HSF SIG at WIBA 2026
By: Dr. Charissa Knihtila
I just spent a few days at the Women in Behavior Analysis conference in Chicago and my first time in person at WIBA did not disappoint! I was able to meet a few of my fellow Health, Sport, and Fitness SIG board members, potentially recruit a few more HSF-SIG members, and attend some great talks and events during the conference.
There were multiple talks related to using ABA outside of autism, including one given by your SIG member coordinator (Me) and Communication Manager (Danielle). The SIG President (Andrea) was presenting too, but on AI 🙂
Yay SIG members!
So many talks were interesting and informative, but the subject that caught my attention the most was on perfectionism. Dr. Mallory Quinn and Dr. Shreeya Deshmukh discussed the behavioral and environmental components of perfectionism related to female athletes, specifically dancers. My personal life has been full of dancers and theater performers for the last 10 years so this is a topic that is near to my heart. The main takeaway is that everyone experiences perfectionism and often anxiety associated with it. Rather than work with these young athletes to avoid the anxiety or shut down when they don’t feel “perfect” ABA and ACT works to accept the anxious feelings (I know….FEELINGS!) and teach appropriate behavioral responses when those feelings come up. Humans can’t avoid bad emotions like fear, anxiety, frustration, etc… So instead of avoiding, we want to work toward acknowledging, accepting, and engaging in behaviors that move toward the values based goals that are set. This barely scratches the surface of what they were talking about, but if it piqued your interest you should definitely look them up!
The more I sit and listen to these applications, the more it fuels me to get some research conducted with the performance arts community related to resilience and perfectionism. I always come away from conferences motivated to start my next project.
I’m excited to announce that the HSF-SIG is going to be starting a co-working, networking, research lab space for anyone who is interested in any of those things! We are going to set a time to meet once a week and I (Dr. Charissa Knihtila) will be there just to network, talk about research ideas, give feedback, etc… There is no cost, there is no requirements, it is just an accountability group for those who are looking to move into this space and need some time to brainstorm or a designated time to have to log in and work on whatever they are doing. It is my goal to have 1 journal club type meeting every 4-6 weeks that will offer CEUs to those that are certified, but that is still a work in progress. Right now it is just a space meant to support those that want it or need it.
Click the link below to get on the email list for the Google meet link to join.
First meeting: Wednesday July 22nd from 8:00-9:00 pm EST
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