David J. Cox

• Ph.D., M.S.B., BCBA-D
• Assistant Director of Research at Endicott College

Artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to affect nearly every aspect of our daily lives and nearly every industry and profession. Many readers of this journal likely work in one or more areas of behavioral health. For readers who work in behavioral health and who are interested in AI, the purpose of this article is to highlight the pervasiveness of...

The generalized matching law (GML) has been used to describe the behavior of individual organisms in operant chambers, artificial environments, and nonlaboratory human settings. Most of these analyses have used a handful of participants to determine how well the GML describes choice in the experimental arrangement or how some experimental manipulat...

Background: Experiences with psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin or lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), are sometimes followed by changes in patterns of tobacco, opioid, and alcohol consumption. But, the specific characteristics of psychedelic experiences that lead to changes in drug consumption are unknown. Objective: Determine whether quantitativ...

Many philosophers and scientists have described a scientific approach to ethical behavior. Historically, ethical behavior has been categorized as descriptive (i.e., what is right) or normative (i.e., why it is right). Whether this topographical distinction is functionally relevant is unknown. In 2 experiments, participants chose what behavior was c...

Value-based care has incrementally increased its footprint across healthcare over the past 2 decades. Several organizations in ABA have begun experimenting with various components of value-based care specific to the delivery of ABA services and it seems likely that this trend will continue into the future. For those new to value-based care, this ar...

The concepts of “reinforcement” and “punishment” arose in two disparate scientific domains of psychology and artificial intelligence (AI). Behavior scientists study how biological organisms do behave as a function of their environment, while AI focuses on how artificial agents should behave to maximize reward or minimize punishment. This article de...

Decreasing funding for nonhuman animal research decreases the opportunity for students and researchers to explore the behavior of many species in many contexts. In the long run, this may reduce variability within the experimental analysis of behavior around what species are being researched and what questions are being asked. New technologies, howe...

In applied behavior analysis (ABA), the topic of dose-response relationships between hours of ABA per week and treatment outcomes is gaining increasing attention. The conversations have, however, largely compared groups of individuals who receive varying amounts of therapy (e.g., 10 hours versus 40 hours) to determine whether group-level evidence o...

Studies suggest that reduced-nicotine cigarettes decrease nicotine intake and dependence. However, questions remain about reduced-nicotine cigarette abuse liability, whether reduced-nicotine cigarette exposure lowers reduced- and full-nicotine cigarette use, and whether reduced-nicotine cigarettes substitute for full-nicotine cigarettes. This rando...

As sciences progress, phenomena originally studied in isolation are often brought together to learn how they interact. In the discounting literature, researchers have explored how choice is influenced by combinations of variables such as delay and probability, or outcome amounts and economic contexts. Across two experiments, we examined how delays,...

The verbal community plays a critical role in the analysis of verbal behavior because it selects conventional verbal forms; shapes listeners' behavior that mediates the consequences of speakers' behavior; and specifies the conditions under which specific verbal forms will contact consequences. However, despite the importance of the verbal community...

For many, artificial intelligence (AI) had its coming out party in 2023. Now it’s time for AI to live up to the hype. For those who already feel behind, fortunately, example AI use cases within and outside of ABA show that AI can be used to improve patient outcomes. In this presentation, we review one way that ABA providers can use AI to model and...

Data and analytics play several critical roles in the effective functioning of ABA businesses such as improved client experience; better clinical and operational decision making; improved operational efficiency; optimized revenue growth; and more agile innovation. Realizing these benefits, however, requires a well functioning data stack and employe...

Safety is a significant clinical challenge in settings serving adults with developmental disabilities. Few resources exist to guide clinical teams in this realm; this study explored safety elements through interviews with experts in critical areas of safety management. The present study aimed to gather knowledge and insights regarding assessing ris...

Biological organisms are always embedded within a dynamically changing environment rich with stimuli, each potentially influencing one or more behaviors at any given moment. Due to technological constraints, behavior analysts historically had to select which environmental stimuli and behaviors to focus on for data collection. But times have changed...

The practical use of the concepts "reinforcement" and "punishment" have evolved in two distinct scientific domains. One domain is the psychological and biological sciences a la behaviorists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The second domain is computer science a la artificial intelligence researchers of the 20th century. Behavior scientists generall...

Determining the precise number of therapy hours a patient needs is a critical clinical decision. Too few hours can reduce overall progress and likely keeps the individual in treatment longer than necessary. Too many hours can cause the individual to spend unnecessary time and money they could have spent on other activities that increase their happi...

Determining the precise number of therapy hours a patient needs is a critical clinical decision. Too few hours can reduce overall progress and likely keeps the individual in treatment longer than necessary. Too many hours can cause the individual to spend unnecessary time and money they could have spent on other activities that increase their happi...

Introduction to the special section on big data & behavior science.

For many, artificial intelligence (AI) had its coming out party in 2023. Now it’s time for AI to live up to the hype. For those who already feel behind, fortunately, example AI use cases within and outside of ABA show that AI can be used to improve patient outcomes. In this presentation, we review one way that ABA providers can use AI to model and...

Many questions that BCBAs or ABA organizations have about the care they deliver are not readily amenable to experimental research. For example, how do their staff training and supervision processes improve RBT and BCBA performance; and how does RBT and BCBA performance impact patient outcomes? As another example, are certain BCBAs better at supervi...

Value-based care has incrementally increased its footprint across healthcare over the past two decades. Recently, several organizations in ABA have begun experimenting with various components of value-based care specific to the delivery of ABA services and it seems likely that this trend will continue into the future. For those new to value-based c...

Patients, their caregivers, and payers often want to know exactly what they will get when receiving ABA and for how long it will last. They also often want to know how they can identify ABA providers who are better at providing ABA services compared to other providers. However, the complexity of ABA service delivery and idiosyncratic intervention a...

Researchers have typically described ABA session delivery by asking practitioners what they do. Here, we sought to contribute data to this conversation via 3.9 million ABA sessions spanning 5.42 years and 599 providers. We observed significant variability in how providers deliver services spanning skill acquisition trials per minute, correct and in...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly a part of our everyday lives. Though much AI work in healthcare has been outside of applied behavior analysis (ABA), researchers within ABA have begun to demonstrate many different ways that AI might improve the delivery of ABA services. Though AI offers many exciting advances, absent from the behavior a...

Simple Summary In this study, researchers aimed to compare the effectiveness of food and leisure stimuli as reinforcers for domestic dogs. While preference assessments have been conducted for various species, including humans and animals like cockroaches and wolves, to our knowledge, no study has specifically examined the preference between food an...

Researchers conducting cluster analyses on data collected from autistic individuals have identified two-to-seven clusters depending on data used. Given the spectrum nature of autism spectrum disorders, it seems unlikely only a handful of patient types exist. Past findings might be due to: smaller sample sizes, more focused variables used, or cluste...

Researchers have found significant utility in approaching choice from a behavioral economics lens. Recently, this framework has begun to be extended to the description and prediction of clinical-ethical choice. Here, researchers have found that common behavioral economics effects occur with clinical-ethical choice at the group level (e.g., framing...

The purpose of this study was to examine how different ethical scenarios and different likelihood of statement accuracy influenced recommendations to seek more information or report an ethical violation. Twenty participants were recruited to participate in a pre-workshop survey where they were presented with five hypothetical ethical scenarios that...

The practical use of the concepts "reinforcement" and "punishment" have evolved in two distinct scientific domains. One domain is the psychological and biological sciences a la behaviorists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The second domain is computer science a la artificial intelligence researchers of the 20th century. Behavior scientists generall...

Researchers conducting cluster analyses on data collected from autistic individuals have identified two-to-seven clusters depending on data used. Given the spectrum nature of autism spectrum disorders, it seems unlikely only a handful of patient types exist. Past findings might be due to: smaller sample sizes, more focused variables used, or cluste...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly a part of our everyday lives. Though much AI work in healthcare has been outside of applied behavior analysis (ABA), researchers within ABA have begun to demonstrate many ways that AI might improve the delivery of ABA services. However, absent from the literature thus far is conversation around ethical c...

Researchers have recently begun to use a behavioral economics framework to study the clinical-ethical decisions made by practicing behavior analysts. Much of this work, however, has examined broad patterns as opposed to isolating the underlying behavioral processes. In this study, we sought to extend past research by studying how clinical-ethical d...

Steep delay and shallow probability discounting are associated with myriad problem behaviors; thus, it is important to understand factors that influence the degree of discounting. The present study evaluated the effects of economic context and reward amount on delay and probability discounting. Two hundred thirteen undergraduate psychology students...

Behavior scientists from behavior analysis and behavioral ecology have used robots to study and change the behavior of organisms through social interactions (e.g., teach technicians to conduct therapy, condition verbal behavior, study social stimuli in nonhuman animals). Often, the utility of robots was to precisely control an independent variable...

In the past decade, consumer-level technology has become increasingly cheaper, more advanced in its primary utility, and easier for non-expert individuals to interact with and use in novel ways. Simultaneously, our data-driven culture has led technology to collect, store, transmit, and automate the analyses of increasingly larger datasets. This imp...

Statistics for Applied Behavior Analysis Practitioners and Researchers provides practical and useful content for individuals who work directly with, or supervise those who work directly with, individuals with ASD. This book introduces core concepts and principles of modern statistical analysis that practitioners will need to deliver ABA services. T...

Researchers have recently begun to use a behavioral economics framework to study the clinical-ethical decisions made by practicing behavior analysts. Much of this work, however, has examined broad patterns as opposed to isolating the underlying behavioral processes. In this study, we sought to extend past research by studying how clinical-ethical d...

Past researchers have sought to describe and predict how individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are likely to benefit from applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy. These studies, however, have had limited generalizability due to sample sizes, simple modeling approaches, and failing to include more holistic patient profiles. Further, few s...

This manuscript is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly a part of our everyday lives. Though much AI work in healthcare has been outside of applied behavior analysis (ABA), researchers within ABA have begun to demonstrate many different ways that AI might improve the delivery of ABA services. Thou...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to impact nearly every aspect of our daily lives and nearly every industry and profession. Many readers of this journal likely work in one or more areas of behavioral health. For readers who work in behavioral health and who are interested in AI, the purpose of this article is to highlight the pervasiveness of...

Unlabelled: Published research in scientific journals are critical resources for researchers as primary sources about: what is important in the field, the direction the field is headed, how the field relates to other sciences, and as a historical record for each of these. In this exploratory study, we analyzed the articles of five behavior analyti...

Human service practitioners from varying fields make ethical decisions daily. At some point during their careers, many behavior analysts may face ethical decisions outside the range of their previous education, training, and professional experiences. To help practitioners make better decisions, researchers have published ethical decision-making mod...

The behavior analytic research community emphasizes within-subject research methodologies to study relations between individual behavior and the environment. This is unique as behavior analytic practitioners can then replicate directly the research they read when determining whether a research finding applies to the clients with whom they work. Res...

Research ethics refers to a domain of human behavior focused on the application of ethical rules and professional codes of conduct to the collection, analysis, reporting, and publication of information obtained through behaviors labeled as ‘conducting research.’ Exactly which rules are applied, how they are applied, and how scientists rank these ru...

The purpose of this study was to examine how different ethical scenarios and different likelihood of statement accuracy influenced recommendations to seek more information or report an ethical violation. Twenty participants were recruited to participate in a pre-workshop survey where they were presented with five hypothetical ethical scenarios that...

Ethical decision-making involves the complex interaction of many distinct behavioral processes. Historically, these behavioral processes have typically been studied in isolation and rarely with research aims explicitly tied to situations that can be labeled as involving “ethics”. In this presentation, we review a contemporary synthesis of the basic...

Staff training is an important line of research to ensure that clinicians in the field of applied behavior analysis provide quality services. One approach to providing training involves the use of asynchronous training materials in which the trainer and trainee do not need to be physically present at the same time. This allows for training despite...

The delivery of ABA services involves a complex interaction of behavioral systems. Patients need to be interested in and seek out ABA services; and, once in ABA, to continue improving their quality of life. Employees need to be hired in sufficient numbers, properly trained, adequately resourced, and appropriately matched with patients they are comp...

Practical Ethics for Effective Treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Second Edition is for behavior analysts working directly with, or supervising those who work with, individuals with autism. The book addresses the principles and values that underlie the Behavior Analyst Certification Board’s® Professional and Ethical Compliance Code for Behavior...

Implementing evidence-based practices (EBPs) first requires that behavior analysts practicing within the autism intervention field (hereafter applied behavior analysts) choose from available intervention options. To choose the “right” intervention, behavior analysts practicing within the autism intervention field considers characteristics of the cl...

Models have a long and storied history throughout the sciences. For example, the quantum mechanical model helps scientists describe the structure of atoms; the fruit fly is a model organism that helps scientists describe the role of genetics in biological organisms; and the three-term contingency helps scientists describe how organisms learn throug...

A critical variable to retaining staff and patients is whether they are satisfied with the culture and services provided by an ABA organization. Though conducting experiments is the optimal method to understand variables that influence staff and patient satisfaction, this requires time, money, and expertise that is not available for many ABA organi...

Many behavior analysts currently work in school settings, or with individuals who may qualify for educational services through federal special education law. However, it remains unclear what training, if any, behavior analysts receive in this law. Behavior analysts have an ethical responsibility to practice within their scope of competency and in c...

Behavior analysts have an ethical obligation to provide quality services. Providing high-quality care requires that behavior analysts first have robust and empirically supported measures of quality services in place. In this chapter, we review the three categories of quality measures in healthcare (i.e., structure, process, and outcome) and provide...

Behavior analysts provide a diverse range of services across a diverse range of clients. Using behavioral systems analysis (BSA), behavior analysts can analyze the environment and create systems (e.g., processes, policies, and organizational supports) that align practitioner behavior with the Behavior Analyst Certification Board Code. Using BSA, be...

In this chapter, we introduce the concept of standardized decision-making, and we describe how standardized decision-making can be used within applied behavior analysis (ABA) and autism treatment to achieve the best outcomes for the individuals we serve. First, we define standardized decision-making, then discuss its benefits for ABA and potential...

Everyday, autism treatment increasingly resembles a model of interdisciplinary care. What does this mean for you as a behavior analyst? It means you are likely to collaborate with Speech–Language Pathologists, psychologists, occupational-therapists, special educators, physicians, and other human-service or medical professionals. Collaborating well...

In this chapter, we discuss some of the more common mistakes professionals make concerning ethics and behavior analysis. We discuss how wrongful appeals to authority can cause more harm than good. We argue that incomplete analyses of ethical scenarios may lead to inappropriate conclusions and courses of action. We also discuss the tricky issue of m...

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is perhaps one of the most popular buzz-phrases in education and healthcare today. But what is EBP, anyway? And, how does EBP work in applied behavior analysis and autism treatment? In this chapter, we shed some light on what EBP is, and what EBP is not. Throughout the chapter, we emphasize that EBP is not an intervent...

Clinical ethics have a long and storied past. This chapter briefly covers the historical background of the current dominant ethical theories and principles that are central to modern clinical ethics. The dominant theories reviewed are virtue theory, consequentialism, deontology, and contract theory. The dominant principles reviewed are beneficence,...

Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) make a plethora of daily decisions. Among these are clinical and ethical decisions. Yet, little has been published explicitly discussing variables that impact BCBA decision-making. In this chapter, we review how basic research on choice and research from the clinical decision-making literature sheds light o...

Scope of practice and scope of competence may seem like interchangeable terms; but in fact, they are very different. Scope of practice defines the activities you may engage in by virtue of holding a credential or license. Scope of competence refers to the activities within an individual’s scope of practice that they are uniquely competent to perfor...

Delay discounting and operant demand are two behavioral economic constructs that tend to covary, by degree, with cigarette smoking status. Given historically robust associations between adverse health outcomes of smoking, a strong preference for immediate reinforcement (measured with delay discounting), and excessive motivation to smoke cigarettes...

The human and economic costs of severe weather damage can be mitigated by appropriate preparation. Despite the benefits, researchers have only begun to examine if known decision-making frameworks apply to severe-weather-related decisions. Using experiments, we found that a hyperbolic discounting function accurately described participant decisions t...

Transparency and accountability surrounding patient outcomes calls for a uniform approach to assessment of treatment outcomes. Reporting on quality outcomes are rapidly becoming the norm and expected by healthcare patients worldwide. For behavior analysts, this increased attention on treatment outcomes calls for practitioners to demonstrate that th...

Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that develops algorithms that improve through repeated interaction with data. The area of machine learning that focuses on verbal behavior is called natural language processing (NLP). NLP researchers have historically taken a structural-linguistic approach to designing and improving algorithms...

Sexual discounting is a growing area of research aimed at identifying factors that reduce people’s reported willingness to have safe sex. One commonly reported reason for condom non-use is that a condom reduces sexual arousal. However, researchers have yet to isolate the specific role of sexual arousal using a sexual discounting framework. We exten...

Verbal reports of drug effects are often used in behavioral pharmacology. Two reports related to reinforcement are drug use (Harford, 1978; Liu et al., 2018) frequency and drug preference. Anecdotally, some individuals may specify a favorite/preferred drug (e.g., psilocybin) despite using another drug more frequently (e.g., tobacco). Research compa...

Molecular analyses predict and control behavior through discrete responses strengthened by contiguous reinforcers. Molar analyses predict and control behavior through response-reinforcer relationships aggregated across a temporal window. Unified analyses aim to leverage molecular and molar analyses to describe, predict, and control behavior. Here,...

Molecular analyses predict and control behavior through discrete responses strengthened by contiguous reinforcers. Molar analyses predict and control behavior through response-reinforcer relationships aggregated across a temporal window. Unified analyses aim to leverage molecular and molar analyses to describe, predict, and control behavior. Here,...

Practitioners of applied behavior analysis (ABA) collect and use data on behavior-environment relationships to determine whether the interventions they oversee are effective. To collect valid and accurate data, practitioners may tailor operational definitions to each client such that no two operational definitions are exactly alike. Though helpful...

How can we maximize what is learned from a replication study? In the creative destruction approach to replication, the original hypothesis is compared not only to the null hypothesis, but also to predictions derived from multiple alternative theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. To this end, new populations and measures are included in the design...

How can we maximize what is learned from a replication study? In the creative destruction approach to replication, the original hypothesis is compared not only to the null hypothesis, but also to predictions derived from multiple alternative theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. To this end, new populations and measures are included in the design...

How can we maximize what is learned from a replication study? In the creative destruction approach to replication, the original hypothesis is compared not only to the null hypothesis, but also to predictions derived from multiple alternative theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. To this end, new populations and measures are included in the design...

Behavior analysts make dozens of practice-related decisions every day. Past research has extensively examined practice-related decision making by medical and other healthcare professionals, but decision making by practicing behavior analysts has garnered little research attention. The purpose of this proof of concept study was to begin a translatio...

This is a study concurrent with Understanding Policing Part I: A Culturo-Behavior Systems Analysis. Black and Latinx individuals are disproportionately stopped and searched in the 50,000+ police traffic stops per day in the United States. In Part I, we identified systemic variables associated with police practices and potential systemic mechanisms...

Police officers make an average of 50,000+ traffic stops per day in the United States with Black and Latinx individuals disproportionately stopped and searched. It is unclear which systemic variables are associated with police practices and the systemic mechanisms that can be leveraged for change particularly when bias is identified. We gathered in...

Behavioral processes underlying sexual behavior are important for understanding normal human functioning and risk behavior leading to sexually transmitted infections (STIs). This systematic review examines delay and probability discounting in human sexual behavior through synthesis of 50 peer-reviewed, original research articles. Sixteen studies fo...

The printing press, compass, antibiotics, and steam engine are but a few examples of technological advances that significantly changed the way humans live. Modern advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology and access are arguably shifting human-environment interactions at similar scale. In medicine, researchers are leveraging advances in A...

Behavioral science is the domain of human understanding that focuses on why people engage in specific behaviors in specific contexts. Data science is the domain of human understanding that focuses on generating insight from large data sets. Behavioral data science is an emerging interdisciplinary field that lies at the interface of behavioral scien...

Ethical statements typically involve rules. All rules can vary in accuracy and specificity depending on the context to which they are applied. Codes of ethics often involve ethical rules that are written generally to cover the wide-ranging set of possible situations that any one member of the profession may encounter. But, despite being written gen...

As more states in the US legalize cannabis for recreational and medical use, the public health impact of cannabis may increase if regularly co-consumed with alcohol or tobacco. We used a behavioral economics framework to examine how public health messaging influences cannabis, alcohol, and tobacco purchasing. Participants who reported current canna...

To be alive is to reside in the expanse of constant choice. Choice about how to live and choice about what to value. Ethics. Moral philosophers have long debated how we know what choice is right and why that choice is best. When observed over time, patterns of ethical choice and justification aggregate into ethical theories that can guide ethical d...