BAAM - Behavior Analysis Association of Michigan

06/06/2025

BAAM Members and Friends:

Lisa Todd, PhD candidate in political science at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, sent us this research information request concerning the autism insurance reform efforts of a number of years ago. As you know, these insurance reform efforts were a major success and involved behavior analysts directly and indirectly. Several BAAM members and BAAM friends were involved in the effort. We are hoping you can help provide additional information for this analysis, to help understand, and potentially replicate, that work for future initiatives.

"I am writing to request your assistance with finding possible participants for my dissertation analyzing the state autism insurance reform efforts that took place from 2000-2019.

The research is focused on the advocacy and policy processes that ultimately led to insurance reform mandates. I am hoping to locate people who were involved in state-level insurance reform processes. In the next stage, I hope to interview those who were most involved, and to gather other valuable information about the reform process.

If you are willing to help, please complete this anonymous electronic survey by June 15, 2025:

https://waynestate.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eDKIh2RaAijDq1E

The survey should take approximately 10 minutes to complete. Please only complete it if you are at least 18 years of age and a resident of the United States. You do not have to have been involved in autism insurance reform yourself, and you do not have to be a behavior analyst, parent, health care provider, or other member of the autism community to complete the survey

Thank you for your time and consideration. If you have questions about this study now or in the future, you may contact me, Lisa Todd, at:

[email protected]

If you have questions or concerns that you do not wish to ask of me, please contact my faculty advisor Brady Baybeck at:

[email protected].

The Wayne State University Institutional Review Board has determined that this study is not human participant research (WSU IRB HPR Number: 2025 107).

Thank you,

Lisa Todd, MS, JD
PhD Candidate
Wayne State University

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02/17/2025

BAAM Members and Friends:

There is still space available to register for the 2025 BAAM Convention, to be held February 20-21, 2025 at the Student Center at Eastern Michigan University.

We have a wide variety of presentations on topics of interest to Behavior Analysts, as well as BACB CEU availability. See the schedule on the BehaviorLive site for details.

Please register directly on BehaviorLive. You may also register at the door. (But we recommend registering online.)

Special BAAM Convention Events include:

Thursday Keynote Address: "The Mock Trial of B.F. Skinner," a historical and conceptual play pitting B.F. Skinner and other notable behavior analysts against historical figures in psychology such as Noam Chomsky and Carl Rogers. This event is scheduled for Thursday at 1:30 PM in Ballrooms A & B.

Friday Keynote Address: "Ethics for Practicing Behavior Analysts: Challenges and Practical Solutions," by R. Wayne Fuqua of Western Michigan University. Wayne, recently retired after 48 years at WMU, will tell will review common challenges that might lead to lapses in ethical judgment and behavior. Wayne has supported and enhanced the behavior analytic community in Michigan for 48 years, and you don't want to miss this opportunity to hear him speak on this very relevant topic. This event is scheduled for Friday at 2:30 PM in Ballrooms A & B, just before the BAAM Poster Session and Social.

Friday Special Guest Address: "Towards Real-World Implementation of Digital Contingency Management for Substance Use Disorders" by Anne Fernandez of the University of Michigan. This presentation will talk about how contingency management (CM) is a highly effective treatment for substance use disorders, but remains underutilized in everyday clinical practice due to pragmatic challenges, lack of resources, and payer support. Fernandez and her collegues were recently profiled for their work on NPR, and we are lucky to have them be able to bring it to us. This event is scheduled for Friday at 1:30 PM in Ballrooms A & B

Friday Poster Session and Social: Come support student presenters, and some others, in their experimental and applied work in behavior analysis. Meet some of the speakers and get some snacks. Our students especially appreciate the attention feedback on their work, and we encourage everyone to stay for this closing event. The poster session begins on Friday at 3:30 PM in rooms 310 A & B.

03/30/2024

New message from the developer of CEU Helper. CEU Helper to be discontinued.

Dear Valued User of CEUHelper,

I hope this message finds you well. We're reaching out with important information regarding CEUHelper and the future availability of your certificates.

Sunsetting of CEUHelper

After thoughtful consideration and review, we have decided to sunset the CEUHelper platform. The last conference/event that the CEUHelper app will host on its app will be June 14, 2024. This decision comes as part of our commitment to the field of continuing education and the realization that our technology platform isn't equipped to handle the complexity of events that are now offered (e.g., hybrid, on-demand, virtual).

We want to assure you that we are dedicated to making this closing process as smooth and supportive as possible.

Certificate Download Deadline: July 31, 2024

As we prepare for this transition, all attendees must download their certificates by July 31, 2024.

After this date, access to CEUHelper (both the mobile app and web app) and your certificates will no longer be available. We strongly encourage you to take action well before the deadline to ensure you have all the documents you need.

Help Desk and Frequently Asked Questions

We have started to build out an FAQ to assist with some commonly asked questions. Our support team only works a few hours a week, so if you can please look at the FAQ before submitting a support ticket to see if you can resolve your issue on your own.
Should you encounter any issues or have questions regarding the download process, our support team is here to assist. Please reach out to us at [email protected].

Thank you for being a part of the CEUHelper community. Your dedication to professional development inspires us and we are sad to leave the continuing education space.

Stay awesome,

The CEUHelper Team
[email protected]

Taking the pain out of managing Continuing Education Units (CEUs) at conferences

01/11/2024

BAAM Convention:

Special Invited paper added, 10:30 am Friday, February 23, (CEUs pending approval.)

Linear and Ratio Line Graphs: An Experimental Study. Rick Kubina, Jr. (Pennsylvania State University)

Line graphs are ubiquitous in applied behavior analysis (ABA) for evaluating treatments and making decisions. While visual analysis via line graphs offers advantages like summarizing performance over time, the approach has faced criticism for issues like low interrater reliability. The present study investigated whether augmenting traditional line graphs could improve trend detection and reliability. Specifically, we compared three graph types: (1) a standard linear graph displaying a trend; (2) a linear graph with a quantified slope value; and (3) a ratio graph with a celeration line and celeration value. Results showed that the ratio graph with supplementary quantifications led to the most accurate and reliable trend detection, suggesting an approach that could strengthen visual analysis in ABA. Standardizing graphical displays through features like celeration lines and values may provide practitioners with enhanced precision and consistency when inspecting data and judging treatment efficacy. Further research should continue refining best practices for communicating single-subject design data through visualized aids to facilitate reliable decisions.

01/10/2024

Workshops at the BAAM Convention

Guy Bruce (Appealing Solutions): Organizational Performance Engineering for Provider, Parent, and Client Success.
Part I: Thursday, Feb 22, 9:00 - 11:50 am (CEUs pending approval)
Part II: Thursday, Feb 22, 2:30 - 5:20 pm 310B (CEUs pending approval)

Workshop Cost, Each Part: $100

Do you work as a program designer, staff trainer, supervisor, or director of an agency that provides educational services to clients with learning difficulties? Are you satisfied with your clients' progress? Behavior analysis developed a powerful technology for helping people, but too many clients don't receive the benefits. Why not? The easy answer is that employees don't do what they are told. But the employees' performance, just like their clients' performance, is a product of their environment. Do employees have the resources, training, and management necessary to help their clients achieve their goals? What about their supervisors and their staff trainers? What about their directors? Organizations are groups of individuals who must work together to provide their clients with the outcomes they want. The failure of clients to make adequate progress is not usually an individual employee performance problem, but a performance problem at the system process, and individual levels of the organization.

This two-part workshop will teach you how to design and implement a pragmatic, organizational performance engineering process to change how providers work together, so that every client makes efficient progress.

The EARS process has the following steps:
1) Evaluate client progress;
2) Analyze causes of provider performance problems;
3) Recommend changes in provider resources, training, and management;
and 4) Solve provider performance problems by designing and implementing recommended changes in provider resources, training, and management.

Workshop Objectives In Part I of this workshop, you will learn to:

1) Label examples of pragmatic and dogmatic approaches to behavior change.
2) Distinguish between the goals of scientists, engineers and technicians.
3) Describe the provider-recipient relationships needed to ensure efficient client progress.
4) Evaluate client products, performance, and progress using frequent, accurate, sensitive measures.
5) Analyze causes of provider performance problems using direct measures to identify can-do problems due to inadequate resources, know-how problems due to inadequate training, and want-to problems due to inadequate management.

The BAAM convention is a multi-track, session-oriented academic and professional meeting on all aspect of behavior analysis open to all.

01/10/2024

Workshops at the BAAM Convention

Aimee Kotrba PhD (Thriving Minds Behavioral Health): Unlocking the Mystery of Selective Mutism
Friday, February 23, 9:00 - 11:50 am (CEUs pending approval)

Workshop Cost: $40--Includes free Friday, one-day, registration for workshop attendees

Children with untreated Selective Mutism are at an increased risk for self-esteem issues, depression, school failure, social skill problems, and school refusal. Early and evidence-based therapeutic intervention is of upmost importance to decreasing anxiety and increase communication in children with Selective Mutism. Through the use of case studies and video examples, participants will learn how to identify and assess for Selective Mutism and what school and mental health professionals can do to help. Exposure- based interventions will be described, so that participants will leave with a clear behavioral intervention plan for both the clinic and school setting. Interventions are broken down into small, easily understood steps that participants can immediately use with their patients or students.

Workshop Objectives:

- Identify and evaluate for Selective Mutism in the clinic and school setting
- Describe what schools/parents can do to help
- Create a specific, evidence-based intervention plan focusing on exposure
- Develop special education plans for children with Selective Mutism
- Identify appropriate social and academic expectations

The BAAM convention is a multi-track, session-oriented academic and professional meeting on all aspect of behavior analysis open to all.

01/10/2024

Workshops at the BAAM Convention!

Barbara Esch (Esch Behavioral Consultants): Echoic Assessment and Program Planning for Early Speech Learners.
Friday, February 23, 9:00 - 11:50 am (CEUs pending approval)

Workshop cost: $60--Includes free Friday, one-day, registration for workshop attendees

Echoic skills, the ability to repeat a speech model, play a major role in early speech development. One such role is to establish sound-making as a reinforcing activity. Another is to fast-track the learning of other important vocal language skills, beyond just repeating what is heard. These critical skills include asking for, commenting on, or having conversations about things, people, activities, and the like. No matter the age of the early speech learner, it is useful to assess and track echoic skills as the foundation of a set of complex behaviors that result in vocal-verbal language. In this presentation, Dr. Esch will discuss the role of the echoic verbal operant within overall vocal language learning, how echoic skills are analyzed in terms of syllable complexity and why this is prioritized over precise articulation for beginning speakers, and how to use echoic assessment information to build a beginning speech-language program. As the basis for this workshop, Dr. Esch will show and discuss materials from her newly-published EESA: Early Echoic Skills Assessment and Program Planner, Guide and Protocol. Dr. Esch will discuss the 6 program planning tasks from the EESA Work Packet contained in the EESA's Protocol manual, with the goal that, by the end of the workshop, attendees will know how to access step-by-step materials to complete a beginning speech program for their unique learner.

Workshop Objectives:
1. Identify the components of syllable complexity.
2. Distinguish accurate from inaccurate syllable complexity codes.
3. Identify characteristics of the EESA-R test groups.

The BAAM convention is a multi-track, session-oriented academic and professional meeting on all aspect of behavior analysis open to all.

01/09/2024

BAAM Friday Keynote Address

Friday Keynote Address; 1:30 - 2:30 pm; Ballrooms A & B

Rick Kubina, Jr. (Pennsylvania State University)

Bridging the Employment Gap: Preparing Autistic Students for the AI Workforce

This presentation explores a pioneering strategy aimed at mitigating the acute talent deficit in the AI sector by leveraging the capabilities of the autistic community. Despite a marked propensity for STEM disciplines within the group, a staggering 80% face unemployment, primarily due to pervasive social stigmas and systemic barriers. Our initiative seeks to revolutionize the scenario by creating avenues for autistic individuals attending community college to pursue specialized AI career paths. The focus will be on deploying innovative teaching methodologies and immersive learning experiences. The strategy includes the application of various behavior analytic techniques such as custom instructional design, reinforcement of pivotal social skills, and adaptive learning interventions tailored to enhance vocational competency and integration. The initiative addresses the skills gap in the AI industry and champions the cause of inclusivity by empowering an underrepresented segment of society with the skills and opportunities to thrive in tech-oriented careers.

The BAAM convention is a multi-track, session-oriented academic and professional meeting on all aspect of behavior analysis open to all.

01/09/2024

BAAM Convention Thursday Keynote Address;; 1:30 - 2:30 pm
Ballrooms A & B

Gordon Bourland (Trinity Behavioral Associates, Arlington, TX)

Ableism-What's That Have to Do with Me?

After growing up in the south of the United States, I recognized upon entering adulthood that I engaged in differential overt and covert behavior- bias- regarding people different from me. The differential behavior reflected how different they were from me and most of the people with whom I interacted. Such differential behavior that I recognized early included racism, sexism, and classism. Subsequently, acceptance and positive valuation of everyone became fundamental guides for my behavior. During over 50 years of identifying as a behavior analyst, the principles of behavior analysis provided a rigorous framework for interacting with people. During those 50-plus years, many changes occurred in my behavior, the scope and sophistication of behavior analysis, and in society in the United States. Sometimes those changes were obvious and recognition of them was unavoidable. At other times, they were noticed after comments by others or after times of personal reflection. Over time, new perspectives on interacting with people have emerged, including notions of implicit bias as well as explicit bias (e.g., racism, sexism). A type of bias emerging more recently was ableism. (Simply put, ableism involves discrimination and prejudice against people with disabilities.) What did that possibly have to do with a civil liberties-embracing, equality and equity-advocating, social justice-pursuing behavior analyst such as me? The relevance of the emerging awareness of ableism to my personal life and my professional work will be addressed. The development, maintenance, modification, and prevention of bias such as ableism will be discussed from a behavior analytic perspective. Suggestions will be offered regarding evaluating allegations of ableism, especially within behavior analysis.

The BAAM convention is a multi-track, session-oriented academic and professional meeting on all aspect of behavior analysis open to all.

12/26/2023

BAAM Members and Friends:

The updated tentative schedule for the for the 2024 BAAM Convention, February 22-23, at the EMU Student Center, is now available. There will be BACB Type-II CEUs for most sessions, pending approval and there are a few sessions yet to finalize.

Registration is coming soon!

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