Karola Dillenburger
BCBA-D
Emeritus Professor of Behaviour Analysis and Education, Queen’s University Belfast
President of the European Association for Behaviour Analysis (EABA)
The topic of presentation
Applied Behaviour Analysis: Ethics, integrity, and spuriousness assertions
The integrity of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) is based explicitly on the aim to enhance socially important behaviour. ABA has been used very successfully to support a different populations, including those in general education, on the autism sprectrum, experiencing intellectual disability, and working in organisations. At the same time, there are some who make spurious assertions about ABA. Without professional recognition and regulation, anyone can call themselves a "behaviour analyst" and service users cannot be adequately informed and protected. In this presentation, I will outline some of the issues involved in this discussion and outline the ethical imperative for behaviour analysts to be professionally regulated and respond to misrepresentations of ABA in public.