Behavior analysis and the study of human aging.
Treat age as a variable in your single-case design and you can serve older adults without learning a new science.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Derenne et al. (2002) wrote a position paper. They asked behavior analysts to study aging as a process, not a label.
The authors showed how to treat age as a variable inside single-case designs. They wanted the field to stop ignoring older adults.
What they found
The paper is a map, not a data set. It lists ways to track behavior change across years.
The core idea: you can run reversal or multiple-baseline designs and still note how age links to the patterns you see.
How this fits with other research
Moore (2016) extends the same logic to the whole lifespan. The later paper says developmental systems and ABA both care about context, so aging fits naturally.
Karmiloff-Smith (2012) also extends the call. That paper warns that one-time snapshots miss real change and urges longitudinal tracking, echoing Adam’s method tips.
Storch et al. (2012) move from theory to practice. They tell BCBAs to serve dementia clients—older adults—because the autism market will fill up. Adam gave the why; A et al. give the where.
Why it matters
If you only work with kids, you are leaving a growing population behind. Use the same single-case tools you already know. Track behaviors like remembering names or safe walking across months, not minutes. Add age as a second axis on your graph. You can publish, get funded, and help people live better in their 80s.
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Join Free →Pick one older client, add an ‘age-month’ note on each data point, and plot behavior across at least ten sessions.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
As the population of older adults continues to rise, psychologists along with other behavioral and social scientists have shown increasing interest in this age group. Although behavior analysts have contributed to research on aging, the focus has been on applications that remedy age-related deficits, rather than a concern with aging as a developmental process. In particular, there has been little interest in the central theoretical questions that have guided gerontologists. How does behavior change with advancing years, and what are the sources of those changes? We consider the possibility that this neglect reflects the long-standing commitment of behavior analysts to variables that can be experimentally manipulated, a requirement that excludes the key variable-age itself. We review the options available to researchers and present strategies that minimize deviations from the traditional features of behavior-analytic designs. Our comments are predicated on the view that aging issues within contemporary society are far too important for behavior analysts to ignore.
The Behavior analyst, 2002 · doi:10.1007/BF03392054