Acceptance and Commitment Training Within the Scope of Practice of Applied Behavior Analysis
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SPECIAL ISSUE: ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT TRAINING IN BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS
Acceptance and Commitment Training Within the Scope of Practice of Applied Behavior Analysis Jonathan Tarbox 1
&
Thomas G. Szabo 2 & Megan Aclan 1
# Association for Behavior Analysis International 2020
Abstract Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a contemporary behavior-analytic approach to intervening on verbal behavior for the purposes of bringing about socially meaningful overt behavior change. Although originally developed as a behavior-analytic approach to psychotherapy, the conceptual functional analyses and procedures that form the core of ACT have been disseminated broadly outside of clinical psychology, including within the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA). This article discusses the use of ACT within mainstream ABA practice and provides preliminary conceptual functional analyses and practical guidelines for incorporating ACT within the scope of practice of applied behavior analysts. Keywords Acceptance and commitment therapy . Acceptance and commitment training . Scope of practice . Applied behavior analysis
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a behavioranalytic approach to addressing problematic verbal behavior involved in behavioral rigidity and insensitivity to socially significant contingencies. The overall goal of ACT is to increase psychological flexibility, which consists of engaging in skillful behavior in the presence of aversive experiences in the service of living a rich and meaningful life. A substantial empirical literature has established ACT as an empirically supported treatment. Since 2015, over 15 meta-analyses of ACT methods have been published (for a list, see Hayes, S. C. (n.d.). A meta-analysis in 2012 found 66 ACT component studies (Levin, Hildebrandt, Lillis, & Hayes, 2012), and dozens more such studies have appeared since. Over 60 mediational studies have been published, and most find that changes in the core processes of ACT are functionally important to ACT outcomes https://contextualscience.org/act_ studies_with_mediational_data.
* Jonathan Tarbox [email protected] 1
2
Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA School of Behavior Analysis, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL, USA
ACT was originally developed and continues to be primarily applied within psychotherapeutic and counseling contexts. However, over the years, a wide range of professions have shown interest in applying ACT outside such settings. For example, nurses and health professionals have successfully used ACT in health coaching sessions to help patients recover from colorectal cancer treatment (Hawkes et al., 2013). Similar efforts have been made by teachers, physical therapists, sports coaches, occupational therapists, dentists, diabetes educators, and professionals from other disciplines (e.g., Kasson & Wilson, 2016; McCracken & Jones, 2012; Pahnke, Lundgren, Hursti, & Hirvikoski, 2014; Szabo & Dixon, 2016). In recent years, interest in ACT from within the applied behavior ana
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