Association for Behavior Analysis International

This competition is designed to encourage, promote, and reward behavior analytic scholarship on topics and issues in DEI, both in the field of behavior analysis and more broadly. Students (graduate or undergraduate) and post-graduate professionals who have completed empirical or conceptual papers relevant to DEI that are informed, at least in part, by a behavior-analytic perspective were invited to submit. This symposium includes presentations by the 2021 Student category winner, the 2022 Student category winner, and the 2022 Professional category winner.

Board certified behavior analysts; licensed psychologists; graduate students.

Students of color are more likely to receive negative teacher-student interactions compared to their peers. Some have attributed the inequalities of teacher-student interactions to implicit bias or bias-based behaviors. Given the impact of bias-based behaviors on student academic and social outcomes, it is critical for school-based practitioners to objectively measure bias-based behaviors to assist in providing culturally relevant and socially significant treatments. The most commonly cited procedure for assessing bias is the Implicit Bias Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP). While the IRAP assessment has produced socially significant results, the utility and acceptability of the IRAP in school-based settings may be limited due to several factors. Moreover, there is limited research that extends the assessment of bias-based behaviors to treatment in primary educational settings. Practitioners must have an efficient data collection system to measure interactions and use the data collection system when providing feedback to school personnel. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to discuss considerations to current procedures being used to assess bias-based behaviors and propose the Teacher Student Interaction Tool (T-SIT) for school-based practitioners. The utility and considerations of the T-SIT will be discussed.

This systematic review consists of 22 peer-reviewed single subject and group design studies that used culturally responsive assessment, implementer training, and intervention to yield positive outcomes for children and adolescents from diverse cultural backgrounds. The studies were published across 15 journals (2010-2021) and included at least 281 implementers and 536 service recipients. The review identified culturally responsive interventions targeting behavioral, social skills, academic, and social-emotional outcomes. Results indicated that most studies considered race, ethnicity, nationality, or language for cultural adaptations in assessment, implementer training, and intervention and addressed the specific culturally sensitive elements suggested by the Ecological Validity Model to some degree. The studies addressed cultural responsiveness in conducting research suggested in the literature, mostly in the area of problem formulation; scant research adequately addressed cultural responsiveness in the area of dissemination. Recommendations, implications, and directions for future research and behavior-analytic practices are discussed.

The aim of this study was to identify and learn about the cultural values and beliefs held by Latinx families in Nevada. In addition, we also examined barriers faced by Latinx families when accessing ABA services. In Study 1, we distributed the Participant Demographic and Experience Survey to Latinx families who were currently receiving ABA services or had received services in the past. The survey included questions about the family’s cultural identity, their primary language spoken in the home, and parent educational level. The second part of the questionnaire asked the parents to share their experiences in receiving ABA services and the extent to which those services were received. In Study 2, we conducted structured interviews and focus groups with some of the families who participated in Study 1. From the structured interviews and focus groups, we identified four main themes: (1) family and cultural values; (2) reaction of receiving a diagnosis; (3) impact of ABA services (4) future recommendations for the field of ABA. From these themes, we found what aspects were meaningful in receiving ABA services, as well as barriers that families faced when seeking services.

Mariela Castro-Hostetler is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and Licensed Behavior Analyst in Nevada. She is a Project Coordinator at the Nevada Positive Behavioral Interventions at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and doctoral candidate in the behavior analysis program at UNR. In her role, she provides behavioral support services for families and children with disabilities and dual diagnoses in Nevada. Castro-Hostetler completed her MS in behavior analysis at Southern Illinois University in 2016. Castro-Hostetler’s experience includes more than 8 years working with children and adults across various settings including homes, treatment centers, and schools. Her current research interests include parent and staff training, Acceptance and Commitment Training, and cultural responsiveness for culturally diverse and linguistically diverse individuals.

Misophonia is an understudied but relatively common learned respondent behavior condition, the impact of which ranges from annoying to debilitating. Misophonia is known as a condition where commonly occurring innocuous stimuli (e.g. chewing sound, specific voice) elicit anger and accompanying physiological responses which function as motivating operations for overt aggression, escape, and avoidance. Although there are many common misophonic stimuli, each person has a unique set of trigger stimuli. Misophonia has similarities with general sensory sensitivity which is common with autism, but is distinctly different. Misophonia was first identified and named by audiologists and has been considered a hearing disorder. Recently misophonia has come to be viewed as an anger disorder and the focus of psychologists and neuroscientists, however our research indicates the core of misophonia is a Pavlovian conditioned muscle reflex, so it may be more appropriate to view misophonia as a conditioned behavioral disorder. Once a misophonic respondent behavior develops, it generally strengthens with repeated exposure to the trigger stimulus and persists indefinitely unless there is an intervention to reduce the respondent behavior. One intervention that has been effective for misophonia is counterconditioning of trigger stimuli by paring a continuous positive stimulus with an intermittent trigger.

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Misophonia is a disorder in which specific innocuous stimuli trigger negative emotional and physiological responses. Reactions can range from annoyance to fight-or-flight. Commonly occurring triggers are oral and nasal sounds, but can be any stimulus. This study reports a successful intervention of a male high school student diagnosed with the primary educational classification of intellectual disability, a secondary classification of autism spectrum disorder, and speech and language impairment. Prior to intervention, the student was frequently triggered by vocal stimuli of one student, and he was continually removed from class due to aggressive and perseverative episodes towards that student. Pre-intervention rate of perseverative behavior was 12.3 times per hour. The intervention consisted of 10-30 minute counterconditioning sessions in a public education setting for three recorded trigger stimuli. Counterconditioning was accomplished by pairing continuous preferred stimuli (e.g., video or music) while the trigger played intermittently using the Misophonia Trigger Tamer app on an iPad. Staff observed overt behavior which indicated physiological responses after the trigger played and increased or decreased volume to maintain a minimal response. The intervention successfully reduced the misophonic respondent behavior, and the aggressive behavior extinguished. Preliminary post intervention rate of perseverative behavior is 0 times per hour.

The roots of relational frame theory (RFT) can be traced back to an early conference paper on rule-governed behaviour in 1984. The seminal book-length treatment of RFT is now itself 20 years old. In that time the account has introduced many new terms, concepts and methods that would be unfamiliar to traditional behavior analysis. The current symposium presents four papers that involve critically reappraising this (RFT) work in an effort to determine its value, while also identifying ways in which to move forward. We argue that progress will likely involve being genuinely open to identifying potential weaknesses in analytic strategies, limitations in key concepts, and in a willingness to engage genuinely with alternative approaches to the study of human language and cognition within behavior analysis. Specifically, the four papers will consider (1) recent developments in the analysis of data from an RFT methodology, known as the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP); (2) the limited utility of the concepts of pliance, tracking and augmenting within RFT; (3) the use of a new framework in applied behavior analyses of language and cognition; and (4) the potential benefits of drawing on both RFT and Verbal Behavior Development Theory (VBDT) in the experimental analysis of human language and cognition.

A basic background in behaviour analysis is assumed.

The implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) was originally conceptualised as a method for assessing the strength of natural verbal relations as conceptualised within RFT. The method itself involved combining the relational evaluation procedure (REP), an RFT-based methodology, and an instrument developed within mainstream social cognitive psychology known as the implicit association test (IAT). The latter was designed to measure the strength of associations in memory and was therefore clearly a tool based on the assumptions of cognitive psychology. In combining the REP and IAT into the IRAP, an increasingly vigorous program of research emerged in which the IRAP was used as an instrument for assessing implicit cognition rather than the strength of natural verbal relations. Although the research program was not without value, in retrospect it was always going to be limited and the IRAP as such would fail to deliver on its original purpose. The current paper will review this retrospective narrative on the history of the IRAP and consider some of the more recent research that has focused on using it as a measure of the dynamics of relational framing itself.

Pliance, tracking and augmenting were defined as functionally distinct categories of rule-governed behavior in 1982. Since this time, however, the terms have rarely been used as the basis for conducting systematic experimental-analytic research, despite their theoretical centrality to the study of rule-governed behavior. 40 years later, it seems useful to reflect upon their place within the literature on the experimental analysis of human behavior, and relational frame theory in particular. In the current talk we evaluate their place within the literature and argue that they should be considered middle-level terms, which lack the relative precision of technical terms within the literature on relational frame theory (RFT). We explore the potential utility of conceptualizing rules as involving increasingly complex derived relational networks and focusing on various dimensions that impact such networks. Finally, we briefly consider a new program of research that has begun to take this approach in the context of up-dating RFT.

Demonstrating awareness of oneself and the states of others is argued to involve a highly complex behavior referred to as perspective taking. Before abstracting or inferring another person's perspective, one depends on a sufficient previously trained relational repertoire. The objective of the current study was to draw on the fundamental units of AARR, specifically with respect to deictic repertoires, using the MDML framework and explore a set of tasks to evaluate and train perspective-taking (PT). A set of non-arbitrary and arbitrary tasks were used to investigate relational repertoires at four levels of relational development (1-mutual entailment, 2-relational framing, 3-relational networking, 4-relating relations) for various generalised patterns of responding (coordination, difference, opposition, comparison, and hierarchy). Data from two children of similar developmental age (one with typical development and one with autism) were collected. The typical development child presented the expected level in abstract relations and showed success in the PT test. The child with autism initially failed the PT test but after an MDML-based intervention showed development in his relational repertoire and finally succeeded in the PT test. This study adds potentially valuable information about the minimal units required for deictic relational responding.

Conceptual developments in RFT, which have provided a general framework (Hyper Dimensional Multi-Level framework) and a dynamical unit of analysis (Relating, Orienting, and Evoking, ROE) have served to highlight clear points of contact and overlap between the analysis of naming and different levels and dimensions of derived relating, in general. Previous studies on naming have presented the object and its name simultaneously during both training and testing, and thus the training component may establish a transformation of function (ToF) directly between the object and the name. The aim of the current study was to test the emergence of speaker naming and entailed ToF with a non-simultaneous presentation technique and evaluate the effectiveness of Multiple Exemplar Training (MET) if deficits are observed. Five typically-developing toddlers participated in the study, and initially, none of the participants exhibited correct naming responses. Three participants received MET, which led to improvements in speaker naming for all. Of these, one needed additional training with simultaneous stimulus presentation trials. The remaining two participants were tested repeatedly, without MET, and did not show any consistent improvements in naming. The applications of the HDML framework to assess the strength of the levels/dimensions of naming are discussed.

Resurgence is the recurrence of a previously reduced target response (e.g., problem behavior) following a worsening in reinforcement conditions for a recently increased alternative response (e.g., a communication request). Recent investigations of resurgence have demonstrated the utility of a bidirectional translational approach wherein basic studies help inform applied treatment refinements and important phenomena observed in the applied setting are brought into the laboratory for rigorous examination. This cycle then continues, enriching both conceptual understanding of resurgence phenomena and improving clinical care. This symposium showcases that unique blend of investigations between basic and applied researchers. Two presentations highlight challenges encountered during laboratory evaluations of resurgence with typically developing adult participants (e.g., persistent responding during extinction) as well as potential methodological refinements to minimize these issues (e.g., manipulating response effort). The two final presentations investigate resurgence of severe destructive behavior within clinical settings and examine the use of mitigation strategies derived from basic literature (e.g., treatment modifications informed by behavioral momentum theory). Dr. ChrisPodlensik, an expert in basic and applied studies of treatment relapse, will discuss the implications of these studies as they relate to understanding and mitigating resurgence.

Resurgence is observed when a previously extinguished behavior reemerges while a more recently reinforced behavior is extinguished. Resurgence is further defined as responding that is greater than an inactive-control response that never produced reinforcement. Recent studies of resurgence in human-laboratory investigations have produced discrepant patterns of responding compared to nonhuman animal-laboratory studies when comparing control response performance. Namely, human-laboratory investigations have produced no differences between target and control responding and persistence across the resurgence-test phase. In the present study, we conducted two human-laboratory experiments to determine if these effects were a product of the history of reinforcement associated with the target response, as well as the types of technology used in human-laboratory studies. For all participants, we found no differences in levels of resurgence and occurrence for the target and control response, respectively. Moreover, we observed persistence of all response types across the resurgence-test phase. This finding was apparent even when the length of baseline (i.e., reinforcement for the target) was increased, when the length of extinction was increased, and when low-technology stimuli were used. We highlight the implications of this outcome in the context of human-laboratory studies and discuss the possible role of verbal mediation in these investigations.

To mitigate resurgence, translational research has largely focused on the role of reinforcement. In treatment programs, components, such as extinction, are much less frequently studied. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of exposures to extinction during functional communication training (FCT) on resurgence of problem behavior when intervention was disrupted. In this study, FCT was implemented across two conditions: (a) brief and (b) extended exposures to extinction. In each condition, a mand opportunity was restricted for brief or extended periods of time in the functional establishing operation. Restricted access to the mand opportunity in the extended condition was three times the length of time used in the brief condition. When problem behavior reduced by 80% of baseline levels in each FCT condition, FCT was disrupted with extinction. For tests of disruption, the hypothesis (based on Schieltz et al., 2017) was that resurgence would occur at higher levels in the FCT condition that resulted in less exposures to extinction (i.e., brief condition) than the condition with more exposures to extinction (i.e., extended condition). The first two completed cases showing different results from an ongoing project will be presented with discussion of methodologic issues related to these differences.

Recent research has shown that functional communication training (FCT) treatments are susceptible to treatment relapse in the form of resurgence of destructive behavior when individuals contact periods in which reinforcers are unavailable. We completed a series of four studies that evaluated how specific behavioral momentum theory (BMT)-informed adjustments to FCT would help reduce the resurgence of destructive behavior during extended periods of extinction for the functional communication response (FCR). The adjustments included (a) delivering a low rate of reinforcement for destructive behavior during baseline (Study 1); (b) delivering a low rate of reinforcement for the FCR during FCT (Study 2); (c) conducting a large number of FCT sessions before exposing the FCR to periods of extinction (Study 3); and, (d) the combination of these three adjustments (Study 4). Study 4 was the only study in which we observed consistently lower levels of resurgence in the context that was designed to mitigate resurgence. Thus, combining the refinements reduced resurgence of destructive behavior to a greater extent than each of the individual refinements. Overall, the results suggest that additional research is needed to replicate and extend these findings before we can recommend incorporating these adjustments into clinical standards of care.

Human-laboratory research on resurgence from our group and others’ has generated data that do not closely resemble those generated from basic-laboratory or clinical evaluations of this form of relapse. In particular, participants’ target behavior tends to persist during the extinction + alternative-reinforcement phase, and participants tend to indiscriminately and persistently allocate their behavior between response options during relapse testing, whether or not those options have been associated with reinforcement. In the present experiment, we asked whether differences in response effort between research settings might partially explain these findings. Participants completed a high-effort and a low-effort resurgence evaluation across two laboratory visits. Effort was manipulated by increasing the physical distance between operanda (BIGmack buttons). In both evaluations, pressing target and alternative buttons produced point reinforcers during the baseline and extinction + alternative-reinforcement phases, respectively. Finally, reinforcement was suspended to test for resurgence. Outcomes from the low-effort condition replicated previous findings from human-laboratory evaluations of resurgence described above. In the high-effort condition, however, target-button pressing was suppressed during the extinction + alternative-reinforcement phase, and responding was differentiated during resurgence testing. Implications of these data for human-laboratory evaluations of resurgence will be discussed.

Effective and efficient behavior analytic practices are an ongoing focus of research within our field. This is especially relevant given the limited time and resources available to meet the many academic and life skill targets our clients require. With increases in the available technology that can be incorporated into behavior analytic interventions, further research is needed at the basic and applied levels. The current symposium will focus on the efficiency of training targeted skills. The first presentation addresses academic skills, evaluated at the basic level, analyzing how stimuli are sequenced and presented on an online platform. The second presentation, evaluated at the applied level, analyzes the use of virtual reality on acquiring necessary day-to-day skills including grocery shopping and pedestrian skills. The current presentations offer different analyses of the variables relevant to efficiently training essential skills. In addition, both presentations provide guidance for using technology to improve skill acquisition and application.

This symposium is geared toward practitioners and researchers

Research at the experimental level is needed in order to extend a behavior analytic understanding of the variables participating in skill acquisition as it relates to fluency outcomes. The current study manipulated how stimuli are presented using an alternating treatments design. One presentation type, the Additive Presentation, presented an array of stimuli in which the array was increased in size until all stimuli were presented. This presentation was compared with the Complete Presentation, in which all stimuli were presented. Three groups of stimuli were presented to compare the two presentation types: 5 stimuli, 7 stimuli, and 9 stimuli. Results indicate that the Additive Presentation of stimuli is correlated with more time to meet criteria (defined by fluency aims) than is a Complete Presentation in conditions that can be described as more difficult. Difficult conditions are defined as either 1) having less exposure to a similar procedure and 2) larger number of stimuli presented in an array.

With the increased accessibility and affordability of virtual reality, the therapeutic application of this technology has increased. Within the realm of autism treatment there are several ways this technology can improve teaching. Virtual reality can allow for more teaching to occur in environments as similar as possible to the natural environments. Improving generalization and minimizing risk. Virtual reality headsets can provide eye-tracking data that can inform prompting strategies and provide better assessments of attending in real time. While research in this area is increasing there remains a lack of data examining the most efficient teaching strategies and the best combination of technological features. A series of studies were conducted in Saudi Arabia and the US utilizing headsets of varying capabilities. Finding items in the grocery store and pedestrian skills were taught across environments. Recommendations on best practices and the minimum technical requirements for efficient teaching will be discussed.

Behavioral treatments such as differential reinforcement are an effective means of reducing problem behavior. These treatments are frequently implemented by highly trained staff in well-controlled settings. After a clinically relevant reduction in problem behavior is achieved, these treatments are then transferred from clinics to the community (e.g., homes and schools), and from trained therapists to parents, caregivers, and other intervention agents. However, these treatments will be challenged during community implementation, potentially—and likely—leading to relapse (e.g., resurgence, renewal) and eventual treatment failure. Fortunately, researchers have developed some strategies to supplement behavioral treatments and improve their durability (i.e., able to withstand everyday challenges). In this symposium, the presenters will discuss common treatment challenges and their corresponding forms of relapse; as well as strategies practitioners can implement to improve the durability of their treatments. They will also describe relevant next steps for researchers in the area relapse and its mitigation. Following the presentations, audience members will be able to identify scenarios likely to result in relapse and ways in which they can mitigate relapse.

The intended audience is behavior analysts who have or currently work with individuals that engage in problem behavior, as well as researchers who work in the area of relapse. Audience members should be mildly familiar with relapse. However, presenters will provide some background and contextualization on various forms of relapse.

Brain injury is the leading cause of death and disability worldwide (IBIA, 2021). Applied behavior analysis (ABA) is demonstrated to be effective in addressing several of the behavioral challenges associated with acquired brain injury (Jacobs, 2000). However, a recent comprehensive literature review demonstrates that additional research, especially research with high methodical rigor, is still needed (Heinicke & Carr, 2014). The lack of research in acquired brain injury presents vast opportunities for behavior analysts who wish to pursue this important line of investigation. Several unique circumstances associated with brain injury and its treatment may pose challenges to researchers, including but not limited to: difficulty recruiting participants, the need to balance rehabilitation efforts with research participation, and issues related to obtaining informed consent. This panel will bring together three top experts who have successfully conducted research in this domain. Discussion will focus on the challenges associated with this line of research and efforts to support future growth in this important area.

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