Tackling terms and conditioning confusion: Sexual behavior and applied behavior analysis

Abstract

When working within sexual health and with people who engage in varying topographies of sexual behavior, the first thing to remember is that sex is behavior: it’s something we do and it follows the same rules as all other topographies of behavior. The fields comprising sexual health care and sexual behavior research--sex therapy, sexuality education, sex research, and reproductive medicine--maintain a descriptive and evolving vernacular that is used by clinicians and academicians throughout. However, there are precious few who work to operationally define these terms in behavioral ways and then carry out research and treatment with a focus on behavior and its context instead of mental events. Whether considering the human sexual response cycle as identified by Masters and Johnson (1966), the incentive sequence model by Pfaus (1999), or the three- or four-term contingency model of behavior, we can predict the overall sequence of sexual behavior of an organism. While it is difficult for many reasons (Akins, 2004) and we thus typically proceed with caution when generalizing from non-human to human models in our attempts to learn more about sexual behavior (Pfaus et al., 2012), we can identify discrete patterns of activity in which both human and non-human animals engage between sexual arousal and satiety (Akins, 2004; Pfaus, 1999). However, it can become particularly confusing when assessing sexual behavior within the context of behavior analysis because sexual stimuli can serve multiple functions.