Is Acceptance and Commitment Training or Therapy (ACT) a Method that Applied Behavior Analysts Can and Should Use?
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THEORETICAL ARTICLE
Is Acceptance and Commitment Training or Therapy (ACT) a Method that Applied Behavior Analysts Can and Should Use? Mark R. Dixon 1 & Steven C. Hayes 2 & Caleb Stanley 3 & Stu Law 2 & Thouraya al-Nasser 2 Accepted: 8 September 2020 # Association for Behavior Analysis International 2020
Abstract The present article examines whether it is appropriate for applied behavior analysts to use Acceptance and Commitment Training or Therapy (ACT) as part of their professional practice. We approach this question by briefly examining the behavioral history of ACT and then considering ACT through the lens of the requirements of applied behavior analysis as specified by Baer, Wolf, and Risley in Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1(1), 91–97 (1968). We believe that ACT meets all seven of their criteria and thus conclude that ACT can and should be used as a behavior analytic method. We briefly consider the need for applied behavior analysts to use ACT in a way that is consistent with their field, scope of practice, and their individual scope of competence. Keywords Acceptance and Commitment Training . Acceptance and Commitment Therapy . Relational Frame Theory . Scope of practice . Private events . Emotions . Thoughts . Verbal behavior . Language
The science of behavior analysis is designed to predict, explain, and influence the entire scope of human behavior. That journey began with the research using nonhuman organisms, but the journey was not meant to end there, and nor was it assumed that it alone would necessarily be adequate. Over 80 years ago, B. F. Skinner’s views on these matters were clearly stated: The reader will have noticed that almost no extension to human behavior is made or suggested. This does not mean that he is expected to be interested in the behavior of the rat for its own sake. The importance of a science of behavior derives largely from the possibility of an eventual extension to human affairs. . . . Whether or not extrapolation is justified cannot at the present time be decided. It is possible that there are properties of human behavior which will require a different kind of treatment. . . . I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of a rat and man (aside * Mark R. Dixon [email protected] 1
Department of Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607, USA
2
University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA
3
Utah Valley University, Orem, UT, USA
from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior. (Skinner, 1938, pp. 441–442) Skinner restated this aspirational goal in his preface to the seventh printing of The Behavior of Organisms, saying he wanted a science that could “move on, but only as its growing power permits, to the complexities of the world at large” (Skinner, 1966, p. 17; Skinner, 1938). In the more than half a century since then, applications of the science of behavior analysis, often described as “applied behavior analysis” or “ABA” have generated considerable empirical evid
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