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BCBA) Program No TMR VOLUME 2 3 2 2 SEP A U 010 T 011 G E U I nsiDE BEHaviOR ANALYSIS B 2 S NEWET SL T ER OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS INTERnatiOnaL 2 E ISSN 2151-4623 ISSN No T VOLUME 3 2 A U 011 G U 2 S I nsiDE BEHaviOR ANALYSIS NEWET SL T ER OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS INTERnatiOnaL L na O IS S nati R E T N LY I IS S Y L NA A N A OR VI R A R A O FOR BEH N O avi ATI I OC S Inside Behavior Analysis Table of Contents S Newsletter of the Association for Behavior Analysis International A Issue Date: September 2011 HE T Issue Number: Vol. 3, No. 2 Frequency of Publication: The newsletter is published three times R OF Presidential Notes From a Radical Behaviorist D annually. Subscriptions are provided with ABAI membership; others 2 E may subscribe from the ABAI web site: www.abainternational.org T L S Michael J. Dougher, Ph.D. Acting Past President nsi NEWE T Richard W. Malott, Ph.D. President 2011 Convention Recap 4 I E BEH Kurt Salzinger, Ph.D. President-Elect VOLUME 3 Martha Hübner, Ph.D. International Representative Gregory J. Madden, Ph.D. At-Large Representative Kathryn Saunders, Ph.D. At-Large Representative No 2 2011 Presidential Scholar’s Essay MRSEPTE BE Raymond C. Pitts, Ph.D. Experimental Representative 10 Timothy R. Vollmer, Ph.D. Applied Representative 2011 Megan D. Aclan, M.S. Student Representative-Elect Sarah M. Dunkel-Jackson, M. S. Past Student Representative Antonio M. Harrison, M.S. Student Representative 2011 Fellows of ABAI 12 Maria E. Malott, Ph.D. Chief Executive Officer/ Executive Editor Majda M. Seuss Managing Editor Updates from ABAI’s Affiliated Chapters Aaron Barsy Publications Coordinator 16 Martin C. Burch Art Director © 2011 Association for Behavior Analysis International All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, Updates from ABAI Special Interest Groups 60 stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the Association for Behavior Analysis International. ABAI reserves the right to edit all copy. All advertisements are accepted and published Behavioral Economics Conference Recap on the representation of the advertiser and its agency that they 82 are authorized to publish the entire contents thereof and that, to the best of their knowledge and belief, all statements made therein are true. The advertiser and the agency agree to hold the publisher harmless from any and all claims arising out of In Memoriam: Joseph V. Brady 86 advertising published. Publication of articles, announcements, or acceptance of advertisements in Inside Behavior Analysis does not imply endorsement by ABAI. ABAI reserves the right to reject any advertisement or copy that ABAI, for any reason, deems unsuitable ABAI Financial Report for publication in any association publication. 88 Association for Behavior Analysis International® 550 West Centre Avenue, Suite 1 Portage, MI 49024 Opportunities for Behavior Analysts 92 269 492 9310 www.abainternational.org ON THE COVER: The bear sculpture outside the Colorado Calendar of Upcoming Conferences Convention Center. 94 Photography: bob RABITO S E Presidential Notes T A From a Radical Behaviorist By Richard W. Malott Don’t Read R UPD R E T P It doesn’t matter how confident you are that you can read A with inflection, enthusiasm, and drama. It doesn’t matter D CH D how many of your friends, agree you’re the greatest reader E AT I since Sir Johnathan Gilgud. It doesn’t matter how crucial L I it is that you get the magic words you’ve spent hours FF A writing just right so they’ll portray the subtle nuances you value so highly. It doesn’t matter because, if you read your abai Don’t talk, your audience is likely either to be asleep or to have lost your thread after the first five minutes. Read Here’s a quote from an APA publication manual: Do not read your presentation. Reading a paper 009 2 usually induces boredom and can make even the best R research sound second-rate (I’ve added the emphasis). E Your Talk B Instead, tell your audience what you have to say just as you would in conversation... EPTEM S Concentrate on only one or two main points and keep at ABAI reminding the audience what the central theme is by 3 relating each major section of the presentation to the No theme. The speaker’s traditional strategy is still valid: Tell the audience what you are going to say, say It, and then tell them what you have said. L Vo UME 31 Omit most of the details of scientific procedures because a listener cannot follow the same level of detail as a reader can… A verbal presentation should create awareness about a topic and stimulate interest in it; colleagues can retrieve the details from a written paper, copies of which you may want to have available. Don’t Talk Beyond the Speed of Human Comprehension You’ve got twenty minutes to talk. After 15 minutes you realize you’re only halfway through. Don’t confuse a talk with an archive. You’ve got five minutes left; you can cover another 1/6th of your paper at a pace everyone can follow, Photography: STICHTING DUURZAME SCHOLEN 2 IS or you can rip through the last 3/6th of your paper at a pace But I’m not so naive as to expect most of us to have S Y L not even you can follow and end with the satisfaction of our acts together well enough in advance to follow that A knowing that at least you got it all in. strategy. So, instead, write your talks in newspaper AN R style, with the most important stuff first, followed by O I Don’t Contribute to the Visual Impairment V decreasingly important issues, until you wind up with a A of the ABAI Membership summary, if you have time for it (again the View/Outline The font was big enough to read on your computer screen, mode of MS Word lets you shuffle subtopics with amazing BEH E D I but that doesn’t mean people can read it projected on a grace). This way, whenever you stop, you’ll stop knowing S screen at ABAI. that at least you’ve made your most important points: and IN that everyone understood them, even though you may not Yes, But… have had time to cover all the details of your inter-observer Yes, Fred Keller read his talks; and he was great. But even agreement calculations you were so proud of. if you put in the 20 hours Fred did preparing a 5 minute 011 How to Avoid Forcing Us to Change the Prescription 2 talk, you still wouldn’t be good enough. R on Our Glasses E Yes, there may be three true exceptions. But that’s B three out of a several hundred presenters who think Never insert into your PowerPoint anything copied directly TEM they’re exceptions. ABAI should risk sacrificing three from or prepared for a journal, like an abstract, a table, or a EP aspiring Kellerites to avoid the wasted opportunity for graph (the most frequent sin), because the words projected S communication that occurs when most of us read. on the screen at ABAI will be too small to read, even 2 Yes, ABAI is not a basketball pep rally but a scientific though they look great on your computer screen. Never use No conference where precision is valued. But in all the ABA/ a font less than 28 pts. in your PowerPoints, even in the ABAIs, I’ve not heard any presentations where the need labels on your graphs. for precision outweighed the need for clarity nor where L History that precision would have been seriously compromised by Vo UME 3 the informal talking of the presentations as recommended I originally wrote this after wrapping up a wonderful by APA. 1990 ABA conference by attending a final symposium Yes, some of the most prominent members of ABAI and featuring three friends of mine, three of the top scholars in also some of my best friends (at least until now) read their our field, all great speakers. But this time they read their papers. But they shouldn’t. papers; and it was so deadly, especially as the audience of hundreds was moving into post-convention hangover How to Avoid the Need to Read mode. And I left so pissed off that I couldn’t sleep until Write or review and edit your paper in the View/Outline I’d catharted this essay all over my keyboard. It was mode of MS Word. Then save your outline as a PowerPoint. published in my Notes from a Radical Behaviorist column The audience will appreciate the visual structure of your talk. (ABA Newsletter, 14, 12, 1991). And at the next ABA, And you’ll appreciate the guidelines of what to say next, one of the oldest most important behavior analysts in the when you’re standing in front of a room packed full of fifteen world, commented to me about my essay, saying that of hyper-critical behavior analysts, while you’re quakin’, and course I meant that only inexperienced presenters should your knees are shakin’, and you can’t even remember your not read their talks, implying that it didn’t apply to him. last name. You just look at that PowerPoint; it’s all there.
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