluated using a multi-element design. If one response modality was acquired more quickly than the others, the other two responses were trained in the successful modality. Four 2-year-old participants were included in the study and data illustrate typical response patterns and the assessments predictive value.

There is limited investigation of procedures for establishing echoic responses. This study evaluated three commonly used teaching procedures for establishing an echoic repertoire with three students with autism or related disabilities. Preference assessments were conducted to identify highly preferred items, including edibles, tangibles and social stimuli. At least two sets of three target sounds were then selected for each participant. Stimulus-stimulus pairing, echoic training and a mand-model procedure were compared. Data were collected on the percentage of correct vocalizations during training sessions and on the frequency of target vocalizations during play sessions completed prior to and after training sessions. These data, in addition to the participants performance during probes assessing the function of their vocalizations were compared to assess the efficacy of each teaching procedure. Interobserver agreement data were collected on over 33% of all sessions above and have averaged above 90% agreement. The results of this study suggested that the most effective teaching procedure may differ across participants thus supporting the need for additional research focusing on the development of assessment tools to identify learning profiles instead of generally effective teaching methods.

When trying to provide the most effective ABA Therapy to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), what happens outside of the session is often as important as what happens within. Sleep deprivation, school environment, and general home environment need to be considered and addressed by the BCBA to create the most conducive environment for behavior change. In this symposium, two case studies are presented in which the BCBA advocated for schedule changes that, in turn, produced significant behavioral benefits for their clients. The first presents a case of insomnia in a child with ASD. When a sleep study was conducted, the sleep experts claimed that nothing could be done. An ABA intervention provided relief for the parents and produced a normal sleep pattern in the child. The second case study presents a child with ASD who changed from a school with an Autism program plus twelve hours of outside ABA Therapy to home schooling with forty hours of ABA Therapy. This move produced a notable change within the first two weeks and other behavioral results that might not have been achieved had the child been kept in the former program.

Sleep deprivation can have a detrimental effect on a wide range of social and academic behaviors and can severely impede learning. Often, childrens sleep patterns impact entire families, making sleep problems that much more important to address. Delayed sleep onset, night awakenings, and early awakenings combined with other issues presented by ASD can be especially difficult for families to manage. Piazza and Fisher (1991) found a lack of methodologically rigorous solutions in the literature that addressed insomnia in children. They effectively approached sleep problems using a protocol of faded bedtime with a response cost. A case study will be presented which used a protocol partly based on Piazza and Fishers with a child with ASD. However, in the present protocol, no response cost was used. Over a four-month period, nightly sleep increased and the time of sleep onset was reduced. In addition to the development of the current protocol, various impediments to the protocol, including parent compliance and addressing sleep as a non-operant, will be discussed.

Insurance companies often restrict the authorized number of hours of ABA Therapy based on the other activities in a childs schedule: school, other therapies, etc. Parents are also known to make such arguments. This and other arbitrary limiting of ABA Therapy seriously impede the progress that can be made with target behaviors not just in the short term, but perhaps at all. A case study will be presented of a child with ASD whose ABA Therapy had been restricted to twelve hours per week due to school and related activities for several years. The parents decided to home school the child so that ABA Therapy hours could be increased to forty. This increase in weekly ABA hours had a dramatic effect on targeted academic behaviors, articulation of speech, independent play skills, and the frequency and duration of tantrums in just a short period of time. It is questionable if the child would have ever reached the current level of responding if ABA Therapy hours had continued to be restricted. That the school environment might have also been hindering some of the target behaviors will also be discussed.

Each study will touch on challenges relating to Autism and related interventions. Including training staff, improving intervention, and social skills for individuals with Autism and Aspergers childhood to Adulthood.

There is an increasing need for therapists who can provide effective evidenced-based therapy for individuals with autism, who often have significant delays and require additional support. In order to improve therapist implementation of evidenced-based practices, effective training techniques are needed. One training method that is emerging is a system of self-monitoring. The literature suggests that allowing therapists to examine their own performance and provide self-initiated feedback may be an effective training method. The current study examines the effects of video self-monitoring procedures used to teach therapists to implement multi-element therapy with a high level of accuracy. Specifically, the intervention included self-monitoring forms used to self-assess therapists implementation of Pivotal Response Treatment. In addition, this study examines the use of performance-based feedback and in-vivo coaching to improve implementation of treatment. A multiple baseline across three participants was used to assess variables of interventionist performance. Results indicate that using a self-monitoring procedure within a training package yields dramatic and immediate results in helping the therapist meet fidelity of implementation that generalizes to other children and environments.

ndividuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) display a marked impairment in social interaction and often exhibit difficulty in maintaining social conversations with peers. These deficiencies can manifest in low levels of question-asking initiations and inappropriate pragmatics in social conversation that persist throughout the developmental lifespan. The purpose of this study is to assess whether or not young adults with ASD can increase their use of question-asking initiations in social conversation and measure possible immediate collateral gains in targeting the pivotal area of initiations in young adults with ASD. Using a multiple-baseline across-participants research design, this study examines whether video feedback will be successful in teaching question-asking initiations in social conversation for each of 3 college student participants with ASD, measures generalization across peers and settings during social conversation, and assesses collateral gains. Data suggest that the video feedback intervention for question-asking initiations results in gains in appropriate question-asking initiations, ability to maintain fluid conversation, the participants interest/affect and perceived confidence in maintaining social conversation, overall pragmatic ratings, and a decrease in perseveration on restricted topics of interest.

Difficulties engaging in social activities are considered to be a core symptom of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Both the literature and our clinical observations suggest that most individuals with ASD have a desire to engage in social activities, but social skill deficits make social interaction challenging, and in turn can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation. Currently there are few resources to support adult students with ASD in forming friendships and involvement in the college community. Using a multiple baseline design over a 33 week period, this study evaluated the effectiveness of structured social planning for college students with ASD. Intervention included weekly sessions that included providing step-by-step social planning related to their interests, and feedback regarding their participation in social activities. In addition, training in specific organizational skills was implemented, such as determining activities, using a planner to ensure participation in the activities, inviting peers to activities, arranging for transportation, and so on. Results demonstrated that participants were not attending any social events throughout the baseline period. Following intervention, all participants increased the number of social events attended per week. Further, quality of life and satisfaction questionnaires all reported a higher satisfaction with their college experience and peer interactions following intervention. Finally, improvements were seen in other untargeted areas, including increases in non-structured social interactions, improvements in grade point averages, and employment. Results are discussed in regards to a creating a social support program for college students with ASD.

While the introduction of functional analysis (Iwata et al 1982/1994) forever changed the field of Applied Behavior Analysis, modifications to behavior analytic procedures are a necessity to have true utility in developing effective treatments for all individuals in all settings with a wide variety of problem behaviors. Individuals with disabilities may exhibit problem behaviors that are difficult to analyze using typical analogue assessments due to intensity or rate (Davis et al, 2012), or the problem behavior may be maintained by idiosyncratic variables that are observed in the natural setting but not during a standard functional analysis (Hanley, Iwata & McCord, 2003). Finally, undifferentiated results may require additional analysis to determine a function. Hagopian et al. (2013) reported that the percentage of functional analyses with differentiated results increased from 47% to 87% when modifications to standard analogue conditions were made. This symposium seeks to extend recent research on modifications to functional analysis methodology to result in more accurate identification of behavioral function. First, the utility of a mand assessment to clarify inconclusive functional analysis results is examined. Second, an assessment of idiosyncratic variables evoking problem behavior during transitions is described. The third presentation focuses on elopement, a behavior that is difficult to address via functional analysis. This study is a systematic replication of the Lehardy et al. (2013) single-room functional analysis of elopement. The final presentation presents data comparing functional analyses of single and multiple response topographies to identify behavioral function of multiple problematic behaviors.

Mands often precede problem behavior and the responses may be related in several ways. Specifically, (a) mands may be one response in a response chain with problem behavior, (b) mands may be the first behavior in a response class hierarchy with problem behavior (Lalli, 1995), or (c) problem behavior may be a precurrent response increasing the probability that future mands will receive reinforcement (Fisher et al. 2001). In this study, functional analyses of problem behavior either failed to evoke problem behaviors or yielded undifferentiated results for four participants with autism. An assessment was then developed to empirically identify the relationship between repetitive mands and problem behaviors. Following a functional analysis to identify the specific reinforcer maintaining mand responses, the consequences for mands (e.g. specific reinforcement, extinction, verbal No, and nonspecific reinforcement) were experimentally manipulated (as potential antecedents to problem behavior), while problem behavior produced access to reinforcement for the mand. Across all participants, problem behavior reliably occurred in one or more of the test conditions relative to conditions during which mands produced specific reinforcement. Data suggest that the problem behaviors for these individuals served as a precurrent contingency for mands.

Although problem behavior during transitions is a commonly described occurrence and various strategies to reduce these problem behaviors, a limited number of studies have analyzed the function of problem behaviors during transitions. Previous research has suggested that problem behavior during transitions may be reinforced by escape from an environment with demands or low attention (Kern and Vorndran, 2000), the unpredictability of the transitions (Flannery & Horner 1994), initiating or terminating an activity or changing locations (McCord et al. 2001). In the present study, a functional analysis was conducted for two participants, during which demands to transition to a room containing academic materials were provided. Problem behavior produced escape from the transition. Both participants exhibited problem behavior during the escape from transition condition relative to a control condition, resulting in no contact with the work in the room. After examining variables specific to the transition, data suggested that it was not the presence of academic materials evoking the problem behavior, but specific features of the environment that may have served as conditioned aversive stimuli (e.g., presence of people and, small spaces). Results will be discussed in terms of conditioned motivating operations, as well as implications for treatment.

The functional reinforcers maintaining problematic behavior may vary across different response topographies. Several studies have recommended that clinicians graph functional analysis data for each topography separately when multiple responses are reinforced during the assessment (e.g., Derby et al. 2000) or conduct separate functional analyses for each topography (e.g. Mace et al. 1986). However, no studies have directly compared assessments reinforcing a single topography with assessments reinforcing multiple topographies of behavior. It is possible that conducting separate functional analyses may unintentionally obscure the results of functional analyses (e.g. by placing one response topography on extinction during the assessment). In the current study, we conducted functional analyses with 3 participants, each displaying at least 2 topographies of problem behaviors. In two separate assessments, either all topographies of problem behavior or a single topography of problem behavior produced reinforcement. Assessment order was counterbalanced across participants. Results indicated that the functions of separate topographies were identified in both the single and multiple topography functional analyses. In fact, data for all three participants showed that reinforcing only one topography of behavior in an assessment also provided a clear identification of function for a second behavior, not producing reinforcement.

Video technologies have been used to teach students with intellectual and developmental disabilities a wide array of skills. In this symposium, two studies and an empirical review of the literature will be presented and the implications of this information discussed. Data will be presented in the two studies related to how to use technology within an instructional framework to prepare students with intellectual and developmental disabilities for community-based employment. The review of the literature will provide an update on the status of using video prompting to teach new skills to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Each of these presentations will discuss implications and directions for future research in this area.

In this study, two students with intellectual and developmental disabilities were taught basic vocational and daily living skills using video prompting. In the first phase, continuous video prompting, in which a video of each step of the task was shown on a continuous loop until the student completed the step. A multiple baseline design across tasks was used to maintain experimental control. In the second phase of this study, we compared continuous video prompting to standard video prompting, in which the video of each step was shown only once. An adapted alternating treatments design was used to determine which method was more effective. Implications for practice and future research will be discussed.

Video prompting has been shown to be an effective prompting tool for teaching a variety of tasks to individuals with developmental disabilities (Banda, Dogoe, & Matuszny, 2011). Generalization programming and maintenance measurements in the video prompting literature are a limited topic of investigation when teaching tasks to individuals with moderate to severe disabilities. The following review explored 22 studies in the video prompting literature that incorporated generalization programming and/or maintenance measures. This review highlights concerning limitations such as the use of generalization techniques, inconsistent maintenance measures, and a limited range of target behaviors. Implications suggest a need for future research on the generalization and maintenance effects of video prompting.

Animal research has long been a part of behavior analysis, however the vast majority of this research has been conducted with relatively few model organisms, i.e. rats and pigeons. While these organisms have helped to reveal behavioral principles and educate future behavior analysts, their use has become increasingly regulated and financially unfeasible. These obstacles however do not apply to arthropods, as research with invertebrate organisms is relatively unregulated and requires far less maintenance than research with warm-blooded organisms typical in behavioral studies. The current symposium will present two discussions on behavior analysis involving invertebrate subjects. The first will discuss aspects of invertebrate learning from a behavior analytic perspective and address issues in the literature that are the result of researchers having little or no behavior analytic training. The second presentation will discuss the logistical aspects of developing and managing an invertebrate learning lab with an emphasis on in house design of apparatuses, methods, and protocols. Further discussion will be provided on the implications of invertebrate research to the field of behavior analysis and behavioral sciences at large.

Over the past two decades the study of invertebrate learning has taken on greater importance as aspects of the nervous system have been revealed. Unfortunately, much of this research is conducted by neuroscientists with little or no training in the comparative analysis of behavior. As a result, several issues in the analysis of behavior have either been ignored and/or discounted by the present generation of scientists interested in invertebrate learning. This presentation outlines several of these issues including: 1) the extent of phyletic differences between vertebrate and invertebrate learning investigated, 2) inconsistencies in the definition of learning phenomena, 3) the use of taxonomies of learning, 4) the need to report individual data, and 5) restrictions on the use of cognitive terminology.

Over the past 30 years our field has seen a decline in the number of graduate training programs that offer animal laboratories. Rising costs, reductions in grant funding, and tighter animal welfare regulations all have resulted in once thriving animal research facilities to close their doors. Most if not all of these setbacks can be avoided by using invertebrates. This presentation will showcase how, after 35 years of closed animal facilities within SIU's Behavior Analysis Program, we were able to once again reinstate animal research using the invertebrate species of the African Hissing Cockroach and the Australian Red Claw Lobster. The process of laboratory creation and management from innovative apparatus building, experimental protocol development, and motivating the rising number of applied behavior analysts to find value in basic operant research will be discussed. The utility of training applied behavior analysts to become proficient in animal research will also be discussed.

The quality of education is critical to producing knowledgeable citizens able to adapt to a changing world. Students’ education and cultural influences set the stage for their future professions, and as leaders or educators in an increasingly interconnected global community. By drawing upon their pioneering work in the area of education, panelists will provide comments regarding this theme of the Seminar on Leadership and Cultural Change. The seminar is designed to aid educational leaders to create new models of stewardship and open opportunities for innovation while adjusting to growing social upheaval, technological advances, and environmental concerns, as well as crises in the global economy, health, education, and environment. It will address how behavior analysis finds common ground with other sciences by investigating the behavior of leaders who influence organizations and society.

Psychologists, behavior analysts, graduate students, and anyone interested in creating new models of education through behavior analysis.

R. Kevin Grigsby, MSW, DSW, is senior director of leadership and talent development at the Association of American Medical Colleges. He served as vice dean for faculty and administrative affairs from 2000–09 at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, PA, where he continues to hold an academic appointment as clinical professor of psychiatry. Dr. Grigsby’s clinical experience includes a history of program planning, implementation, and evaluation in the area of innovative home- and community-based health and mental health services. His clinical practice experience has been primarily in underserved rural and inner city areas and includes perinatal intervention with substance-abusing women, mental-health service delivery to children and adolescents in shelter care, provision of home-based services to parents and children with HIV-related illnesses, and the use of advanced telecommunications technology in health services delivery. During the past decade, the focus of Dr. Grigsby’s work shifted to organizational development in academic health centers including developing a future-oriented perspective in academic leaders and the alignment of resources with missions. Dr. Grigsby remains active in promoting effective interpersonal communication within academic health centers and in implementing alternative conflict resolution/management strategies at the department and institutional levels. The use of teams and other nontraditional organizational models in higher education settings is another area of scholarship. As an expert on the use of teams in academic health centers, Dr. Grigsby has presented at regional and national conferences and has consulted with a number of academic health centers and professional organizations. He and his colleagues published an account of the use of teams to unify the clinical, academic, and research enterprises in an academic health center. This approach was instrumental in breaking down barriers that typically separate academic departments and resulted in reducing traditional barriers between employees and management, promoting faculty and staff participation in decision-making processes, and solving organizational problems that seemed to be intractable in the past. At the AAMC, he and his team offer programs to improve organizational and leadership performance at medical schools and academic medical centers, address the needs of women and underrepresented minorities at academic medical centers, and link individual professional development to improved organizational performance.

Aberrant repetitive behaviors (e.g., stereotypies, compulsions, and rituals) are diagnostic for autism and frequently observed in related neurodevelopmental disorders. Despite this, relatively little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms that mediate the development and expression of these repetitive behaviors. This lack of knowledge precludes effective early intervention and prevention strategies. Clinical studies have provided only very limited findings based on a small number of neuroimaging and genetic studies. Moreover, there is little evidence for the efficacy of pharmacotherapy for repetitive behaviors in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders. Valid animal models can aid substantially in identifying pathophysiological factors mediating aberrant repetitive behavior and aid in treatment development.The talkwill review findings from animal models of repetitive behavior, highlighting environmental factors and the role of altered cortical-basal ganglia circuitry in the development and expression of these behaviors. Dr. Lewis also will review pharmacological studies that have identified novel potential therapeutic targets for clinical drug development.

Although the current world population is about 7 billion behaving human organisms, only very few of these are trained in behavior analysis, fewer practice behavior analysis, and most are located within the borders of the United States. Need exists all over the world. This panel will discuss efforts of a number of United States-based behavior analysts to equip others in areas outside of the United States to help fulfill this need. We will discuss issues pertaining to funding, training, credentialing, travel, cultural learning opportunities, translation, and other areas. We will also related experiences pertaining to each of these areas regarding our work in China, Russia, Belarus, and Middle Eastern countries.

This symposium includes four papers describing recent advances in skill acquisition research with children with autism. The first paper evaluated the effectiveness of a multiple exemplar training package to establish a generalized repertoire of predicting the cause of others' emotions. The second paper evaluated the use of self-monitoring in the reduction of multiple stereotypic motor behaviors using a multiple baseline across behaviors experimental design with two children. The third paper evaluated a multiple exemplar training package to teach children to respond to disguised mands. The fourth paper evaluated the use of a percentile schedule of reinforcement to teach appropriate waiting skills. The symposium will conclude with a discussion by Dr. Amanda Adams from California State University, Fresno.

Numerous studies on perspective taking have suggested that children with autism are distinctively deficit in understanding that others' perspectives are different from their own. These studies often suggest that children with autism may be unable to learn to take another's perspective, but current research in the field of applied behavior analysis suggests otherwise. The current study evaluated a behavioral teaching procedure in one area of perspective taking: inferring and predicting others' emotions based on met or unmet desires. The procedure included a multicomponent training package using multiple exemplar training across scenarios in which three children with autism were asked to predict how others may feel given a met or unmet desire or non-desire and why others may feel this way. Results were analyzed using a multiple baseline across participants design and suggest that the multiple exemplar training package was effective for teaching the prediction of others' desire-based emotions and generalization was observed across novel exemplars.

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a self-monitoring intervention on the reduction of stereotypic behaviors in children with autism. Research has shown that stereotypic behaviors are maladaptive and can have negative effects on social interactions. Previous research has indicated that self-monitoring may be an effective intervention for decreasing these behaviors but most previous research has used multiple treatment components (e.g., differential reinforcement, rules, etc.) and little is known about the efficacy of self-monitoring in the absence of other treatment components. The present study involved teaching self-monitoring techniques in a home setting to identify if self-monitoring alone would result in a reduction of stereotypic behaviors without other treatment components. The results of the study suggest that the self-monitoring component was effective in decreasing stereotypic behaviors. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Skinner's concept of the "disguised mand" is a verbal response, wherein the speaker's mand does not directly describe its reinforcer. Children with autism often have difficulty with detecting and reinforcing disguised mands. Given that a high number of mands in every day interactions consist of disguised mands, it is important to teach children with ASD to detect these and respond appropriately. The purpose of this study was to determine if multiple exemplar training and the use of rules, role playing, and feedback could teach children with autism to detect and respond appropriately to disguised mands. The results indicated that the procedure effectively taught participants to detect and respond appropriately to disguised mands. Additionally, generalization was demonstrated to novel, untrained disguised mands and to other people who were not involved in training.

Despite the social importance of teaching young children with autism to withstand a delay to reinforcement, little research has been conducted to determine how to teach this skill in applied settings. As such, a procedure was developed to examine how a percentile schedule of reinforcement may be used to teach young children with autism to wait appropriately for preferred edible items. All participants experienced a contingency-only phase where the edible item was presented following a wait duration that met the reinforcement criteria as determined by the percentile schedule, a phase that introduced the use of corrective feedback for those wait durations that did not meet the reinforcement criteria, and, finally, the addition of social praise statements that accompanied the delivery of the edible reinforcer. Two types of generalization probes, one conducted by the participants' parents and the other using preferred leisure activities, and one-month maintenance probes were also conducted. Results and suggestions for future research will be discussed.

Evaluating the efficiency of procedures used to teach children with autism is a critical component of applied research. The studies presented in this symposium all focus on evaluating both the effectiveness and efficiency of various teaching strategies. The first study evaluated prompt dependence resulting from varying teaching procedures. The second study evaluated the emergence of reverse intraverbals. The third and fourth studies are comparison studies; one comparing computer-assisted and person-based tract training and one comparing teaching procedures with and without instructive feedback stimuli. All presenters will discuss their findings in terms of applied implications and future research.

Using a modified alternating treatments design, the present study compared the effects of a prompt only condition and a prompt plus instructive feedback (IF) condition on the emergence of several untrained category relations in 3 pre-school aged boys diagnosed with autism or other related disorders. A progressive time delay procedure was used to teach receptive identification of object, while probes for three untrained categorical skills (i.e., expressive identification of object, receptive identification of category, and intraverbal of category) were conducted every 2-3 teaching sessions. Results showed that for all participants the inclusion of one IF stimulus per target response was more efficient than standard teaching procedures as it a) promoted the emergence of multiple untrained skills without direct teaching, and/or b) primed participants to learn untrained skills faster once introduced for direct teaching.

Behavior analysts continue to develop a rich technology of reinforcer identification, and the present symposium explores new areas of preference assessment research. Study 1 was designed to further evaluate the role of differential consequences on pictorial preference assessment outcomes, by comparing the results of a pictorial-without-access assessment to the results of a progressive-ratio reinforcer assessment. The pictorial-without-access assessment successfully identified reinforcers with only some participants. When access to the selected item was necessary, schedule thinning was used to establish conditioned reinforcement properties for pictorial stimuli. In Study 2, efficacy of and preference for different parameters of positive reinforcement was evaluated. Preliminary results showed that one participant exhibited similar rates of responding with constant versus varied reinforcer delivery, but preferred constant reinforcer delivery. In Study 3, preference for work activities was assessed using duration-based and response-restriction assessments. Results demonstrated that the response restriction format produced more reliable and differentiated results across participants. In the final study, preference for function-based treatments with contingent and noncontingent schedules of reinforcement with individuals whose problem behavior was maintained by social-negative reinforcement was evaluated. Two children preferred a differential negative reinforcement treatment over a noncontingent reinforcement treatment, while one preferred a multiple-schedule and chained-schedule treatments.

Pictorial preference assessments are a potentially valuable tool because they allow clinicians to assess preferences for complex stimuli that cannot easily be presented on a tabletop. Past research has demonstrated that pictorial preference assessments are effective for individuals with developmental disabilities only when access to the stimulus is provided contingent on a pictorial selection. The purpose of this investigation was to extend this line of research by assessing the feasibility of the pictorial format with children on the autism spectrum. The role of contingent reinforcer access was assessed by comparing the results from the pictorial format without access to the results of a progressive-ratio reinforcer assessment. If access was found to be necessary, the effects of schedule thinning were evaluated to determine if a pictorial format could be made more practical for those participants. Second, matching and mand assessments were conducted to further evaluate the role of hypothesized prerequisite skills. In general, results indicated that the pictorial format without access was only successful with some participants. However, schedule thinning was found to be an effective method to establish conditioned reinforcement properties for pictorial stimuli to create a more practical preference assessment for a subset of participants.

Previous research has shown that immediacy, quality, and magnitude are parameters that influence the efficacy of reinforcement procedures. Variation, predictability, choice, and reliability are parameters that have not been thoroughly studied, but may prove to be relevant aspects of behavior change procedures. It is important to understand the efficacy and preference of these parameters to improve outcomes associated with skill acquisition and behavior reduction programs. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of and preference for these different parameters of positive reinforcement. There were four conditions: the constant reinforcer condition where the same stimuli were delivered for each response versus a condition where the stimuli delivered were varied, and the reliable reinforcer condition where a reinforcer was delivered for each responses versus an unreliable condition where a reinforcer was delivered for approximately 50% of responses. Preliminary results showed that one participant exhibited similar rates of responding for constant reinforcer and varied reinforcer delivery, but demonstrated a preference for constant reinforcer delivery. Additionally, responding in the reliable reinforcer condition was more efficacious, but a preference was observed for unreliable reinforcer delivery. Interobserver agreement was collected for 43% of sessions, and averaged 97%, with a range of 75%-100%.

The purpose of the present study was to identify the most reliable and sensitive method for determining preferences for work activities, and to determine whether or not preference would shift when assessed under more naturalistic conditions. First, a reversal design was used to compare two assessments methods: a single presentation format where various work activities were available singly for a 5-min interval, and a response restriction format where all activities were simultaneously available and then restricted following a selection. Across conditions, item contact, functional engagement, and indices of happiness and unhappiness were measured to identify the most accurate measurement method. The response restriction format produced more reliable and differentiated results across participants. Functional engagement was determined to be the most sensitive method of measurement. The second part of the study assessed individuals' preference for work activities with and without the presence of reinforcement and prompting. A reversal design showed that relative preference among work and non-work activities was affected by the addition of prompting and reinforcement for working. Interobserver agreement data were collected in at least 20% of sessions and conditions for all participants; agreement was at or above 80%.

Luczynski and Hanley (2009, 2010, & 2013) have shown that children prefer social-positive reinforcement arranged via contingent rather noncontingent schedules under dense and leaner schedule arrangements. The current study evaluated the generality of this preference outcome across function-based treatments with contingent and noncontingent schedules designed for children with autism whose problem behavior was maintained by social-negative reinforcement. The schedule comparisons involved time-based breaks from work (noncontingent escape; Vollmer, Marcus, & Ringdahl, 1995), differential reinforcement of requests for a break (DNRA; Vollmer & Iwata, 1992), and signaled periods of work and extinction for break requests that alternated with signaled periods with a continuous reinforcement schedule for break requests (multiple schedule and chained schedule). To date, two children preferred to experience a treatment with differential negative reinforcement of break requests over a treatment with noncontingent escape. For one child, we evaluated preference for more practical treatments, and he preferred to experience multiple-schedule and chained-schedule treatments over treatments with noncontingent escape with a yoked amount of reinforcement. These preliminary results support the generality of preference for treatments with contingent reinforcement.

Reinforcement that is not socially mediated presents with unique properties for assessment and intervention. Often the reinforcer and the specific reinforcing consequences are not clear. In addition, the reinforcer in question either cannot be directly manipulated and the behavior and the reinforcing consequences cannot be separated (Piazza et al., 2 000). Due to individual idiosyncratic preferences that often emerge in the assessment of automatically maintained behavior, novel utility of these methods are required to effectively assess and treat the interfering behaviors. Also, while numerous studies have examined various assessments and treatments in relation to this topic, systematic extensions of these methods are still needed in pursuit of understanding: (a) the effects of duration and number of exposures to stimuli in assessment, (b) how competing stimuli are selected for treatment, (c) how to control for the effects of stimuli over time, and (d) the differential effectiveness of stimuli in treatment. This symposium presents four studies related to the assessment and/or treatment of behavior that is demonstrated to be maintained by non-socially mediated forms of reinforcement and interfere with daily functioning. Results from these studies suggest extension of methods for assessment and treatment for automatically maintained behavior can: (a) accurately identify auditory stimuli that effectively decrease levels of vocal stereotypy and are compatible for use with ongoing academic demands, functional analysis methodology can successfully identify the reinforcing properties of property destruction, competing item s identified via an MSWO procedure can be comparably effective to those identified using a competing stimulus assessment, and earlier competing stimulus assessment sessions with matched and unmatched stimuli provide differential results when compared to latter exposures.

Previous research has shown that access to auditory stimuli has been effective in the treatment of vocal stereotypy (e.g., Lanovaz, Fletcher, & Rapp, 2009; Rapp, 2007; Taylor, Hoch, & Weissman, 2005). However, previous research has not evaluated the compatibility of auditory stimuli with academic demands. Furthermore, research has typically evaluated the stimuli during brief exposures (e.g., 5 minutes). Thus, the extended effects of access to auditory stimuli is unknown. This presentation includes three studies on the effects of competing auditory stimuli on vocal stereotypy. In Study 1, we evaluated the effects of various types of auditory stimuli on automatically reinforced vocal stereotypy in four students with autism. Preferred music resulted in decreased levels of vocal stereotypy for 3 out of 4 participants. The three participants for which auditory stimuli resulted in lower levels of vocal stereotypy participated in Study 2. In Study 2, we evaluated the compatibility of access to auditory stimuli with ongoing academic demands. Results showed for all participants that auditory stimuli resulted in decreased vocal stereotypy and was compatible with academic demands. In Study 3, we evaluated extended exposure (i.e., 90 minute sessions) to auditory stimuli for two participants to assess if habituation to the stimuli occurred over time. Results showed for both participants decreased effects of auditory stimuli over time.

Intervention based in applied behavior analysis is widely recognized as a standard approach for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Following from research findings that intervention effects are more robust with younger children, the current best practice position is to provide intervention as soon as an ASD diagnosis can be made, and perhaps even earlier at the first reliable signs of characteristic deficits and excesses. Given that emerging technologies are aimed at identification of the disorder in infancy, the behavior analyst working with children with autism is likely to be faced with requests to work with infant children, a population that most behavior analysts are likely unfamiliar with. This symposium will address the following primary questions facing the practitioner considering working with infants and their caregivers: What is the current status of the evidence supporting early identification ASD-related deficits? How should the behavior analyst view the process of infant development, a concept most commonly described within other fields? What behavior analytic interventions have been investigated for this population, and for which infant and caregiver behaviors? And finally, what are some key ethical issues facing the behavior analyst working with infants and caregivers?

Behavior analysts working with young children, particularly those identified with or suspected of meeting criteria for autism spectrum disorder.

Behavioral intervention initiated early in childhood is associated with positive outcomes in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). As such, early identification of ASD-related behavioral deficits and excesses is viewed as central to achieving the best long-term intervention outcome, with the goal for treatment professionals being to intervene from the moment a diagnosis is confirmed. Current validated diagnostic procedures are based in observation of behavior and do not allow for diagnosis any earlier than 18 months of age. However, behavioral deficits indicative of high-risk status for ASD can be identified at 12 months of age, and technologies utilizing potential biomarkers in infants younger than 12 months are emerging. Therefore, ABA practitioners are likely to face demands to work with infant populations in the future. This presentation will provide a review of established and emerging technologies for identifying behavioral characteristics and biological associations of ASD, with a critical review of methods of identification for children younger than 12 months.

Previously defined by DSM IV-R as a "developmental disorder," DSM 5 now categorizes autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as a "Neurodevelopmental Disorder." Although evidence of specific neurological dysfunction is lacking, the developmental basis for behavioral development in autism is not. Behavioral Systems Theory provides a framework for understanding the development, prevention, and treatment of the constellations of behaviors that characterize ASD and explains how multiple factors, including neurological, historical, and current environmental ones lead to the emergence of patterns seen in individuals. This paper will outline the basic principles of development ininfancy as viewed from a behavior analytical perspective. It will focus on processes that produce typical development as well as the acquisition of the behavioral excesses and deficits characteristic of ASD. Among the key developmental concepts involved in understanding typical and atypical are skills learning, "hidden" skills and deficits, and behavioral cusps. Some of the crucial early hidden skills and deficits in infant development will be identified and the implications for early intensive behavioral intervention discussed.

In the U.S. alone, more than 1 million children are on record as having some form of autism or learning disability. This number continues to increase. Researchers have begun to recognize the enormous value of behavior analysis and early interventions in encouraging children to focus attention and shaping their early social behavior. Dr. Pelaez will present interventions with infants "at risk" of later developmental delays using specific forms of social reinforces like synchronized touch and cooing that increase infant's eye contact and gaze at mother's face. Infant massage provides the occasion for synchronized mother-infant interactions that include many of the social reinforcers outlined in this presentation. She will explain a procedure where a caregiver's vocal imitation and motherese speech increases infant vocalizations, smiles, and directs infant attention. In older infants, maternal social contingencies in the form of gestural expressions can work as signals (Sds) for the infant on when and how to respond toward an ambiguous object in the context of uncertainty--a phenomenon known as social referencing. In summary, these techniques developed for early interventions with infants have shown to be effective in improving their social behavior and explain early social learning phenomena as attachment, joint attention, and social referencing.

Applied behavior analysis has been demonstrated to be the most effective intervention for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Following recommendations for intervention for ASD as early as possible, means of identifying infants at risk for ASD are emerging. For example, researchers have determined that younger siblings of children with ASD are at a much higher risk of developing the disorder than the general population. Additionally, biologically based tests purported to identify infants at risk for developing ASD are becoming commercially available. As a result, behavior analysts working in the field of ASD education and treatment can anticipate an increase in requests for ABA interventions for infants. This presentation will outline some of the practical and ethical issues behavior analysts must address in providing services to at-risk infants and very young children. Topics include the competencies of the behavior analyst working with infants, working within the bounds of evidence-based practice, and the potentially multifaceted role the practitioner may need to serve for caregivers through the child's infancy and into early childhood.

Since Sidman and colleagues landmark studi