Behavior analysts are responsible for disseminating behavior analysis by making information about the science available to the public, professional peers, and government officials. The purposes of the current paper are to outline the dissemination efforts of professional associations in the field of behavior analysis; to highlight the parallel efforts to disseminate and establish behavior analysis as a profession, including the evolution and growth of certification; to share examples of dissemination successes; to describe some challenges that have been faced when disseminating behavior analysis internationally; and to suggest some strategies for ethical and effective dissemination of behavior analysis.
Presession pairing is an antecedent-based procedure in which an instructor engages with preferred items with a child for a few minutes before an instructional session. Although this procedure has been described in manualized treatment guidelines for working with children with autism, there are currently no direct investigations of whether this manipulation has a beneficial impact on target responding or the child's social interactions. Functional analyses with three children with autism showed escape or attention and escape as reinforcers for their challenging behavior. Preference assessments identified highly and moderately preferred stimuli. In the context of a multiple baseline across participants design, the participants exhibited fewer challenging behaviors when instructional sessions were preceded by presession pairing than when they were not. Academic responding showed modest increases. Subsequently, in the presence of presession pairing with a novel task, the participants emitted no challenging behavior and similar or higher levels of accurate academic responding. One participant was available for a maintenance session without presession pairing 5 months later and showed near-zero levels of challenging behavior and comparable levels of accurate academic responding. The implications of the findings and future directions are discussed.
Social networking has a long list of advantages: it enables access to a large group of people that would otherwise not be geographically convenient or possible to connect with; it reaches several different generations, particularly younger ones, which are not typically involved in discussion of current events; and these sites allow a cost effective, immediate, and interactive way to engage with others. With the vast number of individuals who use social media sites as a way to connect with others, it may not be possible to completely abstain from discussions and interactions on social media that pertain to our professional practice. This is all the more reason that behavior analysts attend to the contingencies specific to these tools. This paper discusses potential ethical situations that may arise and offers a review of the Behavior Analysis Certification Board (BACB) guidelines pertaining to social networking, as well as provides suggestions for avoiding or resolving potential violations relating to online social behavior.
Applied behavior analysis is a hybrid tradition with roots in many mental health disciplines. Even with these diverse origins, the professional practice of behavior analysis remains distinct and identifiable. Given these factors the professional practice special interest group (SIG) for the Association for Behavior Analysis International has proposed a model-licensing act. The behavior analyst model-licensing act (BAMLA) seeks to restrict the title of "licensed behavior analyst" but not the practice of behavior analysis. This argument has legal basis and precedent. Recently many papers have appeared supporting behavior analytic licensing; however, none to this point have addressed the issues of a licensing board's ability for rule creation and management and aid of impaired professionals, nor their ability to assist in fostering professional identity. This paper seeks to explore these views.
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