Textual Behavior Research Articles

Reading comprehension with the Go/No-Go procedure with compound stimuli.

The present study investigated whether the Go/No-Go procedure with compound stimuli produces emergent relations among dictated words (A), pictures (B), and printed words (C) and the emergence of textual behavior (CD) using a multiple probe design across word sets. Three preschool children were exposed to 4 phases: (1) pretests for BC, CB, and CD relations, (2) pretraining with known stimuli, (3) AB and AC training, and (4) posttests for BC, CB, and CD relations. During AB and AC training, responses to A1B1, A2B2, A1C1, and A2C2 compound stimuli, but not to A1B2, A2B1, A1C2, and A2C1, were reinforced. The results showed that all participants met the learning criterion and demonstrated emergence of BC and CB relations (i.e., relations between pictures and printed words), and CD relations (i.e., textual behavior) after training. These results suggest that the Go/No-Go procedure with compound stimuli is an effective alternative for establishing reading comprehension.

Il Modello di Basilea per l’analisi di también: uno studio contrastivo con l’italiano

L’obiettivo di questo studio consiste in un’analisi contrastiva della particella additiva dello spagnolo también e dei suoi possibili traducenti in italiano, con lo scopo di individuare i livelli di analisi più rilevanti in un’ottica contrastiva fra le due lingue. Lo studio è realizzato adottando una prospettiva funzionale e un approccio semasiologico. Inoltre, l’analisi si avvale di un modello di segmentazione pragmatica del testo: il Modello di Basilea (Ferrari et al. 2008), del quale studi precedenti (p. es., Borreguero 2014 e De Cesare / Borreguero 2014) hanno dimostrato la produttività in quanto strumento euristico capace di spiegare il comportamento testuale delle particelle polifunzionali, anche in un’ottica interlinguistica. Ad esempio, la saturazione del Quadro Informativo da parte di también attiva la funzione di connettivo testuale (vs. avverbio focalizzante) che, in un’ottica contrastiva con l’italiano, si traduce nella selezione di equivalenti diversi da anche. Infine, si focalizzerà l’attenzione su alcuni casi in cui l’ambiguità referenziale innescata dall’ampia mobilità distribuzionale di también deve essere necessariamente risolta per veicolare, nella traduzione, il medesimo insieme di elementi in gioco.

Exceptional spatio-temporal behavior mining through Bayesian non-parametric modeling

Collective social media provides a vast amount of geo-tagged social posts, which contain various records on spatio-temporal behavior. Modeling spatio-temporal behavior on collective social media is an important task for applications like tourism recommendation, location prediction and urban planning. Properly accomplishing this task requires a model that allows for diverse behavioral patterns on each of the three aspects: spatial location, time, and text. In this paper, we address the following question: how to find representative subgroups of social posts, for which the spatio-temporal behavioral patterns are substantially different from the behavioral patterns in the whole dataset? Selection and evaluation are the two challenging problems for finding the exceptional subgroups. To address these problems, we propose BNPM: a Bayesian non-parametric model, to model spatio-temporal behavior and infer the exceptionality of social posts in subgroups. By training BNPM on a large amount of randomly sampled subgroups, we can get the global distribution of behavioral patterns. For each given subgroup of social posts, its posterior distribution can be inferred by BNPM. By comparing the posterior distribution with the global distribution, we can quantify the exceptionality of each given subgroup. The exceptionality scores are used to guide the search process within the exceptional model mining framework to automatically discover the exceptional subgroups. Various experiments are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of our method. On four real-world datasets our method discovers subgroups coinciding with events, subgroups distinguishing professionals from tourists, and subgroups whose consistent exceptionality can only be truly appreciated by combining exceptional spatio-temporal and exceptional textual behavior.

Reading Words Using the Go/No-Go Procedure with Compound Stimuli with Preschool Children

The study investigated whether the go/no-go procedure with compound stimuli would produce emergent relations among dictated word (A), picture (B) and printed word (C). The emergence of textual behavior (CD) was also evaluated. Eight children from 4 to 5 years old were submitted to AB and AC training, followed by tests of BC, CB, and CD relations. During AB and AC training, a compound stimulus (formed of auditory and visual stimuli) was successively presented in each trial. Responses were differentially reinforced in the presence of “related” compounds (e.g., A1B1 and A2B2 in AB training), but not in the presence of “unrelated” compounds (e.g., A1B2 and A2B1). In BC and CB tests, the compounds were formed of a picture and a printed word side by side. Finally, tests of CD relations were conducted (textual behavior). The results showed that all the children met the learning criteria and showed emergence of BC, CB, and CD relations. The data also indicated the feasibility of the go/no-go procedure in producing emergent performance in reading.

Improvement of Conversation Skills through Script Fading in a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The script fading procedure aims to develop better communication skills of children and youngsters with Autism Spectrum Disorder in relationship with other people. The procedure seeks to incorporate cues in several contexts. Scripts may be organized in day-to-day situations of life, such as playful interactions among children and the scripts may consist in pictorial, textual or auditory stimuli. If a learner, for example, lacks conversation skills, but has good repertoire regarding textual behavior, scripts consisting of written phrases may be presented and the learner has to read them. The listener may interact with the speaker like he is emitting responses free from the control of scripts. With repetitive exposure to the contingency and the establishment of a more fluent repertoire of textual behavior, the script is gradually faded out by word removal one by one. This process continues until the learner’s responses become free from the control of the whole scripts. Previous research has demonstrated the establishment of independent performance, maintenance and generalization to different settings and listeners. The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of this procedure in establishing conversation skills in a child aged 9 with ASD. Textual scripts were applied to three sets of conversation. After a baseline condition, training started and the experimental control by the independent variable was established through a multiple baseline design across the three different conversation topics. Independent performance was successfully established through reinforcement of correct performance and error correction. Although the interventions were conducted in a university-based laboratory, the established repertoires generalized to the child’s school classroom and another listeners (another adult and a child). Implications to school inclusion regarding the establishment of conversation among children in school setting were discussed.

Aprendizagem Observacional em Crianças com Autismo: Efeitos do Ensino de Respostas de Monitoramento via Videomodelação

Resumo O presente estudo investigou o estabelecimento de respostas de monitoramento via videomodelação em duas crianças com transtorno do espectro autista e se essas respostas favoreceriam a aprendizagem observacional de tatos e textuais nessas crianças. Foram realizados pré e pós-testes de aprendizagem observacional via videomodelação. O treino de monitoramento foi realizado em três etapas: (1) ensino da resposta de monitoramento; (2) desenvolvimento de controle do responder do participante pelo responder do modelo e (3) controle do responder do participante pela consequência para o modelo. As duas crianças aprenderam a resposta de monitoramento em quatro sessões e houve a aquisição de tatos e textuais por aprendizagem observacional para um dos participantes. Discute-se o potencial da videomodelação para treinar comportamentos precorrentes necessários para a aprendizagem observacional.

Can Collateral Behavior Account for Transitions in the Stimulus Control of Speech?

The task of extending Skinner's (1957) interpretation of verbal behavior includes accounting for the moment-to-moment changes in stimulus control as one speaks. A consideration of the behavior of the reader reminds us of the continuous evocative effect of verbal stimuli on readers, listeners, and speakers. Collateral discriminative responses to verbal stimuli, beyond mere echoic or textual behavior, are potential sources of control and must be included in any complete account of both verbal and nonverbal behavior.

La universidad asincrónica: Uso de las TIC en estudiantes de periodismo

La formación universitaria es uno de los pilares en la redefinición del rol del profesional del periodismo. La transformación que ha vivido la industria de la información en los últimos años y el creciente número de profesionales del sector formados en la universidad alimenta todavía más la necesidad de arrojar luz a lo que ocurre en esta etapa formativa. En paralelo, una generación hiperconectada, acostumbrada a la inmediatez, en movilidad y dispuesta a consumir en múltiples formatos, ocupa en la actualidad las aulas de las universidades; siendo esta la generación de futuros profesionales del periodismo que se encuentran en su etapa formativa. ¿Qué está sucediendo en las aulas de las universidades actuales? ¿Son permeables a las particularidades de esta generación? A través de una encuesta a 276 estudiantes del Grado en Periodismo de dos universidades, una pública y una privada, este trabajo aborda el uso que esta generación hace de las TIC en el contexto universitario. Los resultados muestran un perfil dual. En la universidad los estudiantes adoptan unos hábitos más asíncronos, estáticos y textuales. En el contexto no universitario estos mismos estudiantes se transforman en más síncronos, en movilidad y audiovisuales, adoptando los rasgos característicos de esta generación.

A corpus-based account of left-detached items in the recent history of English

This paper investigates sequences featuring a coreferential link between a left-detached constituent and a resumptive in the following main clause [‘LDet-sequences’]. Their syntactic, semantic and textual behaviour is investigated in historically recent texts (since Modern English) where such detachments are not generally expected to replicate the behaviour that has been attested for contemporary spoken English Left Dislocation [‘LDis’] (cf. Geluykens 1993; Gregory & Michaelis 2001; Snider 2005; Netz et al. 2011). A typology of LDet-sequences is proposed in order to investigate them beyond their apparent structural similarities with spoken English LDis. Left-detached referents are found to typically hold a weak relationship with clause-grammar; however, some of the LDet-sequences attested also exhibit a certain degree of deviation from the less syntactic and freer, discoursal behaviour that characterises others. As far as their diachronic development is concerned, only LDet-sequences that closely resemble LDis illustrate the declining course reported in previous research for LDis (cf. Pérez-Guerra & Tizón-Couto 2009). Lastly, LDet-sequences are more frequent in drama and fiction; thus, the prediction that they are employed to recreate conversation (cf. Geluykens 1992) is provisionally borne out.

Evaluating the effects of massed and distributed practice on acquisition and maintenance of tacts and textual behavior with typically developing children.

This study evaluated the effects of massed and distributed practice on the acquisition of tacts and textual behavior in typically developing children. We compared the effects of massed practice (i.e., consolidating all practice opportunities during the week into a single session) and distributed practice (i.e., distributing all practice opportunities across 4 sessions during the week) on the acquisition of textual behavior in English, tacting pictures of common nouns in Spanish, and textual behavior in Spanish using an adapted alternating treatments design embedded within a multiple probe design. We also examined correct responding during probes that (a) excluded prompts and reinforcement and (b) occurred 48 hr after training each week. The results indicated that distributed practice was the more efficient training format. Maintenance data collected up to 4 weeks after training also indicated that the participants consistently displayed higher levels of correct responding to targets that had been trained in distributed format. We discuss implications for practice and potential areas for future research.

The Social Structure of English in the Text of Theory

A number of explanations have been proposed for the turn from high theory to culture, social justice, and the everyday in Anglo-American English departments in the late 1980s. Some of these accounts focus on the exhaustion of text-centered paradigms of reading, others on the need for incisive responses to socio-political developments of the time. This paper argues that a shift in the governance philosophy of American higher education from public service to private investment drove curricular change and significantly altered the research culture in English studies. High theory marks the transition from the scientific ambitions of the field in an expanding higher education sector between 1950 and 1965 to its complex service and signaling function in the entrepreneurial university of the present. As the most institutionally embedded of high theory's foci, deconstruction provides a detailed symptomatic imaging of changes to the social structure of the discipline through its touchstones of textual ascription, decentering, and performativity. In each case, microscopic evidence testing, terminological abstraction, and the search for laws or properties of textual behavior (however uncanny or self-reflexive) create a scientific anti-science appropriate to a field undergoing an institutional devaluation of its knowledge work. In this view, deconstruction gave way to cultural studies, rather than to new and different forms of theory drawn from the social sciences, not because it was civically disengaged or had run out of interpretive steam but because the consolidation of the market-managerial university in the 1980s and 90s called for a different curricular alignment. This alignment, characterized by service teaching and the articulation of a social justice ("diversity") rationale, better fits the current institutional view of English studies as a field that does not make, study, or promise money, and whose future, therefore, lies not in better knowledge but in better organization.

ESTABLISHING DERIVED TEXTUAL ACTIVITY SCHEDULES IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Children with autism are frequently taught to follow picture activity schedules to increase independence in task engagement and transitions. As textual behavior allows for greater independence and efficiency in responding, schedules should rapidly become textual in form. Previous research has shown the effectiveness of conditional discrimination training and superimposition and fading procedures in establishing textual control. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of these procedures in establishing derived textual control in activity schedules. Participants included two children with autism (ages 3 and 8 years). Following the demonstration of proficiency in picture activity schedules, participants were exposed to superimposition and fading and conditional discrimination training in an alternating treatments design. Pretest–posttest measures were used to evaluate emergent relations among stimuli. Conditional discrimination training was superior to stimulus fading for emergent relations. The participants showed no clear difference between the procedures related to derived textual control. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Editorial: Verbal Behavior and Motivating Operations

Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior is inextricably linked to a behavioral analysis of motivation. One of the most noteworthy features of the elementary verbal operants that are introduced in the first few chapters of Verbal Behavior is the distinction that is drawn between the mand and other types of verbal behavior. Each of the other elementary verbal operants is controlled by public or private discriminative stimuli that are present in the speaker's physical or social environment. To the extent that training contingencies have established tight control by these stimuli, verbal behavior in the form of tacts, intraverbals, echoics, textual behavior, and so on, should be expected to accurately mirror the stimulus conditions and events that the speaker detects through his or her senses. The mand, by contrast, is occasioned by various motivational variables that affect the speaker, summarized by Skinner (p. 36) as “relevant conditions of deprivation or aversive stimulation.” As Skinner explains in detail in chapter 9 (see also Michael, Palmer, & Sundberg, 2011), most verbal behavior is in fact under the multiple control of variables that characterize more than one verbal operant. The motivational variables that define the mand frequently enter into these multiply-controlled relations, and may serve to reduce the correspondence between what the speaker sees, hears, or feels, and what the speaker actually reports. Throughout the remainder of Verbal Behavior, Skinner makes clear that the controlling variables for the mand are ubiquitous in both simple and complex verbal behavior. In other words, the behavior of a speaker cannot be analyzed solely in terms of discriminative stimuli in the speaker's environment; it is complete only when motivational variables are also taken into account.

VARIACIÓN TERMINOLÓGICA Y CORREFERENCIALIDAD TEXTUAL

The object of the article is to investigate the relation between text and terminology, in particular, therelation between textual behaviour and expert meaning. With this purpose, we have studied the reductional paradigm ofthe noun phrase petróleo crudo in eight texts of different degrees of expertise and then analysed co-referentialitybetween the variants. As a result of the analysis, we have verified that the more expert texts present no linguisticevidence so as to decode the co-referentiality between the complete form (petróleo crudo) and its reductions (petróleoand crudo). These are only interpreted as co-referential by experts whose lexical competence includes the necessaryknowledge to establish an appropriate causal relation between the noun phrase and its extratextual referent.

Long Lexical Bundles and Standardisation in Historical Legal Texts

Abstract Standardisation on the level of text is visible in the employment of stable and fixed expressions for a specific textual purpose. When gauging the extent of standardisation in texts, one of the parameters which should be taken into consideration is the length of such stable patterns. Since it is more difficult, and therefore rarer, to reproduce long chunks of text in an unchanged form, such a practice points towards greater standardisation. To explore the textual behaviour of long fixed strings in legal texts, this paper concentrates on long lexical bundles built out of eight consecutive elements (8-grams) and their frequency and function in historical legal texts. The database for this pilot paper comprises two collections of legal and administrative texts written in Scots between the fourteenth and the sixteenth century. The research results point to a considerable degree of textual standardisation throughout the corpus and to the most prominent functions of long repetitive chunks in historical legal discourse.

ENSINO DE RECONHECIMENTO DE PALAVRAS NO CONTEXTO DA LEITURA DE HISTÓRIAS INFANTIS

A instalação e a manutenção do comportamento de ler dependem, como outros operantes, de conseqüências reforçadoras poderosas. A leitura de um principiante, porém, é insuficiente para gerar os reforçadores naturais do ler. Esse estudo verificou se o ensino de reconhecimento de palavras extraídas de histórias infantis, por meio de um procedimento de ensino sem erro que favorece a transferência de controle de estímulos do comportamento ecóico para o comportamento textual, afeta a aquisição e a manutenção de leitura. O procedimento de ensino era individualizado, implementado por computador. Foram ensinados oito conjuntos de 10 palavras (cada conjunto selecionado em um livro) e dois conjuntos foram empregados somente para avaliação, de acordo com um delineamento de linha de base múltipla entre conjuntos de palavras. Quando atingia o critério de aprendizagem de um conjunto, o participante tinha a oportunidade de ler o livro correspondente (com supervisão para feedback e ajuda, se necessário). O ensino de um novo conjunto só era iniciado depois que o aluno dominasse o anterior. Seis alunos com histórico de fracasso escolar aprenderam a reconhecer as palavras impressas na tela, mostraram retenção em testes subseqüentes e apresentaram níveis elevados de acertos no reconhecimento das mesmas palavras inseridas no texto, durante a leitura dos livros. Ao longo do estudo o desenvolvimento do controle textual foi se tornando cada vez mais rápido e menos dependente do ecóico. A aprendizagem alcançada sugere que o procedimento pode ser uma alternativa para o ensino de reconhecimento de palavras a leitores iniciantes, como um passo inicial a partir do qual pode ser ensinado o domínio do código arbitrário entre fonemas e grafemas que caracteriza a correspondência ponto a ponto que define o comportamento textual. A oportunidade de ler as histórias e identificar as palavras aprendidas no computador parece ter tido um significativo valor reforçador. Palavras-chave : aprendizagem de leitura, reconhecimento de palavras, comportamento ecóico, comportamento textual, literatura infantil, motivação, crianças

USING CONDITIONAL DISCRIMINATION TRAINING TO PRODUCE EMERGENT RELATIONS BETWEEN COINS AND THEIR VALUES IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

The current study evaluated the effects of conditional discrimination (listener) training with coins on the emergence of novel stimulus relations, textual behavior, tacts, and intraverbals. Two preschoolers with autism were taught 3 relations among coins, their names, and values. After initial training, 4 relations emerged for the first participant and 7 for the second participant, suggesting that this technology can be incorporated into educational curricula for teaching prerequisite money skills to children with autism.

An experimental analysis of two error correction procedures used to improve the textual behavior of a student with autism.

Instructional programs often require that teachers correct student errors. The current project experimentally analyzed the effectiveness and efficiency of two error correction procedures in improving the oral reading of a girl with autism. The project assessed the effectiveness of a Word Supply and a Discrimination error correction procedure at enhancing accurate reading by measuring the number of error corrections required to teach the child to read segments of text from the same book with 100% accuracy. While both error correction procedures proved effective, the Word Supply corrections were more efficient than Discrimination Corrections in terms of both the number of error corrections required per segment of text and the number of instructional sessions required to reach the pre-set accuracy criterion. We discuss these findings and their implications for instructional planning within the context of earlier experimental work related to error correction procedures. Keywords: error correction, reading, autism, discrimination. ********** Wherever teaching and learning happen, erring also probably happens. Accordingly, teachers should invest time, energy, and effort in designing, implementing, and evaluating error correction procedures they use with their students. How teachers correct errors their students make should constitute an important part of any instructional system (Heward, 1997) and may play an even more important for students with special needs such as autism, who often present quite a challenge to even the most skilled teachers. (Scott et al., 2000) One may consider error corrections as one type of feedback that teachers give students. This feedback seeks to increase the probability that students will respond accurately in the future. Hogin (1996) distinguishes between three types of feedback that teachers might give students: (a) feedback given based on correct performance, (b) feedback given based on incorrect performance, and (c) feedback given based on both correct and incorrect performance. Kulvahy (1977) reviewed published literature on feedback in writing instruction and determined that feedback based on incorrect responses (error correction) proved most effective at increasing the accuracy of student performance. Falvey, et al. (1980) as cited in Wolery, et al. (1988) defined error correction procedures as teacher-delivered feedback that occurs contingent upon a student responding incorrectly to a stimulus. Wolery, et al. (1988) suggested that teachers should group error corrections based on the suspected cause of the error. For example, Wolery et al. (1988) would classify error corrections that occur because a student lacks a prerequisite skill differently than corrections for errors caused by student inattention. In instruction of students' textual behavior (1), behavioral researchers have evaluated two specific methods of correcting student errors: Word Supply error corrections and Discrimination error corrections. Word Supply error corrections involve providing the student with the full correct answer when the student makes a mistake. Discrimination corrections involve the teacher establishing a conditional discrimination within a student's repertoire by asking the student to respond differentially based on some feature of the textual cue that should have occasioned a correct response but did not. An example of a Discrimination correction would include asking a student to respond to the words Cat and Cats because the student said Cat when presented with the word Cats. In this example, only a portion of the stimulus (the letters c, a, and t, but not the letter s) controlled the student's textual behavior. When evaluating these two methods of correcting student errors with young typically developing learners who had difficulty with their reading skills, Carnine (1980) found that error correction procedures that involved highlighting phonemes were more effective than Word Supply error corrections. …

Novice-Level Books for Reading Pleasure in the Second Language Classroom

Extensive reading for pleasure in second language classroom is supported by a cognitive model of learning and theories of affect, as well as by actual research into area itself. Such theory and research support premise that extensive reading promotes not only reading ability, but also aspects of second language acquisition. Furthermore, extensive reading is textual behavior i.e., it is what human beings do with language: use it within confines of a specific text type or genre to create meaning for themselves and others. Students need practice in doing such meaning generation. As Day and Bamford say, reading is the construction of meaning from a printed or written message (12). In order to enjoy benefits of extensive reading in early levels, students need to have access to books/readers/texts that are interesting and easy enough for them to read. For novice students that means some text with a lot of illustration. While simple, heavily illustrated children's books can be an authentic source of reading materials and cultural information for such language learners, nevertheless they do not address all of topics that we or our students might find important or interesting, nor are they always readily available. A solution can be created through using resources and medium of internet, to create novice readers and to share them reciprocally with other instructors. This article is an attempt to explain why extensive reading is important, to tell (with examples) how to create reading materials, and to describe how students can use one's own materials and those of others. It will also show that affective results of using such materials in my own classroom correspond to findings in research literature. Why Extensive Reading?

A Master's program in Applied Behavior Analysis: Contingencies for initiation and maintenance.

We describe a Master's program in Applied Behavior Analysis that involves collaboration between an academic graduate program in psychology and the departments of an institution dedicated to the delivery of behavioral services: in this instance, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the Kennedy Krieger Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The launching of a new program and its subsequent maintenance involves a variety of contingencies, both academic and professional. This paper discusses a few of them, and demonstrates how quickly and effectively progress can be made when compatible and reciprocal contingencies of support are identified for all of the various participants in a program. As we enter the Decade of Behavior, we hope this program will provide a source of more practitioners of applied behavior analysis, so sorely needed to meet the growing demand for our demonstrably successful interventions. ********** One hallmark of behavior analysis and one source of its success in interventions is its recognition of multiple causation in the determination of complex behavior. Multiple causation operates, for example, in verbal behavior, as when the order that someone places at a fast food restaurant is simultaneously determined by many different variables: the person behind the counter as an audience, the menu as an occasion for textual behavior, the food visible in pictures and on the trays of other customers as an occasion for tacting, the overheard orders of other customers as an occasion for echoic behavior, the factors that make the food to be ordered reinforcing as establishing operations, and so on. When many variables that each occasion the same verbal response come together at one time, the verbal behavior that follows may be virtually inevitable. It is no surprise that many causes also enter into institutional behavior, and because much of our own activity as behavior analysts occurs in institutional settings, it may be useful to explore the multiple causation that may be involved in the creation and maintenance of behavior analytic programs. History It is difficult to pinpoint just when discussions began about a possible collaborative program involving the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and the Kennedy Krieger Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (KKI); they may go back two decades or more. Some of the more recent and key administrative discussions (within the past five years) involved A. Charles Catania at UMBC, the chair of the Department of Behavioral Psychology at KKI, Michael F. Cataldo, and the chair of the UMBC Department of Psychology, Carlo DiClemente. Once agreement had been reached about the desirability and feasibility of the program and the nature of its administration, Wayne W. Fisher and A. Charles Catania undertook the implementation of the program, with special attention to design of courses and professional training. The mutual interests of all participants quickly became evident. They included but were not limited to the following: The growing field of applied behavior analysis called for more well-trained practitioners; the UMBC administration wanted to expand the enrollment of graduate students, especially at the Master's level; and, the behavior analysts at KKI needed more qualified people to staff inpatient treatment units and wanted more opportunities to interact with students of behavior analysis. The collaborative program was approved by the UMBC Department of Psychology during the 1997-1998 academic year, and the call for applications went out late in Spring 1998 with a July 1 deadline. Under those circumstances, the numbers were of course too small to really constitute a class, and a couple of students who were unable to complete applications in time were provisionally admitted to course work as special students. More standardized application procedures brought in four more students in the 1999-2000 academic year (including one student from Iceland) and six more in the current (2000-2001) academic year. …