Psychology Midterm Case Assessment 1). Research Methods (Subheader # 1)

Read the attached research article “None of the As in ABA stands for autism: Dispelling the myths” and complete the following:

Compose a two paragraph summary and one implication paragraph over the article with the following requirements:

O APA format

? In-text citations required.

? Reference the article

2). Fields of Psychology (Subheader # 2)

Read the following article Guilty Verdict for Young Woman Who Urged Friend to Kill Himself and complete the following:

Summarize the article in one paragraph (5-6 sentences)
Explain how this article can relate back to the following fields of psychology

O Research (4-5 sentences)

O Memory (4-5 sentences)

O Learning (4-5 sentences)

*Make sure you are specific in how this article relates back to these three fields of psychology. Do not be generic in your responses*

*No citations or reference required*

3). Learning (Subheader # 3)

Tom is 4 years old with a diagnosis of autistic disorder and attends a school specifically for those on the autism spectrum. His problem behaviors consist of screaming, hitting, and throwing work materials on the ground. As a therapist, you would like to decrease one of his maladaptive behaviors. Choose one maladaptive behavior to decrease and compose a behavior plan in an attempt to decrease his behavior.

Conduct an appropriate preference assessment to identify a reinforcer. Explain the steps involved when performing a preference assessment (write it out, no bullet points).
Decide on a schedule of reinforcement and discuss its implementation.
What happens if the child displays the behavior?

O How will you handle the behavior?

O What are some preventative measures you can take to prevent these behaviors from happening in the future? Explain in detail.

O Pretend you have to implement a punishment procedure when the maladaptive behavior is displayed; give an example of how you would deliver a positive and negative punishment.

*To answer these questions effectively, you must pretend you are in a therapy session*

* No citations or reference required*

4). Memory (Subheader # 4)

Find two peer-reviewed research article discussing preventative measures in Alzheimer’s disease. Complete the following:

Find an article through the Lone Star College Library Research Database.
Compose a two-three paragraph summary of the article.

O The summary must include the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease and its impact on memory.

Identify and discuss one preventative measure (5-6 sentences)
In text citations required.
You must reference the 2 articles.

OPINIONS & PERSPECTIVES

None of the As in ABA stand for autism: Dispelling the myths*

KAROLA DILLENBURGER1 & MICKEY KEENAN2

Queen’s University Belfast, Ireland and 2

The University of Ulster at Coleraine, Ireland

Keywords: applied behavior analysis (ABA), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), misunderstanding

Psychology Midterm Case Assessment Introduction

Interventions that are based on scientific principles

of applied behavior analysis (ABA) are recognized as effective treatments for children with autism pectrum disorder (ASD) by many governments and professionals (Office of the Surgeon General, 2000; Ontario IBI Initiative, 2002). However, many still view ABA as one of many treatments for autism and contend that it should be part of an eclectic mix of interventions. This paper addresses this issue by outlining what ABA is and how ABA is related to the array of treatments for ASD. With approximately 1 in 100 children diagnosed with ASD, it is important for professionals to understand ABA accurately.

Getting it right ABA is not a ‘‘therapy for autism’’ (Chiesa, 2005); instead, it is the science on which a wide range of techniques are based that have been used to help people with a variety of behaviors and diagnoses, autism bison of them.

Like most other sciences, behaviour analysis encapsulates three distinct but related fields:

(1) Philosophy of the science: behaviourism.

(2) Basic experimental research: Experimental

analysis of behaviour.

(3) Applied research: Applied behaviour analysis

(ABA).

(1) Behaviourism: The philosophy of the science of behavior

Behaviourism defines behaviour as anything a person does. Behaviour can have one or more dimensions, such as frequency, duration, and/or latency; can be overt (public) or covert (private); can be observed and recorded by one (self) or more persons, and lawful, in as much as it is influenced by environmental events.

The key point of behaviourism is that what people do

can be understood. Traditionally, both the layperson

and psychologist have tried to understand behaviour by seeing it as an outcome of what we think, what we feel, what we want, what we calculate, and etcetera. But we don’t have to think about behavior that way. We could look upon it as a process that occurs in its own right and has its own causes. And those causes are very oftenfound in the external environment. (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007, p. 15)

One of the main advantages of defining behaviour as ‘‘anything a person does,’’ apart from being inherently a holistic perspective, is the way that it permits ‘‘private behaviour’’ (e.g., thinking and cognition, and feelings and emotions) to be considered when developing explanations. A child who behaves in certain ways (e.g., makes no social contact, engages in repetitive, self-stimulatory behaviour) is typically said to have ASD, and ASD is referred to then as the reason (i.e., cause or

*This manuscript was accepted under the Editorship of Roger J. Stancliffe.

Correspondence: Dr Karola Dillenburger, School of Education, Queen’s University Belfast, 69/71 University Street, Belfast, BT7 1HL, Ireland.

Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, June 2009; 34(2): 193–195

ISSN 1366-8250 print/ISSN 1469-9532 online ª 2009 Australasian Society for the Study of Intellectual Disability Inc.

DOI: 10.1080/13668250902845244

explanation) for the said behaviors; ‘‘he does this because he has ASD.’’ In reality, though, the term ASD is merely a ‘‘summary label’’ (Grant & Evans, 1994) for the full range of the child’s behaviors, not the cause of them.

The philosophical basis of modern behavior analysis stems from the early work of Skinner (e.g., Skinner, 1938) and sits in stark contrast to the earlier methodological behaviorism, in which only publicly observable behavior was considered relevant to psychology (Leigland, 1992). In contrast, today’s behavior analysts consider ‘‘everything a dead man cannot do’’ as in the purview of analysis.

(2) Experimental analysis of behaviour

The laboratory-based experimental analysis of behavior has evolved from over 100 years of research and has lead to the discovery of many principles of behavior; for example, respondent (or classical)

conditioning, operant conditioning, derived relational

responding, and so forth (Sidman, 1994).

(3) Applied behaviour analysis (ABA)

Applied Behaviour Analysis is the science in which

tactics derived from the principles of behaviour are

applied systematically to improve socially significant

behaviour and experimentation is used to identify the

variables responsible for behaviour change. (Cooper et al.,

2007, p. 20)

ABA brings improvements and change in socially

relevant behaviours within the context of the

individual’s social environment; is conducted within

the scientific framework; focuses on functional

relationships and replicable procedures; is conceptually

systematic and reflective; achieves measurable

changes in relevant target behaviours that last across

time and environments; is accountable, public,

doable, empowering, optimistic; and is more effective

than eclectic treatments. Aversive methods are

avoided in favour of interventions based on functional

assessment and functional analysis and positive

reinforcement.

Dispelling the myths about ABA and autism

The effectiveness of ABA-based intervention in ASDs

has been well documented through 5 decades of

research by using the single-subject methodology and in

controlled studies of comprehensive early intensive

behavioural intervention programs in the university

and community settings. (Myers & Johnson, 2007,

1164)

Many lay people as well as professionals equate the

pioneering work of Lovaas (1987) with ABA.

However, behaviour analysts at the Princeton Child

Development Institute demonstrated the effectiveness

of early, comprehensive, intensive ABA 2 years

prior to the publication of Lovaas’s study (Ferster &

DeMyer, 1961). Since then, more than 19,000

papers have been published using ABA within a

variety of areas, including well over 500 studies

concentrating on children with ASD (Anderson &

Romanczyk, 1999).

When ABA is mistakenly categorised as a therapy

for autism, rather than as a science, it is listed

alongside a range of techniques such as Discrete Trial

Training (DTT), Picture Exchange Communication

System (PECS), Verbal Behavior Analysis (VBA),

Precision Teaching, generalisation and skill maintenance

training, Pivotal Response Training (PRT),

prompting and prompt fading, imitation and

instruction, Aggression Replacement Training (ART),

shaping, Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI),

chaining, differential reinforcement, incidental teaching,

extinction, and others (Green, 1996). However,

it is the knowledge base gathered from the science of

ABA that underpins all of these techniques. For

practitioners, this means that learning specific techniques

is not the same as learning the science.

Training and professional certification

The Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB,

2007) certifies and regulates ABA professionals.

There are two levels of certification. Board Certified

Behavior Analysts (BCBA) must have at least Masters

degree level training in behaviour analysis as well as

1,500 hours supervised independent fieldwork experience

prior to taking a rigorous 4-hour exam. At

present there are nearly 3,500 BCBAs worldwide.

Board Certified Associate Behavior Analysts (BCABA),

who since January 2009 are now termed Board

Certified assistant Behavior Analysts (BCaBA), must

have at least Bachelor degree level training in

behaviour analysis and 1,000 hours supervised

independent fieldwork experience prior to taking

the exam, and must be supervised by a BCBA

afterwards.

Discussion

In this paper we made three important points to

dispel the myths of the relationship between ABA

and autism treatment:

(1) ABA is an applied science that has evolved

from more than 100 years of research.

194 K. Dillenburger & M. Keenan

(2) This scientific research has produced a

wealth of evidence-based intervention procedures,

which are in turn derived from or

related to several more basic behavioural

principles.

(3) These procedures have been applied with

considerable success in the treatment of

autism. However, readers should not equate

ABA with any particular application or

program (e.g., Discrete Trial Training).

The scientific method applied to the study of

individual’s behaviours was pioneered by ABA. It is

not autism specific, but it guides the development of

techniques that address any socially relevant behaviour.

When applied to children who display autistic

behaviours, ABA is method driven only in the sense

that the scientific method guides decision making

with respect to data collected. By responding to the

specific needs of each individual within their social

context, ABA offers a holistic and comprehensive

alternative to an eclectic mixture of techniques

that are not anchored in a science of behaviour

(Howard, Sparkman, Cohen, Green, & Stanislaw,

2005; Zachor, Ben-Itzchak, Rabinovich, & Lahat,

2007).

References

Anderson, S. R., & Romanczyk, R. G. (1999). Early intervention

for young children with autism: Continuum-based behavioral

models. Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe

Handicaps, 24, 162–173.

Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB). (2007). Retrieved

10 October 2007 from http://www.bacb.com

Chiesa, M. (2005). ABA is not ‘a therapy for autism’. In M.

Keenan, M. Henderson, P.K. Kerr, & K. Dillenburger (Eds.),

Applied behaviour analysis and autism: Building a future together

(pp. 225–240). London: Jessica Kingsley.

Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2007). Applied

behavior analysis (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice

Hall.

Ferster, C. B., & DeMyer, M. K. (1961). The development of

performances in autistic children in an automatically controlled

environment. Journal of Chronic Disease, 13, 312–345.

Grant, L., & Evans, A. (1994). Principles of behavior analysis.

New York: HarperCollins.

Green, G. (1996). Early behavioral intervention for autism: What

does research tell us? In C. Maurice, G. Green, & S. C. Luce

(Eds.), Behavioral intervention for young children with autism: A

manual for parents and professionals (pp. 29–44). Austin, TX:

Pro-Ed.

Howard, J. S., Sparkman, C. R., Cohen, H. G., Green, G., &

Stanislaw, H. (2005). A comparison of intensive behavior

analytic and eclectic treatments for young children with autism.

Research in Developmental Disabilities, 26, 359–383.

Leigland, S. (Ed.). (1992). Radical behaviorism: Willard Day on

psychology and philosophy. Reno, NV: Context Press.

Lovaas, O. I. (1987). Behavioral treatment and normal educational

and intellectual functioning in young autistic children.

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 55, 3–9.

Myers, S. M., & Johnson, C. P. (2007). Management of

children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Pediatrics, 120,

1162–1182.

Ontario IBI Initiative. (2002). Retrieved 10 October 2008 from

http://www.bbbautism.com/ont_new_funding.htm

Sidman, M. (1994). Equivalence relations and behavior: A research

story. Boston: Authors Cooperative.

Skinner, B. F. (1938). Behavior of organisms: An experimental

analysis. New York: Appleton-Century.

Office of the Surgeon General (OSG). (2000). Mental health: A

report of the Surgeon General. Retrieved 10 December 2008 from

http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth

Zachor, D. A., Ben-Itzchak, E., Rabinovich, A.-L., & Lahat, E.

(2007). Change in autism core symptoms with intervention.

Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 1, 304–317

Midterm Case Assessment

Please submit your paper to the dropbox titled “Midterm Case Assessments” by 11:59PM, Sunday, March 10, 2019. No late assignments accepted.

1). Research Methods (Sub header # 1)

Read the attached research article “None of the As in ABA stand for autism: Dispelling the myths” and complete the following:

Compose a two paragraph summary and one implication paragraph over the article with the following requirements:

O APA format

? In text citations required.

? Reference the article

2). Fields of Psychology (Sub header # 2)

Read the following article Guilty Verdict for Young Woman Who Urged Friend to Kill Himself and complete the following:

Summarize the article in one paragraph (5-6 sentences)
Explain how this article can relate back to the following fields of psychology

O Research (4-5 sentences)

O Memory (4-5 sentences)

O Learning (4-5 sentences)

*Make sure you are specific in how this article relates back to these three fields of psychology. Do not be generic in your responses*

*No citations or reference required*

3). Learning (Sub header # 3)

Conduct an appropriate preference assessment to identify a reinforcer. Explain the steps involved when performing a preference assessment (write it out, no bullet points).
Decide on a schedule of reinforcement and discuss its implementation.
What happens if the child displays the behavior?

O How will you handle the behavior?

O What are some preventative measures you can take to prevent these behaviors from happening in the future? Explain in detail.

O Pretend you have to implement a punishment procedure when the maladaptive behavior is displayed; give an example of how you would deliver a positive and negative punishment.

*To answer this questions effectively, you must pretend you are in a therapy session*

* No citations or reference required*

4). Memory (Sub header # 4)

Find two peer-reviewed research article discussing preventative measures in Alzheimer’s disease. Complete the following:

Find an article through the Lone Star College Library Research Database.
Compose a two-three paragraph summary of the article.

O The summary must include the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease and its impact on memory.

Identify and discuss one preventative measure (5-6 sentences)
In text citations required.
You must reference the 2 articles.

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JESS BIDGOOD

JUNE 16, 2017

Michelle Carter Found Guilty in Texting Suicide Case

In a rare legal finding, a judge found Michelle Carter, 20, guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Ms. Carter urged her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, to commit suicide through text messages and phone calls in 2014.

By SARAH STEIN KERR and NEETI UPADHYE on Publish DateJune 16, 2017. Photo by Pool photo by Pat Greenhouse

TAUNTON, Mass. — For a case that had played out in thousands of text messages, what made Michelle Carter’s behavior a crime, a judge concluded, came in a single phone call. Just as her friend Conrad Roy III stepped out of the truck he had filled with lethal fumes, Ms. Carter told him over the phone to get back in the cab and then listened to him die without trying to help him.

That command, and Ms. Carter’s failure to help, said Judge Lawrence Moniz of Bristol County Juvenile Court, made her guilty of involuntary manslaughter in a case that had consumed New England, left two families destroyed and raised questions about the scope of legal responsibility. Ms. Carter, now 20, is to be sentenced Aug. 3 and faces up to 20 years in prison.

The judge’s decision, handed down on Friday, stunned many legal experts with its conclusion that words alone could cause a suicide.

“This is saying that what she did is killing him, that her words literally killed him, that the murder weapon here was her words,” said Matthew Segal, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which raised concerns about the case to the state’s highest court. “That is a drastic expansion of criminal law in Massachusetts.”

Ms. Carter’s defense team is expected to appeal the verdict. Legal experts said that it seemed to extend manslaughter law into new territory, and that if it stood, it could have far-reaching implications, at least in Massachusetts.

“Will the next case be a Facebook posting in which someone is encouraged to commit a crime?” Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge and Harvard Law professor, asked. “This puts all the things that you say in the mix of criminal responsibility.”

Judge Moniz unspooled his verdict in a packed courtroom, which was silent except for his voice and Ms. Carter’s gasping sobs. By the time he told Ms. Carter to stand up, and pronounced her guilty, the two families seated on either side of the courtroom’s aisle — Ms. Carter’s and Mr. Roy’s — wept, too.

The verdict concluded an emotionally draining weeklong trial in southeastern Massachusetts involving two troubled teenagers who had built a virtual relationship largely on texting from 2012 to 2014. Ms. Carter, then 17, started out encouraging Mr. Roy, 18, to seek treatment for his depression but then abruptly changed, and in the two weeks before he killed himself on July 12, 2014, she encouraged him, repeatedly, to do it.

For all the scrutiny during the trial of their texts, the judge based his guilty verdict on a phone conversation.

Once Mr. Roy drove his truck to a remote spot at a Kmart parking lot, the two ceased texting and instead talked on their cellphones. When Mr. Roy, with fumes gathering in the cab of his truck, apparently had a change of heart and stepped out, the judge said, Ms. Carter told him to get back in, fully knowing “his ambiguities, his fears, his concerns.”

“This court finds,” the judge added, “that instructing Mr. Roy to get back in the truck constituted wanton and reckless conduct.”

But the phone conversation was not recorded, and the only evidence of its content came three months after the suicide in a text from Ms. Carter to a friend.

“Sam his death is my fault, like honestly I could have stopped him,” Ms. Carter wrote. “I was on the phone with him and he got out of the car because it was working and he got scared.”

She said she then instructed him “to get back in.”

The prosecution made this phone call, as described in Ms. Carter’s text, the heart of its case. And the judge accepted it as factual and incriminating.

The defense strongly argued that there was nothing to substantiate what Ms. Carter had said on the phone and insisted that Mr. Conrad, who had tried to kill himself before, was determined to take his own life, regardless of anything Ms. Carter did or said.

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Judge Moniz acknowledged that Mr. Roy had taken steps to cause his own death, like researching suicide methods, obtaining a generator and then the water pump with which he ultimately poisoned himself. Indeed, Judge Moniz said that Ms. Carter’s text messages pressuring him to kill himself had not, on their own, caused his death.

Instead, the judge zeroed in on the moment that Mr. Roy climbed out of his truck.

“He breaks that chain of self-causation by exiting the vehicle,” Judge Moniz said. “He takes himself out of that toxic environment that it has become.” That, the judge said, was a clear indication that Mr. Roy — as on his previous suicide attempts — wanted to save himself.

But, the judge said, Ms. Carter had a duty to help Mr. Roy after she had put him in danger by ordering him back into the truck.

“She admits in a subsequent text that she did nothing, she did not call the police or Mr. Roy’s family,” the judge said. “She called no one. And finally, she did not issue a simple additional instruction: ‘Get out of the truck.’”

The verdict stunned many legal specialists because suicide is generally considered, legally, to result from a person’s free will.

Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University, said the decision surprised him because the manslaughter charge seemed “a stretch” to begin with. Because Ms. Carter was not at the scene, and Mr. Roy ultimately acted alone, he said, it was difficult to prove she “caused” the death.

Ms. Gertner of Harvard said that likely grounds for appeal would be that the verdict had “extended the law of involuntary manslaughter to an arena into which it hasn’t been extended before — the notion of liability with respect to a suicide for someone who failed to act, who wasn’t present, who didn’t provide the instrumentalities for the suicide and the concept of a failure to intervene are all unique and that’s what would be litigated.”

At its core, the case was about two troubled teenagers and the fatal path their online relationship took.

Psychology Midterm Case Assessment

Mr. Roy was a gentle but deeply depressed teenager who worked as a tugboat captain. He had graduated from high school with a college scholarship but worried about the social anxiety he might experience there.Ms. Carter was a high school student with homework to finish and a love of the television show “Glee,” but she said her life was controlled by an eating disorder. She too was wrought by social anxiety, desperately seeking the approval of friends whom she admired but worried did not truly like her.

When Mr. Roy told Ms. Carter in June 2014 that he was considering suicide, she told him he had a lot to live for and urged him to seek help.

“I’m trying my best to dig you out,” Ms. Carter wrote.

“I don’t wanna be dug out,” Mr. Roy answered, adding later, “I WANT TO DIE.”

By early July, she began to embrace the idea. “If this is the only way you think you’re gonna be happy, heaven will welcome you with open arms,” she wrote.

They talked at length about how he could kill himself with carbon monoxide. “If you emit 3200 ppm of it for five to ten mins you will die within a half hour,” she wrote. In the last days of his life, she told him repeatedly, “You just need to do it.”

Psychology Midterm Case Assessment

Prosecutors said Ms. Carter wanted Mr. Roy to kill himself because she wanted the sympathy that would come as the “grieving girlfriend.” Ms. Carter’s lawyers cast her as a naïve teenager who wanted to help people and was not even on the scene when Mr. Roy took his life

But the prosecution argued in its closing — and evidently, Judge Moniz agreed — that Ms. Carter’s physical absence was immaterial.

“The phones that we have now allowed you to be virtually present with somebody,” Katie Rayburn, an assistant district attorney, said, adding, “She was in his ear, she was in his mind, she was on the phone, and she was telling him to get back in the car even though she knew he was going to die

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