MALKA213 Laboratory Exercises — Experimental Analysis of Behavior Course description

This course will show how behavioral principles and concepts from respondent and operant conditioning are applied in research and practice.

The course prepares participants for working in intensive programs designed to accelerate learning for young children with pervasive developmental disorders. Applied Behavior Analysis is the treatment of choice, and this course teaches application of several behavioral technologies that have been shown to be effective, especially for the acquisition of communication skills, academic, play, and social skills. Rules for ethical and professional conduct are discussed.

On successful completion of the course, the student has the following learning outcomes classified as knowledge, skills and competence:

Knowledge

The student can

• describe the logic and the methodology of experimental designs

Skills

The student can

• demonstrate shaping of different types of behavior in animals by using computer software
• design and conduct experiments, either as single-case research designs or group designs
• write a manuscript in accordance with principles in the current edition of the APA manual, using data from the experiments
• use the principles for citations and references as given in the current edition of the APA manual
• write a review of a scientific topic and presents results from an experiment in line with relevant ethical standards for writing research papers

Competence

The student can

• ask and argue for relevant research questions
• describe methods of experiments
• present results from experiments
• discuss the results achieved in an experiment

The course includes all-day seminars, hands-on exercises, and discussion of different papers. Practical exercises are essential to this course and the exercises include the use of the software to conduct an experiment, and to write up the results from the experiment as a scientific paper. Students must have a laptop with the required software installed and means of payment for user license.

The following required coursework must be approved before the student can take the exam:

• None

Individual written project examination in the form of a scientific article, on a selected topic, with a maximum length of 20 pages, including the title page, references, tables, and figures, but excluding appendices. The article should be written using Times New Roman 12-font with double spaced lines. Students may submit their exams in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or English.

Resit exam: If the exam is awarded the grade F (fail), the student will be given one (1) opportunity to submit a reworked version.

Individual school examination, 3 hours. Exam questions are in English. Students may submit their exams in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or English.

Authorized materials: Norwegian-English dictionary

All answers are assessed by one examiner.

An external examiner is used regularly, at a minimum of every third completion of the course. When selecting answers for external evaluation, a minimum of 10 percent of the answers shall be included, with no fewer than 5 answers. The external examiner’s assessment of the selected answers shall benefit all students.