Disability-Affirming Supervision: Future Directions in Applied Behavior Analytic Supervision

Various disciplines have undergone a shift towards increasing diversity, multiculturalism, and cultural humility in the past few years. In 2019, a Behavior Analysis in Practice special issue raised a collective call to action for increased diversity and representation within the field at both organizational and individual levels. Since that time, articles, discussions, and reports have been published providing heightened attention to cultural humility toward clients, stakeholders, and practitioners. However, little attention has been directed toward the diversity of individuals supervised by behavior analysts. In particular, effective and compassionate supervision of people with disabilities has not been addressed in the field. Practitioners and supervisors need to have the necessary knowledge and skills to be able to inclusively and effectively train and shape the behavior of supervisees with disabilities. The present article reviews the literature, research, and practices from the field of psychology and makes recommendations of tools to create a disability-affirming environment for supervision in the field of applied behavior analysis.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40617-023-00846-5.

Positive behaviour support: a systematic literature review of the effect of staff training and organisational behaviour management

Positive Behaviour Support is an applied behaviour analytic system of support that is utilised in schools and in residential care settings for children and adults with disabilities who engage in challenging behaviour. Implementation fidelity depends on appropriate staff training and organisational behaviour management. A systematic literature review is reported that evaluated the evidence in relation to change in staff and service user behaviour and the impact of organisational behaviour management systems on effectiveness, generalization, and maintenance of these outcomes. Nine relevant articles were identified and analysed according to (1) the demographics of staff and residents and methods of staff training; (2) organisational behaviour management systems; (3) staff and service-user behavioural outcome measures; and (4) the methodological quality of the study. A combination of antecedent and consequence-based training strategies was used in the studies. Eight studies reported on the organisational behaviour management systems that were used, with five reporting on the responsibility of trainees to transfer their training to their untrained teams (pyramidal training). Although the studies reported on staff behaviour change following the training, only one of the studies reported significant increases of service user quality of life as a result of staff training and only two studies provided adequate methodological strength.

Organizational Silos: A Scoping Review Informed by a Behavioral Perspective on Systems and Networks

In recent years, several organizations have implemented interventions aimed at integrating work processes and bridging network clusters. These are often permeated by different assumptions regarding clusters in organizational settings. There are concerns about the formation of silos and structural barriers to communication across the formal and informal network structures. Conversely, network clusters are regarded as spaces of local social reinforcement from which innovation ideas may emerge. Although terminologically and functionally different, they share some common features insofar as organizational behavior is concerned and the production of artifacts that fulfill organizational goals. The present scoping review presents an analysis of the literature on organizational silos while investigating attempts to bridge network clusters. Based on the search results, 40 studies were included in the analysis of the findings; of these, 20 were empirical studies and were included in a further quantitative analysis of methods and findings. We identified patterns of definitions of silos and variation in terms of aims, variables, and methods used to evaluate interventions among the heterogeneous studies. Special attention was dedicated to the role of consequences of siloed organizational behavior. We conclude that silos comprise barriers to achieving organizational goals insofar as they pose a threat to internal cooperation.

School-wide PBIS: An Example of Applied Behavior Analysis Implemented at a Scale of Social Importance

School-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an example of applied behavior analysis implemented at a scale of social importance. In this paper, PBIS is defined and the contributions of behavior analysis in shaping both the content and implementation of PBIS are reviewed. Specific lessons learned from implementation of PBIS over the past 20 years are summarized.

Bayesian Fundamentalism or Enlightenment? On the explanatory status and theoretical contributions of Bayesian models of cognition

The prominence of Bayesian modeling of cognition has increased recently largely because of mathematical advances in specifying and deriving predictions from complex probabilistic models. Much of this research aims to demonstrate that cognitive behavior can be explained from rational principles alone, without recourse to psychological or neurological processes and representations. We note commonalities between this rational approach and other movements in psychology – namely, Behaviorism and evolutionary psychology – that set aside mechanistic explanations or make use of optimality assumptions. Through these comparisons, we identify a number of challenges that limit the rational program's potential contribution to psychological theory. Specifically, rational Bayesian models are significantly unconstrained, both because they are uninformed by a wide range of process-level data and because their assumptions about the environment are generally not grounded in empirical measurement. The psychological implications of most Bayesian models are also unclear. Bayesian inference itself is conceptually trivial, but strong assumptions are often embedded in the hypothesis sets and the approximation algorithms used to derive model predictions, without a clear delineation between psychological commitments and implementational details. Comparing multiple Bayesian models of the same task is rare, as is the realization that many Bayesian models recapitulate existing (mechanistic level) theories. Despite the expressive power of current Bayesian models, we argue they must be developed in conjunction with mechanistic considerations to offer substantive explanations of cognition. We lay out several means for such an integration, which take into account the representations on which Bayesian inference operates, as well as the algorithms and heuristics that carry it out. We argue this unification will better facilitate lasting contributions to psychological theory, avoiding the pitfalls that have plagued previous theoretical movements.