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Dr. Iser DeLeon is the Director of Research Development for the Department of Behavioral Psychology at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and is also an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Biographical Sketch:
Dr. DeLeon received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Florida in 1997. Before joining the Kennedy Krieger faculty, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Behavioral Psychology and Pediatrics at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins Department of Pediatrics in 1998. In additional to his appointments at Kennedy Krieger and Johns Hopkins, Dr. DeLeon has an adjunct appointment in Psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and is Co-Director of the Applied Behavior Analysis master’s degree program jointly administered by UMBC and Kennedy Krieger. He is Board Certified Behavior Analyst, a former associate editor for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, and a member of various professional societies including the American Psychological Association, the Association for Behavior Analysis, and the Maryland Association for Behavior Analysis, for which he served as president in 2001.
Research Summary:
Dr. DeLeon’s research has focused on the variables that give rise to severe behavior disorders (e.g., self-injury, aggression) in individuals with developmental disabilities, with an emphasis on the development of methods to assess the behavioral functions of these behaviors and the hypothesis-driven development of intervention. Separate, although often related, lines of research have examined choice responding in individuals with developmental disabilities. Choice responding is characterized by selections made when confronted with two or more response alternatives, each associated with a distinct outcome. Choices can be influenced systematically by variables such as the probability of and delay to the outcomes associated with each response option. Dr. DeLeon has been a Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator for several NIH-funded grants related to: 1) examining how these variables can influence choices between quantitatively and/or qualitatively different outcomes; 2) using choice arrangements to permit individuals with disabilities and communicative deficits to express meaningful preferences; and 3) importing principles of behavioral economics to understand the interaction of variables that influence choice and the expression of aberrant behavior.
Recent Publications/Presentations:
DeLeon, I. G., Williams, D. C., Gregory, M. K., & Hagopian, L. P. (2005). Unexamined potential effects of the noncontingent delivery of reinforcers. European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 5, 57-69.
DeLeon, I.G., Toole, L. M., Gutshall, K. A., & Bowman, L. G. (2005). Individualized sampling parameters for behavioral observations: Enhancing the predictive validity of competing stimulus assessments. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 46, 440-455.
Fritz, J., DeLeon, I. G., & Lazarchick, W. (2004). Separating the influence of escape and access to preferred activities on problem behavior occurring in instructional contexts. Behavioral Interventions, 19, 159-171.
DeLeon, I. G., Fisher, W. W., & Marhefka, J. (2004). Decreasing self-injurious behavior associated with awakening in a child with autism and developmental delays. Behavioral Interventions.
DeLeon, I. G., Arnold, K. A., Rodriguez-Catter, V., & Uy, M. L. (2003). Covariation between bizarre and non-bizarre speech as a function of the content of social attention. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 36, 101-104..
DeLeon, I. G., Rodriguez-Catter, V. & Cataldo, M. F. (2002). Treatment of self-injurious behavior: Current standards of care and their research implications. In S. Schroeder, M. L.Oster-Granite, & T. Thompson (Eds). Self-Injurious Behavior: Gene-Brain-Behavior Relationships. Washington, D.C.: APA Books. |
