A Compassionate Approach to Understanding and Addressing Interfering Behaviors

*Attend Live Zoom event (REGISTER NOW) on Sep 09, 2025 at 12-2pm EST for free (Purchase to receive 2 Learning CEUs and Recording)

nterfering behaviors are prevalent among the learners we work with. Understanding why they occur prior to treating it is at the heart of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). Ensuring we understand our learners’ behavior before we change them and minimizing the probability of escalation is at the heart of compassionate ABA (Hanley 2012; Hanley et al., 2014; Rodriguez et al., 2023). Addressing complex behaviors requires us to understand the variables beyond the four basic functions. To understand the function(s) of challenging behaviors, clinicians and school professionals often conduct descriptive assessments as part of the functional behavior assessment (FBA). However, practitioners often break apart the unit of analysis (antecedent-behavior-consequence or ABC) when interpreting data. Furthermore, the strength of the correlation is often not evaluated as part of the descriptive assessment. While descriptive assessment has great utility in many contexts, continuing to take ABC data and observing escalation of severe dangerous behaviors when conducting an FBA is perhaps uncompassionate (Hanley, 2024). This presentation will discuss the prevalence of interfering behaviors in individuals diagnosed with autism and similar developmental disabilities. Attendees will learn about the limitations of conducting descriptive assessments. And if clinicians decide to include a descriptive assessment as part of an FBA, they will learn a more valid way to conducting one. Attendees will learn about an alternative technology to understanding and treatment of challenging behaviors that focuses on safety, televisibility, and rapport (Ghaemmaghami et al., 2024; Iovino et al., 2022). Participants will also be given the tools to make the shift towards assent-based and trauma-sensitive approaches to keeping both students and staff safe (Slaton et al., 2024).

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to identify the functions less commonly discussed in the literature.
• Participants will be able to describe how to respond to interfering behaviors in a variety of contexts that are more aligned with compassionate, assent-based, and culturally-responsive values.
• Participants will be able to identify limitations of descriptive assessments and conduct a more valid assessment that includes evaluating the entire unit of analysis (ABC) and a space-contingency analysis to evaluate the strength of correlations.

Presenter Bio:

Celia L. Heyman is a doctoral level Board Certified Behavior Analyst. She provides consultation to clinics, families, and school districts. Celia’s clinical work involves the dissemination of the practical functional assessment and skill-based treatment to address interfering behaviors. She is a lead consultant with FTF Behavioral Consulting and is a full-time faculty with Capella University’s graduate Applied Behavior Analysis program. Her research interests include emergent learning instruction incorporating stimulus equivalence and RFT, and a functional analytic approach to Acceptance Commitment Training. Celia was a guest editor on the special issue covering compassion for the Behavior Analysis in Practice journal. She serves on the Development Committee of the B.F. Skinner Foundation and is the Student Activities Chairperson for the World Behavior Analysis Day Alliance. Pervading all her activities is a passion for disseminating more ethical, compassionate, and effective treatment based on the science of ABA. Celia enjoys mentoring and tutoring aspiring behavior analysts. In her spare time, she has cultivated a Facebook community studying group, consisting of over 60,000 members worldwide.