Deconstructing Compassionate ABA

  Hey everyone, real quick, before we get to this episode, I want to let you know that if you would like to get these episodes ad-free and Before everyone else gets them like this one this one's been out for at least 24 hours or so Sometimes I put them out a few days early So if you want to get these episodes with no ads no introductory comments just the conversation itself Go to patreon.com forward slash behavioral observations to learn how you can do that All right, let's get to this episode and I'm really excited to share this conversation ahead with Dr. Greg Hanley So a few weeks ago is fortunate to find a couple of hours to catch up with Greg And as you know the Greg is a many-time guest and all-round podcast faith and It turned out to be a really lengthy conversation because he had quite a few things on his mind Here are some of the things we talked about We talked about his recent and new professional association with action behavior centers We talked about the evolution of his company FTF behavioral consulting and what their plans are going forward And we spent a good amount of time talking about the term compassionate a BA Including some of my misgivings on whether terms like these are necessary. So we have some back and forth on that And then we get into the evolution of the Practical functional assessment and skills-based treatment process focusing more on the latter and we distinguish between the immediate and long-term effects of reinforcement Greg talked about efficacy versus effectiveness. I think that's a really interesting part of the conversation We talked about some historical perspectives on functional analysis, which I think you'll also find interesting including the Unexpected topic in which the term automatic reinforcement first appeared in the literature We talked about the role of the descriptive functional assessment Greg's recent thoughts on head directed self injury the role of ticks and self injury and Skills-based treatments intersection with constructional approaches to behavioral interventions and That's just a sample again. This podcast is over two hours long and as always there are lots of resources links etc in the show notes with this episode so good behavioral observations dot com and Look for session 283 and if you want to get these show notes delivered directly to your inbox sign up for the email list You'll be a pop-up when you go to the website just fill it out and Go from there and you'll get these show notes sent directly to your inbox But real quick before we get to the conversation itself I want to let you know we're brought to you by CEUs from your truly behavioral observations That's right get your CEUs while you're driving walking your dog doing the dishes or whatever else you have going on All while learning from your favorite podcast guests Also brought to you by the behavioral toolbox check out our latest quote course motivational interviewing getting educator buy in As well as the hugely popular when not to FBA five quick strategies for improving behavior in classrooms If you work in schools you're going to want to check out the behavioral toolbox dot com Ross will brought to you by behavior university and their mission is to provide university quality professional development for the busy behavior analyst Learned about their CEU offerings including their eight-hour supervision course and their newly revised RBT course over at behavior university dot com forward slash observations Last but not least Mark your calendars for the verbal behavior conference in March of 2025. That's right March 27th through 28th with the full day pre conference workshop on the 26 If you're into verbal behavior You're going to want to check this one out I've been going to this conference for the last several years and it is dynamite So go to behaviorlive.com and look for the verbal behavior conference or again just look for the show notes for this episode and learn more about it there and You don't have to join us in Austin, Texas. Although that would be cool if you did You can watch live at behaviorlive.com And those guys have really taken the online workshop experience to the next level So you can check it out there. All right. That's it for opening remarks sit back and enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Dr. Greg Welcome to the behavioral observations podcast stimulating talk for today's behavior analysts Now here's your host Matt Sikoria Dr. Greg Hamlin. It's good to see you again Thanks, Matt. It's really great to be back I You you'd reshot recently say hey, I've got some things that are on my mind and I'm eager to hear what is on your mind You share with me some things you do want to talk about and I think they will be of interest to the audience Before we get to that though, you know, I know we kind of ran through some of this stuff in my recent interview with Dr. Camelary But just in case someone missed that I know there's some some big big changes that have happened with with you and your fdf colleagues and some really new and exciting things so Why don't you start off by telling us what's new in your world professionally speaking and that we can certainly Proceed to talk about the things that we always talk about in terms of you know Practical functional assessment skills based treatment etc etc Sure, I'd be happy to We were approached a few months back With some the leadership at action behavior center and abc is I don't keep track of these things I believe that one of the largest if not the largest provider of early intervention for kids with autism in the US And we were working with them for a time in a typical small scale way Which is what we do with companies and what we call three client cohorts and teaching this staff how to do pfa and spt and and some of this thing we call universal protocol And it was going very well And we really liked working with them and their leadership chart Charna mince and I go way back and I really liked What she was trying to build with the culture there and then I went out for some event where those a bunch of different speakers I had a wonderful time met their CEO A herch and I really enjoyed my conversations with him and the other members of the team And I come back to fdf and I say hey guys can we stop going small with abc Can we send them a contract that will help get more of their staff trained because I met all these staff and they're like We love this for we really want to get training and there's a bottleneck and they were basically taking the on demand course But as we all know that's not enough to become super competent that she needed an apprenticeship or consultation supervision So anyways, we send a contract that scene to meet with their needs pretty well and they came back and said no We want more and with this too big it'll be too slow not enough people get access to it So long story short Dr. G masheed guy amagami and Tony Camelaria myself are slowly migrating over to action behavior center and Tony and masheed Are going to be with them full time as of January and I will be half time as of January And then it'll scale up as time goes on towards the summer As far as my role, I'll always be with fdf. It's my company. There's no way I can leave it behind And so I'll be serving as CEO of fdf forever as far as I can tell And I'll help guide the company as in the way I've done forever, which is a team building kind of consensus model However, I will be doing a lot of training with abc and so we got a cool model that we're just pulled from fdf I go out do two day trainings at all their different venues and then Tony and masheed follow up with onsite Live support of analyses and then they do asynchronous support skill-based treatment and And then we're building a team so every region we go to We'll be hiring somebody from that area to be part of the compassionate care team So when all said and done we'll probably have a dozen or so people with us Just integrated within the abc culture to make sure people are confident doing pfa and spt when the need arises And and a lot of people say why would you do that at this point in your career? You know, I've had several careers within a career Why why would you do such a thing? It's a hassle. Is it not and it's gonna be work I'm not there as a leader Sitting back with an ascot and a smoking jacket, you know, given ideas What I'm a laborer for abc I'm gonna go in there and work hard to teach people things that are not easy to learn And then my colleagues are gonna be there, you know, supervisors to make sure they can do it Not just talk about it, but actually do it and it's work and I like to work So that's part of it. I like work the hardest part of ftf is making sure everyone has enough work sometimes and And so This is good work. The other part is this Matt is We're doing really great with public schools. I can't believe how well we're doing public schools to be honest Because I was always scared of public schools. They're a cultural beast of their own and you know I always said like I'd never been a classic school teacher and all that kind of stuff However, we're doing great with schools because they're desperate and they have the people in place now That can do this stuff and so we're doing really well with schools We're doing really well internationally because internationally people don't have a lot of baggage They just have need and they want to do Well, and I just love our international partners. You know, we've struggled we struggle with the US Autism companies Now not met we have several great relationships with the US Autism Companies. However Many would contract with us for a short time They do pretty well Some better than others and then it wouldn't scale much because they're confident and some of them have good reason to be And so they would simply take the materials that are freely available and build their own And the problem with that what is Was and continues to be is I have no idea how they're doing Now if they get credentials and they keep getting that staff credential Then I know how they're doing and some places do that like acorn behavior health amazing team Amazing job scaling it and we know how they're doing because they show their presentations and they get credentialed and to get credentialed You have to prove it with videos data sheets graphs etc But most companies I have no idea and that bothers me a bit So when ABC comes knocking I'm gonna have an idea because we're gonna get to do program evaluation Because they hired one of my good colleagues Dr. Lindellablonk and we're independent. I do the labor She's gonna be doing evaluation. I don't even know if we'll ever have a meeting You know where we're putting in the independent variable and she's doing program evaluation But the idea for me to bring this to scale in a 13,000 staffed organization that probably serves about 7,000 children to bring this to scale there Is a huge reinforcer and so that's why I'm doing it. Okay. That's why I like to work And I want to bring things to scale in places that to be frank We we've only succeeded a couple times and that's why we're doing it But that said cool thing with FTF is Dr. Did the unresurraum on is coming back and he'll be doing a lot of trainings He's an amazing trainer. Holly Gover will be coming back in both in January She's also an amazing trainer and she has a great a specialty and food selectivity And there'll be another surprise announcement in a couple months about another person Who'll be joining us who's amazing as a consultant and trainer and and then Dr. Rupel has been elevated pretty much to executive director and so she really is gonna be in a leadership position too But we'll work closely together And other people at FTF are gonna be elevated so the other reinforcer for me is getting out of people's way Do you know anything at some point The old white guy needs to get it out of the way now. I'm not gonna retire So this is a perfect way for me to get out of people's way keep me busy somewhere else So that's another reason why this is all going down But some people stressed this stressing me a little bit they're saying what's gonna happen FTF and my response is Nothing except it's gonna get better We have a lot of people on the team that really know what's up So no to me it's just another opportunity on top of a good opportunity Thanks for the chance to communicate that though. Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to provide it It's funny. I think I mentioned this to my conversation with Tony But when all these announced with ABC started coming down the pike For reasons. I don't really I mean maybe just because of the history or whatever but people were messaging me like like I've got like you know Like you consulted me on that like I don't know. I'll you know try to I'll try to figure out But you know something were to know it would be you Well, yeah, I guess but it was it was it was it was cute. So Well, so there's a bunch of directions we could potentially go in and I guess one thing is and I want to I want to get to this the this notion of compassionate care Because it's something that I talked about again with Tony and if I'd had other I'd numerous private conversations with friends and colleagues And so forth So I'd like to get your thoughts on on deconstructing that Maybe but I know there's some more kind of strategic and tactical things that you want to discuss for you know So that compassionate care man. Okay. Yeah, go with your flow. You're good at this. All right All right, so this you know, it's it's a term that's been used quite a bit as of late or I shouldn't even say as of late for you know A number of years now that I think there's some of the papers go back to the you know the mid-20 teens I think and possibly before that And looking at this this paper that you'd share with me with the That you guys recently published in your group recently published in behavior analysis and practice It's a toward compassion in the assessment and treatment of severe problem behavior You wrestle with this or contend with this a little bit in terms of like well If applied behavior analysis is this Indevert that alleviate suffering and uses the Principles of what we understand about you know the fundamentals of of you know behavior to do so Isn't it by definition already compassionate and what is the You know is the term compassionate care Or adding compassionate or or as I like to call it you know any any sort of hyphenated type of a BA hyphenate a BA is what I sometimes You know jokingly refer to it as you know are these things necessary and one of the things that you know I've always had a little bit of reluctance to To add those you know hyphenated terms personally. I'm just going to be you know I've had our own you know individual conversations about this certainly And not that I'm not open to it and and again I I also saw a great keynote at the 2023 Faba conference by Dr. Bill Aherne About the he's like why I'm gonna butcher the title here But it's like why I'm proud to be a behavior analyst and you should too or something it's words to those effect And and I don't know of bill tunes into the show and I'm hope I don't want to put words in this mouth But you know, I think he perhaps You know had some of the same you know might have thought along some of the same lines, you know any showed Various examples in the literature of of you know what we call compassionate approaches to resolving you challenge or to think of Think through some of these interventions that we apply in ways that are That highlight the you know the humanity of the people that we're trying to provide services to so I know That's an awfully long windup Greg, but I just you know, I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that Your wind up is good Matt because it's complicated and because people are wrestling with these thoughts Just like you and I are You mentioned a paper It's led by dr. G machi guy mage me and I'm really happy with the piece and I'm gonna do my best here to respond to a question But I really do encourage people to take a look at it I think it takes a little bit of unpacking and I think the paper does a good job of that I will say this do I think a b a always has been compassionate The answer is yes in its aim What I mean is we've aimed to be compassionate the fact that we carry the burden of other people's Challenges and we try to address Extreme for instance severe forms of behavior Just the fact that people are courageous enough willing to take that on and want to alleviate the suffering of that child or adult and their family or staff Yes, that all that aim is compassionate by definition. You're totally right I also agree with you that I never wanted a hyphenated version of a b a either I'd been you know people would often say when I would present early on in the early you know 2012 14 15 what is what what is this what do you call this and I said it was it's a b a It's simply a b a and I in fact I would refer to articles of course Montwolves article in Alan Cazins I'm social validity and all that okay But that said all that said Do I think our procedures? Our compassionate and thus do we come across to families Clients and other allied professionals as compassionate when we actually do a b a The answer is sometimes And I would say often no So do we need a hyphenated version of a b a sadly I think we do Okay, now I I chose today's a b a Back in 220 to try to distinguish the kind of a b a that I was Happy with and happy to implement and I kind of need to articulate it from myself It was almost like a public commitment to leave a few things behind and add a few things in Compassion a b a is the same except we have better procedures now We have better procedures right now and 24 than we even had in 2020 That are more aligned with this idea of compassion So let me I'm just going to be detail oriented. Yeah, let's go still just words at this point. So let me be very detail oriented And I'm just going to talk about it in terms of severe behavior. Okay, so A couple things Compassion it doesn't mean being nice. I think everyone knows that there's probably memes about that So let's just make that really clear. It's not being nice. I'm not sure I'm nicer than the next person or Certainly not meaner than the next person But all that said Compassionate simply means when you're doing therapy of any sort including a b a That you show concern for the learner In the moment every moment that's how I teach it I don't I don't know if you need to read a whole article on it. I don't know how big of it up death we need It's very simple It's not in our aim our aims are always compassion our aims have been compassionate since the 60s Okay, and made more compassionate in the 70s when people wrote about social validation Of course our aims are compassionate to ease suffering But our procedures and what we've done on a regular basis lack compassion Especially as we're addressing severe forms of problem behavior Let me be clear what I'm talking about and I'm not calling out people. I will not name names I am talking about my personal experiences in the field and Thousands of others that I've worked with and seen taught or been taught by Goes like this. I'll give you a we'll go from a simple example Young child's with autism. They're free play. They're engaging in stereotomy They do not yet speak They're stimming on some beads. Let's say instead of engaging dramatic player play with the same age peers and they're inclusive program Behavior analyst such as myself my comments they Sally come to the table and I'm gonna do a little direct instruction Nice evidence-based practice try to teach skills because she's not gonna learn skills by accident To be autistic often means to have the you're not gonna learn certain thing by accident You need them to be explicitly taught We can all agree on that So I take that young lady who developmental trajectory is flat and I bring her over to the table Now she's reluctant she doesn't want to join me, but I'm a nice person Again, not compassionate, but a nice person so a nice person makes the expectation clear Sally come to the table Get her little model prompt case you didn't understand walk like this you do it And then I might gently gently physically guide her to the table now. She may start resisting a little bit But what I'm gonna do in my old version of a BA is I'm gonna get her to the table I'm gonna physically bring her to the table Okay, and that little resistance I don't want to honor that because I was taught do not reinforce that behavior once an instruction has been given as I've taught many people back in the day So I bring her to the table now She settles in like many kids where and I say you know give me those beads So you don't not distracted and you can attend to the material. She doesn't want to give them up So again, I use three step prompting I tell her I show her and I help her despite her physical resistance I can remove those beads from her hand. I might say match red She might throw the materials. It's not my first rodeo. I'm applied behavior analyst I'm gonna have a bunch of sample stimuli in my backpack and I'm gonna say match red like this You do it and then when she gets a little upset I'm still gonna prompt her to match red and I'm still gonna take my data I'm gonna do the expected number of trials I'm gonna make sure she doesn't learn to escape without behavior She might be throwing things, but I'm gonna redirect her back to the task She might try to withdraw a scent push away from the table But I might put my meaty thigh against that back of the chair and keep her at that table because I need to teach her That when I say do x it's important that you do x what I'm doing is champion cooperation or compliance Above her emotional well-being What I'm doing is championing the task at hand the objective whether it's letter number color identification I'm still being nice the whole time in my heart. I'm being nice Giving her a chance with a vocal prompt I'm modeling it I'm trying to be very sensitive But nevertheless I am holding the demand in that moment. This is just one example. Okay No one For years decades bad and an eyelash over that treatment of that child And that's a BA and if anyone wants to argue with me that what I just described is not a traditional form of a BA They're diluted because that's that's Exactly my first when I first started working with you know preschoolers and early intervention That's exactly what my supervisor told me to do And we should pick them up and put them in the chair and I said well, what if he gets out? She's like put them back in the chair. You put them back in the chair. You keep going now I will say that you know, I can remember that particular client in that particular individual and We you know Within the first session we are you know, we're up and running after a few you know, you know But I'm in the mobile videos. We'll see the low boss videos. It goes crying resisting escaping avoiding Over time though over time the casual version of escape extinction used by low boss there was more Made a little more professional as functional analysis came to bear and using differential reinforcement Yeah, you can cut through that emotional responding very quickly with some learners. There's no doubt There's no doubt that old ABA Was a godsend for many kids on the spectrum in their families and despite the rough process Beautiful outcomes were achieved. I have no doubt about that. I witnessed them I wasn't a big part of them. I'll admit it, but I witnessed them and that's all true But let me be clear the procedure that was very successful with some learners fundamentally lacked compassion We're again defined by me Simply as show and concern for the learner in the moment every moment There's more to it. So let's describe it. What would we do these days? What would now be consistent with compassionate care? number one is We start with the give not the ask Another words we start with a bunch of reinforcers And we don't make a lot of requests because we want to make sure the student wants to be there wants to be nowhere else but there We want to make sure that we gain a sense to simply participate in the educational or therapeutic or abilitative space We don't start with the instruction come here sit down match red Okay, we start with designing a beautiful environment that they want to be in that's one fundamental difference Next is if I begin to teach and they withdraw a scent And their behavior gets severe we're gonna honor it and we'll talk more about that We did honor that in the past so people say well if the same thing we used to do no it's not pay attention Please it's not the same thing. We're not holding kids against tables there. We're drawing a scent. We let them go We call it vote with their feet. We call it open door therapy Well, everyone that does SBT well the door is literally a metaphorically open if the kid with autism wants it close And but they're allowed to leave whenever they want super important to us because kids who are entangled are trapped in therapy tend to escalate to emotional behavior that we have no behavioral technology to address so we always let the kids go And what it does is puts the onus on us to figure out a way to teach better We do We still use extinction Compassionate ABA still Involves extinction be very clear about that anyone on Facebook that says today's ABA a compassion ABA There's no extinction. They don't understand either It's more complicated than that Okay, but he has the difference now. Here's what extinction looks like when someone's compassionate or doing a compassionate ABA Let's say a little girls at the table Doesn't speak yet, but she looks at you and she's like nah gives that sound clear protest Pretty good eye contact very deliberate, but she didn't hit herself she didn't hit me she didn't push away from the table Okay, nothing severe, but clear Problem behavior on route to escalation What we do there is we first we acknowledge the baby with empathy I understand this is hard. I think I understand this is hard. You're frustrated Okay, if they have language, we clearly are going to language with them. Okay, if they don't have language We're still going to do it and make sure our face is connected them Showing connoting that we kind of understand Second thing we're going to do is we're going to encourage persistence. We're going to say I know hard you're frustrated I've seen you do it. You got this try again Okay, no negotiate no bargaining nothing of that no languaging about how much to do But we're going to keep them in the pocket of hard, okay? When they had a mild problem behavior and we might even change the criteria for reinforcement I want to do 10 trials She's getting a little antsy at three if she gives me two more I'm going to say that was great. Do you want to keep working or do you want to go back to your way basically let it go back Stim play et cetera? I'm going to give her choice So the point here is it's complicated. There's no one word answer here It's acknowledge the baby with empathy encourage persistence and change the criteria for reinforcement This isn't yesterday's a BA where you put in one word Extinction for that behavior. It's not that it's a series of activities to show concern for the learner in the moment While holding them to a high developmental expectation and showing them that despite the hard you did it anyway This is amazing when kids got language It's really great to give reinforcement frames like this Wow, you was super frustrated, but you did it anyway Do you want to keep doing your math? Did you want to go back and do your way? Oh, by the way, you're a kind of kid that When it's hard you do it anyway amazing. That's the kind of languaging we're using now You'd never use that language in the past we wouldn't even language about it now. Let's say that same kid has severe behavior Let's say they slap their face hard Let's say they attempt attempt a bite scratch kick hit all the stuff we've seen for decades when we're doing a BA What would we do in compassionate a BA we'd reinforce it That's an absurd thought for some people we would completely reinforce it. We'd let them escape We'd let them go back to play People have a super hard time. I have to spend almost 45 minutes in the training working out this point because it's so counterintuitive Because yesterday's a BA we have a pathological avoidance of reinforcing problem behavior That's how we were raised. We have a pathological commitment to not reinforcing problem behavior and that's what got us into trouble That's what made it so people don't like us as allied professionals as we ignore Kids with fragile language systems as we work kids through their tears That's yesterday's a BA we never work kids through their tears We don't even get kids to their tears But if they are tearing up we clearly are not teaching them anymore because that lacks compassion again Compassion is shown concern the learner in the moment every moment What we do is we bifurcate the repertoire into non-dangerous and dangerous Non-dangerous behavior we support them through it We don't call partial extinction if you want to call we give attention We'll hold the other reinforcers to try to help them get through it by contrast if we push too hard in their severe behavior We back off we let them settle down We get them affectively physiologically right again and then we try again All everything I just said is way more complicated To implement than what we used to do which was if they do problem behavior you do x Which is a single function extinction procedure that's not this okay? This is way more complicated than that by the way I don't think you can do compassion a BA if you don't synthesize reinforcers That's a big rub right now. I think it's impossible to be compassionate if you're procedures to be compassionate if they're binary You get attention or you don't that's it. That's all we got to work with You can't be compassionate under those conditions But when you combine the reinforcers you can give attention prevents escalation Your shows are being responsive allied professionals don't think you're a jerk when you're ignoring a little kid with The billy language in their communicating clearly with their problem behavior But you withholding the other reinforcers to promote some development to push them through the hard So there's still some pushiness with a BA people there's still a little pushiness of people who are you do not can be able to be Pushy push your tin like I like to call people You can still do that, but you're really just acknowledging and encouraging and getting some pretty cool outcomes Hey there. I just want to jump in and Provide a quick reminder that if you're Interested in some of the sources that we talk about in this episode go to behavioral observations.com and grab the show notes Also while you're there check out what we have to offer in the CEU store That's right. We've got over 60 events with all your podcast favorites and we've got topics for just about all of your interests We got a lot of things covered so go to behavioral observations.com forward slash get CEUs and learn how You can get your professional development while you're on the go all right. Let's get back to this conversation with Greg These think it's a language problem in our part in terms of accepting the idea the notion of reinforcing problem behavior You know and what I mean when you were just talking and I don't have this thoughtfully formed so this could go This might not Look out, but you know like the idea of you know, we say reinforcement, you know in my mind that sounds like make more frequent You know, yeah, and and really what it sounds to me what you're really trying to do is is is is deescalate But so for the purposes of safety And and maybe maybe I'm just wondering out loud here maybe one of the rubs of of this in terms of helping people Or a barrier to people understanding what this processes is the word reinforcement because it just means to make more of you know I agree but but but the thing that The thing is And this is the dilemma I face for the last 15 years Yeah, I could come up with a new term. I could change it But I feel like that would be inauthentic because here's the scoop It is reinforcing the behavior and I think we have to understand with a little more breath the concept of reinforcement for instance Anyone that like you worked in a basic laboratory And you don't have to have worked in a basic laboratory Had this will make perfect sense Reinforcement has two effects on behavior. It has the immediate or local effect and it has the long term effect The long term effect is the one emphasized in all these aBA programs the long term effect is you know The stimulus change following behavior increases the odds of the behavior in a similar situation next time You can replace that with your favorite definition, but we're saying the same thing Yes, it's future oriented with focused on Increasing probabilities of behavior through that operation that is reinforcement But we forget to teach people the immediate or local effect of reinforcement and that is it terminates behavior So when the rat hits the lever and if the dispenser finally yields the pellet They stop behaving and they consume the reinforcer and some continue to stop behaving even after consumption We have names for that depending on the schedule. Okay, but my point is reinforcement stops behavior But for instance, let's say I was decaffeinated right now that and which I am not but let's say I was decaffeinated My daughter was home and I said Gracie, will you grab me a diet coke? Will you grab me a coffee? And I and she's not listening she's not paying attention. She's 18-year-old young lady So I have to ask her multiple times She finally brings me a cup of coffee while I'm drinking the coffee would I ever say Gracie can you grab me a coffee? You think I had a stroke because Reinforcement Terminates the ongoing operant behavior now people say well, we need more research No, we do not need more research look at any functional analysis study that shows within session responding Which is pretty much every isca study published in the last five years Because that's how we show the data when you reinforce the behavior it stops It starts So what I'm trying to propagate here the idea we are propagating is this Safety matters like you said our number one value priority whatever you want to call it is safety So when that student is flipping a table or going to punch you in the face or going to punch themselves in the face What is the one thing we could do to make sure that situation is safe and the only thing I know as a behavior scientist Is to reinforce the behavior because I can show you hundreds of studies that shows that it terminates the ongoing operant response So that's why we reinforce the behavior because I need something that's going to terminate the ongoing response and every safety procedure Marriage and management procedure does not Does not immediately terminate the response it is an exemplally extended shit show and sometimes leads to escalation Through the emotional borderlands where we have no behavioral technology to help that kid except time passing till they pick themselves up so Yes, it's counterintuitive But I don't think it's anything but reinforcement reinforcement in the beautiful traditional sense we understand it It's just reinforcement is more complicated than the simplistic definitions provided in textbooks and and you know Basic masters level coursework. I mean the in the in the other the other concern that is this idea well If you reinforce that severe behavior isn't it going to increase and frequency you might stop it in the moment But then when they're in that situation next time aren't they going to do the same thing and that to me is a smart thought as well But the answer is no If This tactic is embedded within another system our system is called spt skill-based treatment now in skill-based treatment What are we doing with shaping with chaining would be in highly responsive to the learner and letting everyone all the experts tell us what's in their developmental abilities and all that So most of the time reinforcements following skills the skills of communicating tolerating relinquishing transitioning starting to do your work doing a little work a lot of work all that so when you look at our graphs You're going to see reinforcement following skills 25 times and then you might see reinforcement following a severe behavior once Then you're going to see reinforcement following skills 100 times Then you're going to see reinforcement following severe behavior once So when you look at that the relative probability of reinforcement for skills so greatly Outweighs the probably of reinforcement for severe behavior Through the simplistic understanding of the matching law involving math whatsoever No math whatsoever, but just understanding if the relative probability favors response class a greatly And you don't have a lot of reinforcement history versus response class b You can still extinguish the severe behavior despite Despite the availability of reinforcement to me. It's the coolest thing we've learned in the last decade because In essence, we can have our cake and eat too We can reinforce the severe behavior of a safety yet it doesn't strengthen and again This is as long as that tactic is embedded in a larger strategy of proper differential reinforcement with shaping and chaining so Again, it's there's a lot of counterintuitive stuff You know and when people say well, you know, I took that course that I went to see you speak for 90 minutes And I tried and it didn't work It's because this is a counterintuitive Behavior change technology that requires at least a couple days training and require supervision Because this little conversation we're having is just one of many for a counterintuitive process And anyone in a BA is more equipped to do it, but they still need to learn it, you know Because it's it's not that this unlearning they are our fundamental concepts, you know, I'm not going to run away from that But they're a maybe a different way to understand those concepts and certainly apply those concepts Meaningful change in schools starts with true buy-in from teachers and leaders But resistance is real overloaded with initiatives educators often feel unheard and overwhelmed our online course Motivational interviewing getting educator buy-in empowers you to create genuine collaboration Learn to build trust align with their values and inspire lasting commitment not just compliance ready to transform engagement and roll now at the behavioral toolbox.com I get one more I guess pushback or whatever, you know, I skeptical question of of the of the term compassionate. I suppose would be And before I get to that I appreciate the the distinction with those About the the question of reinforcement in the context of reinforcing severe problem behavior. That's a that's a helpful distinction But you know if we look back in you know medicine and perhaps other health care fields and things like that they're I think we could you know and again, I'm not I'm not an expert in these areas, but I think just you know anecdotally we can Come up with examples of the evolutions of practice Right on that that have occurred perhaps without the rebranding or the renaming of you know of You know just to take any medical specialty, you know psychiatry, you know Cardiac sure everything like that, you know, and so there's you know, you know I mean, you know, and the civil war or someone gets injured on the battlefield You know someone sticks a piece of leather and a dude's mouth gives before you know and gets or gets a belt a whiskey Here's you have bite down on this and then you know the doctor comes out with the saw and off goes the leg Whereas we have this is the stupidest example I apologize. There's probably much better ones out there Whereas today we you know there's more in terms of you know the more treatments available for for trauma in that way Payments for instance. Yeah. Yeah, or any legal sure sure, but you know, we don't you know we don't Yeah, but that the name of of that You know medical care has perhaps hasn't evolved, you know, in other words, it's just I Well, I'm really struggling to try to articulate. I'm saying here. I'm just I guess what I'm saying Why do we have to name it? Like yeah, why do we have to name it and can it not just be a BA and a BA is an evolving science and we're You know just as we have left behind other types of practices and whatnot You know if there are If through the I guess the the process of reviewing the literature that's coming in and stuff like that the field shifts in a particular way Towards these sets of practices. Well, that's what a science-based practice is supposed to do anyway, you know, so get can can can we be Sanguine if you will with the you know with calling a BA a BA Given that given that assumption. Yeah. Yeah. I'm hopeful that Within our lifetime it will just be called a BA. I'm hopeful we'll return to that. I don't want a hyphenated version however As you know there's a lot of shade Thrown towards a BA their entire countries that are legislating against a BA Okay, so let's recognize that No one was asking the medical field to stop Yeah, they still went There are many families on this earth that refuse to bring their child to an a BA program Because of the shade thrown towards a BA So do we need to distinguish a particular version of a BA again? I used to be on the fence with this But I'm not anymore. Yes, we do Yes, we do because there are still a lot of people doing traditional forms of a BA with pride And I don't think I don't think that's healthy for us I think Changes slow it'll always be slow I had 10 years to change my practice. I'm not asking people to change their practice within a two-day workshop I asked you to reflect and consider try it on the sides with one client That sort of thing and then you know when you take some success you might bring it to scale But that all said Like you I have mixed feelings about today's a BA compassionate a BA all of that No, I don't think it's a marketing thing. It's not a marketing thing by any means But it is a way to distinguish A way to do a BA Because I want to make it clear that like You can go to certain clinics that do pfa and spt and you can see that form of a BA or you can go to other clinics in the US where they're doing a BA but they outwardly reject Pfa and spt and it doesn't look At all similar They're both a BA But it doesn't look at all similar and there's some common ground But there's some things that are just so diametrically opposed that they're different And so I do believe there need to be a name and to be honest I'm really happy that it is being named because certain companies and interviews basically use the names to figure out who to hire and who not to hire And I think that's a healthy practice and then if that goes on long enough I think someday we'll be able to drop the hyphenation The other part matters this There's certain level of evidence For the outcomes associated with doing a BA this way And there's an amazing lack of evidence for doing a BA the old ways And yet the old way still persists So you understand how hard changes in this field And I believe if you don't name it it won't change it So I used to be a little reluctant about this But given the factors like the amount of Hatred it maybe is too strong a word but no, I don't think it is the amount of hatred towards a BA if you consider that If you consider how slow people are to change I think it's important that you name it In fact, I like people to pledge we have a pledge Cheesies like a Cub Scouting thing I went to Australia a few months back and one of the companies out there in Sydney Really nice company and they had people they gave them a chance to kind of sign the pledge and the reframing them and all that stuff and And and part of me was like oh this is too much right this is too much But you know because anyone else looking at that would say I look at this this culty sort of thing But at the same time The other part of me I was completely proud of it because these people were state put in the stake in and saying this is how we're going to practice going forward Because they were producing outcomes that they weren't producing the other way And so I'll end this part on this thought mat it's not I want the procedures to be beautiful. I wanted to be safe I want people to stop throwing shade towards this because I truly believe in the science of behavior and its applications To to severe behavior and in the unique problem associated with autism and a lot of people are Not embracing it because of our past and and all that you know We we need to do better in the naming I think it's part of that But you know what the real reason why I think the name's important is because it's associated with the technology That has 20 replications with socially validated outcomes From 12 different research groups and six countries and the old ABA for severe behavior doesn't have a single study With the socially validated outcome not one And so The honest I'm getting a little tired like it's not even a debate at this point We have 20 replications with socially validated outcomes the study by Jessica Sladen that just came out in Java A one to two-year follow-up with kid with very severe problem behavior that we're experiencing Crisis procedures on the regular no crisis procedure no behavior controlling man's elimination of severe behavior Completion of the AI Pee goals You can't find that with the other ABA that's what's really troubling for me Everyone wants to talk about the words. They want to talk about trauma Is it trauma informed trauma sensitive trauma assumed is a compassion not compassion with dancing around with these ideas Because it makes us feel uncomfortable that maybe we weren't being compassionate or we weren't being trauma-sumed and we weren't because we didn't know But that's not really where the issue is and it's distracting people from the real issue in the real issue is We do so much in the name of ABA that has no good evidence behind it No good evidence and we have this thing That this community of people from 11 different or 12 different research groups the six different countries have produced These beautiful outcomes we have parents presenting outcomes at conferences Using these procedures with their own children around the world And yet we have people in the bread bad the the place where ABA was born Refusing to even give it a look as they keep on doing their old procedures that have never ever yielded a socially validated outcome That's the real issue All right nothing like picking a very dramatic moment To pause and tell you about behavior university that's right there Their mission is to provide university quality instruction for the busy behavior analyst and you know last couple of times I've talked about behavior university I really recommended that you take a look at their webinars and I always mentioned they sell out And the first two webinars on their schedule are sold out But you're in luck because as of this recording The January 10th, 2025 webinar with Dr. Celia Heyman On guess what a compassionate approach to understanding and addressing interfering behaviors It lines pretty well with this topic. We're listening to right here from Dr. Hanley that is Available It's only available for now though because again these things do sell out So go to behavior university.com and click on the webinars link and sign up for you not just that But they've got a whole host of other really interesting ones One's on gerontology anxiety supervision and lots lots more they also have RPT courses supervision courses So whatever you need they probably have it so go to behavior university.com And don't forget to use the promo code podcast at checkout to save on your purchase. All right. Let's get back to this conversation Maybe we should spend the moment talking about what you mean by a socially validated outcome Well, other while listeners can fire up their email clients Missives if you will so let's talk about that. What are you being by that? You know what I really want to talk about it. Let me start and I'm with you I'll get the social validation But it really the the fundamental difference lies in that these two terms and I remember when I was an AE for Java early on I remember Teaching kind of a general psychology methods course and I came across these two terms and two different ways to talk about Evidence and I shared it with the you know the editorial group at the time and we for whatever reason it didn't go anywhere and I tried to bring it back as editor the journal myself in my own editorial comments when I was editor a Java and it still really went nowhere even under my Leadership so but these the this is the issue. I believe that we're Wrestling with right now. It's the difference between efficacy and effectiveness and These terms are used in medicine that use in psychology and we tried to get the use of Bay of analysis But we're slow to use them and if you look in any journal That does a publishes a BA work people use the terms interchangeably and mainly will use the term effective And we're using the term effective incorrectly given two ways of knowing the term That when people use again in medicine and psychology they distinguish between efficacy and effectiveness I'll talk about that But also we're not using it consistent with how Mont-Wolf asked us to use the term effective So we're using the term effective liberally Generously an out of stimulus control of two very important ways of understanding So the first one the general psychology and medical approach they distinguish efficacy and effectiveness this way efficacy means they both mean it works it being an independent variable it being a treatment it being a therapy and assessment process efficacy and effective both mean it works However efficacious means it works under highly controlled conditions in short sessions For short amount of calendar time when implemented by experts That's what it means it works now Jabba is an efficacy a journal of efficacy Our method single subject designs without any other bells and whistles are efficacy methods usually Not always but usually they're highly correlated Now effective means it works when implemented over longer term periods over longer periods of calendar time in authentic environments like schools homes clinic you know clinics that are funded outside of research grants etc When implemented by staff parents direct care workers Okay, the other thing about effective means other Farts of it works have been evaluated like cost benefit analysis like feasibility Like social validity meaning constituents Describe a whether they thought the procedures were acceptable and that's not really that the one that's that interesting to me It's more the second the third one as Montwolf and Cass didn't described and that is are the effects appreciable to you Did was the amount of behavior change satisfactory? So when I say We don't have a single study with the socially meaningful outcome to back To track to your question. We don't have a single study where someone said Were the effects meaningful to you was the size of the effect important or say it in a less traditional way Can you now teach without fear? Can you bring the child into the community? Those questions have never been asked with the beam behavior modification based treatment like an arbitrary food based punishment based DRO Nor have they been asked with the what's the single function model But I'm saying that that question has been uttered 20 in 20 different studies with over 200 participants again Across a bunch of different research groups in the answers by and large are yes the amount of behavior change was meaningful to my family To my classroom, etc So what I'm saying is the what's the function model debate be mod model it works meaning it's efficacious But that stuff isn't doomed too well in practice Because it's never been proven effective by contrast why in such a short period of time of people all over the world doing PFA and SBT well, it's because it works under real world conditions when implemented by people that don't have you know PhDs and They're getting meaningful outcomes so Again, again distracted by the term not that We need the terms I said we need to name it so I'm glad we're having that conversation But you know what conversation I really want people to have I want people to take an honest look at the evidence base for what they're doing And I want them to ask it are they seeing a beautiful little control of behavior in a nice reversal design In a highly controlled situation for five minute sessions under a calendar time of a month with Absolutely no integration and real world conditions and absolutely no questions to the parents or the teachers about whether The treatment had a meaningful impact on their life I want you to look at the evidence for what people are doing and see if you have that and if you don't You might want to look elsewhere And what I'm saying is the PFA SBT research base has a ridiculous ridiculous amount of social validation now really in my career some of the people I used to hang with didn't really care Much for social validation despite their amazing respect for Montwolf They thought it was kind of a rubbish idea They thought it was rubbish because it was subjective They thought it was kind of outside the scope of our our science And I kind of understood where they were getting at but but here's the thing that if you're not willing to ask that question once Like not once I think that's telling yeah Yes, it is subjective when a parent says yes We can move numbers around from sixes to seven depending on how we administer a social validation assessment all that But that said the score 20 to zero has to be reconciled at some point Yeah Hey real quick I just want to jump in and let you know that if you want to get these podcasts add free And you want to get them before the public feed drops go to patreon.com forward slash behavioral observations to learn how you can support the show with a patreon subscription That's it. Let's get back to the conversation with Greg I appreciate delving to that that efficacy versus effectiveness and that also was Occupied some page space in that article that we were talking about earlier So I will make sure that article is is pinned to the show notes of this episode I've already got a page of a notebooks page worth of notes right here and I'll make sure That gets typed up and put in the show notes and just as like yeah Yeah, it's you know, it's a pain in the butt and It is I have but I've you know bumped into listeners at conferences and things like that and they've they've let's just say they've reinforced that that show note taking repertoire And I'm excited man. I have to tell you this I have to tell you this I'm hustling because of this relationship with a bc. It's coming down the pike and I'm traveling a lot and I I've been in Egypt last week. I'm going to Guatemala next week. I've been to Australia I'm going to all these fun countries and it's it's pretty Amazing I get the chance to do that and when I go to these places and I say how did you learn about this? How did you know about our stuff? Why did you contact me? I would say 9 out of 10 It's because of the behavior observations podcast. It's true. I said that in your second podcast Maybe I said yeah in your second podcast I remember saying hey a lot of people know about this stuff because of your podcast Still to this day. It's the number one reason why people know about this stuff That's amazing Yeah, I just want you to know that and I and just take a pause to thank you for the chance to Allow me to to spread these ideas. I mean whether people like them or not Just thankful that you give me a chance to get the word out there and let people discover things and at their own pace But you know the journal articles and and all that it's just the pace of dissemination is just not good enough I appreciate that Greg and it's you know It's I think the timing is yeah through the course of the various shows that we've done has been fun because the Practice of what you've done is you know has evolved and I think we want to get to that and it'll shortly hear about Some of your first descriptions of the SBTPFA process and What things have stayed the same and would have changed I but I can't I can't help but to comment on a specific section of the paper we guys talk about descriptive analysis And and and you and I got into this on one of our previous shows as well and I I meant to go back and try to listen to those comments again And I honestly I forgot what show it was on and so I'll just ask you to tee it up again And it sounds like what was written in the paper is a little more strongly worded than Then then perhaps our original conversation anyway, so So what is uh So you know every every every person and you know taking ABA 101 you know or whatever they get it or what somewhere in the course sequence, you know They're they're taught how to take ABC data or and so what is For those who have no idea what what the you know about our previous Exchanges on this have been what is what is the current consensus on descriptive assessment as you guys describe it in this paper Wow and be clear there's no consensus. Yeah, I mean I yeah consensus that's the reason why we're talking about how did you guys characterize the descriptive assessments And where do you see its role if that in and what we do is behavior analyst because it's a cornerstone of of our training It's it's been around forever Yeah, one of my favorite people in the field said be you introduced it to us. Yeah and How could he be wrong one of the smartest guys ever entered our field so He's not wrong descriptive assessment is an amazing tool beautiful tool It's in the conditions of usage that we're really talking about and so let me just talk about that Don't be here Let's just talk terms first. So let's just talk terms descriptive assessment versus descriptive analysis I've written about this for like 15 years no one cares But I'm gonna say it anyway Analysis means observation with the manipulation of the environment in some way right we all agree on that one Analysis observation the environment manipulation the environment Analysis and experimentation same words but experimentation that you know is reserved certain conditions analysis more broad very good descriptive analysis to me is an oxymoron A descriptive assessment involves no analysis A descriptive assessment is observation without manipulation of the environment So I know the term descriptive analysis has been published despite Maybe in a reviewer that's other papers saying please please call it descriptive assessment That sometimes message has not been heated But I'm talking about descriptive assessments where you're merely observing behavior Often in natural environments and not necessarily could be in a session room kind of thing and you're writing down or Taping out on a keyboard at the sedans that Received the behavior and the consequences that followed and they descriptive assessments can be open or closed ended Close meaning you're gonna hit a particular key there was no attention and demand was given that sort of thing or it's open-ended more narrative base Okay What's our beef if you will with this thing descriptive assessment? It's not what the tool in general It's with the tool being used in a functional assessment process Okay, so descriptive assessment has a life Outside as any researcher is gonna use observation like an anthropologist an sociologist and a school psychologist it has utility there just observing phenomena Usually Under natural conditions you can learn things and you are usually writing down something about in our world the behavior What how they're behaving and what's going on before and after it is a way to discover in a broad sense And it has great utility in that regard But functional assessment has been around for a long time Yeah, the first person to ever do a functional analysis. I don't think most people know this But it's low boss low boss was the first person to actually do an analysis Provide a contingent event on behavior show its worsening with that event show reinforcement sensitivity Okay, with humans So it's been around let's say since the late 60s early 70s So let's do the math over 50 years So I think we're allowed to to evolve the process An ABC recording and descriptive assessments been a part of functional assessment for a long time We don't encourage it Really at all in the functional assessment process mainly because Those 20 study that most of those 20 studies that I just mentioned Didn't do any descriptive assessment in their process what they did was an open-ended interview In an analysis they put a student in the room provided reinforces non contingently then provider of octave events turned on and off Baby that's an analysis, okay, so that's not nothing descriptive about that And then the interview is not a descriptive assessment although some book chapters confuse that they put descriptive assessment as an overarching category It's not there's interviews then there's observation without manipulation descriptive assessment and then there's analyses We're saying skip the middle part interview analyze now why are we saying that well number one because it works and I'm using that in terms of effectiveness It has treatment utility demonstrated treatment utility I'm saying that because it's efficient because parents and teachers have been doing their own descriptive assessment Informally a problem behavior for years and I'm saying just trust the competence and integrity of parents and teachers Ask them the right questions they will teach you stuff and save you some time I'm saying that because abc recording Usually confuses people and is wrong And if you look at some of the DA studies that do exist they show you the disagreements between you know Different descriptive assessments descriptive assessments and analyses etc I'm not really focused on that But the point being here is just because it's prevalent in the observational environment doesn't mean it's relevant to the control of behavior No matter how much abc recording or man. I mean reams of data you have how many pie charts you make You just have prevalence This happened a lot before the behavior or this happened a lot after the behavior But just because it happened a lot doesn't mean it's a controlling variable to understand in a controlling variable you need an analysis Turn on and off the behavior with the manipulation of that variable descriptive assessment confuses us because the idea of relevance gets conflated with prevalence We like to say just because it's prevalent doesn't mean it's relevant The other reason I don't We really like is because of how much time it takes how many people have done abc recording especially if you're a master's level expensive consultant You're sitting in the classroom and you're waiting for the proverbial shit to hit the fan for your target student But you're waiting hours sometimes you'll go the whole day and you don't see the behavior And what you're probably doing is watching a whole bunch of other students misbehaving you really just want to say Hey, can we sign them up for a functional assessment as your student is acting like a great citizen So it takes all these hours away from where we could be doing something maybe more effective And you but you know why it's brought up in that compassionate paper Because to me when I see people doing abc recording especially master's level behavior analyst doing abc recording They are watching a student engage in severe behavior. They are watching a parent or teacher Engage that student with complete futility And they're simply taking data Can you imagine if someone's having a heart attack on an airplane and a medical doctor just kind of observed To observe what people were doing what was prevalent How would people try to help this pray and they just observed and took data and then get down on their knees and try to help that person That's why we talk about in the compassionate paper I think descriptive assessments Fundamentally lack compassion because we are not showing concern for the learner in the moment What we're doing is showing concern for our data sheets Showing concern for some ideal that we're going to discover some amazing unique controlling variable through our observations Which we don't have a single study showing we do in fact when most people do descriptive assessments They're closed ended they're not open ended they're closed ended So they're not discovering jack they're simply checking off boxes that we've known about for decades, okay I'm gonna give you an analogy Matt. Here's the analogy. I'd like to use some I was in a training. I say who's been to anologist people raise the hand. I saw okay What's the first thing they do they do an open-ended interview don't they they take the the amount of allergens in your Geographic region and they're trying to narrow down the possible ones that you may be negatively affected by they ask you about your symptoms You have behaviors you they ask you about controlling variables for them That's what we're saying do do the same thing then what do they do if you go to an alleges well what they do is they poke you with needles You don't know that they poke you with needles of the suspected allergens from the interview They poke you with the same allergen twice because they're scientists They know that replication is a key to believe ability They do a control poke with saline because they're doing a test control analysis on your body That will we as that's what we're suggesting doing don't test everything don't be generic about it Personalize it test it in a controlled analysis. You know what the alleges doesn't do The alleges doesn't get in their car drive home with a clipboard a laptop follow you around your neighborhood And when you sneeze look around for the correlates Now that seems absurd right? That's that's funny to even think about I like to say medical doctors have Professional self-respect and that's something I'd like behavior analysts to develop who are out there driving cars around A neighborhoods and following kids around with ABC charts thinking they're gonna discover something Again, Matt show me one study put this on the podcast Maybe someone will send you me an email show me one study where the starting point was a descriptive assessment And the end point was a socially validated treatment outcome based on the results of that descriptive assessment and and I bet you No one will email me that study now. I'm not keeping up like I used to but I'm pretty sure that study doesn't exist It'll never exist because the process of ABC recording as discovering controlling variables is broken It all it doesn't set you up It doesn't you know what you need Matt to treat severe behavior You need a relationship with the learner which you are not getting when you're sitting back watching What you need is a context to provide therapy which we'll call skill-based treatment descriptive assessment not giving you that contact You're simply sitting in the wild of the classroom while the ship goes on that's not it You need a therapeutic context that's what the analysis gives you we got to control things. We got to do things. Okay, so I like the people I work with to be doers show respect and To the families and teachers ask them questions. They know stuff That's how you get buying you started a relationship where you start asking questions not pouring yourself into somebody And then the second part is you emulate what they tell you in the analysis and you don't need to do the DA now that's it So I hope I made it clear why we think descriptive assessments lack compassion. Okay, I tried to do that point home Again, I'm not trying to make people feel bad don't don't blow up your systems if you scheduled Some but listener to go to a school tomorrow to do ABC recording go do your job do your job All I'm saying is try on for size This process that has no descriptive assessment in the functional assessment try it on for size with one student And see see if you can be as or perhaps more effective having not done that Okay, yeah So one of the things that Was on the agenda to talk about is you know, we talked a lot about things that you know people should rethink How they are reframe how they see these These historical strategies if you will we're even I shouldn't say historical because they're they're quite current Yeah, regardless of what current and not We'll regardless what people might think of them But you also want to spend some time talking about you know what you call green flags, you know What what are some of the things that That we've gotten right things that have been You know added considerable value to the people we serve to the science and so forth So I want to give the opportunity to perhaps riff on that for a bit. Yeah, well I mean in a b a in general Is that what we're talking about? Yeah, I mean, I think you called them gifts or or I Oh, but I see what to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I often call I often say it because sometimes I feel like I'm a little negative Like that whole thing on d a is a negative because I am trying to say hey Let's stop doing that You know, I mean so it's that's pretty negative like stop terminate, you know But that said No, I think the fields given amazing gifts to me and everyone else. I'll tell you the the best gift I was ever given was this idea of function I hope people don't miss that when we're talking about all these acronyms and compassion and trauma soon and pfa spt We don't forget the fact that some people came out of the behavior mod would work And they said hey, I have an idea That behavior no matter how extraordinary Can be learned on ordinary conditions and conserve a purpose or a function for the learner and maybe you should figure out that function Before you ever attempt to change behavior. That's the idea behind the whole functional assessment process And who gave us that idea who gifted us that idea that's getting weaker every year I asked that questions people in trainings and most people don't know So let's talk about who gave us that idea Ted Carr gave us that idea he wrote a paper 1977 about the motivations by himself and juries behavior He's the one that really took us from moving away from talking about ego and id when he came to severe behavior And started talking about the controlling variables that were right under our nose and Brian a wada obviously was Spired by that conceptual piece and he actually did the hard work of putting a methodology Behind the ideas and Ted Carr was building a methodology behind the ideas too His just fell out of favor a little bit and Brian a wada's fell in more favor because it was more efficacious And that's not presumably comparative studies there a few of them in the 90s early 2000s that kind of demonstrate that The Ted Carr model didn't talk a lot about consequences In fact Ted Carr for all his brilliance one my favorite People in our field that I never directly worked with he wrote one multiple occasions that to provide Reinforcement or severe problem behavior would be unethical Say it again. He wrote in multiple places To provide reinforcement for severe behavior would be unethical so he favored these antecedent analyses It's ironic because we now know that the safest thing you can do for severe behavior is to reinforce it That's how much we've come along. Okay, so please understand by these ideas are so a counterintuitive I guess But back to the gift the gift is Ted Carr Brian a wada and yes low boss early on All of them and many many more gifted us with this idea that you don't just lip around Reinforcers and punishers to change behavior just because you can control behavior Doesn't mean you necessarily should that we should start with understanding first. I mean that idea is brilliant It's still brilliant. It's still a big idea I a lot of places we go people don't know that idea They still want to talk about they still want to go private they want to go deep They want to go into diagnostics and brain juices and and and all that and this idea is so powerful So I always like to remind people of that gift if we should never put that back now I know I'm supposed to be in the positive part you can talk about the gifts But let's just talk about you know, there's still some limits to that gift in the limit to the biggest mistake We made I think in the field the biggest mistake we made the biggest gift is function The biggest mistake is thinking that extraordinary behavior Was happening for a single function. I think that's the biggest mistake we made since moving over to functional assessment This idea was really transported from the basic lab It made sense you don't mean there was single response Reinforcer relations and all our basic research at the time It made sense to kind of come up with a diagnostic classification system That was a little bit more function-based It all made sense at the time But we now know that that has led us down a path that's really hard to get out of It's hard to get people to shake the idea single function Not no single function study is ever yielded a socially validated outcome But people are still spouting off about it at every conference I go to Every poster session every time someone gets a microphone and they deal with severe behavior They're still talking about single functions again despite not a single study showing effectiveness of the process And it's also again committed us to this I like to call these days this pathological avoidance of reinforcing problem behavior because when you have a single function It's binary you can either Provide reinforcement or not. Yes, that's all you got And so when you embrace single function you're also breaks Bracing a system where you're going to be relying on extinction And all the phenomena associated with it that isn't too pleasant often And so I think those are our greatest gift is the idea The procedures have really we made mistakes and and what we're talking about now is not a revolution Not revolutionary. It's just an evolution just like you mentioned earlier in the podcast is just a natural evolution Towards a way of doing the business of figuring out the controlling variables for problem behavior Which is the essence of being a behavior analyst the essence is not function Okay, the essence is Understanding the variables controlling behavior And once you loosen it up like that. It's kind of a it's a bit of an easier Transition I guess the other gifts for me are shaping a task analysis of skills shaping chaining differential reinforcement those are the tried and true things that our toolbox and And every couple years I realized that that people I work with are so much better at chaining and shaping than we ever used to be And we know we always knew that we were shapers, right? We always knew that that was Where we should be But if you look at Java and similar journals there aren't shaping articles and people still love the call in an art And that's a little bit of a problem So again, I'm talking about the gift and the gift is Task analysis breaking down complex rep twars into components, you know composite skills into components And then using Differentia reinforcement to shape approximations and not forgetting that chaining that a law and it's not shaping It's just adding on a new link in the behavior chain But the problem again to keep it all balanced the problem is we don't have studies on shaping and my colleague Kara LeCroy is poised to publish a paper view paper on Shaping and I'll tell you how many studies there are in the applied work on shaping there's like two There's a lot of studies that use the term but there's always things added that make it not shaping usually the culprit is prompting But true shaping is not something we have in our research base Okay, we have more of these package teaching interventions. So What I'm the reason why I'm talking about this is I'm realizing now that the other gift was this idea of chaining and shaping and we haven't really We haven't really taken that gift and used it in the powerful way that we can until recently And again, I'm seeing people You shaping and chaining in ways that are just Magnificent and I've never seen anything like it in the past and and I think part of it is because these kids are very motivated because these folks are relying on synthesized reinforcement So when you have proper motivation shaping is obviously easier because you're getting a lot more behavior throwing at you to Differentiate with with the contingency So that again in retrospect the gifts are function But procedurally we we had a funny spot the gift is Task analysis shaping and chaining but we never realized the power those gifts and so I'm really in a strange way Kind of stoked about the future. I'm stoked to see young BCBAs kind of lap me in my skill set because they are gonna go in With the technology that is just way more powerful and we've been talking about it for 40 50 years But I believe it's here now where people can actually use an under real world conditions and get those beautiful outcomes I don't know if you remember man. I know you're a historian of the field as much as anybody more so But there's that amazing article and psychology today 1972 I think it's called shapers at work and there's a bunch of thumbnail pictures of about 60 behavior analysts at the time and the article is dripping with hope and it describes each person's kind of field of application And there's people working everywhere sports business disability education And there's man and there's woman in this diversity too Largely white male, but not exclusively by any means There's diversity there's hope This variety of application and the article ends in your light This is amazing. These people gonna change the world 52 years later There you go And we're like where's my flying car That's that's what I'm saying. Where's our ABA flying car? But what I'm saying now what I'm saying is that hope Did I remember kind of getting from that article and then the little depression that followed when I realized we were And in close to realizing the you know the the expectations set forth in that article. I feel that now I do and a lot of people like to lament That young people entering our field because like they're coming from only four programs and they're online and And this and that and those challenges are real You know, we have a lot of young people in the field and experience matters and they got to catch up and get some years under They've built and all that But that said I'm way more hopeful for an ABA future because I do believe the technology and the values are all aligned right now for people to do Amazing things and get amazing outcomes because I see it every time I get on a plane in go places I see these outcomes and I'm blown away by them and I I can't say I was blown away by outcomes when I went the conferences for the first X-men years of my career. I was blown away by the functional control I was blown away by the science I was blown away by the ideas, but I was never blown away by the outcome You know what I mean? I never sat back. It said holy smokes look how they solved that S.I.B. aggression or prop or destruction I was blown away by outcomes about potty training and sleep and you know stuff like that But I was never blown away by outcomes of severe behavior because all we did was kind of Kick around the problem re-describe it, you know back it up at another assessment But we weren't focused on beautiful outcomes and I see beautiful outcomes Just so regularly right now. So I think the future's break. What I'm saying Well, that's it. You mentioned self-in-gear's behavior. So that's a good segue to talk about some of the year Thoughts on head directed S.I.B. That you wanted to get into so Please by all means laid on us what it what what what what what was on your mind when you brought this up and what your Current thoughts on it. Yeah You know, I have to get we're gonna put out a CU course on this so I I don't want to go too far into it Because I'm afraid I might lose some people who are uninterested maybe and hit this head directed S.I.B. Topic But I'll I'll try to give you the this quick version map If you asked me three or four years ago You got a student S.I.B. occurs across all condition It appears to be automatically maintained or what other people might say maintain directly by the century products of the self-in-gear's behavior And you use pfa and sbt with that learner and I would have said no I said don't bother If this process does not apply if the suspicion is Automatically reinforced behavior and how do you get that suspicion? Well people tell you it occurs across all conditions People like me used to run traditional and functional analyses. It would persist in the alone condition So it's no stimulus change following the behavior, but yet it would persist or persist in what we used to call the ignore condition It would also be elevated in all conditions and it would just be high invariable So again, I'm not talking about behavior where you there's differences when you give them toys Okay, competing items That's not what I'm talking about that's that's easy to treat that's not intractable head directed S.I.B That's just head directed S.I.B Okay, I'm not talking about kids. It's low in the attention condition because reprimand's work is punishment If reprimand if a reprimand would work as a punishment of the behavior It's not the kind I'm talking about I'm talking about the kind of behavior that persisted across all conditions And it was just really we never could handle on it, okay? And that was the kind of behavior that was my favorite early in the field when I got a chance to move from group homes to real hospital Clinical work those were the kind of kids I like to work with the most and I did work with the most and I learned a lot And we published, you know papers on restraints and restraint fading and you know, it's very privileged to be part of those projects and whatnot However, here's the scoop we can help those kids now With PFA and SBT and it's kind of an accident How we arrived there and some deliberate scholarship over the last two years So let's talk about the concept of automatic reinforcement really quick because people I don't want people to get the wrong idea So let me give you the thesis if you will Automatic reinforcement. I don't think we should ever say not ever. I don't think that's a controlling variable for S.I.B With any kid I've met in the last three or four years. I'll say one more time automatic reinforcement is not a useful concept For unexplaining describing why behavior persists S.I.B. persists for kids now. Let me back up. Do I think automatic reinforcement is a great concept? Yeah, I think it's an amazing concept Skinner talked about it. Why do we have all this behavior when no one prays? They'll give us a cookie Well, there's some automatic consequences to when you behave in the environment when you hit a mobile when you open a door It's a great concept. It explains why we have a lot of behavior without a lot of coaching teaching and training. I love it A Brian a water by the way was the first person to ever utter the word automatic reinforcement in an applied article The funny thing is he didn't talk about it with severe behavior He talked about with preventative dentistry It was part of an article where they incentivized people to floss and brush better And when they got good dental scores no plaque they received a reduction in the dental bill And in the discussion He talked about how you won't need to use the incentives for long because the automatic reinforcement associate with flossing should Maintain that behavior over time and you won't need to use the fever reduction So he was the first person to mention it very cool And if you floss you know what he's talking about the flick on the mirror will For sit you know help you floss more. Okay, very good He did not talk about it when it came to severe behavior Ted Carr talked about initially and in that article I mentioned earlier talked about the century products of the baby being one possibility why it might persist a bunch of other people wrote articles About it with s.i.b I found those intriguing We used it when I worked with Kathleen Piazza We used it to understand why kids would engage in cigarette pica Why they've engaged in saliva play dangerous climbing behavior and the construct why someone engages in certain forms of Stereotope that are very intractable We've used fit to help with those problems in the past so the concept has great utility to mean automatic reinforcement However, when it comes to head directed s i b. I think it's a big problem I think it's a problem because first When we utter it we really mean we have no control over behavior But instead of saying it's undifferentiated or instead of being humbling saying we don't know why but let's keep looking We say automatic in the search stops. That's a problem Because again, I grew up doing this up in the early 90s. I remember the pivot. I'm so confused by it One year we published the same graph. We'd say undifferentiated two years later. We said automatic It just kind of picked up like wildfire Again, the back story to automatic reinforcement the one that holds the most is really articulate well by Travis Thompson And but others are particularly same thing and the idea is that these phosphoblose release a compensatory response to the pain which is the release of endogenous opioids And so that's what's maintained the behavior this release of the digested opioids that make sense. It's coherent But again when someone punches their face and I've watched sadly many many many hours and hours of videos or live seeing kids hit I've never seen anyone sit back with this relief Like they just got high like they just took a hit. I know what that looks like too It doesn't look like that when kids hit themselves. They're anguish They experience pain their public accompaniment on not that of pleasure or relief Okay, so that's another red flag the other bit is when we say automatic reinforcement. There's no function-based treatment I go around the world and I see these kids in arms flints like the one I took a picture of in 1995 And these kids are just in splints that's their life in a helmet Being restrained or you know, they're not function-based treatments. They're just safety management tactics And the kids still on a 10-second edible DRO There is no function-based treatment for automatic reinforcement of self-injury. That's another problem There's also studies where people have taken cerebral spinal fluid samples to see if there's a difference in opioids Following before during an after self-injury danger studies never showed anything There's a whole bunch of studies on neltrexone and no-electricity I've seen I've seen neltrexone work at at at once or twice But it's the signal off it or not There you go. Yeah, the signal the literature is not strong quite Mixed is being generous and any families. I talked to the kids were on it They're short term effects and you'd expect to see a little extinction and then come down that effect isn't shown either And so it's probably more of a sedative Effect for some of these kids, but nevertheless No one is publishing socially validated outcome with neltrexone and Let's put that way. Let's just make that our line in the sand. Okay And so here's our new thoughts first is Stop saying automatic reinforcement. I truly believe with scrolling kids when we say automatic reinforcement Sorry for all the people they just published book chapters and have Our talks lined up for the May conference with automatic reinforcement of s.i.b But I'm just telling you I believe it's one of our it's our third mistake I believe it's our third mistake and we'll maybe realize that 10 years from now I realized it recently and Here's the idea Matt these kids are doing the behavior this head directed s.i.b To get out you're gonna Remet you've heard this before to get out of shit They don't want to do to do the shit they want to do with people they give a shit about they're doing it for the same reasons Other kids engage in problem behavior But there's two other things to consider in addition to the traditional synthesized contingency number one avoidance and number two ticks So when I say avoidance I mostly your audience probably knows the difference between escape and avoidance but Beers probably should describe it Escape means some notchus aversive whatever event is presented do math, you know stand up walk over here Do this put down the the stimitoi do your work something's presented Self-injury happens it terminates that thing it strengthens the behavior through the termination of the present aversive by contrast of avoidance There's no nothing presented that's aversive. It's more postponement of the aversive interaction And you know we can get into the details of two factor avoidance and single factor and Sidmin and all that and if you're into that I wanted to alert your readers to an article by fron's van haran Look for fron's van haran's article on self-injury's behavior and avoidance. He's really the first person who articulated this When I say first person first person to bring the idea back Please know that the original functional analysis talked about avoidance Avoidance was something talked about early on in the early 80s But for some reason it fell out of favor again So everything kind of has been here. It just some things fall out of favor So what we're noticing with some of these kids is their s i b is again Escape to stuff and attention all that traditional stuff, but it's also avoidant And when it's a voydent man, it's hard to treat and when it's a voydent It masquerades as automatic reinforcement because people are doing oh here we go They're doing a bc recording They're watching the kid. There's no change in the antecedent There's no change in the consequence and yet the behavior persists And so what do people say when they see that They say oh it must be maintained directly by the century products It makes sense But I think we're wrong for a lot of these kids. They're what they are they're masters of avoidance We now it's a lack of a better term that We can profile kids we can profile them through our process and through what we see in the analysis So I'll tell you what I mean by that avoidance kids when we say hey, what's the probability when you provide all their reinforces What's the probability you're going to get zero s i b? They'll be like no never you'll never get zero s i b now when someone just says regular old s i b They'll say yeah if you give them all this stuff don't have them do their work give them attention all that yellow be zero That that's telling me not ticks not avoidance But when they say no, we'll never get zero you can't get zero now it I'm alerted to it's either void And so ticks of both so the avoidance profile kids no one believes in get zero the second thing is These kids tend to love to hide They like to have blankets on their head if I find them in public schools. They're in a tent They're under their blankets. They're the ones with hoodies on with the hat on with a jacket over their head They tend to be small they send a sit like in the w position They're never big. They never make great eye contact They don't run around the room being silly and socializing. They're small They're located in these preferred locations the bean bag chair the swing the corner of the classroom They're small They don't make a lot of eye contact They don't do a lot and they have this kind of rhythmic Pushing out of the behavior that's often a similar form and they're kind of saying like I'm a bad dude Don't f with me don't take my stuff don't ask me to do stuff It's like these kids ascending messages. Yeah, the symbol wheel message I'm a bad dude. Don't f with me. That's the message of s i b But again, you didn't do anything bad, but they're still going because they just send it out reminders This is again a casual way to talk about it So what do we do with these kids? Well, it's very counterintuitive and it's not easy to treat. I'll tell you the first thing When we do the analysis the typical rule of analysis is do not put an evocative event until you get four minutes of zero Zero problem behavior and they're happy relax and engage. That's how we get people safe That's the typical rule of analysis. This performance based analyses. We teach people Well with avoidance kids. It's not that at all 20 minutes and you're still seeing the behavior you have to put the EO in because you have to convert it From an avoidance behavior to an escape behavior You have to teach them to stop wasting behavior. You have to teach them that their behavior has power Okay, so it despite them tricking out s i trickling out s i b's You put that EO in anyway. You give the signal of doom You get close soon as they have any problem behavior that you know might be in the repertoire you reinforce fast Then 30 seconds later you put that EO back in you see that behavior you reinforce it fast What I show people in trainings is we convert avoidance behavior to escape behavior where you can usually do within 30 minutes It's all takes And then you have no more behavior trickling out during reinforcement all of a sudden that idea that it's automatic now you realize how bullshit that was That it's not automatic at all when you have no behavior happening in reinforcement It happens when and only when the EO is put in place and it turns off immediately Bowling reinforcement So again the trick is to first profile the kid and there's some indicators of avoidance Then it's about changing the rules and engagement in the analysis that sound a bit risky and they are So you can empower the kid and then the next part of the process is It's time consuming, but you have to have people hang around these kids within its closest you can get without triggering the avoidance S.I.B. And you have to hang out and not not do anything terrible From their perspective Don't give a demand don't take anything away. Don't redirect just be totally available until the kids come out What they'll do is they'll come out from under their blankets and they'll engage in social bids again None of these kids want to be alone No one wants to be alone. They just want you to cut the shit Stop doing things then I'm good at come to with what have you and so we have some people spend hours and it's not pairing It's not that pairing is too talkative too controlling. It's not that it's Being available to receive the social bid and not preventing any evocative events that you learned about through the interview process Then after that you can't prompt these kids That's the other mistake you can't prompt kids with this avoidance history You'll get the avoidance behavior popping back up. So what you got to do is model everything there is no prompting with these kids So they're going to teach a communication response You'll model it you show them you present the EO you emit the button press my way You reinforce then I do in anything they're just watching you from under their blanket You have to do that like 50 70 times and then Then you might see them press the button as you progress the challenge a little deeper You really get it under evocative control you get the manned under evocative control Which now makes it a manned but you didn't do with prompting because prompting is not going to help with these kids Then the rest of it's just spt But you understand what I just described is not typical. It's counterintuitive And it is not even consistent with the way we do pfspt for most kids So that's why we need to know where their avoidance is part of the game We show studying we show several cases in our trainings now which they're not research studies But if you see the videos and you see the social validation by the parents we got these people in Our eliminating s.i.b. Completely with these kids that they used to you know Went to fancy hospitals and have the diagnosis of automatic reenforcing and we find them Again all hiding in a corner with muscle atrophy because they don't move their bodies We had some kids wheeled into the clinic because they don't walk And then next thing you know, you know they're big and moving the branches we work on with these kids are always get big To teach them to get big not might be just walking Stretching to get something off a shelf get big because this whole notion We always find them small and tight and just avoiding everything in life They tend to be highly anxious. They tend to be low motor low tone. That's all part of the profile Okay, moving on ticks We don't ticks an s.a. B. A correlate we know that since the 60s But again, we've losing threads sometimes some ss. I b with convinced right now and convinced despite lack of direct evidence As convinced people are of automatic reinforcement. So some people say well, how do you know? I say well, I know just as much as I used to know when I said automatic reinforcement But actually I know more because it works You know what I mean? But that said you know treatment utility the truth kind of lies there sometimes for some of us Anyways, these kids with ticks Their profile is very different Kids with avoidance they don't want to be in the protective equipment They certainly don't want you to hold them or be near them by contrast ticks Kids who the behavior seems to be an uncontrollable involuntary motor act kind of like a stutter or motor tick They tend to like their protective equipment if they have equipment. They'll put their head in it They'll put their armor if you try to take off their equipment and they can speak they'll say no put it back on Okay, they're the kind of kids that want to be held they're the kind of kids that want staff to Hold them hug them hard sit next to them. They're the kind of kids itself restrained We've known about self-restraint s. I b for so long but never really understood it Wildly confused by the relationships, okay, but these kids with tick-like s. I b are basically saying I can't help it. I don't want to punch myself help me And so they want to wear the baggy sweatshirts to self-restraining They want staff to hold them. They want to be in restraint So the first part of the process is figuring out the restraint condition that yields zero tick-like s. I b That they prefer So I mean for some one of the kids in the videos It was almost like an underwear pants assessment He'd like to stick his hands in his pants down through his shorts and then he had those white hospital posey mitts on If the pants were to lose his hand would come out and he'd slap if the pants were too tight He couldn't get his hand in comfortably he'd slap if he had the right protective equipment We got the zero these kids tend to be big they're social never run around the room. I contact all that as soon as their equipment Isn't proper or the hole doesn't proper they s. I b With these kids you often have to keep that equipment in place of the hard part with these kids is all branches all SBT communicating everything has to be done while they're restrained So these are kids where we have them press augmentative device with their toll Their talent response is an elbow touch because their hands are restrained Okay, you can't make these kids come out of restraint During the teaching because they have ticks they can't control the s. I b and when you're teaching them You're stressing them we know ticks occur when kids are anxious frustrated or passively engaged And so what we do with these kids is it's an accident that it works. We try to get them HRE That's the whole point Ticks at least likely when kids are happy relax and engage it's most likely when they're anxious and passively engaged So we spend a lot of time in reinforcement We spend a lot of time finding conditions of protective equipment We never ask them to leave the hold or protective equipment During the EO we kind of go with their Restraint flow and then in reinforcement we wait until they release themselves from their holds and protective equipment And they do Once you teach them that this is a very comfortable non-threatening environment They will come out of their restraint to play or to eat or to engage And once they start doing that now we can start teaching outside of equipment Okay That's a lot Yeah I have so many questions, but I think one of the things that you've successfully done is Really generate a lot of interest in the upcoming course So when that does come out let me know and I'll be sure to Point people in the right direction because there's so many I've got a gazillion questions And I think I'll probably just put a put a put a pen in it for the time being We've been talking for a while. I think that's the right move But you're right Matt. I really want to convey to people this in case it gets lost in the details I want to convey the hope that we don't need s i b. We can't treat anymore With the maybe less nine s i b associate less nine super hard still For all of us, but I'm talking maybe outside that one particular genetic condition And I'm including the other congettic conditions like can you leave it lying and PWS and all that I'm saying we can Treat s i b that we used to say is automatically reinforced and the path the freedom Is first not saying automatic reinforcement to allow you to look for the controlling variables and to discern But to discriminate between tick-like behavior and avoidant-like behavior and then you have to change the way you do your your Process a bit. I just want to give people hope and I don't usually say hey you should come to f t f for consultation We're busy and we're here if you need us, but I will tell you this If you're out there and you're measuring s i b on a daily basis You should come get some consultation to fix that problem. Kid should not be under the routine care of a b c b a Wacken and hurting themselves Regularly we just don't need to do that anymore. We can get zero with these kids We can get skills developed and then we can you know hold them to the highest expectations and still not trigger the behavior And it takes work and it's not a short amount of time But nevertheless, it's totally possible and that's really one. I want to convey to people that hope One last post script on this s i b Segment is that there's a There's an old timer. I if you're listening. I hope you don't mind me Tacting that you in that way. I won't share his name, but as a guy who's been listening to his podcast for years and years and years and every like once a year I want every few months. He'll he'll send me like a Like an eight paragraph email, you know, and he'll just like break down an episode and stuff like that It's awesome. I love it and you know great great guy And and his been in behavior analysis, you know, both Probably before I was born I just turned 50 so just give you some perspective. You know, so anyway He wants wrote me and I think it might have been after one of your episodes and he talked about the concept of automatic reinforcement and he shared some e a b literature from the e a b world of of you know organisms responding on like obnoxiously lean schedules of reinforcement and that was his Preferred take on the so-called automatic reinforcement Considering a junk to behavior. I assume something like that. Yeah, yeah, and you know, he was you know behavior between reinforcements as they get template extended. Yeah It was interesting analysis. So I just I want to mention that really quickly as a you know something else to throw in the mix so I I don't I can't say I see that because I'm not Looking for it and I'm not saying it's not there, but I'll tell you I like that idea better than automatic reinforcement Yeah, I'm in our control and it's it's learned and and that's really our sweet spot, you know Good deal. So I think there's one last thing I'd like to get to I we've been going way long if you have a few minutes I'd like to ask you I and maybe throughout the conversation you've already hit on these already but you know it's been gosh, it's been I think nine years since I think I first talked to you about Iskas and you know skills-based treatment things like that. So it's been a while and yet and or you know earlier on in this conversation you said that the process evolved even in the last couple years. So what are some What are some what are some of the big picture things that that you have changed As a result of the outcomes that you're seeing as as a result of the research you and your your colleagues and your extended colleagues that you You know all over the place are doing yeah, so if you can just give us a you know Maybe a couple of quick points about how this process evolved over time. Thanks. That's a great. That's a great ending thing I'll tell you the thing I'm most excited about right now and it's the biggest change is people of seeing this As an integrative model early on I play I did the same thing. Oh should you do EFL or SBT peak or SBT Aim or SBT actor SBT you go you know the Cobbess model or SBT precision teaching or SBT Now people fully recognize and embrace this idea That this is a process or a format to then connect your preferred assessment and curricula to I guess one of my recent favorites is the early start Denver model And I didn't know much about it early in my career But it's it's a you know pretty useful assessment treatment process for young kids on the spectrum and What places like soar for instance on Colorado they're very expert in ESD. I'm well. They're also expert in SBT And what they do is you know if the child has any Probably a severe behavior. They put them in SBT But the branches as we call them as they get to the table of high expectations all their branches are ESD and branches I'm working mark Dixon and I are collaborating on a really great project out with the Department of Ed and Hawaii So hopefully we're going to be maturing this into a very large randomized control trial Wow, that's exciting. Yeah, very exciting and the kids in the treatment group get SBT plus peak or aim depending on their needs and developmental abilities And the control group kids get a BA as usual and then if One's more effective than the other that group will get the alternative which Zoom will be SBT and peak and aim in the following year So the point being that I'm getting to work with all these experts in other areas as we integrate SBT into the other curriculum. We no longer think of it as an or it's just the questions of what's the scope and sequence When do we combine it? Where do we put in the act? Do we put it into the beginning? Is it a branch? And so this whole notion of integration is just super exciting and really to give me kind of a breath of fresh air doing SBT Kazam in the in the humble seat learning how to do these other ways of ABA So I think that's the the thing I'm most excited about and I think in the upcoming years That's going to be where the exciting research is is the scope and sequence of combining SBT with other ways of doing ABA On a more micro level that's kind of a macro thing on a more micro Level I'll tell you just a couple tactics that are so sweet when I see people using them. It's just it's so good And it's this idea of You know when you're doing this chaining and you're out in the middle of the chain Let's say the listeners that know cab three that means they're finally at the table starting to do their work Meaning they've learned to communicate tolerate and relinquish transition and now they started to do their work So that's like five chain links in the chain And what people we talk people to do and they're doing it better than we've ever even taught it is If they're going to reinforce an early member of the chain other words something that's been mastered They never reinforce immediately. They only reinforce the terminal link and the chain immediately because that's the one that has not been at strength yet But let's say they're intimately reinforcing early members of the chain Which is an integral part of the process in the child communicates and the data sheet says reinforce communication You'll never see someone the kid hits the button. That says my way. You're never going to see them say of course You're going to be away what you'll see instead by people really expert is they put in the delay Kids as my way and there's nothing there's no stimulus change and what are those kids do Because we gave them a history of immediate reinforcement what those kids do is they look up and they check in And they give a beautiful check-in response maybe with it with icon We don't care, but they're basically looking towards the lit listener for information And then that person has two choices. They can either say sure you can have your way or not right now And they move on to the next link in the chain And we just see in these like amazing interactions between the implementer in the student without any direct instruction of Social initiation eye contact orientation any of that so this idea To really use micro delay following previously learned members of the chain and immediate reinforcement the last member of the chain experts doing this process when they show that on video It is just a beautiful set of interactions So that is a little tactic that we're really going hard teaching people and I love it another one is Not is framing reinforcement as a choice even when kids cannot yet speak And that's at the same part of the process So they're at the table finally and you know, they do one or two things and you're ready to reinforce We just don't reinforce we don't say oh, thanks for you know matching or drawing or speaking you can have your way It's You know a nice triangle do you want to draw more shapes or do you want to go to your way? constantly putting in choice whether it's with hand gestures or with language Because what kids are teaching us now is as they're in the chaining process a lot of the time they elect to stay at the table They in other words the branches that used to be so evocative for problem behavior they're no longer And you can't know that unless you give that kid the choice so they can teach you the relative value of You know the synthesizer reinforcement condition versus being taught and it's a beautiful thing when kids choose to be taught by people And that's what I'm seeing when people are watching the stories when I when I go on the road and people showing their cases And people see that it's it's a really beautiful moment And so we're really encouraging people put that choice in so they can teach you Teach you what's important to them at the time and in a surprise you what they're teaching you So that little tactic I found very exciting So you can see there's like these macro things this integration is super exciting But also just this these little teaching tactics that are beckoning more refined and they're not new man, right? They're shaping delay Chaining it's just different. It's just crafty differential reinforcement But people are getting a lot of bang for their buck when they're doing this process in that kind of expert way actually that's uh, it's all very exciting stuff and getting back to that that checking in process You were talking about earlier one of the questions I stick it at asking is what you know what might be some experimental questions for folks In grad school or just in general who are interested in this process and I that that alone sounds like a fertile area You know in terms of you know measuring things like join attention and what not or the development this does sounds like a lot of Lot of cool stuff there. So you asked me. Yeah, sorry. I want to do one more thing. Yeah, yeah Going on time. No, no, I'm yeah, I'm here for you. So you you said you know, we should talk about future research You got young listeners and they may be there's a PhD programs and so I'm so glad you brought that out because you You you are right on you know, we need to do research on is exactly what you said all this social development stop one of the core features of autism People I would love to consider doing research with pfa and spt and do those proper measures a lot of it is just doing the process But measuring more widely we need to just expand on measures because there's a lot of indirect effects of all sorts of good ABA including spt and they're just left on the cutting room floor if you will they edited out by our decisions of what to measure And I really do think what people will embrace ABA when they kind of see those indirect games and we're seeing a lot of indirect gains Other ally professionals sometimes their biggest gains are all indirect and they'll admit that It's not put the targeting. It's all the indirects they're getting and some SLPs and autes will measure those things And I read some articles and I believe some people do a better job measuring those beautiful indirect effects and So I think that's a fertile area for research I think we have to do some rcts of this stuff. So I'm glad I you know hook it up with Mark Dixon because he's Very good at that among other things But I encourage people to kind of expand our methodology We're still using single-subtique design, but we're also complementing it with designs that that speak to other audiences So we've been saying that for a long time as a field, but I'm just reiterating that I'll tell you though Matt went I'm not as excited about research as I used to be it's you gonna imagine I get more excited going out there doing training and and seeing these socially validated outcomes and But I want to see it captured and so I'll a couple things in that regard I'm really appreciative of the people that are working hard to do research Josh jessel Close colleague of mine, but He's just doing his thing and he's doing a lot of research and so I really appreciate people who are sticking to it And doing that research and he's one of them. So if you haven't looked at his research lately I encourage you to do that But I'll tell you when I go to conferences, Matt And this is why I'm gonna sound a little negative and I don't want to end on this or I hope you have a good joke To end this one But I'll tell you I go to these con I go to conferences and I still love it when I go to a regional conference I always stay as a listener. I go to talks from morning till night I don't just go to speak I listen And sometimes I'm hearing some stuff that I'm really impressed with and that's always fun But I tell you the more data in the talk Sometimes a lesson pressed I'm getting And I'm seeing people do all these studies where they're like correlating let's say I don't know sleep problem with S.I.B And I see the graph and I can do math from a graph and seeing enough graphs and I'm looking at the math and I'm seeing a kid hit himself Maybe 1200 times So we can correlate that he sleeps less on days where he has let S.I.B. Oh vice versa He has let S.I.B. on the days following last sleep Well, those correlations have been known since the 80s And I'm not sure people in our field need to get back into that And I just asked people that when they're doing research they ask this question Is it worth it? Is it worth just sitting back and correlating? Is it worth just counting the behavior? Or maybe we need to step up and get zero And so that's the thing Matt that that's why I'm struggling with research and our methodology because our research requires baselines You know, that's a baseline methodology and a baseline means an elevated rate of severe behavior If like me you work with people with severe behavior and I just won't do that anymore I can't do that anymore and when I see people having rates of behavior Repeatedly on a graph. I have a hard time with it I'm respectful and if they young the younger they are the less I'll say something to them and I apologize for The people my age or older the field, but I say something then And it's really I think we have to stop playing around with problems and stop finding it acceptable to let kids engage in severe behavior To satisfy our curiosities when we know how to get zero And it doesn't mean we can't do research It just means we have to get better at doing research like what's your control condition? You know what I mean? It's like it's about figuring out methodologically. How can we be humanistic and scientific And I'll be honest. I don't see both of those in a lot of research in a B.A. right now And I don't know what to do about it. I tried Had a time and instead I just kind of ran and so I'm doing something else. I don't do as much research, but I just want to put that out there for people to really think about especially the young people in the field when you're doing research Are you just graph in severe behavior? And I think you might be uncomfortable with that study 10 years from now So you might want to come up with a different way to ask the question that protects the dignity and safety of those clients Well, let me that may you know, so so what would you what would your suggestion be to demonstrate The before and after you know, how do you get the before and after picture? You know, that's the I mean because I you know, I you know when I am doing school consultation and I'm most of the behaviors that I'm working on are are are not severe, but they're chronic and disruptive and frankly annoying and whatnot And I do when I'm talking to T.J. and I know I don't I'm not I'm not trying to publish any data I'm not trying to you know get like you know You know, I'm not aiming for long periods of steady state responding in the Johnson and Penny Packer Tradition, you know, I'm just trying to be able to say does this work? Yeah, I can go to the teacher and say look now that you've implemented this see how much better Things are right now not that they you'd had grafted to understand that but you know at the very least to you know So I mean, I I feel like I'm sticking up for taking baseline data, but but I'm you know I'm with you Matt. I'm with you because what I'm what you're doing what you can do Is rely on the data that already exists The data that are here exists then you do your process and then you remeasure in the same context in which the data that Already existed was measured in and if you're looking for a simple pre-post you have it To be honest, that's what ABC recording or incident reports have utility Sure, what do mean you have it? They're regulated measures. So we have a bunch of regulated measures in schools that are already there Use them, but what I'm saying and especially if it's non-dangerous I don't even have a problem with these steady state baselines because they're just happening and they're not no one's getting hurt by it disruptive and knowing sure I'm talking about SIB aggression Proper destruction steady state baselines Or precursor analyses look at conditional probabilities than to see if it's before or after a during Oh my we got a technology where we can get zero just get zero. How do you show control with those you show control over skill development If you want to do a probe where you get a first instance of a response I think that's acceptable. It's not the steady state thousands of SIBs if you want to I'll tell you know where the real trick is of having a safe And dignified research project with kids of severe behavior It's people who respect the idea of response class membership Who respect the idea because there's enough studies that have taught us this that if people say they whine Before they slap themselves and you have a baseline of whining that that is sufficient because that is a proxy or indicator Of whether your treatment will work for SIB and If you're wrong the SIB will occur in treatment Do you see anything? So this idea of response classes About using interviews and analyses to reveal response class membership to be okay taken in inferential leap That if someone reports it to be a associated member And you only treat that and there's no Resurgence of severe behavior that you treat a severe behavior without baselining the severe behavior I think that's the trick But it's hard. It's easy and practice to have this conversation It's hard and job at have the conversation trust me. They're injurious though. I'm just showing whining I get that But we make inferential leaps all the time we've had automatic reinforcement in our language system for 40 years All through an inferential leap so we make inferential leaps I think we have to understand when to make them and we have a lot of empirical evidence supporting the inferential leap about precursors and and severe behavior So that that might be too roaming but the point is Be thoughtful when you do research to avoid repeated measures of severe behavior. There are other ways design ways again Response class membership ways and also Focus on skill development these whole these folks that like to gather around the constructional approach It's been around a very long time. It has bears a lot of similarity to SPT by historical accident But I appreciate that focus on skill development and maybe we don't need to always measure the severe behavior to say we did something important for severe behavior Maybe just measuring the amazing skill development and then socially validating the outcome and the parents says He hasn't at S.I.B. in a year. We get satisfied with that Again, that's going to be hard for some people, but that's another example of people moving in that direction. I appreciate them All right Well, Greg you said you had some things on your mind And that turned out to be true so that I appreciate the say to your correspondence This is a bit of fun conversation It's always if people want to learn more about the on-demand trainings and things like that they can just go to ftfbc.com Love links and the show notes. Yeah, so congrats on Your your new endeavors and making this stuff work at scale and I really look forward to seeing You know what you and your colleagues do Man, I appreciate you appreciate this chance to connect both with you because I just like talking to you about these things because you're so thoughtful But also just a chance to connect with people on your podcast. I can't thank you enough. So So I won't say until next time I keep saying this will be the last one. Yeah, no, no I won't say that. I'll just say again. Thanks a lot and I'll keep listening All right, thank you for listening to the behavioral observations podcast with Matt Sacoria you can find Matt's notes on this episode at www.behavioralobservations.com We also invite you to stay connected with us on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash behavioral observations And on twitter at behavior podcast So So