Use of restraint during crisis intervention is of great concern as these situations evoke stress responses in the direct care staff that respond to them. This stress response often leads to non- neutral reactions. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has been used to effectively de- literalize task-related stimuli in individuals that share similar physiological symptoms of stress to those that direct care staff might experience during crisis. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how an ACT intervention would improve direct care staff performance during crisis interventions and increase accuracy of incident report writing. Results indicated that four out of the six participants improved their performance following ACT training, while the most improvement was observed in accuracy in incident report writing. This study expands upon the limited research available on the utility of ACT in the workplace. Implications of this study suggest that ACT may be a beneficial intervention to increase staff performance during crisis.

The present study evaluated the validity and efficacy of the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Relational Training System Equivalence Module (PEAK-E) using a single-case, multiple baseline across skills design with 3 adolescents with autism. Total scores from the PEAK-E assessment (PEAK-E-A) and programs were used to evaluate the degree to which the assessment was able to identify language skills to teach using the PEAK-E curriculum, and how effective the PEAK-E curriculum was at teaching those target skills. Baseline results suggested that the programs selected using the PEAK-E-A were not currently in the participant’s language repertoire. Upon completion of 9 total programs across three participants (3 programs per participant), mastery was achieved and all derived relations emerged for all 9 programs. The PEAK-E pre-assessment, assessment, and training programs were proven to be valid and efficacious at improving participant’s language skill repertoire. Keywords: autism, applied behavior analysis, verbal behavior, derived relational responding, stimulus equivalence, PEAK

The purpose of the current investigation is to two-fold: 1) to determine whether relational training increases block design and IQ score 2) to determine if relational training results in increased performance on block design programs. The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-IV) for Children intelligence assessment was assessed to the participant prior to baseline and after training, and programs adapted from the PEAK-Relational Training System were used for relational training procedures. A multiple-baseline design across skills (relational frames) design was used in the present study. Test relations (Y-Z) were probed during training after 3 training trial blocks and novel stimuli were used. The results indicate that the relational procedures were effective in increasing IQ on the block design subtest. The implications of the current study are discussed.

Therapist burnout is of primary concern for individuals who provide ABA therapy for those with autism or related disabilities. Prolonged high levels of work-related stress increase the risk of negative interactions and emotional exhaustion among workers. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) may alleviate this problem. ACT has been found to decrease levels of perceived work-related stress among direct care staff. The primary purpose of the study was to evaluate whether ACT would improve positive interactions among therapists for children with autism spectrum disorder. The results indicated that the percentage of positive interactions had improved an average of 23.1% and procedural fidelity improved an average of 7% across all three participants. This study extends that of previous research by supporting the efficacy of ACT in work environments. One implication of the current study is that it could benefit the psychological well-being of ABA therapists. Future studies should examine whether ACT-exercises influence the way therapists address challenging behavior as it pertains to the quality of services delivered.

The current study sought to add to the literature on applying interdependent group-oriented contingency systems with randomized components to academic performance. This study expanded previous work, which has only examined effects on elementary classrooms and students with disabilities, by implementing a similar intervention within a general education, secondary classroom. Given the restricted time that teachers have to learn and implement interventions, while simultaneously carrying out all their additional responsibilities in the classroom, it is necessary for school psychologists to consider these limitations when recommending interventions. In previous work involving interdependent group-oriented contingencies, the delivery of reinforcement has been relatively immediate. While this is an ideal arrangement, it may be infeasible for middle and high school teachers to ensure reinforcement of academic performance occurs immediately within the class period. This study examined whether the delivery of reinforcement can be delayed within an interdependent group-oriented contingency system and still improve the academic performance of students in the classroom, which will allow the teacher more time for evaluating the quality of student work and, in turn, impact the acceptability of the intervention. One middle school, general education classroom served as the setting for this study. Academic performance data, including in-class work completion and accuracy rates, were collected class-wide and data on social behavior variables were gathered for 3 students exhibiting moderate to high levels of off-task behavior, based on teacher perception. An alternating treatments design was employed with two intervention conditions: one condition included immediate reinforcement and the other involved delivering reinforcement to students a day later. The interdependent group-oriented contingency intervention implemented included procedures for randomly selecting target behaviors, criteria, and reinforcers.

The current study evaluated the efficacy of a training series designed to teach typical school-based behavior support professionals to build behavioral interventions from functional behavioral assessment (FBA) information. The study was conducted in three stages. First, a descriptive assessment examined the extent to which typical school team leaders demonstrated knowledge of core behavior support plan (BSP) development features following a four-part training series on the development and implementation of function based supports. The second stage of the study assessed the extent to which participants who met criteria for BSP development during training were then able to lead a typical school team in building a BSP that was perceived by expert behavior analysts as "technically sound." In the final stage, a nonconcurrent multiple-baseline design was used to determine if there is a functional relationship between implementation of BSPs led by typical school-team leaders who received the training and improvement in the level of student problem behavior. Thirteen school professionals participated in four 1-hour "From Basic FBA to BSP" training sessions. A post test analysis of BSP knowledge indicated that the participants ended training with the knowledge needed to use FBA information to develop student BSPs. Six of the 13 professionals went on to lead school-based teams in the development of BSPs that were rated by outside experts as technically adequate. Direct observation data were collected on student behavior during the implementation of five of the six resulting BSPs, and decreases in problem behavior and increases in academic engagement were seen for all five student participants. Additionally, participating team leaders and classroom staff indicated that they found the procedures and tools used to be both acceptable and effective. These results document preliminary findings supporting the efficacy of a four-part training series used to teach typical school staff to use FBA data in designing student BSPs. Further implications for practice in schools and directions for future research are discussed.

In this study, a concurrent randomized multiple baseline across three parent-child dyads single-case design was employed to evaluate the effects of a brief three-week parent training program, titled Practiced Routines. The Practiced Routines parent training program included positive behavior supports (PBS) and mindfulness strategies within the context of natural family routines. Three mothers and their children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) participated. Visual analysis combined with a standardized mean difference analysis revealed mixed results with a medium effect found for increases in parent behavioral strategy use and small effects found for reductions in parent stress and child challenging behavior. All three mothers rated the social validity of the Practiced Routine program favorably. Implications for science and practice in educational and behavior health early intervention for families of children with ASD are discussed.

[pt] As configurações familiares estão em processo de diversificação, de maneira que o modelo tradicional de família, formado por homem e mulher unidos em matrimônio, não é o único a ser legitimado pela sociedade. Esses diversos arranjos familiares podem resultar em diferentes concepções sobre a família. Considerando tais mudanças, este estudo teve como objetivo geral investigar as concepções de famílias para crianças, considerando suas produções gráficas e relatos verbais sob a perspectiva teórica da análise do comportamento. Participaram da amostra 108 crianças, com idades entre cinco e 12 anos (M é igual à 8,58; DP é igual à 1,54), residentes na cidade do Rio de Janeiro (RJ), sendo 51 meninas (47,2 por cento) e 57 meninos (52,8 por cento) e seus respectivos responsáveis (71,3 por cento mulheres; M idade é igual à 36,9; DP é igual à 7,31). Foi solicitado às crianças que desenhassem uma família e requeridos esclarecimentos sobre o desenho, os quais foram anotados em uma folha de registro. Ao final, foi questionado à criança o que era uma família para ela. O conteúdo foi armazenado em formato de texto e áudio. Além disso, foi solicitado aos responsáveis que preenchessem um questionário sociodemográfico contendo informações sobre a família da criança. Para analisar os dados do formulário de registro e do questionário sociodemográfico foram realizadas análises descritivas e o Teste qui-quadrado. No que concerne aos dados do relato verbal da criança, foi realizada uma análise lexical proposta pelo programa IRaMuTeQ e uma análise de conteúdo baseada em Bardin. Os resultados indicaram que as crianças retratam o estereótipo de família tradicional, constituído por pai, mãe e filhos, em seus desenhos (67,6 por cento; n é igual à 73) e relatos. Por outro lado, verificou-se que as crianças entendem a família a partir da dimensão afetiva, e não somente associada aos espaços comuns de convivência e moradia. Esse estudo propôs novas perspectivas empíricas e teóricas para a avaliação do desenho da família e relato verbal. Sugeriu, ainda, a necessidade de melhor compreender de que forma os diversos arranjos familiares são apresentados pelas crianças. / [en] The family configurations are in the process of diversification, so that the traditional family model, formed by man and woman united in matrimony, is not the only one to be legitimized by society. These various family arrangements can result in different conceptions about the family. Considering these changes, this study had as general objective to investigate the conceptions of families for children, considering their graphic productions and verbal reports from the theoretical perspective of behavioral analysis. A study has a total of 108 children aged five to 12 years (M equals to 8.58, SD equals to 1.54), living in the city of Rio de Janeiro (RJ), 51 girls (47.2 percent) and 57 boys (52.8 percent) and their respective managers (71.3 percent women, M age equals to 36.9, SD equals to 7.31). The children were asked to draw a family and required clarifications about the drawing, which were noted on a record sheet. In the end, the child was asked what a family was for her. Content was stored in both text and audio format. In addition, respondents were asked to complete a sociodemographic questionnaire containing information about the child s family. To analyze the data of the registration form and the sociodemographic questionnaire, descriptive analyzes and the chi-square test were performed. Regarding the verbal reports of the child, a lexical analysis was carried out, proposed by the IRaMuTeQ program and a content analysis based on Bardin. The results indicated that the children portrayed the traditional family stereotype, consisting of father, mother and children, in their drawings (67.6 percent, n equals to 73) and reports. On the other hand, it was verified that the children understand the family from the affective dimension, and not only associated to the common spaces of coexistence and dwelling. This study proposed new empirical and theoretical perspectives for the evaluation of family design and verbal reporting. He also suggested the need to better understand how the various family arrangements are presented by children.

abstract: Crises or large-scale emergencies such as earthquakes and hurricanes cause massive damage to lives and property. Crisis response is an essential task to mitigate the impact of a crisis. An effective response to a crisis necessitates information gathering and analysis. Traditionally, this process has been restricted to the information collected by first responders on the ground in the affected region or by official agencies such as local governments involved in the response. However, the ubiquity of mobile devices has empowered people to publish information during a crisis through social media, such as the damage reports from a hurricane. Social media has thus emerged as an important channel of information which can be leveraged to improve crisis response. Twitter is a popular medium which has been employed in recent crises. However, it presents new challenges: the data is noisy and uncurated, and it has high volume and high velocity. In this work, I study four key problems in the use of social media for crisis response: effective monitoring and analysis of high volume crisis tweets, detecting crisis events automatically in streaming data, identifying users who can be followed to effectively monitor crisis, and finally understanding user behavior during crisis to detect tweets inside crisis regions. To address these problems I propose two systems which assist disaster responders or analysts to collaboratively collect tweets related to crisis and analyze it using visual analytics to identify interesting regions, topics, and users involved in disaster response. I present a novel approach to detecting crisis events automatically in noisy, high volume Twitter streams. I also investigate and introduce novel methods to tackle information overload through the identification of information leaders in information diffusion who can be followed for efficient crisis monitoring and identification of messages originating from crisis regions using user behavior analysis. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Computer Science 2015

Submitted by TAISA SCARPIN GUAZI null (taisa_guazi@hotmail.com) on 2017-08-15T20:50:00Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Taísa.pdf: 1306309 bytes, checksum: 4293392198ac4c50c1741810879ff2d1 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Monique Sasaki (sayumi_sasaki@hotmail.com) on 2017-08-22T17:58:46Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 guazi_ts_me_bauru.pdf: 1306309 bytes, checksum: 4293392198ac4c50c1741810879ff2d1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-22T17:58:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 guazi_ts_me_bauru.pdf: 1306309 bytes, checksum: 4293392198ac4c50c1741810879ff2d1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-07-28 / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Em estudo anterior, Guazi e Laurenti identificaram a presença de reforçamento natural na manutenção do comportamento acadêmico de pesquisadores seniores. Contudo, as atuais contingências acadêmicas destoam, em muitos aspectos, das contingências às quais os pesquisadores seniores estavam expostos no início de suas carreiras. As atuais contingências acadêmicas estão permeadas, por exemplo, pelos fenômenos (relativamente recentes) do produtivismo acadêmico e da competitividade entre pesquisadores. Nesse sentido, os professores iniciantes, que ingressaram contemporaneamente na academia, parecem constituir uma geração de pesquisadores cujo perfil é diferente. Considerando esses aspectos, esta pesquisa objetivou identificar as diferenças e similaridades existentes entre as variáveis que controlam o comportamento acadêmico de professores seniores e iniciantes. Participaram desta pesquisa, de natureza exploratória, seis professores bolsistas de produtividade do CNPq que atuam nas áreas de Psicologia, Genética e Física – sendo selecionado, de cada área, um pesquisador sênior e um pesquisador iniciante. Os dados, coletados por meio de entrevistas, foram analisados pelo método de interpretação analítico-comportamental e organizados de modo a permitir a análise, em separado, das contingências originárias e mantenedoras do comportamento acadêmico dos participantes. As três participantes seniores deste estudo são mulheres brancas, que concluíram o doutorado na década de 1960 (os dados coletados permitiram considerar a variável gênero na análise do comportamento acadêmico das participantes seniores), e os participantes iniciantes, são três homens brancos, que se doutoraram entre 2009 e 2012. As contingências responsáveis por instalar o comportamento acadêmico das participantes seniores foram, preponderantemente, contingências de reforçamento positivo, as quais expuseram as entrevistadas à formação liberal. O padrão comportamental acadêmico dos participantes iniciantes, por outro lado, parece ter sido instalado por meio do emprego de regras. Na contemporaneidade, o comportamento acadêmico das participantes seniores parece ser mantido por meio de reforçamento positivo natural. Em contrapartida, as contingências responsáveis por manter o comportamento acadêmico dos participantes iniciantes, as quais estão relacionadas às atuais exigências de produtividade científica, parecem distanciar o comportamento acadêmico dos entrevistados das suas consequências naturais. As principais diferenças encontradas entre as contingências originárias e mantenedoras do comportamento acadêmico dos participantes seniores e iniciantes parecem aludir às diferentes contingências a que os entrevistados foram expostos ao longo da formação básica e superior, e às mudanças pelas quais a educação e ciência brasileira passaram nas últimas décadas. Este estudo contribuiu para a compreensão das práticas científicas contemporâneas, bem como permitiu elucidar as contribuições da análise do comportamento para esta temática. A interpretação dos dados coletados sugere a necessidade de que mais pesquisas, que versam sobre as atuais contingências institucionais acadêmicas, sejam feitas. / In previous study, Guazi and Laurenti identified the presence of natural reinforcement in maintaining the academic behavior of senior researchers. However, current academic contingencies are in many ways at odds with the contingencies to which senior researchers were exposed early in their careers. The current academic contingencies are permeated, for example, by the (relatively recent) phenomena of academic productivism and competitiveness among researchers. In this sense, the beginner professors, who entered the academy contemporaneously, seem to constitute a generation of researchers whose profile is different. Taking these matters into consideration, this research aimed to identify the differences and similarities between the variables that control the academic behavior of senior and beginner professors. Participated in this exploratory research, six academic professors with productiveness scholarships granted by the CNPq who work in the fields of Psychology, Genetics and Physics - a senior researcher and a beginner researcher were selected from each area. The data, collected through interviews were analyzed by the Behavior Analysis interpretation method and organized to allow the analysis, separately, of the contingencies that originated and maintained the participants' academic behavior. The three senior participants in this study were white women, who completed their doctorate in the 1960s (the data collected allowed the gender variable to be considered in the analysis of the academic behavior of senior participants), and the beginner participants were three white men, who completed their doctorate between 2009 and 2012. The contingencies responsible for installing the academic behavior of the senior participants were, predominantly, contingencies of positive reinforcement, which exposed the interviewees to the liberal formation. The academic behavioral pattern of beginner participants, on the other hand, seems to have been installed through the use of rules. Currently, the academic behavior of senior participants seems to be maintained through natural positive reinforcement. On the other hand, the contingencies responsible for maintaining the academic behavior of the beginner participants, which are related to the current demands of scientific productivity, seem to distance the academic behavior of the interviewees from their natural consequences. The main differences found between the contingencies that originated and maintained the academic behavior of the senior and beginner participants seem to allude to the different contingencies to which the interviewees were exposed during basic and higher education, and the changes that Brazilian education and science have undergone in recent years decades. This study contributed to the understanding of the contemporary scientific practices, as well as allowed to elucidate the contributions of the analysis of the behavior to this theme. The interpretation of the data collected suggests the need for more studies on current academic institutional contingencies. / FAPESP: 2015/09081-9