Talk Behavior to Me: Kendall Ryndak-Samuel

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This week we are joined by a very special guest, Board Certified Behavior Analyst Kendall Rindak-Samuel. Kendall joined us to talk about the fascinating world of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), showing how it can transform fields like education, sports, and corporate systems. Join us as we debunk common myths and gain an enriched understanding of human behavior, all while Kendall shares her dual expertise in behavioral sports psychology and dissemination.

During the episode Kendall discusses the value of ongoing research beyond initial education, highlighting how honing observational skills in daily life can strengthen both personal and professional relationships. She also touches on the pitfalls of self-diagnosis on social media and underscores the need for ethical standards in changing behaviors that genuinely impact individuals’ lives. 
 
 Effective communication is crucial in behavior analysis, and Kendall excels at translating complex terms into accessible language. She recently wrote a book called “Talk Behavior to Me: The Routledge Dictionary of the Top 150 Behavior Analytic Terms and Translations” so that the average person can better understand the different terms used in behavioral analysis. Tune in for practical insights and strategies to enhance your observational skills and deepen your understanding of human behavior, guided by Kendall's expert perspective.

Thank you so much for tuning in, we hope you enjoy the episode and please check out our Patreon channel where we have a lot more content, as well as subscriber only episodes of the show. If you enjoy the podcast, I would kindly ask that you leave us a review and more importantly, please share it with a friend. Thank you for your time and don’t forget that Training Changes Behavior!

Check out Kendall's book: https://a.co/d/c4Z3s1s

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Human Behavior
Podcast.
This week we are joined by avery special guest,
board-certified behavior analyst, Kendall Rindak-Samuel.
Kendall joined us to talk aboutthe fascinating world of
applied behavior analysis,showing how it can transform
fields like education, sportsand corporate system.
Join us as we debunk commonmyths and gain an enriched
understanding of human behavior,all while Kendall shares her

(00:21):
dual expertise in behavioralsports, psychology and
dissemination.
During the episode, Kendalldiscussed the value of ongoing
research beyond initialeducation, highlighting how
honing observational skills indaily life can strengthen both
personal and professionalrelationships.
She also touches on thepitfalls of self-diagnosis on
social media and underscores theneed for ethical standards in
changing behaviors thatgenuinely impact individuals'

(00:42):
lives.
Effective communication iscrucial in behavior analysis and
Kendall excels at translatingcomplex terms into accessible
language.
She recently wrote a bookcalled Talk Behavior to Me the
Routledge Dictionary of the Top150 Behavior Analytic Terms and
Translations.
She wrote that so that theaverage person can better
understand the different termsused in behavioral analysis.
Tune in for practical insightsand strategies to enhance your

(01:05):
observational skills and deepenyour understanding of human
behavior, guided by Kendall'sexpert perspective.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
We hope you enjoyed the episodeand please check out our
Patreon channel, where we have alot more content as well as
subscriber-only episodes of theshow.
If you enjoyed the podcast, I'dkindly ask that you leave us a
review and, more importantly,please share it with a friend.
Thank you for your time anddon't forget that training

(01:26):
changes behavior.
All right, Hello everyone, andthank you for tuning in.
Today, Greg, we have a veryspecial guest who I would like
you to introduce yourself.
We have Kendall Rindak, Samuel,who is a BCBA, a behavior
analyst, and Kendall.
Thank you so much one forcoming on the show.
Tell everyone a little bitabout you so we can jump to the

(01:49):
fun part of the conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me guys.
I am a board-certified behavioranalyst.
I am different than apsychologist.
I feel like a lot of people.
When they ask me what do you do?
I go I'm a behavior analyst.
And they go like a socialworker.
And I go nope.
And they go like a counselor.

(02:11):
What do you do?
I'm like nope, not that either.
So I am a professional who Istudy the environment and I try
to analyze and understand whatis causing different behaviors
to happen and then, if it'ssignificant enough, we put in
strategies to change those.

(02:33):
So it could be something assmall as teaching somebody how
to make a sandwich, or it couldbe as grand as changing an
entire system at a company onhow you can decrease turnover
and putting in incentive systemsand all that.

(02:54):
But what I specifically do?
I work in two areas.
I work in behavioral sportspsychology, so I'm a private
softball instructor.
So I'm a private softballinstructor, so I use behavior
analysis to teach all of mystudents how to pitch, how to
field properly.
I'm using behavioralperformance in order to help

(03:16):
them grow their skills, which isa little bit different than
just typical coaching, becausetypical coaching you just might
look at someone and be like allright, this looks like this is
going wrong.
Let's try this, whereas I kindof track progress over time and
I track the strategies that I'musing and then I also work in
dissemination.
So I teach people how to talkabout behavior analysis, very

(03:39):
basically, and I teach peopleabout what it is, because not
many people know about it.
So, long and short, I do a lot.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
No, that's perfect and this is why I was also
interested to have you on.
And, for anyone listening, gregand I a while back were on the
Behavior Bitches podcast, whichwas a fun one, and they're BCBAs
.
They do a whole lot of stuffand they're just fun to talk to.
And we've also been on the like, the texas association of

(04:08):
school psychologists.
They have their own uh podcastas well.
We we went on there with themand you know the reason and you
I love how you hit it up righthere with your your sort of your
softball example is that it'skind of like one.
We get the same question.
When I tell people I you know,work in human behavior or do
something like that, they'relike oh, are you reading me?
right now Can you tell me thatI'm like, first of all I'm like

(04:28):
ma'am, leave me alone, I'mtrying to have a drink.
That's my usual response.
But there's a lot ofmisconceptions.
And what I also like aboutfolks like you and then the
behavior bitches as well is youknow, you're a practitioner,
right, and so Greg and I arepractitioners, right.
We're not just studying andwriting and reading about this

(04:51):
stuff at a university level oran academic setting, which is
great, you need to have thatstuff.
But you know, we're all aboutthe application of it, and so
you brought up two sort ofcompletely different areas,
which is interesting to me.
One a lot of stuff, a lot of theBCBAs, a lot of this work.
A lot has to do with kids andpeople think about autism or

(05:12):
different issues.
My mom was an occupationaltherapist she actually just
recently retired, so she workedwith a lot of real young kids,
like zero to three, on some ofthose basic things like how to
feed yourself, how to pick upthese different things.
And so you're looking, it'sit's very behavioral based, and
then you put in differentintervention strategies.
But what really fascinated metoo is because you have a

(05:34):
background in softball andyou're a coach, is you're
looking at it from not just acoaching perspective and maybe
softball experience, but likewhat you know about behavior and
I'll you know, I'll ask you.
But in my you know, since I'vebeen doing this for a long time,
it's sort of like once you getin and understand some of the
underlying principles ofbehavior and how humans are,

(05:57):
it's like it opens up this worldthat touches everything.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
So I kind of yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
So I kind of want to get like your perspective on
that, because we even havelisteners, uh, from all
different backgrounds.
Like we have a lot of like lawenforcement, first responders,
some military folks listen, uh,but we also have like fraud
investigators.
We have just interested parents, we have people who just want
to keep themselves safe, becausewe we deal a lot with like sort
of what people call threatrecognition.

(06:24):
That's not what we really do,but it is in a sense so it goes
everywhere, and so sometimesthat can become nebulous to
people.
They're like well, what do youmean?
It touches everything.
So I want to get yourperspective on that, or your
experience in dealing withsomething like that.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah.
So I mean, that's what made mefall in love with this science
is that I saw this opportunityfor a lot of people call it a
technology um, because it reallyis this like huge, like
grouping of strategies and howto um, how to analyze what's

(07:02):
going on and strategies for that, and then strategies to change
behavior, if you need to, and toteach skills and to you know,
work on like increasingmotivation, which is how we live
.
And I just found that was sofascinating.
Because I I really hadn't seenanything like that before in my

(07:24):
life, even like learning aboutgeneral psychology in high
school.
It was cool.
But then when you got to likeoperant and classical
conditioning, I was like, wait asecond, this is actually how
people learn how to do things.
This is how people getmotivated to get out of bed, to
go to their job, to have kids,like everything.

(07:45):
So if you can understand thebasics of that, that's like a
superpower.
So, and and working in thefield that that that's what you
do for a job, it's so cool.
So, um, I really wanted to gointo this because I was like
well, I, there's, there's no way, there's a job for this.

(08:06):
In high school and in college Iwas like I'm so good at this,
breaking down all the operantsand learning about how Pavlov
made his dogs salivate and allof that, but there can't be an
actual job for that.
Well, there is, there is, and Iwas so excited because, again,

(08:32):
I felt like I was going to learnabout a superpower that I could
teach everybody else about.
Then, when I got into it, Ilearned that it's actually kind
of a narrow practice right now.
There are all these differentthings that we can do with the
science, where even on ourboard's website, the board of
behavior analysts, and thenthere is another organization

(08:52):
it's called the Association forBehavior Analysis International.
So all of these organizations,they have all of these
subspecialties of areas thatthey say behavior analysts can
practice in.
And when I found that I waslike, oh my God, I can choose
any of these.
Just like in medicine you couldbe a gynecologist, a

(09:13):
cardiologist, an oncologist, youcould do anything.
I could do the same thing.
But in behavior analysis thisis dope.
But then when I got into it Iwas like whoa, people are only
working in a couple areas.
I want to change that.
I want to grow that, becausethere's research, tons of
research that's been out therethat has said this science

(09:34):
should be used by everybody.
If people understand how to usethis, you could change your
life.
You could change your family'slife, you could change the
gigantic groups like anorganization, a country, for the
better.
And that's why I do what I do,because I want to see a great
impact in the world.

(09:54):
And that's why I found you guys, too, talking about behavior
analysis, behavior science ingeneral and how else it's being
practiced, because really thesetwo areas that are being
practiced in one very, veryheavily is in autism and like
that's where a lot of peoplethink of behavior analysis.

(10:16):
Working is in like schools,therapy centers, and then you
got the other side of it, kindof small Um, but it's called
organization, organizationalbehavior management, which is
like business behavior analysis,so working in the corporate,
setting um and helping people.
You know you've heard of a pitbefore performance improvement

(10:38):
plan stuff like that, incentiveprograms, so that's happening a
little bit.
But I want to grow this fieldand see it thrive and help the
world.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Well, Greg, did you want to add anything before I
leave?

Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah, of course I do.
I'm excited about your bookcoming out in October.
Brian will talk about thatlater.
I'm sure One of the things I'dlike that you did that set you
apart from other people.
Look, there's a lot of.
I get anxious because a lot ofpeople write about stuff they
don't know about and they read abook or they studied in school

(11:13):
and then turn it into theirlife's work without doing any
research after that initialtranche of information they
found.
So one of the things that'stroubling is in Europe right now
they've got a lot of theseseminars where people say, oh,
absolutely everything abouthuman behavior starts and ends
with kinesiology and bodylanguage and this is the end-all
, be-all and it's not.
It has nothing to do with it orvery little to do with the big

(11:35):
process.
What you talk about is you talkabout research.
One of your quotes was that'sanother layer of being really
successful.
Behavior analysis is havingextreme empathy and being able
to put yourself in somebodyelse's shoes, because if you
can't do that, it's going to bereally difficult to see the
whole picture and why maybesomething's happening.
So I pride myself on being inthe business longer than a lot

(11:59):
of people and I still, to thisday, walk through a parking lot,
pick a car at random, take alook inside the car and then go
in the business to try to findthe person that owns that car.
And that hones my skills allthe time, because absolutely
everything you do from a trashpoll to where you park your car,
to what your car looks like,all that stuff that's on the
floorboards of your car or thedashboard that helps me target

(12:19):
you.
And again, my goal is slightlydifferent than yours and again
my goal is slightly differentthan yours.
But what I do is I read the fullspectrum of human behavior and
then I compare it against thebaseline that that person is
operating in or that theyoperate in at home, and then
people will say so what Well?
That helps me figure outexactly what you need, what you
need to hear from me, what youneed to do in your home, why

(12:41):
you're thinking that you'refailing.
So all those things that I cando with that information are
amazing to me.
And then when I open somebody'seyes, like in a lesson, brian
and I'll teach a course, or, youknow, in the book, or when we,
you know, do a webinar orsomething, people go.
Oh my God, that's amazing we cando that and it's like, yeah,
it's called pattern recognition,you know, and so the analysis

(13:02):
part is what you're doing andwhat we do, but the idea is that
we have to disabuse people, andI think you wrote a lot about
this as well, because I've readit.
There's a lexicon that's outthere that's non-helpful.
It's like a doctor telling youall of these different things
that you truly don't understandand saying, well, there's my
analysis.
Well, if you can't use thatinformation?

(13:22):
So I street everything up, andBrian and I are very good at
taking things to a level thatanybody can understand and use
them immediately Turn around inyour own life and be a better
lover or husband or wife or, youknow, coach.
So I just want to give you thekudos for that and tell you that
we're all on the same coin.
It's just we may be on oppositesides of it, but I think all

(13:43):
roads lead to Rome on this.
I hope you feel that way aswell.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, I, I a hundred percent agree, and especially
with what you said.
How, yeah, if a doctor givesyou their analysis like I love
to use these examples like adoctor wouldn't tell you.
So I looked at you and you gotrhinosinusitis, you would be

(14:06):
like I'm dying.
This is the worst thing ever.
I should probably go get alawyer and write my will.
It's a sinus infection.
That's what they describe toyou.
You have a sinus infection.
Here's a prescription Call meif it doesn't get better.
Or cephalagia, that's aheadache.

(14:27):
You don't hear doctors sayingthat and if you do, if you're
listening to this and yourdoctor has said that to you,
please, please, maybe, go findsomebody else.
But that's what's happening inbehavior analysis is that we
have this wonderful science, allof these strategies that people
are secretly obsessed with.

(14:48):
People talk about this stuffall the time in books, on social
media.
It's everywhere, and that's oneof my hashtags I use when I
make my TikToks and Instagrams.
It's ABA or hashtag.
Aba is everywhere because it is, but people just don't know it
because the people who arepracticing it don't talk about

(15:09):
it appropriately.
We say things like themotivating operations here, just
really fighting against whatthe actual behavior is doing and
where it's coming from.
Already, as a lay person, I'mlike I gotta go.
I can't you could have just saidsomebody's motivation is a

(15:29):
little bit in a in a differentdirection here.
Uh, they have a differentcraving that maybe we we might
need to look at, um and andchange so that we can help them
achieve their goals, whatever.
That sounds so much better, butwe're I.
I've been guilty of it myself.
But that's why I wrote the bookis because we need to help

(15:50):
people speak about thisappropriately and easily, so
that we can help everybody thatwe need to and so that we can
grow the science as well.
It sounds better, it's a lotfriendlier.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, and and, and you know, especially on social
media, there's a lot of peoplesort of self-diagnosing with
different, different things andit gets pretty bad.
So there's, there's a ton ofmisconceptions out there and
part of it is just people's, youknow, feeling like, oh, I want
to be special or I'm different,you know.

(16:23):
And so feeling like, oh, I wantto be special or I'm different,
you know.
And so, oh, I have ADHD or I'mon the spectrum autism spectrum,
or I'm this, and it's like allright, like, uh, if that's where
you're starting with, and Ithink we're, we're not at the
best place, and so what?
And the reason is, what I wouldlike to kind of get from you is
sort of like, I guess sort of atwo-part question is what are
some of the big misconceptionsthat you see out there,

(16:47):
especially with your trainingand your experience and your
being a practitioner?
And then also there's thisthing where people talk about
what's normal or typical andit's like, well, that's not
typical or that's not normal.
And when you study behavior atleast for me and I know Greg's
similar, greg Simler the thingsthat we find normal or typical

(17:08):
is a lot more than what mostpeople do.
It's like, look, people are odd.
Sometimes People are weird.
They do weird things.
It doesn't necessarily meananything.
We can't attribute value tothat.
So I want to get yourperspective on that from your
background is, whatever you see,those big misconceptions and
what are the things that you seeout there that are just kind of

(17:28):
wrong?
And then what is normal, whatis typical?

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, so both really good questions.
The first one I see huge kindof misconceptions again, just
basically around ABA.
A lot of people justmisunderstand what the science
is.
Again, when I tell somebody I'ma behavior analyst, they
immediately go to your socialworker, your counselor or your

(17:53):
psychologist.
So right away they go to mentalhealth, which there are
behavior analysts who work inthe clinical setting that work
in mental health Absolutely, butthat's one specialty of it.
So there's misconception aroundwhat an actual behavior analyst
is, what they're able to do.

(18:14):
Again, like I said, a lot ofpeople, if you have been around
BCBAs before, they immediately,if they know what a BCBA is,
they think they you work inautism or you work with kids who
don't follow the rules, or youwork in a school, um.
Then there is another group ofpeople that they know what

(18:37):
behavior analysts uh, behavioranalysis is Um, and they may
have had a bad experience withit.
And then they just labeled theentire science as it's not good.
Don't use it.
There are better strategies andtherapies out there, especially
like in the realm of autism.

(18:58):
There are much better things todo with your child to help them
than ABA.
I do not doubt that people havehad bad experiences with
behavior analysts.
People have bad experienceswith their doctors.
People have terribleexperiences with their plumbers,
their hairdressers.
Not everybody is good at whatthey do, so there are going to

(19:22):
be people that are kind ofbotched professionals.
Um, and that's superunfortunate and it's unfortunate
that that's in a uh, really, um, it's a very intimate setting
that you're working in,especially when you work in
therapy.
Um, you have to be reallycareful about what you do and a
lot of people make not greatmistakes.

(19:43):
They make mistakes and it itleads to bad outcomes.
So, um, aba has had this badrap also, that it's um, it's,
it's not good.
I've on TikTok, people haveripped me saying like you're
abusive, you abuse children andall these things, and that is
the furthest thing from whatbehavior analysts are doing.

(20:05):
Working in autism because I didwork in autism for a while we
will change behavior that'ssignificant to that person.
We're not just going to changea behavior just because and
that's in our ethics code too soif there is a BCBA that's out
there that's just changingbehavior just because it's

(20:25):
convenient for them or forsomebody else, that's not good
and they should be reported.
But if there is an issuehappening where somebody is
injuring themselves or they'reputting themselves or other
people in very dangeroussituations.

(20:46):
Or maybe it's not a dangerousbehavior, maybe it's just you
want to see an increase inperformance from your employees
or, like my pictures that I see,I want to help them make a
significant change with theirskills so that they can throw
the ball harder.
That's a significant behaviorand I am going to change that.

(21:06):
So behavior analysts don't justchange anything just because it
has to be significant to thatperson and make a very
significant impact in their lifeor that group's life.
So those are the maininconsistencies that I see with
people who just aren't familiarwith the science or who had a
bad experience with the science.
And then for your secondquestion about what's typical,

(21:30):
there isn't a whole lot that'stypical.
It's all relative to the personand again, we're not going to
change some behavior because itjust doesn't look typical.
I've had plenty of familiescome to me in the past for
either autism families saying mychild is hand flapping.

(21:54):
We have to get rid of that.
My first question is well, isit hurting them?
Is it hurting somebody else?
Is it getting in the way ofsomebody else's learning?
Is it getting in the way oftheir learning?
Is it distracting to an entireclass?
Is it so distracting to thisperson they're not able to get
their things done?
If you can't answer any ofthose questions, I'm probably
not going to change it becauseit's not significant and it

(22:18):
doesn't matter if that looksatypical, okay, we all have.
If that's like a stimulatorybehavior, like we call it in ABA
, sometimes stimming, um, peoplestim all the time that this
shirt, that could be a sim, I'mstimming right now I'm, I love,
I love running my fingers acrossmy, um, my, my fingers across

(22:41):
my hands.
Also, my dog might bark yeah,yeah, the car just went off.
Um, so, yeah, it might not looktypical, but that's okay.
Uh, that people do.
Everybody has atypical kinds ofbehaviors.
Um, and then in pitching whatI've seen people will say, oh,
okay, uh, this her windup.

(23:03):
It looks weird.
Compared to everybody else, itdoesn't really look typical.
We got to get rid of it.
Again, if she's getting enoughpower, she's throwing strikes,
she's able to be an effectivepitcher.
I don't care that that looksatypical, I'm not going to
change it.
So sometimes it's preferencefrom your clients and that can

(23:25):
be hard to deal with at times.
But, um, typical is relative tothe person.
It's not, it's typical, it'sagain.
It just depends on what thatperson is doing it's, it's, it's
not, you know, uh uh, this,this large grouping of only
these behaviors, are typical.
Only these behaviors are normal.
Only these behaviors are normal.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
No, it's relative to the person, and the way I look
at it too is like, becausethat's a great explanation,
because we look at it as you'rekind of bringing this up in a
sense implicitly is, well,what's the outcome or what's the
impact or what's the effect ofwhat they're doing?
Because that's what it shouldbe.
It's because you know, humansare terrible in general at

(24:10):
measurement and assessment.
Right, we don't measure things.
Well, you know, if I need tocut a piece of wood for
something I'm building, it'svery easy.
I take out my tape measure.
All right, we use, you know,inches, and this is, you know,
and I can make my cut cut.
But when it comes to things likepsychology or behavior, I would
say just behavior in general,it's not like physics, right,

(24:31):
physics is math, right, here'swhat it is, this is what we know
.
You can measure it, and unlessyou get really really, really
small or really way far out inthe universe, then it gets a
little complex, but otherwiseit's hard, it's difficult maybe,
but these are the laws.
You understand it implicitly,implicitly, like you don't need
to know you or be taught.
The um, you know the, the, themeasurement for for what gravity

(24:52):
is right, you, because you knowwhat that is.
You're not.
If you jump off your roof, it'sgoing to hurt when you fall
Right, but when it comes tobehavior like, there's a lot of
complexity in it.
And so we don't always uh, we,you know, we don't always
measure it correctly.
And something you brought up,even when you first, um, were
introducing yourself, is likeyou talked about the environment

(25:13):
and everything else, so it'sit's always like you're
comparing something to somethingelse.
Every observation you make is acomparison to something, and I
think what a lot of people don'tknow is like okay, they can see
something, but what am Icomparing it to?
Why am I measuring this?
What am I?
You know, every observation Imake is, is, in a sense, is is a
.
Every perception is ameasurement of something.

(25:34):
Whether it's hot or cold in theroom, is subjective to you
right, what the, what thetemperature, what the thermostat
says, that's, that's anobjective measurement, because
that's what it is.
But the effect could besomething completely different
and it seems to me difficult forpeople to, even who know
certain things, like you broughtup the great example of the
pitcher doing it different orwind up.

(25:55):
Well, I see that with reallygood trainers people for
teaching shooting or somethingthey're like well, that's a
little different than we taught,but you know what the really
good trainer will be like.
Hey, if that works for them andit's safe and it's effective,
then that's how they do it.
It's the outcome.
But, um, you know, we, we don'tdo that with everything.
It kind of takes a lot of tacitknowledge and experience.

(26:17):
So, like, what are?
Are there?
Are there common ones that yousee like that?
Or or where, where someone orwhat's the best way?
What I always try to getsomeone's perspective on, who's
outside of our field or doesn'tdo what we do, is, in general,
how do you teach people or howdo you explain that to people,
on how to measure correctly orwhat is your comparison or why

(26:38):
is this observation significant?
You get what I'm saying.
It's like we focus on thevanilla, we focus on what's the
comparative background, is themost important part right to us.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
So I kind of just want to see, like what you've
seen in that or what your, whatyour take is on that I'm getting
chills with you asking me aboutthat, because this is like
getting into the nitty gritty ofwhat behavior analysts do.
This is so exciting.
So, again, this is whatbehavior analysts do.
This is so exciting, um.
So again, this is what behavioranalysts are so good at is
turning something that seemsvery subjective like somebody

(27:11):
running uh or um, uh, people notshowing up to work on time and
turning it into an objectivemeasurement.
So to um, a typical personoutside of person, outside of
working in the behavior analysisfield, if they wanted to start
measuring something, they'dprobably be like, okay, if I'm,

(27:34):
if I'm looking at you know theseemployees coming in late, I
might.
I might just say, okay, they,they showed up.
They showed up a couple minutespast 8 am.
They're supposed to be here at8 am, okay, well, if that's not

(27:54):
written down somewhere that 8 amis the exact start time, then
that'sa problem, because then itreally isn't very objective.
Everybody doesn't really knowthe rule.
So what BCBAs would do is wewould come in and say, okay,
let's make this even more clear.
You can show up anytime between8am and 8.10 and be on time

(28:18):
still any time past 8.10.
It's late For something that isa little bit more complex.
Like I always like to go back tosports, um so uh.
Gymnastics is a huge sportwhere a lot of people they do
have objective measurements forhow they um, how they have their

(28:41):
grading systems, um, or pointsystems for um, uh, for who
takes first and second and allthat Uh.
But some people argue that it'ssubjective at times because
it's also so difficult to judgethose skills cause they happen
so fast, um, so um.
For a lay person they mightthink, okay, well, um, you know

(29:01):
they, it looks like they're,they're getting, you know, seven
feet off the floor, maybe Idon't know, so they might just
eyeball it, whereas behavior,behavior analysts are a lot more
rigid, um with that.
But that's how we get objectivemeasurements, that's how we
teach people.
Okay, this is how you're exactlygoing to measure this thing.

(29:23):
We have to have a verydefinitive description of what
you are measuring.
Um, say, in gymnastics,someone's layout has to be um,
you know, at least eight feetoff before.
Whatever it is, um, we wouldput that in our what we call our
um, uh, uh, our operationaldefinition.
Um.

(29:43):
So we have to start with a veryobjective definition of what we
are measuring.
So everybody measures it thesame over time, not just when we
are first tracking our data andseeing what's going on.
That is the definition thatstays from the start of tracking

(30:05):
it all the way through.
Okay, now we have started tochange it.
If it was significant, we needto make sure this individual
maintains this behavior and then, until we're done so, we are
the experts at taking somethingthat looks very subjective and
making it very, very objective,which a lot of people.
It's very hard to do thatbecause you have to break it

(30:28):
down to its most minute form,but again, we're trained to do
that and that kind of separatesus, apart from some other
professionals who might targetbehavior at times.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah, so talk about the travails of predictive
analysis.
So what happened for ourlisteners?
Brian brought up a greatquestion and, kendall, you did a
great job answering it.
What both of them were talkingabout?
In our realm, what we deal withis called an external
perspective.
What happens is most people areso interested in giving an

(31:03):
internal perspective this iswhat this means, this is what I
see and they're compared againstthemselves as a baseline and
that doesn't mean anything.
The idea is like, for example,if I was going to do a cold read

(31:24):
on Kendall, I look in the backto Sam.
I am, the certificate that'sabove it, the organization, how
she's dressed, that she'swearing white, all risky
behavior there, but she's veryclean with her lines and
organized, and the corkboardthat's next to her.
All of those things are great.
So I'm breaking that down.
Well, the problem is now I'm aCNN analyst, because I don't
know if you bought that room.
I don't know if yoursignificant other built that
room.
I don't know if those thingsare valuable to you or you built
it for a podcast background,because you want to portray a

(31:44):
behavior.
So what we do is we have tolook at 360, everything, the
Hoberman, we have to move itaround and then we have to
measure it against something.
So we have to measure thebehavior that we see against
known behavior and then we gotto measure it against the
baseline and then from thatinformation we have to say, well
, there's likelihood, this islikely what's going to happen if
we don't impact that behavior.

(32:05):
This is likely what's going tohappen if we do a little bit of
impactful this, you know, intothat behavior.
So we're in the same world.
The difference is with BCBA.
When you guys have boardcertified people that create a
diagnosis, okay, the otherpeople around are the ones that
don't understand.
It's generally not the personyou're dealing with.

(32:25):
Like, if we're dealing with asupervisory level, they'll look
at us and go, yeah, but I don'tunderstand why you can't just
point to the school shooter.
It's like wait a minute.
That's not the way any of thisworks.
This is you know we're not inOz here, or Wingardium Leviosa.
You know we don't have theHarry Potter's magic wand With
you and I love the sportsanalogy as well.
What you do is you have to lookat a situation, you have to look

(32:47):
at the person in that situation.
You have to understand thatsometimes, when we go to the
doctor.
We lie to the doctor.
You have to have to say thatsometimes we put on, you know,
egotistical behaviors which youknow we use to trump some other
void in our life, and we have togo through all of that other
stuff and go.
It's getting better or it'sgetting worse, or there's an
attack likely or it's nevergoing to happen.

(33:08):
So I think that you're doing thesame basic thing and I think
that sometimes themisunderstanding doesn't come
necessarily from the client,sometimes it comes from society,
because society doesn'tunderstand that.
And that goes back to yourpoint, brian.
People are horrible at whatthey think is wrong with them
and if you're gettingopinion-based testimony, so if I

(33:29):
ask you what are your symptoms,and you give me an honest
portrayal of the symptoms, I cando more with that than if I say
, okay, what do you think iswrong with you?
Because with me I'm always onWebMD and I have a brain cloud,
so I'm not sure what that means.
But no, it's.
It's actually a UTI, greg,you're going to get better.
But you see what I'm trying tosay.
So when I look at how you'reapproaching it, I love it

(33:52):
because it's very clinical andvery basic and people would be
able to understand and getbehind it, Whereas I see that
this mysticism, we have to shinelights on those folks and we
have to say that's not how anyof this works and get to the
root cause.
Do you find that once thatepiphany occurs, once that
people see what it is that youdo, do you find that it's easier

(34:12):
to get your desired end state?

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Absolutely, because then you have buy-in, and that's
why it's so important toexplain everything basically to
whatever stakeholders you'reworking with clients, people who
might not be directly yourclients, but who might work with
that client or live with thatclient.
So you're trying to get thispicture of their life or the

(34:40):
office setup or their practiceenvironment, to see how they're
training.
And then, when you go to doyour analysis, or when you're
just explaining what you'regoing to do and how the
progression of behavior analysisworks, if you're not able to do

(35:01):
that and speak to that personin their language, that
connection is going to be brokenright away and no rapport is
going to be built.
And they're probably going tosay, all right, connection is
going to be broken right awayand no rapport is going to be
built.
And they're probably going tosay, all right, I'm going to try
to go find somebody else who'sgoing to help me, but yeah, if
you can do that, if you canspeak to someone in their
language, you're going to makethem feel really comfortable.

(35:22):
You're going to be able to makea really big impact in their
life and then they're going tofeel a lot better about what is
about to happen and they'reprobably going to go talk to
their friends and family aboutyou know what?
I'm working with this person?
I'm working with this behavioranalyst who's helping me get up
earlier in the morning.
It's phenomenal.

(35:42):
It's the same science that theyuse with kids who are having
issues in school.
It's the same science that theyuse to teach Olympic athletes
how to run faster.
It's insane.
And it's getting me up earlierin the morning.
That's great.
So that's again the level ofimpact that communication can

(36:03):
have on people.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
It's great, I totally agree with that.
And Brian, just one quickcomment here.
Look, you can go to any, any,any uh uh right aid or or.
I'm in a small town so we don'thave a pharmacy.
Actually, I have to go to awitch doctor who comes out and
get a chicken foot and tells youwhat you got.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
Your doctor also is like the vet and takes care of
the horses.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
And the barber.
You give it a pin.
But you can go to any pharmacyand you can go in and say I have
a headache and a person willlead you to a counter that has
aspirin and Advil and Tylenoland all of these other things.
And what I see sometimes ispeople go to a doctor and they
go well, they've got me on thismed and you know one of the side
effects or and you grab theperson.
I'm a touchy-feely.
I grab the person I go.

(36:49):
Have you ever read all of thestuff that's in a normal bottle
of order-the-counter aspirinsand what it can do to you?
Well, we don't See the thingsthat are familiar to us.
We don't dig deep, we don'tlook under the veneer, we don't
want to investigate thosebecause we just take them for
granted.
And our human behavior.
Look, if you would have had acounselor and Brian, this is for

(37:09):
you, for the love of God If youwould have had a counselor,
like Kendall when you weregrowing up, you wouldn't have
had all of these behaviors thatwe got to unpack now and speak
with a megaphone please come offthe roof and all that other
stuff.
But we don't have that.
We don't have those lifecoaches Now.
We have coaches at differentparts of our life, and we have
parents and we have significantothers.
And you know what, if I'm goingto conduct predictive analysis,

(37:31):
the more of those people youhave, the better unpacked you'll
be and the better you'll do inlife, but the less that you have
the ability to bounce that off.
Look, I'm feeling that this isnormal, clinically normal, but
it might not be.
I feel that this soothingbehavior that I'm doing is okay.
Look, measurement assessmentleads to a better conclusion,

(37:51):
and that's what we do.
We just do that over a.

(38:13):
We're looking for differentthings.
You know you're looking for thepitch.
I'm looking for a bomb emplacer.
You know you're looking for howcan this person improve
themselves?
I'm saying, on a highway fullof cars, this is the one you
want to interdict because that'sthe most dangerous vehicle
that's coming up.
So, but it's no differentreally, because what we're doing
is we're comparison andcomparing and measuring and

(38:35):
saying, hey, that banana is tooripe, that one's not ripe enough
.
We're either having bananabread or we got to leave it out
in the sun.
I love that.
So.
So you simplify things, whichmeans I'm a big fan, because
most people are overblown andyou can't even get through the
diagnosis without having to havea you know PDF on your side or
a dictionary, to reference someof the material.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Can you kind of like explain or give sort of an
example, if you've got some,like how do you one of the
things you talk about and Gregwas talking about when we go
with internal versus externalbaselines and how we read a
situation or a person orbehaviors right, and one of the
things that's hard to do and Ikind of Greg and I kind of argue

(39:16):
about this a little bit.
Maybe it's just the way we talkabout it, but it's when you say
, like taking another person'sperspective, like it's
psychologically that's very,very difficult to do.
Like Kendall, I have no ideawhat, like we've only been
talking for half an hour.
We had one like 15 minute phonecall before this and I Googled
you right.
So I don't.
But I don't know your lifeexperiences, I don't know what

(39:36):
you see, I don't know how youthink, and so it's difficult.
Like how am I supposed to takeyour perspective on this?
How am I supposed to get in thehead or in the mind of someone
else?
Like I've got like a little.
He's now like 13 months.
You know, boy, it's easier thatbecause it's like this kid's me
, like I see, like this kidliterally is me but biologically

(39:57):
is.
You know, I helped create him.
But but like even his behaviorsand even how he acts and points
and stuff, like I can get itbecause I live with them, I see
him every day and I do it.
But when it comes outside ofthat right it can get, it can
get difficult and you know.
So what are your?
How do you do that?
How do you shift perspective?
How do you take someone else'sperspective?
Or do you even have to Causethat's my thing is, what I tell

(40:19):
people is like, look, it'sreally hard to psychologically
take another person'sperspective, but but you don't
have to, you don't have to knowwhat they're thinking.
So you have to have somecomparison.
So like, how do you describethat?
Or what do you tell people todo?
Or when they ask you, hey, I'msure you have people come up,
hey, I've got my kid doing this,or someone's I'm watching this.
I'm sure you get all these wildquestions that most of them are
completely irrelevant and don'tmatter in the big picture.

(40:42):
So like, how do you, how do Ifilter through that?
If I'm just listening to this,going like, yeah, maybe it's
about my kids or my neighbor'skid or someone I saw?
Like, how do I use what areyour lenses that you use?

Speaker 2 (40:51):
So, um, we use a few different um measurement
strategies in like thatassessment portion of when we
are looking at behavior, becausewe can't put changes in place
before we learn about what'sgoing on.
So when we're in thatassessment phase of behavior

(41:11):
analysis, we will take objectivedata which first, like we
talked about, we have to have areally, really good definition
of what we're supposed to betargeting.
So, for instance, say it's.
So, for instance, say, say it's, we'll go to a child example,

(41:37):
say a child in school and theyjust aren't doing their homework
and they they haven't turnedanything in all year and it's
like two months in.
So what we will do is we willinterview the teacher, we'll
interview the child, if they'reable to, if they're able to talk
for themselves, we'll interviewthe family.
So we get all this backgroundinformation of what could

(41:58):
possibly be happening and whatother people, other people's
perspectives are of the behaviorthat's going on.
And then we will take objectivedata on what we are seeing Um,
so uh for a behavior analystthat would be working in this
area, they they might go intothe home or they might go into
the school and take data on whatis happening right before that

(42:23):
child is supposed to be engagingin doing their homework, um,
what is happening when they'redoing their homework?
Or if they're not doing theirhomework, what are they doing?
And then, if they did do theirhomework or didn't do it, what
happened right after that?
So then we try to find thesepatterns of what is going on in
these situations and then oncewe can put all these pieces

(42:46):
together and sometimes ithappens pretty quickly because
some behaviors are very, veryconsistent, others it might take
a little bit longer tounderstand because it might be
happening across all differentenvironments, it only might be
specific to one environment orone person, they might only not
be doing their homework for oneteacher Once you can get all

(43:08):
that information, then we canmove forward.
So we do what you guys kind ofcall it pattern analysis, which
it might be different than this,but we do try to find those
consistencies of this is what ishappening.
This appears like this is whyit's happening.
Now we can put this change inplace.

(43:29):
So we rely heavily on thatobjective observation of.
I'm not going to try to get inyour head.
If you want to tell me what'sgoing on in your head, I'm going
to write that down, becausethat is probably impacting also
what you're doing.
But I'm not really worryingabout what's going on in here or
in here again, unless you tellme.

(43:49):
I'm worried about what's goingon out here because we can kind
of change that to help thatperson meet their goals.
Stay on track, whatever it is.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
Yeah, and Brian, I think a great thing there a
great parallel discussion.
Look, you're speaking the rightstuff, kendall.
You're going to hopefullyresonate very well with our
audience and I think they'regoing to listen in, follow up
and buy your book, because it'sreally good stuff and it's very
simple stuff.
I was sexually abused as a kidso if I was going to conduct an

(44:28):
interview with, for example, apedophile, the easiest thing for
me to do is bring myconfirmation bias, bring all my
hate and vitriol and all thethings from my internal
perspective on it and lay it outwhile I'm doing the interview.
Well, it might give me somesense of relief, but I'm not
going to get anywhere withfiguring out what's inside the
pedophile's head.
So the difference between Brianis Brian is classically trained

(44:48):
and then has a lot of streetexposure.
I had all street exposure andno classical training.
So when we talk about puttingourselves in the shoes of
somebody else, I do it becausewhat I have to do is force
myself to do the externalperspective, and then I go over
and ask people.
So the great thing is, I'm likethe stumbling detective and I

(45:10):
go over and I go.
Excuse me, what does this mean?
What do you mean by this?
Why are you wearing this ringon this hand rather than on this
hand, and through that I gain alot of information.
I'll give you a very, verybrief one that speaks directly
to this.
So IEDs improvised explosivedevices were very different in
Iraq than they were inAfghanistan, but the same bomb
makers taught those criminals.
So then there was tendencies tofollow a pattern, so we could

(45:33):
actually figure out where a bombcame from, who that guy taught,
what the pigtail splice waslike, and that was very
important to predict what wasgoing to happen.
So I'm in this meeting and theygot all these geniuses from the
Department of Defense andDepartment of Justice and ATF
and everything in Afghanistanand they're all in this room, in
this bomb protected room, andthey were talking about this new
thing where they were puttingbombs and culverts on roads,
these IEDs that would blow upand kill the people.

(45:56):
And I had been on the road.
I was out there talking to thepeople and the reason they do
that is because they don't haveto dig a hole, because people
are lazy.
So if I find a culvert under aroad and just put a bomb in it,
it's much simpler.
So there's always an analysis,but there's also the answer that
the person, why?
Why do you cut off the ends ofthe bread?
Why do you do this?
Why do you do it?
So I'm using culture as contextand love the interview process

(46:21):
and you both are very clinicallytrained.
So you, you stack the cards andeverything.
But both of us and all three ofus on this call understand
there's also an interventionstrategy where you've got to go
more quickly.
This is going to harm somebody,so we have to intervene.
So if you take all of those,what you have is now you have
this big body of work that sayspattern analysis works because

(46:41):
people repeat behaviors.
We have this whole body of workthat says physically,
physiologically, chemically,scientifically, cognitively,
that people repeat behaviorsbecause of these reasons.
And that's forced society andhumans to say, okay, then give
me a checklist and checklistblow, they're absolutely
horrible, you can't give one.

(47:01):
So so, folks, if you'relistening to my voice and you're
hearing this call, listen towhat they're saying.
Measurement and assessment andcomparison and baselines are how
you come up with an analysisand a diagnosis, not saying,
well, there are 3.1 on thisscale and 2.7 on that one.
I hope you agree with me onthat one because it sounds like

(47:22):
we're all in violent agreement.
Okay, perfect.
Yes, that wasn't really aquestion, I was just happy.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Yeah, no, it's fine Great.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Greg got some validation on the call.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
For the first time in 62 years, somebody is on the
right tune of music.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
So thank God, I'm never going to give you
validation music, so thank godI'm, I'm, I'm, I'm never going
to give you validation, so butbut no that that all goes back
to kind of like you know.
It goes back to you know whatis this person doing
specifically and then what isthe effect it has on them, on
others, on the environment, like, and that's where you can come
in, because, like you even saidand I I see this too with

(48:05):
organizations where it's it'slike oh, we gotta, we gotta, get
better at communication.
It's like okay, well, how didyou arrive that at that solution
?
Already you haven't clearlydefined what the problem is and
you're already jumping into asolution.
Do you see stuff like that?

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Oh my God all the time.
And that like Do you see stufflike that?
I'm guessing, oh my God all thetime.
And that is such a perfectexample of again, most people
have really good intentionsAnybody who's saying that they
want to help make whateversituation it is better and
relieve whatever issues arehappening.
So their intentions are good.

(48:43):
But to a non-behavior analyst,they say we have to get better
communication, whereas abehavior analyst would say I
have observed that there havebeen four people not on our
meetings and these three peoplehaven't responded to any of the

(49:03):
emails that we've been sendingout.
So let's look at how we canincrease attendance at meetings
and increase people's responsesover email.
Boom, great.
That's where behavior analystscome in and we can really help
because we can make people'slives easier so that it's not

(49:24):
just this, this dark cloud, very, you know, gray space.
We have to increasecommunication.
That's impossible.
I, I, I don't it's a really,really difficult task, um, but
what you said, I loved what yousaid how, um, both of you guys
have said something about, like,you have to find out someone's

(49:44):
why, why you're doing this, whyyou cut the bread like this, why
you have to get a hot dog everytime you go to this baseball
park Um, that's what we do.
That's like one of the parts ofthings that behavior analysts
do.
Um, we do that analysis.
It's to a lay person.
I would describe that as like amotivational analysis.
What's motivating you to dothis?

(50:05):
So that's where we find thepatterns.
We find out.
In our jargon we call themfunctions of behavior.
So we see that there are fourmajor functions or four main
whys of why people do things.
It's either for attention,escape or avoidance, access to
tangibles, things, and thenautomatic meaning.
It just feels good, um.

(50:25):
But sometimes you don't have toactually go that route, because
sometimes you're not trying tofind out why.
Why are you doing this?
Why aren't you doing this?
Maybe you're just trying toincrease somebody's skills, um,
like in performance training,for sports, for work, like
you're onboarding somebody.
That's just skill training.
Um, but that's another thingthat we're experts in, because

(50:49):
we know how to take a really,really complex behavior, um,
like Simone Biles doing I don'teven know the names of all of
the different flips and like herroutines and everything like
that Crazy, but a analyst wouldable to be would be able to.
Who is an expert in behavioranalysis and gymnastics would be

(51:10):
able to break down thosemovements and teach that to
someone who is trying to learnthat.
Now I'm not saying thateverybody's going to be able to
be Simone Biles later on in life.
That would be incredible.
But, um, we know how to breakdown those skills and make it
more realistic for somebody toattain those goals that they
have and be able to do thoseflips and all those movements

(51:37):
for them.
So just more yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
And so we do a lot of the same stuff.
When you talk about how do youturn the subjective into the
objective, and that's why we usea lot of the tools that we use
in the lexicon that we have, andbecause it does that, it's
saying well, this is a categoryit fits into here.
And now I have a way to sort ofmeasure it, and it comes down
to those different sort ofoperational definitions that you

(52:03):
talked about, and we have evenour own that we use.
And so did that play into cause?
I kind of want to.
You've got the book coming outcalled uh, uh, talk behavior to
me, and it's the Routledgedictionary of the top 150
behavior analytical terms andtranslations.
So was that kind of fit into?
What you're trying to do hereis is define some of this stuff

(52:26):
for people better, or what wasthe?
What was the reason for thebook?

Speaker 2 (52:29):
Yeah.
So I just I saw that there is ahuge lack of people talking
about behavior analysis.
Basically, and because I lovethe science so much, I was
seeing and I don't have actualdata on it but I see how

(52:49):
pigeonholed and how narrow ourpractice is, with only like one
to two populations, and I seethat some of that is because we
can't talk to people about whatwe do.
If you put a BCBA at a bar andhave someone approach them and
say what do you do, theconversation that on on the

(53:11):
behavior analyst side would beso long and they it would.
It would probably get morecomplex and confusing the longer
that it would go on and thatthe the person who approached
them would probably be like,okay, I got to go to the
bathroom and they probably leave.
The person who approached themwould probably be like, okay, I
got to go to the bathroom andthey probably leave Um, cause
it's, it's just, it's too muchUm.
So I wanted to simplify thingsfor everybody, to teach

(53:32):
practitioners and students howto talk to non-behavioral
analysts about what we do, so wecan increase our impact, grow
the field Um, but then, on asmaller scale, increase how
effective our treatments are bymaking it easier for the people
who are implementing ourstrategies and all of our plans.

(53:53):
Making it easier for them tounderstand and then do it right
teachers, parents, youth coaches, professional coaches anybody
who's not a behavior analyst.
They're usually the ones whoare taking these plans and
running them.

(54:13):
If they don't understand whatwe're writing, why are we even
working?
What are we doing?
We're not going to help anybodyif we can't talk to people in
their language.
So I saw that there was a hugelack of resources out there for
our practitioners and ourstudents to achieve this, and so

(54:34):
I said you know what I'm doingthis.
I went to a great talk out inBoston in 2021.
And the researcher, dr KimberlyMarshall.
She's out of University ofOregon.
She's an expert indissemination of behavior
analysis, and this is what shetalked about at the end of her
speech.
She said from this research,this should prove to everybody

(54:59):
that we need to increaseresources, do more exercises
with our students in school toteach them about this ethical
code that we have, where it sayswe have to talk in an
understandable manner to all ofour clients and stakeholders.
This is going to help supportthem.
We can't just tell people.
You have to talk basically topeople and make sure they

(55:19):
understand it, because thisreally isn't taught to anybody
directly.
So right after I left there Isaid I called my mom.
Right away I go.
I think I'm going to write abook.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
And yeah right.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah, and but it's not just for our practitioners
to talk basically to people,anybody who is interested in
behavior analysis or who wantsto understand if you're getting
services from a behavior analyst, whether your company is or
your child is, or maybe you'reworking with a behavioral sports
performance coach like myselfand you have these plans that

(55:53):
they give you and it might havesome jargon in there, or you
just want to understand whatthey're doing with you better,
even though they might betalking very basically to you
and you understand everything.
This is going to help youunderstand it on a way more
basic level and make you feelmore comfortable about what
you're getting into.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Yeah, that's great and those things are important.
Right, having the differentoperational terms, the different
ways to describe something,because they can be different
for you than they are for me,but we're talking about the same
thing.
So what allows you to do isobviously use that, or use those
and use the terms, use aprocess to conceptualize it in
whatever area of your life orwhatever, whatever reason, or,

(56:34):
or you know whatever you'reusing it for, and so do you.
Do you have any like um, do youhave any things that you tell
people, like on how to look orlooking for things or stuff to
look out for?
And I don't mean like thechecklist, like hey, when you
see these things, it means youknow that, cause it's never it's

(56:54):
never a squared plus B squaredequals C squared.
That's not how behavior is Right.
It's, it's, it's, it's, it'schaos, it's, it's very complex.
So, meaning, meaning, like likeGreg and I'll give uh, uh,
folks like examples.
Uh, give folks examples whenthey're talking about looking
for the seams and gaps of anarea, looking for negative space
.
Where do criminals, terroristsand surgeons, where do they get
in from?
How do they do this?
And so we play observationalgames where we go.

(57:15):
I want you, when you're out,driving around, walking around,
look for any feral cats in yourneighborhood.
And because cats, they don'tjust go strutting down the
middle of the street, right,where do they hide?
They hide underneath cars, theygo in between buildings, right?
They're careful on theirmovement.
Well, guess who else acts thatway, right?
A lot of criminals act that waytoo.
So it's like the idea is, if Ijust tell you, go, look for the

(57:36):
guy you know trying to breakinto a place, you're never going
to see that.
But if you go out today andstart looking for feral cats,
you're going to realize likedamn, there's a lot of cats, you
know what I mean, justwandering around.
So the idea is you get, you geta reward, you actually get some
practice in it and you get, youknow, you get a little bit of
validation and you get better atit.
But I was just curious as likedo you have anything that you do

(57:57):
or that you tell people as likea general practice of, of, of
things to do?

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Yes, um.
So I'm so happy I put this inmy book, because when I was
writing it I was like, oh, Icould just make this like a
translational dictionary andwe'll end it there.
But at the end of my book I waslike I want to give people some
general tips that they can use,because I know they're going to
be non-behavioral analysts whoare reading this.
So let's help people learn howto use the science very easily.

(58:26):
So I have a couple of them thatI'll read off.
There are I think I have aboutmaybe 12 that are at the end of
the book.
But the first one is you have tobe the best listener and
observer in the room, because alot of the times what happens is
behavior analysts, especiallynew behavior analysts, will go

(58:46):
in and they'll have, you know,all their data collection system
stuff.
They got their clipboard andtheir iPad and all these things,
and then you have behaviortechnicians coming up and
talking to you.
You got people messaging you.
You're trying to multitask whenyou're trying to assess a
behavior, because you'reconstantly assessing.
It's like we're streetresearchers.

(59:06):
We are constantly researching,taking data, putting in
strategies, changing all thesethings.
But if you can't be in themoment and put your pen or your
iPad down, you're going to missa lot of really important things
, because behavior, when we lookat it, the things that we look

(59:28):
at are what happens directlybefore behavior occurs, like
within the first five secondsbefore behavior occurs, and then
what happens within fiveseconds of that behavior ending.
So you have to A know whatyou're looking at.
B have your eyes wide open andcompletely focused on this one
thing, because you have to catchthese things so quickly.

(59:50):
And there are other analysesthat we do that you're just
constantly writing or typingdown what is happening and if
you can't observe, you're notgoing to have a great assessment
, which is going to lead to afaulty treatment.
You're not going to have agreat assessment, which is going
to lead to a faulty treatment,which is going to lead to the
person not meeting their goalsor progressing.
So you have to be able toobserve and listen very, very

(01:00:14):
well.
So going along with that,observe before you make moves.
One of the other biggest issuesthat happens in behavior
analysis is people right away.
Even though we're taught toassess before we put changes in
so many balls they walked 10people this weekend my brain

(01:00:48):
immediately is like, oh my God,I'm not helping them.
This isn't good.
Or if it's a new student, I'mlike I hope I can help them.
You know, maybe I'm thinkingthat we need to do more snapping
drills, we need to do more legdrive.
Before you go there, you have toknow what's happening.
So you have to observe and getall the information before you

(01:01:11):
can even worry about how you'regoing to change it, because you
can't change something that youdon't know anything about, so
you have to learn about it first.
And that when you're justplainly observing, you can't do
that and try to think about allthese changes and your worries
and anxieties about.
I don't know if I can do this.
You can't really do those atthe same time when you're

(01:01:32):
completely in the moment, and inbehavior analysis we call that
an incompatible behavior whenyou can't do two things at the
same time.
And then the last thing, which Ifeel like is the most important
out of anything we do inbehavior analysis, is you have
to be consistent with whateverstrategies you're using, and it

(01:01:55):
doesn't just mean you'reconsistent for a day or an hour.
You have to be consistent overa long period of time with
however it is written in thatplan that you were supposed to
be acting.
When this person does email youback on time, if it says in the
plan, you're supposed to sendthem back.
Thank you so much for gettingback to me.

(01:02:16):
Or you're supposed to I don'tknow say, you have some employee
reward board, you're supposedto put a star up there.
Great, you have to do that.
You have to keep doing it,because nobody ever mastered
anything by doing it once in awhile or just one time.
So consistency is huge and it'ssomething we preach all the
time um to our clients andstakeholders, our students that

(01:02:40):
we work with.
You have to do the same thingall the time until we say it's
okay to change it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
I'll be a quick translator for Kendall to our
normal audience for firstresponders.
What Kendall said is you havelights on your vehicle and a
siren and you're rushing to anunknown trouble where you've got
limited information coming infrom an RP on the scene and a
dispatcher and you, as thecopper, have already decided how
you're going to handle thescene and the situation and calm

(01:03:09):
things down.
And that's why cops die,because we're rushing into the
situation with scant information.
Another sales pitch for yourbook.
I surround myself withtranslators because sometimes I
speak in parables that I don'tunderstand.
It's just information comes outin that manner, and earlier
when we were talking, I said thewhite shirt represented risky

(01:03:29):
behavior, kendall, and what Imeant by that is I have to wear
dark shirts.
Why?
Because I'm a mess maker.
When I'm drinking, I'm alwayswearing it and I'm up in front
of people all the time.
So your risky behavior is thatyou know that you can hold it
together, so I have to havepeople around.
That says what Greg is tryingto tell you is this.
So the reason I'm excited aboutyour book coming out and I was

(01:03:50):
so thankful to be able to talkto you is common sense.
Street-level interventions, forme, work the best and when
people understand that they'recontributing, like listening to
somebody, and they're sittingthere going.
Don't you want to write any ofthis down?
Not yet.
I'm enthralled, go on.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
And you know, and this is how we're going to learn
about other people, this is howwe're going to fix things.
Self-help books.
Listen, if you knew how to helpyourself, you wouldn't be
buying a book.
So my thing is that I like thisapproach.
I'm very enthralled by it, andI just think that when you said,
don't sell yourself short onthe translational aspect of the

(01:04:31):
book, because even the layperson is going to get something
out of it.
They're going to read it andthey're going to be able to
compare it to their own life andgo, wow, that's me.
And that's helpful too, seeingthat, you know you got to show
up every day engaged, and theonly way to be engaged is to
understand what your role is.
So this book is going to speakvolumes to you understanding
what that person means, why thatperson shunned you, why you're

(01:04:53):
turning people off.
You know all of those are partof the subtext of what you're
talking about, and I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
That's all I got to say you know, and what happens
with you know?
This is why I love talking tosomeone sort of from a different
realm, that's in a similar youknow, doing something similar,
but kind of a different domain.
Maybe you know you brought upsome things that everyone goes
well, yeah, yeah, that's commonsense, I get that.
It's like no, but you didn't doit Right.

(01:05:21):
You said all right, you know,because you put it as what Be
the best listener.
You right, because you put itas what Be the best listener in
the room.
Just shut your mouth and openyour ears.
Because we always say one of ourprinciples is that humans are
constantly on transmit.
People teach you how they wantto be treated.
We're constantly justtransmitting everything about us

(01:05:42):
.
So I have to one tune into theright frequency and then not jam
a square peg into a round hole,right?
So I have to not let that, letthat take over.
And you know, even with youyou're talking about listening
and people like OK, yeah, no, Ilisten to him.
It's like no, like this is eveneven military, has terms called
SILS, stop, look, listen, smelland like so I get inserted with
my team via helicopter in themiddle of the night somewhere.

(01:06:04):
We jump off.
Sometimes, depending on themission, you literally sit there
for an hour and you just stop,you look, you listen, you smell,
you hear, see what's going onin the area, see if your
presence just attracted anywhere.
I mean, for an hour you justdon't say a damn thing and you
just sit there and then youdecide to start moving towards
wherever you're going.
I mean, that's the idea,because you're just getting that

(01:06:26):
baseline, you're getting thatsample, you're acclimating
yourself to the situation.
So you're using that externalbaseline, not an internal one,
of what you think is going tohappen and it seems so obvious
but people really don't do it.
And then what happens is likeGreg, did you know the thing
earlier in the call, when he'slike, okay, this is what you're
showing me, kind of like you'rehighly organized, you've got all

(01:06:47):
your stuff neat in your room,you've got a cool little neon
sign in the background with youknow everything.
Yeah, you've got all this stuffand it's, it's, it's well put
together, it's clean, it says.
But here's the thing.
I don't even know if that'sduring COVID, for a lot of like,
and it happened mostly in DCall the talking heads on

(01:07:09):
different news shows, becausethey're mostly doing stuff
remotely.
There were companies that wouldcome in.
You could hire them and theywould put in like a bookshelf.
Make a decorative zoombackground.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
I didn't know that, but I don't doubt it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
Yeah, yeah, and it was big, big money too, and it
was all certain.

(01:07:43):
I didn't know that.
But if you saw where my this is, my little loft office above
our garage, like this is Brian'shead, I've got like the guitars
over here, I've got some stuffstacked up over here that I need
to get to, I've got my booksback there, the couch that I sit
, like it really is, but.
But you only get thisperspective right.
You're only seeing what I'm I'mshowing you.
So those, those simple thingsis where I see things go wrong.

(01:08:04):
So I like what you're doing withthe book and then kind of
expanding this, this sort ofreach, because you know,
especially with BCBAs, it's,it's so much focused on kids and
intervention strategies, andthen that takes on a life of its
own with social media and everylittle thing gets picked apart.
That's why Greg, even broughtup like kinesics and body
language, you know at thebeginning where it's like.

(01:08:26):
You can't start there.
You have to know where you'restarting from and and I I just
love getting your, yourperspective or background from
this.
So you know, I don't um, I wantto, I want to allow you to like
any, any you, anything else youyou kind of want to add or or
takeaways for people.
Um, people, from what you'veseen especially stuff with kids

(01:08:47):
and sort of your you knowperspective on, you know
everyone's really scared ofsocial media and these different
apps and the way things arechanging.
You know, I always say peoplehave been the same for a really,
really long time.
It's not the app, it's not thephone, it's the person, you know
.
It's not the gun, it's not thedrugs, it's the person.

(01:09:08):
If we shift our focus to thatand people are worried, well,
what do I do with my kid?
What do I do about this?
And my opinion of this is sortof okay.
What are you doing yourself?
Because I see adults are muchworse at this than children are,
and if you're doing that aroundyour kid all, they're going to

(01:09:29):
do is mimic your behavior.
So if you're constantly on thephone, when you're hanging out
with them and checking yourInstagram, well then that's what
they think is normal or typical.
So it's actually not them thatyou have to worry about, it's
you.
So I'm just curious, from yourperspective, what you see or
what you tell parents, or whatyou've seen before, and kind of
where you think the social mediaimpact what it really is, not

(01:09:52):
just versus what it's alwaystalked about.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
So like social media impact on like what people are
saying about behavior analysisor like how social media how
it's, how it's really affectingour behavior, especially at a
younger age.
Oh, I think this could be anentire podcast in itself.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
It could be.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
But what I see is it totally draws people out of the
moment and again, I don't havedata on this.
I don't have data on this, butfrom my observations, I'm seeing
decreases in how people areconnecting with anybody and

(01:10:31):
anything around them.
A lot more risky and dangerousbehavior, Like people are
texting constantly or on socialmedia at the red light and you
might take your foot off thebrake for a second and don't
realize that you're rolling andthen you get into a fender
bender, Um.
So all these things that maybeweren't happening as much before

(01:10:55):
social media occurred, um arestarting to pop up now.
Because of it, we're alsoconstantly comparing ourselves
to other people.
I'm super guilty of that becauseI'm an influencer.
I am on social media all thetime, and it's not the best
environment for us to reallythrive, Because when you're

(01:11:17):
constantly comparing, you'regetting pulled out of the moment
that you're in right now.
You're maybe not interactingwith the people around you or
your pets as much.
You're not attending to whatyou should be the stove that's
on, maybe all the work that's infront of you.
We're being less productive.

(01:11:39):
We're living less in the momentand, to me, when I'm on social
media more, even though I loveit and it's so fun.
I almost feel like sick, likesomething's wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:11:54):
Like and.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
I'm like man.
Why do I feel like so off?
It's because I've been livingin this world, in this box, for
you know, two hours or whateverit is.
I really try not to be onsocial media for that long, but
it happens.
So all of these risky thingsand these things that we talk

(01:12:17):
about like, oh, we don't likebeing ignored.
We don't like when people arenot vigilant when they drive.
We're doing that because we'reon social media.
Social media is wonderful for somany things.
It allows us to connect to alot of people, but I think that
there has to be a lot moreeducation for the young

(01:12:38):
population on how to engage withit appropriately and what to
expect.
Maybe some restrictions on whocan be on there, like what age
and duration restrictions.
Maybe there also needs to beafter when you become an adult,
you can have full access to this.
Here are some tips on how youcan engage with your social

(01:13:02):
media audience and your platformand whatever in a healthy
manner, because here are theeffects that can come from it,
which there are resources outthere, but just constantly
putting them out there forpeople, because if we're not
prompted, we're not going to doit, if we're not, if it's
already not a habit.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
So yeah, well, greg, I'll let you kind of get any
final comments or any otherquestions for Kendall while we
have her on here.

Speaker 3 (01:13:32):
I had so much more we could talk about.
I think this would be a funconversation to revisit once the
book comes out.
We've all had a chance to lookaround.
I think we should have you backon the show.
I think that there's all.
The book comes out in October.
No, I'm sorry, go ahead yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
You can preorder it now.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
Yeah, I'm not preordering unless it includes
like an autographed edition withthe Sam.
I am moniker on it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
You got it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
But no, but this was a fun, spirited discussion about
simple stuff that everybody canwrap their head around.
It demystifies some of it.
It puts it back in the realm ofyou writing your own narrative,
and that's what people reallywant.
That's why people are reallyout there looking for an answer,
and this is an answer.
It's not the answer.
We don't offer the answer.

(01:14:21):
We offer an answer, and I thinkthat's important.
So I just want to tell youthanks.
You lived up to all theexpectations that I had.
Can't wait to see the book.

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
Oh, thank you guys for having me on.
I was so excited to talk withyou because I know you guys are
in a different domain of humanbehavior and I love learning
about what other people aredoing, because that's why I got
into this is to grow the scienceand have the biggest impact
possible.
You guys are awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
Well, we appreciate you coming on here sharing your
perspective.
Obviously, for listeners andeverything, we'll have the links
to you and your social mediaand the book to pre-order in the
episode details and all that,and you can always look her up
at the Behavior Influencer onInstagram.
And then TikTok.
I'm not on TikTok just becauseit's not, I don't you know.
I think the Chinese governmenthas enough information about me

(01:15:12):
already.
Because they steal so much bysurveillance and my you know,
different things have beenhacked that have my information
in it.
So they have enough on me.
But you know we appreciate youcoming on here.
So they have enough on me.
But but you know we appreciateyou coming on here, you know.
I think you know if you'reinterested to maybe maybe
something again, we couldorganize something, just kind of

(01:15:32):
getting into the social mediastuff, because it's it's huge
and we've got sort of differentperspectives between the three
of us in general.
And then I kind of want to getlike how, how to address it.
We get questions on it all thetime and you know, I thing where
I do like all right, brian, ifyou're going to grow this stuff
on Arcadia, on the social media,you got to be more consistent.
It's like okay, so I startbeing more consistent.

(01:15:53):
And then I realized like Jesus,I'm spending so much time on
here, it's not good for me and Idon't like it.
So then people are like how doyou?
You just post and then youwon't even open the app for like
another week.
I was like no, they're like youhave to engage with people.
If you want to go, it's like ahman, I don't really want to do
that, but uh, but it's, it's,it's, it's tough, but that's
just part of that, Just like agenerational thing and how we

(01:16:15):
use it.
No-transcript.