James C. Gross, JD · Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller, & Naylor, LLP
Thursday, March 12 • 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
James Gross is a partner in the California law firm Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor, LLP. He specializes in
government law and the legislative process and is one of the original members of the firm's government law section and a member of the
firm's Management Committee. He specializes in health issues, state and local fiscal and tax policy, and local government issues. Over the
last 19 years, he has participated in the development and passage of major legislation affecting the delivery of health and human services in
California. He is a graduate of the University of California, Davis and the University of California, Davis School of Law where he wrote and
edited for the Law Review.
Behavior Analysis and the Public Policy Process
The profession of behavior analysis is becoming a cornerstone in the treatment of children with ASD. However, in the public policy arena, the
area where laws are debated and enacted, the profession is unknown, and until recently, unrepresented. As the debate over access to services
for these children proceeds in the state Legislature in the next year, it is vital that the profession be both represented and active through its
members. The profession must participate in the political process to make the case for the services it provides. This presentation will discuss
in detail what the key issues are and how the profession can and should bring its message to policy makers.
Sigrid S. Glenn, PhD, BCBA · University of North Texas
Friday, March 13 • 8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.
Dr. Glenn, Regents Professor at the University of North Texas (UNT), was the founding chair of its Department of
Behavior Analysis. She is a past president of the Association for Behavior Analysis-International and one of its founding
fellows. A Board Certified Behavior Analyst, she established and directs UNT's distance education program, designed to
enable individuals with master's degrees to obtain the behavior analysis courses needed for Board certification and to
provide continuing education for those already certified. Dr. Glenn's published work includes empirical and theoretical
articles, books, and book chapters targeting audiences within and outside behavior analysis. In the past several years,
she and her students have collaborated with faculty and students in Norway and Brazil in developing a research program
for the experimental analysis of metacontingencies and the effect of cultural level selection on the interlocking operant
contingencies embedded in complex cultural units.
Examining the "Radical" in Radical Behaviorism
Radical behaviorism is often used synonymously with behavior analysis, but it is only one component of behavior analysis: its philosophy of
science. Like all philosophies of science, the tenets of radical behaviorism derive in part from the science itself; they lay bare its underlying
assumptions; and they identify the conceptual boundaries of the science. Radical behaviorism is radical in the sense that almost all of its tenets
require a kind of figure-ground reversal in the way that we think. It challenges some of the basic assumptions we were implicitly taught by the
everyday language of our culture. Such challenges can be intellectually invigorating or frightfully threatening—or both. In this paper, several
concepts associated with radical behaviorist philosophy will be examined to clarify their role in the science and to point out the uniqueness
of the radical behaviorist perspective on these concepts. The concepts to be discussed in this paper are lawfulness [of behavior]; mentalism;
private events; contingency shaped and rule governed; phylogenic and ontogenic; social and nonsocial; and verbal and nonverbal.
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