|
 Trauma: The Invisible Elephant Underlying Challenging Behavior |
| Friday, May 23, 2025 |
| 8:00 AM–3:00 PM |
| Marriott Marquis, M4 Level, Liberty M |
| Area: EDC/CBM; Domain: Service Delivery |
| CE Instructor: Jeannie A. Golden, Ph.D. |
| JEANNIE A. GOLDEN (East Carolina University), SARAH HAYES (East Carolina University), MELISSA GLENN (Nationwide Childrens Hospital), PAULA Y FLANDERS (Private Consultant) |
| Description: Behavior analysts are often charged with the responsibility of dealing with challenging behaviors and may be unaware of the impact of underlying trauma on these behaviors. These challenging behaviors are frequently not amenable to traditional functional behavioral assessments (FBAs) and positive behavioral interventions (PBIs). This may be because behavior analysts are reluctant to incorporate distal setting events, discriminative stimuli, and motivating operations into their FBAs, which is essential to the incorporation of trauma into these analyses. One of the key impacts of trauma is on challenging behaviors which often leads to disciplinary referrals, suspensions, alternative placements, and inaccurate diagnoses disproportionately for students of color. Additionally, racial trauma is a form of trauma which has devastating consequences and is often overlooked. Further, it is necessary to acknowledge the impact of verbal behavior in implementing effective interventions, as covert thoughts and feelings often are the establishing operations that motivate challenging behaviors. This workshop will familiarize participants with FBAs that incorporate trauma as well as with strategies that use verbal behavior in conducting interventions. Participants will see role-play demonstrations of these strategies and practice these strategies with feedback and correction. They will also be provided with PBIs specific to their own caseloads. |
| Learning Objectives: (1) Explain why youth who have experienced trauma are more likely to exhibit challenging behaviors; (2) Describe how to incorporate distal setting events, discriminative stimuli, and motivating operations into functional behavioral assessments of youth who have experienced trauma; (3) Describe how private thoughts and feelings often serve as establishing operations that motivate challenging behaviors; (4) Describe trauma’s impact on challenging behaviors which often leads to disciplinary referrals, suspensions, alternative placements, and inaccurate diagnoses disproportionately for students of color; (5) Explain why verbal behavior is important in implementing effective interventions for youth who have experienced trauma; (6) Describe some of the verbal behavior strategies that could be effective interventions for youth who have experienced trauma. |
| Activities: This workshop will include presentation of lecture, modeling, video demonstrations, group discussion, live demonstration, role-play, feedback and practice. Handouts that enhance learning will be provided for take-away. |
| Audience: Behavior analysts, psychologists, teachers, social workers, counselors, administrators and psychiatrists would be appropriate audience members for this symposium. This presentation will be at the intermediate level and audience members should have the ability to apply basic behavioral concepts such as positive and negative reinforcement, motivating operations, and discriminative stimuli. |
| Content Area: Practice |
| Instruction Level: Intermediate |
| Keyword(s): challenging behavior, de-escalation strategies, trauma, trauma- informed |
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