Emotional Overtones of Behavior Analysis Terms in English and Five Other Languages.

It has been suggested that the language of behavior analysis is not always consumer-friendly, but the very limited empirical support for this claim comes from examining jargon in English. We consulted publicly available data sets to shed light on one specific aspect of the jargon problem: how non-English speakers may react emotionally to the technical vocabulary of behavior analysis. Previous research has suggested that English speakers may experience English technical terms as unpleasant. Here, we show that the same may apply when speakers of other languages (Egyptian Arabic, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish) encounter translated technical terms. Our results, although constrained by the availability of data for only a small sample of relevant terms, suggest that responses of English speakers to English terms may be a good predictor of emotional responding to translated terms. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical study to address international ramifications of a so-called marketing problem in behavior analysis. Our main purpose is to call attention to the need for cross-language and cross-cultural studies on factors that affect public perceptions and acceptance of behavior analysis.

Parent training: acquisition and generalization of discrete trials teaching skills with parents of children with autism.

This study examined the effects of an intensive parent training program on the acquisition and generalization of discrete trial teaching (DTT) procedures with two parents of children with autism. Over the course of the program, parents applied the DTT procedures to teach four different functional skills to their children, which allowed for an assessment of "free" and programmed generalization across stimulus exemplars. Parent training was conducted by the first author utilizing instructions, demonstrations, role-play, and practice with feedback. Parents' use of DTT skills and children's correct and incorrect responding were measured. A within-subject multiple-baseline across stimulus exemplars (functional skills taught) design was employed both to demonstrate control of the training program over parents' correct use of DTT, and to allow a preliminary investigation of the generalized effects of training to multiple stimulus exemplars. Results demonstrate initial control of the training program over parent responding, and the extent to which each parent extended her use of DTT procedures across untrained and topographically different child skills. The potential for designing more generalizable and thus more cost-effective parent training programs is discussed.

Normative Emotional Responses to Behavior Analysis Jargon or How Not to Use Words to Win Friends and Influence People.

It has been suggested that non-experts regard the jargon of behavior analysis as abrasive, harsh, and unpleasant. If this is true, excessive reliance on jargon could interfere with the dissemination of effective services. To address this often discussed but rarely studied issue, we consulted a large, public domain list of English words that have been rated by members of the general public for the emotional reactions they evoke. Selected words that behavior analysts use as technical terms were compared to selected words that are commonly used to discuss general science, general clinical work, and behavioral assessment. There was a tendency for behavior analysis terms to register as more unpleasant than other kinds of professional terms and also as more unpleasant than English words generally. We suggest possible reasons for this finding, discuss its relevance to the challenge of deciding how to communicate with consumers who do not yet understand or value behavior analysis, and advocate for systematic research to guide the marketing of behavior analysis.

Social antecedents of children's eyewtness testimony a single-subject experimental analysis.

In a laboratory simulation, a single-subject design was used to examine the effects of two types of social influence on children's eyewitness testimony, which has not been the subject of systematic behavioral analyses. This study replicates and extends findings from group-comparison studies, and shows that a topic of pressing social importance is amenable to analysis at the individual level, and therefore, potentially, to a behavioral analysis.