Association for Behavior Analysis International

Behavior analysis has long grappled with how to characterize thoughts, feelings, and other behaviors that pose a challenge to objective observation (see Sandoz, Boullion, & Rachal, 2020). Termed “covert,” “private,” or “subtle” in different behavior analytic traditions, contemporary behavior analysis has, for the most part, oriented to thoughts and feelings as significant aspects of the behavioral stream, subject to behavioral (i.e., non-mentalistic) conceptualization and analysis. The present symposium will explore several behavior analytic conceptual analyses of a sample of these phenomena that may be particularly socially and clinically significant. The first contribution will include a behavior analytic conceptualization emotion regulation (and dysregulation) extended to direct implications for the clinician-scientist. The second contribution within this symposium will re-conceptualize distress tolerance as an actionable, observable target for clinical behavior analysts. The third contribution is a conceptual analysis of irrational fear that may be present for clinicians when attempting to form an effective therapeutic relationship with a client from a heavily stigmatized population. The final contribution within this symposium will examine the functional relationship between music and the subtle behavior it evokes.

Emotion dysregulation is associated with a number of psychological struggles such as anxiety, aggression, and eating disorders (see Mclaughlin et al., 2011) and conceptualized as a critical component in models of how such struggles are developed and maintained (Hofmann et al., 2012). In this way, the process of responding effectively and meaningfully in emotionally evocative contexts seems to be of critical importance to well-being. However, traditional conceptualizations of emotion regulation and dysregulation have predominantly relied on mid-level, mentalistic models emphasizing innate cognitive abilities or personological characteristics as the source of this important behavioral process (e.g., D’Agostino et al., 2017; Thompson 2019). Such mentalistic conceptualizations offer little, however, in terms of making emotion (dys)regulation directly actionable as an observable act-in-context. The present paper will propose a behavior-analytic conceptualization of emotion dysregulation as a response class of respondent and operant behaviors occurring at varying levels of analysis (e.g., physiological, psychological, behavioral) in emotionally evocative contexts. Then, building upon our conceptual analysis, we will offer examples of how the analysis can facilitate increased sensitivity and effectiveness to the clinician-scientist.