Buffer theory offers a compelling framework for understanding how individuals can be protected from the harmful effects of adverse, aversive, and coercive experiences that accumulate across conditioning histories, clinical encounters, and childhood development. The theory proposes that specific protective factors, or buffers, can be deliberately cultivated to mitigate the biological, behavioral, and medical impacts of these harmful experiences.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via Stone Soup
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Join Free →According to buffer theory, individuals face adverse, aversive and coercive experiences in our conditioning, clinical, and childhood histories; these experiences change biology, behavioral needs, and medical trajectories for us as well as for our families, clients, caregivers and staff. Ethical and community responsibilities (including acknowledging our own contributions to those harms) urge us to prevent further harms and ameliorate the ones that have already happened. We can do this by preventively incorporating buffers (6 explicit areas identified by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris and described in Kolu, 2023) in the lives of our clients, their caregivers and ourselves, and acting to solve problems that produce barriers to engagement in these areas. Stories in this talk illustrate planful action in buffering areas that can address some of the changes related to contextual fear learning, enduring disasters, and other aversive experience. Audience participants will consider these actions and outcomes in the context of the BACB ethics code, especially those areas that discuss taking responsibility (2.01), modeling for others and being aware of personal challenges (1.10), fostering supportive environments for teams (4.06), and considering medical and biological contributions to behaviors (2.12).
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1 | Ethics |
| COA | 1 | — |
| IBAO | 1 | Ethics |
| CPBAO | 1 | Ethics |
Dr. Camille Kolu is a behavioral scientist in Colorado and owns Cusp Emergence University. Kolu trained at University of North Texas and Rutgers University examining autism, social and olfactory contextual conditioning, and their neurobiology. She taught Ethics and more at universities for decades, and partners with families and individuals across the lifespan to engineer behavioral cusps in the context of experienced trauma, autism, foster care or adoption, and mental health needs. Kolu savors partnerships with health and human service agencies, mental hospitals, schools, and community organizations of all kinds. Dr. Kolu has published in peer-reviewed journals and serves on the advisory board of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. Her personal passions include enriching the lives of her children, cat and dog, chickens, dough, and soil, while her professional work on buffers reflects her interest in transforming everyday clinical work into a radically preventive application of the science of behavior.
Dig into the research behind this topic — plain-English summaries written for BCBAs.
256 research articles with practitioner takeaways
236 research articles with practitioner takeaways
225 research articles with practitioner takeaways
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All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.