Measuring Change in Private Events: A Review of Precision Teaching Interventions for Inner Behavior

Van et al. (2026) read every paper that used precision teaching to change private events. They found ten studies that counted thoughts, feelings, or urges and charted them on a Standard Celeration Chart.

The team asked one question: does frequency building make inner behavior move on the chart? They looked for jumps in level, trend, or less bounce.

All ten studies showed clear movement. After one-minute timings and daily charting, private events went up or down in a predictable way.

The chart lines looked like any other fluency target. Inner behavior, once 'unseeable,' acted just like reading words or writing numbers.

AHamama et al. (2021) gave us the five-step blueprint for precision teaching. Van et al. show the blueprint works even when the target is inside the skin.

Black et al. (2016) proved that counting seconds, not sessions, changes the story. Van’s review finds the same rule holds for thoughts and feelings.

Shimp (1968) taught us to slice behavior into one-second bins. Today’s studies copy that move to catch a ‘self-talk’ burst that lasts only a moment.

Schmidt et al. (2024) used brief experimental analysis to pick the best writing intervention. Van’s paper says you can run the same 5-minute test on private events—just count and chart until the line accelerates.

You can finally treat thoughts and feelings like public skills. Take a one-minute timing of negative self-talk, set a frequency aim, run timings, and watch the SCC. If the line drops, your intervention works—no guesswork, no questionnaires.