2019 Annual Meeting of the Trustees

Claire St. Peter, PhD, BCBA-D, Associate Professor & Area Coordinator, Behavior Analysis, West Virginia University, “Supporting Teachers as Behavioral Engineers: Creating High-Quality Trainings for School Contexts” 

Abstract

American teachers are increasingly asked to manage difficult behavior in the classroom, and consistently report feeling unprepared to do so. To have the greatest positive impact on child behavior, teachers must be able to implement high-quality, empirically based interventions. Behavior analysts can assist teachers by determining teachers’ skill sets and the fidelity with which teachers implement procedures. These fidelity data can serve as quality indicators as teachers receive additional training. Data from our research group suggests that teachers need frequent training and supports to become successful implementers. To sustain behavior-analytic practice in schools, our trainings must meet both our quality standards and be “do-able” for school districts. I will describe three ways that behavior analysts can adapt well-established behavioral skills training to increase our impact in educational contexts.

Eric V. Larsson, PhD, LP, BCBA-D, Executive Director, Lovaas Institute Midwest Executive Director, Lovaas Institute Midwest, “Organizational Behavior Management Systems that Support Progressive Individualized Applied Behavior Analysis” 

Abstract

Comprehensive ABA treatment at the Lovaas Institute Midwest is recovery oriented. Complete recovery is a challenging goal that requires all of the core features of Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention to be delivered at their optimum levels. These core features are: Early Intervention; Intensive Intervention; Remediation of all Diagnostic Aspects of Autism; Training Parents to Independence; Individualization; Dynamic Programming; and Accountable Treatment. Two crucial features are Early Intervention and Individualization. What this means is that the organization must be geared to efficiently identify and develop the most significant objectives for each different child in as short a time frame as possible The most efficient objectives will result in mastery of essential behavior that is genuinely generalized to all relevant natural interactions and maintained without the need for artificial interventions. There is also a risk that over-training in restricted contexts will not only fail to generalize or maintain, but will impair the likelihood of future generalization or maintenance. To meet these needs, the organizational management system is designed to ensure that the performance of all team members, parents, and supervisors is optimal and accountable on a daily, weekly, six-month, and overall basis. Key measures focus on generative responding, acceleration toward single-trial mastery, recombinative generalization, and naturalization. A multi-layered matrix training system enables the management of the complex task analysis in the most effective manner. Throughout all of this task analysis and program management, the fundamental concern is contingency management. The behavior must be part of an effective schedule of reinforcement, that is highly managed to ensure that the reinforcement is as natural as possible, as minimal as possible, and as generalized as possible to all of the child’s natural social interactions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Cost-effective staff training and management is also a fundamental concern, and so the system utilizes a data collection system that enables timely decision making, to both increase effectiveness when individual acquisition is challenging, and reduce the artificial training parameters as quickly as possible without impairing generalization or maintenance. This staff training and management system is referred to as dynamic programming. 

Known Attendees as of 5/21/19

Minutes from the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Trustees (Trustees to vote on acceptance of the Minutes)

Nominations – Trustees & Advisors Bios

Distinguished Scholars 2019/2020