Journal of applied behavior analysis最新文献

I first heard Brian speak at an American Psychological Association (APA) conference in the early 1980s. I knew immediately that his presentation had completely altered the course of my career.

My research at that time was devoted to vocational skill training and supported employment. Although this research program was successful, there was a definite disconnect between my research and clinical practice. Clinically, I directed two outpatient clinics in Pediatrics and the Center for Disabilities and Development at the University of Iowa that focused on children (with and without developmental disabilities) and adults (with developmental disabilities) who displayed severe challenging behavior. In my research programs, I had a strong knowledge base in skill training that allowed us to train most clients to complete job tasks successfully. In contrast, my knowledge base for assessing and treating challenging behavior was lacking. I had no idea what could be done in a 90-min outpatient clinic appointment, especially because most families came to the clinic only once or twice.

During his talk, Brian introduced the audience to the concept of function and how function could be the basis of treatment. I had never heard of “functional analysis” as an assessment procedure and had only rarely used multielement designs. I found myself taking pages of notes on both the procedures and the analysis of those procedures, and for the first time in my career, I was excited to conduct the assessments in the clinic. I remember calling my colleague, Wendy Berg, and discussing how important it was for us to bring Brian to Iowa. He was the best presenter I had ever heard, and I knew that for us to conduct these evaluations in our clinics, the medical staff would have to be “on board.” Who better than Brian to present Grand Rounds and describe functional analysis to the pediatrics faculty and staff? Later that day at APA, I asked him if he would spend three days presenting Grand Rounds and consulting with faculty, staff, and students. We had about $75 to pay him for this multiday commitment. He immediately agreed.

And so began my 30-year career as a function-based researcher. But it was not simply procedures I learned from Brian. It was how to be an original empirical researcher—Brian's term for describing his work—practicing in a medical setting. Brian's research and clinical practice at the John F. Kennedy Institute (later, renamed the Kennedy Krieger Institute) were fully integrated, and we followed that model for the remainder of my career. We embraced “unknowns” as research challenges. For example, after many mistakes, we launched our brief functional analysis procedures and published our results. He taught me how to blend teaching into my research and clinical programs. He described how graduate students and interns could help expand our services while learning from more senior students, staff, and faculty. Again, I followed this teaching model f

Physical inactivity has been associated with several health problems, including diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. Although many of these health problems are preventable through regular exercise, a small percentage of the adult population engages in the recommended levels. Reinforcement-based interventions have been implemented successfully to promote physical activity, but studies targeting moderate or vigorous physical exercise using behavior-analytic interventions are scarce. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the feasibility of a multicomponent intervention that provided monetary incentives for increasing running, jogging, or brisk walking distance for five adults. The intervention lasted 6 weeks and comprised weekly goal setting, feedback, public posting, and group contingencies. The results of the study suggest that the intervention may be feasible and effective at increasing moderate physical activity to levels recommended by the federal guidelines, but further research is warranted.

I was deeply saddened when I learned of Brian Iwata's passing, but his death also set the occasion for me to think about and appreciate how lucky I was to have known him and to have learned from him. I never worked directly with or studied under Brian Iwata, though I viewed him as a mentor, and he had a profound influence on my career. I don't know for certain, but I suspect that many behavior analysts who use functional analysis methods to study and treat severe problem behavior also viewed Brian this way.

My first interaction with Brian was in the mid-1980s, after I left the Medical Center Rehabilitation Hospital at the University of North Dakota to become the Director of Psychology at the State Developmental Center at Grafton in Grafton, North Dakota. The developmental center was under a court order from a class-action lawsuit (Association for Retarded Citizens of North Dakota v. Olson, 1982/1983) for the expressed purpose of ensuring that the residents and clients of the center, “may realize the rights to which they are entitled; obtain needed services; investigate complaints, abuse, and neglect; and remove barriers to identified needs.” One of my responsibilities in my new position was to ensure that the residents who displayed severe problem behavior (e.g., aggression, self-injurious behavior [SIB]) received active and appropriate treatment. As I attempted to fulfill that responsibility, I quickly realized that I was in way over my head. Too many of the residents exhibited highly dangerous behavior (e.g., resulting in broken bones or permanent scar tissue), and far too often, the treatments involved chemical or physical restraint (e.g., high doses of haloperidol, five-point restraint).

To better address these challenges, I went to the University of North Dakota library and conducted a literature search on aggression and SIB (because in those days, few people had home computers and none of them connected to the internet). Through the search, I found an article by Brian and his colleagues titled, “Toward a functional analysis of self-injury” (Iwata et al., 1982/1994). It may sound hyperbolic (or alternatively, timeworn) for someone to say that a given event changed the course of one's life, but reading that article certainly changed my career path. Until that point, I thought that I practiced behavior analysis when managing problem behavior, but I did not. I practiced behavior modification—I introduced recycled antecedents and consequences that were effective with prior clients without analyzing and understanding the ones that maintained the current client's problem behavior. And if the first set of antecedents and consequences I introduced didn't work, I would move on to the next set without knowing why the first set failed or whether the next set would fare any better. It was akin to trying to unlock a door by cycling through the keys on a keyring until finding the one that worked; only in thi

Hank Pennypacker had an inestimable influence on the development of the science of behavior; the establishment and promotion of behavior analysis as a cohesive field and profession; the foundations, health, and vigor of the behavior analysis program at the University of Florida; and the achievements of the many students and colleagues whose lives and careers he inspired, including my own. I had the great good fortune to be part of Hank's research and development team while a graduate student during the early to mid-1980's, as the analyses and syntheses that would give rise to MammaCare were unfolding. This period arguably merits a closer look in our honoring of Hank, for it represents a genuine microcosm of his legacy as a scholar, a teacher, and as a person.

Hank often emphasized the power of one's initial experimental question in shaping a program of study. For this particular program, the origin story lay in the observation that a majority of breast tumors were being found first by women themselves rather than through screening technologies such as mammograms or ultrasound. Sadly, by the time the tumors were identified, they were often large and, if cancerous, advanced. Hank's question thus emerged: If fingers could become proficient with the complex discriminations required to read Braille, shouldn't it be possible to help women learn to detect small masses, at a point when treatment was much more effective? For the next 50+ years, Hank accepted the challenge this question entailed. To begin to address it, he turned first to his roots in classic experimental psychology. (Hank's PhD work involved highly controlled laboratory investigations of classical conditioning in monkeys, and he was known to describe himself as a “converted Hullian.”). Here, a series of careful psychophysical studies detailed that the tiniest of ball bearings embedded between silicon pancakes could be reliably reported when fingers were placed directly over the target (e.g., Adams et al., 1976), clearly demonstrating the proof of concept.

Of course, ball bearings are not breast tumors, and the need for a more realistic simulation of breast tissues resulted in an ongoing collaboration with materials scientists to develop a medium appropriate for discrimination testing and training. Hank frequently argued for the importance of working together with other disciplines when attacking big problems, and here was an initial case in point for the breast-examination project. With his legendary insistence on absolute units, critical dimensions of real breast tumors and normal nodularity were measured and approximated in silicone in an iterative process that resulted in increasingly sophisticated breast models containing lumps of varying size, firmness, and depth of placement (e.g., Madden et al., 1978). When skeptics (usually physicians) commented that the silicone models didn't feel exactly like the real thing, Hank liked to quip that an out

The professor stood before the class, donning a yellow button-down shirt with a slightly askew tie, a pair of slacks, and well-loved cowboy boots. He asked us to report our names, year in school, and “how you got yourself into this mess.” The question gave me a bit of anxiety and, when it was my turn to report, I lied. Name? Claire St. Peter (that was true). Year in school? Junior (also true). How I got myself into this mess? Obviously, I was very interested in the science of behavior (big lie). After all, the title of the course was the Natural Science and Technology of Behavior, so the response seemed like a good one. The truth was that I had never heard of the science of behavior, and I had registered for the class because it was an upper-division course that fit in my schedule. By the end of the semester, though, it wasn't a lie. I was sold on the power of a natural science of behavior.

Dr. Henry S. Pennypacker (who his students affectionately called Dr. P) was the professor who sold me on the science, and I wasn't the only one. I had the good fortune of taking several courses with Dr. P and then later coteaching these courses with him for years (it was during these later years that I shifted from calling him “Dr. P" to “Hank”). Hank made tremendous contributions to the science of behavior and to the transfer of that science to meaningful technologies. He coauthored a best-selling textbook on research methods that is now in its fourth edition. He saved lives by leveraging stimulus control and discrimination training to develop effective breast self-examination technologies (known as MammaCare). He was broadly passionate about education, helping to transform learning for students of all ages. He developed the Personalized Learning Center at the University of Florida and later founded the corporation, Precision Teaching of Florida. This corporation helped to lay the foundation for what is now the Behavior Analyst Certification Board. I hope that others will provide details on these important contributions in their memorial writings. Instead of reviewing all of Hank's broader accomplishments, I will focus on his teaching.

Student learning was enhanced because the course wasn't just about behavior analysis: the course was behavior analysis. Students learned about the course content in ways that forced them to interact with the subject matter and to think critically about how it applied to their lives. Course assessments were multifaceted: fill-in-the-blank cards, written essays, and oral responses. Assessments occurred weekly as the course material was learned, and students were required to master the content in one unit before moving on to the next. This approach allowed students to demonstrate that the content had been mastered while giving them latitude (in the oral assessment) to focus on the portions of the material that were most meaningful to them. Each student completed these assessments with a “manager” who h

The peer-review component of the editorial process is designed to facilitate quality control, legitimize scientific research, and self-regulate scientific communities. Even though serving as a reviewer undoubtedly has direct and indirect benefits, the peer-review system and the methods of teaching scholars to conduct reviews are nascent and relatively underdeveloped. This article describes the peer-review process and provides recommendations for writing reviews for scientific journals. The recommendations were developed based on the expertise and preferences of editors in chief and associate editors for behavior-analytic journals (Cengher & LeBlanc, 2024), and they include honoring your responsibility, knowing your audience, being constructive and kind, and carefully evaluating the merits of the study or review. These guidelines may serve as a primer for scholars who want to conduct reviews for scientific journals in behavior analysis.