Habilidades sociais no Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA): diferenças e aproximações com o conceito de comportamento social em Skinner

Abstract

There is hardly any consensus on the concept of social skills in the behaviorist perspective. Considering this situation, this study presents a historical analysis of the use of the expression in order to find evidence of the developmental trajectory of the content and to verify if there is an approximation with the concept of Skinner’s (1953) social behavior. To do that, the keyword “social skills” was searched in the titles of articles published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) between 1968 and June 2019. From a set of 22 articles (the first one was published in 1976, volume 9), it was possible to investigate characteristics of the articles that address the theme. The comparison between the use of the terms social behavior and social skills in the same articles did not result in sufficient data to describe social skills as a specific set of social behaviors or to conceptualize this set. It was assumed that Baer, Wolf and Risley’s dimensions (1968), according to which social relevance can sometimes overlap the theoretical dimension, might be indicative of this limitation. In addition to the intermittent social environment, it was difficult to operationalize the expression social skills, leaving suggestions for future research that may contribute to the theme