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: automatically reinforced host, Abraham, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Your alone condition Shane All.
Speaker 1: There's so many problems with the way I describe myself.
Speaker 1: That's okay, We're moving on. We are a psychology podcast.
Speaker 1: We talk about the things that humans and non human
Speaker 1: animals do. And this is a part two episode. We
Speaker 1: have been talking about something inside of behavior science in
Speaker 1: which an assessment is conducted to attempt to determine why
Speaker 1: certain behaviors happen, particularly when there are people who can't
Speaker 1: just say why those behaviors happen, and so they conduct
Speaker 1: some kind of an assessment to try and learn what
Speaker 1: is going on for those individuals. It's called a functional analysis.
Speaker 1: And so if you did not hear the first part,
Speaker 1: we dig a lot into the history, concepts, a little
Speaker 1: bit of jargon, and the foundational and seminal study that
Speaker 1: kicked off this. So if you do not hear that part,
Speaker 1: I do recommend checking it out. We'll do a brief
Speaker 1: recap at the beginning of this discussion, so in case
Speaker 1: you don't remember or you haven't heard it, you'll at
Speaker 1: least have a little bit of context to help set
Speaker 1: up for this part because we're going to be building
Speaker 1: off of that discussion today.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, so yeah, we'll give
Speaker 2: you the ins and out and kind of where we're
Speaker 2: at leading up to all the cool new stuff that's
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 1: Right. So, if you're joining us for the first time,
Speaker 1: then welcome. I do recommend you go back and check
Speaker 1: out that episode and then you'll be joining us for
Speaker 1: maybe the second time. But either way, you found yourself
Speaker 1: here and I appreciate you being here. If you're a
Speaker 1: returning person, thank you for coming back. And if you
Speaker 1: like to support us, and you haven't done that already,
Speaker 1: you can leave us a rating and review, like subscribe,
Speaker 1: tell a friend, join us on Patreon. I'll talk more
Speaker 1: about those things at the end of our discussion today.
Speaker 1: But this is a part two, but it still comes
Speaker 1: out on a different day of the week than Part one.
Speaker 1: Matter of fact, this one comes out on August fifth,
Speaker 1: So Happy Green Peppers Day.
Speaker 2: Yes, of course, love Green Peppers. It is International Alberino Day.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 2: No idea. We're gonna leave it at what it is,
Speaker 2: just like cheese Sacrifice Day.
Speaker 1: It's okay, very good. It is International Traffic Light Day.
Speaker 2: I have fast. It's National Oyster Day.
Speaker 1: M go support your local oyster by giving it.
Speaker 2: Go pet your oysters.
Speaker 1: You'll plus your oysters. All right. National Psychiatric Technician Appreciation Day.
Speaker 1: Well that feels. That feels very relevant to our topic.
Speaker 2: Yes it does. So does National Underwear Day.
Speaker 1: Nice. And it is work like a dog Day, which
Speaker 1: is to say, lay on a couch, chew a bone,
Speaker 1: take a nap. Yes, have someone take you out to
Speaker 1: go poop in the yard.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: That is working like a dog.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Anyway, we don't just talk about holidays. We also talk
Speaker 1: about we don't science things, and we don't poop in
Speaker 1: you know, well we don't. Maybe some people have listened
Speaker 1: to us. Probably not, Yeah, some people do it. We
Speaker 1: as a species. Okay, let's do a brief recap. So,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, we've been describing in this discussion so
Speaker 1: far something called the functional analysis. What that is, where
Speaker 1: it comes from? And so as a brief background here,
Speaker 1: long long ago in behavior science, calling something a functional
Speaker 1: analysis was more like a conceptual exercise to just try
Speaker 1: and like think through what are the circumstances, certain classes
Speaker 1: of behaviors tended to occurb. That was kind of all
Speaker 1: that it was. But then at the time also you
Speaker 1: had people who had disabilities. Some of them were very
Speaker 1: impacted by those disabilities that had meant a lot of
Speaker 1: limitations for them. They were hospitalized, they were lobottomized, they
Speaker 1: were medicated into a coma basically, and along came behavior
Speaker 1: analysts behavior as scientists who are doing our behavior modifiers
Speaker 1: there was kind of a more popular name at the time,
Speaker 1: and they're like, well, we can use rewards and punishments
Speaker 1: to direct these behaviors to do these other things. Those
Speaker 1: kind of where things started before there was sort of
Speaker 1: a more assessment based functional analysis.
Speaker 2: Yes, and then around the same time you had Iwata
Speaker 2: and friends as well as car and Durand started developing
Speaker 2: a technology for us to be able to critically evaluate
Speaker 2: and really deep dive into the conditions under which this
Speaker 2: certain type of behavior occurred. And they looked at the
Speaker 2: conditions before and after a behavior occurred, and they looked
Speaker 2: at isolating those as much as possible. Now, Card and
Speaker 2: Durand is the nineteen eighty five article that kind of
Speaker 2: started to really kind of evaluate this and develop a technology.
Speaker 2: But this was also in development in nineteen eighty two
Speaker 2: with Brian Iwata and his friends, and so they came
Speaker 2: up with kind of what we understand today is the
Speaker 2: gold standard of a functional analysis, which has multiple conditions,
Speaker 2: and what it does is it looks at setting up
Speaker 2: a circumstance for behavior to possibly occur and then delivering
Speaker 2: some outcome as a result of that behavior occurring and
Speaker 2: seeing if that influences behavior in some ways. And they
Speaker 2: did this with really three different types of outcomes. It
Speaker 2: was either positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, or we don't know
Speaker 2: what we're doing or what's going on as behavior, so
Speaker 2: we're gonna we're gonna see this play out commission and
Speaker 2: it changed the world. It changed the world to be
Speaker 2: par analysis in ways that we cannot possibly begin to enumerate.
Speaker 1: I mean, we could possibly begin to, but that's as
Speaker 1: far as we make it. Before we were a live
Speaker 1: well and that's another episode in the bank. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was very profound. And yeah, just as you said,
Speaker 1: I think an important thing then maybe a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't necessarily think about with respect to the functional
Speaker 1: analysis is it was essentially these behaviors that are happening,
Speaker 1: which in the original study was was primarily self injury,
Speaker 1: is like self harm behaviors. They're either happening because there's
Speaker 1: some positive reinforcement for it, there's some negative reinforcement for it,
Speaker 1: or there's some self sensory stimulation that is happening as
Speaker 1: an outcome for it. That was the hypothesis that drove
Speaker 1: the development of the framework for that assessment. It's like,
Speaker 1: let's create those conditions see when the behavior occurs, so
Speaker 1: we now understand why the behavior occurs, right and with
Speaker 1: the technology developed by car and Durand who conceptualized these
Speaker 1: behaviors as a form of communication, essentially that these are
Speaker 1: people who are saying, they were trying to communicate, we
Speaker 1: need something. We don't know how to ask for what
Speaker 1: we need, but we do need it, and right now
Speaker 1: the way that we've learned to get it is doing
Speaker 1: these types of behaviors, and they're saying, well, okay, once
Speaker 1: we know what you need, we can now teach you
Speaker 1: to ask for that in a different way. And so
Speaker 1: that was the intervention that was born out of the assessment,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into those a bit more as later
Speaker 1: parts of this discussion. But essentially what we did in
Speaker 1: the last episode is describe in fairly great detail how
Speaker 1: that experiment was set up, the different conditions, how they worked,
Speaker 1: and because it'll be relevant for today, I'll just briefly
Speaker 1: describe that in the original assessment, these were fifteen minute
Speaker 1: conditions where they rotated between whether they got social disapproval
Speaker 1: as a form of positive attention and reinforcement. They got
Speaker 1: removal of demands, which was escape from a condition that
Speaker 1: was the negative reinforcement or demand condition. They had a
Speaker 1: toy play condition, which was essentially a neutral everything is
Speaker 1: chill vibes session, and then there was like, yeah, all
Speaker 1: by yourself, do you do these self injury behaviors when
Speaker 1: just there's no one around to do anything with you
Speaker 1: type of thing to try and figure out if that's
Speaker 1: the automatic piece. They were fifteen minutes long. They were
Speaker 1: usually randomly rotated. Every time that the challenging behavior was observed,
Speaker 1: there was a specific type of outcome that was provided
Speaker 1: by the person in the room, unless it was two
Speaker 1: of those sort of control conditions, the toy player alone,
Speaker 1: and that when they observed a higher percentage of intervals
Speaker 1: with that self injury, then that indicated that that was
Speaker 1: the condition that under which the behavior was most likely
Speaker 1: to occur, that was the most likely outcome that that
Speaker 1: individual was seeking in those moments, and that was it.
Speaker 1: So fifteen in intervals. They were divided up in these ten
Speaker 1: second intervals per session, and they repeated each of those
Speaker 1: conditions until they either had clear differentiation between the conditions
Speaker 1: meaning that the self injury only occurred in one condition,
Speaker 1: or they had twelve days of sessions that they had
Speaker 1: experienced those conditions. The last part of this then, is
Speaker 1: that this study was later republished in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: and that was sort of like really kicked off a
Speaker 1: lot of new research in this field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's why the I WANTA study
Speaker 2: is often cited as nineteen eighty two slash nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 2: because it was published, it was published, it was republished,
Speaker 2: and really, I mean, like you said, kicked off a
Speaker 2: whole set of research that was specifically focused on functional
Speaker 2: equivalents and making sure that we were teaching skills based
Speaker 2: on circumstance.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that is as much I think of a
Speaker 1: nutshell as I can do about the last hour long
Speaker 1: discussion that we did Yeah, is there anything that I
Speaker 1: missed you felt like was important that we communicate before
Speaker 1: we dive into part two.
Speaker 2: Let's see, we had some recommendations at the end of it,
Speaker 2: which was really nice. We talked about how the current
Speaker 2: administration is trying to institutionalize people and we don't want
Speaker 2: to go back to that because it was bad. No,
Speaker 2: I think you covered it. I think we did it.
Speaker 1: Great, perfect, Thank you all right? Perfect? So let's go
Speaker 1: ahead then, and essentially the next part here is understanding
Speaker 1: what happened after that big study sort of came out
Speaker 1: because there was a lot left to learn and new
Speaker 1: challenges faced by people who were at tempting to implement
Speaker 1: these types of strategies. But whole what a groundbreaking and
Speaker 1: like foundational seminal article this was. It really changed the
Speaker 1: name of the game. In this discussion, we'll essentially be
Speaker 1: expanding on what came after. So when technology is when
Speaker 1: new technologies such as this one emerge, there's often a
Speaker 1: substantial interest in determining what we do with this, like
Speaker 1: how do we improve it, how do we refine it,
Speaker 1: what do we need, what do we not need? How
Speaker 1: do we make it more efficient? And they're a hardly
Speaker 1: better exams this than there are with functional analyzes, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I forgot to mention this, but we
Speaker 1: might call them fays because that's a very common way
Speaker 1: that they're talked about, is just to abbreviate functional analysis
Speaker 1: as FA FA, so you might hear that just to know.
Speaker 1: So anyway, there are hardly better examples of the refinement
Speaker 1: process than is what happened with FAS. So will briefly
Speaker 1: enumerate some of these refinements and experimental arrangements that have
Speaker 1: evolved the implementation standards of this experimental FA and that's
Speaker 1: actually that is a qualifier that is sometimes attached to
Speaker 1: functional analysis as to call it experimental because it is
Speaker 1: set up like an experiment. You have essentially test and
Speaker 1: control conditions that are alternated to help establish a pattern
Speaker 1: that differentiate data trends in only certain conditions to illustrate
Speaker 1: and a numer like help understand what's going on as
Speaker 1: opposed to just functional analysis, which as we mentioned KITE
Speaker 1: maybe could refer to something more conceptual in nature and
Speaker 1: not necessarily in experiment. So this is sometimes called an
Speaker 1: experimental functional analysis or experimental EFFA.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think another term too that we want to
Speaker 2: make sure that everybody is aware of because I think
Speaker 2: you said this just now, which was new technologies. When
Speaker 2: we talk about technologies, I think people automatically assume that
Speaker 2: what we're talking about is something like electronic like the
Speaker 2: advance Secures advice that look a device, And it's really
Speaker 2: important understand that a technology is also something like something
Speaker 2: that we do. Yeah, it's basically like some something new emergency,
Speaker 2: the sign something that is useful and pragmatic that can
Speaker 2: be used to you know, improve somebody's life, change behavior,
Speaker 2: stuff like that that's also a technology. Like a token
Speaker 2: economy is an example of a technology that we use
Speaker 2: in behavior analysis because we can take this intervention and
Speaker 2: we can apply it in a in a different place.
Speaker 2: So like I think that, I think that's really valuable
Speaker 2: to remind everybody about too, because technology does have its
Speaker 2: own connotations.
Speaker 1: Such a good catch. Yeah, I wasn't thinking about that
Speaker 1: beer exactly right, that like a strategy is a type
Speaker 1: of technology. There's it's a it's a different way of
Speaker 1: doing it, Like there's this whole form of expertise that
Speaker 1: can go along with a new strategy, a new way
Speaker 1: of doing things. The antithesis of technolo logical development as ADS.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, So we barely started to really
Speaker 1: get into the new discussion here, but we felt like
Speaker 1: it was really important to ensure that we had recapped
Speaker 1: the foundation. It's been a week since that episode came out.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're already familiar with this, maybe this is new
Speaker 1: to you, but we just wanted to make sure we
Speaker 1: had enough sort of foundation that we could proceed with
Speaker 1: the next part of this and have that makes sense
Speaker 1: because it's building on what we've talked about last time.
Speaker 1: So that took the majority of our initial part here
Speaker 1: before we had to take our first AD break. But
Speaker 1: here we are. We're getting into now the new stuff.
Speaker 2: Yes, so there are a few major methodological shifts in
Speaker 2: that PAS that have become essentially standard practice in several
Speaker 2: other versions of that FAS that have been attempted. So
Speaker 2: I think it's really important though, Like just because this
Speaker 2: was done and it was developed and it was incredibly
Speaker 2: useful at the time that it was developed, doesn't mean
Speaker 2: it stayed like that, because remember, science does not have
Speaker 2: a finish line. So we're going to start with some
Speaker 2: of the major procedural shifts that occurred. So first that
Speaker 2: we talked about was, and this is really important you
Speaker 2: brought this up in the recap, is the session length.
Speaker 2: So in the original study, each condition or sometimes you'll
Speaker 2: see the term condition and session used interchangeably, but condition
Speaker 2: is really a better term. But each condition lasted fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: And there was an early attempt in nineteen ninety one
Speaker 2: by Northrop and friends to streamline the FA process by
Speaker 2: conducting shorter sessions that were only five minutes long, or
Speaker 2: shorter conditions that were only five minutes long. However, several
Speaker 2: different studies attempted shorter session durations, and in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: Whillas and i Wata published a study demonstrating that reducing
Speaker 2: sessions to ten minutes produced identical data to fifteen minutes. Further,
Speaker 2: reducing sessions to only five minutes yielded only minor discrepancies
Speaker 2: from the fifteen minute observations. So thus I sow, thus
Speaker 2: I don't need to say both of those. Thus, most
Speaker 2: contemporary studies use five minute sessions for each condition, yielding
Speaker 2: a more efficient procedure and analysis. So basically what this
Speaker 2: is saying is originally fifteen minutes, we don't need to
Speaker 2: do fifteen minutes we were able to shorten it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's like we got it down to ten,
Speaker 1: that already lopped off thirty three percent of the time
Speaker 1: we were spending, and it turns out we can actually
Speaker 1: get it down to five. And because that was like,
Speaker 1: your data were likely to show similar patterns at five
Speaker 1: minutes as they were at fifteen minutes, I was like
Speaker 1: that that's a lot more efficient. We can get a
Speaker 1: lot more done in a lot less time because we
Speaker 1: apparently don't actually need that much time to do this.
Speaker 1: So that it was like a really important refinement to
Speaker 1: determine that they could do that. So it's not that
Speaker 1: every single study is going to do this, but it
Speaker 1: is fairly common that if you were to look at
Speaker 1: a relatively recent study that used a functional analysis as
Speaker 1: part of their methods, which you will very undoubtedly find
Speaker 1: if you're looking in behavior analytic research, then it probably
Speaker 1: used a five minute interval for their functional analysis. Not
Speaker 1: always right, but a huge amount of the time. Right now,
Speaker 1: So that was one of the first major changes is
Speaker 1: that the standard setup was fifteen minutes. Now the standard
Speaker 1: set up, regardless of anything else you're doing with that
Speaker 1: function analysis, is probably five minutes right, major caveats in there,
Speaker 1: we'll get to some of the other refinements that have happened.
Speaker 1: But a second thing that changed and changed fairly early
Speaker 1: on in this was the measurement strategy. Now, as we
Speaker 1: described in the original study, they divided this fifteen minute
Speaker 1: session into intervals, specifically ten second intervals, and then they
Speaker 1: calculated the percentage of intervals in which the target behavior occurred. So,
Speaker 1: just as a quick description of what that meant is like,
Speaker 1: across fifteen minutes, there was a timer running and every
Speaker 1: ten seconds they entered a new interval, and if that
Speaker 1: behavior occurred during the interval, the would essentially fill in
Speaker 1: the box to say yes, the behavior occurred, And then
Speaker 1: they could calculate, of all those ten second intervals in
Speaker 1: a fifteen minute window, what percentage of those had album
Speaker 1: that challenging behavior the self harm in the original study occurred. Okay, However,
Speaker 1: it quickly became apparent that this is not super sensitive
Speaker 1: to changes in actual frequency. So, for example, let's assume
Speaker 1: that we are measuring something like self harm and that
Speaker 1: that behavior occurred once every single second. That would be
Speaker 1: ten instances of that behavior in a ten second interval,
Speaker 1: But it would only be recorded as one interval. So
Speaker 1: imagine we're going to do a five minute session. There
Speaker 1: are three hundred seconds in a five minute session, meaning
Speaker 1: that there would be three hundred instances of a behavior
Speaker 1: that occurred once every second. But what that would show
Speaker 1: on a interval recording would be one hundred percent of intervals,
Speaker 1: which is a lot. We understand that's very high. But
Speaker 1: take this other example. What if that challenging behavior had
Speaker 1: occurred once every ten seconds, but it occurred once every
Speaker 1: ten seconds, that would be thirty instances of that behavior.
Speaker 1: It would also show one hundred percent of intervals. Three
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty are pretty different numbers.
Speaker 2: Those are different numbers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a wide range for your percentage to show
Speaker 1: the exact same amount of challenging behavior occur. From thirty
Speaker 1: times in an observation to three hundred times in observation,
Speaker 1: that's not very sensitive, right, So essentially, researchers found that
Speaker 1: counting each instance of behavior that occurred across the entire
Speaker 1: five minutes and then instead converting the number of instances
Speaker 1: to a rate per minute, that was a much more
Speaker 1: sensitive way to measure behavior. So essentially, when they sort
Speaker 1: of made this discovery of like, look, we can really
Speaker 1: measure moment to moment changes here that it's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot more sensitive to trend if we just
Speaker 1: count every instance and then convert it to account permit it.
Speaker 1: That became the standard for how people generally conducted these.
Speaker 1: The overwhelming majority of FA studies published now use a
Speaker 1: rate permittent instead of the interval recording method because it's
Speaker 1: so much more sensitive at capturing the changes and rates
Speaker 1: of those behaviors and the magnitude of the changes in
Speaker 1: those rates.
Speaker 2: Yeah, makes sense. Now. The third change is the condition ordering.
Speaker 2: So in the original study and for a while, the
Speaker 2: order in which conditions were presented was either random or
Speaker 2: quasi random. And there were some exceptions with this, and
Speaker 2: we'll talk about that in a little bit, but basically
Speaker 2: it was like, you know, when we talk about the
Speaker 2: escape alone, play and control conditions, what would happen is
Speaker 2: they would randomize that. Yeah, so it wouldn't be escape alone,
Speaker 2: play control, escape, you know, whatever. It would go escape, escape,
Speaker 2: attention alone. You know, like, it would randomize it in
Speaker 2: lots of different ways. But in nineteen eighty four, it
Speaker 2: would suggested that the order in which sequences were presented
Speaker 2: might be important for obtaining clear results, And finally, in
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, a study by Hammond and friends clearly empirically
Speaker 2: showed that results were clear and obtained more quickly if
Speaker 2: they were presented in the order ignore, attention, play and demand,
Speaker 2: So ignore being the alone condition, attention being the social disapproval,
Speaker 2: play being the toy play that we talked about earlier,
Speaker 2: and then the band being the escape or demand condition.
Speaker 2: This has become the generally accepted standard procedure for conducting
Speaker 2: an FA.
Speaker 1: Yes, with some exceptions, but yes. Essentially, what they sort
Speaker 1: of realized was how you end one condition potentially set
Speaker 1: up how that person was kind of activated to go
Speaker 1: into the next one, and that you would have some
Speaker 1: carryover effect if you weren't actually planning these out very
Speaker 1: strategically right, like what was the mo for one became
Speaker 1: the setting event for the next one, and so you
Speaker 1: might accidentally create some artifacts by having the sequence set
Speaker 1: up to accidentally promote or inhibit the likelihood of some
Speaker 1: of those behaviors occurring. And so they did an analysis
Speaker 1: of these fixed versus random patterns and empirically showed, yes,
Speaker 1: you actually if you do this fixed pattern you are
Speaker 1: more likely to obtain differentiated results where data were primarily
Speaker 1: observed in only one condition, and you are more likely
Speaker 1: to obtain that outcome more quickly than if you had
Speaker 1: those randomized sequences. And so yeah, it just became like
Speaker 1: everyone's like, oh great, we'll do that from now on,
Speaker 1: Like that sequence moving forward makes sense to me perfect
Speaker 1: And so that's generally the one of the refinements. So
Speaker 1: essentially the three of you we've numerated so far from
Speaker 1: the original study. That changed were that they reduced from
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes to five minutes, They started counting every instance
Speaker 1: of the behavior and converting that to a rate per minute,
Speaker 1: and then finally that the order in which they presented
Speaker 1: the provocative situations became fixed because it allowed for clearer
Speaker 1: differentiating the results. And that became essentially if you pick
Speaker 1: up a journal article in the last fifteen years or so,
Speaker 1: maybe ten years since all these happened, like those will
Speaker 1: be essentially what you'll see most of the time when
Speaker 1: you're looking at functional analysis. With a major glaring exception,
Speaker 1: some people are probably yelling at about their speakers, and
Speaker 1: we will get to that. I promise, don't worry, don't worry.
Speaker 1: We'll get in there, okay. But there was one more
Speaker 1: that I want to discuss. There's a fourth and final
Speaker 1: major procedural change, and actually it's worth noting, and I
Speaker 1: understand people will say this. I know this is not
Speaker 1: one that has been as widely adopted. So where the
Speaker 1: other three, you'll pick up a study like you will
Speaker 1: see those three very like arrangements as the new standard
Speaker 1: for how to do an FA. This one's less consistent,
Speaker 1: but it is there.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: It did set the context for a new direction in
Speaker 1: standard FA procedures, and it has been used in many
Speaker 1: different settings, so it's like maybe more being adopted. But
Speaker 1: this is with respect to that alone condition in which
Speaker 1: the individual was left alone for the duration of that condition,
Speaker 1: right that we just left them in the room and
Speaker 1: say what happened? Now, okay. The identified purpose this condition
Speaker 1: originally was to identify the potential for automatic reinforcement, which
Speaker 1: is to say, if we're not there, we're not interacting
Speaker 1: with them, we're not doing anything, and they're still doing
Speaker 1: that behavior, then that that's probably because there's something self
Speaker 1: stimulatory about it, there's something they're getting out of it
Speaker 1: that's just the byproduct of that is a sensory experience potentially,
Speaker 1: that's what we think. Okay, there's that, so okay. So
Speaker 1: that was the whole point, right, is that like if
Speaker 1: we leave them alone, we'll see what happens. There was
Speaker 1: kind of a problem that actually emerged fairly early on
Speaker 1: with just leaving a kid alone in this weird austere
Speaker 1: room like these are almost always set up in like
Speaker 1: a session environment the majority of the cases, particularly in
Speaker 1: these studies, where it was like a padded room, and
Speaker 1: it was because a lot of the time they were
Speaker 1: engaging in self harm, and so we didn't want to
Speaker 1: leave them with sharp corners and a lot of things
Speaker 1: which with which they could injure themselves, and that include
Speaker 1: hitting their head on the floor, head on the walls,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so these were like very sterile, austere,
Speaker 1: padded environments that were very out of the norm for
Speaker 1: where that individual spent most of their time, right, And
Speaker 1: so what happened is they take them into this room
Speaker 1: and they just leave and like shut the door and
Speaker 1: basically wait outside the door, so that in case the
Speaker 1: kid did try and leave most of the time these
Speaker 1: were kids, by the way, in case the person did
Speaker 1: try to leave, they could like they wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to just run off the property and get hit by
Speaker 1: a truck or something, so they're like they're still staying
Speaker 1: by for safety, but for the kid's experience, they're basically
Speaker 1: alone in a strange room. Well, that can be a weird,
Speaker 1: distressing environment for a kid to find themselves who already
Speaker 1: doesn't really understand what's going on. There's a very strange
Speaker 1: set of people doing a very strange set of things,
Speaker 1: and now they're just like left alone in a room
Speaker 1: for a long time, and they're like, what is going
Speaker 1: on here? I don't like this? And so there was
Speaker 1: kind of a problem with this idea of them just
Speaker 1: being left alone in the alone condition because they might
Speaker 1: actually see a huge spike in a bunch of random behaviors,
Speaker 1: which could include the self injury behavior that were much
Speaker 1: more a product of the fact that they were in
Speaker 1: this weird, distressing environment that they've just been tossed in
Speaker 1: and left alone, and not having anything to do with
Speaker 1: something provocative that someone's doing to them or that they
Speaker 1: want to change or anything. They're just like a very
Speaker 1: novel place to be that is not very comfortable and
Speaker 1: strange and unfamiliar, right, And so instead what they did
Speaker 1: did they switched to that was something that was more
Speaker 1: like an ignore condition. And so it happened is they
Speaker 1: basically go in and the person's in the room with
Speaker 1: them still they just pay no attention to them whatsoever,
Speaker 1: no matter what they do. Unless it becomes like untenable
Speaker 1: in the level of danger that is happening, then they
Speaker 1: probably intervene. But the idea was, if we're going to
Speaker 1: do this alone condition instead of being alone will be
Speaker 1: in there, we just won't interact with them, and so
Speaker 1: they call it and ignore. Okay, just need to set
Speaker 1: the context for.
Speaker 2: That, sure, sure, yeah, I think it's super valuable.
Speaker 1: Perfect all right, So in this new ignore condition and
Speaker 1: you can ignore these ads, Okay. So I was just
Speaker 1: describing the fact that there's this new development with respect
Speaker 1: to the standard procedures for a functional analysis and FA
Speaker 1: they had done this alone condition instead of change to
Speaker 1: ignore condition. That's actually kind of tangential to the point
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make here, which is that the modification
Speaker 1: was with respect to that ignore condition. Well, there's this
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen study published by Queerim and friends that proposed
Speaker 1: that assessors could actually start the functional analysis process with
Speaker 1: an extended alone slash ignore condition. Depending on whether you're
Speaker 1: doing one or the other. Most of the time it's
Speaker 1: ignored anymore. And again this was identified as an automatic
Speaker 1: reinforcement screening condition. The hypothesis was that if low rates
Speaker 1: of the target behavior, whatever they were there to be
Speaker 1: assessed for, if there was not really occurring during the
Speaker 1: extended ignore loan condition before they got into any of
Speaker 1: the other conditions, then those behaviors were unlikely to occur
Speaker 1: during those conditions during the FA, allowing the experimenter to
Speaker 1: use then only the three other conditions attention, toy play
Speaker 1: which is the control condition, and escape from demands. And
Speaker 1: in addition, if they did start the entire FA process
Speaker 1: by that extended ignore condition, and they did observe high
Speaker 1: rates of that target behavior occurring, then there was like
Speaker 1: a fairly good likelihood that that was already going to
Speaker 1: be automatically reinforced behavior, which is to say, sensory stimulation
Speaker 1: or something of the you know, some kind of sensory
Speaker 1: input that they were getting from that experience or whatever
Speaker 1: it was, right, that's the general hypothesis that was floated
Speaker 1: out there. Anyway, So they're like, well, if that's what
Speaker 1: we're trying to get at, we can just do that
Speaker 1: whole all those conditions right up front, just do a
Speaker 1: nice long process where they're give an ample opportunity to
Speaker 1: if this is something they're getting out of this, we
Speaker 1: can do it now, and if they if they do
Speaker 1: observe it, then we can probably conclude without doing the
Speaker 1: rest of the analysis that this is probably automatically reinforced behavior.
Speaker 1: It's probably sensory, it's probably self stimulatory, and we don't
Speaker 1: have to do the rest of the assessment now. For
Speaker 1: the experiment they did, and they did the normal standard
Speaker 1: functional analysis, so that what they could do is see,
Speaker 1: if we observe it here, well, we also observe it here,
Speaker 1: can we reliably determine that this probably is And they
Speaker 1: had a very high correspondence. If they observed those target
Speaker 1: behaviors during the extended ignore condition, then they also saw
Speaker 1: them in the other conditions and definitely in the ignore
Speaker 1: conditions during the rest of the FA and they could
Speaker 1: reasonably use those to inform this was probably self stimulatory
Speaker 1: and if they didn't observe it in those conditions at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the process. They also didn't observe those
Speaker 1: target behaviors during the alone or ignore conditions during the
Speaker 1: regular FA, and they did see some other kind of
Speaker 1: differentiated outcome in the other conditions. And so they reasonably said, like,
Speaker 1: we propose that when you start your functional analysis procedure,
Speaker 1: just do this nice elongated extended ignore condition. You don't
Speaker 1: see any of those behaviors. Just don't do that condition anymore.
Speaker 1: Just do the remaining three. Do that attention condition, the
Speaker 1: toy play control condition, and escape from whatever the situation
Speaker 1: is demands type of condition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that makes sense. I mean, because
Speaker 2: ultimately this is in service of like I mean, you're
Speaker 2: trying to discover the features that reinforce or occasion behavior, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's ultimately what they're trying to do. But there is
Speaker 2: something valuable because I think the implication here is not
Speaker 2: necessarily that you don't need this extended alone condition. It
Speaker 2: is another way to save you time, yes, to get
Speaker 2: the results of your assessment more rapidly and not waste
Speaker 2: time on conditions you don't need.
Speaker 1: Exactly right, that was exactly right, perfect.
Speaker 2: So, although the pre screening condition is not as broadly
Speaker 2: incorporated as some other refinements. It is still a relatively
Speaker 2: systematic change that is often used when conducting fas, and arguably,
Speaker 2: I think anytime you are in a space where you
Speaker 2: can save time to get to well enformed interventions, you're
Speaker 2: better off. And so I think this is just one
Speaker 2: of those things that like it makes sense to adopt
Speaker 2: that as part of your FA standard exactly right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you probably noticed a theme that a lot
Speaker 1: of these refinements were toward efficiency. It was like, how
Speaker 1: can we make this a quicker and more effective process
Speaker 1: where we can get to intervention, treatment supports, what have
Speaker 1: you more quickly so that we can we can reduce
Speaker 1: the amount of time this individual is existing in conditions
Speaker 1: where they're having to experience this challenging behavior. Is a
Speaker 1: potentially a very high volume.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean there's a conversation inside of this where
Speaker 2: it's like you're balancing treatment utility versus practical utility, right,
Speaker 2: Like what is ultimately going to serve the most effective
Speaker 2: treatment versus what is going to be the most useful
Speaker 2: in a treatment context in terms of like like practical use,
Speaker 2: and like it does not benefit anybody to have extended
Speaker 2: long assessment periods that delays access to treatment that's going
Speaker 2: to be useful, right, but it also doesn't benefit anybody
Speaker 2: where the treatment is not useful in itself. So we
Speaker 2: have to strike a balance between those two things.
Speaker 1: Exactly right. So people probably hear this and maybe the
Speaker 1: whole entire time you've been asking or screaming, I don't
Speaker 1: know that you've been experiencing and having the thought like yeah,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, you're also providing
Speaker 1: a lot of reinforcement to self harm behaviors. I hear you.
Speaker 1: We will get to that in the discussion where we're
Speaker 1: going to get more into things like some of the
Speaker 1: ethical implications, some of the other considerations. Some of the
Speaker 1: different approaches people have taken to this are hot takes,
Speaker 1: Like we do have something to say about that piece, right,
Speaker 1: because like this is not a new criticism people who
Speaker 1: have been responding to this for a long time. We'll
Speaker 1: get to what others have said about that piece of it.
Speaker 1: But just just know that, like I hear you, it's
Speaker 1: coming up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna get to it. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's so much to say about so much of this.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we're now at the point where we have
Speaker 1: introduced a lot of refinements to try and streamline and
Speaker 1: increase efficiency in this process so that we can have
Speaker 1: as quick of an assessment as possible that guides to
Speaker 1: as an effective a treatment or intervention as possible. That
Speaker 1: what results as an outcome of this assessment is data
Speaker 1: that tells us what supports are likely to be effective
Speaker 1: for this individual. Okay, yes, there's that. There were other
Speaker 1: innovations that occurred to also boost the utility and effectiveness
Speaker 1: and robustness and what have you of these functional analyzes
Speaker 1: in which researchers attempted to refine, revise, alter these functional
Speaker 1: analysis protocols to work in other environments and situations. So
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss three major ones here in sort
Speaker 1: of the detail. Because these are like, the reason I
Speaker 1: separated these from those other refinements are these are like,
Speaker 1: these are totally different approaches all together, like how to
Speaker 1: conduct a functional analysis. The refinements we discussed are like
Speaker 1: how to make the existing process more efficient. These are
Speaker 1: how to do a different process, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So that's why, yeah, I separated these in their own thing.
Speaker 2: The structure of these are very different. I would say
Speaker 2: that the critical feature that you're going to find in
Speaker 2: all the functional analysis variations that we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about are that all of them include at least one
Speaker 2: test and one control. Yeah, right, like that is a
Speaker 2: core feature of functional analysis. I you've got a test,
Speaker 2: you've got to control, and then everything else is a
Speaker 2: variation from that theme, you know. But the standard DEFA
Speaker 2: is kind of its own thing. And then the first
Speaker 2: one we're going to talk about here is latency based defas,
Speaker 2: which I love doing because you don't have to manage
Speaker 2: behavior as long true, which is really nice, and you
Speaker 2: don't have to worry about delivering as much reinforcement. So
Speaker 2: as some people may have considered, as we've been talking
Speaker 2: about this, some behaviors are too intense to allow them
Speaker 2: to happen fully or even really at all. Nevertheless, it
Speaker 2: has been generally considered the most ethical course of action.
Speaker 2: And there's debate about this, and I think it's really important,
Speaker 2: but generally speaking, it is the most ethical to attempt
Speaker 2: to understand the function of behavior, what the individual gets
Speaker 2: out of it, what they need, before trying to proceed
Speaker 2: blindly to treatment, Because getting the wrong treatment delays effect
Speaker 2: the treatment, and it also puts the person at risk
Speaker 2: because they continue to engage in the behavior or the
Speaker 2: behavior worsens as a result of not having a function correct, right,
Speaker 2: So like you have the argument is there? Okay? Yeah,
Speaker 2: So a modified version of FA was developed to attempt
Speaker 2: to capture the behavior without really letting it occur.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's kind of the thing is, like some
Speaker 1: of these some of these behaviors are so intense that
Speaker 1: they a single instance would be an intolerable amount of
Speaker 1: that behavior occurring, Okay, And so they developed these latency
Speaker 1: based fas so established in a twenty thirteen study by
Speaker 1: Thomasin Sasse and friends. In this arrangement, the experimental presents
Speaker 1: the provocative situation that again may escalate the behavior that
Speaker 1: could be like seriously dangerous. And then they start a
Speaker 1: timer and as soon as the onset of the behavior begins,
Speaker 1: like as soon as it even starts, it hasn't like
Speaker 1: fully even exploded yet. It's like on the verge of starting,
Speaker 1: they provide whatever the putative outcome or reinforcement is for
Speaker 1: that condition and terminate the rest of the session before
Speaker 1: I can escalate anymore. The more quickly the behavior occurs,
Speaker 1: the more likely that outcome is the effective thing that
Speaker 1: the individual is seeking in those moments. I don't think
Speaker 1: we really explain this super clearly in the original studies.
Speaker 1: That essentially what happened is like, let's go back to
Speaker 1: that social disapproval condition that is in the normal situation,
Speaker 1: and let's go with the refinement of like a five
Speaker 1: minute condition of that socialist approval. So they come into
Speaker 1: the room and they're interacting briefly for a little bit,
Speaker 1: and then the person, the experimenter or the therapist whatever,
Speaker 1: the tech says I can't talk right now, I'm busy,
Speaker 1: or I can't I can't hang out with you, I'm busy,
Speaker 1: and then they withdraw their attention. If the individual in
Speaker 1: this room then demonstrates the target behavior of concern, let's
Speaker 1: say self harming again, then the tech will come over
Speaker 1: and they'll provide attention, but they only do it for
Speaker 1: like twenty or thirty seconds. They're just providing this, So
Speaker 1: don't do that, please stop, You're gonna hurt yourself. It's
Speaker 1: like usually, I mean, it depends on a wide variety
Speaker 1: of factors, but how they respond is informed by an interview,
Speaker 1: which we haven't talked about. We'll try I'll try to
Speaker 1: remember to make sure we get to that in the future.
Speaker 1: But essentially how they respond is informed by what was
Speaker 1: normally or supposed to normally be. This how people would
Speaker 1: respond when this individual would do this in their normal environment.
Speaker 1: But anyway, they'll only do that for about twenty seconds.
Speaker 1: Then they withdraw their attention again, and so then the
Speaker 1: individual could again immediately do that self harm behavior. And
Speaker 1: if they do, then the therapist immediately comes over and
Speaker 1: addresses it again, and back and forth they go for
Speaker 1: the entire five minute interval. So you could have like
Speaker 1: a maximum instance in which they they will do self
Speaker 1: harm and receive some outcome for it that could be reinforcing,
Speaker 1: and then it's withdrawn and then they do it again
Speaker 1: and they receive enforcement again, and they do it again
Speaker 1: and they receive it again. Could do this up to
Speaker 1: three times a minute. If they're really really efficient, it'd
Speaker 1: be once every time, Like assuming it was a twenty
Speaker 1: second interaction for the social disapproval, they could do that
Speaker 1: up to three times a minute to really maximize how
Speaker 1: much attention they could get to how much effort it
Speaker 1: took for them to do the thing, the self harm behavior.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: All that is to say that in these latency based ones,
Speaker 1: there is no opportunity for repeated opportunities for that behavior
Speaker 1: or escalation is like they start to get worked up
Speaker 1: and you're like, boom, reinforcement, whatever the thing is, whatever
Speaker 1: the outcome is, we deliver it right away before this
Speaker 1: can escalate, and then we stop. We're not doing it again, right,
Speaker 1: And it's how long did it take before I provoked
Speaker 1: you to you starting to escalate? And that's the latency piece.
Speaker 2: Right, So it'd be like, you know, we present an ad,
Speaker 2: how long does it take for you to start skipping
Speaker 2: through the ad? Okay, so we are back. We're talking
Speaker 2: about latency based that phase. And really the feature is
Speaker 2: that when we present the evocative or the provocative stimulus
Speaker 2: to whatever's going to escalate the behavior, we start a timer.
Speaker 2: We record when the onset of the behavior, we deliver
Speaker 2: the reinforcer right away so that the behavior does not
Speaker 2: continue to escalate, and that is the end of that session.
Speaker 2: Like once the behavior starts, that is the end of
Speaker 2: that session. Because it's supportant for everybody to know, latency
Speaker 2: is for the time between the stimulus and a response, right,
Speaker 2: So that's why it's called a latency based AFA. It's
Speaker 2: the time between when we present that evocative stimulus to
Speaker 2: the time the response starts. Now related to this, Najowski
Speaker 2: at All in twenty thirteen identify that there are some smaller,
Speaker 2: lower stakes behaviors that reliably precede escalation to higher magnitude behaviors.
Speaker 2: They could reinforce those less intense behaviors as functional proxies
Speaker 2: for the target behavior of interest and obtain clear, differentiated
Speaker 2: results which could proceed to an effective intervention recommendation. So
Speaker 2: I imagine what we're talking about here as a precursor.
Speaker 1: FA right, Yep, that's exactly what that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, precursor FFAs are really cool and coming from a
Speaker 2: place where I work with folks that have that really
Speaker 2: severe behavior, like these are life saving tools. Yeah, being
Speaker 2: able to identify related precursors to a behavior can save
Speaker 2: somebody's life. You know. I've done fas for like rectal
Speaker 2: digging behaviors and eye gouging behaviors, and it was because
Speaker 2: we had these tools that we were able to do
Speaker 2: it and figure out the functions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was actually going to share a story of
Speaker 1: like someone that I did work with who they were
Speaker 1: a very large person and they would often run to
Speaker 1: places where there were hot water. Whether we were sharp objects,
Speaker 1: they would try to run out the door. If they
Speaker 1: got escalated, they would attack and they would like punch, hit, scratch, bite.
Speaker 1: They got really intense and they would really really badly
Speaker 1: into themselves. But before they did that, they would reliably
Speaker 1: bite their thumb, and so it was like as soon
Speaker 1: as they were getting agitated, they would bite their thumb,
Speaker 1: and you knew, okay, we are now on the escalation trajectory.
Speaker 1: So what you could do as part of a functional
Speaker 1: analysis is reinforce the thumb biting and only that, and
Speaker 1: we didn't let it get past that point because that
Speaker 1: was functionally the same as the rest of the behavior.
Speaker 1: The outcome for that was the same as the outcome
Speaker 1: for the bigger, more escalated behavior. At least that's what
Speaker 1: the research seems to have shown, is that like, we
Speaker 1: can reinforce those precursors and then it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: get to the point of severe danger because the lower
Speaker 1: stakes want to bite your thumb, which is also like problematic.
Speaker 1: Like this he would scar himself from some of the
Speaker 1: biting he would do, but like that wasn't getting the
Speaker 1: point where he was cutting himself or running into traffic.
Speaker 1: So it was like, we can reinforce the lower magnitude
Speaker 1: version of this before it escalates, and then provide an
Speaker 1: intervention based on the fact that we can presume that
Speaker 1: the outcomes of the same because they're part of the
Speaker 1: same class of behaviors. It's just part of the escalation
Speaker 1: ramping up.
Speaker 2: And it's super important to understand when we talk about
Speaker 2: synthesize that phase later.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: True, that is so important to understand that precursor piece
Speaker 2: because that is such a key element to It's not everything,
Speaker 2: but it is a key element to the synthesize that
Speaker 2: phase when we talk about that in the next episode.
Speaker 1: Perfect, yes, thank you for teeing it up so beautifully.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's that's getting That's like the latency based
Speaker 1: fays as well as those precursor fays, they were kind
Speaker 1: of related in a lot of ways, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to incorporate them there because with the with the latency base,
Speaker 1: like you often want to stop it before, like you're
Speaker 1: basically reinforcing the precursor in that as well. But at
Speaker 1: that point you you terminate the assessment so that you
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily getting out of hand, right, Like, how many
Speaker 1: times are you willing to allow someone to stab someone
Speaker 1: as part of an FA? Zero times zero is the
Speaker 1: right number. No stapping.
Speaker 2: It literally can't happen.
Speaker 1: Yes, it can't happen. So it's like you you stop
Speaker 1: it before it gets to that point. Okay. Another kind
Speaker 1: of similar way that these are set up, but they're
Speaker 1: technically their own class of things is called a trial
Speaker 1: based functional analysis. Now, functional analyzes were and usually are
Speaker 1: conducted in these as I mentioned, highly structured, tightly controlled
Speaker 1: settings with many safety precautions in place, right, Like, like
Speaker 1: I said, the padded rooms, they're like lots of staff
Speaker 1: on hand, there's very little in the environments they could
Speaker 1: possibly hurt themselves with or somebody else. But in reality,
Speaker 1: that's not where or what the situation is like when
Speaker 1: those type of behaviors tend to occur for that individual, right,
Speaker 1: they're not usually like they did not start life or
Speaker 1: let's spend most of their time in these patterned rooms.
Speaker 1: Usually they're at home, they're in school, they're in a
Speaker 1: grocery so, or they're in an actual place with a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff around them and a lot of potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous stuff, and so that's just not similar to the
Speaker 1: situation in which that individual's challenge of behaviors tend to occur.
Speaker 1: So there was this nineteen ninety five study by Sigafus
Speaker 1: and Saggers and they pioneered a different presentation for their
Speaker 1: functional analysis functional analysis assessment that they called a trial
Speaker 1: based functional analysis.
Speaker 2: Yes, so in this arrangement, the experimenter first presents a
Speaker 2: calm setting event that is unlikely to evoke a problem behavior.
Speaker 2: Then the experimenter presents the evocative situation, similar to a
Speaker 2: latency based FA if it's our behavior occurs, the pre
Speaker 2: selected outcome is delivered, and then the session is terminated.
Speaker 2: These usually last only one to three minutes and have
Speaker 2: the similar benefit of stopping the behavior before it escalates uncontrollably.
Speaker 2: So it does allow us to kind of evaluate the
Speaker 2: context in which the behavior is evoked without seeing the
Speaker 2: follow up of the dangerous behavior that might continues to occur.
Speaker 1: And again they can kind of do these now more
Speaker 1: out in normal environments. So it's like, this is the
Speaker 1: situation we're in, We're all prepared and ready to go.
Speaker 1: We're going to just present the vokave situation. See if
Speaker 1: it happens, and then if it does provide that that
Speaker 1: potential reinforcer, and then we'll call it done for that trial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it was just a one and done. Does this
Speaker 1: reliably produce the behavior? Can we reliably provide something that
Speaker 1: would reinforce that behavior? And then that trial can complete.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't produce that behavior and there's no opportunity
Speaker 1: for that putative consequence or the outcome, then we could
Speaker 1: reliably say that probably is not the situation, That's not
Speaker 1: what that individual is going for, right, Yeah, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they can do these in those more naturalistic environments. Grocery stores.
Speaker 1: Schools is actually a very commonplace.
Speaker 2: Schools. I was going to say, schools is probably the
Speaker 2: most common you'll see that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that those most likely with this is
Speaker 1: happening is in schools. And then they can get to
Speaker 1: use that assessment data to suggest and inform a potential
Speaker 1: intervention package that they might have then put together to
Speaker 1: support this individual's communication or environmental arrangements that are less
Speaker 1: likely to cause the kind of distress that results in
Speaker 1: self harm or aggression toward others. Right, absolutely, all right,
Speaker 1: the final sort of arrangement we're going to describe that
Speaker 1: was kind of a different take on this is again
Speaker 1: similar to this trial based FA. These are natural environment
Speaker 1: would also called like pop up or FA burst contingency
Speaker 1: functional analyzes, and as I said, these are are very
Speaker 1: similar to this idea of the trial based functional analysis.
Speaker 1: It's in a natural environment where this is likely to happen,
Speaker 1: but these can be arranged for their much longer, so
Speaker 1: it's sort of just given an opportunity, you are there
Speaker 1: observing the whole time. They're not really planned, but given
Speaker 1: the opportunity, you jump in when and if that target
Speaker 1: behavior naturally occurs as part of the sort of regular
Speaker 1: daily situation. So the experiment might observe for a long
Speaker 1: time and again they're doing this same environment that's highly
Speaker 1: likely to evoke that behavior of concern here, and then
Speaker 1: when it does again, they provide the outcome they're attempting
Speaker 1: to measure regarding whether or not that is the thing,
Speaker 1: that is what the individual is attempting to obtain. What
Speaker 1: are they seeking to get out of this? What do
Speaker 1: they need? Can we identify that by providing it when
Speaker 1: that target behavior occurs, systematically providing it.
Speaker 2: And this requires some staff training as well, So like
Speaker 2: if it's happening in natural environment, and there's like staff
Speaker 2: or caregivers. Like what they are supposed to do is
Speaker 2: when that behavior does occur under whatever conditions, they are
Speaker 2: supposed to deliver whatever outcome, like immediately, they're supposed to
Speaker 2: drop everything, and like basically their response is contingent on
Speaker 2: the burst of behavior that occurs. And that's essentially what
Speaker 2: happens is like the minute the behavior starts to occur
Speaker 2: in whatever condition, because the conditions are longer, we are
Speaker 2: prepared to do an attention condition at this time. So
Speaker 2: we are going to when this behavior occurs, we deliver
Speaker 2: attention and see what the rate of behavior is that
Speaker 2: in that particular condition, so or if it persists. So
Speaker 2: it's an interesting one. It's a fairly new one, but
Speaker 2: it is one that does exist because it is occurring
Speaker 2: in naturally natural environments, and it is something that is
Speaker 2: pretty unique. And ideally this occurs when, if my understanding
Speaker 2: is correct, it occurs when it's difficult to capture naturally
Speaker 2: occurring mosh. So like this might be something where like
Speaker 2: you know, you have a hard time kind of like
Speaker 2: setting up that evocative situation, and you know there are
Speaker 2: certain situations that are a little bit more difficult, like
Speaker 2: you know, maybe going to a doctor's office or something
Speaker 2: like that, So you might do something like that where
Speaker 2: it's less it's it's similar to trial based, but it's
Speaker 2: a little bit different because you are programming in a
Speaker 2: different way. We kind of thought about this before the
Speaker 2: show too, and like in the middle of the show,
Speaker 2: there are studies on this, but it's kind of unique
Speaker 2: and kind of like its own thing, and it is
Speaker 2: I think currently being further evaluated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just as you said, like, the conditions under which
Speaker 1: this makes sense as an approach are just as you're saying, like,
Speaker 1: if you try to manufacture the conditions, that might not
Speaker 1: be enough to actually create the context of which that
Speaker 1: behavior is likely to occur. So you can't do the
Speaker 1: actual assessment because you never get to observe it. You
Speaker 1: never get to attempt any kind of arrangement that would
Speaker 1: allow you to get an assessment other ones in which
Speaker 1: just might occur. Are like you don't have a space
Speaker 1: to try and conduct that functional assessment, so the best
Speaker 1: you can do is go into the space or it
Speaker 1: currently exists. This might make a lot of sense if
Speaker 1: you are in a situation where even if you had
Speaker 1: a space, for whatever reason, you couldn't get the person
Speaker 1: to that space, and so you just have to show
Speaker 1: up where they are, Like if it's not safe to
Speaker 1: drive them, for one, if they don't have transportation. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons that you couldn't necessarily get them there,
Speaker 1: but you want to be able to assess this anyway.
Speaker 1: So there are a variety circumstances under which this makes sense.
Speaker 1: And you can also imagine like how much more valid
Speaker 1: it is to be like, well, this is we didn't
Speaker 1: manufacture anything. This just happens. Yeah, it happens, and like
Speaker 1: we get to be there, so we can capture the
Speaker 1: opportunity to see, can we do an actual assessment analysis
Speaker 1: of this when it happens. That's got more validity to
Speaker 1: an approximation of what kind of outcomes are most likely
Speaker 1: the ones that are occurring here that would tell us
Speaker 1: something about this this behavior right exactly. Okay, So those
Speaker 1: are some of the major adjustments that have been attempted
Speaker 1: to find ways to bring utility to functional analysis to
Speaker 1: address some of the issues that came up with functional analyzes.
Speaker 1: We have a lot more to say about this. We
Speaker 1: haven't even gotten into the fact that, like, similar to
Speaker 1: this idea of natural environment, what about just observing and
Speaker 1: not manipulating anything. There's a name for that too. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that. And there are data that have
Speaker 1: compared those observational assessments to experimental assessments to questionnaires. There's
Speaker 1: actually a lot to impact inside of those spaces. Of course,
Speaker 1: many of you, I'm hoping, if you are behavior analysts,
Speaker 1: will also be wondering, well, why haven't you talked about
Speaker 1: the synthesized FA yet or the ISCA or the PFA
Speaker 1: different names for the same thing. We are going to
Speaker 1: get into that next time. That'll be a part of it.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lodge unpack with that, because that also
Speaker 1: came with that was such a major shift and how
Speaker 1: functional analyzes were conducted. It kind of created a schism,
Speaker 1: like there is kind of a camp of people who
Speaker 1: are like, we'll go this route with functional analyzies and
Speaker 1: other people who are like, no, we're not going that
Speaker 1: route with functional analysies. Yeah, So getting into the controversy, well,
Speaker 1: I think will be its own huge discussion we need
Speaker 1: to unpack because there's a lot of nuance there and
Speaker 1: a lot of smart people making a lot of great
Speaker 1: observations and smart points on both sides of that discussion,
Speaker 1: And I think we just want to be as transparent
Speaker 1: and objective as we can be about what's going on, right,
Speaker 1: And I mean, I'm happy for us to kind of
Speaker 1: weigh in on some of these aspects of things, but
Speaker 1: I do think like let's just sort of unpack what's
Speaker 1: happening as part of it, and that will require a
Speaker 1: lengthy discuss that we want to save for its own thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most definitely.
Speaker 1: There's also like some of the refinements that have come
Speaker 1: from the interventions that have been developed out of these.
Speaker 1: There's a wide array, but there's some that I think
Speaker 1: that are particularly interesting that are worth spending a little
Speaker 1: time discussing. And we've got our own opinions to share
Speaker 1: on some of these. So there's plenty for a whole
Speaker 1: nother discussion here that we're going to save for next time.
Speaker 1: So never don't you fret if you're a worried we
Speaker 1: hadn't gotten to your favorite stuff yet, We'll get there.
Speaker 1: And if your favorite stuff is behind us, well, then
Speaker 1: keep coming back because we've got fun things to say
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And if your favorite stuff is adds, that's weird.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. We're wrapping this up. We're wrapping
Speaker 1: up this particular discussion for part two. We do have
Speaker 1: a part three. Part three should finish it up. I
Speaker 1: think we'll be able to fit everything we need to
Speaker 1: in that part of the discussion. It's possible this will
Speaker 1: go part four, but I really don't think there's enough
Speaker 1: left for that to be the case. But I'll leave
Speaker 1: the door open. If there's something we missed. If you
Speaker 1: like to chime in and share some stories to give
Speaker 1: us some context, to help us unpack something that maybe
Speaker 1: we said incorrectly, or a citation that we got wrong
Speaker 1: or missed, feel free to email us. You can contact
Speaker 1: us directly at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com, or on
Speaker 1: the social media platforms. If I am blowing your mind,
Speaker 1: if we both of us are doing this, If we're
Speaker 1: blowing your mind so far and you're like, man, I've
Speaker 1: never learned so much in one place, well, congratulations. We're
Speaker 1: happy to have supported you in that journey. You can
Speaker 1: help other people have that same experience by leaving a
Speaker 1: rating and a review, liking, subscribing, telling a friend wherever
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Speaker 1: If you've got constructive feedback, we're happy to hear those things,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't need to be in the context of
Speaker 1: a review. It can be nice. And if you like
Speaker 1: to support us financially because you're a that blown away,
Speaker 1: which is very cool, then we appreciate that. We love
Speaker 1: blowing minds, and you can do that by heading over
Speaker 1: to Patreon. If you go there, you also get some
Speaker 1: bonus content, add free episodes, early episodes, and I will
Speaker 1: shout out your name. You can put whatever name you want.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to know that it's you want
Speaker 1: people to know that you support this podcast. You just
Speaker 1: want to do and secret. You can put whatever name
Speaker 1: you want, or you can put your name, and either
Speaker 1: way I'm gonna read it. So a giant thank you
Speaker 1: and shout out to the people who put their name
Speaker 1: as Mike, m Megan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, Kiara,
Speaker 1: and Charlie. Thank you all for your support, for your
Speaker 1: continued support, for your loyalty, for your generosity, for being
Speaker 1: just generally awesome humans. And we appreciate you.
Speaker 2: You're perfect and we love you.
Speaker 1: I did not say this before, but we were going
Speaker 1: to recommend some things. We did this at the end
Speaker 1: of every discussion. Hopefully you're a returning person and you
Speaker 1: know that by now, but if you don't, then that
Speaker 1: is a fun thing that we're about to do. After
Speaker 1: the credits, I also would like to say thank you
Speaker 1: to my team of people, without whom I could not
Speaker 1: make this show. So writing in fact checking from Shane
Speaker 1: and myself. Thank you for your help and for recording
Speaker 1: with me today.
Speaker 2: Shane, Hey, anytime, happy to do it.
Speaker 1: Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. And the person
Speaker 1: who is extraordinary, amazing, wonderful, awesome, perfect on, creable and
Speaker 1: just the best overall audio engineer is Justin. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Justin for making us podcasts sound like good podcasts do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we only sound good because you do good.
Speaker 1: Yes, despite my best efforts, it turns into a podcast,
Speaker 1: and that's thanks to Justin's magic. All right, I think
Speaker 1: I said the things. Is there anything that I missed
Speaker 1: or you would like to add before we get to
Speaker 1: our recommendations. No, let us recommend some things.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm so ready recommendations.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm recommending a board game. I kind of
Speaker 1: tried to strategically over the last few episodes, like I
Speaker 1: recommended a show, a movie, a board game, an album.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to spread out the love a little bit.
Speaker 1: This is a board game. It's actually not a new
Speaker 1: board game. This has been out for a little while.
Speaker 1: It's not that old. It's maybe like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's fifteen years old, thirteen years old, on ten years old,
Speaker 1: something like that. It's it's oldish, but not that old.
Speaker 1: It's called Zulkin. It's spelled tzl k apostrophe.
Speaker 3: I n.
Speaker 1: This is based on the mind calendar.
Speaker 2: Mmm.
Speaker 1: And it's this cool gimmick that I really like, which
Speaker 1: is that on the board you have these plastic gears
Speaker 1: that interlock and every time you take a turn. Once
Speaker 1: everybody has taken a turn, they're putting out their pieces
Speaker 1: on the gears. Then you move the gears one space
Speaker 1: and then that changes what you could potentially gain from
Speaker 1: having been on those gears. And then you take your turn,
Speaker 1: and then you move the gears again and so and
Speaker 1: you've only so many times that you can put your
Speaker 1: pieces on gears or you're taking pieces back from gears,
Speaker 1: and you're basically doing that for four rounds of the gears.
Speaker 1: They have little stickers so you know how long it's
Speaker 1: been per round. But you do that and then and
Speaker 1: it's just a really cool idea. And basically you're doing
Speaker 1: a thing where you're like collecting resources to do certain
Speaker 1: things you want to collect other like build buildings or
Speaker 1: you want to move up a temple, or you want
Speaker 1: to build technologies, whatever, you can do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: But the point is you sort of choose to collect
Speaker 1: some resources and then you get to just move the
Speaker 1: little gear around again, and that just moves your pieces
Speaker 1: down different spaces that give you different abilities that you
Speaker 1: can then take. So you kind of have to calculate out, well,
Speaker 1: how long do I want to wait on this gear
Speaker 1: before I get moved to the space I want or
Speaker 1: I get moved past the space that I want, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then choose at that point to how you're going
Speaker 1: to interact with your options. Just a really cool neat idea,
Speaker 1: A really fun little system that's been developed and it
Speaker 1: looks really cool and really fine and it's not particularly expensive.
Speaker 1: This is the publisher is called check Games or CGE,
Speaker 1: and so you can check out those. But that's Zulkan
Speaker 1: zupboard game.
Speaker 2: That sounds so fun. I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to recommend a series of four books
Speaker 2: right now, currently eight, because I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed and
Speaker 2: I am I can't help but be obsessed and so fair.
Speaker 2: I'm going to continue to talk about Dungeon Crawler Carl
Speaker 2: until I turn blue in the face because I am
Speaker 2: having so much fun with this series. So by the
Speaker 2: time you hear this, I'll have read the first four
Speaker 2: books and they are called in order, Dungeon Crawler, Carl,
Speaker 2: Carl's Doomsday Scenario, The Dungeon Anarchist Cookbook, and The Gate
Speaker 2: of the Faral Gods.
Speaker 1: Beautiful.
Speaker 2: And this book series is one of the best world
Speaker 2: building book series I've ever read in my life.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I mean it is truly like it talks about like
Speaker 2: at some point in time they go on talk shows
Speaker 2: because because remember the because I've talked about it before,
Speaker 2: but I'll talk about it again. The whole premise is
Speaker 2: that Earth has now been reclaimed by a private organization
Speaker 2: to reclaim all of the resources. So like every Earthling
Speaker 2: has now become enslaved by this alien organization and they
Speaker 2: are forced to compete in a dungeon crawl similar to
Speaker 2: dungeons and dragons, and there are eighteen floors. It's like
Speaker 2: a game show. Like it's a game show. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a reality game show. So it's broadcast across the entire universe.
Speaker 2: And of course, because it's being broadcast as a reality show,
Speaker 2: there are advertisers, and there are sponsors, and there are
Speaker 2: all the things that go along with that, and so
Speaker 2: it's just it just gets more absurd and more ridiculous
Speaker 2: as it goes. And so I am about to finish
Speaker 2: the Gate of the Parah Gods, which there's at some
Speaker 2: point in time, there's a haunted sex doll. There's all
Speaker 2: kinds of things that are happening in this book. It's
Speaker 2: just it gets really really obnoxious and absurd, and I
Speaker 2: love it. I love it. I am just like I can't.
Speaker 2: I don't normally care about spoilers, but this is one
Speaker 2: of those things where I'm like, I don't want to
Speaker 2: read anything about this book until I finished the eight
Speaker 2: books because I don't want any spoilers. So I'm like,
Speaker 2: I want just to be surprised by everything that happens.
Speaker 2: And it's like I get the same feeling that I
Speaker 2: get when I read The Dark Tower the first time.
Speaker 2: M that's awesome, which is just like, I'm so excited
Speaker 2: to see what happens next and I don't want anybody
Speaker 2: to spoil it for me. So anyway, it's a really
Speaker 2: good time. It's a lot of fun, and I suggest
Speaker 2: everybody start reading it. You're to hear me talk about
Speaker 2: it a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been so widely recommended to me by so
Speaker 1: many people, so many times. It's definitely like very high
Speaker 1: on the list of like next things to read. And
Speaker 1: I'll probably burn through really quickly like you did. But
Speaker 1: that's super fun, so great. I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1: I recommended Zulkan, the Board, gamelk Apostrovia I n and
Speaker 1: then you recommended Dungeon Crawler Carl. The are apparently eight books.
Speaker 1: You're recommending one through four as an ongoing recommendation, so
Speaker 1: it will come back again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an ongoing recommendation. It will come back every
Speaker 2: time I finished a book, it will be the recommendation.
Speaker 1: Very good, very good. All right, Well that's awesome. As
Speaker 1: I said, you can tell us your thoughts by emailing us.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for listening. I think that's what we
Speaker 1: have to say. Is there anything you liked out or
Speaker 1: that I forgot before we wrap up?
Speaker 2: Nope, that's it perfect.
Speaker 1: This is Abraham and this is Shane. Come back for
Speaker 1: part three next time we are out see yuh.
Speaker 3: You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
Speaker 3: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
Speaker 3: going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 3: and we hope you have an awesome day. B