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Not every behavior needs an intervention
By: Abby Amacher, BCBA, LBA
Okay, But Why Are We Changing It?
A child walks on their toes in the hallway. A different child lets out a shriek of joy on the swings at the indoor playground. An adult is wearing Little Mermaid clothes and carrying a doll. A different adult tells their personal care worker to “fuck off.”
As BCBAs, we're often asked to reduce or change behaviors like these. Before jumping to “How do we reduce it?” we need to interrupt that thought process and ask, “Why are we reducing it?”
In a field that increasingly talks about neurodiversity, assent, autonomy, and person-centered care, we still seem remarkably quick to identify difference and ask how to change it. And my answer to why is often: It depends.
If you have spent any time working with me, you've heard this phrase 1,000 times. Sometimes there is a very good answer for why we are reducing something. But sometimes the answer ends up being, “Because people don't do that?”
Ummm. Which people? Because this person is a people and they are doing it.
Noticing something does not automatically equal evidence that behavior change is warranted.
Socially Significant. According to Whom?
ABA has had social significance baked into applied work since 1968, and Wolf later argued for validating the significance of the goals themselves.
And this isn't some brand-new neurodiversity-era question. Mathur, Renz, and Tarbox (2024) point to Cooper, Heron, and Heward's (1987) considerations for evaluating the social significance and prioritization of potential treatment targets. Some of those considerations still feel remarkably relevant: Will changing this behavior actually improve the person's life? Will it give them access to meaningful environments or reinforcement? Are we targeting the actual problem?
Others deserve another look.
Is the behavior age appropriate?
There's that phrase again. Apparently we are not done with this. Why are we so hung up on age appropriateness?
Age can be clinically relevant. But “people your age don't usually do that” isn't, by itself, evidence of impairment.
Socially significant and socially noticeable are not interchangeable. Noticing a behavior, even strongly disliking it, doesn't mean that changing it is socially significant.
We asked according to whom? last week. This week, there's another question: significant how?
Impact Is Not the Same Thing as Discomfort
When we ask why a behavior needs to change, a common answer is some version of, “Because it impacts other people.”
Okay. How?
Billy rocks in his chair and his teacher finds it distracting.
Now consider a different scenario:
Billy repeatedly kicks the shared table while another student is trying to take a test.
In both examples, Billy’s behavior affects another person. But those effects aren't equivalent. The experiences of the teacher and the other student both matter. We all matter. But discomfort with difference and meaningful interference are not interchangeable.
In the first example, we may need to ask more about the observer’s tolerance for difference. In the second, we have a competing need: Billy needs access to movement, and another student needs access to an environment where they can complete their test.
So we have to start asking questions. And unfortunately, a lot of the answers are going to be: it depends. Get used to it.
Does the behavior cause harm? Does it interfere with someone else's access? Does it infringe on another person's autonomy? Does it interfere with something the person themselves wants or needs? Does it create a health or safety risk? Or is the “impact” that somebody finds the behavior annoying, weird, immature, inappropriate, or distracting?
And even after we've established that there is meaningful impact, we still haven't established who, or what needs to change.
Move Billy? Move the other student? Provide a different testing space? Give Billy another way to access movement? Modify the environment?
If we start from the assumption that autism or ADHD is a collection of deficits in need of correction, behaviors like scripting or repetitive movement can quietly ooze their way into treatment plans as targets for reduction without anyone stopping to ask whether they actually need to be reduced.
But shift the lens. What if autism is a different way of experiencing and interacting with the world?
All of a sudden, some deficits become differences.
Maybe a particular difference is disabling for a particular person. Maybe it interferes with something they want, causes pain, restricts access, or creates meaningful harm.
But we don't get to assume that just because it's different.
If Nobody Were Watching, Would It Still Be a Problem?
Humans are fucking gross. We do weird shit in private ALL the time when nobody is watching.
People pick their noses, scratch their privates, eat food off the floor, sit weird, talk to themselves. The list goes on and on and on.
So what happens when we take behavior away from the social gaze?
If the rocking happens alone—is there impairment?
If an adult carries Barney around her bedroom—is there impairment?
If he scripts while walking around his house—is there impairment?
If she tells her PCW to “fuck off” because she’s busy—is there impairment?
Are we picking apart an autistic person's behavior because there is actually a concern, or because we think it should change? As Mathur et al. (2024) note, Cooper and colleagues outlined 19 considerations for evaluating the social significance and priority of potential treatment targets. A big fat zero of them simply say, “because neurotypical people don't do that.”.
That question really matters, and we aren't asking it enough.
If a behavior only becomes a “problem” in the presence of someone who thinks it looks weird, immature, autistic, inappropriate, or otherwise different, that tells us something important about the nominated treatment goal.
Not necessarily that intervention is never warranted. It tells us that we haven't justified it yet.
Let's go back to some of our original examples.
A child walks on their toes. Why does that matter? Are they experiencing pain? Is there a potential orthopedic concern that warrants evaluation by a physical therapist or another provider? Does it limit their mobility or participation in something they want to do?
Or do they just walk differently?
An adult wears Little Mermaid clothes and carries a doll. Why does that matter? Does it create a barrier to something she wants? Is she being excluded from an environment she wants access to? Does she want something to be different?
Or does somebody else just think an adult shouldn't carry a doll?
A child shrieks with excitement on the swings. Why does that matter? Is the volume causing pain or preventing another child from safely accessing the same space? Is there a setting where volume genuinely matters?
Or are we uncomfortable because that's not how we expect joy to look?
Same behavior. Very different reasons someone might nominate it for treatment. And those reasons matter.
Topography alone cannot and does not tell us whether behavior change is warranted.
The question isn't whether toe walking, scripting, rocking, shrieking, swearing, or carrying a doll is inherently acceptable or unacceptable. The question is what that behavior means in this person's life, in this context, and what would actually improve if we changed it.
Sometimes the answers are going to reveal a barrier. Maybe the adult is being excluded from an activity they really want to participate in because they carry a doll.
Okay. Still doesn’t mean the doll has to go. Maybe we change the environment instead.
Maybe Change the World Instead
Behavior analysts are supposedly obsessed with environmental variables.
And yet:
Kid does something people don't like → change kid.
Adult likes things people consider “baby-ish.” → change their interests
Why isn't our first instinct sometimes to change the environment, expectations, available supports, or other people's behavior? This is exactly what the neurodiversity movement has been pushing behavior analysts to ask. But I still see a gap between that conversation and what happens in practice.
Which is kind of wild, because changing the environment isn't some radical departure from behavior analysis.
Skinner was literally telling us to do that.
In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner wrote, “We must know how the environment works before we can change it to change behavior.”
Behavior analysts have spent decades studying the relationship between behavior and the environment. We manipulate antecedents. We arrange consequences. We conduct functional analyses. The environment is kind of our whole fucking thing.
So why, when a behavior is nominated for treatment, does our attention so often land immediately on changing the person doing it?
If behavior is a function of the environment, why is the client so often the thing we're trying to change?
And Skinner's very next sentence matters too: “A mere shift in emphasis from man to environment means very little.”
I'm not arguing that we should never change a person's behavior. Sometimes we absolutely should. I'm arguing that the client shouldn't automatically be the default location of change.
Sometimes we change the behavior. Sometimes we change the environment. Sometimes we change what we're doing. Sometimes we do all three.
But we should at least ask the fucking question.
A few examples:
An autistic employee struggles in an open office. Instead of teaching them to tolerate eight hours of fluorescent lights, chatter, and interruptions, allow headphones, different lighting, a quieter workspace, or remote work.
A student paces during instruction but is still attending and learning. Instead of targeting sitting, change the expectation that learning requires an ass in a chair.
A client uses AAC to say “fuck off” when a staff member interrupts something they're doing. Instead of immediately targeting “inappropriate language,” maybe staff need to learn to acknowledge communication, give warning before transitions, or sometimes actually fuck off for a minute.
The person isn't necessarily what needs to change.
Okay, But Some Behavior Actually Does Matter
Inevitably someone will say, “but Abby what about dangerous behavior?”
Yes that absolutely matters. Where did anyone say it didn’t?
Yes. Some behavior actually does matter.
Some behavior creates meaningful risks to health or safety. Some behavior infringes on another person's autonomy. Some behavior limits access to things the person themselves values, disrupts relationships they want to maintain, interferes with learning or participation, or substantially affects their own quality of life.
Recognizing that autistic behavior has historically been pathologized doesn't require pretending that behavior associated with disability can never be profoundly disabling. And acknowledging disability doesn't mean every feature of disability automatically becomes a treatment target either.
The point isn't never change behavior. The point is that behavior change requires a reason.
Leave It Alone Is a Clinical Decision
Choosing not to intervene isn't doing nothing.
Sometimes we've assessed the behavior, considered its impact, asked whose concern it actually is, looked at the environment, and concluded:
This person doesn't need to change.
That's a clinical decision.
We don't need a behavior-reduction plan for every behavior we can observe. We don't need to turn every difference into a deficit or every inconvenience into a treatment goal. Sometimes the clinically appropriate recommendation is accommodation. Sometimes it's changing the environment. Sometimes it's changing our own behavior.
And sometimes it's leaving the behavior the fuck alone.
The fact that a behavior is noticeable, atypical, inconvenient, or socially undesirable does not establish that it should be a treatment target.
That doesn't mean behavior change is never warranted. As we've already established, some behavior meaningfully affects health, safety, autonomy, access, relationships, or quality of life.
But if we're going to intervene in another person's behavior, we should be able to articulate what meaningful outcome we're trying to produce by changing it.
And if we can't?
Maybe that's information too.
If leaving it alone is appropriate when behavior causes no meaningful harm, what do we do when it does?
References
Allen, L. L., Mellon, L. S., Syed, N., Johnson, J. F., et al. (2024). Neurodiversity-affirming applied behavior analysis. Behavior Analysis in Practice. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-024-00918-0
Baer, D. M., Wolf, M. M., & Risley, T. R. (1968). Some current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1(1), 91–97. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1968.1-91
Mathur, S. K., Renz, E., & Tarbox, J. (2024). Affirming neurodiversity within applied behavior analysis. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 17, 471–485. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-024-00907-3
Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity. Alfred A. Knopf.
Wolf, M. M. (1978). Social validity: The case for subjective measurement or how applied behavior analysis is finding its heart. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 11(2), 203–214. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1978.11-203