It’s the Little Things: Why EAB Still Matters in RFT and ACT Spaces
By Barbara Kaminski
As we’ve noted, communities of practice involve the sharing of stories, as they are practitioner spaces, which recognize the value of many ways of knowing about our work, exploring diverse perspectives, as told through our real life experiences. Over the next few weeks and months, we’ll be sharing some of those stories—the topics that each of us are passionate about, reflecting the range of experiences we all bring to the lab table. This week, Barb Kaminski shares her story, we hope you enjoy it!
If you had asked me earlier in my career where I’d end up spending my professional time, being part of Constellations would not have been an obvious answer. My training, and much of my professional career as a behavior analyst, was in the experimental analysis of behavior; labs, carefully arranged conditions, and tight operational definitions. But EAB has always been deeply contextual to me. The methods are controlled, sometimes it seems like to an extent that makes application impossible, but the aim is understanding when behavior changes, when it doesn’t, and what aspects of the environment matter most. What is that if not the foundation of a contextual science approach, provided that the scientist retains a big-picture orientation.
Over time, my work shifted from the lab into more applied settings. What changed wasn’t my interest in context, but the scale of the questions I was asking. I’ve always thought of lab findings as building blocks—essential, but not meant to stay scattered. Humans assemble those pieces into complex, flexible patterns of behavior. RFT makes sense to me as a way of understanding how basic behavioral processes are reintegrated into language, perspective-taking, and other forms of complex human behavior.
That’s ultimately why I care about keeping EAB in the conversation within RFT and ACT spaces. The lab isn’t the opposite of contextual thinking—it’s where it gets its footing. Isolating variables isn’t about stripping behavior down; it’s about identifying the conditions under which patterns reliably emerge, so that higher-level theories don’t lose contact with the processes they’re built on.
Being part of Constellations has changed how I teach EAB. I’m always looking for ways to connect lab data to the larger behavioral landscape and to teach students to ask what those findings help us understand once we leave the operant chamber. In my experience, that orientation helps students not only understand EAB more deeply, but also develop a genuine appreciation for RFT as part of the same continuum of behavioral science.
And if you’re working in RFT or ACT and feel far removed from the lab, I’d encourage you to connect in concrete ways. Read a basic paper—JEAB is a good place to start—and focus on the functional relation and the conditions under which it holds. Revisit classic preparations like multiple schedules, conditional discrimination, or stimulus equivalence and ask how those processes already show up in your work. After all, it’s often the little things, like the lab data and the carefully controlled findings, that make the biggest difference in understanding the complex patterns of human behavior.
