2020 Volume 34 Issue 2 Pages 166-177
Positive behavior support (PBS) has attracted attention as an approach to behavioral problems of persons with intellectual disabilities and/or developmental disabilities. In the United States, positive behavior support became a legal requirement, which led to its having some influence on society. In recent years, school-wide positive behavior support (SWPBS) has become increasingly well known outside of Japan, mainly in the United States, and Japanese behavior analysts should not ignore the practice and research related to positive behavior support. However, it is not easy to explain what positive behavior support is in relation to applied behavior analysis (ABA). In the present article, in order to be able to explain what positive behavior support is, a bibliographical investigation was done on the origin of positive behavior support, the history of its development, its definition and features, and its relationship to applied behavior analysis. The results confirmed that the positive behavior support that was created in a social climate in which normalization and protection of the rights of people with disabilities came to be emphasized has various definitions, and those definitions have changed over time. The positive behavior support community in the United States formed separately from the applied behavior analysis community, and associated professionals established an independent organization. In addition, there has been controversy over the uniqueness of positive behavior support, as some view it conceptually as one of applied behavior analysis’s service delivery models, and others view it as a new applied science evolved from applied behavior analysis. The present paper concludes with an examination of how to present positive behavior support in Japan and of future problems that may arise in relation to it.
