Translational behavior analysis: from laboratory science in stimulus control to intervention with persons with neurodevelopmental disabilities

Throughout its history, laboratory research in the experimental analysis of behavior has been successful in elucidating and clarifying basic learning principles and processes in both humans and nonhumans. In parallel, applied behavior analysis has shown how fundamental behavior-analytic principles and procedures can be employed to promote desirable forms of behavior and to prevent or ameliorate undesirable forms in clinical, educational, and other settings. Less obviously, there has also emerged a small but identifiable bridging field that can potentially connect and inform both basic and applied behavior analysis. Although such translational behavior analysis uses laboratory methodologies, research targets are selected largely for their value in ultimate application to improve the human condition. I will discuss the distinction of translational behavior analysis from basic and applied behavior analysis and consider the potential contribution that translational research can make in the development of the science of behavior.     

Creating a strategy for progress: a contextual behavioral science approach

Behavior analysis is a field dedicated to the development and application of behavioral principles to the understanding and modification of the psychological actions of organisms. As such, behavior analysis was committed from the beginning to a comprehensive account of behavior, stretching from animal learning to complex human behavior. Despite that lofty goal, basic behavior analysis is having a generally harder time finding academic support, and applied behavior analysis has narrowed its focus. In the present paper we argue that both of these trends relate to the challenge of human language and cognition, and that developments within clinical behavior analysis and the analysis of derived relational responding are providing a way forward. To take full advantage of these developments, however, we argue that behavior analysts need to articulate their unique approach to theory, to develop more flexible language systems for applied workers, and to expand their methodological flexibility. This approach, which we term contextual behavioral science, is meant as an evolutionary step that will allow behavior analysis to better capture the center of modern psychological concerns in both the basic and applied areas. Clinical behavior analysis is showing a way forward for behavior analysis to regain its vision as a comprehensive approach to behavior.     

Assessing the Connection between Students’ Justice Experience and Attitudes Toward Academic Cheating in Higher Education New Learning Environments

The present study is aimed at comprehensively assess tendency to neutralize (justify) academic cheating as a function of individual experience of teachers’ just behavior and new learning environments (NLE), while considering the Belief in a Just World (BJW) as a personal resource that has the potential to enhance those experiences. Data were collected from a sample of 193 second-year undergraduate college students. Path analysis main results showed that students who evaluated their teachers’ behavior toward them personally as just, held more positive evaluation of the learning environment, and were less inclined toward academic cheating neutralization. Personal BJW was partly associated with the perceived NLE, this connection was primarily mediated by the experience of teacher justice. Moreover, students’ evaluation of their teachers’ just behavior was a stronger negative predictor of academic cheating neutralization than perceived forms of NLE. Interpretation of these results, applications and implications for future research are discussed.     

The ecological rationality of state-dependent valuation

Laboratory studies on a range of animals have identified a bias that seems to violate basic principles of rational behavior: a preference is shown for feeding options that previously provided food when reserves were low, even though another option had been found to give the same reward with less delay. The bias presents a challenge to normative models of decision making (which only take account of expected rewards and the state of the animal at the decision time). To understand the behavior, we take a broad ecological perspective and consider how valuation mechanisms evolve when the best action depends upon the environment being faced. We show that in a changing and uncertain environment, state-dependent valuation can be favored by natural selection: Individuals should allow their hunger to affect learning for future decisions. The valuation mechanism that typically evolves produces the kind of behavior seen in standard laboratory tests. By providing an insight into why learning should be affected by the state of an individual, we provide a basis for understanding psychological principles in terms of an animal's ecology.     

Applied behavior analysis: New directions from the laboratory

Applied behavior analysis began when laboratory based principles were extended to humans inorder to change socially significant behavior. Recent laboratory findings may have applied relevance; however, the majority of basic researchers have not clearly communicated the practical implications of their work. The present paper samples some of the new findings and attempts to demonstrate their applied importance. Schedule-induced behavior which occurs as a by-product of contingencies of reinforcement is discussed. Possible difficulties in treatment and management of induced behaviors are considered. Next, the correlation-based law of effect and the implications of relative reinforcement are explored in terms of applied examples. Relative rate of reinforcement is then extended to the literature dealing with concurrent operants. Concurrent operant models may describe human behavior of applied importance, and several techniques for modification of problem behavior are suggested. As a final concern, the paper discusses several new paradigms. While the practical importance of these models is not clear at the moment, it may be that new practical advantages will soon arise. Thus, it is argued that basic research continues to be of theoretical and practical importance to applied behavior analysis.     

Essential readings for graduate students in behavior analysis: A survey of the JEAB and JABA boards of editors

We surveyed the editorial boards of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis in an attempt to construct an essential reading list for graduate students in behavior analysis. Respondents were asked to list up to 10 behavior-analytic journal articles, 10 behavior-analytic books, and 5 non-behavior-analytic books or journal articles that they felt were essential readings. Several behavior-analytic books were listed by members of both editorial boards, suggesting that an understanding of the philosophy of radical behaviorism and its basic principles are essential for graduate students. In contrast, a number of disparities point to differences in training and a lack of integration that may exist between basic and applied researchers. However, these disparities might also be indicative of the strength of behavior analysis. Finally, several non-behavior-analytic readings draw attention to the convergence of behavior analysis and other fields of study.     

The Function, Mechanism, And Evolution Of Learning: A Review Of Sara J. Shettleworth’s Cognition, Evolution, And Behavior.

Behavior is a property of living animals and is therefore a biological phenomenon. This book shows us what it looks like to have a truly biological science of behavior. Such a science needs to discover the laws that control behavior as it is occurring, and it is this that behavior analysts and other psychologists interested in animal behavior and learning have done so well. The science also needs to explain, however, the role that behavior plays in the life of the individual and in the existence of the species, and this has not been part of the agenda for most psychologists. Shettleworth addresses all of these questions about behavior. She views learning in terms of what it accomplishes for the individual and then provides insight into its causal laws and its evolution. All of this is accomplished with a critical eye and unremitting rigor. These accomplishments occur in the context of a theory based on a unique combination of domain‐general and domain‐specific processes that takes a major step in the direction of showing what students of animal behavior and animal learning have to offer each other.     

Basic research needed for stimulating the development of behavioral technologies

The costs of disconnection between the basic and applied sectors of behavior analysis are reviewed, and some solutions to these problems are proposed. Central to these solutions are collaborations between basic and applied behavioral scientists in programmatic research that addresses the behavioral basis and solution of human behavior problems. This kind of collaboration parallels the deliberate interactions between basic and applied researchers that have proven to be so profitable in other scientific fields, such as medicine. Basic research questions of particular relevance to the development of behavioral technologies are posed in the following areas: response allocation, resistance to change, countercontrol, formation and differentiation/discrimination of stimulus and response classes, analysis of low-rate behavior, and rule-governed behavior. Three interrelated strategies to build connections between the basic and applied analysis of behavior are identified: (a) the development of nonhuman animal models of human behavior problems using operations that parallel plausible human circumstances, (b) replication of the modeled relations with human subjects in the operant laboratory, and (c) tests of the generality of the model with actual human problems in natural settings.     

��If This is What I��m ��Meant to be������: The Journeys of Students Participating in a Conversation Partner Scheme for People with Aphasia

The development of speech language therapy students into clinicians is an area of increasing interest as educators focus on how knowledge, skills and attitudes are taught and learnt within the profession. The personal journeys of students through experiences of service learning have potential to further our understanding of the impact of civic engagement on the student experience and their learning. This paper explores the journeys of first year speech and language therapy students through a Thematic Analysis of reflective letters written by students to themselves at the beginning and completion of a service learning module. Analysis demonstrates development of interpersonal and preclinical skills as well as an understanding of attitudes and values inherent in the social model of disability. The skills and attitudes developed by the students through participation in the Conversation Partner Scheme are consistent with social model principles that support therapists to fully address the long-term, real life needs of clients with aphasia (the acquired communication disorder that frequently follows stroke). The interface between the social model of disability and the role of service learning in nurturing the attitudes and values which underpin this model are explored.     

Theoretical implications of the neurotic paradox as a problem in behavior theory: An experimental resolution

Why do human phobias last for months or years when such behavior should undergo extinction? This failure of extinction or persistence of self-defeating behavior of human disorders was labeled by Mowrer as the neurotic paradox. The paradox is cited by an ever-increasing number of critics who challenge any laboratory-based learning model of human psychopathology. Laboratory research, of course, omits essential requirements in the analysis of behavior, and the principles derived from such analyses must be combined in order to explain complex human behavaior. Validation for a behavioral model can thus be achieved if (a) basic principles inferred from observation of humans treated with a laboratory-derived extinction procedure (e.g., implosive therapy) are combined with (b) principles examined in laboratory research that are combined to generate unique predictions that correspond to known features of human phobic behavior. The latter evidence is briefly reviewed in research demonstrating sustained responding over one thousand consecutive active avoidance responses with complete avoidance of the “phobic” CS for an initial single shock trial. Differential reinforcement for responses to early sequential stimuli depends on minimal work requirement, and reinforcement by timeout from avoidance. This combination of factors effectively precludes extinction to main conditioned aversive stimuli for nonhumans, as it does for human phobias. Support for a laboratory model of human phobia is thereby attained.     

From Sole Learning to Soul Learning

Abstract. Is it effective or even possible to teach an introductory course in religious studies that not only provides first‐year university students with the fundamental vocabulary, concepts, and critical tools of religious inquiry but also invites and stimulates the transformation of the religious imagination? In what kind of teaching and learning method could the process of personal transformation occur and how might one assess it? These are the questions that led to an experiment in teaching religion the objective of which was to prepare beginning students for the academic approach to religion and, at the same time, transmit the experience of learning as an embodied process that engages personal narrative within a community context. This essay is based on a three‐year project that has made considerable progress in meeting these goals and answering these questions. (Supplementary materials for this essay are available on the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion web site http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/journal/baldwin.html .)     

Being a good or a just teacher: Which experiences of teachers’ behavior can be more predictive of school bullying?

In two cross‐sectional questionnaire studies with N = 2,931 German students, aged between 12 and 17 years (M = 14.1, SD = 0.5), we investigated the relation between students’ bullying behavior and their personal belief in a just world (BJW). We considered students’ personal experience of teacher justice as a possible mediator in this relation and investigated whether the students’ experiences of their teachers’ classroom management explained bullying behavior in addition to personal BJW and teacher justice, while statistically controlling for sex and school type. In both studies, multilevel modeling results showed that the more students endorsed personal BJW and the more they evaluated their teachers’ behavior toward them personally as being just, the less likely they were to report that they bullied others. The students’ personal experience of teacher justice mediated the association of personal BJW with bullying. Furthermore, the students’ personal experience of classroom management significantly predicted bullying in addition to personal BJW and teacher justice. The observed relations were mainly significant at the individual level. The pattern of results persisted when we controlled for school type and when we considered student sex as a moderator. We discussed the adaptive functions of BJW and implications for future school research and practice.

     

The basic importance of applied behavior analysis

We argue that applied behavior analysis is relevant to basic research. Modification studies, and a broad range of investigations that focus on the precipitating and maintaining conditions of socially significant human behavior, have basic importance. Applied behavior analysis may aid basic researchers in the design of externally valid experiments and thereby enhance the theoretical significance of basic research for understanding human behavior. Applied research with humans, directed at culturally-important problems, will help to propagate the science of human behavior. Such a science will also be furthered by analogue experiments that model socially important behavior. Analytical-applied studies and analogue experiments are forms of applied behavior analysis that could suggest new environment-behavior relationships. These relationships could lead to basic research and principles that further the prediction, control, and understanding of behavior.     

The place of the human subject in the operant laboratory

Although laboratory study of human behavior seems an obvious vehicle for strengthening the scientific base of behavior analysis, the place of the human subject within the operant laboratory remains problematic. The prevailing research strategy has been to link principles developed with animals to human affairs, either through interpretation of naturally occurring human behaviors or through application of the principles to the solution of human problems. The paucity of laboratory research on human operant behavior derives from several misconceptions: the possibility that experimental demand characteristics and pre-experimental behavioral dispositions of human subjects contaminate the results; that ethical considerations place undue constraint on research topics and experimental designs; and that uncontrollable variation in subjects' histories and other relevant personal characteristics prevents observation of reliable functional relations. We argue that these problems do not pose insurmountable obstacles to the experimental analysis of human behavior; that adequate methods of control and analysis are available; and that operant techniques, by emphasizing experimentally imposed contingencies, are well suited for the laboratory study of human behavior.     

English for Bible and Theology: Understanding and Communicating Theology Across Cultural and Linguistic Barriers

This article introduces English for Bible and Theology (EBT), an inherently interdisciplinary field that merges English language learning with the content of biblical and theological studies in a context that is, by nature, cross‐cultural. Within this collaboration there exists the possibility not only to enable theological study, but also to enhance it through a focus on personal meaning and its communication, both of which are foundational to the communicative language classroom. That is, EBT seeks both to aid students worldwide in attaining the specialized language and cultural proficiency necessary to access English theological resources and to provide a community in which students can connect theological content to their lives. It is this second aim that provides EBT its relevance across a range of theological contexts, as native English‐speaking students likewise stand to benefit from the application of EBT's principles.     

CAN AN UNDERSTANDING OF BASIC RESEARCH FACILITATE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PRACTITIONERS? REFLECTIONS AND PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES

I have written before about the importance of applied behavior analysis to basic researchers. That relationship is, however, reciprocal; it is also critical for practitioners to understand and even to participate in basic research. Although applied problems are rarely the same as those investigated in the laboratory, practitioners who understand their basic research background are often able to place their particular problem in a more general context and thereby deal with it successfully. Also the procedures of applied behavior analysis are often the same as those that characterize basic research; the scientist-practitioner will appreciate the relation between what he or she is doing and what basic experimenters do, and as a consequence, will be able to apply therapeutic techniques more creatively and effectively.     

The quail, Coturnix coturnix, as a laboratory animal

The quail, Coturnix coturnix, is small, gentle, hardy, adaptable, easy to house, and economical to maintain. Wetherbee and Jacobs (1960) call it the “Drosophila of the avian laboratory,” and yet this charming bird is virtually unknown to the psychological laboratory. Our preliminary investigations show that the pecking operant is readily conditioned and that little or no deprivation is necessary to maintain behavior with food as a reinforcer. Visual and temporal discriminations were very quickly made. Our observations suggest that the social behavior of these birds might be a fruitful area for psychological study. On the basis of our somewhat limited observations, we believe that C. coturnix should prove a useful experimental animal for comparative studies, for basic research in learning, motivation, and perhaps social behavior, and for teaching the analysis of behavior in demonstrations and laboratory courses.     

A forgotten resource critical to the future of behavior analysis: undergraduate psychology majors

The demand for board-certified applied behavior analysts is not being met, and there is a perception that fewer students are exposed to systematic courses in basic and applied behavior analysis than was true a generation ago. This article outlines how we have successfully implemented an undergraduate curriculum in behavior analysis within a traditional department of psychology. Certification credentials offered by the Behavior Analysis Certification Board facilitated the approval of this curriculum, and the cultural practice selection contingencies that supported the creation of our curriculum in behavior analysis may be similar at other comprehensive universities. Advice for developing an undergraduate program in behavior analysis within a psychology department is outlined. We also summarize strategies we have used to attract talented students to the courses and the significant impact these strategies have had on the number of our graduates who pursue graduate training in basic and applied behavior analysis. Attracting the best and brightest students to behavior analysis is critical to the future of the field.     

Reciprocal heuristics: A discussion of the relationship of the study of learned behavior in laboratory and field

At the turn of the century, the initiators of laboratory study of animal learning advocated two very different approaches to the subject matter. Willard Small favored the investigation of learning in ecological settings appropriate to individual species. E. L. Thorndike treated the process of association formation in animals as a general one, best studied in situations distant from those to which subject species were adapted. The latter view dominated laboratory study of animal learning for 80 years. The consequent absence of ecological content from laboratory investigations of animal learning, together with recent expansion in knowledge of the behavior of free-living animals, has created opportunities for ecologically sound investigations of animal learning of the type first advocated by Small. Studies of taste-aversion learning, although introducing evolutionary issues into the study of animal learning, do not exemplify such an approach. Integration of field and laboratory studies of behavioral plasticity in animals requires a change in the methods used to select phenomena for analysis. Such integration does not often lead to identification of the behavioral processes underlying the development of particular behaviors observed in nature. Rather, its results are an increase in the variety of learning processes investigated in laboratory settings and enhanced understanding of the behavioral capacities of subject species.