Relatório da Força‑Tarefa da ACBS sobre as Estratégias e Táticas de Pesquisa em Ciências Comportamentais Contextuais (tradução portuguesa)

TITLE AND COMPLETE REFERENCE

Original Title (Portuguese): Relatório da Força-Tarefa da ACBS sobre as Estratégias e Táticas de Pesquisa em Ciências Comportamentais Contextuais

English Title: Report of the ACBS Task Force on the Strategies and Tactics of Contextual Behavioral Science Research

Complete Reference: Hayes, S. C., Merwin, R. M., McHugh, L., Sandoz, E. K., A-Tjak, J. G. L., Ruiz, F. J., Barnes-Holmes, D., Bricker, J. B., Ciarrochi, J., Dixon, M. R., Fung, K. P.-L., Gloster, A. T., Gobin, R. L., Gould, E. R., Hofmann, S. G., Kasuja, R., Karekla, M., Luciano, C., McCracken, L. M. (2025). Report of the ACBS Task Force on the Strategies and Tactics of Contextual Behavioral Science Research. [Portuguese translation]. Perspectivas em Análise do Comportamento, Special Volume: Terapia de Aceitação e Compromiso, 2025. Translation: Caroline Saraiva Leão, Cibele Pacheco Gomide, José Umbelino Gonçalves Neto, Marcello Henrique Silvestre & Pierre Motta. [Original publication: Hayes, S. C., et al. (2021). Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 20, 172-183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2021.03.007]

Type of Work: Task Force Report / Consensus Document / Research Strategy Statement (Portuguese translation of original 2021 report)

CENTRAL THESIS AND OBJECTIVES

The report establishes that Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS), in its modern form, requires clear strategic reformulation regarding how its research approaches current challenges. The central thesis maintains that:

Research strategies and tactics in CBS have demonstrated distinctive features compared to traditional behavioral science approaches, and these distinguishing features must be maximized to clarify how CBS can contribute to contemporary practical and intellectual problems.
CBS research must be multilevel, multidimensional, process-based, prosocial, and pragmatic to produce maximum scientific and practical impact.
It is imperative that the CBS community develop consensus on a detailed research agenda integrating these characteristics, with 33 specific recommendations to drive field progress.

The immediate objectives were:

Create a white paper on progressive research strategy for CBS
Develop a quality-checking checklist for contextual behavioral studies
Recommend an open science approach consistent with CBS susceptibilities and strategies

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Intellectual Roots of CBS

The report documents that CBS:

Emerged from functionalism, pragmatism, and relational behaviorism, with roots in the intellectual history of behavioral psychology
Developed as response to limitations of classical behaviorism, incorporating functional contextual analysis
Was stimulated by creation of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS) in 2005 and consolidated through the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science (JCBS)

Fundamental Principles of CBS

CBS is characterized by:

Analytical-behavioral commitment to scientific precision: CBS seeks to identify increasingly well-organized statements of relationships between events permitting prediction and influence of all action—public and private—of organisms interacting with contexts considered historically and situationally.
Derived relational responding framework (RFT): Relational Frame Theory (RFT) provides a framework for language and cognition consistent with CBS, allowing psychological processes to be understood through how people establish relationships between events.
Pragmatist philosophy: CBS emphasizes that analysis is only useful if it can achieve prediction and influence as unified specifiable objectives in contextual circumstances permitting experimental research and applied intervention.
Multimodal naturalism: CBS rejects neurobiological reductionism and adopts an approach seeking high-precision, high-scope analysis committed to unity between analytical discoveries and analysis in the broad family of life sciences.

Distinctions of CBS versus Traditional Behavioral Science

The document emphasizes CBS differs in its:

Emphasis on functional and contextual contexts
Integration of processes of change across multiple levels
Application of evolutionary theory
Focus on basic processes that can scale hierarchically through complex multilevel systems

MAIN ARGUMENTATIVE DEVELOPMENT

Section 1: CBS as Multilevel Approach

The report establishes that all life phenomena are embedded in increasingly complex levels of organization. The cell is part of an organism, action is part of a repertoire, the individual is part of family, community, and so forth. This requires that:

CBS research recognize importance of naturalistic and observational approaches: To understand complex influence systems and processes of change, CBS emphasizes analyses tested through experimental manipulation, seeking appreciation of complex dynamics and influence systems and processes of change.
Avoid false dichotomies: The report rejects dichotomies between hypothetical-deductive versus functional/analytical theories, and between psychological versus biopsychosocial levels. Instead, it proposes that CBS must resist extreme individualism, neurobiological reductionism, and must maintain clarity regarding analysis focus.

Section 2: CBS as Multidimensional Approach

The report identifies multiple dimensions on which human behavior can be analyzed:

Cognitive Dimension: Includes language and cognition processes. Although there is no simple separation between affect and cognition, the distinction is heuristic and reflected in CBS research. Cognitive modules offer orientation about what is being emphasized in intervention and can guide relative dominance of derived relations.

Attentional Dimension: Includes actions increasing or decreasing stimulus control. Relevant versus irrelevant stimuli for the task, and capacity to move between levels of attention, hypervigilance and scanning. Including capacity for present-moment concentration fundamental to mindfulness concepts.

Affective Dimension: Emotion is more challenged to define. In clinical use, we often study affect as measures of change in therapy. Considering affective results of this type as "dimension" of change process diminishes little value of process focus, once it raises question of which pathways are functionally important.

Self-Sense Dimension: Overlaps with other dimensions, meriting special emphasis. The sense of "self" overlaps with other dimensions. Much existing work on sense of identity was organized around three-part model of "self" as content, "self" as process, "self" as context.

Motivation Dimension: Can refer to both unlearned and learned motivational operations. When combined with relational learning, variety of motivational questions arise.

Open Behavior Dimension: Includes dimensions of open behavior such as impulsivity versus behavioral inhibition, behavioral excesses versus deficits.

Didactic, Social and Cultural Level Dimensions: Therapeutic relationships as examples of didactic relation embedded in sociocultural context. Development of methods for studying how different dimensions can be measured in ways idiographically useful.

Section 3: CBS as Process-Based Approach

The report emphasizes that CBS focus on processes of behavioral change allows psychological events to be predicted and influenced to achieve desired analytical, prosocial and practical objectives.

Identified Change Processes:

Basic behavioral processes: Reinforcement, extinction, stimulus generalization, social learning, derived relational responding (RFT), and others.
Evolutionary processes: Include genetics, epigenetics, survival circuitry regulation, evolution of cultural practices, phenotypic development and similar.
Therapeutic change processes: Expressed at mid-level of analysis, oriented behavioral analysis for important domains such as "compassion," "acceptance," "group identity" or "values."

The document establishes that these mid-level terms can be developed later, and it is recognized that such terms can be defined less precisely than basic behavioral processes from CBS perspective. Mid-level terms are used commonly in CBS discretely to constitute some level of basic support and in their best aspect, serve as summary for sets of functional analyses.

Section 4: CBS as Prosocial Approach

The report maintains that rising levels of worldwide turbulence, authoritarianism and global climate change and many similar problems cannot be treated by sciences based solely on positivism, skepticism and apathy.

To promote prosocial cultural transformation, contextual behavioral science is necessary. Humans present evolved capacity for verbal behavior with purpose of helping navigate and manipulate environment, form social bonds to permit mutual cooperation complex collective actions, transmit knowledge, skills and cultural traditions across time and generations.

These evolved capacities lead to injustice within our society; atrocities and wars between societies, as well as harm to natural environment, including pollution, species extinction and climate change. With technological advances, our capacities to produce destructive conquests continue increasing.

CBS must be pragmatic in purpose: This simple statement brings several recommendations. CBS cannot be misused to encourage or corrupt those with greater social capital, individually or systemically, involuntarily or intentionally.

Section 5: CBS as Pragmatic Approach

The pragmatic purpose of CBS research is that models and methods must be moderated by practicality and measures from practical human purposes of behavioral science.

In research science, investigations are sometimes studied for their own benefit, hoping they eventually lead to practical applications. However, CBS involves a parallel "richest" relationship between basic science and practical application.

Specifically from that perspective, best basic science allows us to understand, predict and influence the multitude of aspects of real world, and best applied program that promptly connects and aids more complete understanding and specification of basic principles.

THIRTY-THREE MAIN RECOMMENDATIONS

The report articulates 33 recommendations organized around five characteristics:

MULTILEVEL RECOMMENDATIONS (1-6):

Examination of relevant variables across multiple levels of analysis
More experimental research on sources of behavior influence across levels of analysis
Mid-level terms examined for utility in different contexts
Careful measurement of multifactorial factors which ethical/practical reasons cannot manipulate
Longitudinal evaluation emphasizing behavioral sequences in context
Deep analysis incentivizing identification of scalable principles/processes

PROCESS-BASED RECOMMENDATIONS (7-13):

Basic/applied research to identify change processes
Identify and conceptualize intervention "grains"
Behavioral/biophysiological measurement of change processes
Greater emphasis on idiographic ECRs with change process analysis
Idiographic/dynamic research with high temporal-density behavioral measures
Greater empirical emphasis on interventions and components/grains based on degree of process modification

PROSOCIAL RECOMMENDATIONS (23-27):

Intercultural focus/budgetary visions influencing change
Issues of diversity (gender, language, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, identity)
Prosocial objectives and pursuit knowledge about social justice
Concentration on conditions promoting human cooperation
Variables influencing prosocial social networks

PRAGMATIC RECOMMENDATIONS (28-33):

Practical research tools focusing on functionally important processes
Greater intercultural focus and attention to budgetary visions
Research on adaptive clinical methods for testing components
Identification/conceptualization intervention "grains" using varieties methods
Pragmatism in developing practical research tools
Promotion of ACBS recommendations in labs, classrooms, scientific reports, agencies, conferences and journals

CLINICAL AND RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS

For Research

The report emphasizes that:

Integration between basic and applied research: There must be continuous feedback relationship where basic discoveries inform intervention development and outcomes of practical applications inform theory refinement.
Need for multidimensional measures: Existing psychometrically refined instruments will continue having utility, but quality filter for intensive idiographic evaluation is necessary given intraindividual and interindividual variability focus.
Single-case methods and time series analysis: Intensive longitudinal designs including case studies, extending to complex networks analysis.
Incorporation of mobile technology: EMA (Experience Sampling Method), continuous real-time monitoring, allow better analysis of change processes at individual level.

For Clinical Practice

Clinical implications include:

Contextual specificity in intervention: Interventions based on identified processes must be tailored to patient's specific context, not simply applied generically.
Functional versus symptomatic measures: CBS research suggests measures capturing change processes (such as psychological flexibility) may be more useful than symptomatic measures.
Mechanism analysis in RCTs: For interventions based on evidence to be truly effective, they must identify components or "grains" modifying essential processes of change validated empirically.
Attention to individual variability: Different contexts may require different emphasis on treatment components, and research must examine how these can be adapted.

CONTRIBUTION TO CBS FIELD / CONTEXTUAL BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

This report represents important milestone in CBS maturation as rigorous scientific discipline. Its contributions include:

Clarification of philosophy and research strategy: By explicitly articulating how CBS differs from previous approaches and defining central characteristics (multilevel, multidimensional, process-based, prosocial, pragmatic), the report provides field coherence.
Detailed research agenda: The 33 recommendations provide concrete roadmap for researchers, facilitating alignment of efforts across multiple laboratories and institutions.
Integration of RFT and behavioral change theory: The report solidifies Relational Frame Theory's position as fundamental framework for understanding psychological processes in CBS.
Emphasis on prosocial responsibility: By insisting CBS must pursue objectives benefiting human condition and social justice, the report marks explicit ethical commitment.
Evolutionary and context-sensitive methodology: Emphasis on idiographic methods, time series analysis, and sensitivity to cultural contexts represents significant advance over previous practices.
Bridge between basic theory and practical application: By rejecting dichotomy between "pure" versus "applied" research, CBS positions itself as science that can address real human problems while maintaining theoretical rigor.