Co-sponsored the Association for Behavior Analysis

The Federation co-sponsored a Science and Public Policy Briefing with one of its member societies, the Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA, http://www.abainternational.org), on April 11, 2003.  The topic, “Using Science as a Basis for Behavior Change” relates to an important funding initiative at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) designed to facilitate the application of basic research (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/tbsia/priority.cfm).  Our congressional sponsor was Representative Rush Holt.  
 
Mike Perone, PhD (West Virginia University) discussed the basic research question of understanding when, and for how long, a subject (animal or human) pauses after reinforcement in an experiment.  His work has demonstrated that long pauses occur primarily in shifts from rich to leaner reinforcement conditions.  Perone noted that this preparation could be an effective model for testing aberrant behavior and investigating ways to reduce it.  

Kate Saunders, PhD (University of Kansas) discussed her data on mentally-challenged adults and how some of the basic research could be applied to them as well as other populations in teaching the skill of reading. For example, she noted how computer applications properly designed to teach reading could both accelerate the learning process and reduce the potential embarrassment associated with learning how to read as an adult.  Unfortunately, since society has low expectations for the mentally-challenged, techniques have not been fully developed for them, instead focusing on teaching normal children to read.  Since the mentally challenged suffer serious deficits in learning ability, there is a challenge to researchers to fine tune the analysis of what actually goes into learning to read.  Saunders explained that there are visual as well as phonological components in learning how to read and while these components are assumed to be quite accessible in normal populations, these are basic areas needing research for the mentally challenged.  

Edmund Fantino, PhD (University of California- San Diego) discussed research he has conducted with both pigeons and humans on assessing probabilities, and showed that pigeons were more adept at making “decisions” of this sort than were humans.  Since people commit the “base-rate neglect” error (the ignoring of key information in formulating a decision), these subjects carry a bias not observed in non-verbal organisms such as the pigeon.  Fantino noted that this tendency to ignore base rates, even when trained to avoid this type of error, has serious implications for health care workers interpreting test results.  That is, a doctor may not fully assess the probability of your having a disease if false negatives and false positives are not included as information in the analysis.  


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