May 18, 2025 • 51 mins
ABA on Tap is proud to present Dr. Scott O'Donnell. (Part 1 of 2)
Dr. O’Donnell earned a bachelor’s in Psychology minoring in Cognitive Neuroscience under the mentorship of Dr. Philip Hineline at Temple University where he assisted in conducting an experimental analysis of behavior with rats and pigeons.
Dr. O’Donnell began working with adults with autism and intellectual disabilities in 2013, youth with autism and intellectual disabilities in 2015, and received his registered behavior technician credential in 2016 working for multiple companies providing autism services. Dr. O’Donnell earned his masters in Psychology and Applied Behavior Analysis in 2018 from Purdue Global (nee Kaplan University) where he studied under Dr. Antonio Harrison, a researcher and practitioner of behavior analysis in health, sports, and fitness settings. In 2022, Dr. O’Donnell graduated with a PhD from The Chicago School for Professional Psychology where he researched applications of applied behavior analysis in non-traditional settings including sports and organizational behavior management under Dr. Jack Spear, publishing his thesis in 2021 reviewing behavioral interventions to improve the performance of competing athletes and conducted his dissertation on behavior analysis with competing golfers.
Dr. O’Donnell works with under-served mental health populations providing Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to clients on medical assistance in Philadelphia. Dr. O'Donnell is the President of the Philadelphia Metropolitan Association for Behavior Analysis. Dr. O’Donnell volunteers with his local civic association and promotes the use of radical behaviorism in government. Some of his research interests include translational behavior analysis (theory to practice), Health/Sports/& Fitness, social responsibility and sustainability, freedom and government, Relational Frame Theory, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, radical behaviorism, and self-applications of behavior analysis.
Dr. Scott is a wealth of knowledge and an amazingly cool dude. We look forward to his next visit. This is a nice, super-chilled, tasty and refreshing brew. Feel free to pour generously and always analyze responsibly.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Welcome to ABA on Tap, where our goal is to find
(00:14):
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
look back into the ingredientsto form the best concoction of
ABA on tap.
In this podcast, we will talkabout the history of the ABA
(00:35):
brew, how much to consume toachieve the optimum buzz while
not getting too drunk, and therecommended pairings to bring to
the table.
So without further ado, sitback, relax, and always analyze
responsibly.
SPEAKER_00 (00:55):
All right, all right, and welcome back to yet
another installment of ABA onTap.
I am your ever-grateful co-host,Mike Rubio, along with Mr.
Daniel Lowry.
Mr.
Dan, it's been a few weeks, sir.
How you doing?
SPEAKER_01 (01:07):
Great to be back and really excited about today.
We've got some amazing guests ontoday, starting with Dr.
Scott.
Really, really excited
SPEAKER_00 (01:14):
to
SPEAKER_01 (01:15):
have him on the podcast and talk about maybe
some ABA outside of autism.
SPEAKER_00 (01:20):
A lot of that.
And what's really, I think, whatreally got me about his
background, he's done everythingwe've done, and then he's
exploring a whole bunch of otheravenues, and it seems like his
daily practice is something thatwe haven't had a chance to focus
on enough if at all i think onaba on tap so without further
ado super excited to introducedr scott o'donnell give it up
(01:48):
for our house band there theydon't have they don't have a
name yet so maybe dr scott willbe the first to cast his vote dr
scott thank you for your timesir we're super excited to have
some time with you and chat howare you doing today
SPEAKER_02 (02:00):
It's great.
Great to be here.
Love to be on the show.
I'm a fan of the show.
I would say a name could be theTappers.
(02:30):
and now I actually get to talkback.
SPEAKER_00 (02:33):
Man, that's, we have to tell you, just really kind
words.
We truly, truly appreciate that.
And we want to give a shout out,that said, to our show producer,
recently joined, SuzanneJuswick, for really propelling
us forward and making theseconnections with folks like
yourself.
And glad to be in your car, gladto have you on our screen and on
(02:54):
our show.
We love the origin story.
You've probably heard that.
So we want to give you some timeto just tell us all about it.
about your background.
You've done cognitiveneuroscience, you've done the
RBT route and worked withautistic individuals.
You're doing a lot of mentalhealth related work, which I
think is an area that needs muchmore exploration in terms of
(03:14):
bringing our ABA technologiesinto that realm.
Please tell us how it all gotstarted.
Tell us what drives you, whatstarted your fire and what keeps
it going.
SPEAKER_02 (03:25):
sure i'll get into that but i got to be a fanboy
for a little bit longer if youlike okay so i do remember the
first one of the first episodesmike had a baby right and then
you know and it's funnylistening to that episode
because it wasn't that long ilistened to that episode but how
old is that child at this pointfour four four going on 14 that
(03:48):
is amazing because i do rememberan episode with it where the
child was two weeks old then itwas 22 months and now it's you
know
SPEAKER_00 (03:58):
change she's um she's part of i don't know if
you've heard it dan she's partof our outro now uh in the voice
and she's the one that saysalways analyze so listen for
that on some of the newerepisodes I think I've put it on
two now and I'll see if I canintegrate her little voice more
because she comes into the youknow I'll be editing and stuff
and she'll come in and she justwants to play with the
microphone loves to hear herselfso I really appreciate you
(04:20):
asking um what uh um What anamazing continuing education for
me, right?
In terms of, you know, I'mpretty sure that was her, that's
her whole role in my life rightnow is reminding me all those
things I preach and then I haveto come practice and it's not
always as easy.
SPEAKER_02 (04:39):
The other thing I want to mention is, Dana, I
really liked what you said abouthow, what your approach is going
to be and with this ABA companywith highly trained RBTs and
then how you looked at it like,well, Is that high school
diploma and 40 hours of trainingenough?
No, I want my RBTs to be reallyhighly trained.
(05:01):
And that 5% supervision isn'tenough.
And I was just in the carsaying, hallelujah, thank you
guys for saying that.
I really appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01 (05:09):
You're welcome.
And thanks for acknowledgingthat.
And hopefully that becomessomething in the field.
Because, yes, we are excited tohopefully promote that.
SPEAKER_02 (05:18):
And the last thing I want to mention is, other than
I'm really happy for moreepisodes, is I really liked,
Mike, your conceptualization ofthe sympathetic nervous system
and the escape avoid controlresponse, because I find this to
be very significant in workingwith people who have PTSD, and
when we are identifyingtriggers, and we talk a lot
(05:41):
about the sympathetic nervoussystem and parasympathetic
nervous system.
And I explained to them that Isee it not as two switches, but
two knobs.
can get turned up and the otherone gets turned down at the same
time.
And I do explain it veryneuroscientifically, but more
behaviorally, as in like, hey,what behaviors can we engage in
(06:04):
to reactivate theparasympathetic nervous system?
And one of the main ones is deepbreathing.
So I do preach that a lot for myclients and teach them
diaphragmatic breathing and deepbreathing and stuff like that.
But I appreciate that,especially the part where you
talked about the blood drainingfrom the frontal lobe.
And it makes so much sensebecause this is an adaptive
(06:27):
thing.
We had to make decisions fastersometimes at some points,
especially when our life reallydepended on it and we had to
fight or run.
And you don't want a whole lotof blood going around in your
frontal lobe and you thinkingabout a lot of things.
No, you need to make animmediate decision based on the
immediate future.
(06:48):
So I found that to be like, Ifound it to be significant.
And I adopted it myself.
And the way I'm talking about itand the way I'm explaining how,
like, hey, you know, there's apart of body that's affected
here, too.
SPEAKER_00 (06:59):
Nice, man.
That's incredible feedback.
We really appreciate thatsomeone's out there listening
and someone like yourself cantake some of those concepts.
And that's what this is allabout.
It's why we started this isreally to start.
a lot of self-criticism, I wouldsay, at the beginning.
And now it's taken a turn towhere there's a lot more
collaboration.
Here we are talking thisneuroscience stuff that I wasn't
(07:20):
sure, you know, who's out therelistening and you're taking it
and, you know, giving it a wholenew level.
I really appreciate that.
I think that there's a lot moreto learn and many more
directions that we can go in,which is why we're super excited
to hear more about your work andwhat you're doing with ABA and
how you're applying some ofthose concepts.
You know, the idea of deepbreathing and the sort of
(07:42):
generalization Yeah, Iappreciate that.
(08:12):
same function as a curve ispretty interesting to me.
So maybe we'll get into that atsome point.
SPEAKER_02 (08:20):
Yeah, yeah.
I'm big on those parts of it.
In fact, that's really where mybackground came from.
I came from an experimentalanalysis of behavior background
and predominantly read mostlyJAB and not Java when I first
started getting into the field.
(08:42):
And I was lucky to be mentoredby Dr.
Heinlein at Temple University,which has been a great
experience, especially recently.
I'm an adjunct there now, andI'm teaching some of the same
classes that I got to teach,including the next couple of
terms.
I'll be teaching experimentalanalysis of behavior there.
(09:03):
So it's like a big full circlething coming back to me, like
teaching it again.
But yeah, so I got my degree inpsychology and cognitive
neurosurgery.
neuroscience there for myundergrad.
And I didn't have to do a ton ofneuroscience classes.
I got most of those creditsspending time with Dr.
Heinlein and taking classesunder him.
(09:24):
So they were all behavioralclasses.
I had the rat in the box andeverything.
And that was an eye-openingclass when you're training a
lever press and stuff like that.
And I'm just big on that wholelike, hey, what we do really has
to be conceptually consistentwith our science.
And it has to go all the wayback it has to be these basic
concepts from the experimentalanalysis of behavior that we
(09:46):
elucidate in translationalresearch and then and then do
applied research and then feedour practitioners with this uh
with this information so i likethat continuum just on that uh
that piece where we haveconceptual you know consistency
um makes sense to you guys right
SPEAKER_01 (10:03):
100 percent I just take notes.
So if you see me looking down, Ijust take notes of things that
we can talk about movingforward.
So if you see me looking down,I'm just taking notes because
you've already made me thinkabout a couple of things to talk
about.
Go ahead.
SPEAKER_02 (10:18):
Okay.
Interesting.
I take notes when I talk to myclients too.
So like, you know, I'm the notetaker, but you know, and they
actually kind of find that asvaluable.
Sometimes some of my clientswould say, hey, can you go back
to like what I said or thistime?
And it's been worth it when, youknow, if they're having, you
know, dealing with courts andstuff like that too sometimes
(10:38):
they could say like oh can yousend this the lawyer like you
know uh my previous notes andstuff like that so um but and so
uh just to continue mybackground i moved on and uh and
i did i wasn't in the field forthe longest time i just want to
pay off my bachelor's and i wasout of the field and did a bunch
of different things but seemedto really kind of keep that like
you know my eye on behavioranalysis i was a supervisor at
(11:01):
ups and really just uh startedusing a my department to number
one, which is like, and, um,this was like, we, it was the
island of misfit toys there.
It's the people would send meworkers that they didn't want,
like, oh, they couldn't work forme.
They'd suck.
And I would just use, you know,just ABA principles and then
(11:22):
treat them well.
And then all of a sudden they'reworking for me.
And, and it's like,
SPEAKER_00 (11:26):
imagine that that's killer.
SPEAKER_02 (11:28):
Yeah, your loss.
But I was out of the field for along time, and then with the
insurance mandate changing, I'mlike, oh, maybe there would be a
use for me.
And I went back and got mymaster's, and I had a
two-week-year-old kid at thetime.
So you can imagine doing yourmaster's.
And I jumped right into the PhDright afterwards.
(11:51):
And I was lucky to study underAntonio Harrison, who was into
behavior analysis in sports.
during my master's.
And then I was going to startwith some autism research, but
COVID kind of changed someplans.
And then I pivoted to sportsresearch.
So I published in that a reviewarticle, which like, you know,
(12:13):
we haven't talked about a wholelot, direct versus indirect
competition in sports.
I think it's, I think it'sinteresting.
I use the behavioral contingencyto like create a classification
for like, for different sportstypes.
Like you could, you could have asport where like, golf where
you're it's indirect competitionlike I can't block you in golf I
can't stand in front of yourshot or make you miss or
(12:36):
something like that the onlycompetition that's created is
like a score to beat orsomething like that or versus
basketball where like I can getdirectly in your way and it
really how I am as a defenderreally has to do with like how
you're going to do offensivelyand then I continued with that
research and I did some researchin golf which I'm hoping to
(13:00):
publish soon.
I've tried publishing a coupleof times.
I have to pare it down a littlebit, I think, and try again.
But I think it's going to besignificant when it comes out.
SPEAKER_00 (13:12):
So that means you're going to be adding the direct
competition element to golf.
They're going to be tacklingeach other.
That'd be fantastic.
Happy Gilmore style.
I would certainly watch if thatwas the case.
A whole
SPEAKER_02 (13:22):
new sport.
Yeah, a whole new sport.
I can't wait to talk about that.
That's in my mental notes.
You've got to talk about that.
the sports
SPEAKER_00 (13:29):
research
SPEAKER_02 (13:30):
are you guys golfers i was i was curious
SPEAKER_00 (13:32):
i am not i am not no sir
SPEAKER_02 (13:34):
okay no so because i was gonna i was gonna talk about
golf a lot but do you guys playpool
SPEAKER_00 (13:40):
a little bit a little bit a little bit sure
enough yeah okay i mean yeah youcan get into any of that
SPEAKER_02 (13:46):
Oh yeah, I've been dabbling in that a lot too.
So yeah, so I'm a pool playerand a golfer and I like to
investigate in sports.
Like I've done so officially ingolf and did a study which
included golfers with eightirons on a golf simulator and
(14:06):
came up with like some data thatwas pretty orderly, a lot more
orderly than I expected it to bethat indicated some functional
relations in terms of thetarget.
So it really looks like thetarget makes a big difference in
performance and how someone'sgoing to perform.
And a lot of the golf researchrecently has been with tag
(14:28):
teach, which is not reallyfocusing on a target.
In fact, they're not measuringthat stuff at all.
They're just measuringtopography.
And this is like a little petpeeve of mine.
It's been bothering me thatthere's this focus on topography
and not this focus on functionand behavior analysis.
sports and i just feel likemaybe the field needs to be set
(14:49):
right and like maybe that thereneeds to be a clear distinction
there so we really kind ofunderstand what is what is
biomechanics versus what isbehavior analysis versus what is
kinetics
SPEAKER_01 (15:00):
can you uh talk about what you mean oh i'm sorry
when you say target versustopography in relation to golf
what do you mean by that
SPEAKER_02 (15:07):
Well, we got enough people worried about your swing
when it looks like, right?
And then maybe you look at theangles between body parts.
And is that something thatSkinner looked at when he had
the rats and they were pressingthe levers and stuff like that?
He didn't care what body partthat rat would use to press the
(15:30):
lever.
He couldn't use his hind paw orits nose or his front paw or
whatever.
It wasn't about that.
It was about the switch and theweights and the schedules of
reinforcement.
And I think that's what, if ourscience was based off of that
originally, I think that's forus to be conceptually consistent
and conceptually systematic.
I think that's where we have togo with behavior analysis in
(15:52):
sports.
And I think that's actuallyreally closely related to a lot
of the metrics that our athletesare already recording.
So I don't think it's going tobe a big transition for them.
And I think those metrics areright there.
And it kind of makes sense thatthat's what they're using
because they've been successfulwith them.
We just know how to use them thebest because we're behavior
analysts.
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (16:11):
That's fascinating.
Wow.
Yeah.
I've got
SPEAKER_01 (16:13):
so many questions.
Go ahead, though, Mike.
Wow.
I'm not even sure where tostart.
Me either.
I was like, whoa, sports?
Wow.
Using ABA with sports is just soamazing because I'm a huge
sports fan.
So, wow.
Go
SPEAKER_00 (16:25):
ahead, Mike.
And so you're talking about bodymechanics.
So that's a whole new level.
Are we saying that those don'thave to be so uniform?
Is that what you're saying andthat we look at that?
currently that closely orscrutinize it in terms of
mechanics being a very specificway and not necessarily looking
at the end result.
(16:45):
So like a quarterback, forexample, and his mechanics, as
long as he throws the ball andhe gets it downfield, Is that
kind of what you're saying?
SPEAKER_02 (16:55):
I would say that's where behavior analysis should
focus, right?
Just like you said.
And there's people out therethat do biomechanics and they do
a really good job and theirmeasures look different than
ours.
They are very concerned aboutangles between moving body parts
and they'll use a, they'll use alike fit to a bio model and
they'll use a lot of, a lot ofdifferent measures and stuff
(17:18):
like that.
Like the cameras and stuff likethat, motion tracking and, and
they're, calculations lookdifferent.
And maybe that's just not whereI mean, that's not where
behavior analysis came from.
And it doesn't make sense for usto be going there.
You know, with like, what a taskanalysis, you know, compared to
what they're using, like, youknow, it doesn't look the same.
(17:40):
And don't get me wrong, taskanalysis, I'm not saying it's
not useful.
I'm just saying that there areother things that we can be
doing.
And there is a clear role forbehavior analysis and, and
sports that's not by mechanics.
SPEAKER_00 (17:54):
Well, you've probably heard it here.
I think we like to say, I thinkwe're guilty of overly task
analyzing a lot of the time.
And then if you pair that with avery inflexible vision of what
the behavior eliciting issupposed to look like, you can
really make a mess of things.
You can really conjure upbehaviors that now you're
(18:15):
attributing to diagnostics andit's not at all.
It was the situation, thecircumstance you've just created
here.
So I agree with you.
I think we've overly It's reallyfascinating to think about that
application in sports, and itmakes a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_01 (18:29):
I think we talk about, and I've talked about
this too, we talk about responsegeneralization, but we don't
allow for it, right?
We say, oh, we should generalizeresponses and allow for
different responses to the samestimuli.
Look at Steph Curry, ReggieMiller, and Kobe Bryant.
They all have different shootingform, right?
And they've all been verysuccessful.
But in ABA, we've only accepted,like you've said, and Mike, you
(18:50):
just mentioned one specificthing.
And if we don't get this onespecific answer, answer the one
specific response to the onespecific SD then we don't accept
it as correct and we don't allowfor any response generalization
yet in all of my 40 hourtrainings we train on response
generalization but somehow thatjust gets thrown out the window
SPEAKER_02 (19:07):
Yeah.
And the research out thereactually kind of shows that
maybe we shouldn't be lookingfor a repetitive topography,
like the same motion over andover again, because when we see
that, we actually don't get thesame results over and over
again.
But when we see very slightvariations in topography, it's
(19:30):
like the athletes are varyingvery slightly to get the same
performance over and over again.
So maybe the goal isn't to haveperfect topography result
perfect function I think thegoal should be like when
function gets there thetopography would look very close
too but that should be the goalwe should work on on that first
and go back to your example Mikelike all right like we shouldn't
(19:51):
be worried about their thequarterback's mechanics but the
other things he's worried abouthow fast that ball goes how far
that ball travels the trajectoryof that ball and whether he hits
his target or not
SPEAKER_00 (20:02):
yeah well then behaviorally what you know what
changes in terms of of beingable to practice that to you
that term specifically so thatyou can repetitively perform
knowing that just doing the samerepetitive motion isn't
necessarily what we're afterhere.
So that's really, I mean, that'sa fascinating, you're going to
have me thinking about that therest of the day.
(20:22):
Anytime I watch a basketballgame for the rest of the season.
SPEAKER_01 (20:26):
Well, game seven, Warriors Rockets tonight.
That's right.
I've been thinking about you.
Question for you, Scott.
So going back, so you were kindof in the ABA field, it sounds
like, or you did your researchmore in the lab.
Um, side of things.
And then you said you took abreak, then COVID came around,
you went back into the field andthen you found yourself in
relating behavioral behaviorismto sports.
(20:48):
How did you get there?
Because there's so commonly thetrajectory is, oh, you get your
BCBA or you do anythingbehaviorally.
Now you work with kids withautism and do ABA.
That's, that's the career path.
And we're trying to show here atthe podcast that there's so many
other things that you can do.
So how did you get frombehaviorism to sports?
SPEAKER_02 (21:08):
Yeah, and you know what?
through autism somehow you knowbecause you can't really avoid
it in this field and I workedwith kids and adults with autism
for 10 years so yeah I guessthat way but that was never
where I started and it wasn'tabout that like I said I started
with the rats and the pigeons inthe behavior lab so it wasn't
(21:31):
like I wasn't reading Java Iwasn't reading about like how
this would be used for autism Inever thought that not until the
insurance mandates changedaround in 2013, but I mean, I
got my bachelor's in 2002.
Um, so this was way before that.
And for me, it was like, how canwe use the science of behavior,
um, to, um, you know, help, helppeople and change the world.
(21:55):
And I was asking myself, how canI use this to help my
Philadelphia sports teams winchampionships?
Um, and like, if that couldhappen, then that would be a
really good proof for thescience.
Like if I could use the scienceto do that, then that would,
that would really really provedto me that this science...
I mean, not that I need it atthis point, and I haven't done
(22:15):
that yet.
I am a full believer in behavioranalysis.
I'm very deeply committed to thescience.
But just to see that, that wouldbe proof of concept.
You
SPEAKER_01 (22:24):
know what I mean?
Of course.
So with that, would it, in youropinion, be possible to use
behavior analysis to have theCowboys win a championship?
Or is that just too far?
Is that outside of...
It was too easy.
Did we get that comfortablething?
I mean, there's probably limitsto behavior analysis.
Dr.
(22:44):
Scott?
I'm going to let Dr.
Scott answer this.
If you said,
SPEAKER_02 (22:47):
would it be possible to help the Eagles win a
championship, I would say 100%.
And as long as you get meinvolved, then yeah, we're going
to do it.
But the Cowboys.
SPEAKER_00 (22:59):
Oh, man.
SPEAKER_02 (23:00):
You had to pick the Cowboys.
Could you, can you like pickanother team?
Like, give me an example withanother team.
SPEAKER_01 (23:06):
Oh, sure.
So in fairness to Mike, I don'tparticularly have sports teams
that I root for because I try tostay objective.
So I do have kind of an abilityto give him a hard time, but he
cannot reciprocate it because Idon't have a sports team.
So objective.
SPEAKER_02 (23:21):
How about the, how about the Browns?
You know, how about the Browns?
Yeah.
A hundred percent for theBrowns.
No problem.
No problem.
In fact, you know what?
I think, I, I think 100% forevery team, maybe, except for
the Cowboys, maybe.
No, but seriously, seriously,yeah, I think you could.
I would go with an OBM approachfor the front office, and then
(23:42):
you go with contingencymanagement and act for the
players, and then you go liketeacher-student interaction
scale with the coaches, and thenyou got ABA on like three levels
there.
I think, yeah, I think that'show you would do it.
That's how I would do it.
SPEAKER_00 (23:58):
Does Joe listen?
Don't.
I mean, he's listening.
I hope he's not listening.
Because I'm hoping he's writingthis down.
I mean, that sounds like awinning recipe right there, man.
Jeez.
I mean, yeah.
Come on.
Help us out, brother.
I
SPEAKER_02 (24:11):
came up with it.
SPEAKER_00 (24:12):
It's going to be a rough few seasons, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (24:16):
Yeah, Miami is another team, which any other
team by the Cowboys.
I don't think ABA works in thatstadium.
SPEAKER_00 (24:28):
Well, you're saying nothing's 100%.
You're saying nothing's 100% inall fairness.
No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02 (24:33):
I'm just being biased.
SPEAKER_00 (24:36):
Of course, you have to be.
You got to keep up your streetcred.
Can you imagine if people inPhiladelphia found out you were
saying you could take theCowboys to win?
We can't have that out there.
SPEAKER_01 (24:45):
Actually, our last...
Our second to last guest,Maggie, was from Philadelphia
and she was so excited about theEagles.
Yeah, so if we talk too muchCowboys, we're going to lose our
Philadelphia.
SPEAKER_00 (24:54):
Yeah, our Philadelphia contingency.
SPEAKER_01 (24:56):
Yes.
I actually have a question foryou going back before, kind of
transitioning a little bit awayfrom the sports.
So it's funny because I'mlooking at a sticker here in our
studio.
It has the Living Room Cafe, butwe have a...
A mantra that we talk about alot called the lab to the living
room and how ABA has obviouslybeen brought up in the lab with
(25:16):
Skinner and Ratz and you have areally better understanding
obviously than even I would inthe lab side of things.
That being stated, the way thatABA maybe differentiates or
actually BSD, Behavioral ServiceDelivery, certainly
differentiates from EAB is thatit's done in the home and we
(25:36):
don't have the experimentalcontrols in the home that you
would have with rats and pigeonsin the lab.
But so often we see that peopleare trying to emulate the lab in
the home and maybe there's someincongruencies there and maybe
they're trying to fit a squarepeg through a round hole.
Do you have any thoughts aboutABA transitioning from the lab
(25:59):
to to the living room becauseyou have such a great expertise
from the lab side of things.
You've done it.
Tell us how.
SPEAKER_02 (26:05):
Yeah.
And I guess that would be myniche where I'm like the
translational guy.
And I'm not saying I'm the onlyone.
There's definitely people outthere who have that EAB
experience and the ABAexperience.
And the big difference betweenthe two is going to be how much
experimental control that you'reable to gain or you're even
(26:27):
looking for.
like a reversal design makes alot of sense in the lab, but
clinically you have to likeconsider whether you really
wanna reverse that behavior ornot, because you're doing it for
a very socially significantreason.
And the other big difference is,and I'm just looking to answer
(26:48):
some basic questions too withEAB and translational research,
like how does this work andwilling to experiment to
elucidate that where, andapplied behavior analysis, then
not so much because you areconsidering that maybe
procedures would be built off ofthis.
And then in service delivery,like those are, like you are
(27:11):
working clinically and yourprimary concern is that client
and those stakeholders.
So, but there's, you know,there's that ethical
consideration there that reallyexists in terms of social
validity and working with aclient.
And that's the way I see thatbig difference But hopefully
(27:31):
there's not as much lost.
I have a feeling there is somethings lost when we go from the
lab to the field.
But there should also be somebackwards flow where we're
researching things that arehappening in service delivery
and saying like, hey, maybe weshould take another look at this
(27:52):
and kind of experiment andelucidate this.
Here's an example.
And I know we talk about it allthe time.
And I don't want to be that guy.
I don't want to be that guy thattalks against something because
it's just really one of myprofessors that really kind of
convinced me.
But he was writing this paperand he let me see it.
He was going to publish it.
I don't know if this went out.
(28:13):
But Dr.
Roger Bass was talking about theidea of the MO and EOs and stuff
like that.
And have we experimentallyseparated these from antecedent
stimuli?
And we haven't.
And it was just kind of aconceptual paper.
And then we would just...
adopted that right intopractice.
And there wasn't like, hey, youknow, we could really tell the
(28:33):
difference between this being anEO and this being an SD.
And you can't.
In fact, we often see that SDswill gain appetitive, you know,
functions and different kinds offunctions that make it seem like
it's an EO when it's not, whenit's an SD.
(28:54):
So, like, yeah, I would like tosee that done.
Like, experimentally delineatedwhere we can see, oh, yeah, this
is a clear difference.
I don't think there will be,though, even though we talk
about these are two differentthings in practice.
SPEAKER_01 (29:08):
So it's so interesting because I've worked
so many people through therebecause I was the trainer at my
last few companies.
So we had a lot of peoplesitting for the BAC or BCBA
exam, excuse me.
And that was literally probablythe hardest thing consistently
across all of the people that Iwould train is that when we
would do the mock test questionsis differentiating the SDs from
(29:32):
the EO.
And I totally remember therewas, you know, an example of an
individual who was hammering anail and asked his assistant to
get a screwdriver or something,who was trying to take care of
this nail and asked hisassistant to get a screwdriver.
(29:53):
And the question was, what isthe site of the nail?
An SD or an EO?
And it was, you know, so wewalked through it and I was able
to kind of walk them through theanswer to that.
But sometimes it does becomepretty intertwined and it
certainly becomes ambiguous ofwhat the difference is in
(30:13):
certain situations.
And the question is, does itmatter what the difference is in
either situation?
But I just when you brought thatup, I was just having flashbacks
to constantly going over thatspecific question and in my head
remembering that.
Trying to talk people throughthe site of the nail.
What is that to the personasking for the hammer?
(30:33):
And it was the EO, not
SPEAKER_00 (30:34):
the SD.
When I could join your trainingsessions, one of my favorite
things to do, just because, youknow, admittedly, I think I'm
better in practice and not asfluent with the technology.
But being able to delineate thatand say, for the test, you're
going to want to say this.
Now, in the real situation...
Who cares?
What are you going to do?
You know, what's the appropriateresponse here?
(30:57):
And then let's move forward.
I do think that's a...
Again, back to the idea of, youknow...
over task analyzing, overidentifying.
I think that's a really goodpoint.
And again, one of those aspectsof lab to living room.
How much of this do we need toreplicate?
I know we love to talk about ithere on the show and joke about
(31:17):
being so rigid about replicatingcertain things that you had to
have that IKEA table and chairand the discrete trial had to go
through these trial types.
And it's not to say that wethrow those things out the
window because they're useless.
No, they're not.
They are the foundation uponwhich we stand to be able to
take those things out, in myopinion, with less experimental
control now trying to developsome type of instructional
(31:41):
control.
And if we're too rigid, yeah, Ithink we walk into
self-fulfilling prophecies ofchallenging behavior that we
were a part of in an effort totry and intervene.
It's a really interestingquandary.
SPEAKER_01 (31:53):
Yeah.
So with that, what are yourthoughts on that, Scott?
Because like Mike said, and wedid this so often, we were so
DTT heavy in the beginning.
And you always say, Mike, thatif Lovaas saw what we were doing
today, he'd be rolling over inhis grave because hopefully 30
years from the time...
(32:17):
People are still trying toemulate the Lovaas model and DTT
and things like that, which isbasically trying to emulate the
lab.
Let's get a room with nothing init because we had to have the
bare room with, like you said,the IKEA table and chair and the
picture cards.
And we had to ask 10 times.
So it was so much of trying toreconstruct the lab in the home
to potentially eliminate a lotof the constrainious or
(32:39):
confounding variables.
But then we...
So we got...
a little bit of the external orinternal validity, but never
really got to the externalvalidity part.
And now there's kind of been ashift of, okay, let's do a
little bit more PRT,naturalistic settings, maybe
getting rid of a little bit ofthe internal validity or not
being as solid there with a hopeof getting the external validity
(33:02):
and the generalization there.
What are your thoughts on kindof the progression of ABA and
how you would recommend peopledo it or just in general,
because I know you've come fromthat high end internal validity
backing from the lab
SPEAKER_02 (33:16):
well um I guess in in practice for me it's
different for you guys becausemy clients like are all verbal
and they tell me what's goingon.
Where you would be doing an ABCdata sheet on someone and
sitting there and filling it outand watching them and observing
them, my clients do it with mebecause they're verbal and they
(33:36):
can talk it through.
And then when we try to figureout the function, it makes it a
whole lot easier because theywill tell you, no, that's not
what I was trying to do.
Yes, that wasn't what I wastrying to do.
Or they'll tell you what's up.
And they'll even tell you, andthis is an interesting thing
that I've realized in doingthese ABC data sheets, um, is
like, I'll, I'll ask them like,is that what you want it to
(33:57):
happen?
Right.
And so oftentimes it isn't whatyou want it to happen.
So you guys talk about likeproblem behavior and like, and
the other way I'm translatingthem, I always feel like I'm
translating from autism becauseI know you're talking about this
world, uh, this autism worldwhere, where like I'm
translating it to like, Oh, howwould this, this work for, uh,
you know, other people.
(34:18):
And these are the sameprinciples.
So this isn't like somethingthat should be really hard to
translate, but it like it issomething that like oh how do i
apply this with regular peopleand they they tell you um the
other thing i realize is that umis that problem behavior is
differentially reinforced andand i realize that because i'm
doing these abc data sheets withpeople and they're talking me
(34:38):
about problems that they'rehaving and i'll say to them like
is that what you wanted tohappen and they say no this is
what ended up happening and it'snot what they wanted right so
it's like yeah that means thatsometimes this is working for
you and sometimes it isn't andAnd that shows to me it's
differentially reinforced.
And that's why it's kind ofpersistent.
And that's why you're stillhaving an issue with it and
(35:00):
having a hard time moving on.
So then we look at things, allright, you know, let's interrupt
this.
Can we, you know, come up withsome other options of behaviors?
When we see this, when we seethis antigen stimuli, can we
come up with a couple otheroptions of behavior?
You know how that works.
You know how that's going to go,yelling or reacting or fighting
or whatever, whatever theproblem behavior is.
(35:21):
But let's have like, let's haveanother option.
option here just because youdidn't like how that turned out
last time.
And maybe this other behavioroption might have some different
consequences that you like alittle bit better.
SPEAKER_01 (35:33):
Well, what's so cool about that is he keeps saying,
is this what you wanted tohappen?
Did you like the outcome of thissituation?
And that's a scent basically forthe nonverbal people that we
work with.
But so often it's not for thepeople that we work with.
It's not Are they happy withwhat happened?
It's are the parents, are thepeople around them happy with
what happened?
(35:54):
And I mean, the voice, like yousaid, you work with individuals
that are more vocal.
So I think that really does sheda lot of light on how that
inherently sometimes we treatindividuals that are non-vocal
so differently than individualsthat are vocal because when
people are vocal, we startasking them, are you happy with
the response?
But a lot of times withindividuals that are non-vocal,
(36:16):
were discerning their happinessbased on other people around
them, which is very interesting.
SPEAKER_02 (36:21):
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
And, uh, it's just a different,it's a different world.
Like I've done, I can't tell youhow many ABC data sheets I've
done with my clients and everysingle one, they're my partner
in the analysis and they, youknow, determine the function
with me and stuff like that.
And they come up with theantecedent and the behavior and
the consequence, and it's alltheir words.
(36:43):
Um, so it's, they're my partnerin it.
And, um, and I don't want to goback to the way it was where I'm
doing behavior analysis onsomeone.
I like it better that they're mypartner in it and they're doing
it with me.
SPEAKER_01 (36:54):
I love that because again, and I'll stop relating it
to autism, get back because I'mvery interested to hear your
demographic because it is sodifferent and we're so excited
to learn from it.
You would think that, let's saywe present something and a
client that we work with cries,right?
So relating it to kind of whatScott's saying, that person
saying, hey, this isn't workingout for me.
(37:16):
But in ABA, again, and BSD, whatso often is going to happen is,
wait, this person's crying.
We have to stop the cryingbecause that's a maladaptive
behavior.
It's not working out for us.
It's not working out for us,right?
And we need to stop thatbehavior rather than focus on
the fact that this person'ssaying it's not working out for
them.
SPEAKER_00 (37:37):
That is, and I think you bring the other element in
this if we're working withyounger children and parents,
parents' natural reactions.
I like to do the analogy to thesmoke alarm, right?
Yeah.
You're cooking bacon happily ona Saturday morning and that
smoke alarm goes off and you'rejust hardwired to respond to
those sounds.
So it's almost like it's a realcatch 22 that we're in because
(37:59):
it's not like we want the childto continue crying.
That would seem cruel andunusual.
At the same time, based on thispremise we're elaborating here,
that would be the function andthat would be okay.
And we're going to soothe youthrough it and then find a way
to explain to you, you know,other outcomes or other
possibilities for the future.
It's really a fascinatingpremise, even in trying to be
(38:21):
more ascent based in our work,especially as of late, we run
into that challenge of trying tosomehow control that, that we'll
call it distress behaviors.
I stopped using tantrum, but theidea that somebody is expressing
distress and because you're aparent and you're hardwired to
be distressed by that distress,you want that negative
(38:42):
reinforcement.
How do I make this go away?
And I think, you know, parentsor professionals, young
professionals get into some realvicious cycles with that just
trying to, and that gets backinto the idea of, I don't know,
much more authoritarianapproaches.
I'm telling you what to do andthis is the way things get
(39:02):
better for you and whatever.
But yeah, it's reallyinteresting that now, so I'm
thinking about maybe olderclients that are verbal, vocal
and are able to communicate withme and some of the clients that
I see that are on telehealthnow.
And yes, how refreshing it is inhaving gone over treatment plan
goals with him and his family.
(39:23):
And then, like you mentionedthis earlier with your client
site, because we're ontelehealth, I can pull up these
worksheets and I basically haveour tasks for the day and the
things we're talking about.
And I relate them back to thetreatment goals.
And I'm always talking about whywe're doing this.
Why are we doing this activity?
Do I care if you learn how tosketch?
No, we're just gonna engage ourobservational learning skills
(39:44):
right now.
I just want you to watch andimitate.
We're gonna watch each other.
Watch the video.
That's it.
And there's this ease that I seehim, you know, shoulders kind of
slink down like, cool.
I know why I'm doing this.
I enjoy doing this.
This is good stuff.
I see him smile.
You know, his parents arereporting back good things.
And it is it's very refreshingto be able to engage, you know,
(40:06):
the clients directly.
And then there's the questionof.
You know, not going backnecessarily into autism, but
speaking of somebody nonverbalor somebody younger who may not
have that capacity and learningor are still developing that
capacity and learning more abouthow to apply these exact
approaches nonetheless.
What other forms ofcommunication are available to
us?
They're there.
In fact, we just talked aboutthe crying.
(40:27):
It's there.
Unfortunately, we want that tostop instinctively.
And it's hard to sort of developany treatment protocol, if you
will, beyond that.
It's a challenge.
And again, something thatdifficult not to say we won't
get there, but In fact, it givesus the impetus to really explore
with vigor, you know, checkthose questions out.
SPEAKER_02 (40:46):
Yeah.
And Mike, you're a developmentalguy and you can probably
conceptualize this like this.
If you think about a responseand a response gets reinforced,
that response, like responsesevolve, right?
As a reinforced, because we aretalking about a selectionist
system here in which like theenvironment is selecting
behaviors.
So that's makes sense that itwould evolve.
And so like that, that cryingdoesn't, go away is still
(41:10):
there's still that same basicneed and the basic basic
function of behavior and it justturns into something else later
and i guess you can you knowconsider that to be complaining
or something like that orgriping you know i like to say
to my clients it's good toadvocate you know for yourself
so i also like to tell myclients like hey during therapy,
it's your right to complain.
(41:31):
This is, if you want to gripe orcomplain, not because, not
necessarily because like, hey,like I really want this person
crying more, but like, hey, youknow, that's, we could talk
about these things that arebothering you and maybe like
come up with some differentperspectives and maybe try, you
know, try to work on thosethings around you and solve them
instead of trying to work onthat you're depressed about it.
You know what I mean?
(41:51):
Like, because it makes senseyou're depressed about it.
This isn't, you know, and you'renot happy with the things around
you.
So let's change the thingsaround you and then And then
once those things change, thenall of a sudden you start seeing
people do better because thethings around them are better.
But I would say it's like aninteresting, I guess like from
my perspective, like what youjust said with the crying, like,
(42:13):
hey, this isn't necessarilysomething that's bad.
Although it irritates us and itbothers us, it's not necessarily
something bad.
And I often will talk to myclients about like their
feelings of depression oranxiety or something like that.
If you went up to a parent andyou said, I'm anxious, they
would try to get for you as ifit's something bad.
(42:36):
Instead of like, well, why areyou anxious?
Or, you know, or some impendingactivity or something like that,
you know, that's going tohappen.
You know what I mean?
So, and then with theschizophrenic clients too,
there'll be, I'll think that,like, I want them to talk.
(42:57):
I don't want them just to shutup.
Like, yeah, it's a problem ifthey have a delusion and they go
on and they start talking aboutsomething and it's somewhat
non-contextual and it doesn'treally make sense.
And then they start, you know,saying that like, you know, it's
the, it's the fault of like, orI saw a sign and that sign was
meant for me.
And it's like something magicalabout it or, you know, about
this inanimate object orsomething like that.
(43:18):
And it's like, well, do youlike, what's your role here as a
behavior analyst, just to getthem to shut up about it or like
that they're telling you thesethings and you're telling you
they're having these experiencesbecause the experiences are
relevant.
Like they make a lot of sense.
Like that's what they need helpwith.
Not just like that, you know,they need help not talking about
it.
You know what I mean?
So yeah, we get annoyed whenkids cry and we get annoyed when
(43:40):
people complain, you know, butif we like show them how to help
themselves with it, then theywon't have to cry about it
anymore, right?
SPEAKER_00 (43:49):
I've always wanted, I mean, absolutely.
I've always wanted to develop atraining model for like RBTs,
for example, where we, you know,do a simulation with like, you
know, there's clear auditorystimuli that get us to that
level and like trying topractice the idea of maybe it's
moral reflex or something andlike kind of dampening that so
that we don't kick into this.
(44:11):
I don't know if it's possible,like kick into this mode of
trying to make it go away, butgiving ourselves a couple
seconds to take it in and gocontextualize and go, oh, that's
why this is happening.
Now this is my response.
It's so hard not to react tothose stimuli.
Rightfully so, they're adaptive.
I mean, you know, there's achild in distress.
We should all feel a little bitof distress, but you have to
(44:32):
act, you have to react upon itor professionally speaking, can
we train ourselves to respond,yeah, give it a couple seconds
and then go for it.
I feel like maybe in my, youknow, nearing my 30th year of
practice, maybe I've, you know,developed that a little bit.
I'd love to learn more about howto train that or help people
(44:52):
understand that better.
I mean, it's what we're talkingabout here.
SPEAKER_02 (44:55):
Yeah, it's basically, I guess, what I'm
doing.
I guess I do that a lot.
I go back to one model I presentto people.
It's the sacred pause.
I don't know if you've heard ofthat, but that's like a Buddhist
thing.
And the act therapy involves alot of some Eastern philosophies
and the mindfulness and stufflike that.
(45:15):
So it kind of makes sense thatwe would circle back around to
that.
But that certainly has to dowith taking these stimuli in
your your environment first andthen act according to what is
important to you.
And take that perspective whereyou could see yourself reacting
to it, not like that you'recaught up in it, that kind of
(45:37):
approach to it.
But I also work with people withADHD a lot, and we do those
executive functioning tasks.
And it works really well withthe behavior analysis
conceptualization of it, becauseSkinner was always the proponent
that private events aren'tnecessarily not for behavior
(45:59):
analysis, but it's just theissue is we can't be objective
with them.
But we see the talking and thethinking as these are two
mutually exclusive processes.
They work on a lot of the samebrain structures, except the
ones that move your mouth whenyou're thinking.
But the ones that move yourmouth when you're talking, yeah,
(46:20):
they're active.
So you can't really do boththink and talk at the same time.
So because of that, yeah, weknow that people with ADHD
aren't like going through theseexecutive functioning tests,
like thinking through the nextfew steps, thinking through the
next day, thinking through thelittle steps, what they have to
do, right?
And that's what I will do withthese clients often.
(46:40):
I'll say, all right, take methrough until the next day.
What's going to happen now?
What's going to happen next?
What do you have to do to dothat?
What do you have to do to dothis?
And they'll just like break theday down piece by piece.
And they're like, wow, like, Ijust, I don't, I don't normally
do that.
It's like, well, yeah, that'swhy you're...
That's why you're sounstructured and you just kick
your feet up and procrastinateand look at your phone for hours
(47:01):
because you didn't think aboutwhat the next few things you had
to do were.
We know.
That's why you're telling meyou're not thinking about it.
We talk it out.
That's very similar to thinkingabout it.
If we talk it out enough, thenthey don't have to talk it out.
They could just think.
SPEAKER_01 (47:17):
Interesting.
Can you explain?
You talked about your history.
You were working in a lab.
Then you went back to school.
And you said that you don'treally work with a lot of
individuals with autism now, atleast not in the in-home way
that we do.
SPEAKER_02 (47:32):
Yeah, not the in-home way.
Yeah, a couple.
SPEAKER_01 (47:34):
So you're a PhD, you're a doctor.
Can you talk about kind of whatyou do now and who you primarily
work with?
I know you've alluded to it, alot of people with
schizophrenia, ADHD, etc.
But can you just, for ouraudience, let us know exactly
what you do now?
SPEAKER_02 (47:47):
Yeah.
All right.
So my plate right now is prettyfull.
If you want to know everything Ido, and it involves a lot of
behavior analysis, which is partof it I like.
So my full-time job, I amworking at a clinic in
Philadelphia close to the centerof the city.
(48:10):
We call it center city,Philadelphia, right?
And close to that and with avery diverse population.
So I can't tell you who's goingto walk in the door or, um, you
know, what they're going to haveor what they presented from is
I, I never know.
I have no ideas, but it's just,it's a very diverse place to
live.
Um, but it is for a nonprofitthat is, uh, been a minority run
(48:33):
since its inception and back inthe sixties and seventies.
So, um, so, um, yeah.
And, and, um, I get a lot ofenjoyment out of that.
I do the act therapy and I do alot of traditional behavior
analysis in that too.
Um, I'll do assessments.
here and there.
And then my part-time job isadjuncting at Temple University.
(48:53):
I just started that, finished myfirst semester there and taught
a couple classes.
I taught an ethics class thatwas really fun.
And I taught a methods class onvisually analyzing graph data,
which is like right up my alley.
I really like that.
It's all right up my alley.
I just really, I love all of it.
(49:14):
And I'm also the vice presidentof the a local civic association
here and I use behavior analysisthere and basically local
government, very small timepolitics kind of situation.
And I'm also the president ofthe Philadelphia Metropolitan
(49:35):
Association of BehaviorAnalysis, which is the ABAI
special interest group localchapter that includes
Philadelphia and parts of thesurrounding area.
in New Jersey and Delaware.
And also, oh, geez, what else doI do with it?
I am just using it in myeveryday life.
(49:58):
I chart a lot.
I have a chart on all the chartsI keep.
So this is basically an idea ofhow much I chart.
SPEAKER_00 (50:04):
It's a meta
SPEAKER_02 (50:04):
chart.
Yeah, it is.
It's a meta chart.
Yeah, it's the first one I fillout.
And actually, I think this wouldbe the only one if I really
wanted to increase how much I doin a day would be the only one
that...
I actually provide reinforcementon it.
You see, it is up to date.
That was yesterday.
That included my workout
SPEAKER_01 (50:23):
and stuff like that.
I see a bunch of lines.
SPEAKER_02 (50:27):
Yeah, lots of dots in a piece of paper.
Do you guys use behavioranalysis on yourself?
SPEAKER_00 (50:36):
Oh, great question.
You'll have to return for theanswer and part two of our
interview with Dr.
Scott O'Donnell.
Please do come back and
SPEAKER_03 (50:45):
always analyze responsibly.
SPEAKER_00 (50:49):
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.
Welcome to ABA on Tap, where our goal is to find
(00:14):
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
look back into the ingredientsto form the best concoction of
ABA on tap.
In this podcast, we will talkabout the history of the ABA
(00:35):
brew, how much to consume toachieve the optimum buzz while
not getting too drunk, and therecommended pairings to bring to
the table.
So without further ado, sitback, relax, and always analyze
responsibly.
SPEAKER_00 (00:55):
All right, all right, and welcome back to yet
another installment of ABA onTap.
I am your ever-grateful co-host,Mike Rubio, along with Mr.
Daniel Lowry.
Mr.
Dan, it's been a few weeks, sir.
How you doing?
SPEAKER_01 (01:07):
Great to be back and really excited about today.
We've got some amazing guests ontoday, starting with Dr.
Scott.
Really, really excited
SPEAKER_00 (01:14):
to
SPEAKER_01 (01:15):
have him on the podcast and talk about maybe
some ABA outside of autism.
SPEAKER_00 (01:20):
A lot of that.
And what's really, I think, whatreally got me about his
background, he's done everythingwe've done, and then he's
exploring a whole bunch of otheravenues, and it seems like his
daily practice is something thatwe haven't had a chance to focus
on enough if at all i think onaba on tap so without further
ado super excited to introducedr scott o'donnell give it up
(01:48):
for our house band there theydon't have they don't have a
name yet so maybe dr scott willbe the first to cast his vote dr
scott thank you for your timesir we're super excited to have
some time with you and chat howare you doing today
SPEAKER_02 (02:00):
It's great.
Great to be here.
Love to be on the show.
I'm a fan of the show.
I would say a name could be theTappers.
(02:30):
and now I actually get to talkback.
SPEAKER_00 (02:33):
Man, that's, we have to tell you, just really kind
words.
We truly, truly appreciate that.
And we want to give a shout out,that said, to our show producer,
recently joined, SuzanneJuswick, for really propelling
us forward and making theseconnections with folks like
yourself.
And glad to be in your car, gladto have you on our screen and on
(02:54):
our show.
We love the origin story.
You've probably heard that.
So we want to give you some timeto just tell us all about it.
about your background.
You've done cognitiveneuroscience, you've done the
RBT route and worked withautistic individuals.
You're doing a lot of mentalhealth related work, which I
think is an area that needs muchmore exploration in terms of
(03:14):
bringing our ABA technologiesinto that realm.
Please tell us how it all gotstarted.
Tell us what drives you, whatstarted your fire and what keeps
it going.
SPEAKER_02 (03:25):
sure i'll get into that but i got to be a fanboy
for a little bit longer if youlike okay so i do remember the
first one of the first episodesmike had a baby right and then
you know and it's funnylistening to that episode
because it wasn't that long ilistened to that episode but how
old is that child at this pointfour four four going on 14 that
(03:48):
is amazing because i do rememberan episode with it where the
child was two weeks old then itwas 22 months and now it's you
know
SPEAKER_00 (03:58):
change she's um she's part of i don't know if
you've heard it dan she's partof our outro now uh in the voice
and she's the one that saysalways analyze so listen for
that on some of the newerepisodes I think I've put it on
two now and I'll see if I canintegrate her little voice more
because she comes into the youknow I'll be editing and stuff
and she'll come in and she justwants to play with the
microphone loves to hear herselfso I really appreciate you
(04:20):
asking um what uh um What anamazing continuing education for
me, right?
In terms of, you know, I'mpretty sure that was her, that's
her whole role in my life rightnow is reminding me all those
things I preach and then I haveto come practice and it's not
always as easy.
SPEAKER_02 (04:39):
The other thing I want to mention is, Dana, I
really liked what you said abouthow, what your approach is going
to be and with this ABA companywith highly trained RBTs and
then how you looked at it like,well, Is that high school
diploma and 40 hours of trainingenough?
No, I want my RBTs to be reallyhighly trained.
(05:01):
And that 5% supervision isn'tenough.
And I was just in the carsaying, hallelujah, thank you
guys for saying that.
I really appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01 (05:09):
You're welcome.
And thanks for acknowledgingthat.
And hopefully that becomessomething in the field.
Because, yes, we are excited tohopefully promote that.
SPEAKER_02 (05:18):
And the last thing I want to mention is, other than
I'm really happy for moreepisodes, is I really liked,
Mike, your conceptualization ofthe sympathetic nervous system
and the escape avoid controlresponse, because I find this to
be very significant in workingwith people who have PTSD, and
when we are identifyingtriggers, and we talk a lot
(05:41):
about the sympathetic nervoussystem and parasympathetic
nervous system.
And I explained to them that Isee it not as two switches, but
two knobs.
can get turned up and the otherone gets turned down at the same
time.
And I do explain it veryneuroscientifically, but more
behaviorally, as in like, hey,what behaviors can we engage in
(06:04):
to reactivate theparasympathetic nervous system?
And one of the main ones is deepbreathing.
So I do preach that a lot for myclients and teach them
diaphragmatic breathing and deepbreathing and stuff like that.
But I appreciate that,especially the part where you
talked about the blood drainingfrom the frontal lobe.
And it makes so much sensebecause this is an adaptive
(06:27):
thing.
We had to make decisions fastersometimes at some points,
especially when our life reallydepended on it and we had to
fight or run.
And you don't want a whole lotof blood going around in your
frontal lobe and you thinkingabout a lot of things.
No, you need to make animmediate decision based on the
immediate future.
(06:48):
So I found that to be like, Ifound it to be significant.
And I adopted it myself.
And the way I'm talking about itand the way I'm explaining how,
like, hey, you know, there's apart of body that's affected
here, too.
SPEAKER_00 (06:59):
Nice, man.
That's incredible feedback.
We really appreciate thatsomeone's out there listening
and someone like yourself cantake some of those concepts.
And that's what this is allabout.
It's why we started this isreally to start.
a lot of self-criticism, I wouldsay, at the beginning.
And now it's taken a turn towhere there's a lot more
collaboration.
Here we are talking thisneuroscience stuff that I wasn't
(07:20):
sure, you know, who's out therelistening and you're taking it
and, you know, giving it a wholenew level.
I really appreciate that.
I think that there's a lot moreto learn and many more
directions that we can go in,which is why we're super excited
to hear more about your work andwhat you're doing with ABA and
how you're applying some ofthose concepts.
You know, the idea of deepbreathing and the sort of
(07:42):
generalization Yeah, Iappreciate that.
(08:12):
same function as a curve ispretty interesting to me.
So maybe we'll get into that atsome point.
SPEAKER_02 (08:20):
Yeah, yeah.
I'm big on those parts of it.
In fact, that's really where mybackground came from.
I came from an experimentalanalysis of behavior background
and predominantly read mostlyJAB and not Java when I first
started getting into the field.
(08:42):
And I was lucky to be mentoredby Dr.
Heinlein at Temple University,which has been a great
experience, especially recently.
I'm an adjunct there now, andI'm teaching some of the same
classes that I got to teach,including the next couple of
terms.
I'll be teaching experimentalanalysis of behavior there.
(09:03):
So it's like a big full circlething coming back to me, like
teaching it again.
But yeah, so I got my degree inpsychology and cognitive
neurosurgery.
neuroscience there for myundergrad.
And I didn't have to do a ton ofneuroscience classes.
I got most of those creditsspending time with Dr.
Heinlein and taking classesunder him.
(09:24):
So they were all behavioralclasses.
I had the rat in the box andeverything.
And that was an eye-openingclass when you're training a
lever press and stuff like that.
And I'm just big on that wholelike, hey, what we do really has
to be conceptually consistentwith our science.
And it has to go all the wayback it has to be these basic
concepts from the experimentalanalysis of behavior that we
(09:46):
elucidate in translationalresearch and then and then do
applied research and then feedour practitioners with this uh
with this information so i likethat continuum just on that uh
that piece where we haveconceptual you know consistency
um makes sense to you guys right
SPEAKER_01 (10:03):
100 percent I just take notes.
So if you see me looking down, Ijust take notes of things that
we can talk about movingforward.
So if you see me looking down,I'm just taking notes because
you've already made me thinkabout a couple of things to talk
about.
Go ahead.
SPEAKER_02 (10:18):
Okay.
Interesting.
I take notes when I talk to myclients too.
So like, you know, I'm the notetaker, but you know, and they
actually kind of find that asvaluable.
Sometimes some of my clientswould say, hey, can you go back
to like what I said or thistime?
And it's been worth it when, youknow, if they're having, you
know, dealing with courts andstuff like that too sometimes
(10:38):
they could say like oh can yousend this the lawyer like you
know uh my previous notes andstuff like that so um but and so
uh just to continue mybackground i moved on and uh and
i did i wasn't in the field forthe longest time i just want to
pay off my bachelor's and i wasout of the field and did a bunch
of different things but seemedto really kind of keep that like
you know my eye on behavioranalysis i was a supervisor at
(11:01):
ups and really just uh startedusing a my department to number
one, which is like, and, um,this was like, we, it was the
island of misfit toys there.
It's the people would send meworkers that they didn't want,
like, oh, they couldn't work forme.
They'd suck.
And I would just use, you know,just ABA principles and then
(11:22):
treat them well.
And then all of a sudden they'reworking for me.
And, and it's like,
SPEAKER_00 (11:26):
imagine that that's killer.
SPEAKER_02 (11:28):
Yeah, your loss.
But I was out of the field for along time, and then with the
insurance mandate changing, I'mlike, oh, maybe there would be a
use for me.
And I went back and got mymaster's, and I had a
two-week-year-old kid at thetime.
So you can imagine doing yourmaster's.
And I jumped right into the PhDright afterwards.
(11:51):
And I was lucky to study underAntonio Harrison, who was into
behavior analysis in sports.
during my master's.
And then I was going to startwith some autism research, but
COVID kind of changed someplans.
And then I pivoted to sportsresearch.
So I published in that a reviewarticle, which like, you know,
(12:13):
we haven't talked about a wholelot, direct versus indirect
competition in sports.
I think it's, I think it'sinteresting.
I use the behavioral contingencyto like create a classification
for like, for different sportstypes.
Like you could, you could have asport where like, golf where
you're it's indirect competitionlike I can't block you in golf I
can't stand in front of yourshot or make you miss or
(12:36):
something like that the onlycompetition that's created is
like a score to beat orsomething like that or versus
basketball where like I can getdirectly in your way and it
really how I am as a defenderreally has to do with like how
you're going to do offensivelyand then I continued with that
research and I did some researchin golf which I'm hoping to
(13:00):
publish soon.
I've tried publishing a coupleof times.
I have to pare it down a littlebit, I think, and try again.
But I think it's going to besignificant when it comes out.
SPEAKER_00 (13:12):
So that means you're going to be adding the direct
competition element to golf.
They're going to be tacklingeach other.
That'd be fantastic.
Happy Gilmore style.
I would certainly watch if thatwas the case.
A whole
SPEAKER_02 (13:22):
new sport.
Yeah, a whole new sport.
I can't wait to talk about that.
That's in my mental notes.
You've got to talk about that.
the sports
SPEAKER_00 (13:29):
research
SPEAKER_02 (13:30):
are you guys golfers i was i was curious
SPEAKER_00 (13:32):
i am not i am not no sir
SPEAKER_02 (13:34):
okay no so because i was gonna i was gonna talk about
golf a lot but do you guys playpool
SPEAKER_00 (13:40):
a little bit a little bit a little bit sure
enough yeah okay i mean yeah youcan get into any of that
SPEAKER_02 (13:46):
Oh yeah, I've been dabbling in that a lot too.
So yeah, so I'm a pool playerand a golfer and I like to
investigate in sports.
Like I've done so officially ingolf and did a study which
included golfers with eightirons on a golf simulator and
(14:06):
came up with like some data thatwas pretty orderly, a lot more
orderly than I expected it to bethat indicated some functional
relations in terms of thetarget.
So it really looks like thetarget makes a big difference in
performance and how someone'sgoing to perform.
And a lot of the golf researchrecently has been with tag
(14:28):
teach, which is not reallyfocusing on a target.
In fact, they're not measuringthat stuff at all.
They're just measuringtopography.
And this is like a little petpeeve of mine.
It's been bothering me thatthere's this focus on topography
and not this focus on functionand behavior analysis.
sports and i just feel likemaybe the field needs to be set
(14:49):
right and like maybe that thereneeds to be a clear distinction
there so we really kind ofunderstand what is what is
biomechanics versus what isbehavior analysis versus what is
kinetics
SPEAKER_01 (15:00):
can you uh talk about what you mean oh i'm sorry
when you say target versustopography in relation to golf
what do you mean by that
SPEAKER_02 (15:07):
Well, we got enough people worried about your swing
when it looks like, right?
And then maybe you look at theangles between body parts.
And is that something thatSkinner looked at when he had
the rats and they were pressingthe levers and stuff like that?
He didn't care what body partthat rat would use to press the
(15:30):
lever.
He couldn't use his hind paw orits nose or his front paw or
whatever.
It wasn't about that.
It was about the switch and theweights and the schedules of
reinforcement.
And I think that's what, if ourscience was based off of that
originally, I think that's forus to be conceptually consistent
and conceptually systematic.
I think that's where we have togo with behavior analysis in
(15:52):
sports.
And I think that's actuallyreally closely related to a lot
of the metrics that our athletesare already recording.
So I don't think it's going tobe a big transition for them.
And I think those metrics areright there.
And it kind of makes sense thatthat's what they're using
because they've been successfulwith them.
We just know how to use them thebest because we're behavior
analysts.
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (16:11):
That's fascinating.
Wow.
Yeah.
I've got
SPEAKER_01 (16:13):
so many questions.
Go ahead, though, Mike.
Wow.
I'm not even sure where tostart.
Me either.
I was like, whoa, sports?
Wow.
Using ABA with sports is just soamazing because I'm a huge
sports fan.
So, wow.
Go
SPEAKER_00 (16:25):
ahead, Mike.
And so you're talking about bodymechanics.
So that's a whole new level.
Are we saying that those don'thave to be so uniform?
Is that what you're saying andthat we look at that?
currently that closely orscrutinize it in terms of
mechanics being a very specificway and not necessarily looking
at the end result.
(16:45):
So like a quarterback, forexample, and his mechanics, as
long as he throws the ball andhe gets it downfield, Is that
kind of what you're saying?
SPEAKER_02 (16:55):
I would say that's where behavior analysis should
focus, right?
Just like you said.
And there's people out therethat do biomechanics and they do
a really good job and theirmeasures look different than
ours.
They are very concerned aboutangles between moving body parts
and they'll use a, they'll use alike fit to a bio model and
they'll use a lot of, a lot ofdifferent measures and stuff
(17:18):
like that.
Like the cameras and stuff likethat, motion tracking and, and
they're, calculations lookdifferent.
And maybe that's just not whereI mean, that's not where
behavior analysis came from.
And it doesn't make sense for usto be going there.
You know, with like, what a taskanalysis, you know, compared to
what they're using, like, youknow, it doesn't look the same.
(17:40):
And don't get me wrong, taskanalysis, I'm not saying it's
not useful.
I'm just saying that there areother things that we can be
doing.
And there is a clear role forbehavior analysis and, and
sports that's not by mechanics.
SPEAKER_00 (17:54):
Well, you've probably heard it here.
I think we like to say, I thinkwe're guilty of overly task
analyzing a lot of the time.
And then if you pair that with avery inflexible vision of what
the behavior eliciting issupposed to look like, you can
really make a mess of things.
You can really conjure upbehaviors that now you're
(18:15):
attributing to diagnostics andit's not at all.
It was the situation, thecircumstance you've just created
here.
So I agree with you.
I think we've overly It's reallyfascinating to think about that
application in sports, and itmakes a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_01 (18:29):
I think we talk about, and I've talked about
this too, we talk about responsegeneralization, but we don't
allow for it, right?
We say, oh, we should generalizeresponses and allow for
different responses to the samestimuli.
Look at Steph Curry, ReggieMiller, and Kobe Bryant.
They all have different shootingform, right?
And they've all been verysuccessful.
But in ABA, we've only accepted,like you've said, and Mike, you
(18:50):
just mentioned one specificthing.
And if we don't get this onespecific answer, answer the one
specific response to the onespecific SD then we don't accept
it as correct and we don't allowfor any response generalization
yet in all of my 40 hourtrainings we train on response
generalization but somehow thatjust gets thrown out the window
SPEAKER_02 (19:07):
Yeah.
And the research out thereactually kind of shows that
maybe we shouldn't be lookingfor a repetitive topography,
like the same motion over andover again, because when we see
that, we actually don't get thesame results over and over
again.
But when we see very slightvariations in topography, it's
(19:30):
like the athletes are varyingvery slightly to get the same
performance over and over again.
So maybe the goal isn't to haveperfect topography result
perfect function I think thegoal should be like when
function gets there thetopography would look very close
too but that should be the goalwe should work on on that first
and go back to your example Mikelike all right like we shouldn't
(19:51):
be worried about their thequarterback's mechanics but the
other things he's worried abouthow fast that ball goes how far
that ball travels the trajectoryof that ball and whether he hits
his target or not
SPEAKER_00 (20:02):
yeah well then behaviorally what you know what
changes in terms of of beingable to practice that to you
that term specifically so thatyou can repetitively perform
knowing that just doing the samerepetitive motion isn't
necessarily what we're afterhere.
So that's really, I mean, that'sa fascinating, you're going to
have me thinking about that therest of the day.
(20:22):
Anytime I watch a basketballgame for the rest of the season.
SPEAKER_01 (20:26):
Well, game seven, Warriors Rockets tonight.
That's right.
I've been thinking about you.
Question for you, Scott.
So going back, so you were kindof in the ABA field, it sounds
like, or you did your researchmore in the lab.
Um, side of things.
And then you said you took abreak, then COVID came around,
you went back into the field andthen you found yourself in
relating behavioral behaviorismto sports.
(20:48):
How did you get there?
Because there's so commonly thetrajectory is, oh, you get your
BCBA or you do anythingbehaviorally.
Now you work with kids withautism and do ABA.
That's, that's the career path.
And we're trying to show here atthe podcast that there's so many
other things that you can do.
So how did you get frombehaviorism to sports?
SPEAKER_02 (21:08):
Yeah, and you know what?
through autism somehow you knowbecause you can't really avoid
it in this field and I workedwith kids and adults with autism
for 10 years so yeah I guessthat way but that was never
where I started and it wasn'tabout that like I said I started
with the rats and the pigeons inthe behavior lab so it wasn't
(21:31):
like I wasn't reading Java Iwasn't reading about like how
this would be used for autism Inever thought that not until the
insurance mandates changedaround in 2013, but I mean, I
got my bachelor's in 2002.
Um, so this was way before that.
And for me, it was like, how canwe use the science of behavior,
um, to, um, you know, help, helppeople and change the world.
(21:55):
And I was asking myself, how canI use this to help my
Philadelphia sports teams winchampionships?
Um, and like, if that couldhappen, then that would be a
really good proof for thescience.
Like if I could use the scienceto do that, then that would,
that would really really provedto me that this science...
I mean, not that I need it atthis point, and I haven't done
(22:15):
that yet.
I am a full believer in behavioranalysis.
I'm very deeply committed to thescience.
But just to see that, that wouldbe proof of concept.
You
SPEAKER_01 (22:24):
know what I mean?
Of course.
So with that, would it, in youropinion, be possible to use
behavior analysis to have theCowboys win a championship?
Or is that just too far?
Is that outside of...
It was too easy.
Did we get that comfortablething?
I mean, there's probably limitsto behavior analysis.
Dr.
(22:44):
Scott?
I'm going to let Dr.
Scott answer this.
If you said,
SPEAKER_02 (22:47):
would it be possible to help the Eagles win a
championship, I would say 100%.
And as long as you get meinvolved, then yeah, we're going
to do it.
But the Cowboys.
SPEAKER_00 (22:59):
Oh, man.
SPEAKER_02 (23:00):
You had to pick the Cowboys.
Could you, can you like pickanother team?
Like, give me an example withanother team.
SPEAKER_01 (23:06):
Oh, sure.
So in fairness to Mike, I don'tparticularly have sports teams
that I root for because I try tostay objective.
So I do have kind of an abilityto give him a hard time, but he
cannot reciprocate it because Idon't have a sports team.
So objective.
SPEAKER_02 (23:21):
How about the, how about the Browns?
You know, how about the Browns?
Yeah.
A hundred percent for theBrowns.
No problem.
No problem.
In fact, you know what?
I think, I, I think 100% forevery team, maybe, except for
the Cowboys, maybe.
No, but seriously, seriously,yeah, I think you could.
I would go with an OBM approachfor the front office, and then
(23:42):
you go with contingencymanagement and act for the
players, and then you go liketeacher-student interaction
scale with the coaches, and thenyou got ABA on like three levels
there.
I think, yeah, I think that'show you would do it.
That's how I would do it.
SPEAKER_00 (23:58):
Does Joe listen?
Don't.
I mean, he's listening.
I hope he's not listening.
Because I'm hoping he's writingthis down.
I mean, that sounds like awinning recipe right there, man.
Jeez.
I mean, yeah.
Come on.
Help us out, brother.
I
SPEAKER_02 (24:11):
came up with it.
SPEAKER_00 (24:12):
It's going to be a rough few seasons, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (24:16):
Yeah, Miami is another team, which any other
team by the Cowboys.
I don't think ABA works in thatstadium.
SPEAKER_00 (24:28):
Well, you're saying nothing's 100%.
You're saying nothing's 100% inall fairness.
No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02 (24:33):
I'm just being biased.
SPEAKER_00 (24:36):
Of course, you have to be.
You got to keep up your streetcred.
Can you imagine if people inPhiladelphia found out you were
saying you could take theCowboys to win?
We can't have that out there.
SPEAKER_01 (24:45):
Actually, our last...
Our second to last guest,Maggie, was from Philadelphia
and she was so excited about theEagles.
Yeah, so if we talk too muchCowboys, we're going to lose our
Philadelphia.
SPEAKER_00 (24:54):
Yeah, our Philadelphia contingency.
SPEAKER_01 (24:56):
Yes.
I actually have a question foryou going back before, kind of
transitioning a little bit awayfrom the sports.
So it's funny because I'mlooking at a sticker here in our
studio.
It has the Living Room Cafe, butwe have a...
A mantra that we talk about alot called the lab to the living
room and how ABA has obviouslybeen brought up in the lab with
(25:16):
Skinner and Ratz and you have areally better understanding
obviously than even I would inthe lab side of things.
That being stated, the way thatABA maybe differentiates or
actually BSD, Behavioral ServiceDelivery, certainly
differentiates from EAB is thatit's done in the home and we
(25:36):
don't have the experimentalcontrols in the home that you
would have with rats and pigeonsin the lab.
But so often we see that peopleare trying to emulate the lab in
the home and maybe there's someincongruencies there and maybe
they're trying to fit a squarepeg through a round hole.
Do you have any thoughts aboutABA transitioning from the lab
(25:59):
to to the living room becauseyou have such a great expertise
from the lab side of things.
You've done it.
Tell us how.
SPEAKER_02 (26:05):
Yeah.
And I guess that would be myniche where I'm like the
translational guy.
And I'm not saying I'm the onlyone.
There's definitely people outthere who have that EAB
experience and the ABAexperience.
And the big difference betweenthe two is going to be how much
experimental control that you'reable to gain or you're even
(26:27):
looking for.
like a reversal design makes alot of sense in the lab, but
clinically you have to likeconsider whether you really
wanna reverse that behavior ornot, because you're doing it for
a very socially significantreason.
And the other big difference is,and I'm just looking to answer
(26:48):
some basic questions too withEAB and translational research,
like how does this work andwilling to experiment to
elucidate that where, andapplied behavior analysis, then
not so much because you areconsidering that maybe
procedures would be built off ofthis.
And then in service delivery,like those are, like you are
(27:11):
working clinically and yourprimary concern is that client
and those stakeholders.
So, but there's, you know,there's that ethical
consideration there that reallyexists in terms of social
validity and working with aclient.
And that's the way I see thatbig difference But hopefully
(27:31):
there's not as much lost.
I have a feeling there is somethings lost when we go from the
lab to the field.
But there should also be somebackwards flow where we're
researching things that arehappening in service delivery
and saying like, hey, maybe weshould take another look at this
(27:52):
and kind of experiment andelucidate this.
Here's an example.
And I know we talk about it allthe time.
And I don't want to be that guy.
I don't want to be that guy thattalks against something because
it's just really one of myprofessors that really kind of
convinced me.
But he was writing this paperand he let me see it.
He was going to publish it.
I don't know if this went out.
(28:13):
But Dr.
Roger Bass was talking about theidea of the MO and EOs and stuff
like that.
And have we experimentallyseparated these from antecedent
stimuli?
And we haven't.
And it was just kind of aconceptual paper.
And then we would just...
adopted that right intopractice.
And there wasn't like, hey, youknow, we could really tell the
(28:33):
difference between this being anEO and this being an SD.
And you can't.
In fact, we often see that SDswill gain appetitive, you know,
functions and different kinds offunctions that make it seem like
it's an EO when it's not, whenit's an SD.
(28:54):
So, like, yeah, I would like tosee that done.
Like, experimentally delineatedwhere we can see, oh, yeah, this
is a clear difference.
I don't think there will be,though, even though we talk
about these are two differentthings in practice.
SPEAKER_01 (29:08):
So it's so interesting because I've worked
so many people through therebecause I was the trainer at my
last few companies.
So we had a lot of peoplesitting for the BAC or BCBA
exam, excuse me.
And that was literally probablythe hardest thing consistently
across all of the people that Iwould train is that when we
would do the mock test questionsis differentiating the SDs from
(29:32):
the EO.
And I totally remember therewas, you know, an example of an
individual who was hammering anail and asked his assistant to
get a screwdriver or something,who was trying to take care of
this nail and asked hisassistant to get a screwdriver.
(29:53):
And the question was, what isthe site of the nail?
An SD or an EO?
And it was, you know, so wewalked through it and I was able
to kind of walk them through theanswer to that.
But sometimes it does becomepretty intertwined and it
certainly becomes ambiguous ofwhat the difference is in
(30:13):
certain situations.
And the question is, does itmatter what the difference is in
either situation?
But I just when you brought thatup, I was just having flashbacks
to constantly going over thatspecific question and in my head
remembering that.
Trying to talk people throughthe site of the nail.
What is that to the personasking for the hammer?
(30:33):
And it was the EO, not
SPEAKER_00 (30:34):
the SD.
When I could join your trainingsessions, one of my favorite
things to do, just because, youknow, admittedly, I think I'm
better in practice and not asfluent with the technology.
But being able to delineate thatand say, for the test, you're
going to want to say this.
Now, in the real situation...
Who cares?
What are you going to do?
You know, what's the appropriateresponse here?
(30:57):
And then let's move forward.
I do think that's a...
Again, back to the idea of, youknow...
over task analyzing, overidentifying.
I think that's a really goodpoint.
And again, one of those aspectsof lab to living room.
How much of this do we need toreplicate?
I know we love to talk about ithere on the show and joke about
(31:17):
being so rigid about replicatingcertain things that you had to
have that IKEA table and chairand the discrete trial had to go
through these trial types.
And it's not to say that wethrow those things out the
window because they're useless.
No, they're not.
They are the foundation uponwhich we stand to be able to
take those things out, in myopinion, with less experimental
control now trying to developsome type of instructional
(31:41):
control.
And if we're too rigid, yeah, Ithink we walk into
self-fulfilling prophecies ofchallenging behavior that we
were a part of in an effort totry and intervene.
It's a really interestingquandary.
SPEAKER_01 (31:53):
Yeah.
So with that, what are yourthoughts on that, Scott?
Because like Mike said, and wedid this so often, we were so
DTT heavy in the beginning.
And you always say, Mike, thatif Lovaas saw what we were doing
today, he'd be rolling over inhis grave because hopefully 30
years from the time...
(32:17):
People are still trying toemulate the Lovaas model and DTT
and things like that, which isbasically trying to emulate the
lab.
Let's get a room with nothing init because we had to have the
bare room with, like you said,the IKEA table and chair and the
picture cards.
And we had to ask 10 times.
So it was so much of trying toreconstruct the lab in the home
to potentially eliminate a lotof the constrainious or
(32:39):
confounding variables.
But then we...
So we got...
a little bit of the external orinternal validity, but never
really got to the externalvalidity part.
And now there's kind of been ashift of, okay, let's do a
little bit more PRT,naturalistic settings, maybe
getting rid of a little bit ofthe internal validity or not
being as solid there with a hopeof getting the external validity
(33:02):
and the generalization there.
What are your thoughts on kindof the progression of ABA and
how you would recommend peopledo it or just in general,
because I know you've come fromthat high end internal validity
backing from the lab
SPEAKER_02 (33:16):
well um I guess in in practice for me it's
different for you guys becausemy clients like are all verbal
and they tell me what's goingon.
Where you would be doing an ABCdata sheet on someone and
sitting there and filling it outand watching them and observing
them, my clients do it with mebecause they're verbal and they
(33:36):
can talk it through.
And then when we try to figureout the function, it makes it a
whole lot easier because theywill tell you, no, that's not
what I was trying to do.
Yes, that wasn't what I wastrying to do.
Or they'll tell you what's up.
And they'll even tell you, andthis is an interesting thing
that I've realized in doingthese ABC data sheets, um, is
like, I'll, I'll ask them like,is that what you want it to
(33:57):
happen?
Right.
And so oftentimes it isn't whatyou want it to happen.
So you guys talk about likeproblem behavior and like, and
the other way I'm translatingthem, I always feel like I'm
translating from autism becauseI know you're talking about this
world, uh, this autism worldwhere, where like I'm
translating it to like, Oh, howwould this, this work for, uh,
you know, other people.
(34:18):
And these are the sameprinciples.
So this isn't like somethingthat should be really hard to
translate, but it like it issomething that like oh how do i
apply this with regular peopleand they they tell you um the
other thing i realize is that umis that problem behavior is
differentially reinforced andand i realize that because i'm
doing these abc data sheets withpeople and they're talking me
(34:38):
about problems that they'rehaving and i'll say to them like
is that what you wanted tohappen and they say no this is
what ended up happening and it'snot what they wanted right so
it's like yeah that means thatsometimes this is working for
you and sometimes it isn't andAnd that shows to me it's
differentially reinforced.
And that's why it's kind ofpersistent.
And that's why you're stillhaving an issue with it and
(35:00):
having a hard time moving on.
So then we look at things, allright, you know, let's interrupt
this.
Can we, you know, come up withsome other options of behaviors?
When we see this, when we seethis antigen stimuli, can we
come up with a couple otheroptions of behavior?
You know how that works.
You know how that's going to go,yelling or reacting or fighting
or whatever, whatever theproblem behavior is.
(35:21):
But let's have like, let's haveanother option.
option here just because youdidn't like how that turned out
last time.
And maybe this other behavioroption might have some different
consequences that you like alittle bit better.
SPEAKER_01 (35:33):
Well, what's so cool about that is he keeps saying,
is this what you wanted tohappen?
Did you like the outcome of thissituation?
And that's a scent basically forthe nonverbal people that we
work with.
But so often it's not for thepeople that we work with.
It's not Are they happy withwhat happened?
It's are the parents, are thepeople around them happy with
what happened?
(35:54):
And I mean, the voice, like yousaid, you work with individuals
that are more vocal.
So I think that really does sheda lot of light on how that
inherently sometimes we treatindividuals that are non-vocal
so differently than individualsthat are vocal because when
people are vocal, we startasking them, are you happy with
the response?
But a lot of times withindividuals that are non-vocal,
(36:16):
were discerning their happinessbased on other people around
them, which is very interesting.
SPEAKER_02 (36:21):
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
And, uh, it's just a different,it's a different world.
Like I've done, I can't tell youhow many ABC data sheets I've
done with my clients and everysingle one, they're my partner
in the analysis and they, youknow, determine the function
with me and stuff like that.
And they come up with theantecedent and the behavior and
the consequence, and it's alltheir words.
(36:43):
Um, so it's, they're my partnerin it.
And, um, and I don't want to goback to the way it was where I'm
doing behavior analysis onsomeone.
I like it better that they're mypartner in it and they're doing
it with me.
SPEAKER_01 (36:54):
I love that because again, and I'll stop relating it
to autism, get back because I'mvery interested to hear your
demographic because it is sodifferent and we're so excited
to learn from it.
You would think that, let's saywe present something and a
client that we work with cries,right?
So relating it to kind of whatScott's saying, that person
saying, hey, this isn't workingout for me.
(37:16):
But in ABA, again, and BSD, whatso often is going to happen is,
wait, this person's crying.
We have to stop the cryingbecause that's a maladaptive
behavior.
It's not working out for us.
It's not working out for us,right?
And we need to stop thatbehavior rather than focus on
the fact that this person'ssaying it's not working out for
them.
SPEAKER_00 (37:37):
That is, and I think you bring the other element in
this if we're working withyounger children and parents,
parents' natural reactions.
I like to do the analogy to thesmoke alarm, right?
Yeah.
You're cooking bacon happily ona Saturday morning and that
smoke alarm goes off and you'rejust hardwired to respond to
those sounds.
So it's almost like it's a realcatch 22 that we're in because
(37:59):
it's not like we want the childto continue crying.
That would seem cruel andunusual.
At the same time, based on thispremise we're elaborating here,
that would be the function andthat would be okay.
And we're going to soothe youthrough it and then find a way
to explain to you, you know,other outcomes or other
possibilities for the future.
It's really a fascinatingpremise, even in trying to be
(38:21):
more ascent based in our work,especially as of late, we run
into that challenge of trying tosomehow control that, that we'll
call it distress behaviors.
I stopped using tantrum, but theidea that somebody is expressing
distress and because you're aparent and you're hardwired to
be distressed by that distress,you want that negative
(38:42):
reinforcement.
How do I make this go away?
And I think, you know, parentsor professionals, young
professionals get into some realvicious cycles with that just
trying to, and that gets backinto the idea of, I don't know,
much more authoritarianapproaches.
I'm telling you what to do andthis is the way things get
(39:02):
better for you and whatever.
But yeah, it's reallyinteresting that now, so I'm
thinking about maybe olderclients that are verbal, vocal
and are able to communicate withme and some of the clients that
I see that are on telehealthnow.
And yes, how refreshing it is inhaving gone over treatment plan
goals with him and his family.
(39:23):
And then, like you mentionedthis earlier with your client
site, because we're ontelehealth, I can pull up these
worksheets and I basically haveour tasks for the day and the
things we're talking about.
And I relate them back to thetreatment goals.
And I'm always talking about whywe're doing this.
Why are we doing this activity?
Do I care if you learn how tosketch?
No, we're just gonna engage ourobservational learning skills
(39:44):
right now.
I just want you to watch andimitate.
We're gonna watch each other.
Watch the video.
That's it.
And there's this ease that I seehim, you know, shoulders kind of
slink down like, cool.
I know why I'm doing this.
I enjoy doing this.
This is good stuff.
I see him smile.
You know, his parents arereporting back good things.
And it is it's very refreshingto be able to engage, you know,
(40:06):
the clients directly.
And then there's the questionof.
You know, not going backnecessarily into autism, but
speaking of somebody nonverbalor somebody younger who may not
have that capacity and learningor are still developing that
capacity and learning more abouthow to apply these exact
approaches nonetheless.
What other forms ofcommunication are available to
us?
They're there.
In fact, we just talked aboutthe crying.
(40:27):
It's there.
Unfortunately, we want that tostop instinctively.
And it's hard to sort of developany treatment protocol, if you
will, beyond that.
It's a challenge.
And again, something thatdifficult not to say we won't
get there, but In fact, it givesus the impetus to really explore
with vigor, you know, checkthose questions out.
SPEAKER_02 (40:46):
Yeah.
And Mike, you're a developmentalguy and you can probably
conceptualize this like this.
If you think about a responseand a response gets reinforced,
that response, like responsesevolve, right?
As a reinforced, because we aretalking about a selectionist
system here in which like theenvironment is selecting
behaviors.
So that's makes sense that itwould evolve.
And so like that, that cryingdoesn't, go away is still
(41:10):
there's still that same basicneed and the basic basic
function of behavior and it justturns into something else later
and i guess you can you knowconsider that to be complaining
or something like that orgriping you know i like to say
to my clients it's good toadvocate you know for yourself
so i also like to tell myclients like hey during therapy,
it's your right to complain.
(41:31):
This is, if you want to gripe orcomplain, not because, not
necessarily because like, hey,like I really want this person
crying more, but like, hey, youknow, that's, we could talk
about these things that arebothering you and maybe like
come up with some differentperspectives and maybe try, you
know, try to work on thosethings around you and solve them
instead of trying to work onthat you're depressed about it.
You know what I mean?
(41:51):
Like, because it makes senseyou're depressed about it.
This isn't, you know, and you'renot happy with the things around
you.
So let's change the thingsaround you and then And then
once those things change, thenall of a sudden you start seeing
people do better because thethings around them are better.
But I would say it's like aninteresting, I guess like from
my perspective, like what youjust said with the crying, like,
(42:13):
hey, this isn't necessarilysomething that's bad.
Although it irritates us and itbothers us, it's not necessarily
something bad.
And I often will talk to myclients about like their
feelings of depression oranxiety or something like that.
If you went up to a parent andyou said, I'm anxious, they
would try to get for you as ifit's something bad.
(42:36):
Instead of like, well, why areyou anxious?
Or, you know, or some impendingactivity or something like that,
you know, that's going tohappen.
You know what I mean?
So, and then with theschizophrenic clients too,
there'll be, I'll think that,like, I want them to talk.
(42:57):
I don't want them just to shutup.
Like, yeah, it's a problem ifthey have a delusion and they go
on and they start talking aboutsomething and it's somewhat
non-contextual and it doesn'treally make sense.
And then they start, you know,saying that like, you know, it's
the, it's the fault of like, orI saw a sign and that sign was
meant for me.
And it's like something magicalabout it or, you know, about
this inanimate object orsomething like that.
(43:18):
And it's like, well, do youlike, what's your role here as a
behavior analyst, just to getthem to shut up about it or like
that they're telling you thesethings and you're telling you
they're having these experiencesbecause the experiences are
relevant.
Like they make a lot of sense.
Like that's what they need helpwith.
Not just like that, you know,they need help not talking about
it.
You know what I mean?
So yeah, we get annoyed whenkids cry and we get annoyed when
(43:40):
people complain, you know, butif we like show them how to help
themselves with it, then theywon't have to cry about it
anymore, right?
SPEAKER_00 (43:49):
I've always wanted, I mean, absolutely.
I've always wanted to develop atraining model for like RBTs,
for example, where we, you know,do a simulation with like, you
know, there's clear auditorystimuli that get us to that
level and like trying topractice the idea of maybe it's
moral reflex or something andlike kind of dampening that so
that we don't kick into this.
(44:11):
I don't know if it's possible,like kick into this mode of
trying to make it go away, butgiving ourselves a couple
seconds to take it in and gocontextualize and go, oh, that's
why this is happening.
Now this is my response.
It's so hard not to react tothose stimuli.
Rightfully so, they're adaptive.
I mean, you know, there's achild in distress.
We should all feel a little bitof distress, but you have to
(44:32):
act, you have to react upon itor professionally speaking, can
we train ourselves to respond,yeah, give it a couple seconds
and then go for it.
I feel like maybe in my, youknow, nearing my 30th year of
practice, maybe I've, you know,developed that a little bit.
I'd love to learn more about howto train that or help people
(44:52):
understand that better.
I mean, it's what we're talkingabout here.
SPEAKER_02 (44:55):
Yeah, it's basically, I guess, what I'm
doing.
I guess I do that a lot.
I go back to one model I presentto people.
It's the sacred pause.
I don't know if you've heard ofthat, but that's like a Buddhist
thing.
And the act therapy involves alot of some Eastern philosophies
and the mindfulness and stufflike that.
(45:15):
So it kind of makes sense thatwe would circle back around to
that.
But that certainly has to dowith taking these stimuli in
your your environment first andthen act according to what is
important to you.
And take that perspective whereyou could see yourself reacting
to it, not like that you'recaught up in it, that kind of
(45:37):
approach to it.
But I also work with people withADHD a lot, and we do those
executive functioning tasks.
And it works really well withthe behavior analysis
conceptualization of it, becauseSkinner was always the proponent
that private events aren'tnecessarily not for behavior
(45:59):
analysis, but it's just theissue is we can't be objective
with them.
But we see the talking and thethinking as these are two
mutually exclusive processes.
They work on a lot of the samebrain structures, except the
ones that move your mouth whenyou're thinking.
But the ones that move yourmouth when you're talking, yeah,
(46:20):
they're active.
So you can't really do boththink and talk at the same time.
So because of that, yeah, weknow that people with ADHD
aren't like going through theseexecutive functioning tests,
like thinking through the nextfew steps, thinking through the
next day, thinking through thelittle steps, what they have to
do, right?
And that's what I will do withthese clients often.
(46:40):
I'll say, all right, take methrough until the next day.
What's going to happen now?
What's going to happen next?
What do you have to do to dothat?
What do you have to do to dothis?
And they'll just like break theday down piece by piece.
And they're like, wow, like, Ijust, I don't, I don't normally
do that.
It's like, well, yeah, that'swhy you're...
That's why you're sounstructured and you just kick
your feet up and procrastinateand look at your phone for hours
(47:01):
because you didn't think aboutwhat the next few things you had
to do were.
We know.
That's why you're telling meyou're not thinking about it.
We talk it out.
That's very similar to thinkingabout it.
If we talk it out enough, thenthey don't have to talk it out.
They could just think.
SPEAKER_01 (47:17):
Interesting.
Can you explain?
You talked about your history.
You were working in a lab.
Then you went back to school.
And you said that you don'treally work with a lot of
individuals with autism now, atleast not in the in-home way
that we do.
SPEAKER_02 (47:32):
Yeah, not the in-home way.
Yeah, a couple.
SPEAKER_01 (47:34):
So you're a PhD, you're a doctor.
Can you talk about kind of whatyou do now and who you primarily
work with?
I know you've alluded to it, alot of people with
schizophrenia, ADHD, etc.
But can you just, for ouraudience, let us know exactly
what you do now?
SPEAKER_02 (47:47):
Yeah.
All right.
So my plate right now is prettyfull.
If you want to know everything Ido, and it involves a lot of
behavior analysis, which is partof it I like.
So my full-time job, I amworking at a clinic in
Philadelphia close to the centerof the city.
(48:10):
We call it center city,Philadelphia, right?
And close to that and with avery diverse population.
So I can't tell you who's goingto walk in the door or, um, you
know, what they're going to haveor what they presented from is
I, I never know.
I have no ideas, but it's just,it's a very diverse place to
live.
Um, but it is for a nonprofitthat is, uh, been a minority run
(48:33):
since its inception and back inthe sixties and seventies.
So, um, so, um, yeah.
And, and, um, I get a lot ofenjoyment out of that.
I do the act therapy and I do alot of traditional behavior
analysis in that too.
Um, I'll do assessments.
here and there.
And then my part-time job isadjuncting at Temple University.
(48:53):
I just started that, finished myfirst semester there and taught
a couple classes.
I taught an ethics class thatwas really fun.
And I taught a methods class onvisually analyzing graph data,
which is like right up my alley.
I really like that.
It's all right up my alley.
I just really, I love all of it.
(49:14):
And I'm also the vice presidentof the a local civic association
here and I use behavior analysisthere and basically local
government, very small timepolitics kind of situation.
And I'm also the president ofthe Philadelphia Metropolitan
(49:35):
Association of BehaviorAnalysis, which is the ABAI
special interest group localchapter that includes
Philadelphia and parts of thesurrounding area.
in New Jersey and Delaware.
And also, oh, geez, what else doI do with it?
I am just using it in myeveryday life.
(49:58):
I chart a lot.
I have a chart on all the chartsI keep.
So this is basically an idea ofhow much I chart.
SPEAKER_00 (50:04):
It's a meta
SPEAKER_02 (50:04):
chart.
Yeah, it is.
It's a meta chart.
Yeah, it's the first one I fillout.
And actually, I think this wouldbe the only one if I really
wanted to increase how much I doin a day would be the only one
that...
I actually provide reinforcementon it.
You see, it is up to date.
That was yesterday.
That included my workout
SPEAKER_01 (50:23):
and stuff like that.
I see a bunch of lines.
SPEAKER_02 (50:27):
Yeah, lots of dots in a piece of paper.
Do you guys use behavioranalysis on yourself?
SPEAKER_00 (50:36):
Oh, great question.
You'll have to return for theanswer and part two of our
interview with Dr.
Scott O'Donnell.
Please do come back and
SPEAKER_03 (50:45):
always analyze responsibly.
SPEAKER_00 (50:49):
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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