Behavior Analysis Minor

Program Overview

The Behavior Analysis Minor is a 18-credit hour program at UNT offering a comprehensive foundation in behavior analysis. It prepares students to understand and improve behaviors in various fields, including education, healthcare, business, and animal studies.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

The Behavior Analysis Minor is a 18-credit hour program designed to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the science of behavior and the technology of behavior change. It is offered on campus and can be completed in 2-3 semesters. The program is designed for students interested in understanding and helping children with autism, improving the lives of individuals with developmental and behavioral disabilities, studying animal behavior, or enhancing organizational behavior.

Teaching:

• The program is taught by nationally recognized experts in the field of behavior analysis.
• Faculty have published extensively in refereed journals and presented research at national and international conferences.

Careers:

• The minor works well with any degree that is concerned with behavior, such as speech-language pathology, rehabilitation, psychology, neuroscience, business management, or merchandising.

Other:

• The Department of Behavior Analysis at UNT was the nation's first stand-alone department of behavior analysis and offered the first undergraduate degree in the field.
• The department serves as the headquarters for the Texas Association for Behavior Analysis.
• The department has been recognized for its tradition of leadership in teaching, service, and scholarship by the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis.
• Coursework focuses on applied behavior analysis literature, behavior change techniques, behavior management, behavior principles, behavior technology, and data collection and analysis.

Sample Courses:

• Behavior Principles II (3 hrs): This course examines behavioral principles describing relations between behavior and antecedents.
It covers principles of operant stimulus control, discrimination and generalization, stimulus equivalence, and establishing operations, relating them to laboratory procedures, everyday life, and intervention techniques. It also explores principles of respondent (Pavlovian) conditioning related to laboratory procedures, everyday occurrence, and their applications in behavioral interventions.
• Science, Skepticism and Weird Behavior (3 hrs): This course utilizes scientific critical thinking to examine the causes of various strange phenomena, including alleged paranormal events, magic, superstition, mystery illnesses, bogus therapies, and pseudoscience.
It seeks to explain why people believe and do weird things.
• Data Collection and Analysis (4 hrs): This course covers methods of observing and measuring behavior and for analyzing behavioral data.
Topics include dimensional properties of behavior, techniques of direct observation, methods of summarizing data, preparing graphs, and analyzing graphed data. It introduces single-subject experimental designs including reversal, multiple baseline, and multi-element designs.
• Behavior Principles and Self-Management (3 hrs): This course uses behavior principles to understand and deal with problems in self-management.
It involves self-assessment of goals, options, and necessary trade-offs, followed by a behavior analysis of the nature of the self-management problem.
• Organizational Behavior Management (3 hrs): This course describes the theory and techniques of applying behavior analysis principles to solve performance problems and design more effective workplaces.
It focuses on pinpointing critical work behaviors, measuring work performance, analyzing the contingencies responsible for the performance, implementing and evaluating intervention programs involving stimulus control, feedback, and reinforcement systems to improve employee performance.
• Behavior Principles I (3 hrs): This course examines behavior as a part of the natural world, with primary focus on principles describing relations between operant behavior and its consequences.