Association for Behavior Analysis International

Clinical behavior analysis (CBA) is the behavior analytic approach to traditional psychotherapy. Although it has integrated principles and technology from behavior analysis (BA) with interesting results, methodological issues and practitioner familiarity remain significant challenges for meaningful translational work in the field. Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP) is one of the therapeutic models that has been interested in conceptualizing and applying BA principles to produce therapeutic changes in-session, while moving towards improving clients' performance out-of-session. FAP states that therapists provide in-session consequences of reinforcement to improve clients' new functional behaviors and to demote problematic repertoires. However, it does not currently utilize efficient, effective or useful procedures to assess reinforcers before implementing interventions. Applied behavior analysis (ABA) has developed plentiful technologies to measure reinforcers and conduct preference assessment that could be translated and adapted to clinical practice. FAP also lacks a methodology to evaluate consequences from a molar functional relations perspective. This panel will discuss methods to evaluate reinforcers in FAP from multiple perspectives. Likewise, it presents the adaptation of ABA technology relevant to reinforcement and preference assessment in-session to improve psychotherapy practice, training, and ecological validity.