Association for Behavior Analysis International

This presentation will introduce the latest thinking on the mechanisms of action of psychedelic compounds such as LSD and psilocybin. Dr. Carhart-Harris will present the results of his functional brain imaging work with compounds such as psilocybin, LSD, and DMT, and discuss what these findings tell us about how these drugs alter brain function to alter consciousness. He will also presenthis latest findings on psilocybin with psychological support for treatment resistant depression, including brain imaging findings suggesting how the treatment is working.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Selection is central in everything we do, from the highest-level decisions (which candidate should I vote for?) to the lowest (where should I move my eyes next?). So what determines when a stimulus will be selected for action, versus being ignored? Research on attentional selection has shown that stimuli with distinctive physical features (color, brightness, loudness, etc.) can exert control over our behavior even when this conflicts with the goal of our current task; for example, when driving we might be distracted by a loud noise from the back seat. Recent work has gone further by demonstrating that distraction is not purely a function of the physical salience of stimuli: it is also influenced by prior learning about association with reward. I will review evidence for this value-modulated attentional capture effect from behavioral studies, eye-tracking, and EEG, showing that rewards exert a rapid and pervasive influence on attentional selection. This effect is somewhat analogous to demonstrations of sign-tracking in nonhuman animals, and (much as for sign-tracking) preliminary evidence indicates it might be related to development of addictive behaviors. Finally, I will describe evidence suggesting that counterproductive effects of reward on attention can be reduced, if not overcome, via instrumental conditioning.

Behavior analysts interested in the psychology of learning and attention, and in psychological mechanisms of addiction.

Language is a complex adaptive system (CAS). Its evolution, development in learners, and use are historically contingent and emergent. Its patterns emerge from social interaction in an environment, which both structures and is structured by iterative language use. Frequently-occurring patterns provide the system some stability; however, change is immanent in the system, brought about by its users co-adapting to an ever-changing environment. It is this co-adaptation that is the source of creativity and innovation in meaning making in a pragmatically appropriate manner. This view of language as a CAS represents a challenge to more traditional views of second language development. It suggests that there is neither linguistic innateness nor an endpoint to the development, certainly not one that is isomorphic with native speaker use. It at least partly explains why there is ubiquitous variability in the process and why given the nature of the process the learner's linguistic system is free to develop along alternative trajectories. These claims will be supported with both corpus and longitudinal developmental data.

Researchers and practitioners interested in theories of language and language development.

An obscene message written on a potato chip triggered the development of a radically different approach to dealing with disciplinary problems. Discipline Without Punishment is the innovative performance management system that replaces traditional disciplinary policies and procedures with a positive, responsibility-focused approach. Like conventional approaches, the Discipline Without Punishment procedure provides a progressive series of steps to handle the everyday problems of absenteeism, bad attitudes and poor performance that arise in all organizations. But Discipline Without Punishment gets rid of traditional disciplinary responses—like warnings, reprimands, and unpaid disciplinary suspensions—that focus on punishment. Instead, the DWP system requires employees to take personal responsibility for their own behavior and to make real decisions about their performance and continued employment. Unique to Discipline Without Punishment is the final step before termination: the Decision Making Leave. The employee is suspended from work for one day. He receives full pay for his time away. But this is no extra vacation day. On "Decision Day" the employee must make a final decision: either to solve the problem completely, or to quit and find greener employment pastures elsewhere. Dick Grote created Discipline Without Punishment. Through his books and consultations he has helped some of the largest organizations around the world eliminate punishment as a disciplinary tool and replace it with a system that demands personal responsibility. Dick will explain how he created the approach and why it has been successful for over 40 years.

The target audience is any individual who is responsible for managing the performance of other people; any individual who is called upon to provide counsel and advice about how to manage problem employees and solve performance issues; any individual who is interested in learning about the mechanics involved in creating and implementing a major management system that changes organizational culture.

Modern zoos continue to transform both their mission and their execution as they reach the end of a decade’s long transition from animal attractions to sincere conservation entities. A heightened awareness of the science of animal welfare, the value of measuring behavioral outcomes, and the realization that zoos represent the last hope for many species has thrust us into a paradigm driven by natural history. The aim of this lecture is to highlight the modern approach to zoo animal welfare and the prevalence of behavioral science and its application to effective conservation programs. By using examples of how modern science has helped the management and conservation of species like the African elephant, I will review some of applications of zoo-based findings on in-situ conservation programs. I will cover some of the metrics used to measure animal welfare in zoos, as well as how the frequency and diversity of behavior can be used as a functional indicator of animal welfare. Finally, I will outline some of the strategies used to turn caretakers into stakeholders, primarily in cultures where animal husbandry and welfare are viewed in contrasting terms.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

This lecture will explain, by means of a theory of coordination, the relationship between matter, movement and mind. There will be a little physics (self-organization), a little biology (synergy selection), a little math (mostly nonlinear), a little theory (coordination dynamics) and a little experimentation (from fingers and babies and brains to ballet dancing and beyond)—all presented at the level of the proverbial educated layperson. The story is one of emergence, how spontaneous processes give rise to properties not usually ascribed to ordinary matter, but rather to living things, such as agency and goal-directedness. Paradoxical though it may seem, the self–the “I”– emerges from self-organization which, by definition, means the system organizes itself. In these open, complex systems, there is no organizer doing the organizing. The path, made by walking--as Machado would have it--is from nonequilibrium phase transitions in matter and movement (including motor development and learning) to the “eureka effect” of experiencing oneself as an agent for the first time. Who cares? Well, if you have ever wondered how mind gets into matter or how matter produces mind, please join me: like a choreographed script, the order of matter, movement and mind might be important. Phase transitions offer a transcendental mechanism, “the way in” to their relationship. Via symmetry breaking, “the way out” is the modern, metastable mind.

Everyone who is interested in a novel, or different approach to the age-old mind-matter relation and the possibilities it creates.

Depression and anxiety in youth are prevalent and impairing conditions, with a high degree of current and lifetime comorbidity. Targeting the internalizing disorders as a unified problem area is in line with calls for new approaches to conceptualizing comorbidity and a focus on transdiagnostic processes. This lecture details a 15 year program of work to develop an efficient transdiagnostic brief behavioral therapy (BBT) for internalizing problems in youth focusing on the core behavioral process of avoidance of negative affect and threatening situations. Development of the initial BBT program is described, including illustrative cases. As a capstone, results are presented of a recent major randomized controlled trial designed to test the effects of BBT compared to assisted referral to specialty mental health care (ARC) in a large sample (N=185) of children and adolescents (age 8-16) presenting with anxiety and/or depression in pediatric primary care. Overall, BBT youth had significantly higher rates of clinical response than those in ARC (56.8% versus 28.2%), and these superior effects were replicated for anxiety-specific measures and functioning outcomes. Results were particularly strong for Latino youth suggesting BBT may help reduce disparities in care outcomes. Implications for the development and dissemination of behavioral treatments are discussed.

mental health professionals, intervention developers, intervention researchers, behavioral health consultants, primary care / pediatric care providers