How Fuzzy are We?
Jeff Kupfer, Ph.D., BCBA-D and Ron Allen, Ph.D., BCBA-D
University of Colorado and Simmons University
While clearing my files this morning, I reread Critchfield and Reed’s (2017) article, “The Fuzzy Concept of Applied Behavior Analysis Research.” The article describes the history of applied behavior analysis (ABA), particularly surrounding the seminal Seven Dimensions (Baer, Wolf, & Risley, 1968; hereafter, BWR), which were devised to promote functional analysis. Critchfield and Reed suggest, however, that the Seven Dimensions have become a litmus test in peer review that precludes valuable research and treatment results from publication. They question whether these publication practices serve the” interest of society” in that research of societal importance is based in terms of problems, not methods.
The authors specifically raise the following points:
- Topics of societal importance are marginalized in ABA because they have not been examined within the BWR framework. It’s ironic that the framework, which was originally recommended to place an emphasis on social relevance, now places limits on the number of domains in which ABA is socially relevant.
- Applied journals should promote material of societal importance, not promote a specific method. This does not mean “anything goes,” only that the bar for what pertains to a behavioral analysis should not be set so high as to discourage relevant work that does not fit in a preconceived research mold. First and foremost, they asserted, what makes an investigation behavioral is the conceptual system that’s applied to it.
The Critchfield and Reed article was a logical analysis supplemented with examples, not a systematic literature review, so it’s reasonable to ask whether an overly strict criterion for what qualifies as ABA really does focus attention on specific methods and away from many informative lines of investigation. If so, we would expect to see a limited range of socially-important topics being published in ABA journals like Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA).
Here are some of the topics addressed in JABA, Vol. 57, No.3:
- Substance abuse and social incentives
- Behavioral skills training for FCT
- Investigation into research on response disequilibrium theory
- Evaluation of the effects of parent Preschool Life Skills for telehealth
- Treating feeding disorders
And here are some from Vol. 57, No. 2:
- Qualifying ABA’s influence on public policy discussions
- Understanding assent
- Review of concurrent-chains to assess intervention choice
- Video modeling in teaching earthquake evacuations for children with autism
- Examination of extinction bursts
- Reviewing the relation between renewal and resurgence behaviors
I didn’t examine the methods used to investigate these topics, so it’s possible that socially-important research is, as Critchfield and Reed suggested, being excluded on the basis of methods that don’t fit the BWR framework. That is, perhaps the articles in JABA Vol. 57 all met the standards implied by the BWR framework. And, we don’t know what kinds of studies were submitted but not accepted for publication.
But this is a pretty broad range of socially important problems, which seems inconsistent with Critchfield and Reed’s general assertions about the consequences of too strict a reliance on the BWR framework.
I also didn’t determine a baseline of what JABA Tables of Contents looked like prior to the publication of Critchfield and Reed (2017). Maybe the topics from JABA Vol. 57 reflect progress toward addressing their concerns; that is, perhaps recent years have seen a shift in the priorities of ABA journals. Or maybe not. If the alarm Critchfield and Reed sounded about publication practices in ABA is valid, we should be talking about making changes. But currently there is no systematic evidence that addresses their claims. A constructive place to start would be a systematic review of ABA literature before and after Critchfield and Reed (2017), with a focus on how completely published studies hew to the Seven Dimensions.
REFERENCE
Critchfield, T. S., & Reed, D. D. (2017). The fuzzy concept of applied behavior analysis research. The Behavior Analyst, 40(1), 123–159. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40614-017-0093-x