Honoring the Past and Looking to the Future: Updates on Seminal Behavior Therapy Publications on Etiology and Mechanisms of Change

This is the introduction to the first of two special issues in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. The goal of this issue is to pay tribute to prior seminal Behavior Therapy publications on etiology and mechanisms of change, to provide an updated review of important topics covered by these papers, and to make recommendations for the future. Each invited paper highlights a particular Behavior Therapy publication’s contribution to our understanding and also provides an updated review or meta-analysis on the topic of the original paper. The topics covered here include mechanisms of etiology such as preparedness, reinforcement, and control. In terms of papers on mechanisms of change, we cover mechanisms related to extinction including fear activation, within- and between-session extinction, safety behaviors, and variables related to imagery. In addition, we examine principles related to generalization of learning and optimizing the impact of homework. With the two special issues of Behavior Therapy, we hope to inspire additional research and discussion.