Erica Ranade always felt like something was missing from the field of Behavior Analysis, but her background in psychology is helping fill in the gaps.
Ranade is a trainee for HDI’s LEND program, which provides training to people going into fields related to neurodevelopmental conditions. She is also an author and editor of “Psychology Essentials for Behavior Analysts,” a book she published alongside Lauryn M. Toby. Both Ranade and Toby hope to expand the knowledge base of behavior analysts and bring in wisdom from other fields.
“We started noticing in behavior analytic literature, there were all of these buzzwords like trauma informed care, compassionate care, viewing the individual within a system, all these things that were sort of posed as new concepts, but to us, were concepts that have been around for decades in psychology.” Ranade said.
She noted that behavior analysis and psychology split as practices in the 1960s, and ever since, behavior analysis has had its own distinct infrastructure separate from psychology. While the two fields have developed independently, Ranade said that a lot of valuable knowledge from psychologists has not made it past the divide between them.
“The goal of this book…is to reintegrate some of those concepts that have been lost in the fallout,” she said. “As behavior analysts, we have a very notorious reputation for not being the best collaborators. And I think a big part of that is we use a lot of jargon, which is true of many, many disciplines. But behavior analysts in particular, we tend to think we have the answer to everything…look at the function of behavior, and that’s going to tell us how to ‘solve’ all the problems in the world. So this text is really meant to be kind of a stepping stone for practitioners that want to improve that interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary perspective.”
But Ranade isn’t done learning yet.
She said she often makes a point of inviting in perspectives that have often gone unheard in behavior analysis circles, something her experience in LEND has further contributed to. She noted that she’s met many autistic people, many of whom have talked to her about the controversies associated with behavior analysis and the traumatic effects it has had on them. She thinks it’s important to acknowledge those experiences and learn from them.
“I believe that our discipline needs to focus on harm reduction and prevention, and this starts by listening to autistic advocates; moving away from compliance-based techniques, heavy emphasis on edible and tangible rewards, and teaching masking behaviors; reforming the business practices and insurance structure, initiating additional research about trauma and autism and focusing on autonomy/assent/boundaries,” she said. “I feel that all behavior analysts can benefit from learning more about these topics from adjacent fields, such as social work and psychology.”
Recently, many of those experiences have come even more into focus after her partner was diagnosed with autism and Ranade herself was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. All of these experiences have led her to new understandings – and she hopes those understandings allow her to live a more fulfilling life and help more people in the future.
“Being in LEND, putting this book out, and getting those diagnoses has really led me to shift my personal and professional perspective on things like access and looking at things through the social model of disability,” she said. “I’ve been very grateful to kind of have LEND come into my life at this moment for me personally as well.”
