Association for Behavior Analysis International

Addressing issues of diversity and equity is an ongoing process that requires intentional goal-setting, committed action, and ongoing evaluation. As a field, we have embraced diversity as a value, however greater individual awareness and training are needed to increase engagement in values-directed behaviors by individuals. The aim of this symposium is to discuss key data and research related to increasing diversity and equity in Applied Behavior Analysis; specifically issues related to race, gender, socioeconomic background, and sexual orientation will be discussed. The symposium will open with a detailed discussion of cultural competency with respect to transgender individuals, followed by a paper examining an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) approach to increasing awareness of privilege and committed action with respect to increasing cultural competency as an ABA practitioner. Following a review of relevant data and research, each paper will discuss key ethical and practical concerns related to the topic, and make recommendations regarding specific actions that might benefit consumers and create a more inclusive and empowering environment for ABA staff, students, and practitioners.

BCBAs, BCaBAs, Graduate students, Psychologists, Researchers, Academics

This discussion paper will define and differentiate gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation specific to the transgender and gender-nonconforming community. Relevant research and data will be presented to highlight the unique needs of transgender individuals and the common barriers that impact their access to healthcare and behavioral health services. Tying in the BACB ethics code, specific action steps will be outlined to promote cultural sensitivity and competence, with a highlight on navigating pronouns.

Every attendee at this conference, including you, is impacted by social and clinical effects of bias, racism, and cultural incompetency; it’s critical to further conceptual and theoretical study of, and practical approaches to, mitigating those effects. This is a local, global, and personal problem. Personal because of our direct experiences of discrimination. Personal, too, because you suffer bias’s negative effects as a clinician, related to client outcomes and career burnout. Locally, communities and schools continue to experience the devastating effects of bigotry and racism. Globally, we are disseminating our science and practice into new cultures but creating extraordinary ethical risk when we replicate ‘what has worked’ without culturally adapting and researching carefully. You are not immune from these concerns if you don’t work internationally. In a global world, diversity is so much more than visible differences, and your assessments, interventions, and interactions require nuanced and practiced cultural competencies: in higher education, in clinical practice, in training and supervision. Behavior science can help ameliorate these clinical and social effects in career, education, community, and international settings. We will share some of what we’ve found to work. Join us as we continue the fight to mitigate bias and increase multi-cultural competencies.

This topic of diversity, bias, burnout, and multicultural competency applies to every person living, working, and learning in the field of ABA. The topic is growing in importance, and everyone from students through seasoned doctoral level experts will benefit from exploring how all of us are affected by implicit cognition - and to learn how to culturally adapt our effective behavior analytic practices to cross-cultural, non-Western, and diverse populations of clients and students.

The effectiveness of behavior-analytic interventions for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is well- documented. However, little is known about the contextual appropriateness or translational capacity of those interventions in non-western cultures. ASD treatment centers in majority world countries lack funding for teacher or staff training. Thus, those programs rely heavily on the western community for training supports. Therefore, research on how to best culturally adapt training methods is crucial for increasing training effectiveness and sustainable dissemination of behavior-analytic services around the world. This study examined the impact of self-monitoring with performance feedback on caregivers’ use of culturally adapted praise. We also measured collateral effects on student academic engagement. Four caregivers and four students with autism in Accra, Ghana participated. Results indicated that self-monitoring and performance feedback effectively increased caregivers’ use of praise across phases. Additionally, adaptations to the topography of praise were critical for establishing desired student outcomes. This experiment provides an impetus for further examination of behavior-analytic interventions for children with autism in non-western contexts.

As the demand for behavior analytic services grow, we can expect to see increased diversity among both people seeking behavior analytic services and people seeking licensure or certification as behavior analysts. We must consider the best methods for teaching multicultural competencies to graduate students while simultaneously accommodating students from different cultural backgrounds. This case study describes a potential framework for a parallel process of remaining culturally sensitive as instructors while teaching students how to maintain their ethical responsibility of cultural sensitivity when practicing as a behavior analyst.

Perceptions of sexuality, gender identity, and relationship structures are all shaped and maintained by our verbal communities. Additionally, verbal communities often have rules (both direct and implicit) that specify appropriate roles, and which reinforce alignment with those roles and punish stepping outside of them. Because of this, individuals who adhere to the rules of a verbal community through behavior or through endogenous traits often experience privilege- social advantages or benefits for aligning with the dominant group. Relational Frame Theory (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001) provides a framework for examining this ingrouping and outgrouping in verbal communities. This presentation provides a behavior analytic examination of identities and privilege and offers initial suggestions on behavior analytic approaches to ethically supporting clients with marginalized identities and on decreasing inequity in our verbal community at large.

Jealousy — the emotion and collection of collateral responses that occur when a person is faced with a perceived threat to an important relationship — is a common source of distress within romantic and other close interpersonal relationships (Elphinston, Feeney, Noller, Conner, & Fitzgerald, 2013). In contrast, some people report an experience of compersion – joy in response to a partner experiencing emotional or sexual attraction toward and interactions with another person (Aumer, Bellew, Ito, Hatfield, & Heck, 2014). Jealousy and compersion are collections of responses emitted by individuals in both monogamous and non-monogamous relationships, and both can be understood in terms of their surrounding environmental contingencies. This presentation explores several potential contingencies at play in situations involving jealousy, and in so doing, identifies ways in which contingencies may be altered to produce a reduction in jealous responding. Finally, potential contingencies involved in compersion are presented, and suggestions made as to how it may be fostered within relationships in which compersion is a goal.

Body image has been studied through many psychological lenses, but for transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) individuals, traditional approaches to body image which focus on body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) may not be appropriate or account for the unique verbal behavior which contributes to gender dysphoria (Garcia-Falgueras, 2014). Gender dysphoria can include a discomfort with how one is treated based on cultural perceptions of physical stimuli. Conversely, gender euphoria can include experiences of joy from being treated in ways that align with one's identity, irrespective of assumptions based on physical stimuli. Psychological inflexibility may be a useful construct to examine body image, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) tools may assist in addressing BDD. These may or may not be useful when examining gender dysphoria and gender euphoria. This paper will examine the utility of this model when examining dysmorphia when contrasted with dysphoria, the ways in which language around each may be shaped, and components of ACT tools which may be useful across populations.

As our field expands our analysts are exposed to various cultures, including work in international markets as well as diverse populations within our own communities. Because of the diversity of individuals we serve, there is a clear need to begin a discussion about the consideration of ethics when navigating the nuances between cultural norms. In addition, we may be missing the opportunity to support a large portion of the population due to our lack of cultural sensitivities. While this overarching discussion is broad and sometimes difficult to operationally define, there are areas of our practice that we can begin developing to create socially significant changes in the culture of our field. In this panel we would like to address how including multi-cultural competencies in our supervision process are crucial and can develop culturally sensitive practitioners. We would also like to address the ethical dilemmas we come across when working with differing cultures. As we are working in the homes of our clients for months sometimes years, and cultural sensitivity is imperative for programing, training of caregivers, and successfully achieving the client’s ultimate outcomes.

This Panel is developed for current Board Certified Behavior Analysts, and Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analysts.

Behavior analysts serve a growing diverse population. Diverse groups currently make up about 28% of the population (Humes, Jones, & Ramirez, 2011), and by 2044 diverse groups are projected to make up more than half of the population (Colby & Ortman, 2017). Additionally, research from outside of behavior analysis has evaluated ways to reduce health care disparities and propose solutions for barriers that diverse groups experience. Conversely, limited research has been conducted on how to reduce barriers for diverse groups within behavior analysis. As students, this is an opportunity to learn about the current standing of diversity in behavior analysis. It is important to have these discussions and begin to conduct research on how we can best serve diverse groups in behavior analysis. Thus, the panel is designed to open up a conversation about issues with diversity in behavior analysis and review proposed solutions that behavior analysts can follow. The presenters will also discuss how to better serve diverse populations and how to recruit and retain diverse behavior analysts.

As appears to be true across all scientific and technical fields, behavior analysis is not immune to sexual harassment, disrespect, discrimination, and behavior reflecting explicit and implicit bias. This panel and discussion are a follow-up to the open forum on these issues at the 2018 ABAI Convention. The panel presentation will provide information on (a) the challenges faced by organizations like ABAI, (b) options for addressing those challenges using a constructional strategy, (c) reports on the work being done by the ABAI Diversity, Respect, and Inclusion Task Force and the ABAI Council going forward, (d) the realities of and approaches to manage and weaken the implicit biases that all carry, and (e) how behaviorists can begin to engage with these issues within our organization, but also in work and community settings, as behavioral and cultural analysts. Our science offers specific knowledge and alternatives for shaping and maintaining diverse, equitable, and inclusive cultures organizationally and in the community. The second half of the program will be oriented toward contributions (questions and comments) from attendees and panel responses.

Annual meeting of the Culture and Diversity SIG (formerly MultiABA). Come and meet the members!