Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome
Speaker 1: to Why we do what we do. I am your
Speaker 1: Analyzing Behavior Functions host Abraham.
Speaker 2: And I'm your Rearranged Conditions host Shane.
Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast or talk about the things
Speaker 1: that humans and non human animals do, and today we're
Speaker 1: digging in hardcore to the behavior analysis side of things. So,
Speaker 1: uh huh, what a treat for everybody?
Speaker 2: Really really in the analysis part of it.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, going deep, going deep on that. If you're
Speaker 1: joining us for the first time, then welcome. I hope
Speaker 1: that you enjoy what you hear in this discussion. And
Speaker 1: you're probably maybe selected this because you are also a
Speaker 1: behavior analyst and you saw the title and we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: finally something I can get up with. And if not,
Speaker 1: then I still hope you enjoy us in here. I
Speaker 1: do try to specifically explain these things with little jargon
Speaker 1: and a lot of explanations, so and when we do
Speaker 1: introduce jargon, it's because we're going to use those terms
Speaker 1: a lot and do try to define those so like,
Speaker 1: this should be very accessible to anybody, and I actually
Speaker 1: think we'll be very illustrative and eliminating even to people
Speaker 1: who maybe came into the field and just kind of
Speaker 1: learned what this thing was but don't necessarily know the
Speaker 1: history behind it. There's a lot of interesting stuff to unpack.
Speaker 1: So anyway, do you join us for the first time,
Speaker 1: that's what you're in for. If you're a turning person,
Speaker 1: then welcome back. I hope that you continue to enjoy
Speaker 1: what we put out for you and that this feels
Speaker 1: of a spirit in kind to I've described in Either way,
Speaker 1: if you like to support us, then you can join
Speaker 1: us on Patreon, leave us a rating and review, like subscribe,
Speaker 1: tell a friend. I'll say more about the ways you
Speaker 1: can support us at the end of this discussion. But
Speaker 1: if you're joining us on the day that this publishes,
Speaker 1: then Happy July twenty ninth. Witch is anniversary of the
Speaker 1: Army Chaplain Corps.
Speaker 2: Yeah sure, it's also Cheese Sacrifice Purchase Day.
Speaker 1: I actually don't want to know what that is, so
Speaker 1: that it can live in my mind as whatever I
Speaker 1: am imagining it to be just probably not correct, but
Speaker 1: I want it to stay that way.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a nice it's a
Speaker 2: nice mazzarell up on a cross.
Speaker 1: You're not far off. I imagine here more Temple of
Speaker 1: doom e. But yeah, International Tiger Day is also July
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, Yes it is.
Speaker 2: It's also international or I'm sorry, just national. That's National
Speaker 2: Lasagna Day.
Speaker 1: Oh I like me some lasagna. That's good, good stuff,
Speaker 1: good stuff right there? National Lipstick Day.
Speaker 2: Sure. Yes, it's rain Day, which is every day in Florida.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seriously, And it is Hepatitis Awareness Week. It's raining
Speaker 1: hepatitis hopefully.
Speaker 2: No, that sounds like one of the weird plagues that
Speaker 2: they didn't talk about in the Bible.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, that's a bad day. That's a bad day.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be out in there. Yeah, nope,
Speaker 1: probably find that in Florida too, possibly, Texas definitely, joy
Speaker 1: all right, definitely Tennessee. I don't know. I'm just throwing
Speaker 1: southern states under the bus right now, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: places where there's a lot of jerrymandering that has resulted
Speaker 1: in a crazy disproportioned amount of conservative representation in places
Speaker 1: that do not have that many conservative voters. Because that's
Speaker 1: how jerry mandering works. Maybe we need to do an
Speaker 1: episode on jerrymandering that feels.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's got to go somewhere.
Speaker 1: It was like a thing that we would do. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about those holidays is for this discussion,
Speaker 1: Nor are we talking about gerrymandering, despite how much time
Speaker 1: we have already spent on both of those topics. No, No, Instead,
Speaker 1: we're getting deep into the history, the science, the philosophy,
Speaker 1: the inner workings, if he will, of applied behavior analysis,
Speaker 1: and arguably one of the most fundamental purposes of behavior
Speaker 1: science more broadly is to understand why certain forms of
Speaker 1: behavior happen and what can be done to change those
Speaker 1: behaviors when they are not serving the interest of the
Speaker 1: behaving organism. And that's an inherent value that I think
Speaker 1: sometimes gets missed. And what the behavior scientist does is
Speaker 1: we change behavior because changing behavior helps improve and save lives.
Speaker 1: At least that should be the circumstances. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: lot to impact inside of that in terms of who's
Speaker 1: choosing what improved means and under what circumstances does someone
Speaker 1: make that choice, And that's not what we're getting into today.
Speaker 1: And so if you do have thoughts on that, feel
Speaker 1: free to let us know. But that's not where we're going,
Speaker 1: So don't be distracted by the fact that I said it.
Speaker 1: I just want to clarify that, Like, when we're doing
Speaker 1: this thing, generally speaking, those of us who got into
Speaker 1: this profession got into it to be a helping profession,
Speaker 1: like we want to help people, And if you think
Speaker 1: about all the various other helping professions, they also involve
Speaker 1: changing and usually changing behavior and changing something about an organism.
Speaker 1: See our Discussions of disability for more about like the
Speaker 1: various models and philosophies about that. I feel like I've
Speaker 1: dug myself a giant hole I'm trying to climb out of.
Speaker 1: Point being, the fundamental purpose of behavior science is to
Speaker 1: understand why behavior happens. Let me leave it at that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine. This is going to be an episode
Speaker 2: largely about apply behavior analysis, specifically the methods by which
Speaker 2: we attempt to understand certain behavior forms or what we
Speaker 2: call topographies, and more specifically the forms of behavior that
Speaker 2: are thought of as problematic or identified as like maybe
Speaker 2: having an impact on somebody's quality of life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they could maybe just be described as challenging. There
Speaker 1: are some that are like directly violent and have harm
Speaker 1: involved in them, So there's like there's those things to unpack.
Speaker 1: We'll get into more of those as we get into
Speaker 1: this discussion, but there is an assessment performed to understand
Speaker 1: these challenging behaviors, and it is called a functional analysis,
Speaker 1: very commonly abbreviated as FA. I am sure in this
Speaker 1: discussion many times we're going to oscillate between calling it
Speaker 1: an FA and a functional analysis. But know that when
Speaker 1: we say FA, that's what we're talking about. Functional A
Speaker 1: for analysis FA. And what is most certainly two or
Speaker 1: more episodes. I'm actually kind of explicitly planning on this
Speaker 1: to be three based on how much there is to
Speaker 1: even talk about with this. We're going to unpack what
Speaker 1: functional analyzes are. They're incredibly storied history and evolution, modern
Speaker 1: approaches to functional analyzes and controversies around them. And eventually
Speaker 1: we'll even get to our own hot takes about various
Speaker 1: aspects of this topic, which I know you're all here,
Speaker 1: like you're here for the hot takes. Let's be real,
Speaker 1: of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you like when we get spicy.
Speaker 1: That's right, we get on our soapbox. We got things
Speaker 1: to say. So that's what we're up to right now.
Speaker 1: Is like, for those of you who have been with us,
Speaker 1: who are like the behavior analysts among you. You've heard us
Speaker 1: talking for a long time. We've hardly have we ever
Speaker 1: gone this much in a single direction, but it kind
Speaker 1: of has been one that's been on the list for
Speaker 1: me for a long time of like, we do need
Speaker 1: to get to this at some point, and the timing
Speaker 1: felt right. We're here. Yeah, this is not like a
Speaker 1: sweet like we've done on normal suites, but it is
Speaker 1: going to be multipart. It's going to take a while
Speaker 1: to unpack all of this discussion now. I feel like
Speaker 1: I breathed through our preamble fairly quickly before we got
Speaker 1: into this, and we already have now burned through our intro.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that I missed or you'd like to
Speaker 1: add or something that's important to help set this up
Speaker 1: before we get into the meat of our topic here.
Speaker 2: I think the big thing to understand here and we're
Speaker 2: going to really unpack this is this is an assessment. Yes,
Speaker 2: Like this is ultimately a discovery process, and like one
Speaker 2: of my favorite things about assessment is that it is
Speaker 2: a discovery process, which means that we're not when we
Speaker 2: talk about this, we are not intervening right at this moment,
Speaker 2: Like when we're doing this, it is a discovery. We
Speaker 2: are gathering information so that we can better design interventions
Speaker 2: for the folks that we're serving when we do these assessments.
Speaker 2: So like I think, like just to kind of like
Speaker 2: when we talk about this, we are in a discovery phase,
Speaker 2: which means we have questions to ask in questions to
Speaker 2: answer inside of this and that'll become more apparent as
Speaker 2: we talk about the structure and the outcomes and stuff
Speaker 2: with this assessment. But it is an assessment and that's
Speaker 2: and I think that people tend to conflate assessment and
Speaker 2: intervention sometimes, and that's we're not intervening, we are just discovering.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, I think in the philosophy of this,
Speaker 1: you can make the arguments that even as part of
Speaker 1: the assessment process, it can have intervention like effects. That's
Speaker 1: not your tension of it, but those things exist, and
Speaker 1: we will get actually into that specifically when we get
Speaker 1: to the later parts of this discussion, but we don't
Speaker 1: need to go there today. The point of this is
Speaker 1: that it was designed to be an assessment tool that
Speaker 1: would then later inform intervention. That was that's sort of
Speaker 1: the point. The purpose, the raison detra if you will.
Speaker 1: That's where this thing sort of comes from. But we
Speaker 1: actually need to even go back further in the history
Speaker 1: of behavior analysis. The term functional analysis has been used
Speaker 1: for a very long time, going back probably I think
Speaker 1: over one hundred years from some of the dates that
Speaker 1: I saw, and an early behavior analysis doing something that
Speaker 1: was a functional analysis, calling what you were doing functional
Speaker 1: analysis was a somewhat cerebral, maybe conceptual exercise in which
Speaker 1: some behaviors or classes of behaviors or behavior topographies they
Speaker 1: were described in terms of a variety of variables that
Speaker 1: led to the evolution and development of those behaviors, as
Speaker 1: well as the maintenance and continued evolution and development of
Speaker 1: those behaviors. So, just to say that another way, people
Speaker 1: would say they were doing a functional analysis, when what
Speaker 1: they were kind of doing was like saying, let's conceptualize
Speaker 1: these behaviors to try and understand where they come from,
Speaker 1: where they're going, how they got to be the way
Speaker 1: that they are, and they kind of just talked through it,
Speaker 1: you know, they ad mused through it, they'd think on it,
Speaker 1: and they had a lot of important things to say.
Speaker 1: There's a sort of applying the principles, we understand about
Speaker 1: how behavior works, to an observation of some kinds of behaviors,
Speaker 1: often classes of behaviors, and say, let's understand how these
Speaker 1: things work together. What's the function of them, if you will,
Speaker 1: And so it was it was kind of this conceptual
Speaker 1: thing when it was used back at these in these times.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, for instance, what a BF. Skinner's most important
Speaker 2: and widely used books is Verbal Behavior, which he describes
Speaker 2: as a functional analysis of language. Now, in it, he
Speaker 2: proposes that language can be conceptualized as behaviors that occur
Speaker 2: in certain context and have specific effects for the speaker,
Speaker 2: as media by moment to moment motivations and interactions with
Speaker 2: a social audience. So basically, like our language is shaped
Speaker 2: by our context and like the audit who we're talking to,
Speaker 2: and like what we need to say and all that stuff. Now,
Speaker 2: units of language can be categorized by how they work
Speaker 2: and probably worth a full discussion at some point in time.
Speaker 2: But essentially what he's saying is like a functional analysis
Speaker 2: of language, which is really interesting because he's not really
Speaker 2: doing a functional analysis of language because it was an
Speaker 2: interpretive analysis because you couldn't actually do the functional analysis
Speaker 2: of the language at the time, because it didn't exist.
Speaker 2: It's a whole thing. But more to the point, what
Speaker 2: he's saying is he's analyzing the context and the variables
Speaker 2: in which language occurs.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you're you're right. And I think how we
Speaker 1: use the term functional analysis today would make it a
Speaker 1: little bit confusing to call what he did a functional analysis.
Speaker 1: But at the time, again, because that term was more cerebral,
Speaker 1: it was more conceptual, like for that time, a functional
Speaker 1: analysis was an apt description for that exercise. Sure, but yes,
Speaker 1: I think saying it, calling it an interpretation, I think
Speaker 1: is perfectly legitimate, like that is equivalently, I guess if
Speaker 1: you want to put it that way. Kind of what
Speaker 1: he was up to in that discussion was like, let's yeah,
Speaker 1: let's try and superimpose a philosophy over classes of language
Speaker 1: and say, like, and when we see communication happening, we
Speaker 1: can understand that through the behavioral principles that have been
Speaker 1: described so far by behaviorism, and that that in and
Speaker 1: of itself is a kind of functional analysis at the time.
Speaker 1: And really, again, the point of this is not to
Speaker 1: dig in on Skinner's verbal behavior, probably something to unpack
Speaker 1: in the future. A very seminal thing that is hugely
Speaker 1: impactful in the field of behavior analysis and behaviorism more broadly.
Speaker 1: But the point is that, like that's what was sort
Speaker 1: of described as functional analysis at the time. Now again,
Speaker 1: the point really at this point was just that functional
Speaker 1: analysis back in the earlier days of the philosophy of
Speaker 1: this field looked more like pontificating about behavior environment relations
Speaker 1: before the name functional analysis. The term was repurposed to
Speaker 1: describe a specific assessment technique, which is what we'll get into,
Speaker 1: Like we're headed that direction. But just the point being that,
Speaker 1: like that's kind of what was really being said when
Speaker 1: people use that phrase functional analysis before it became what
Speaker 1: it became as an assessment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like how people use
Speaker 2: the term evil before they call them ads. So we
Speaker 2: are talking about the history of functional analysis and behavior
Speaker 2: analysis in general and kind of where this came from.
Speaker 2: Now we are going to go all the way back
Speaker 2: in our way back machine, which I always thought was
Speaker 2: a strange thing to call a time machine. I feel
Speaker 2: like time machine is way more fun. Wayback machine sounds strange,
Speaker 2: But maybe that's from so, you know, from that cartoon
Speaker 2: show mister Peabody and Truman or whatever. But we're going
Speaker 2: to go all the way back and we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about behavior analysis before it was described as applied. Actually,
Speaker 2: it was most commonly referred to as behavior modification, and
Speaker 2: we did an episode about this forever ago. What we
Speaker 2: understood is that you could gradually direct behavior to different
Speaker 2: forms by providing or withholding positive reinforcers such as tokens,
Speaker 2: special snacks, privileges, or social encouragements.
Speaker 1: Strategically, yeah, that is to say that, like, if you
Speaker 1: wanted to change what behaviors were happening, you could just
Speaker 1: alter or specifically superimpose certain rewards as consequences for those behaviors,
Speaker 1: outcomes for those behaviors, and that could sort of direct
Speaker 1: the behavior where you wanted it to go. Now, we're
Speaker 1: going to er out a little dirty laundry here, because
Speaker 1: we're talking about the past and people did not get
Speaker 1: a lot of things right back in the fifties. This
Speaker 1: also included things like providing cigarettes that could be a
Speaker 1: reinforcer that was like a reward that they could earn,
Speaker 1: not something that would be done today. And it also
Speaker 1: included things like providing or removing aversives they might do
Speaker 1: things such as withholding privileges or taking privileges away. They
Speaker 1: might even do things such as exposing them to foul
Speaker 1: smells or things as far as even like electric shock
Speaker 1: to humans. We've talked about this in previous episodes as well.
Speaker 1: Go see those for a more in depth discussion about
Speaker 1: what was going on there. Suffice to say, in these times,
Speaker 1: what they ran into was there was something we wanted
Speaker 1: to change about what someone was doing. We can either
Speaker 1: provide some kind of punishments to decrease certain behaviors we
Speaker 1: don't like, and or we can provide certain rewards to
Speaker 1: try and increase certain behaviors that we like or that
Speaker 1: we'd like to see more of. And that was essentially
Speaker 1: what they could just do. They would just like apply
Speaker 1: that thing as they saw fit, I guess in those circumstances.
Speaker 2: Right, So, if there was some perceived reason to change
Speaker 2: behavior patterns, and we say perceived because many people made
Speaker 2: many decisions for people without consulting them or including them, Yep,
Speaker 2: someone could orchestrate this. This's is behavior change through strategic
Speaker 2: use of rewards and punishments. And you might think this
Speaker 2: would not work that easily or that well, and you'd
Speaker 2: be wrong. It's honestly surprising and even a little scary
Speaker 2: how effectively this works, even among people for whom language
Speaker 2: can effectively change behavior. So like, it's pretty astounding to
Speaker 2: see this work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you really. A lot of people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just simple rewards, Like you can't do that much
Speaker 1: with that. I'm like, yeah, you actually can accomplish a lot,
Speaker 1: even with people that you can just like tell them things.
Speaker 1: When you specifically use outcomes, rewards and punishments in this way,
Speaker 1: you'd be impressed. Like, how far I mean impressed. Again,
Speaker 1: it's a little surprising in some cases, a little scary
Speaker 1: how far you can actually drive behavior in ways that
Speaker 1: might surprise you. So don't discount it because it feels simplistic.
Speaker 1: It is remarkably effective and powerful. Right anyway, not that
Speaker 1: we're trying. We've talked about this. We're moving on all right,
Speaker 1: as we know, So we're talking about like a long time,
Speaker 1: many many decades ago, nearly a center ago. Most often
Speaker 1: this was applied to people who were institutionalized or otherwise
Speaker 1: had some diagnosis that probably meant some significant impairment. These
Speaker 1: are people who often had little language, often little education,
Speaker 1: They might have lacked other self care skills, including and
Speaker 1: up to the ability to clothe and feed themselves or
Speaker 1: even use the restroom the toilet independently. There were wide
Speaker 1: swaths of this, but those tended to be the populations
Speaker 1: where you were likely to see this kind of work
Speaker 1: being done as people who had disabilities. Often they might
Speaker 1: have called these profound disabilities, and often it meant that
Speaker 1: these were people again who just had repertoires such that
Speaker 1: there was relatively little they could do at the time
Speaker 1: with very much independence. And to be fair, like, we're
Speaker 1: not granted very many opportunities to do anything with very
Speaker 1: much independence. They were really not often even thought of
Speaker 1: or treated as if they could have those things, and
Speaker 1: loved ones weren't consulted, they weren't consulted themselves. Oftentimes it
Speaker 1: was just kind of up to the doctor who made decisions,
Speaker 1: and then they did the things according to what that
Speaker 1: person decided, which sometimes was pretty terrible. So understand that
Speaker 1: those that's where this is at. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: the population with which you would tend to see this
Speaker 1: applied right and.
Speaker 2: At the time, and the absence of behaviorists, these folks
Speaker 2: disabilities might be locked in a cell, medicated, quote unquote,
Speaker 2: medicated with sedatives, lobotomized, are incarcerated. This is a well
Speaker 2: documented in very recent history that I think is really
Speaker 2: important to note. This is not three hundred and four
Speaker 2: hundred year ago. I mean, this was happening, you know,
Speaker 2: on some level many centuries ago, but this was happening
Speaker 2: in the mid nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like sixties, seven years ago, like sixties.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, So I mean it's this is a
Speaker 2: recent history. So despite what sounds disrespectful of people with
Speaker 2: disabilities in the way that it was approached by behaviors
Speaker 2: of the time, it was actually much better than what
Speaker 2: those people usually got. And that's not to excuse it,
Speaker 2: but I think the context is really worth understanding here
Speaker 2: that like whenever we talk about history, it's always a
Speaker 2: delicate situation because like these situations come up in like
Speaker 2: we're in a situation now where we know better, so
Speaker 2: we try to do better, and in fifty years that's
Speaker 2: going to be the same concept that we have today.
Speaker 2: Like we're trying to make it so that we don't
Speaker 2: have these terrible histories going forward, but it's going to
Speaker 2: happen as we learn more stuff. And I think when
Speaker 2: we look back at the history that was going on,
Speaker 2: you know, you had situations where families had no idea
Speaker 2: what disabilities were, and they were imparting different harms, or
Speaker 2: they didn't know how to care for their children or
Speaker 2: the people that they loved, And so institutions were arguably
Speaker 2: a better option for folks that could receive round the
Speaker 2: clock care rather than families who couldn't provide that. But again,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean it was good. Yeah, yeah, it was
Speaker 2: incrementally better than what was maybe available, but not good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Life for people with disabilities was very very hard
Speaker 1: at this time, and they were often not treated with
Speaker 1: very much dignity and respect. And so if you had
Speaker 1: some kind of diagnosis that and these range widely widely
Speaker 1: in terms of what they might be. But like, assuming
Speaker 1: you had something let's just say profound like autism, like
Speaker 1: you might have described back then, like essentially that meant
Speaker 1: you'd probably be sent to an institution. And in many
Speaker 1: of these you were given enough drugs that you barely
Speaker 1: moved and stuck in a cell and you basically lived
Speaker 1: out your days that way. Yeah, behaviorists came along and
Speaker 1: they said, well, actually we can teach these people things
Speaker 1: we can we can have them do other stuff. We
Speaker 1: can teach some vocations, we can have them gain some independence,
Speaker 1: and they would just be like, let's do em and
Speaker 1: MS or or privileges. Cigarettes will We'll give them these
Speaker 1: things as rewards to help teach them, give them feedback
Speaker 1: on these new skills that they're learning, and they'll learn
Speaker 1: them faster and be able to do this. So while
Speaker 1: all of that sounds you're like looking at going none
Speaker 1: of this is good. The situation where someone came in
Speaker 1: and thought, maybe we can teach these people things, Maybe
Speaker 1: we can get them to do stuff that require that
Speaker 1: means that they don't have to wear mechanical restraints all day.
Speaker 1: They're not like handcuffs, they don't have to stay in
Speaker 1: a patent room all day, they don't have to be
Speaker 1: on so many medications. Ultimately, it was probably in the
Speaker 1: better interest of those people and is not still what
Speaker 1: we would have done now knowing what we know. So
Speaker 1: just trying to paint the broad context to make sure
Speaker 1: it's really clear. As you were saying, like, I think
Speaker 1: you said it really well, but I just wanted to
Speaker 1: say it again of like understanding where things were at
Speaker 1: at the time, and that you know, when they had
Speaker 1: nothing else, they didn't know what the future was going
Speaker 1: to look like. Back then, this looked like probably the
Speaker 1: most humanitarian thing that was going on, right, right, And
Speaker 1: now we know better, like we treat people with considerably
Speaker 1: more respect now than we did back then, and fully
Speaker 1: we'll do way better still.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is exactly why we are wanting to fight
Speaker 2: this current administration from implementing institutions again, right, because this
Speaker 2: was not the way to go.
Speaker 1: Yes, this was bad, exactly. At some point in time,
Speaker 1: it finally became clear that like a better approach to
Speaker 1: changing behavior was understood. It was to understand why those
Speaker 1: behaviors were occurring in the first place. Back then, they
Speaker 1: were just sort of like we can use words and
Speaker 1: punishments and change behavior, and instead what was happening is
Speaker 1: they're like, under what conditions does the behavior occur? And
Speaker 1: if we understand that, then maybe we can do something
Speaker 1: a little bit differently about this. So it gave rise
Speaker 1: to a hypothesis about how we might determine what conditions
Speaker 1: gave rise to and maintained some of those behavior patterns.
Speaker 1: And a quick language note here, when we're talking about
Speaker 1: this idea of like understanding why behaviors happen, This assessment
Speaker 1: can only be performed on behaviors that happen, and we
Speaker 1: can't assess behaviors that aren't happening. And I know this
Speaker 1: seems like an obvious observation, but people have asked me
Speaker 1: me personally, and I've heard seen this asked in other
Speaker 1: places too. They say, like, why are you not performing
Speaker 1: a functional analysis what we're getting to on a skilled deficit?
Speaker 1: And the reason is is because you can't assess a
Speaker 1: behavior that isn't happening. So the point, just a quick
Speaker 1: note on the language here, is essentially what happened is
Speaker 1: they sort of figured, we're seeing these behaviors occur, these
Speaker 1: other challenging behaviors that's resulting in these people being put
Speaker 1: in handcuffs, locked up, or sedated or all of those things.
Speaker 1: And they were just like, we'll use can rewards and
Speaker 1: punishments to change their behavior. And then they sort of realized, well,
Speaker 1: what if we just try to understand why they're doing
Speaker 1: those behaviors in the first place, that might then inform
Speaker 1: something that we could do differently. Why would these people
Speaker 1: play ads? Okay, so we're back Essentially, we described what
Speaker 1: gave rise to the hypothesis that we could understand behavior
Speaker 1: by understanding why it occurs in the first place. And
Speaker 1: then just a quick side note about the fact that
Speaker 1: many people might be like, well, if functional analysis is
Speaker 1: the way to go, we should do it for everything,
Speaker 1: including skill deficess I'm like, yeah, but that's a behavior
Speaker 1: that's not happening. We can't assess nothing. We have to
Speaker 1: assess something, so it has to happen for us to
Speaker 1: assess it. So just a note that make sure that
Speaker 1: that's clear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So the logic of the functional analysis
Speaker 2: was to see if providing certain scenarios would provoke the
Speaker 2: behavior in question, and if reinforcing that behavior with related
Speaker 2: outcomes tend to occur for that individual resulted in higher
Speaker 2: rates of that behavior. So basically what they're talking about
Speaker 2: is we present a scenario, if the behavior occurs, we
Speaker 2: present a related outcome, and let's see if that has
Speaker 2: an impact or influences the behavior in some way, and.
Speaker 1: We'll get into specific examples. That makes because that probably
Speaker 1: sounds vague if you're not really sure what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: but we'll get into some specific examples. I'll just give
Speaker 1: you one. Now. Actually, let's just say there's a scenario
Speaker 1: where like this person's asked to brusht their teeth and
Speaker 1: whenever they're asked to brush of teeth, they throw their
Speaker 1: toothbrush or they throw it at the staff and maybe
Speaker 1: go and try and punch them. They're like, ah, what's happening.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're like, okay, let's do this. Let's present
Speaker 1: the scenario of brushing teeth and then when they if
Speaker 1: they throw the toothbrush they attack the staff. Whatever it is,
Speaker 1: We're going to provide a very specific outcome and see
Speaker 1: if that's why they do it. Just would make the
Speaker 1: first one to make the staff go away, And see
Speaker 1: if whenever we ask them the brush to teeth, they
Speaker 1: want the staff to go away and stop asking them
Speaker 1: the brush their teeth, like they wouldn't want to figure
Speaker 1: out if that's what's going on. And so that's what
Speaker 1: we mean here is like as an example of a
Speaker 1: scenario where it's like, let's figure out there's something going on,
Speaker 1: and we want to figure out why it's going on.
Speaker 1: So let's systematically create the situation and then create applausible
Speaker 1: outcome that could be what they're trying to get after, like,
Speaker 1: what are they're trying to get out of this behavior
Speaker 1: in that situation? Right?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: That makes sense? Yes, absolutely, okay, so then yeah, the
Speaker 1: logic here would be that if we could identify this
Speaker 1: circumstances that produce the behavior and what outcomes reinforce that behavior,
Speaker 1: which is to say, what were they trying to get
Speaker 1: out of that situation, then we could use those outcomes
Speaker 1: that they're trying to get to to then reinforce a
Speaker 1: different type of behavior in that situation again, right, and
Speaker 1: using an example I just gave. And we're jumping ahead
Speaker 1: a little bit here because we'll be talking about this
Speaker 1: in more detail, but using the example I just gave,
Speaker 1: let's say that they're like, whenever they're asked to brush
Speaker 1: their teeth, they attack the staff, and that that's where
Speaker 1: the problem exists. It seems like they're doing this because
Speaker 1: they want the staff to go away. What we'll do is, well, instead,
Speaker 1: we'll teach them that when they ask you to do
Speaker 1: something you don't want to do, you can say I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that, and then the staff will
Speaker 1: leave you alone. Yeah, And then that way you get
Speaker 1: what you want, which is they're not bothering you and
Speaker 1: they get what they want, which is you're not attacking them,
Speaker 1: and everybody wins. Like that's the sereo. And obviously there's
Speaker 1: a whole solution of like, well, what do we do
Speaker 1: about the brushing their teeth? We'll get to that, but
Speaker 1: not us. But like they're saying, like, we'll address that separately.
Speaker 1: But the point being that, like, in this moment, what's
Speaker 1: happening is they need something. They don't know how to
Speaker 1: ask for what they need. What they know is if
Speaker 1: I attack this person, I get what I need, right,
Speaker 1: And so we're teaching them, Okay, now that we know
Speaker 1: what you need, we can tell you to ask for that,
Speaker 1: and then you don't have to attack. You can just
Speaker 1: get the thing that you need.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That's essentially where we're going with it. But that's what
Speaker 1: I mean by all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think it's super helpful. So before
Speaker 2: the modern version of functional analysis became popular and widely adopted,
Speaker 2: another attempt was developed by other researchers around the same time,
Speaker 2: but not quite the same time. Yeah, so car and
Speaker 2: Durand in nineteen eighty five, really good year, and they
Speaker 2: have bothesized that challenging behaviors such as eloping from the
Speaker 2: learning environment and violence could be conceptualized as communication that
Speaker 2: the student was communicating something about the situation they did
Speaker 2: not like, and teaching an alternative way to ask to
Speaker 2: get out of that situation. What allow us students to
Speaker 2: get their needs met without running away or hurting other
Speaker 2: people or themselves. So they basically said, these are things
Speaker 2: that are happening. If we assume this is communication, then
Speaker 2: they're communicating that there is something about the situation they
Speaker 2: don't like. Let's teach them about way to get.
Speaker 1: That right exactly. Like I said, I jumped ahead a
Speaker 1: little bit, but that was essentially what I was trying
Speaker 1: to come up with that example. But this is what
Speaker 1: they did in that study, is they specifically did that
Speaker 1: thing that conceptualized it that way. The behaviors that we
Speaker 1: observe that people see as like problematic are communication. They
Speaker 1: don't know how to communicate what they need, and so
Speaker 1: that's what they have developed. That's how they learned to
Speaker 1: communicate what they need is to do something in a
Speaker 1: way that was aggressive or they're running away or something.
Speaker 1: So they designed an assessment which in this part of
Speaker 1: the study, this nineteen eighty five study and which they
Speaker 1: introduced tasks of varying levels of difficulty, hypothesizing that it
Speaker 1: was the difficulty of the task that was likely the
Speaker 1: situation that provoked those challenging behaviors. And what they saw
Speaker 1: was they were right. If there were tasks that were
Speaker 1: more difficult, those tended to more reliably provoke challenging behaviors.
Speaker 1: The tasks that were easy did not. And so what
Speaker 1: they did is they then taught the students to end
Speaker 1: the task by asking to end the task by teaching
Speaker 1: them like, if this is too hard, you can say
Speaker 1: I need help, or you can say I can't do
Speaker 1: this as too hard, whatever it was, they taught them
Speaker 1: some way to request a way out of it or
Speaker 1: to get through it more easily. And when they taught
Speaker 1: them how to do this, this quickly resulted in zero
Speaker 1: or very low rates of those challenging behaviors and very
Speaker 1: high rates of the students using their new communication skills
Speaker 1: to ask for what they needed. Yeah, it worked like
Speaker 1: a charm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if I remember correctly, this is the one where
Speaker 2: they did the easy thirty three difficult one hydred. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the one. So for like to kind of like
Speaker 2: get into like a little bit of detail on this. Basically,
Speaker 2: they tested a couple different conditions. They tested that a
Speaker 2: task was difficult, but that's the learner got a lot
Speaker 2: of attention. The task was easy but they got less attention,
Speaker 2: or the task was easy and they got a lot
Speaker 2: of attention. So they tested those three different situations, and
Speaker 2: what they found was like some of the learners really
Speaker 2: just wanted to have a lot of attention, some of
Speaker 2: them really wanted to get away from the task. And
Speaker 2: that was really the two big findings they found out
Speaker 2: of I think they had six participants in it or
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 1: This sounds right, yeah, but it was.
Speaker 2: It was really cool, and I was like when I
Speaker 2: first learned about this, I was like I'd already learned
Speaker 2: about the other assessment that we're going to talk about,
Speaker 2: the other the gold standard, if you will. I didn't
Speaker 2: know about this one first, you know, like I didn't
Speaker 2: know like that this was already done. So it was
Speaker 2: kind of a like I say, already done. I didn't
Speaker 2: know that this was like in the works or around
Speaker 2: at the time too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the actual we're getting into like the actual study,
Speaker 1: but at the time, there were kind of people who
Speaker 1: were trying different things, because again, the hypothesis was out there,
Speaker 1: the idea was out there. They're like, what we can
Speaker 1: do is assess what these people need and address it
Speaker 1: from that direction rather than just say, let's just use
Speaker 1: reward and punishment to get what we want. We can
Speaker 1: figure out what these people need, and then we can
Speaker 1: use that to help teach them whatever might need to
Speaker 1: be taught, yeah, to help address it. And so there
Speaker 1: were a couple different ways to approach it. This study
Speaker 1: was one of the big ones. That's why I wanted
Speaker 1: to include it because I actually think it's one that
Speaker 1: is often not known by many students of behavior analysis.
Speaker 1: They just learned about sort of what we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about is what is considered now the gold standard FA.
Speaker 1: But there were other attempts to tell like, figure these
Speaker 1: things out, and this was one of the early ones too,
Speaker 1: that was right around a similar time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely
Speaker 1: separately and published a couple of years before that, car
Speaker 1: and Durand eighteen eighty five study what would become what
Speaker 1: is widely considered this gold standard of assessments was born,
Speaker 1: and this was a WATA Slipher, Bowman and Richmond in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two published their study which they published in
Speaker 1: which they demonstrated an assessment strategy for determining why those
Speaker 1: challenging behaviors occurred in a kind of similar way to
Speaker 1: the car and durand but with some fundamental differences will unpack.
Speaker 1: And this was called Toward a Functional Analysis of Self Injury,
Speaker 1: and this was published in nineteen eighty two in the
Speaker 1: journal Analysis and Intervention and Developmental Disabilities. That was where
Speaker 1: it was first published.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there are a number of people with little
Speaker 2: or no language and caught in disabilities that self harm
Speaker 2: at pretty high rates and pretty dangerous rates too, and
Speaker 2: usually in the form of hitting or binding themselves or
Speaker 2: hitting their body parts, commonly their head against hard services.
Speaker 2: I am almost positive that you have worked with folks
Speaker 2: that do this. I know for a fact that I've
Speaker 2: worked with lots of folks that do this. They have
Speaker 2: lots of scarring and callouses and head injuries and protective equipment,
Speaker 2: and it is it is never easy to see when
Speaker 2: it happens, even when you get used to it. It
Speaker 2: is never easy to watch somebody do this, and so
Speaker 2: it's hardy is Yeah, it's hard to watch. It's hard
Speaker 2: to intervene on sometimes it is it can be scary.
Speaker 2: It's scary, that's it. Yeah, exactly, it's scary and you
Speaker 2: get elevated. It's it's a very difficult thing to be around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like, and these are often people who live
Speaker 1: with families who also don't know how to support them,
Speaker 1: and they're like just doing their best to try and
Speaker 1: prevent these types of behaviors from occurring. But that means
Speaker 1: that oftentimes they would bring them to some of these clinics.
Speaker 1: And so they designed the study to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's see if we can understand why they're doing this
Speaker 1: thing and address it that way, right, and rather than
Speaker 1: like just tying their arms to their back so they
Speaker 1: can't move, or rather than sedating them with medication, or
Speaker 1: rather than just using a bunch of punishments or something like,
Speaker 1: let's say, if we can understand what's going on here,
Speaker 1: so that the context is like, that is a thing
Speaker 1: that happens for some people who have disabilities, that is,
Speaker 1: sometimes they do develop those types of behaviors. And then
Speaker 1: there was now this new approach to try and understand
Speaker 1: what was going on here. So the general logic of
Speaker 1: the assessment was that they could determine whether self harming
Speaker 1: behaviors of these nine individuals in their study, the nine
Speaker 1: individuals with cognitive disabilities and little or no language, if
Speaker 1: those behaviors of self harm were more likely to occur
Speaker 1: when there was either positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement, or
Speaker 1: whether those behaviors occurred regardless of whether there was positive
Speaker 1: or negative or any reinforcement.
Speaker 2: Right, So, positive reinforcement was conceptualized as in this assessment
Speaker 2: social attention. Do they harm the selves when they were
Speaker 2: receiving little attention or no attention? And what providing attention
Speaker 2: increase the likelihood that they continue to hurt themselves. So
Speaker 2: basically it would set up that they would get no
Speaker 2: attention or little attention. And when we say little attention,
Speaker 2: when we say no attention, we don't mean like they
Speaker 2: were completely ignored. We mean like that the attention wasn't
Speaker 2: very rich, it was very quiet, like the person that
Speaker 2: they were interacting with us maybe distracted. Yeah, the selfagury's
Speaker 2: behavior would occur, and then when it would occur, they
Speaker 2: would deliver the attention to assess whether or not they
Speaker 2: had influence on the behavior, and so what they were
Speaker 2: trying to discover was if those were related, then social
Speaker 2: attention could be the outcome that they are trying to
Speaker 2: get by hurting themselves.
Speaker 1: And what we'll describe each of these conditions in more detail,
Speaker 1: like how they're arranged and all the features of like
Speaker 1: what this experiment looked like. But yeah, the idea was like,
Speaker 1: all right, if we are with them and we remove
Speaker 1: our attention from them, do we see that they now
Speaker 1: are doing this more often because when they do it,
Speaker 1: we then do pay attention to them, like is this
Speaker 1: attention seeking behavior? And so we're just going to systematically
Speaker 1: do this repeatedly so we can see if every time
Speaker 1: we remove our attention they do this, they get our attention,
Speaker 1: and they're now more likely to do this. They essentially
Speaker 1: have learned, like they're showing us like that's what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get at here, is I just want your attention, right?
Speaker 1: That could be a thing that was one of their ideas.
Speaker 1: So that was the first piece of this. The next
Speaker 1: one is the negative reinforcement condition, and this was conceptualized
Speaker 1: as terminating task requirements or demands. So did they observe like,
Speaker 1: was it the case that these individuals would harm themselves
Speaker 1: if and when they were asked to perform tasks, so
Speaker 1: certain tasks, and if so, then if you terminated the
Speaker 1: task request, if you removed those demands, would that increase
Speaker 1: the likelihood that they were going to harm themselves? And
Speaker 1: if so, then the removal of demands like taking away requests,
Speaker 1: stopping asking them to do things, that could be the
Speaker 1: outcome that these individuals are trying to achieve when they
Speaker 1: hurt themselves and they're like, I just I don't like
Speaker 1: it when you make me do these things. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to communicate that any other way. So when
Speaker 1: you asked me to do them, I hurt myself. And
Speaker 1: if you stop asking me, then I will stop hurting myself.
Speaker 1: But it's it's like I will hurt myself until you
Speaker 1: go away, until it makes this go away, right, And
Speaker 1: so that was essentially what they wanted to assess here
Speaker 1: in the negative reinforcement condition. That was the concept spetualization
Speaker 1: of that part of their study.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a really good example of this would be
Speaker 2: something like you're listening to a podcast, you're listening to
Speaker 2: it on normal speed. We present an ad. You might
Speaker 2: yell and scream, and then we take away the ad
Speaker 2: that might be an arrangement that we might look at
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 1: And now you're more likely to yell and scream when
Speaker 1: we say that we're going to play an ad exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're talking about the way that this experiment
Speaker 2: was kind of arranged. We've talked about how positive and
Speaker 2: negative reinforcement were conceptualized in this and we mentioned earlier
Speaker 2: that they were trying to evaluate the positive reinforcement contingency,
Speaker 2: the negative reinforcement contingency, and also whether the behavior occurred
Speaker 2: regardless of the type of reinforcement that was delivered by
Speaker 2: somebody else. That brings us to the other condition that
Speaker 2: we're looking at. And there was another condition in which
Speaker 2: the experiments experimenters simply interacted in a mild, gentle condition,
Speaker 2: and they called it the play condition. Individuals weren't asked
Speaker 2: to perform any tasks. Attention was freely given. If self
Speaker 2: harm occurred in this context, it might be that they
Speaker 2: hurt themselves because of something called automatic reinforcement or reinforcement
Speaker 2: that the person delivers themselves. Right, it simply means that
Speaker 2: there's something about performing the behavior itself that was inherently
Speaker 2: reinforcing to the individual. Could be sensory stimulation that is
Speaker 2: produced by the behavior or whatever it is. It's basically
Speaker 2: like the learner engaged in the behavior, that behavior produces
Speaker 2: some outcome that is not delivered by somebody else, and
Speaker 2: there's some sensation about that behavior that is produced that
Speaker 2: maintains the behavior. So it's kind of like, for those
Speaker 2: of you who aren't watching this, I generally kind of
Speaker 2: rock back and forth while I'm talking, and that's in
Speaker 2: the absence of any context. I'd be doing this if
Speaker 2: I was working, or if I was recording a podcast
Speaker 2: or anything with Abraham, I just kind of do that
Speaker 2: because I like the way it feels right, And that's
Speaker 2: kind of like what that kind of circumstance might look
Speaker 2: like perfect.
Speaker 1: Such, yeah, very good example that's exactly right. Is like
Speaker 1: there's something about the action itself that the experience of
Speaker 1: that maintains the action that it's like, nobody around you
Speaker 1: doing things has anything to do with the reasons to
Speaker 1: do that, and so they needed to include a condition
Speaker 1: that could potentially determine if that was the case for
Speaker 1: any of these individuals. Is like, they're going to do
Speaker 1: it no matter what we're doing. They're just they're going
Speaker 1: to do it, and that could mean that there's something
Speaker 1: about that action itself that is not related to what
Speaker 1: we're doing, but something they're getting out of it. Right
Speaker 1: now in the experiment, the way the arrangement looks like,
Speaker 1: what will describe it, go ahead, like in detail here
Speaker 1: what's going on. A single individual, one of these individuals
Speaker 1: is in a room with a single experimenter, sometimes called
Speaker 1: a therapist sometimes I don't know, but yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: to just call them an experimenter. They're just like a
Speaker 1: person who's in the room who's like the person who's
Speaker 1: there to change the circumstances to see what's going on
Speaker 1: with those behaviors. So anyway, there's a single there's one
Speaker 1: person who has these self harm behaviors, there's one other
Speaker 1: person in the room who's this experimenter, and the experimenter
Speaker 1: would implement one of the conditions that we just listed.
Speaker 1: There's the social attention one, that toy play one, the
Speaker 1: demand one, or an alone condition, and we'll get into
Speaker 1: more about what that looks like here in a second. Now,
Speaker 1: at the beginning of each of these conditions, the experimental
Speaker 1: would enter the room with the individual and they would
Speaker 1: establish some scenario that could potentially evoke that problematic behavior,
Speaker 1: whatever the self harm behavior they were sort of on
Speaker 1: the lookout for might be. Each of these sessions lasted
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes, and in those fifteen minutes they were divided
Speaker 1: into ten second intervals, and observers who were usually watching
Speaker 1: maybe from across the room, maybe behind some like mirrored
Speaker 1: glass of some sort, they would watch and record whether
Speaker 1: any self harm behaviors occurred within a given ten second interval,
Speaker 1: because again we had fifteen minutes. The entire thing is
Speaker 1: broken into ten second intervals, and they would just mark
Speaker 1: down if during this interval the behavior occurred, check that
Speaker 1: box and say, okay, that's it. And then at the
Speaker 1: end of the fifteen minutes, what they would do is
Speaker 1: they would report what percentage of the intervals had instances
Speaker 1: of those self harm behaviors. So there's watching, and ever
Speaker 1: ever retirement occurs, they would check that box or whatever,
Speaker 1: and at the end they look and see, all, right,
Speaker 1: out of all the boxes that we have, how many
Speaker 1: of them had self harm occur And that was the
Speaker 1: percentage of those intervals. That was how they measured this
Speaker 1: in this study.
Speaker 2: Right now, in the attention condition, which they called social disapproval.
Speaker 2: In this situation. This was what they called the positive
Speaker 2: reinforcement condition, and so they would enter the room and
Speaker 2: engage with some of the toys briefly. Then the experimenter
Speaker 2: would say something like I have to do some work,
Speaker 2: or like they would pretend to be busy, I have
Speaker 2: to take a call. This is in the eighties, so
Speaker 2: maybe they weren't taking a call, but like, now you go,
Speaker 2: I have to take a call and pretend to be
Speaker 2: on your cell phone, right, yeah, But they would say
Speaker 2: I have to do some work, and they would start
Speaker 2: reading something like a newspaper or a book. And if
Speaker 2: the individual hurt themselves or engage in the behavior itself,
Speaker 2: the experimenter would react with a disapproving statement, something like
Speaker 2: don't hurt yourself, or don't do that, or stop it,
Speaker 2: you know, something along those lines. Not yelling, but like
Speaker 2: a disapproving statement, right, And this would be an attempt
Speaker 2: to replicate the ways that staff might interact with them
Speaker 2: in their daily environment. It has a quick reminder when
Speaker 2: we say the word positive our behavior analyst friends, we
Speaker 2: all know this, but if you're listening and you're not
Speaker 2: a behavior analyst, and you hear the word positive, and
Speaker 2: you think that means good, That's not what we're saying.
Speaker 2: In this context, positive only means that something has added
Speaker 2: after the behavior occurs. In reinforcement, it means that the
Speaker 2: behavior increases in frequency. So positive reinforcement is something is
Speaker 2: added behavior increases in frequency over time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so in this case, what's added is some
Speaker 1: form of attention. Yeah, it is social disapproval. But like
Speaker 1: the fact that it's disapproval doesn't make a negative. It's
Speaker 1: still something that is added afterward, and so therefore it
Speaker 1: is positive. And if that behavior increases, then that's called reinforcement.
Speaker 1: So that's just to make sure people are clear on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the attention also called social disapproval condition. The
Speaker 1: other one was that negative reinforcement condition, which is also
Speaker 1: sometimes called the demand condition. And in this one, the
Speaker 1: experimenter and the individual enter the room and they'll start
Speaker 1: performing academic tasks of some sort. Maybe it could be chores.
Speaker 1: I've also seen that done in some iterations, but I
Speaker 1: believe in this experiment it was academic tasks. And if
Speaker 1: the individual self harm to any point during those instructions,
Speaker 1: then the experimenter would immediately stop requesting the performance. Of
Speaker 1: those tasks and they would turn their attention away from
Speaker 1: the individual. Right. So, essentially they're saying, like, if a
Speaker 1: thing that provokes self harm is us asking to do something,
Speaker 1: then us taking away that request should be a reinforcer,
Speaker 1: a negative reinforcer for that behavior, which means it would
Speaker 1: increase the likelihood. So again, with negative this only means
Speaker 1: in behavioral terms, that something was taken away. In this case,
Speaker 1: the performance tasks, the requests were what was taken away.
Speaker 1: They were there before the behavior occurs. We took away
Speaker 1: the thing we didn't like, and this is then reinforcement. Again,
Speaker 1: if the behavior increases in frequency, reinforcement always means the
Speaker 1: behavior increases in frequency, regardless of whether it's positive or negative.
Speaker 1: And so as an outcome of terminating those requests, are
Speaker 1: they more likely to self harm in the presence of requests?
Speaker 1: If so, that would tell us that what they don't
Speaker 1: like is being asked to do these specific tasks, and
Speaker 1: the reason they're doing them is because when they do them,
Speaker 1: it gets them out of doing those tasks.
Speaker 2: Right. That's like the example of the toothbrushing earlier. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like staff ask the client to brush their teeth, they
Speaker 2: start engaging in self harm, you remove the task, Hey,
Speaker 2: you don't have to brush your teeth. That's it, that's done,
Speaker 2: and then they stop harming. That is essentially what happens.
Speaker 2: The task is aversive negative reinforcement. We remove that aversive,
Speaker 2: they get relief.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's relief, and they're now more likely to self
Speaker 1: harm when you ask to brush their teeth because they've
Speaker 1: now learned that that specific thing they do gets them
Speaker 1: out of the task, right bingo. And so we see
Speaker 1: an increase in frequency the self harm because it removes
Speaker 1: an aversive situation, which in this case is the request
Speaker 1: to perform something.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly now. In the unstructured play condition we talked about,
Speaker 2: where it's like toy play and stuff like this, there
Speaker 2: are a variety of toys on the floor and the
Speaker 2: experimenter would simply spend time with the individual, following their lead,
Speaker 2: asking them for nothing, but would comment on their play
Speaker 2: in a neutral or gently encouraging manner. And this I
Speaker 2: think one of the things that we talk about and
Speaker 2: you'll see kind of like today, one of the things
Speaker 2: that we're taught is that we don't ask them questions
Speaker 2: during this correct it's very much so I like the
Speaker 2: way you're playing with that that looks like a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. It's like you're making statements about what they're doing,
Speaker 2: because asking them questions could be considered demand.
Speaker 1: Exactly right. Yeah, the whole point is to try and
Speaker 1: make it as neutral as possible. Yes, Like you're just there.
Speaker 1: You're not withholding your attention, you're not giving it dependent
Speaker 1: on anything. You're not asking them anything or asking them
Speaker 1: to do anything. You're just there to sort of follow
Speaker 1: their lead. Make it just the most comfortable you can
Speaker 1: for them, where it's just chill, chill vibes all around.
Speaker 1: What is the goals called the chill vibes conditions?
Speaker 2: That's what it should be called now.
Speaker 1: Exactly right. So again the point here is that if
Speaker 1: those self hard behaviors occur more during any one of
Speaker 1: those conditions, particularly we think of like the social disapproval,
Speaker 1: the positive reinforcement, or the demands like removal of task
Speaker 1: requests that can, then that would suggest that the condition
Speaker 1: was likely the thing that was provoking that challenging behavior,
Speaker 1: and the type of outcome associated with that condition was
Speaker 1: likely the kind of reward, the kind of outcome, the
Speaker 1: kind of reinforcement that the individual was seeking in those situations.
Speaker 1: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: Like skipping through ads, you're seeking to get rid of them.
Speaker 1: So here's your chance. Okay, we're back. We've essentially been
Speaker 1: describing in detail the different conditions of the experimental functional
Speaker 1: analysis in this nineteen eighty two study, and also the
Speaker 1: interpretation of what those results might mean as far as
Speaker 1: understanding the behaviors when they occur.
Speaker 2: Right, So in this experiment, they also had another condition
Speaker 2: in which the individual was left alone in a room
Speaker 2: and observe for fifty minutes to determine whether the self
Speaker 2: harm behaviors occurred in the absence of any provocative or
Speaker 2: consequential conditions. This could suggest that the automatic reinforcement that
Speaker 2: behavior was occurring. So, like what we mean by that
Speaker 2: is is there was nothing to do. There were no demands,
Speaker 2: there was no task, but there was nothing enriching either,
Speaker 2: so there was no attention, there was no staff. It
Speaker 2: was kind of just like a when you are left
Speaker 2: to your own device, is what happens? Yeah, And essentially
Speaker 2: that's what they're trying to test. And so we also
Speaker 2: call this the we don't really know what's going on,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't seem to be related to anything we
Speaker 2: are doing reinforcement, meaning that like everything that we're delivering
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to have an influence or impact on this behavior,
Speaker 2: there's got to be something else that we just all
Speaker 2: know about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So essentially you can imagine if it was the
Speaker 1: case that this was sensory, like self stimulatory in some way,
Speaker 1: or there was something about it that the individual is
Speaker 1: getting out of it that was unrelated to what the
Speaker 1: experimenter was doing, you would likely see this. The self
Speaker 1: harm behaviors occur when there's positive reinforcement, when there's negative reinforcement,
Speaker 1: when you're playing with toys, and when you're left by yourself. Now,
Speaker 1: it is possible that the toy play condition would be
Speaker 1: enough of a distraction that you would see less of
Speaker 1: the behavior of her in that situation and still walk
Speaker 1: away with the interpretation that there was something sensory, self stimulatory,
Speaker 1: or otherwise not socially mediated and therefore what you might
Speaker 1: call automatic reinforcement about what was going on for that individual.
Speaker 1: But if you only saw it in the conditions where
Speaker 1: there was social interactions happening, particularly if they were primarily
Speaker 1: in just the social positive reinforcement or the negative reinforcement.
Speaker 1: That gave a fairly clear, differentiated picture of what could
Speaker 1: be functioning as reinforcement, What was the outcome that was
Speaker 1: likely the reason for those type of behaviors, Like what
Speaker 1: is that individual trying to get out of those situations? Now,
Speaker 1: in the study, each of these conditions is presented and
Speaker 1: represented again and again in a randomized order until the
Speaker 1: individual had experienced each condition multiple times and either what
Speaker 1: happened was data demonstrated a systematic pattern, meaning that it
Speaker 1: was differentially observed only in certain conditions, or else they
Speaker 1: completed twelve days of sets, so that was essentially the
Speaker 1: arrangement is they're like, it wasn't thating. You do it once,
Speaker 1: you don't do like one time, you do that attention condition,
Speaker 1: one time you do the demand condition. You do them repeatedly,
Speaker 1: but you rotate through them. So you would do that
Speaker 1: toy play condition, then you go do it that a
Speaker 1: social disapproval attention condition. Then you might do the alone condition.
Speaker 1: Then you'll do that demand condition, Then you do the
Speaker 1: attention condition again, then you do that alone condition again,
Speaker 1: then you do that social attention condition again, then a
Speaker 1: demand condition, then maybe another demand condition. Anyway, you're just
Speaker 1: cycling through these until you either see that one condition
Speaker 1: is clearly showing a pattern where there's elevated rates of
Speaker 1: that challenging behavior in that condition, which would tell you
Speaker 1: that's the time that the behavior like, that's why that
Speaker 1: behavior occurs is because that situation provokes it and rewards it.
Speaker 1: And if not, then you would keep going until you
Speaker 1: either saw that or you had done twelve days and
Speaker 1: probably what you saw is a wide distribution across all
Speaker 1: conditions or at least three of the four conditions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. Now they successfully demonstrated systematic allocations
Speaker 2: of self harm behaviors across specific situations for most of
Speaker 2: the subjects in the study, indicating that they now felt
Speaker 2: confident in understanding why the behaviors occurred in the first place. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: in combination with the technology developed by car and Ran
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty five, behaviorists could now identify what an
Speaker 2: individual needed when they engage in challenging behavior and teach
Speaker 2: them to communicate their needs rather than to engage in
Speaker 2: those harmful, dangerous behaviors.
Speaker 1: I will get a little bit more into that as
Speaker 1: we get through this, Because they become inherently linked it's
Speaker 1: not just like, well, now we know what's happening and
Speaker 1: done by it's like, now, what do we proceed from
Speaker 1: this analysis, this assessment? What do we do with that information?
Speaker 1: And so we get We'll talk more about that in
Speaker 1: subsequent parts of this discussion. So that was the study
Speaker 1: that we just described in relatively elaborate detail, how the
Speaker 1: study was set up and what they found. And this
Speaker 1: was a very import and study. Now, at first, this
Speaker 1: I think kind of flew under the radar. It was
Speaker 1: not quite as widely recognized, but it did become recognized
Speaker 1: fairly soon afterward. What this was contributing to how people
Speaker 1: were approaching trying to understand when behaviors like self harm
Speaker 1: occurred and people who they lacked sufficient language to communicate
Speaker 1: what it was that they needed in those moments. Okay,
Speaker 1: And so this was later republished in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Applied Behavior Analysis in nineteen ninety four. That's one of
Speaker 1: the most common dates you'll see associated with this now,
Speaker 1: and it became one of, if not the most cited
Speaker 1: study in all of behavior analysis history and launched a
Speaker 1: fundamentally different approach to addressing these types of challenging potentially
Speaker 1: you know, problematic behaviors that in the past no one
Speaker 1: had any idea what to do about those. Now there
Speaker 1: was a very clear direction that was guiding how people
Speaker 1: would start thinking about and attempting to provide some kind
Speaker 1: of support for moving forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean this is a groundbreaking study for sure.
Speaker 1: It was, and yeah, widely study, widely utilized. We're going
Speaker 1: to go ahead and pause here for this part of
Speaker 1: the discussion because and the next part we're going to
Speaker 1: get into. After this happened, there was a massive interest
Speaker 1: in how to further refine, develop and evolve these procedures
Speaker 1: to be as effective and as efficient as possible and
Speaker 1: test their limits when doesn't it work, What can we
Speaker 1: do instead? What are the other problems that might have
Speaker 1: that we didn't necessarily think about when we were first
Speaker 1: putting these together. There's a lot that happened, and so
Speaker 1: that'll be the next discussion that we'll come back to,
Speaker 1: is getting into that second part where we really dig
Speaker 1: into the evolution of this technology and where it sort
Speaker 1: of went. But let's go ahead and pause there. We'll
Speaker 1: wrap up this discussion, and at the end of our
Speaker 1: full length discussions, even when we break them into multiple
Speaker 1: par art. We're going to recommend some things because it's
Speaker 1: fun and we do it every single time. So if
Speaker 1: you're joining us for the first time, surprise. That's the
Speaker 1: thing that we do at the end is we recommend
Speaker 1: some things, and I recommend sticking around for those recommendations
Speaker 1: because they're fun, agreed, and you're here for the fun,
Speaker 1: So do that thing. Before we get into that though,
Speaker 1: we'll get through some credits and all of that and
Speaker 1: let you know what you can do to support us,
Speaker 1: which is that, as I mentioned to the top, you
Speaker 1: can leave us a rating and a review wherever you
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Speaker 1: that can be a little one. You can dedicate however
Speaker 1: much you feel comfortable with. But if you do that,
Speaker 1: we'll be eternally grateful and we will will shout you
Speaker 1: out at the end of our discussions for helping to
Speaker 1: keep us a podcast. And I don't really mention this often,
Speaker 1: but we have really fun names for the various tiers
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Speaker 1: armchair psychologist. You can be a pop psychologist. You can
Speaker 1: be an undergraduate research participant. Uh huh, it's a good one.
Speaker 1: You can be a budding behaviorist. There's all kinds of
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Speaker 1: But more importantly and why most people are here when
Speaker 1: they sign up, is that they get some bonus content
Speaker 1: add free episodes, early episodes, and at the end of
Speaker 1: our discussions, I'll read the names of all the people
Speaker 1: as a shout out for them being so generous and
Speaker 1: their support. So thank you and shout out to Mike
Speaker 1: m Megan, Mike t, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley
Speaker 1: Kerr and Charlie. Appreciate you all so much for everything
Speaker 1: you've done. To help us be a podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're the best, truly absolutely.
Speaker 1: Also, thank you so much to my team of people
Speaker 1: without whom I could not make podcasts. Takes a lot
Speaker 1: of work, takes a village, and I need them so
Speaker 1: writing and fact checking from Shane and myself. Thank you
Speaker 1: for recording with me today, Shane anytime. Our social media
Speaker 1: coordinator is Alma Wilson. And the person who makes the
Speaker 1: words that spew out of our mouths turn into a
Speaker 1: podcast as Justin God Emperor, producer extraordinaire of wonderful Greatness
Speaker 1: from Planet Awesome, and he's so good at what he
Speaker 1: does and we appreciate him so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, otherwise you hear us just say about the whole time.
Speaker 1: That is that is exactly what it sounds like. These
Speaker 1: are facts. So thank Justin for making this podcast sound
Speaker 1: so good and creamy and buttery in your ears. Mm hmm,
Speaker 1: all right, I think this we have to say, so
Speaker 1: come back for part two. We're going to be continuing
Speaker 1: to elaborate on the important aspects of the functional analysis.
Speaker 1: We really just barely got to dig into the surface
Speaker 1: here and we got through the core foundational study and
Speaker 1: which was important, but like there's so much that happened
Speaker 1: after this, there's a lot to impact. So is there
Speaker 1: anything that I forgot or you like to add before
Speaker 1: we transition to our recommendations.
Speaker 2: No, not today.
Speaker 1: Okay, I did forget to say that. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to tell us your thoughts on anything we've discussed so
Speaker 1: far on FAS, or you like to throw your hat
Speaker 1: in the ring in terms of some other things we
Speaker 1: might add in the future parts of this discussion, good luck,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the we're recording ahead of time,
Speaker 1: but we might get to some of it. So you
Speaker 1: can read us directly by emailing us at info at
Speaker 1: wwdwwdpodcast dot com, or you can reach us on the
Speaker 1: social media platforms, and we do look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: from you. So do that thing, please do by Okay,
Speaker 1: let's recommend some things.
Speaker 2: I'm in recommendations.
Speaker 1: A couple episodes ago, at some point, Shane recommended the
Speaker 1: TV show, specifically the episode Gary for a TV show
Speaker 1: called The Bear. This is their final season. Season five
Speaker 1: wraps up this entire TV show. It was recently released
Speaker 1: as available on Disney Plus and Hulu. If you have
Speaker 1: never heard of this, this is essentially about a restaurant,
Speaker 1: and it is a lot of gorgeous close ups of
Speaker 1: people performing very competent tasks preparing food, and it evolves
Speaker 1: from kind of like a rundown sandwich shop into so
Speaker 1: a super high class highly rated critic Rave reviewed restaurant
Speaker 1: over the course of several seasons. It is like anxiety
Speaker 1: and TV show form, but also like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of heart, there's a lot of depth, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of story, there's a lot of character, and some really
Speaker 1: great people who are on the show. In the season five,
Speaker 1: I felt like ended just masterfully. It felt really satisfying,
Speaker 1: It felt pretty complete. I feel like it's hard for
Speaker 1: shows to end well, and they stuck the landing pretty well.
Speaker 1: So season five of The Bear is available now go
Speaker 1: check it out if you haven't already. It's a good
Speaker 1: time and I think people who have already liked the
Speaker 1: show will like it. People who are new to the show,
Speaker 1: I think we'll find it a nice satisfying conclusion to
Speaker 1: what was a very chaotic start in the first season.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes. I agree. Huge recommend
Speaker 2: bonus recommend on that too, because I fully support that.
Speaker 2: It's just lovely.
Speaker 1: Awesome, that's That's what I would recommend is the TV
Speaker 1: show The Bear season five beautiful.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna recommend a little piece of music. It is
Speaker 2: a band out of Boston called Fiddlehead. They are this
Speaker 2: is the singer of a hardcore band called Have Heart,
Speaker 2: and he's been doing this for a long time. Fiddle
Speaker 2: Heads actually put out more records than Have Heart ever did.
Speaker 2: But have Heart was super influential and like current hardcore,
Speaker 2: but Fiddlehead is a little bit different, and so they
Speaker 2: put out a new EP called Baby I'll Change. And
Speaker 2: if you are interested in something that's got like a
Speaker 2: nice melodic kind of like nineties alt feel, it's got
Speaker 2: that vibe for sure, you know, very introspective lyrics, catchy hooks,
Speaker 2: really great guitar work, their drum, their rhythm section is incredible,
Speaker 2: just like really technically proficient, and they're not doing anything
Speaker 2: like mind blowing. It's like going to go like, oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, like these are you know, like it's not
Speaker 2: an Ingva Momstein type of situation, but like for if
Speaker 2: you're a musician and you listen to it, you go, oh, like,
Speaker 2: these guys really know what they're doing and they do
Speaker 2: it well, and it's like they're just they have it
Speaker 2: locked in so fun. It's only three songs this EP
Speaker 2: called Baby I'll Change, and every song on it's great,
Speaker 2: every it's perfect. It's a perfect release, so I strongly
Speaker 2: recommend it. Cool.
Speaker 1: All right, So it's the Bear season five and the
Speaker 1: group Fiddlehead with the EP Baby al Change. If you
Speaker 1: want to go check those things out. Awesome, Well, I
Speaker 1: think this way I have to say about this for now.
Speaker 1: Come back for Part two and then probably a part three.
Speaker 1: We're going to continue to discuss and explore these functional
Speaker 1: analysis things that make up a huge chunk of what
Speaker 1: a lot of behavior analysts are kind of doing out
Speaker 1: in the world. I think that's where we wrap this
Speaker 1: up now. Anything that you'd like to add or that
Speaker 1: I forgot before we say goodbyes?
Speaker 2: Nope, not today.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for listening. I'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: This is Abraham When's Machine. We're out.
Speaker 2: See ya.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Why we Do what We Do.
Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
Speaker 2: going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 2: we hope you have an awesome day.