Florence DiGennaro Reed is a licensed behavior analyst and researcher who studies how to improve the quality of health and human services using organizational behavior management. She was a professor in and chairperson of the Department of Applied Behavioral Science at the University of Kansas until becoming the Chief Operating Officer of the Behavior Analyst Certification Board. [1]
DiGennaro Reed completed her BA in psychology at Binghamton University, an MA in experimental psychology at Long Island University - CW Post Campus, and a PhD in school psychology at Syracuse University. She completed her clinical post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Child Development and a pre-doctoral internship in clinical psychology at the May Center for Education and Neurorehabilitation and the May Center for Child Development. She has authored over 100 articles and book chapters, edited two books, and co-authored a textbook on various behavior analytic topics including performance management, assessment, and intervention. [2]
At KU, her lab, called Performance Management Laboratory, studied methods of staff training [3] and performance improvement and conducted translational research. [4]
She has served on the editorial boards of Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis , Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, Behavior Analysis Research and Practice, Journal of Behavioral Education, Behavior Analysis in Practice, The Psychological Record , and School Psychology Review and has served as an Associate Editor for Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis , Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, Journal of Behavioral Education, and Behavior Analysis in Practice.
Industrial and organizational psychology "focuses the lens of psychological science on a key aspect of human life, namely, their work lives. In general, the goals of I-O psychology are to better understand and optimize the effectiveness of both organizations and their employees." It is an applied discipline within psychology and is also known as occupational psychology in the United Kingdom, organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, and work and organizational (WO) psychology throughout Europe and Brazil. Industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology is the broader, more global term for the science and profession.
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process where voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition of reward or aversive stimuli. The frequency or duration of the behavior may increase through reinforcement or decrease through punishment or extinction.
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understand the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex elicited by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events. The cognitive revolution of the late 20th century largely replaced behaviorism as an explanatory theory with cognitive psychology, which unlike behaviorism views internal mental states as explanations for observable behavior.
Ole Ivar Løvaas was a Norwegian-American clinical psychologist and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is most well known for his research on what is now called applied behavior analysis (ABA) to teach autistic children through prompts, modeling, and positive reinforcement. The therapy is also noted for its use of aversives (punishment) to reduce undesired behavior.
Adaptive behavior is behavior that enables a person to cope in their environment with greatest success and least conflict with others. This is a term used in the areas of psychology and special education. Adaptive behavior relates to everyday skills or tasks that the "average" person is able to complete, similar to the term life skills.
Applied behavior analysis (ABA), also called behavioral engineering, is a scientific discipline that applies the principles of learning based upon respondent and operant conditioning to change behavior of social significance. ABA is the applied form of behavior analysis; the other two are radical behaviorism and the experimental analysis of behavior.
Pivotal response treatment (PRT), also referred to as pivotal response training, is a naturalistic form of applied behavior analysis used as an early intervention for children with autism that invented by Robert Koegel and Lynn Kern Koegel. PRT advocates contend that behavior hinges on "pivotal" behavioral skills—motivation and the ability to respond to multiple cues—and that development of these skills will result in collateral behavioral improvements. It's an alternative approach to ABA from the more common form, sometimes called discrete trial training (DTT).
Steven C. Hayes is an American clinical psychologist and Nevada Foundation Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno Department of Psychology, where he is a faculty member in their Ph.D. program in behavior analysis. He is known for developing relational frame theory, an account of human higher cognition. He is the co-developer of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a popular evidence-based form of psychotherapy that uses mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based methods, and is the co-developer of process-based therapy (PBT), a new approach to evidence-based therapies more generally. He also coined the term clinical behavior analysis.
The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal which publishes empirical research related to applied behavior analysis. It was established in 1968 and is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. The editor-in-chief is John Borrero.
Ogden R. Lindsley was an American psychologist. He is best known for developing precision teaching.
Organizational behavior management (OBM) is a subdiscipline of applied behavior analysis (ABA), which is the application of behavior analytic principles and contingency management techniques to change behavior in organizational settings. Through these principles and assessment of behavior, OBM seeks to analyze and employ antecedent, influencing actions of an individual before the action occurs, and consequence, what happens as a result of someone's actions, interventions which influence behaviors linked to the mission and key objectives of the organization and its workers. Such interventions have proven effective through research in improving common organizational areas including employee productivity, delivery of feedback, safety, and overall morale of said organization.
The professional practice of behavior analysis is a domain of behavior analysis, the others being radical behaviorism, experimental analysis of behavior and applied behavior analysis. The practice of behavior analysis is the delivery of interventions to consumers that are guided by the principles of radical behaviorism and the research of both experimental and applied behavior analysis. Professional practice seeks to change specific behavior through the implementation of these principles. In many states, practicing behavior analysts hold a license, certificate, or registration. In other states, there are no laws governing their practice and, as such, the practice may be prohibited as falling under the practice definition of other mental health professionals. This is rapidly changing as behavior analysts are becoming more and more common.
Donald M. Baer was an American psychologist who contributed to the science of applied behavior analysis and pioneered the development of behavior analysis at the University of Kansas and the University of Washington. Baer is best known for his contributions at the University of Kansas. Throughout his career, he published over two hundred articles, books, and chapters on various psychological issues. Some of his most noteworthy contributions include literature on behavior-analytic theory, experimental design, and early childhood interventions. Baer received numerous awards during his lifetime which acknowledged his innovation and dedication to his field of research.
Functional analysis in behavioral psychology is the application of the laws of operant and respondent conditioning to establish the relationships between stimuli and responses. To establish the function of operant behavior, one typically examines the "four-term contingency": first by identifying the motivating operations, then identifying the antecedent or trigger of the behavior, identifying the behavior itself as it has been operationalized, and identifying the consequence of the behavior which continues to maintain it.
Francis Mechner is an American research psychologist best known for having developed and introduced a formal symbolic language for the codification and notation of behavioral contingencies. He has published articles about the language's applications in economics, finance, education, environment, business management, biology, clinical practice, and law. Mechner is also known for a variety of contributions to instructional technology and basic research in the field of learning.
A behavioral cusp is any behavior change that brings an organism's behavior into contact with new contingencies that have far-reaching consequences. A behavioral cusp is a special type of behavior change because it provides the learner with opportunities to access new reinforcers, new contingencies, new environments, new related behaviors (generativeness) and competition with archaic or problem behaviors. It affects the people around the learner, and these people agree to the behavior change and support its development after the intervention is removed.
The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a classroom management strategy used to increase self-regulation, group regulation and stimulate prosocial behavior among students while reducing problematic behavior. Major research at Johns Hopkins Center for Prevention and Early Intervention has studied three cohorts of thousands of student, some of whom have been followed from first grade into their 20s. In multiple scientific studies, the Good Behavior Game dramatically reduces problematic behavior within days and weeks.
A licensed behavior analyst is a type of behavioral health professional in the United States. They have at least a master's degree, and sometimes a doctorate, in behavior analysis or a related field. Behavior analysts apply radical behaviorism, or applied behavior analysis, to people.
Karl Ulrich Smith was an American physiologist, psychologist and behavioral cybernetician.
Beth Sulzer-Azaroff was a psychologist and pioneering figure in the field of behavior analysis. She conducted research on organizational behavior management and promoted the use of applied behavior analysis for teaching children with autism. The Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences noted her contributions as "instrumental in translating findings from the basic behavior analytic laboratory to the applied setting, from the classroom to the factory."