What is a Behavioral Gerontologist?
A behavioral gerontologist is a behavior analyst (e.g., BCBA or UKBA (Cert)) that specialises in working with older adults. This may be from a research perspective or a clinical perspective, or both. There's no set age range that behavioral gerontologists work with, but the typical age range is people over the age of 65.
Behavioral gerontologists bring an specialist skill set to the table when working with older adults; a thorough understanding of the aging process and how that interacts with behavior. Aging at a younger age is often called development, particularly when there is an expectation of continued skill development.
With the aging process, the same expectation doesn't hold true. Instead, there is a general understanding that behavioral repertoires will decline and there will be an overall loss in behavioral competency. This means that the focus is often on maintaining and retaining already established behavior in the face of increased biologicial variables.
These biological variables tend to be a decline in vision, hearing, physical health and even in the case of major neurocognitive disorder, a decline in cognitive loss.
Behavior analysts that want to specialise in working with older adults need to invest their time and energy in learning in depth about the aging process and how that impacts and interacts with the environment to produce, influence and maintain behavior. Only then can a behavioral gerontologist make a positive, educated and compassionate approach to designing effective behavioral interventions.
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Enrich is the passion project of Dr Zoe Lucock, providing CEU courses for behavior analysts all about ABA with older adults.
