Standard Celebration & Acceptance and Commitment with Dr. Scott O'Donnell (Part II)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dan Lowery (00:00):
Welcome to ABA on Tap, where our goal is to find
the best recipe to brew thesmoothest, coldest, and best
tasting ABA around.
I'm Dan Lowry with Mike Rubio,and join us on our journey as we

(00:23):
look back into the ingredientsto form the best concoction of
ABA on tap.
In this podcast, we will talkabout the history of the ABA
brew, how much to consume toachieve the optimum buzz while
not getting too drunk, and therecommended pairings to bring to
the table.

(00:43):
So without further ado, sitback, relax, and always analyze
responsibly.

Mike Rubio (00:54):
Welcome back to ADA on Tap.
I am your co-host, Mike Rubio,and this is part two with Dr.
Scott O'Donnell.
Enjoy.
Wow.
Maybe not with charting, butI'm sure, I mean, I think I do,
you know, contingency analysison just about everything.
Yeah, I

Dan Lowery (01:15):
think I do lax behavior analysis where I think
about things, I conceptualizeit, but I don't actually chart
it.

Dr. Scott O'Donnell (01:22):
Yeah, I mean, I know that not everybody
charts it.
And I know that sometimespeople will see this.
this scary standardacceleration chart and they'll
say oh my gosh it's so scary andthey'll say and they'll say oh
i can't do it even though eventhough there are like what
eight-year-olds that can't readat the morningside academy that

(01:43):
are using standard accelerationcharts every single day so you
guys have no excuse for that

Dan Lowery (01:47):
we don't we don't there's some like block that
people have to math and i thinkstandard acceleration charts
fall into that people just shutdown when it comes to math.
Go

ahead.
Sounds fancy.
Well, math, it's just dots on apiece of paper.
I don't know.
So you guys think it'ssomething else.
I don't know what you guys arethinking, but I just, I don't
know either.
I love them because like I,once you, after you put the dot,
you don't have to write anumber, right?
So I'm just putting a dot,right?
It only takes a second to do.
And then you're, you'regraphing, you're graphing at the
same time you're recordingdata, right?

(02:18):
So it's kind of like, yeah, youget, you don't have to do
anything else except analyze itafter, after that point.
But I, I No, my big thing is,hey, if we're going to use this
with clients, we have to bewilling to

Mike Rubio (02:31):
use it on ourselves.
ABA on tap is recorded live andunfiltered.
Sorry about that.
Go ahead.
Sorry.

I was saying, how can we use this on
our clients if we're not willingto use these things on
ourselves?

Mike Rubio (02:44):
That's a great question.
You've convinced me.
I'm going to have to findsomething, something to chart,
something to track.
Especially if we say...

Dan Lowery (02:51):
If you're not taking data, you're not doing ABA.

Well, actually, I wonder with the name
of the show, I do record myalcohol intake, and I wonder if
it's going to increase withbeing on ABA on tap.
We'll see.
I do have a good amount ofbaseline data here, so we'll see
if there's an increase.
I could just

Mike Rubio (03:14):
mark that down.
Alcohol intake.
That's going to be my thing.
That's where I'm going tostart.
Right there.
That'll be something very goodfor me to track.
Yes, sir.

I just record the number of drinks I
have a day.
It's really

Mike Rubio (03:25):
easy to track.
What's your sauce?
What do you like, sir?

Oh, I do.
I do like beer.
I do like beer probably, butthat's why I'm tracking it
because probably I probably likebeer too much.
Um, so, um,

Mike Rubio (03:39):
me, me and bourbon, me and bourbon, uh, we have a
really, really friendly,friendly relationship, uh, and,
uh, almost too friendly, youknow, not to, not to be too
worried about me, but the ideais I just, wow, that's, you
know, I've been sitting here andI've just enjoyed a lot.
I need to track this stuff.
You need to try it too.

(04:00):
Yeah, no, you got me.
That's where I'm going to startapplying this to myself for
sure.
So really quickly, you wouldthink, and I've written some of
the show descriptions.
I don't know if you've caughtthem.
We do take this whole brewingbeer element to it.
Dan's not a beer drinker.
I will certainly enjoy beer.
It came out of sort of a parenteducation session where this

(04:24):
dad was like, man, you guysserve up a good brew.
If you guys do a podcast, youshould call it ABA on tap.
And we were like, That's agreat idea.
We're going to run with it.
Yeah.
No, we do.
Yeah, I like it.
Yeah, no, we're hoping to, andyou would have been a perfect
guest for this.
You know, as we talk toadvertisers and show sponsors,
we're really hoping that we canhook up with somebody that might

(04:46):
be able to deliver preferredlibation to our guest as well as
then have one ourselves and,you know, spend a couple hours
enjoying a drink and chattingand, you know, that'd be a nice
touch to it.
So hopefully the next time youcome around we'll have that up
and ready.

Well, my thinking was that you guys were
going to brew your own and thenthere's going to be like a
special ABA on tap brew becauselike, what do you need to do it?
Like a bathtub?
I mean,

Mike Rubio (05:15):
as long as people are willing to drink it and we
don't, you know, kill anybody, Ithink we're

okay.
Okay, so if you do, you justsend me something.

Mike Rubio (05:24):
So we've thought about this, man.
So we've thought about this,again, in terms of show
sponsors.
The idea at conferences, we gotto moderate, shout out to
Jennifer, who invited us tomoderate, do some moderating at
the Clinical Practice and ABAconference in October of 2024.
Oh, yeah, I was in that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And we were, you know, we werethinking about that, man, if we,

(05:46):
you know, if we get theseopportunities, how cool would it
be to host ABA on tap happyhours at these conferences where
we do hit up some local brewerywherever the conference is at
and buy a keg and label it withour stuff or whatever.
Yeah, it'd be fun.
So these are all show ideasthat are brewing.
Hopefully we'll get to that atsome point because it would be

(06:07):
fun to add that element.
I mean, again, these havebecome very comfortable
conversations.
So you add a nice libation,alcoholic or not, whatever
people prefer, I think thatwould be a good touch for the
future.

So I also will track how much I'm, you
know, listening to like readingand writing about it and
listening to behavior analysis.
So just to give you an idea,right?
So one of these dots is youguys, me listening to you guys,
right?
Actually, I'm sure several ofthese dots were.
Several of these dots are melistening to you guys.

(06:40):
So I'm using ABA to...
Listen to your show.
We

Dan Lowery (06:46):
appreciate that.
And how would that look?
What would that look likeactually?
I mean, we're able to see it,but most of the people that are
listening are just listening,not able to visualize that.
Can you explain how you wouldrepresent that on a standard
acceleration chart?

Oh, it's a bunch of dots.
It's a bunch of dots on achart, right?
And when there's a lot of dotson the chart, that means that
there's a lot of behavior goingon.
Yeah.
That's what that means.
I just thought that was cool.
I thought about that.
Wait a second.
I'm writing down how much I'mlistening to their shows.
I think that last dot, the lastdot on there were the last

(07:22):
probably two or three since Igot to hear the rest of the Matt
story episode.
That was me listening to that.
I track that too.
We appreciate that.
I also track billiards.
That's something I've beendoing recently because I like to
play pool and I want to getbetter.

(07:45):
And anytime there's somethingyou want to get better at, you
just use ABA and you makeyourself better at it.
But it's not all on a standardacceleration chart.
I realized I can't put it allthere.
So there's other sheets I'musing.
And I've done a few things.
I've tried to look for fluency,how quickly I could run a rack

(08:05):
or go through all the balls on arack and stuff like that, how
long that takes.
how many turns it takes andstuff like that and they seem to
be closely related so i'm notsure how much the fluency is
going to make a difference but ii think like well just like get
into these variables because ihaven't seen any articles on aba
and billiards out there i don'tknow if you guys have like seen
anything like

Mike Rubio (08:24):
that no no sir but we'll be looking for yours

Oh, you're thinking, well, I would have to
do a whole study with the IRBand everything before I could do
that.
Just like I did with the golf,though.

Mike Rubio (08:36):
Yeah, it might be worth it.
It gets you playing a lot ofbilliards.

Yeah, well, you know what?
I'd be doing that anyway, but Iwant to get better.
Might as

Dan Lowery (08:44):
well get paid and research

for it.
See, I want to get better atit.
You guys are thinking like, oh,yeah, you could publish and let
everybody else know.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I want to get better billiardsI'm not trying to make everybody
else better right now let meuse ABA to make myself better
then like we'll see if I getreally really really really good

(09:06):
right I'm already really goodbut if I you know if I if it
really really worked well maybeI'll share it with everybody
else but there's no reason why Ican't just use this on myself
to make myself better

Mike Rubio (09:17):
ESPN billiards analyst well there's a lot of I

Dan Lowery (09:21):
used to listen to Rogan a lot and I know Rogan
would talk a lot about billiardsand he would talk about how a
lot of the money is in like theunderground billiards hustling
arena.
Maybe you get really good andnobody knows about it.
I'm sure there's some games inPhilly where there's a fair
amount of money exchanginghands.

There you go.
I don't play for money.
They never pay.
I'm in and they don't pay.
There's always some excuse.
You got to go around with abouncer or something like that
if you're really going to dothat.
Then you're paying someone.
It's not really worth it.
You said you

Dan Lowery (09:54):
got some Jersey connections.
Maybe there's some Italianjersey connections that if
people don't pay you could havethem make a visit

yeah we don't have to go down we don't
have to go to jersey that's truejust go right down we go right
down to south philly all rightthey're still there we have the
italian market and everythingthat's where they're all that's
where they all lived and thenbefore they moved to jersey

Dan Lowery (10:16):
so you make a trip to south philly you know you let
people know you got some debtsthat need to be settled Hey,

I'm free and clear, all right?
Like, see, you're talking aboutthis, but you don't understand.
Like, my mom's family?
Like, yeah, yeah.
So, like, but, like, I don'towe any favors.
They

Mike Rubio (10:32):
don't owe me anything.
Good, good, man.
That's the way to be.

Dan Lowery (10:36):
I have a question.
So, going back to the clinicthat you work at, is it people
that just walk in?
Like, did you...
Is it like a walk-in clinic?
People are experiencingwhatever?
Is it people that have beenpre-screened and they...
have been kind of referred toyou.
How do you get your clienteleat your, you said your main job,
I think you called it, or yourfull-time job?

Yeah.
It's, it's, um, people who arelike have contacted their
insurance company or on medicalassistance and they're looking,
you know, looking for outpatienttherapies.
It's all outpatient, you know,stuff, um, you know, which is
good, you know, because youdon't have to deal so much with
the psychiatric stuff.
Although we do have apsychiatrist working there too,
um, you know, prescribing medsand stuff like that, but it's,

(11:20):
it's, uh, all outpatient work,um, different than what you guys
are, but I'm wondering if whatyou guys do, if that's going to,
you You don't know.
I know you guys get like 40hours a week if you want.
But that might change soon.
And if you look at OT andspeech, they don't get like 40
hours a week.

(11:40):
So I don't know how sustainablethat's going to be.
I imagine that's part of thefield.
Part of the growth of thisfield is going to be like, yeah,
we're going to have to shutsome hours down a lot.
We've been

Dan Lowery (11:51):
fighting against the 40 hours a week as much as
that's been blasphemy.

Mike Rubio (11:54):
I think our mindset is we're fortunate to have had
the mindset to...
to start meeting clients attheir availability, not
necessarily makingrecommendations fully based on
their availability.
I don't know if that makes anysense, but there's a lot of,
what should I call these?
I wanna be respectful.

(12:14):
There's a lot of cool excusesyou can make in terms of
pointing back to research andsaying, You either get this
level of service or we can'tserve you at all.
And it's an interestingpremise.
I don't want to say anythingmore about it.
But luckily for us, I think,fortunately, to your point,
we've gotten very accustomed tosaying, okay, this is our
recommendation.
what are you actually able toaccess as a family?

(12:36):
What other services does thechild have?
And then we'll go from there.
So as much as it's much moredifficult to not fit everything
into a nice block schedule orsomething that's already
predetermined, we just think itworks better.
And it is more of a struggleand it is gonna change our pace.
But maybe to your point, it'llleave us a little more prepared

(12:58):
for that change.

Yeah, maybe making the most of your time
with the client.
That could be important, too,and just having more.
I mean, Dan, you were talkingabout DTT and stuff like that.
And I know I've seen studiesthat say the amount of learning
trials is similar, but I thinkthat's BS.
Anyone who's done DTT andnaturalistic training, too, at

(13:23):
the same time realizes, no, thenaturalistic training, it takes
more time, and you have to getset up, and you have to think
ahead.
And, you know, kind of have anidea of what's going to happen
on, you know, in that learningand that, and it's, and it's
unstructured where in DTT, youget a client working on it and
it could be, I mean, they couldgo pretty quick.
I've seen clients who really dowell with DTT and they just,

(13:45):
Hey, if you're creating twosituations, here's one, come sit
at this table and do a bunch oflearning trials with me and get
a bunch of, you know,reinforcement versus like go
over there and, not or play withyour toy, but you don't really
play because you, you know, youjust kind of like stand there
and clap your hands or a stem orwhatever.
Like, I think they're going toenjoy the table a lot more, um,

(14:07):
because it's just moreenriching.
And that from my experience,that that's what they do is as
long as you make it likeenriching and enjoyable for
them.
I think that's the mostimportant point.
Yeah.

Dan Lowery (14:18):
I think there was an interesting, I don't want to
say falsehood about trialsbecause again, Lovaas proved
that, um, ABA worked and Lova'smodel originally was a lot of
DTT.
I mean, just looking at itcompared to naturalistic
intervention, I don't know.
Well, we only have to run halfthe trial.

(14:59):
So it's not necessarily theamount of trials that need to be
presented.
It's the amount of trials ofwhich they have attention to.
You talked about MOs aremotivated to pay attention to.
So I think we kind of got thismisattribution of like
individuals with autism, theyneed a whole bunch of trials.
Well, no, they're just notattentive because we haven't
enriched the environment enoughto help them gauge attention.

(15:22):
So if we can start like you dowith joint attention or...
getting their buy-in, thenmaybe we can actually present
less trials because the onesthat we do, they're going to be
attentive to.

Mike Rubio (15:32):
Yeah, I think that's the...
That's the important differencethat you're both delineating.
And we agree, the idea thatyou've got that setup, that
traditional setup, table andchair, and you've got a kiddo
who's bought in and you've gotthis nice quick flow drill.
Of course, that's perfect.
And then the other questionbeing when you haven't
established that, then what'syour next move to be able to get

(15:56):
to that?
And I think there's a lot oferrors that can be made along
the way there in an effort tosort of replicate the optics.
This, this, this looks reallygood.
We look like we're in control,uh, but somehow that there's,
there's no reciprocity to thatlevel of instructional control,
meaning, you know, I'm promptingsomebody through it or, and I

(16:16):
think we've come a long way.
So I, um, you know, again, we,we started this, uh, when we
started this podcast, uh, wewere on our soapbox about like,
man, I can't believe people arestill doing some of this, uh,
or, you know, uh, RBT is comingto us from other companies with
a certain amount of training andthen we would get into the
training situation with them andbeing like, wait, this is what
you've been doing?
Okay, this is interestingbecause there's no way to pivot.

(16:39):
There's no way to shift.
You're just kind of bulldozingin this linear fashion and
you're missing a lot of cues.
So I think you make a reallygood point, Dr.
Scott.
The idea that we don't want todiscount anything about DTT
other than the errors that wecan make in its implementation.
The idea of presenting trialsyou know presenting some sort of

(17:02):
SD towards some response thatcan be differentially reinforced
I think that you know doingthat rinse and repeat that is
the basic recipe whether thechild is sitting at the table
standing you know whatever thecase may be we can't throw that
out and then there's the notionof are we trying too hard to
replicate this again back to thelab to living room thing are we

(17:23):
trying so hard to replicatethis without the experimental
control that it's actually beingrendered useless Thank you.

Well, that's, you know, when you're in
a clinical spot and you knowall these different things, like
a real good clinician, the bestones can bounce between one to
the next.
Yes, sir.
Use whatever, like, you know,because you'll be doing DTT one
minute and then TT the nextminute, you know, and just
because you see that opportunityand you see, you know, you can
train them.
So even the best ones, but Ithink when we talk about DTT, we

(17:50):
can't, like, we have tospecify, and especially when we
talk about Lovaas, that nobody'sdoing what Lovaas did, you
know, back then.
We just, even if we say we'redoing DTT It's not what Lobos
did back then.
You're talking about he wasslapping their legs when they
were stimming and would notcontinue on with the trial until
they stopped stimming andstarted making eye contact.

(18:13):
I don't even think we'rerequiring eye contact anymore
with DTT and we're still runningtrials.
So it's not the same thing.
And even when you're thinkingabout that, well, that means it
might have included a lot ofpunishment, positive punishment
too.
So then you're talking aboutout completely different
schedules of reinforcement.
You know, so it's really notthe same thing.

(18:34):
Even though we call it DTT,this isn't like, this isn't
Lobos method, you know,whatever.
That's a great point.
However you cut it, it's notthe same.

Mike Rubio (18:44):
That's an excellent point.
You make me think of somethingin terms of the evolution of
systems and procedures and maybewhat your thought is about
this.
And I haven't found a good wayto explain this yet.
Hopefully I can do okay here.
But The notion that if you goback to, if we get into Lovaas'
head and his motives, you know,we go back to late 60s and he's

(19:04):
starting his project at UCLA.
And these are now individualswho, you know, by age 13, as
childhood schizophrenics, whichwas, I think, the general term
back then, they're going to beinstitutionalized.
This is where we're going.
We've got some politicalmovements at the same time in
terms of civil rights.
Now you've got this researcherwho says...
I don't know the manyhypotheses he had, but the idea

(19:26):
that there is this demographicof the population, and I think
I've got techniques and systemsand strategies that can apply to
them, that can apply...
learning theory as it werepretty basic learning theory in
a way that hasn't been donebefore and i'm not supporting
any of the things that we canlook at now you know in terms of

(19:48):
uh maybe punishment proceduresor things that were applied i
wouldn't look at them now andsay yeah we should try those
outside of maybe very specificsituations where they might
still apply But we could beremiss in thinking about some of
those things as bad.
I think our culture, oursociety is dealing with a lot of
this, even though maybe at thatpoint in time, it was necessary

(20:09):
to propel us forward.
And then it's up to us toevolve beyond those things.
So I'd be hard pressed to thinkof a situation where I might
slap a child's leg at thispoint.
However, I know that it serveda purpose back at that time.
I don't know.
I don't know if I made anysense there, if you have any
thoughts on that.
I think that we get into Well,let's just say this.

(20:30):
There's a lot of discussionabout the idea of compassionate
ABA.
I know what people mean.
I'm not going to be criticalabout it.
At the same time, shout out toCJ, our colleague, he would come
back and say, well, what haveyou been doing?
Have you not beencompassionate?
What does that mean?
You know, I don't know if youhave any thoughts on that.
And I threw a lot out there.

Yeah, yeah.
And this has been, you know,this was a topic in the ethics
class too, you know, becausewe're talking about, we're
talking to the next generationabout the, you know, some main
topics that are going on now,which is like, yeah, the shift
in ABA to be more compassionate.
And I agree with you, likewhen, if you take something
someone did out of historicalcontext and compare it to what

(21:13):
the values and the core cultureis today then they will often
look like you know a real badguy but that doesn't matter it
could be anyone like um one ofmy um one of my heroes is Ben
Franklin and guess who likeguess who also used to put dots
on a piece of paper Ben Franklinused to do that too so you know

(21:34):
so like I see him as the firstbehaviors but like I also know
that he was like really racistbut he knew he was really racist
too which is kind ofinteresting that he like
recognized his own bias and hewould even say How I am now is
not going to be viewed thatgreat in the future, which makes
me think, what are the thingsthat we are doing now where

(21:54):
people are going to look back tous and say, ew, that is just
gross that these people would dothat.
I think it probably has a lotto do with what we're doing to
the earth around us.
I think that people willprobably look back and say, ew,
you're throwing things out.
Ew, you're such a wasteful.
You used a paper plate and apaper cup.
That's gross.

(22:15):
You know what I mean?
And like, but now it's likecommon, but we've got no problem
doing it now.
Yeah.
Paper plates and plastic cups.
Some people are moving on, butpeople still use them even when
they're convenient.
And we're not stuck on like,you know, like using regular
dishes and stuff like that.
Although we should, hey, wehave this system in which we can
renew those sources.
We could use a cup and we coulduse a dish from like our actual

(22:38):
cup and dish instead of a papercup and a dish.
We abandon this behavior forsomething that is more
convenient for us to lower theresponse effort we've adopted
using these these methods andyeah it's immediately rewarding
because it lowers the responseeffort but look at the delayed
you know cost it's like it'sit's ruining the environment

(23:00):
we're like killing the world andwe're using our resources too
fast and plus it's just wastefulyou know what i mean we're
using like what a paper cup anda and a paper plate just to walk
you know 10 feet and sit downand eat something and then throw
it out it's like really kind ofwasteful.
I don't know.
I might have went kind of along way on that one.
No, no.

(23:20):
A little bit of a tangent.

Mike Rubio (23:21):
I mean, I think it applies.
Makes a lot of sense.
Again, response effort is whatyou were talking about.
And I think that applies herevery easily when we think about,
you know, just trying to shootfor compliance, for example,
which whatever.
There's, you know, prettyminimal value.
Yes, there's very clear, butpretty minimal value over all

(23:42):
the idea of compliance.
You don't want that to be theoverall effort.
But it can be very easy,especially if you're working
with a young kid and that cryingis going away very easily and
you're not considering the valueof or the type of reinforcement
that you're using.
Yeah, I think people can make abig mess of things based on
that more minimal responseeffort along with the negative
reinforcement because you're notgetting that distress signal

(24:04):
that you're having to deal with.
And it's a lot harder to workthrough that and to integrate
the aspects of self-soothinginto all the verbal elements
that might go into thatsituation.
When it's 30 minutes of yourchild crying and it's the end of
the day and you're tired andthey already didn't have dinner
and people are going to do someinteresting things and young
professionals are going to dosome interesting things just in

(24:27):
an effort to make everybody feelbetter.
That's not a bad motive.
And then for us as behavioranalysts, there's a lot to
examine there to make sure thatfrom a treatment perspective,
for example, we're addressingthose variables.

I've also pushed, I know you guys have
done it, well, if you've been inthe field long enough, you've
done it, like, you know, whereyou rode the wave and pushed
through the extinction burstand, like, you know, just did a
blanket extinction procedure.
Like, you can't tell me youdidn't do it.
I'm sure you did

Mike Rubio (24:53):
it.
100%.
We love talking about it here.
The blanket, the extinctionmeans blanket ignoring equation.
That's, we love, yeah, we lovethat discussion.

Yeah, like I also noticed, like, you know,
especially when I startedworking with more verbal
clients, like being ignored,they don't like that.
Like, you know, so it's kind ofaverse.
Wait, really?
In fact, I don't know anyonewho likes being ignored.
Dan does.

Dan Lowery (25:16):
My girlfriend does.
My partner, yep.

Maybe at certain times it's like, leave
me alone thing, but more of,yeah.
But being ignored, that'sgenerally not a good thing.
And we have alternatives tothat.
That's great.
But ultimately, I've seenbehavior analysis to be the
compassion of science justbecause of our single subject
approaches that we do treatpeople.

(25:42):
And I think this speaks a lotto DEI initiatives, too, that we
see individuals in theindividuals.
We don't have to put people inboxes to treat or anything like
that.
We can measure their ownbehavior and compare it to what
happens after the interventionand still be able to have

(26:04):
procedures and methods that canhelp them that we can try.
So different options forprocedures or different kinds of
procedures and stuff like that.
So I think that we've alwaysbeen compassionate.
We've always tried to becompassionate.
But if you're going to lookback and say, oh, this This is
what we did back then.
Well, it's just because wedidn't know better.
We're still trying to do thebest for that client that we

(26:25):
could possibly do.
And we were just, you know, nowwe have better procedures.
You know, same with modernmedicine.
Like, modern medicine used to,like, what, bleed people.
They used to cut your arm andmake you bleed into, like, a
container or something likethat.

Mike Rubio (26:39):
The frontal lobotomy is my favorite example of that.
Oh, yeah, the frontal lobotomy.
That was our best idea at thattime.
And it worked.
It worked.
It was awful.
And it took...
of a whole lot of other thingsthat you didn't want to address,
but at that point in time, itworked.
That's my favorite examplethere of a blunt force.
It met the objective.

Dan Lowery (27:00):
Dr.
Scott, excuse me.
Let me ask you a question aboutthat.
That was really enlightening.
ABA is compassionate from thesingle subject design.
I'm going to let that marinatea little bit because I think,
wow, that's very, veryinsightful.
One thing that...
I've trained a lot on, andplease educate me on this
because I don't have theclinical experience that you

(27:22):
have, is this concept ofcircular reasoning.
And you made me think about itwith a single subject design
piece, just testing somebodyagainst themselves.
You work with individuals thatmay be diagnosed with
schizophrenia.
And from an ABA perspective ora behaviorist perspective, a lot
of times I feel like thatdiagnosis, we look at it as
circular.
The person has delusions andtherefore they get a diagnosis

(27:43):
of schizophrenia.
And why do they have thediagnosis of schizophrenia?
Because they have delusions, sothat becomes circular.
What are your thoughts on that?
Do you feel that havingdiagnoses benefits the
individual?
Because in ABA, we kind of stayaway from diagnoses.

Yeah.
And I guess like, I guess it'snot going to, my thoughts on the
diagnosis isn't going to vibereal well.
Cause I know there's a lot ofpeople out there that are
self-diagnosing themselves,which I would say like, if
you're giving yourself adiagnosis and you don't need a
diagnosis.
Yeah.
And I see, I see a diagnosis asa way to get help.
Not like as like, Hey, thisexplains, you know, my behavior,

(28:26):
this, you know, this will helpmake sense.
But the, the other thing islike when you're exposed to all
the different diagnoses outsideout of autism you realize
there's a lot of other issuesthere and it kind of makes sense
I know a lot of people havebeen saying like oh autism
clinics should be able todiagnose autism well like when I
first started working I hadthat DSM first started working

(28:49):
in mental health I had the DSMand that really helped me
because every time someone wouldcome in the only two things I
would really know are ADHD andautism I would think everybody
had ADHD and autism when theydidn't and I'm like well this
doesn't fit but that's all Iknow But like, yeah, then you
have this whole book and thebook can be kind of broken down

(29:09):
like behaviorally too.
But it is a differentperspective, even with some of,
some of the clients specificallylike schizophrenia.
And I guess like, how familiarare you guys with relational
frame theory?
Is that like a big thing?

Mike Rubio (29:22):
Very little, very little, but it's, we're going to
have you, please talk.
The floor is yours, sir.

Well, I can't get into relational frame
theory, but I will talk aboutlike how clients with
schizophrenia are overly, overlywe're relating to things,
right?
And I guess relational frametheory, people think it's like
neo-Scanarian or it's different,but it's like really, it needs
behavior analysis and behavioranalysis needs relational frame
theory.
And if you think about it, evenlike the behavioral contingency

(29:51):
is like you're responding tothe relation between the
stimuli.
You're not responding to onestimulus in particular, but
you're responding to how thatstimulus relates to
reinforcement or relates topunishment.
So like even...
our conceptualization of thebehavioral contingency, the ABC,
is relational responding.

(30:12):
But it's significant,especially with individuals who
are verbal, and it's all aboutrole-governed behavior.
We can act in a way accordingto something, or we can act
oppositional to something, or wecan act towards things.
We could place them in ahierarchy.
There's all kinds of differentways we can respond to these

(30:34):
relations between things.
They're all arbitrary ways.
And we can respond arbitrarilyto the arbitrary ways that we
respond arbitrarily.
We have this special ability ashumans to be able to respond in
arbitrary ways, arbitrarystimuli that we assign arbitrary
meanings to.
And that's what makes itspecial that we can do this to

(30:54):
an infinite extent.
And I would say that peoplewith schizophrenia have this
problem where they overrelatethings, where they see things
that like an inanimate object asbeing meaningful or as having
some causative issues.
Like I have a client that hasschizophrenia that I've been

(31:16):
with him for a while, which isgood.
Because if you get a clientwith schizophrenia, keeping them
for a while is important.
You want to keep them on theirmeds.
And that's an important part.
Otherwise, if they go off theirmeds, they can have a lot of
challenges.
But I realized as we weretalking to earlier, is it my
goal to have him not tell meabout his hallucinations?

(31:38):
And I would say like, no, whenhe has hallucinations, and he
has delusions, I do want to hearabout them.
I need to know if these thingsare happening and how he's like
approaching them.
But that also like that, like,hey, you might see this thing,
you might see three twigs on theground in a certain and and
there.
And you might see that as anarrow that points to a certain
direction.

(31:58):
And you might think that meantis meant for you.
Right?
But it's not right.
This is just reachwigs on theground.
It's just they're not reallypointing in a certain direction.
And these are inanimate objectsthat like don't really have any
meaning, but they see meaningin it, which is really
interesting that like it's so sothe behavioral
conceptualization of it is stilllike is very pertinent.

(32:21):
It's very important becauselike you can kind of understand
that, hey, these are things thatthat you see as like related to
contingencies, like as you'reyou're creating discriminative
stimuli that aren't.
necessarily discriminativestimuli.
Interesting.

Mike Rubio (32:37):
Interesting.
The term is entailment.
Is that the, am I getting thatright?
Am I remembering that

correctly?
Something like that.
I

Mike Rubio (32:44):
don't know.
Entanglement is all of it.

Dan Lowery (32:46):
I always mix it up with that.
That's Will Smith and Jada.
That's the entanglement.
Okay.
Another Philly reference.

Mike Rubio (32:56):
That's when you get your son.
Anyway.
Anyway, yeah.
I wanted to go back tosomething you mentioned that's
very important.
For a little while, I tried thetraipse into the idea of
neuropsychopharmacology with alot of our clients because a lot
of them are on meds and becausethey're being administered
largely by their parents.
And I would hear about thesemed vacations and going, did you

(33:19):
check with your doctor on that?
Is that what you should bedoing?
And I thought it was somethingthat maybe we could help with
and we did in some cases interms of uh tracking data and
you know phase change lines whenthere was changes and anything
that we could contribute it wasa real it was really cumbersome
yeah it was really cumbersome totry and and um then collaborate
with the medical practitionersfor you know various reasons

(33:41):
they're busy and we get it couldyou talk a little bit i mean
that's got to be hugelyimportant you just alluded to
that with with the populationthat you serve Give us a general
overview on that and wherebehavior analysis comes in
there.
I've always liked to say, sure,once the chemical compounds in
your body, that's physiological,but the act of taking that pill

(34:03):
and putting it in your mouthand swallowing it down, I'm
going to call that behavioral.
You have to be involved in thatto some capacity.
Obviously, it's imperative orit's crucial to your work.
Tell us a little bit about thatand how you get involved.

Yeah.
And if there is any room forlike a motivating operation or
something like that, I would saythis would probably be the time
when you are talking about amedication that like results in
like, um, to potentiatingdifferent reinforcers.
Um, you know, because that's,that's really kind of what we're
talking about and the differentmeds do different things.
Um, and like my, my clients, Ido realize that, you know, some

(34:39):
of them need meds and some ofthem don't have meds and some
are in our meds.
So I'm, I'm fine either way.
Um, I do like try to, you know,track down that as best as I
can when they start a med and,and, you know, just tell them,
tell them, like, educate them,because I realized they don't
have that much time with apsychiatrist, where, like, where
we have therapy, you know,that, like, you'll see me for

(35:01):
therapy, they're just doing,how's your med?
Is it working for you?
Can I, can I refill it?
You know, do we need to make achange?
Like, that's, that's their,their main things.
So, like, understanding how itworks and stuff like that, we'll
talk about, but, but I guessyou guys, I guess, like, you
probably, like, would wouldshade an area of the data sheet
to say, oh, the medication wastaken at this time, and then you

(35:23):
shade that area down to itshalf-life or something like that
so you know the active amount.

Mike Rubio (35:29):
I've never gotten that involved just as much as
maybe change in dosage, changein the type of medication.
Phase change lines.
You just gave me a whole new, Imean, that'd be interesting.
That's certainly something thatwe deal with more
qualitatively, and I can see itwith a lot of the kiddos I work
with where it could be a falseattribute A lot of the times I
feel like, yeah, I'm coming in,it's after school, and your mom

(35:53):
probably forgot your seconddose.
Hey, mom, oh, yeah, I forgot.
Okay, you start seeing certainthings, and yeah, I think we
could probably use that data.
If I could find a good way tostart tracking it, you just gave
me some good starting points.

Yeah.
You would like shade, I guess,shade it down in a half-life and
then go to a gradient afterthat, because you would expect
like, and the medication isgoing to peak at some time and
the effects are going to startwearing off.
So you could probably look atthat too and not have it like,
all right, you know, instead oflike a block of orange or
something like that.
I just, I remember doing, youknow, doing this before.
And this is what I taught wastaught about behavioral, you

(36:26):
know, psychopharmacology, um,you know, during my PhD.
Um, but, um, I, you know, otherthan that, I do tell clients
the ones that are, take adepression med.
Like we do talk about like whatNCR is related to it.
Like, hey, this is going to, itmight make you feel better.
It's not going to change thethings around you, you know, so
they're not going to change.

(36:47):
But, you know, I realized thatif I'm just with a client an
hour a week and they're havinghuge problems and there's a lot
of things in their environmentthat needs to change and these
things are not going to bechanging quickly, right?
Then it kind of makes sense,you know, that they'd be on a
medication.
And a lot of people aren'tgoing to like me saying this
because we're talking aboutlike, hey, you know, but I don't

(37:08):
see the medication as areplacement for behavior
analysis.
It's like, you still need thebehavior analysis there because
you want to get off themedication.
You don't want to just keep ontaking the medication.
The medication just makesthings you all right with it.
It just makes things you areall right.
It makes you all right with theterrible things that are going
on around you.
But ultimately, like my job asa therapist is like, Hey, let's

(37:28):
change these terrible thingsthat are going on around you.
And then you're going to feel awhole lot better because it
makes sense that you feeldepressed or you feel anxious
because you have this crap goingon your in your life so let's
change the crap going on in yourlife instead of trying to
change the feeling or deal withthe feeling you know this even
though it's the long thelong-term solution and might

(37:48):
take longer than just taking apill um and then when they when
they take that pill telling themthat like hey this is it just
makes you okay with thoseterrible things going on in your
life and it's not changing themwe got to do the work to change
them like we still need thebehavior analysis to change
those things you know we won'tget it from the pill the pill is
just it's going to keep thingsokay just for now you know just

(38:10):
for now or for as long as youkeep on even not even for as
long as you keep on taking itreally just for now

Mike Rubio (38:17):
do you think it's is it possible for you to to to
look at the therapeutictherapeutic effects of a
medication or sort of see aclient maybe experiencing those
versus side effects and is thereany level of positive or
negative reinforcement that youthink we as part of the
environment could add to that?
So, I mean, if somebody, youcan tell they're feeling better

(38:39):
and is saying that of anyassistance, for example.

Well, I'll give you the opposite example in
a counter-therapeutic situationwhere like, yeah, this client,
like I see twice a week, shewasn't going to have a med check
for another month.
She's taking thisantidepressant and it's like,
she's like falling asleep duringthe day.
She can't sleep at night.
And she's like having theworst, worst time.

(39:03):
And like, I don't even know ifher sleep is like, if it's, if,
if she's really getting sleep,you know, I think her sleep was
disrupted too.
And, and then she's havingsuicide.
suicidal thoughts and I'm likeoh you gotta you gotta stop
taking it and she's like noteven realizing it's a medication
I'm like this you weren't likethis like you know a few weeks
ago it takes a while for thismedication to like build up in

(39:25):
your system now there's build upyou're having all kinds of
problems um so like you gottastop taking it um and you know
just because like hey if itincrease your suicidal thoughts
and your doctor says stop takingit if it increases your
suicidal thoughts and stoptaking it um so that's happened
before but also like It isinteresting and tracking like,

(39:46):
you know, with theschizophrenics, like tracking
their delusions.
How many did they have thissession?
And then how many are theyhaving while they're on
medication?
And then seeing that like, oh,yeah, there's a big decrease.
And they're just I don't knowif they're just not having
delusions or they're not talkingabout delusions, you know, but
if they have them, they'll talkabout them.
And so it seems like they'rejust not that interested or not,

(40:08):
you know, not relating so much,I guess, on that delusion.

Dan Lowery (40:13):
That's interesting, and that makes me feel better
about what I've told parents inthe past about medication.
Like you said, medication isn'tnecessarily the long-term
answer.
If the individual is overlystimulated, is there a way for
us to...
help this individual calm downso they can access their
environment in which then themedication kind of fades away as

(40:35):
the environment takes over butif they're so stimulated they're
not able to access theirenvironment well maybe there
needs to be some interventionthere to allow them to access
their environment or what you'resaying on the flip side of
things if this individual'saccessing their environment in a
way that's traumatizing oroverwhelming for them is there a
way for us to blunt that for aperiod of time so that we can
change the environment to thenfade down the medication is that

(40:57):
kind of accurate to what youwere thing uh dr scott

some of the plans we make and changing that
they're you know people's livesthe things around them like you
know i have some clients a lotof my clients who are medical
assistants so some of them arein bad spots and trying to get
out of them like in shelters youknow and don't have jobs or
maybe just got out of jail orsomething like that and it's
like yeah you could do the woeis me approach and and just feel

(41:20):
bad about yourself and be youknow and be miserable and be a
We're working on getting a joband we're working on getting you
out of the shelter.
But how long does that take?
You know, that's going to takesome time.
And how much are we going toget done in an hour a week?
You know, when when part of thetime is like you get your

(41:41):
chance to gripe if you need togripe about things that you're
right and therapy to gripe aboutthings that things are not
happy about.
And that gives me an idea like,oh, here are socially valid
targets, you know, things thatlike they're griping about it.
So they want these things tochange.
But yeah, it doesn't matterlike how good of a therapist you
are.
You might not be able to getsomeone who just got out of
jail, you know, like a job,like, and is in a shelter, just

(42:03):
got out of jail and a jobovernight.
And then it might take monthsand might take months and you
have to keep them applying andworking.
You can't do a form.
You got to keep them doing it.
So they got to keep on applyingand then failing.
Right?
So we're talking about being onreally thin schedules of
reinforcement.
So it kind of makes sense.
Like a medication during thistime might help them.
And I've seen that where peoplewere on medication and then

(42:26):
like got out of that spot andthen, you you know, didn't have
to take it anymore after thatbecause, like, yeah, the things
around them changed, you know,and they were doing better, so
they didn't have to take themedication anymore.

Mike Rubio (42:39):
Tremendous amount of response effort to very thin
reinforcement.
I think that's reallyimportant.
I mean, that speaks to a lot ofother topics that we could
probably apply that same conceptto where people are.
I mean, you're almost trainingor implementing a behavior of
endurance.
You know, it's a littleabstract, but that's what you're
asking.
these people to do is to endurea whole lot of really tough

(43:03):
circumstances for a real glimmerof hope.
It has to feel amazing when yousee somebody get there.
And I'm assuming that thathappens more often than not,
hopefully.

Oh, man, it does.
And I don't get to talk aboutit because you can't talk, you
know, which is the toughestthing.
You got to keep, you know,people with their personal
information private and, youknow, and confidential and stuff
like that.
But it's like really, yeah,it's really rewarding when you
get to like the text like, oh,yeah, it was all up it's all
because of you and like you knowi'm doing so much better now

(43:37):
and yeah like it's yeah you knowpeople turning people's lives
around is cool it's fun and thenit's like and you wish you
could do that for everybody andit's just sometimes you just
can't you know and you want itbut you also got to understand
that you can't be like draggingpeople along by the hand they
have to be climbing their ownladders you can't be dragging
them up the ladder you know soit's like that's that's the

(43:59):
thing we i gotta get youclimbing i gotta get you do it
you know, really, really teachyou to help yourself as much as
possible.
Well, that

Dan Lowery (44:07):
payoff

for you, that

Dan Lowery (44:09):
payoff for you has got to be so important too,
because you were talking aboutresponse effort for payoff.
Like your job has a huge amountof response effort.
You come and have to listen toall of this negativity, which
I'm sure wears on you after awhile, just hearing all of this
negativity and things people aregoing through.
And I'm sure it's hard todecompartmentalize that outside
of your work and not thinkabout, is this person going to

(44:29):
be okay?
Which is taking a strain onyour, you know, mental
wellbeing.
So getting those payoffs of mylife has changed now as a
result.
I mean, obviously there's amonetary payoff, but none of us
get into this field cheerilybecause of the monetary payoff.
Right.
Really?

Speaker 03 (44:43):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
That's why I'm in it.
What

Dan Lowery (44:46):
are you talking about?
But that payoff has to be justso amazing and reinforcing for
you.

It is.
But like, have you done, haveyou done the act therapy?
All right, Dan.
No,

Dan Lowery (44:57):
no.
Which is, was going to be myquestion.
And I want to open that up toyou.
Go ahead.

All right, well, that's what I'm saying.
Like, I tell my clients this.
I wouldn't do any therapy onyou that I haven't tried on
myself first, right?
So, like, I definitely, like,you know, do the act therapy on
my own.
So like, yeah, they'recomplaining.
I don't interact with it likethat.
I got to hear this all day.
And this is some horriblething, you know, and like that

(45:24):
it accumulates some kind ofburden on me or anything like
that.
No, I'm just trying to helppeople.
So what does that act

Dan Lowery (45:29):
therapy look like when you say you do it on
yourself?
Can you describe it?
Because I'm still very new init.
I'm not really understanding.
So can you describe it for ourlisteners?

Yeah, it looked just like that.
I was just telling you.
Yeah, I'm in it to help people.
That's my value.
That's an important thing.
All right, so I guess I'll giveyou this analogy.
I'll give you the latteranalogy.
And this is part of analogy.
This is a later part of theanalogy.
But we have these values.

(45:58):
And these values are, if you'relooking at it through a
Scenarian lens, this is ourrule-governed behavior that we
conform And we can form it in acouple of different ways,
tracking, right?
Which we are paying attentionto the environment and we're
making rules off theenvironment, right?
So like, so this person wasmean to me, this person is
always going to be mean to me,right?

(46:20):
And then we have plies, whichare, you know, certainly
important culturally.
Like, you know, mom always toldme if I don't have anything
good to say, don't say anythingat all, right?
You know, so there might belike those things and they call
them plies because we'recomplying, you know, to that
rule.
And for the most part, likeour, our values, um, are, are,

(46:41):
uh, applies, um, the, and thesethoughts that like for mine is
going to be, I want to be a goodbehavior scientist and I want
to be a good father and I wantto be a good husband and, you
know, a good, you know, son andbrother.
And, and I want to be, youknow, it's not, I want to be a
good pool is I want to befantastic at pool, you know,
cause I'm already good.

(47:01):
So like that's kind of shiftedup and I want to be a good
golfer and good at playingguitar, you know, and those are
important things, but there'snever going to be a day where I
say, oh, I'm a good behavioranalyst.
I'm done.
I'm done.
Like, I don't have to do itanymore.
No, I'm always striving for it.
And that's the thing with ourvalues is like things.
Those are the things we'realways striving for.
So, you know, when I think of aladder and I really like
ladders.
I don't climb ladders all day,just like the idea, the concept

(47:25):
of the ladders.
And I think about how theladders have these big, long
sides, big sides, big, thicksides, easy for you to grasp
onto.
And they go really far up.
They carry you all the way up,right?
And these ladders remind me ofour values, how they both kind
of go up.
They're both going up in thesame direction, you know,
because our values aren't goingto, you know, intertwine or like

(47:46):
conflict with each other.
They're consistent and they'reeasy for us to hold.
But then I think about therungs.
And the rungs are the mostimportant parts for a behavior
analyst.
Because the rungs, they cannotbe too close together.
Otherwise, we can't fit ourfeet in between them.
But the rungs can also not betoo far apart.
Because how are we going to geta 20-foot ladder that has two

(48:10):
rungs on it?
Dan, what would happen if youtried to climb a 20-foot ladder
with two rungs?

Dan Lowery (48:15):
Even with my height, I would fall down and bust my
butt.

Right.
And the rungs are like thegoals, right?
And so we know that as behavioranalysts, if we put these goals
too close together, then ourclients are going to be able to
do them.
But if we make these goals toobig and too far apart, then
they're not going to be able toclimb off that ladder either.
They have to be able to seethat next step and be able to

(48:40):
grab onto it and pull themselvesup.
And I tell my clients thatwhile they're climbing that
ladder, do not look for a rope.
A rope is something someonemight, you know, hand down to
you and say, hey, hey, I'll helpyou.
I'll pull you up, right?
And I tell them that because ifthey grab onto that rope, then
they're not climbing their ownladder.

(49:00):
Someone else is doing it forthem.
Someone else is pulling them upand then someone else, they
might be pulling on this ropeand be like, oh, this rope is
really heavy.
And then be like, well, there'smy own ladder.
Let me climb my own ladder.
And then what do they do withthe rope?
They just let it go.
And then that person is backdown at the bottom of the hole.
And then sometimes people willtoss them up a rope from the

(49:21):
bottom of the hole.
And you know, where that ropeis going.
It's not going up.
Right.
So I coach people that like,hey, stay on your ladder.
You know what's important toyou.
We'll come up with some goalsfor you to accomplish what's
important to you and you to makeprogress.
And yeah, you might look overand be like really impressed
with how high someone else hasclimbed.
But most importantly, stay onyour own ladder and don't let

(49:42):
anyone help you.
I'll be on my own laddercheering you on from over here.
Like, keep on going.
I'm cheering you on.
But ultimately, I'm climbing myown ladder too.
Right.
So don't grab for a little bit.
help yourself stay on your ownladder and let's keep on making
progress in a direction that wewant to go that will make us
happy in the long run i'm goingto cut that

Dan Lowery (50:01):
clip and use that for training at the end yeah
that's amazing

Mike Rubio (50:05):
gentlemen we are exactly on time uh we could
probably we could probablycontinue to i mean literally
like you're the end of yourlovely analogy there uh put us
right at the end We're going tohave to do this again, please.
So we'll reach back out to you.
So many more things we want totalk about.
So many more things to talkabout.

(50:26):
It has been...
tremendous honor, Dr.
Scott, to have you on the show.
We learned so much and so manymore things that I want to ask.
We'll do our research beforethe next one so we can revisit
some of these topics.
Yeah, real pleasure to have youon and to share your wealth of
knowledge with our listeners.
Any closing thoughts, Dan,before I give my little wrap-up?

Dan Lowery (50:48):
Well, Dr.
Scott, do you have any closingthoughts, anything that you
would like to add, any placethat we can direct listeners to?
Any

closing thoughts from you?
There is the one thing you guysdidn't talk about that movement
that's going on now.
I don't know if you guys arelike, I know you haven't been on
LinkedIn as much.
You guys know what I'm talking

Mike Rubio (51:09):
about.
Please, no.
I'm not on LinkedIn.

Yeah.
So I had maybe complained alittle bit about the BACB and
then on LinkedIn.
And then some people kind offelt the same way.
And I guess people were kind offeeling that the BACB has been
very focused on autism.
And then there's some of usthat do behavior analysis

(51:33):
outside of autism.
And there's needs avoidance.
because the people who do itoutside of autism are trying to
say like, Hey, we could doreally important work here.
And like, and there's, thereshould be jobs for us, but
there's not, it's, it's all thefocus is in autism and like, or
do we really have a voice?
And a lot of people wanted tocreate a new board.

(51:55):
And I'm not sure if that'sgoing to happen or not, but I
know, but we've been meeting andthere's been a lot of
important, you know, significantpeople in the field that have
been interested in this and kindof pushing for it.
And I'm just kind of riding thewave right now.
So, but I don't know, you guysdidn't, you guys are like

(52:16):
looking at me like I was astranger.

Mike Rubio (52:18):
No, no, no, no, not at all.
I mean, I think that you'retalking about something very
important.
We've, I've delved into thattopic very minimally and also
with a very related venture.
So the idea of behavioralpediatrics as a developmental
guy, that was sort of my soapboxin saying, I mean, this has
more applications than justautism.

(52:38):
So, I mean, yeah, the idea ofif somebody can't integrate, the
idea of doing your own thingmakes a lot of sense.
And I'm glad you brought it upbecause we don't have to stop
now.
We've got plenty of time todiscuss it a little further.
So what are the the next steps?
Where do you think this isgoing?
What kind of feedback have yougotten?
What's next?

Um, right, right now is just meetings.
We're meeting again and, and,uh, actually two Sundays from,
from now we'll be meeting againand we're going to actually,
we're having meetings morefrequently now.
So momentum is kind of pickingup and, you know, I w I was just
complaining about the BACP alittle bit.
Like I kind of, I didn't thinkthat there was going to be a lot
of other people out there thatwere like, Hey, yeah.
Um, yeah, we need this.

(53:23):
We do kind of need something.
And I, I guess it was kind ofborn from the whole, um, uh, not
everybody feels comfortablewith some of the ethics the BACB
has with operating in otherareas.
And we kind of feel that likeour that some of the things we
learn in our science areapplicable to behavior outside
of autism, not just not justapplicable to autism.

(53:45):
So absolutely.
So when when they say you needlike all this, you know,
education and training and thisand that and like some of the
other areas, some of us justdon't see it that way.
I'm used to using it inwhatever area I want to apply
to, you know, without regard tolike, oh, I have to get a mentor
or supervisor or something likethat.
Sometimes, that's just notpossible.
I don't know anyone who's doingbehavior analysis in billiards

(54:08):
or anyone who's reallyinterested in using behavior
analysis in their community andpolitically.
Who am I going to look up to?
I don't even want to.
I don't think it makes anysense to.
I think it would be bad forscience to also because that
means getting someone else'sidea and kind of going along

(54:32):
with their own applicationinstead of saying like i'm very
i'm very strong with my myfundamental knowledge of these
methods and i can take thesemethods and i can apply to any
human behavior or animalbehavior you know sometimes too
that i don't need to have likeyou know a special someone
supervised me that has a lot ofexperience in this area or a lot

(54:52):
of education in this area andit might even be bad too because
that would be both of us youknow translating you know really
me going off of his translatinginstead of me translating it
from the original text, youknow, from that original thing.
And I think that's kind of likewhat happened, what has
happened in sports too, and whyit's kind of become like a
little more biomechanical forbehavior analysts instead of

(55:15):
like more functional.
And it's because like, yeah,like look at how much work has
come out of Florida from MiltonBerger, you know, and they did a
lot of dance stuff and it makessense for that, but does it
make sense for a sport likegolf?
And it's like, no, that's noteven our goal and plus there's
people out there that do itbetter than us and and also like

(55:35):
hey there's some metrics thatthey're interested in that have
nothing to do with you knowswing mechanics or anything like
that then the loser should bethe metrics we're most
interested in maybe how closeyou get it to the hole not like
how big your backswing is youknow what i mean so like and and
ultimately like we see this asselectionist so we're selecting
you know some of thesetopographies too um so if we

(55:57):
just worry about schedulesreinforcement like on on the
variables that are mostimportant to the offers then it
will take everything else willtake care of it itself you know
or you have some other peoplelike that are there to do it um
so i guess i guess like um intotality it's like yeah we need
to have um behavior analysis foreverybody else yeah um and like

(56:19):
including start using it onyourself and i encourage you
guys to do so you got me um livea live a behavioral life you
know like i got i don't know 20standard acceleration charts i
think i spend like a I don'teven think I spend five minutes
a week on them because it's likeI'm just putting a dot on a
piece of paper.
You could do the same.

(56:39):
You could spend five minutes aweek and have 20 standard
acceleration charts andaccelerate 20 of your behaviors.
You know what I mean?
You have those skills to do so.
Why can't we just go do it?
Yeah.
Wow.
I like that.

Dan Lowery (56:55):
The biomechanics of a golf swing are really
interesting because you bringthat up.
Yeah.
If we're focused on that andsomebody's teaching us how to
play golf, by virtue of usfocusing on that, that person's
going to be teaching us throughtheir biomechanics and what
worked for them and thenattributing that to us and
saying, well, the way that weneed to hit this, like you said,
because you hit it better withyour backswing being like this,

(57:18):
I'm going to say that you needto do that and teach it through
that.
That premise, that's reallyinteresting for focusing on the
function.

Mike Rubio (57:24):
You all meet on Zoom or live or a hybrid?
Yeah, we've

been meeting on Zoom.

Mike Rubio (57:30):
So maybe we could do a, I mean, if we could set up
one of your meetings as a show.
Maybe let's check back in onthat.
That might be a really good wayto just get the entire premise
out there.

It is really interesting.
The way it's going right now,we're in the early phases and we
adopted Robert's Rules ofOrder.
I don't know if you guys havebeen in organizations on boards
or anything like that.
If you get active and you getinto activism, then you might
get on nonprofits.

(58:05):
Robert's Rules of of order orlike rules for democracy.
So, um, so everybody has a say,no one can talk a second time
before, like, you know, or noone could talk a second time
before someone else has talked,you know, once.
Um, and then, uh, we go throughlike, you know, like, oh, I
motion to do this, or I moved tohave this done, or like I moved

(58:25):
to substitute this verbiage andwe're creating bylaws and we're
creating purposes of thisorganization and, and committees
and, and, you know, and justlike what everybody does and
everybody's involved.
from the get-go it's likereally is like kind of like a
democratic um behaviorist boardlike where people who like
people what is not just jim carrdoing it it's like it's not

(58:49):
jim's car say it's likeeverybody say um and i think
it's it's different and likejust seeing things getting put
together like they are now wherelike everybody's involved and
it's not like just me coming upwith these ideas and we're all
voting on it and stuff like thatit's neat where do people

Dan Lowery (59:07):
uh Where do people find this resource?
How do people get involved?

All right.
So this just started, thismovement just started on
LinkedIn.
You can find me on LinkedIn.
I would be a good follow onLinkedIn anyway, because I do
talk about behavior analysis agood amount.
Just out of the blue, I'll justsay like, I'm thinking about
this today, you know, or I'mthinking about how this applies
to this, you know, just like,you know, it's like a sounding
board for me.

(59:33):
And also it's a great area tonetwork with behavior analysts.
There's a lot of them on there.
And a lot of marketing people,you know, they say behavior
analysis has a mark I disagree.
I think that because all thesemarketing people do is they send
me DMs and I don't want to talkto

Mike Rubio (59:50):
anyone.
That's why I said I haveLinkedIn, but now you're
inspiring me to go back on.
I will find you for sure.
And we will add his LinkedIninto the description as well.
Yeah, if that's okay with you.
I'm glad we took that extratime to talk about this.
Let's certainly check back in.
We'd like to get involved.

Dan Lowery (01:00:08):
He hit us with that bombshell at the end of the
episode.
He's been waiting.
He's been sitting on it.
I know.
He's been waiting.
Now we know what our nextepisode will be about.

Dr. Scott O'Donnell (01:00:15):
Well, Suzanne knows about it.
I'm surprised she didn't promptyou guys

Mike Rubio (01:00:19):
to be like, hey,

talk to him about this.

Okay.
Now, I mean, I think it wouldmake sense for us to get
involved as well, even just asbusiness owners in the autism
intervention piece.
We are looking for other waysto utilize our skill set and
provide different services.
So even if it's related andstill working with families, the
idea that we're taking itoutside the scope of autism
treatment, I think is a very,very needed movement for sure.

(01:00:43):
So man, Dr.
Scott, we're We're going tohave you back on.
This is a great connection.
It's a real pleasure to meetyou.
I like to end you guys.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
We'll make sure to include therelevant links.
I know Suzanne's good atfinding those.
Make sure those are part of theshow description and we'll find
a very good excuse to have youback on soon or connect with

(01:01:04):
your group.
A little wrap up for us.
I'm going to say climb your ownladder, live a behavioral life
and always analyze responsibly.
Cheers, Dr.
Scott.
Thanks a lot,

man.
Can I say I feel nice andrefreshed, like I just had a
nice cold one?
Yeah, please.
After this talk, yeah.

All right on, man.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
We appreciate you.

See you guys.
Thank you.

ABA on Tap is recorded live and unfiltered.
We're done for the day.
You don't have to go home, butyou can't stay here.
See you next time.

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