The field of applied behavior analysis (ABA) appears to be at an inflection point where we are experiencing substantial criticism from the autistic community. We as a field can choose to defend our field from the criticism or we can choose to listen and be responsive to it. Some early forays into discussing the implications of neurodiversity for ABA have been fruitful (Veneziano Shea, 2023; Mathur et al., 2024) and it seems clear that the time for direct dialogue between ABA scientist practitioners and some of our greatest critics has come. Suckle et al. (2025) described one side of a recent dialogue between scholars of ABA and Critical Autism Studies (CAS), in which CAS scholars posed questions to ABA scholars and ABA scholars answered them. That article was explicitly composed for a disability studies audience and accordingly published in a disability studies journal. The current article describes the other side of that dialogue, in which ABA scholars posed questions to CAS scholars, who then provided their answers. The current article is explicitly written for the ABA researcher and practitioner audience. We may not feel entirely comfortable with some of the criticisms of ABA that come from CAS scholars but we believe that willingness to experience this discomfort is a critical prerequisite for our field to evolve. This article explores how our field can engage in cross-disciplinary collaboration and concludes with potential actionable steps that ABA researchers and practitioners can put into practice today.

Applied behaviour analysis and critical autism studies are generally assumed to find no common ground on the question of autism support strategies. With the core conviction that no autism support or intervention that seeks to normalise autistic people can ever be considered neurodiversity-affirming, two critical autism scholars and two BCBA behavioural analysts discuss how and why ABA needs to evolve to serve its main clients: autistic people. Building on a question-and-answer exchange between the two groups, this article is a cautious collaboration between these two apparently opposing groups, with the objective of discussing whether ABA can evolve and what it would take to do so. This article, one of two generated by this exchange, speaks to critical autism scholars and urges further critical engagement with those factions of the ABA industry seeking to take autism-centred approaches to autism support. A separate paper will speak to the ABA community.

We developed and examined a laboratory preparation with adult humans that pits shorter term avoidance over longer term positive reinforcement and may serve as a useful laboratory functional analogue of problematic behavior. Participants were exposed to choices between (1) avoiding an aversive sound and acquiring no money or (2) listening to an aversive sound for a set duration and then receiving money. The first choice, avoiding an aversive sound and acquiring no money, was conceptualized as immediate negative reinforcement and no positive reinforcement, whereas the latter choice, listening to an aversive sound for a set duration and then receiving money, was conceptualized as a potential positive punisher paired with a larger later positive reinforcer. We manipulated the duration of the sound and the magnitude of money to identify the point at which individual participants' choices changed from avoiding the sound to choosing the sound plus money. As the sound duration increased, the choice of listening to the sound and receiving money decreased. Similar functions were observed with two different monetary magnitudes. The model has potential applicability to real-world problems such as smoking, addiction, gambling, anxiety disorders, and other impulse control disorders.

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of behavioral procedures, including relational training and multiple exemplar training on empathic responding of individuals who display racial bias. In particular, this study used a multielement design with five adult participants to evaluate whether the presentation of relational frames of coordination and distinction between the participants’ values and the values of a person belonging to a group for which a bias existed altered empathic responses toward people belonging to such groups. The results showed empathic responding was higher when relational frames of coordination were presented and lower when relational frames of distinction were presented. This study provides preliminary data suggesting that relational training may result in altered patterns of empathic responses toward people belonging to different racial groups for which a bias previously was observed.

Background Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by persistent deficits in reciprocal social interaction, communication, and restricted, repetitive, behaviour, that are atypical or excessive for the individual’s age and sociocultural context (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5th ed TR.; 2022). The rate of ASD continues to increase and remains a concern due to inequitable access to diagnosis and quality services. A lack of standardization in assessment and treatment presents further difficulty in benchmarking and improving care. Method The International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM) recruited a Working Group (WG) of 20 subject matter experts, including researchers, clinicians, policy makers, and lived-experience experts to identify a minimum set of measurable outcomes along with case mix variables (i.e., risk adjustment factors). A proposed set of Patient Centered Outcome Measures (henceforth known as the ASD Set) was identified and endorsed using a modified Delphi process to reach consensus. Results The WG took into consideration variation in global health, social care and educational systems were considered to ensure implementation of the ASD Set is feasible. The Set includes a core set of measurable outcomes (i.e., domains) that include core symptoms, daily functioning, accessibility, and support. Conclusions The ICHOM ASD Set is a scientifically-sound, internationally vetted tool that will enable assessment of care for individuals with ASD that can facilitate targeted, person-centered clinical and social inclusion strategies. Large scale implementation and use should generate standardized data describing the individual's health and wellbeing that can inform decision-making, quality improvement and best-practices insights.

Perspective taking is a critical repertoire for navigating social relationships and consists of a variety of complex verbal skills, including socially adaptive forms of deception. Detecting and being able to use socially adaptive deception likely has many practical uses, including defending oneself against bullying, telling white lies to avoid hurting others’ feelings, keeping secrets and bluffing during games, and playing friendly tricks on others. Previous research has documented that some Autistic1 children have challenges identifying deception and playfully deceiving others (Reinecke et al., 1997). The current study employed a multiple baseline across participants design to evaluate the use of multiple exemplar training, rules, modeling, practice, and feedback for teaching four Autistic children and adolescents to use deception to play friendly tricks on others. The procedure was successful for all participants, and generalization was achieved across novel, untrained tricks.

Purpose: The purpose of current study was to evaluate change in hours of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy utilization for autistic children during the year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the first three months of the pandemic (crisis phase), and the following 9 months of the pandemic (mitigation phase). Additionally, this study aimed to evaluate if change in therapy utilization differed based on child race, ethnicity, and primary payer of services. Finally, we aimed to identify potential mechanisms of ABA therapy disruption by interpreting findings using an extended version of Donabedian's structure-process-outcome model. Methods: Retrospective clinical data on client demographics and therapy utilization (n = 283) were collected from ABA clinics in California and analyzed with four piecewise growth multi-level models. Results: We found that therapy utilization dropped during the first three months of the pandemic (-10.65 h/month; p < .001) and increased during the following 9 months (2.39 h/month; p < .001). Moderator analyses revelated that Asian, Non-Latinx and school-district funded children had significantly different trajectories of change in therapy utilization compared to white, non-Latinx participants and private insurance funded participants, respectively. Conclusion: Findings suggest that utilization of ABA therapy was disrupted for a full year following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and that child race/ethnicity and primary payer influenced the degree to which autistic children were impacted by service disruption. These findings have implications for autistic children who lost therapy access during key developmental periods and for the ABA care delivery system.

Many have suggested that a compassion-focused approach to applied behavior analysis (ABA) services may improve provider–client therapeutic relationships and has the potential to improve program acceptability and clinical outcomes experienced by our clients. In this article, radical compassion is defined and explored as a foundational approach to the implementation of ABA, with special emphasis on practical applications in the area of service delivery for families living with autism. In this framework for care, compassion is offered as a measurable repertoire and as a philosophical guidepost for future developments in the profession. This article explores preliminary tenets of compassion-focused ABA and their implications for practice. This approach is offered in the hope of moving the field toward a future of improved acceptability and sustainable consumer preference.

Operant extinction has substantial evidence to support its effectiveness across a variety of populations and behaviors. However, extinction procedures may be less-preferred by learners, caregivers, other community stakeholders, and the staff implementing them. In the current study, we evaluated the effectiveness of a “kind extinction” procedural modification, in which we provided a functionally arbitrary reinforcer in the form of genuine positive regard and validation, contingent on interfering behavior, while implementing escape and tangible extinction. The procedure produced large and rapid decreases in interfering behavior, accompanying increases in alternative behavior, and was rated as acceptable by caregivers and staff. Implications for increasing the social validity of behavioral procedures, as well as contributing to a more kind and compassionate future for the field of applied behavior analysis are discussed.

The goal of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is to help people engage in experiential avoidance less and committed action toward values more. One possible behavior analytic interpretation is that it helps people choose short-term negative reinforcement less and choose longer-term positive reinforcement more. To our knowledge, no laboratory research to date has evaluated the effect of ACT interventions on the behavior of choosing between immediate negative reinforcement or delayed positive reinforcement. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of defusion exercises on participants' choice making on a delay discounting computer task that presented choices between immediate avoidance of an aversive sound or presentation of the aversive sound and delayed positive reinforcement in the form of money. A multiple baseline design across participants was used to measure changes in discounting before and after a brief defusion session. All three participants discounted less steeply (i.e., selected to listen to the sound in order to earn money more often) following defusion training when compared to baseline.

This study aimed to expand current research in one area of perspective taking related to teaching children with autism spectrum disorder to predict others’ emotions. The current study evaluated a behavioral teaching procedure on predicting and inferring the cause of emotions based on another’s desires. The procedure included a training package including multiple-exemplar training, rules, modeling, prompting, and reinforcement across scenarios in which children with autism were asked to predict how others may feel given a met or unmet desire or nondesire. Three children with autism, who did not already demonstrate this skill at baseline, were included in the study and learned a repertoire of emotion prediction and cause that generalized to untrained novel scenarios. Generalization to situations in which it was necessary to apply information about another’s desires during play activities was not observed until direct in-vivo training was implemented. Future directions and implications of this research are discussed.

To ensure effective applied behavioral analysis (ABA) interventions for children with ASD, accurate and detailed realtime annotation of targeted behaviors is crucial to the intervention evaluations and clinical decision-making of therapists.However, the majority of prior computational modeling research for ASD has focused on designing one-size-fits-all models for research domains that are standardized among participants, and not yet on modeling targeted atypical or functional behaviors that are highly individual and require long-term personalization.To bridge this gap, this work aims to develop socially assistive robot-supported ABA interventions to collect a novel long-term multimodal dataset of targeted behaviors from individual children with ASD, to include frame-by-frame ground-truth labels for both atypical maladaptive behaviors (vocal protest, vocal and physical stereotypy, and self-injurious behaviors) and encouraged functional behaviors (manding and tacting behaviors) targeted in ABA interventions.Based on this multi-session multimodal dataset, we propose to train and evaluate personalized multimodal machine learning models with supervised domain adaptation to automate the annotation process while adapting to each child's unique behavioral patterns.The optimal goal of this project is to liberate therapists from tedious manual annotations, so we can pave the way for more cost-effective robot-assisted ABA interventions to fully support the special needs and challenges of children with ASD.

This article introduces the "Behavior Analysis in Practice Emergency Series of Publications on Systemic Racism and Police Brutality. " After the murder of George Floyd, the behavior analytic community was charged to respond in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King's challenge to social scientists. The charge of Dr. King was to explain real life phenomena negatively affecting the Black community. This series covered a wide range of topics with the intent of creating solutions that may be used to address remnants of the overarching impact of systemic racism and anti-Blackness. In this editorial, we provide an overview of the major themes of the accepted articles, some personal accounts of the editorial team, context for the special issue, discuss the contributions of the included articles, and a discussion of the areas in need of further work.

In U.S. schools, disruptive behavior is by far the primary reason for disciplinary referrals, including suspensions and expulsions. School-based interventions targeting disruptive behavior usually position struggling youth as treatment recipients and neglect the psychosocial benefits of helping others. In this mixed methods pilot study, we evaluate the preliminary feasibility and acceptability of Peer Coach Training (PCT), a novel, school-based intervention for youth referred for disruptive behavior that deemphasizes the youth’s existing problems and focuses instead on training youth to help their peers. We used quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of PCT on two cohorts of disruptive youth (N = 9) in an urban middle school in Southern California. Youth and teachers completed assessments at baseline, post-treatment, and three-month follow-up. At posttreatment and follow-up, youth reported significant reductions in externalizing problems, as well as reductions in conduct problems, attention problems, and aggressive behavior; in contrast, teacher ratings yielded null findings. Qualitative interviews revealed that youth and teachers observed positive changes in peer interactions, self-confidence, and classroom participation efforts. Youth satisfaction data indicated that youth enjoyed participating in PCT and would highly recommend it to their friends. Results from this pilot evaluation suggest that training youth to help their peers is an appealing, feasible, and promising strategy for reducing disruptive behavior, however, controlled trials are needed to provide evidence for treatment efficacy.

Abstract Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a widely adopted and well-supported contemporary approach to psychotherapy. However, the basic research and learning principles that ACT is based on originated in the science of behavior analysis; therefore, ACT remains linked to behavior analysis at the conceptual level. In recent years, a flurry of interest in ACT among applied behavior analytic practitioners has developed, and research on the application of ACT inside of behavior analysis has been flourishing as well. This chapter discusses the conceptual foundations for ACT inside behavior analysis, including a brief conceptual analysis of the six core ACT processes in terms of behavior analytic principles of learning and motivation. The chapter reviews research on ACT inside of behavior analysis, especially as it has been applied to individuals with autism, their caregivers and staff. Also discussed are the extent to which the research reviewed adheres to the defining characteristics of applied behavior analysis, as well as directions for the future research that could both enhance the precision of the ACT literature, as well as expand the scope of applied behavior analysis.

Behavioral research has demonstrated that children with autism spectrum disorder can be taught to recognize the false beliefs of others using video modeling (e.g., Charlop-Christy & Daneshvar Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 5(1), 12–21, 2003; LeBlanc et al. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 36(2), 253–257, 2003). The current study extended such research by teaching three children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities to respond appropriately to false-belief tasks using behavioral intervention strategies conducted in the natural environment with people in their enviornment. We used a nonconcurrent multiple-baseline across-participants design to evaluate the use of multiple-exemplar training, prompting, and reinforcement for training correct responses with two false-belief tasks: the hide-and-seek task and the M&Ms task. We also conducted a pre/posttest of an untrained false-belief task, the Sally-Anne task. All participants learned to pass the hide-and-seek task and the M&Ms task and improved on their performance on the Sally-Anne task during the posttest.

Typically-developing (TD) children under age 5 often deny that they can see a person whose eyes are covered (e.g., Moll & Khalulyan, 2017). This has been interpreted as a manifestation of their preference for reciprocal interactions. We investigated how 3- to 4-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD, n = 12) respond in this situation. Because a lack of interpersonal connectedness and reciprocal communication are core features of this disorder, we predicted that young children with ASD will not make mutual regard a condition for seeing another person and therefore acknowledge being able to see her. Against this prediction, children with ASD gave the same negative answers as a group of TD (n = 36) age-mates. Various interpretations are discussed, including the possibility that some children with ASD are capable of relating to others as second persons.

The high occurrence of feeding disorders among children with autism spectrum disorder has caught the attention of professionals from different disciplines. When taking an insight into their feeding problems, mixed physical, behavioral and psychological difficulties were encountered, such as oral skill deficits (e.g., chew, swallow, and coordination), fine motor skill deficits, food selectivity (e.g., texture aversion), food neophobia, and so on. However, the traditional non-oral tube feeding method for maintaining their nutrition consumption is criticized as too intrusive and inadequate for training self-feeding skills. Therefore, to target both establishing independent self-feeding function and food consumption variety (nutrition) while using a less intrusive intervention method, the present study tested the effectiveness of a multicomponent behavioral intervention protocol on a child with autism and feeding disorder, setting across physical, behavioral and psychological background. A task analysis on self-feeding function resulted in a backward-chain training procedure on swallowing, chewing, and fine motor skills, separately and then combined. The training procedure consisted of 3 key components: 1) swallowing training, 2) chewing training starting with using a chew facilitator tube, 3) fine motor training targeting on self-feeding; and 4) fine motor-chewing-swallowing coordination training with multiple types of food. The results showed the present multi-component behavioral intervention protocol successfully established the participant’s self-feeding skills: ameliorated his oral and fine motor skills, cultivated his independent self-feeding function, and increased his food consumption volume and variety.

Resolving social conflicts is a complex skill that involves consideration of the group when selecting conflict solutions. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulty resolving social conflicts, yet this skill is important for successful social interaction, maintenance of relationships, and functional integration into society. This study used a nonconcurrent multiple baseline across participants design to assess the efficacy of a problem-solving training and generalization of problem solving to naturally occurring untrained social conflicts. Three male participants with ASD were taught to use a worksheet as a problem-solving tool using multiple exemplar training, error correction, rules, and reinforcement. The results showed that using the worksheet was successful in bringing about a solution to social conflicts occurring in the natural environment. In addition, the results showed that participants resolved untrained social conflicts in the absence of the worksheet during natural environment probe sessions.