Mary Jane Weiss, Ph.D., BCBA-D

Jamie DeQuinzio, Ph.D., BCBA-D

Shawn Quigley, Ph.D., BCBA-D

Tom Zane, Ph.D., BCBA

Jon S. Bailey, Ph.D., BCBA-D

Title: A Passion for Ethics 

Abstract: I became formally involved in ethics in 1988 when I developed a Code of Ethics for the Florida Association for Behavior analysis but my sojourn began in my youth when I memorized the Boy Scout Law. My professional passion for ethics began when Jerry Shook asked me to promote the new BACB Guidelines for Responsible Conduct in 2001; one thing led to another and in 2007 I began answering ethics questions online for a national audience. This opened up a whole new world of ethical conflicts to analyze. Over the years the conduct problems in our industry have become more nuanced, complex, and weighty. Now we have an enforceable Compliance Code to hold behavior analysts accountable and I have recently assembled a team of ethicists who are devoted to helping people with ethics questions through our independent ABAEthicsHotline.com Over the years I have come to view unadulterated ethical conduct as a somewhat rare repertoire that is constantly under attack by larger social and economic forces in our culture. In this talk I will explore the contingencies which I believe account for my passion for ethics and hope to enlist your assistance in promoting this spirit in others.

Learning Objectives

Participants will:

1. Describe changes in the ethical climate of our field over time.
2. Discuss implicit contingencies that produce unethical conduct.

James T. Chok, Ph.D., BCBA-D

Title: Expanding the Analysis of Behavior

Abstract: This presentation will examine how behavior analysis can contribute to the assessment and treatment of private events, such as thoughts and emotions. The presentation will include a review of the literature as it relates to the manner in which scientists have tried to make these unobservable events observable, through the use of functional neuorimaging, the measurement of physiological experiences, and permanent product measures of thoughts. Behavior analytic research of private events will be reviewed, along with areas of study that require further inquiry to advance the science of behavior analysis.

Learning Objectives

Participants will:

1. Identify the multiple dimensions of behavior that contribute to responding (including private events).
2. Identify how these different dimensions influence each other and responding.
3. Distinguish between respondent and operant behavior and identify how these processes interact to influence behavior.

Patrick McGreevy, Ph.D, BCBA-D

Title: Making Skills Functional Again

Abstract: In an age of the Common Core State Standards and the proliferation of developmental skills curricula, Dr. McGreevy will provide an argument for a return to the teaching of functional, life skills for children and adults with moderate-to-severe disabilities, including, but not limited to autism. This argument is based on a rich history of the effective teaching of these skills by pioneers in the field of behavior analysis prior to the time when the numbers of children with autism began to increase substantially. This argument is also based on considerable evidence that most of these learners, including many with autism, regardless of the quality and intensity of instruction, experience the barriers described by M. L. Sundberg and others: limited stimulus generalization and induction, along with difficulty acquiring abstract concepts, forming equivalence classes, making conditional discriminations, and exhibiting meaningful intraverbal responses.

Learning Objectives

Participants will:

1. Describe three of the five barriers previously describe by M. L. Sundberg and others
2. Describe how functional skills will improve the outcomes and the quality of life of learners with moderate-to-severe disabilities