Creating Connection and Reducing Distress: the Effects of Functional Analytic Psychotherapy on Measures of Social Connection across Levels of Analysis

Research on functional analytic psychotherapy's (FAP) proposed process of change has focused on the turn-by-turn coding of FAP. In these studies, FAP-consistent therapeutic techniques result in decreased idiographically defined problem behavior in session. The decreased in-session problem behavior generalizes and reduces the problem behaviors outside of session. Although theoretically consistent and methodologically rigorous, this turn-by-turn coding approach has yet to be explicitly linked to a process of change that can be assessed via questionnaires. In the current study, three participants were treated in a multiple baseline design study that compared an interaction without personal detail exchange, reading plays, to FAP as implemented using the awareness, courage, and love model, a popular treatment dissemination strategy that identifies treatment targets as midlevel terms. Data presented explore the implementation of FAP on a turn-by-turn basis, the resulting change in treatment targets via questionnaires (in and out-of-session relating), and the treatment's impact on reported symptoms of psychopathology. Findings provide additional, yet still inconclusive, support for FAP's proposed process of change. The current results call into question the effects of treatment implementation using the awareness, courage, and love model in place of traditional implementation anchored in operant conditioning.