Teaching Compassion Skills to Students of Behavior Analysis: A Preliminary Investigation
A single telehealth BST session lifts ABA students’ compassionate-care skills and empathy scores.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Rohrer and colleagues taught four ABA master’s students how to show compassion during caregiver interviews. The team used a short telehealth BST package: brief lecture, video model, role-play, and live feedback.
Sessions happened online. Each student practiced asking open questions, showing interest in the family’s life, and joining with warmth.
What they found
After training, every student used the skills far more often. Their empathy scores also rose. Gains stayed high when the researchers checked again later.
The study shows you can teach “soft” skills with the same BST steps you use for teaching PECS or preference assessments.
How this fits with other research
Park et al. (2024) and Aslan (2022) used the same BST recipe—instruction, model, rehearsal, feedback—to train teachers to 100 % fidelity on PECS and Power Cards. Rohrer swaps the target skill for compassionate interviewing and still gets big gains, so the package extends to new content.
Akers et al. (2024) trained BCBAs through remote delayed feedback. Rohrer chose live telehealth BST instead. Both remote methods worked, giving you two proven choices for distance supervision.
Shawler et al. (2023) also coached adults over telehealth, but aimed for behavior reduction in the child. Rohrer aimed for empathy growth in the student. Together they show telehealth can hit either adult-learning or client-outcome goals.
Why it matters
You can add a one-hour telehealth module to your supervision calendar and watch students learn to greet families, ask about their day, and listen without interrupting. No extra travel, no extra cost—just a Zoom link and a checklist. Try it in your next practicum seminar.
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Join Free →Open Zoom, pick one caregiver interview, and run a 15-minute BST loop: show a two-minute model, have the student role-play, give live feedback.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Socially valid practices are at the heart of applied behavior analysis and can influence how interventions are experienced by families. However, the training of practitioners of applied behavior analysis is primarily focused on the implementation of technical procedures with little focus on therapeutic approaches. Empathy and therapeutic rapport have been associated with improved outcomes in allied professions (Beach et al., Journal of the American Board of Family Practice, 15(1), 25–38, 2006; Hojat et al., Academic Medicine, 86(3), 359, 2011; Horst et al., Journal of Child & Family Nursing, 3, 5–14, 2000), but have been minimally studied within the field of behavior analysis. In the present study, several sources were utilized to identify and define empathic and compassionate care skills. These skills were divided into three skill areas (i.e., basic interviewing skills, interest in the family, joining with the family) and taught to ABA master’s students using behavioral skills training via a telehealth platform. All four participants significantly improved their engagement in compassionate care skills following training and maintained these skills in follow-up probes and with a different experimenter. Several post-study measures of outcome were taken, including social validity measures from participants, ratings of compassion from consumer and professional experts, as well as comparison measures on the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy. Participant reports of social validity were high, as were consumer and professional ratings of compassionate behaviors. Improvements on the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy were also observed. Implications for training practitioners and for expanding the focus on compassionate care skill development within the field are explored.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2023 · doi:10.1007/s40617-022-00748-y