A Functional Approach to Teaching Emotional Awareness to Autistic Learners is the kind of topic that looks straightforward until it collides with the speed, ambiguity, and competing demands of case conceptualization, intervention design, staff training, and literature-informed problem solving. In A Functional Approach to Teaching Emotional Awareness, for this course, the practical stakes show up in stronger conceptual consistency and better translational decision making, not in abstract discussion alone.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via Gulf Coast Autism
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Join Free →Autistic individuals are described as having difficulty identifying and responding to emotions in themselves and others (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Many programs often rely on teaching learners to label facial expressions or infer internal states; however, these approaches may misrepresent how emotions function in everyday contexts (Barrett, 2017; Goldiamond, 1979; Layng, 2017). Facial expressions are complex and often ambiguous social cues that can be difficult for autistic learners to interpret or use meaningfully. Based on instructional design methodology (Tiemann & Markle, 1991), this symposium presents a data-based functional approach to teaching emotional awareness grounded in behavior-analytic principles (Linnehan, 2025). The first presentation will provide a conceptual and practical framework for teaching emotional awareness as contextually bound behavior, highlighting how emotion words can be taught as descriptions of environmental arrangements, events, and consequences that occasion specific patterns of action. The second presentation will illustrate this framework with examples of instructional tools and teaching strategies that help autistic learners build more flexible and functional emotional problem-solving repertoires. Instructional methodology and corresponding data will be presented to demonstrate the effects of the teaching procedures. Together, these talks will emphasize how a functional approach can support learner self-advocacy, social interaction, and meaningful participation across contexts.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1 | General |
Anna M. Linnehan is an Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science for the Institute for Applied Behavior Analysis and a professor at Endicott College. Dr. Linnehan earned her masters and doctoral degrees in Applied Behavior Analysis from Endicott College, Beverly, MA. She began her career as a professional chemist and has a passion for improving the lives of others through science. Her research utilizes the Goldiamond-Layng Theory, a behavioral contingency analytic account of emotions, paired with instructional design to teach emotional concepts to develop programs to help individuals identify and problem solve their own emotions and emotional behavior. Additionally, she is passionate in the dissemination of nonlinear contingency analysis and programming based on Israel Goldiamond’s constructional approach toward the application of assent based procedures.. Dr. Linnehan is also interested in the application of signal detection theory to analyze decisions and decision-making behavior. She recently co-authored a book, Decisions and Judgments in Ambiguous Situations: A Conceptual Introduction to Signal Detection Theory, with Dr. T. V. Joe Layng. She was also an editor as well as contributing author on the book Perspectives on Neurodiveristy and Belonging: Reflections for Behavior Analysts. She has also served as a member of review boards for a variety of behavioral journals and serves as an Advisor of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. As a professor, Anna enjoys teaching behavioral science at the undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels.
Dig into the research behind this topic — plain-English summaries written for BCBAs.
280 research articles with practitioner takeaways
256 research articles with practitioner takeaways
200 research articles with practitioner takeaways
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