Using Teaching Interaction Procedure to Increase Empathetic Responding During Cross-racial Behavior Analytic Supervisory Relationships

Abstract

Abstract As graduate student's racial/ethnic identities continue to diversify among individuals pursuing applied behavior analysis, there is an increased risk for marginalization to occur during supervision. To promote successful supervisor-supervisee relationships, supervising behavior analysts need to acquire culturally responsive practices such as empathetic responding and partake in continuous education to shape their supervising repertoire. This will expand their ability to provide quality support for supervisees belonging to various identity groups. The teaching interaction procedure is a training tool that can be used to teach culturally responsive practices to supervising behavior analysts. It is an evidenced- based tool that has been used to teach social skills to children and adults. This training tool procedural components consist of labeling the social skill, providing rationale for that social skill, describing the steps involved in the social skill, modeling examples and non-examples of the social skill, and providing feedback throughout the process. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the teaching interaction procedure effectiveness as a training tool to teach empathetic responding skills to three supervising behavior analysts within crossracial dyads in a web-based training format. The results of a multiple-baseline design will show the teaching interaction procedure was effective at training all 3 supervisors empathetic responding in a contrived setting and suggests this had a positive impact on the perceived level of satisfaction among their supervisees.