Behavioral Gerontology SIG – 2025 Annual Report

By Zoe Lucock

About the BG SIG

Behavioral gerontology, the application and philosophy of behavior analysis to the problems of adults age 65 and older, has a long tradition, from Ogden Lindsley’s (1964) chapter on the design of geriatric behavioral prosthetics, and Skinner and Vaughan’s (1983) practical advice on how to compensate for physical decline and enjoy old age, to recent Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis publications on teaching internet skills to older adults and reinforcer selection for individuals with neurocognitive disorders (e.g., Pachis & Zonneveld, 2019; Lucock, Sharp & Jones, 2020). Indeed, behavior analysts across specialties work with older adults.

The Behavioral Gerontology SIG (BGSIG) provides a forum for students, practitioners, and researchers with interests in applying the science, practice, and philosophy of behavior analysis to the problems encountered by adults in later life. Our goal is to promote the development, implementation, and evaluation of behavior analytic solutions to a wide variety of topics of high public health significance in the older adult population. Among these are the self-management for health promotion and disease prevention, functional assessments of and interventions for behavioual changes commonly associated with neurocognitive disorders (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease), aging with a disability, and effective healthcare navigation, including participation in inter- or multidisciplinary teams.

The BGSIG committee meets every other month to continue to work towards our goals. The 2025 annual business meeting was held in an online format allowing both members and non-members to attend.

Dissemination

During the past year, The BGSIG has made continued efforts to disseminate behavior-analytic research and clinical practice related to the problems of older adults through our social media channels. As of February 2025, the BGSIG Twitter account had 580 followers, the BGSIG Facebook page had 2700 likes (+100), and the closed Facebook group moderated by the BGSIG committee members had 882 members (+86 members).

The BGSIG website is hosted through ABAI and features a variety of content including blog articles from behavioral gerontologists, lists of relevant resource and journals and details about the SIG. In addition, the website has a “members only” section where BGSIG members can access training resources and videos of previous ABAI conference talks and webinars on behavioral gerontology.

The BGSIG has created a mailing list and plans to begin working on disseminating more information via email to people who are interested in behavioral gerontology. Anyone can sign up to the mailing list via the BGSIG website.

Learning Opportunities

This year the BGSIG has focused on the development of learning opportunities in behavioral gerontology over the past year. The BGSIG has hosted three separate webinar events, free for anyone to attend and each offering CEUs for BGSIG members. These have been very successful and well-attended and are now available for all BGSIG members on the members only part of the website for members to view and collect CEUs at their convenience.

The BGSIG continues to offer case consultation groups to practitioners in the field on an as-needed basis to BGSIG members – any member can request a peer consultation group by emailing bgsig.training@gmail.com. The BGSIG has published two newsletters over the past year featuring articles from behavioral gerontologists, details of CEU opportunities related to behavioral gerontology and information about our social media videos from behavioral gerontologists.

The BGSIG has a provider list in development. This is a list hosted on our website displaying any provider of behavioral gerontology services across the globe. We are currently actively asking for any providers to get in contact with us if they wish for their details to be added to the list.

Task Force

This year we have also seen the conclusion of the Insurance Funding Sub-committee. We recruited a number of prominent and experienced behavioral gerontologists, behavior analysts with expertise in insurance funding and other allied professionals to work together on establishing an understanding of the current routes for funding in behavioral gerontology. The task force has completed its review and made recommendations. These will be shared with members in due course.

Membership

The BGSIG currently has 33 members consisting of six affiliate members, three early career/transitional members, one retired/emeritus members, 13 full members and 10 student members.

The BGSIG also awarded a financial payment as part of our student award this year and the student award was renamed to the “Amy Shaw Student Award for Behavioral Gerontology” in honour of last year’s winner, who sadly passed away this year. We encourage all student members to submit their behavioral gerontology related research to the annual conference next year to be in with a chance of winning!

We welcome all new members to join us at the BGSIG, whether you are working with older adults or just interested in learning more and supporting our work. You can join via the ABAI website through your portal or click the link on our website: https://bgsig.abainternational.org