B.F. Skinner Foundation - Award Winners
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Science
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-FABA
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-CalABA
The B. F. Skinner Foundation sponsors a Young Research Award for innovative and important research in behavior analysis conducted within the first five years of receiving a doctorate.
2010 Awards
Paul Soto of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine was selected to receive the Basic Research Award based on his research in the area of quantitative analysis. Paul received his Ph.D. from Emory University.
Michael Kelley of The University of Southern Maine was selected to receive the Applied Research Award based on his research in the areas of functional analysis and treatment of severe problem behavior and language development. Michael received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University.
2010 Awards
2010 Awards
2011 Awards
Matt Normand, University of the Pacific
Title: Battling the Bulge: Future Directions for Behavioral Research on Obesity
Abstract: Obesity is a significant public health concern and is largely the result of two behavioral factors: eating and physical activity. Despite the importance of the problem and the clear role behavior plays in causing it, one can argue that very little is known about the relationship of eating and activity to overweight and obesity, at least in a clinical sense. The research and practice in the areas of obesity prevention and treatment are dominated by inadequate measurement strategies, most involving self-reports of behavior. Moreover, little to no research has experimentally assessed the environmental variables that are functionally related to eating and activity. In this talk, I discuss some of the problems facing researchers trying to accurately measure eating and activity in "free living" conditions and describe the research from my lab that is addressing the problems of measurement and assessment so as to better inform interventions designed to prevent and treat overweight and obesity, especially in children. I argue that behavior analytic approaches to research and intervention, refined over the years with a variety of populations and across a range of problems, are well suited to advance research on, and interventions for, obesity.
Christopher A. Podlesnik, The University of Auckland
Title: Stimulus context and resistance to change
Abstract: Challenges to the treatment of any undesirable behavior often are the persistence and likelihood of reoccurrence (i.e., relapse). The present studies explored in animal models how contextual stimuli mediate the persistence and relapse of positively reinforced behavior. Arranging alternative sources of reinforcement within the stimulus context decreased target responding, consistent with treatments directed toward decreasing problem behavior. However, resistance to extinction and the relapse of target responding also was greater in stimulus contexts presenting alternative reinforcement. Finally, we explored a method to circumvent enhancing the target response while still reducing its frequency. Responding was maintained in three mutually exclusive stimulus contexts, two of which maintained different responses in separate stimulus contexts. In a third, a separate response was reinforced in the same context as a target response, modelling a differential-reinforcement-of-alternative-behaviour (DRA) schedule. The overall reinforcement rate in the DRA context was equal to the sum of the separate stimulus contexts. Combining the separate stimulus contexts during extinction reduced resistance to change of target responding relative to in the DRA context. Therefore, training alternative responses in separate contexts circumvents enhancing the persistence of undesirable behavior observed with methods standard for decreasing problem behavior. Moreover, these findings elucidate reinforcement conditions contributing to the persistence and relapse of behavior and provide a framework from which interventions for problem behavior might be developed.