EABA History

• Secretary: Christoph Bordlein, Germany
• Treasurer: Karola Dillenburger, UK
• Basic science representative: Torunn Lian, Norway
• Applied science representative: Christos Nikopoulos, Greece

The 1st Summer School of the European Association for Behaviour Analysis took place on the beautiful island of Crete in the Hellenic Republic from July 6th to 17th. The local organization was a collaboration of the Departments of Psychology of the University of Crete and Panteion University of Athens, together with the Hellenic Community for Behavior Analysis.

The inaugural Summer School was composed of four 15-hour courses. The first week’s courses were taught by Ricardo Pellón of the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Madrid and by Katerina Dounavi of Queens University Belfast. Pellón provided the enthusiastic “summerschoolers” with a systematic demonstration of the relevance of work in the experimental analysis of behaviour for clinical analysis and intervention by describing how his understanding of the nature and determinants of adjunctive behavior has changed over the course of nearly three decades of research, and how this understanding has lead to innova- tive intervention in phenomena such as exercise-induced anorexia and related forms of com- pulsive behavior. In the first week’s evening sessions, Katerina Dounavi amply demonstrated the power and elegance of a scientific analysis of verbal behavior and its effective application in enriching the family, school and social lives of individuals characterized by developmental delays. Week two saw a continuation of Pellón’s efforts to demonstrate the clinical relevance of basic experimental analysis, with Robert Mellon’s (aka Mellón) presentation of the implications of aversive control processes for understanding problematic “cognitive” phenomena such as thought-action fusion and catastrophic thinking. In the evening course, Christos Nikopoulos of Autism Consultancy Services, London and the Behavior Analyst Certification Board, treated his participants to a delightfully practical, hands-on course on developing curricula for persons with autism spectrum disorder utilizing functional analysis and video modelling.

The EABA Summer School’s courses were conducted in an atmosphere that was both intellectually rigorous and fun. The fun continued between classes, with a lively social program improvised by the summerschoolers themselves in collaboration with our Local Coordinator, impresario George Kandylis, who also arranged two delightful evenings of Cretan music and cuisine in the charming village of Koufi, as well as excursions to Episkopi Beach and to the spectacular Triopetra Beach on the Libyan Sea.

The EABA board wishes to express its gratitude to the 1st Summer School’s instructors who, in the interest of disseminating behavioral philosophy and its experimental and applied sciences, provided their excellent courses for our participants without monetary remuneration.

Discussions on the development of a European Association were continued at the first international ABAI Conference in Venice, Italy.

The initial goal of the EABA were:

1. to act as a unifying body to promote Behaviour Analysis across Europe.
2. to organise the European Congress in experimental and applied Behaviour Analysis
3. to foster collaboration between the member countries and organisations outside Europe (e.g. The Association of Behaviour Analysis International).
4. to establish and maintain a website.
5. to support the publication of the European Journal of Behaviour Analysis (EJOBA).
6. to work towards developing a democratic organisation representing Behaviour Analysis from both applied and basic domains from all countries in Europe.