October 11, 2023 • 58 mins
Dive headfirst into the intriguing world of behavior analysis with my good friend, Dr. Merrill Winston. In this fascinating discussion, we challenge the norms of traditional functional analysis in education, shedding light on the holistic aspects of behavior challenges. Anchored in the teachings of field pioneers like Brian Iwata and Hank Pennypacker, our conversation unearths the need for a deeper understanding and more probing questions about behavior.
We delve into the issue of extreme reactions stemming from the aversive stimuli of everyday life. How can we better manage these situations? How can aversives build resilience and help achieve goals? Dr. Winston expertly guides us through these complex waters, highlighting the dynamic nature of behavior problems and the impact of varying reinforcement types from adults and peers.
We also touch on the essential role of behavior analysts in successful outcomes and the quest for meaningful behavior change. As we wade through the challenges of inclusion, we take a hard look at an ecological approach to behavior problems. We examine issues around curriculum, teaching, and repertoire problems, along with the complexities of punishment. We wrap up with practical tips on managing conflicts and maintaining balance in meetings.
If you'd like to find out more about Dr. Winston or connect with him, check out his website, Winston Behavioral Solutions
Also, be sure to check out the Stone Soup Conference. Dr. Winston, Anika Costa, and a stellar lineup of behavior analysts will be presenting on a range of topics!
And finally, if you are a behavioral consultant in school districts and you find yourself struggling with making a positive difference, check out The Behavioral Toolbox, the first online course of its kind that's bringing Organizational Behavior Management to behavioral consulting in education!
Pick up a copy of the #1 bestseller: Adaptive Intelligence: The Evolution of Emotional Intelligence Through the Proven Power of Behavior Science
The Behavioral Toolbox equips those charged with supporting behavior change in schools with practical applications of the science of human behavior for making a positive difference in the workplace. In this case, the classroom and school!
Be sure to subscribe to Dr. Paulie's Heart & Science YouTube channel for a variety of content related to behavior science and bringing out the best in yourself and others.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the thoughts and rants of a behavior
scientist show Hosted by WallStreet Journal in USA Today.
Best-selling author, dr Pauley.
Okay, thanks for joining me onthe thoughts and rants of a
behavior scientist podcast.
I'm your host, dr Pauley.
I'm here with one of myfavorite guys in the whole wide
world, dr Merrill Winston.
(00:20):
What's up, my brother?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hey, feeling is mutual, pauley, how you doing.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I'm good man, I'm good.
I'm sorry I didn't get to hearyour talk.
A couple weeks ago they they'dlined us up at the same time and
yeah, and they've, and, and youknow, we're gonna be talking,
we're gonna be doing a talktogether and in a week and a
half at the stone soupconference, and they'd line us
up again at the same time.
So I'm not gonna get to hearyour talk.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And no, it was multi-track.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah, there's two.
There's two going on, unlessyou know, but anyways, what?
What you're a nick and I aredoing a talk on A tough talks
about.
You know, when you've got tomeet with somebody if they're
having some performancechallenges, so I'm really
looking forward to that.
It's next.
It's a week from Friday.
What's your talk about?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
my talk is gonna be about Behavior analysis, looking
at mental illness, and thetitle of that talk is it isn't
what you got, it's what you do,and so I'll be.
I'll be taking people throughthe way that I.
I conceptualize mental healthproblems as a behavior analyst
so that I can work with others.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Right, man, I'll probably have to.
I never, man.
I mean, I do podcasts, I do myown videos.
I never come back.
I don't listen anybody else'spodcast and almost I don't watch
videos.
Man, I'm like this, I guess mytime, man, but I want you, I
really want to hear your stuff.
It's always so great, butanyway, anybody that's Turing in
, hey, come check us out a weekfrom Friday, so it should be.
(01:45):
You know we get some coolthings off, or I know there's
some others other stellarpresenters out there that are in
the stone soup lineup.
So I actually asked Meryl tocome on today to talk about how
he deals with behaviorchallenges.
A lot of times I'm out in aschool district and my my focus
is zoomed out.
I look at things throughsystems and organizational
(02:07):
behavior management lens andthey say, hey, you know, in
Everly We've got this kid thatda, da, da, da, da.
I'm like and it's always themost challenging kid and like
you need Meryl Winston.
You know Dr Meryl Winston isthe guy for this.
I'm not the guy for that.
We're on opposite ends of the.
You know, in the polls here,although it's all science, it's
just how we apply it.
So I thought I'd love to hearabout how you go about your
(02:27):
business, you know.
So that's what we're here forsure.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Well, this, this, the approach that I take, is a
little bit different than some.
It probably has commonalities,because I think, after a while,
people figure out things thatare real and they figure out
ways to conceptualize problemsthat are more fruitful.
So I wrote a book back in 2012called adventures in special
education, and it came from myexperience Working in special
(02:56):
education in the Palm BeachCounty school system.
However, everything I talkabout and the way I organize it,
it's for everybody.
It's not just for kids inschool, but the all the examples
and things like that wereschool-based.
But the way that, you know, Iview things is broader than a
traditional functional analysis,which is very important, and
(03:20):
Brian Iwata, who passed recently, he gave us, he gave us
something that, like, we couldnever repay.
You know, and Even though, what, what?
The way I view things, it goesa bit beyond the functional
analysis.
I, I believe you know JimJohnston used to say this thing.
I mean, he didn't invent thephrase, but he liked it and I do
(03:42):
too, and that is we we have.
We can see as far as we do,because we're standing on the
shoulders of giants, and BrianIwata and recently also Hank
Penny Packer were two of thosegiants whose shoulders we
continue to stand on.
And so everything I do here andwhat I propose to people, it's
(04:02):
not to say, oh, don't do thefunctional analysis, that's old,
that's not, that's not true atall.
The functional analysis isreally good for getting a good
start on finding out what are wedealing with here in a basic
sense.
But every anyone who's done onecan also know sometimes they
come up goose eggs, sometimesthey come up every function and
(04:23):
then where are you?
And so they're.
What I'm proposing is that therethere's just the functional
analysis does not contain badquestions.
It's just, in my opinion,they're not enough.
They're not enough questionsand there's certain kinds of
issues that the functionalanalysis was never intended to
get at.
So the way that I look atthings is in terms of problems,
(04:48):
and you know we used to have acriticism in the field, we
probably still do, and in somesense, in some senses it's a
valid criticism, and that usedto be by traditional
psychologists and they'd say,well, behavior analysis.
Yet you know you have all thedata and you have this and it
comes from experimental and allthose kinds of things.
But One of the problems inbehavior analysis is that you
(05:15):
guys are only treating thesymptom.
You're only treating thesymptom, you're not getting at
the Underlying causes.
And my point is that, well, Idon't know if they're underlying
causes, but there there areother causes that sometimes we
are not aware of or don'tconcern ourselves with, and so
my whole feeling is thatsometimes that is a valid
(05:37):
criticism.
If you're just saying, let'sjust find a procedure that's
good for getting rid ofallotment, well, maybe you could
, and maybe you could come upwith a simple, powerful
procedure that stopped it.
It doesn't mean you understandthe allotment completely.
And even if you did afunctional analysis and you say,
well, we're thinking isalloping to access tangibles,
(06:00):
you know, even that is not acomplete analysis.
Okay, you know, aren't theretangibles in the room?
What kinds of tangibles?
Why is he only want to accessthose?
Why aren't the things he wantsto access in the room?
All those other kinds ofquestions.
And one of my points is thatthere's all kinds of ways to
analyze behavior, not just theways that are codified in
(06:23):
people's assessment tools not inmine, not in anybody else's.
I made my own tool as well.
That's not the only way to lookat things.
That's not correct andeverything else is wrong.
It's another way to look atthings, taking different
perspectives, but anyway, backto the initial one Can I
apologize on?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
yeah, I'd like to, paul.
Yeah, so I, of course, fromorganization behavior management
we look at like performancechaining, and up the chain, I
think about like man, I can'tlook at that child's behavior
without zooming out and alsolooking at, of course, the
teachers behavior and the theeducator support behavior, that
this student, that the schoolleader behavior, district leader
behavior, there are these mediccontingencies and all these
(07:04):
other variables that areimpacting the performance.
But all those people down thechain, how do we even get this
point in the first place?
So you know what you're saying.
You know is like, yeah, man,this is the way business should
be, but it's not no, it isn't.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I was just thinking about that earlier today.
You know, like what you andAnika and Matt do, these things
are necessary because, like anyanalysis I do of an individual
child, that's going to requirepeople to do specific things in
a specific way.
That won't happen if thereisn't a system of management to
support it.
You know it, I know it, andanybody who's been in school
(07:37):
settings know it, and not justfor schools, anywhere there is.
Poor management Doesn't makefor the best behavior analysis
Period.
You know, is it possible?
And have I seen pockets ofexcellence in a school, in a
classroom, where one teacherreally had their act together
(08:00):
and they were awesome and theclassroom was run well?
Yeah, but that's the exception,that's not the norm.
You know that.
I know that.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Everybody points to that, so she's doing it.
Well, it's one person.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, right, right, I've seen.
You know there are pockets ofexcellence everywhere, but if
there's only one pocket ofexcellence in a sea of darkness,
it's not enough, you know, andso this is part of the problem.
So you know, what I like to sayto people is that, regarding
analyzing behavior, is that Iknow behavior is our thing, but
(08:33):
when someone says, okay, what'sthe problem, well, he's got
really bad headbanging.
Okay, that's not the problem.
The headbanging is never theproblem, never, never.
It is a serious problem thatmust be solved.
That has occurred because ofanother set of interrelated
(08:53):
problems, and many times wedon't identify all the problems.
And it's not that you have toidentify every single relevant
problem.
You may never be able to, butyou do have to be able to
identify enough problems thatcan be worked on reasonably,
right, because or as many as youcan reasonably that can be
(09:19):
solved, because the moreproblems you identify and solve,
the faster, the more durable,the more generalizable is going
to be your behavior change, youknow.
And so the whole idea is that,yeah, the SIV is a problem.
Yeah, the aggression is aproblem Nobody's saying it isn't
, but it's the end result ofanother set of interrelated
(09:41):
problems, and this was one ofour criticisms, more so for
methodological behaviorism, whenyou just ran in and started
throwing reinforcers andpunishers at people.
And if you throw big enoughreinforcers and punishers you'll
get behavior change very oftenright.
But it's not very elegant, it'snot very sophisticated and it
doesn't mean you reallyunderstand what's going on in
the person's world, and it'salso oftentimes not
(10:03):
generalizable.
Right, right as well.
So I just and we can just chatabout each one briefly but I
identified and this is again,this is arbitrary, it's not
based on research or anythinglike that.
It's just another way oflooking at things.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Well, you've had some pretty deep experience, merrill
.
You know what I mean.
Just because you know I meanit's based on my experience.
It's just not research.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
It's based on clinical experience.
But the areas, they're abouteight areas.
So they're problems withreinforcers, problems with
versives, problems with chronicversus intermittent behavior,
which is the presentation I do,problems with adults, problems
with peers, repertoire problems,teaching and curriculum
(10:48):
problems and problems withpunishment Not that punishment
is a problem and doesn't work,but just like reinforcement it
goes wrong 700 ways.
And that's kind of the way Iorganized it and the reason I
said that is that some of thesethings transcend function.
So, as an example, sometimesthe problem is not identifying
(11:10):
what's maintaining the behavior.
The problem is that what'smaintaining the behavior is
really bad for the person andeveryone else.
That is like signs of damage.
You like to make people cry,you like to hurt people's
feelings, you like to see thingsdestroyed.
So in that case, like makingthe teacher cry by insulting him
(11:35):
, by insulting her which I'mthinking of that because I know
a really good teacher whoeventually became a behavioral
analyst and she just lost it oneday and broke down crying
because everybody has theirlimit and it involved a kid who
cursed at her pretty badly andat some point she just couldn't
manage it anymore.
(11:55):
But anyway, as an example, theproblem there is gee, I don't
know what's maintaining thebehavior.
That's not the problem.
The problem is what'smaintaining the behavior
shouldn't be that is, we'remaking a judgment call as
members of society, saying weare collectively saying, if you
love to make people hurt, that'snot a good thing.
(12:17):
Like we're saying that to kidsat school, like bullying.
Bullying is all about signs ofdamage.
So the problem in understandingbullying is not gee, what's the
function of the bullying?
It's to produce signs of damage.
But the problem is not we don'tunderstand the function.
The problem is how do we getthis person that is accustomed
(12:38):
to and seeks signs of damage?
How do we get them to switchover to signs of joy, like hey,
that's a cool shirt man.
Ah, thanks, we're telling a jokeand making somebody laugh or
helping somebody who's thenappreciative and says, hey,
thanks, nobody else helped me.
Those are more like signs ofjoy, signs of happiness, and a
(12:59):
lot of the individuals we workwith, their behavior is not very
controlled by those things.
So, as an example, if you sayto them hey, buddy, great job
getting this done, many studentswill immediately become
inappropriate.
And the reason is that's notone of their reinforcers.
And the real problem is wedon't understand what's
(13:20):
maintaining their behavior.
The real problem is we knowwhat's maintaining their
behavior.
We don't know how to get it tostop doing it.
We don't know how to get themto switch from this kind of
social reinforcer to this kindof social reinforcer, and the
functional analysis doesn't helpus in that.
It helps us in other thingsright, but it doesn't help us
recognize those issues and itdoesn't help us figure out what
(13:43):
to do with those issues, justlike the functional analysis
doesn't really help you figureout exactly what replacement
behavior to teach.
That's and people fall down onthat a lot Because it can be
difficult depending on thecontext.
But that was that's someexamples.
Other examples of problems withreinforcement are just it's
being used improperly with theperson Limited reinforcers.
(14:07):
Like we've all worked withindividuals, there's only really
one thing they want.
They only want trampoline, andtrampoline is not always
available.
But that's a that would be acategory of problem with
reinforcers.
What's the problem?
He's only got one.
You know, like one main one,right, that you can use.
Well, that's kind of a problem,right, as opposed to somebody
(14:30):
who enjoys a variety of thingsand will work for a variety of
things.
Right, that's much easier,right?
So, point being, there are someproblems that are problems just
with reinforcement and they'rekind of okay with other things.
They have an odd reinforcer asan example, right, they have one
that's maybe dangerous, likekids that like to play with fire
(14:53):
.
Well, there's nothing wrongwith playing, but the particular
thing you're playing with iskind of a problem, right.
So that would be, you know, andwhat's the behavior maintained
by?
Well, access to positivereinforcement, but what's the
problem?
The positive reinforcer iswatching things burn.
So this as an example.
So this that's kind ofclinically where I'm at with
(15:17):
what are the problems, right,and that's why I say this is not
meant to replace a functionalanalysis, but it's meant to
perhaps augment one Otherproblem area.
Did you want to say anything orask a question, paulie?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Because you're making perfect sense, man.
You're right on this stuff,yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Another problem and I say this a lot and this is
actually probably about, I don'tknow, just spitballing, but
like 80% of our problems, theseare problems with aversive
stimuli, like so much becauseyou do crisis management, like I
did for so many years, inaddition to classroom management
.
But so many problems with thepeople that we work with comes
(15:59):
down to their response to whatare common aversive events.
Okay, we ran out of orangejuice, there's no more cookies.
Okay, the movie got canceled.
Everyday disappointments for usthat make us go man, it makes
somebody else destroy theclassroom, so.
(16:21):
But here's what they have incommon they're both aversive.
The difference is a lot of thefolks we work with they don't
cope with aversive stimulationvery well at all, and I don't
mean like super nasty eventsbeing screamed at, being beaten.
So what I'm talking about?
I'm talking about everydayinconveniences and things that
(16:42):
you and I would just say, man, Iwas so pissed off yesterday.
Well, that's all we get.
That's all we get.
We just get pissed off and wemove on.
We don't break expensive things, we don't get into fights with
people, we don't try and hurtpeople, right?
These are the differences andso a lot of the problems that
(17:06):
our students and clients arehaving.
They don't cope with aversivesvery well at all.
Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
So if you were to go in there and in lieu of doing a
functional analysis, but even ifyou did a functional analysis
and they say, well, here's theissue, under these conditions,
here's what's going on, and yousolved the problem there.
But it seems like you'd reallyneed to focus on some sort of
pivotal behavior, maybeself-management, right, or you
(17:34):
need that to generalize to otherversus.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, and all probability so a lot of and I'm
working with a lot of them thesedays, it seems.
But a lot of kids they havewhat anybody might call a hair
trigger, and that is they'llescalate to a high level of
physiological arousal veryquickly over what you and I
would say is basically nothing.
(17:58):
In other words, they are cryingover spilled milk.
Not only they're not crying,they're usually beating somebody
up or destroying something, butit is.
I'll give you a perfect example.
The other day the story wasrelated to me of a client.
They ended up getting takenbecause of a series of poor
decisions, but they ended upgetting taken away by the police
(18:19):
in Hancox.
You know what the whole thingstarted with?
Another girl at the schoolkicked his football and he had a
problem with that.
Nobody cursed him out, nobodystole his money, nobody tried to
attack him.
Someone kicked his football andso the thing is well, nobody
likes people messing with theirstuff.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
But are you going to ask?
Are you going to?
Speaker 2 (18:42):
escalate to the point that law enforcement has to be
called.
So you know, this is kind of aperfect example of a problem
with the versus and is it aproblem with self-control
behavior?
A lot of times, yeah it isPeople don't know what to do
when they become upset.
Or perhaps they know what to do, but especially if they're
higher functioning and have goodlanguage, they may know what to
(19:05):
do.
But what's easy, convenient andfamiliar is going into a rage
over anything.
It gets reinforced, you know,causes a lot of disruption, and
so it may be a combination ofpoor self-control, but also it
may be reinforcement of aberrantbehavior, where, when you
scream enough and have a fit,things happen.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Right, it does right.
Yeah, I think I copped thisfrom you.
You said, like you know, whenpeople are escaping things,
they're not escaping into theblack hole.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Right, something else is going on.
That's actually yeah, but I gotthat from McGreevy, from Pat
McGreevy, you know.
He said they're not escaping tonothing, they're not just
sitting there and thank God Idon't have to do anything
anymore just sit there.
They almost always begin to dosomething else.
Try to access some otherreinforcer.
That used to be Pat's argument,for sometimes, instead of
(19:59):
teaching break, you're betteroff teaching, asking for an
alternate activity becausethey're going to end up doing it
anyway.
Oh yeah, they're not going totake that break and go out and
smoke a cigarette.
You know, like people workingall day that kind of a thing.
But that would be.
That category is problems withthe verses, and most of that
(20:21):
category is people not dealingwell with very common verses and
you have to teach them how toRight.
Another problem is sometimeswhere especially with people who
might be related, oppositional,defiant or antisocial that
(20:42):
sometimes what happens is and Ithink teachers don't have enough
appreciation for this there's awhole category of problems that
falls under this heading.
What should be aversive to youisn't.
Now, if you're going to be amember of society, certain
things need to be aversive toyou, because if the things that
(21:02):
are aversive to most members ofsociety are not to you, you're
going to end up in jail.
Okay, because the things thatwe all worry about, they don't
worry about.
I don't know if you've everseen the movie Goodfellas, but I
just saw it the other day.
Joe Pesci's in it, right, andJoe Pesci asks a guy do you know
(21:25):
?
who I am and he's like, well,yeah, I know, and he goes.
No, you don't, I'm the guy thatdoesn't care about going to
jail.
And what Joe Pesci was sayingis the things that are aversive
to everyone else, that everybodyelse is afraid of doing and
getting caught, they are notaversive to me.
And what he was intimating isyou need to be worried because I
(21:49):
will mess you up like nobody'sbusiness and I'll do it in
public and I don't care if I getarrested.
And so what Joe Pesci was kindof saying is your aversives are
not mine and because of that youneed to be very worried, right,
but this is extremely true ifyou look at criminal behavior.
(22:09):
Right, they don't want to go tojail, but the thought of it is
not as aversive as it is to youand I.
They're willing to, they'rewilling to risk it, right.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
And like how about school?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
suspensions.
Pauly, think back when you werea young man, little kid, I
don't know about you, this is myjoke.
I never got suspended.
And you know why?
Because if I had got suspended,I wouldn't have gone home, I
would have gone to find a newfamily.
Okay, I wouldn't have been ableto face my father.
I wouldn't have been.
I mean, he wouldn't have beatme, but he would have screamed
(22:44):
at me and he would have beenextremely unhappy and it would
have been very, very aversive.
Okay, I never got suspended.
The kids that I work with today, they're not worried about
being suspended and a lot of theones are not worried.
How is this going to affect myapplication to the university
where I want to go?
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Right, they're not worried about that either.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
That's not aversive to them either.
Neither is getting an Fsometimes, right.
So if you one of the problemsand this is why it's a problem
with aversives, in a manner ofspeaking, that is, if people
don't value what you value, whatis aversive to you won't be
aversive to them.
So if the teacher, as anexample, values academic success
(23:28):
, that's why he or she became ateacher.
They want to produce academicsuccess in their students, right
?
And failure to them theteachers is aversive, but a
failure to the student him orherself if failure to them is
not aversive, you have amismatch of motivations again,
right, I desperately want you tosucceed and for you to fail is
(23:53):
aversive to me.
And then, from my point of viewas a student, I am not worried
about grades and see, that'skind of part of the problem is
that getting an F for a goodstudent will send them into a
tailspin.
For a straight A student,getting a B will send them into
a tailspin because they're sosensitive to academic aversives
(24:13):
and failure and a poor grade andthings like that.
And some people love to performand love to achieve, others are
more motivated by fear offailure and for many of us it's
a mix of these things right, butpeople are different on this
and for some things maybe you dowant to achieve and some things
maybe you only do them likestatistics in graduate school.
(24:34):
I didn't do it because I lovedit.
I worked at it because of fearof failure and getting kicked
out of graduate school.
But the thing is no one cantell me, merrill, you should
love statistics, right?
Or just like no one can tellthe kid you should fear failure.
And then the kid suddenly fearsfailure.
So that's another problem withaversives, people that have
(24:59):
different values from us.
They often have differentreinforcers and different
aversives and it creates thismismatch because we're like, hey
, straighten up, or suspension,and then from the kid's point of
view it's like I don't get yourthreat.
This is not a problem for me.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Right, it's the Disney syndrome, yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
You know, yeah, so it's right from the ditch to
Disney, right.
So that is kind of a problemwhere you know people have to
learn to respond to.
You know typical kinds ofaversives.
Like a successful person would,we all encounter them.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I wonder how you think it's shaped up.
I mean, there's a couple ofobvious ways, but how much of is
that?
They become desensitized to theverse, whatever it was aversive
at one time.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
It might have been aversive, or after enough
failure you might just stoptrying and not worry about it.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And yeah, like, when I do, I'm not going to get it.
And then how much of it is thatthe reinforcement was a power
enough to drive their to pulltheir behavior towards it.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
And it's probably a combination of.
The thing is, yes, you do needreinforcement, but in the real
world, okay, there are aversivesand they enter into all of our
contingencies of aversives are.
Our laws are based on aversives, and so the thing is you can
say you don't agree with it, butyou still have to abide by it,
(26:19):
and it's the way things areworking.
I don't know how it is for you,polly, but I don't get a check
from the government for everymonth that I don't murder
somebody.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Okay, but if I do murder?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
somebody, the punishment hammer will fall
quickly, okay, but there is no.
You know, polly, there iscapital punishment in our
government, but there is nocapital reinforcement.
This you can be certain of youknow, and it's just it's
interesting, man, thisdiscussion.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
I don't want to derail our conversation here,
but just came to my mind.
I think, about a number ofnumber of adolescents that are
struggling now and I wonder whenit's the number seems to be so
large.
When I speak to other people,including my own son, you know,
I look back and what could I do?
More or less or differently,you know, and I wonder how much
(27:09):
of it is that we've become kindof like a helicopter society,
right, and meaning that when wewere younger and you know, like
my mom would send me out and youknow I'm not saying it's the
right thing to do, but it seemedright at the time like be, be
home when the streetlights areon.
I lived in rough neighborhood,man, and so I made a lot of
mistakes and I fell and I gothurt and all this stuff.
(27:30):
But I developed resiliencyalong the way, right by, you
know, by overcoming thoseaversives and you know, I think
that's an important, you know,piece of the puzzle.
I think, you know, because justthinking about people listening
here and saying, well, theyshouldn't have to tolerate
aversives, well, I think that'sa problem, you know, because
they're just part of life.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
You're absolutely correct.
Aversives are part of life.
Don't confuse aversives.
Can we curse on here?
Yeah, Don't confuse aversiveswith being an asshole to
somebody, okay, or being cruel.
They're not the same thing.
If you're being cruel tosomebody, by its very nature
there's usually all kinds ofaversives in it.
But there's all kinds ofaversives in all kinds of things
(28:12):
we do with people our ownchildren, in our relationships,
in society in general, and youhave to be able to navigate them
.
The other thing that I tellparents is regarding aversives
is we're not talking about youshould suck it up and be able to
tolerate terrible things, no,but you should be able to
(28:33):
tolerate common things.
And the other thing is if youwant students to achieve and I'm
using that word specificallynot finish their math, but if
you want students, your clients,to make achievements, okay,
then they are going to have tosuffer some aversives, because
(28:56):
it's not an achievement if youdon't suffer in some manner.
Suffering doesn't mean painnecessarily, Although it might.
If you're doing an exerciseprogram or you're learning
martial arts or you're trainingfor a marathon, suffering might
mean pain right.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I would argue that the more suffering you go
through I don't want to overgeneralize this, but to
accomplish something, the biggerthe accomplishment it feels.
The important is to me.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah, the issue is for everybody listening, you're
going to suffer, you're going tobe subjected to aversive
stimulation.
The question is is it unduesuffering, is it intentional
suffering or is it unintentional?
Unintentional suffering is kindof nobody planned it.
You made somebody upset andthey screamed at you okay, and
that's unintentional suffering.
(29:42):
Intentional suffering is sayingI'm going to go work out, I
haven't worked out in a whileand man, I'm going to be really
sore tomorrow.
I probably won't even be ableto get out of bed.
Okay, but that's intentionalsuffering.
It's all suffering.
Okay, but intentional sufferinglevels us up.
Now, suffering endlessly withoutachieving beats the human down.
(30:08):
Okay, and a lot of childrenexperience that as well.
So, suffering by itself,needless suffering, stupid
suffering, cruel suffering a lotof people are experiencing that
, but just like regularsuffering, with support from
someone who's been through that.
Hey, I know the math is hard,gosh, I remember I hated it, but
(30:32):
you can get through it.
I'm going to teach you a coupleof tricks, okay, and you help
them through their suffering andthen they achieve and they feel
great about it.
Yeah, and then they're able totolerate other kinds of typical
suffering and inconvenience andstuff like that.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
That's the resiliency piece of it.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yes, yeah it is, and kids especially are quite
resilient.
But again, people shouldn'tmisconstrue.
A lot of people when they hearthe word aversive they think
automatically nasty.
No, aversive can be the mildest, tiniest irritate.
Your tag in the back of yourshirt.
If you cut it out, it was bydefinition aversive.
It just wasn't painful orhorrific, but it's aversive.
(31:11):
So we have to remember not toattach baggage to these words
when talking about them.
The other areas just kind ofquickly and aversives and
reinforcers by themselves, arevery large areas to cover Would
be problems with chronic versusintermittent behavior, and the
reason I split them up isbecause very often when
something's happening 200 timesa day, it is very different
(31:34):
fundamentally in nature thansomething that's happening once
every two weeks, okay.
And so I split them up indifferent categories as
different kinds of problems.
Like a kid that bangs his headin every single environment
multiple times per hour would bechronic.
That's a different sort ofproblem.
It usually has a different kindof a context.
(31:55):
As an example, most of thehigher functioning kiddos that
you'll work with who may begetting a fight sometimes right,
they don't get into a fight 87times a day, okay Typically
developing individuals who havebehavior problems, but no
particular diagnosis or delay.
They tend to have problems thatare less frequent and more
(32:18):
intense, like we do, and sousually the problems we have are
not super high frequency, someof them are.
Just because you can talk welldoesn't mean you don't have high
frequency behavior problems.
Some of those problems aretalking just too much or the
wrong things, and it is a highfrequency, but things like
(32:38):
aggression, getting into fights,stuff like that usually are at
a lower frequency for thosefolks.
But anyway, there are differentcategories of problems, because
one of the big things is thatif somebody's only doing
something once a week liketearing up the classroom, but
only once a week, it means themotivator, the MO, is only there
once a week.
And then the question is whySomeone who's misbehaving all
(33:00):
day long has needs that aregoing on all day long that
aren't being addressed.
If all their needs wereaddressed, they wouldn't need to
misbehave, they would just kindof sit there and be happy.
But anyway, that's another kindof two ways of looking at
problems, and the only reasonfor making up these arbitrary
categories like chronic andintermittent is just so we can
(33:22):
start looking in different areasand starting to rule out some
things, someone who only doestheir behavior once a week, it's
likely not a communicationthing.
Communication things, behaviorproblems that serve to
communicate.
They're usually communicatingall day long because they have
problems all day long and theyuse their behavior problems the
(33:44):
same way we do when I talk.
So anyway, that's the way.
I split that up Other problems,a problem with adults or a
problem with peers.
And the only reason I splitthat up that I got from
classrooms as well because I'dfind some for a lot of kids.
Maybe you knew some of themwith other children.
They have non-stop behaviorproblems With an adult that they
(34:07):
like reasonably zero and you'veknown some of these kids.
And one of the issues is theadult is competent socially and
not mean, and if the kid makessome social missteps the adult
handles it gracefully.
If a child makes some socialmissteps around another child,
(34:30):
they will destroy them.
They're not as gracious as theadult and a lot of the kids feel
safer with the adult.
They like the adult sense ofhumor, they prefer to talk with
the adults and they may even bea little bit more sophisticated
and don't like talking to theirpeers.
But the thing is, if you knowthat it never happens with
(34:51):
adults and it's always withpeers, then it's likely not
something that just cuts acrosseverything Like oh, they do it
for attention.
Well, if they never do it withyou, even when you don't give
attention to what's going on?
So a lot of times these issuesare things like the adults don't
.
(35:11):
The adults give me morereinforcers and reverses and the
kids mostly give me a versus.
In other cases I've heard ofjust as many where I'll ask them
this just to steer theconversation.
I'll just say, and if they cananswer me instantly, I'm usually
fairly confident that they knowwhat they're talking about.
But I'll say does it happenonly with peers, only with
(35:33):
adults or equally with both?
And sometimes they'll instantlygo oh, only with peers.
And to me that rules out allkinds of problems and rules in
all kinds of other things,Because what it means is they
clearly don't need their problembehavior to get along with
grownups.
They only need it with theother kids.
And then that suggests there'ssomething about the way the
(35:55):
other kids are behaving towardsthem or the way they're behaving
towards the other kids becausethey're histories.
But anyway, it's just a way toget people thinking of broad
areas where people are competent, where there's no problems, and
other areas where there areproblems.
And of course, sometimes likeif the individual has almost no
(36:15):
language, the problem almostalways happens with everybody.
Other reasons that sometimesproblems only happen with adults
is that their peers don't blocktheir access to reinforcement,
that is, the peers don't tellthem what they can't do and the
peers don't deliver demands.
That's the adult.
So sometimes it's an adultfocus problem or the supervisor
(36:41):
focused problem, the authorityfigure focused problem, Because
the authority figure all daylong is telling me what I can't
have and is telling me what Ineed to do, and both of those
are sources of aversivestimulation.
So, anyway, that's.
The only reason I split it upthat way is to point to possible
problem areas with interaction.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Well, so now we've got a.
I mean you've really broadenedthe scope here.
When you look at that lens man,it brings a lot of things to
the table and just shows you thecomplexities of human behavior
and the complexities of beinglike a good consultant, being a
good behavior analyst.
When you go into thesesituations, how would somebody
(37:22):
take this information and put itinto their own repertoire,
because it makes sense?
It seems like this should begoing on already, right, first
and foremost, that we're lookingat these variables.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
It's a way that I look at things just, and here's
the reason why I want moretreatment options.
I want to have more angles toapproach the problem right.
I don't want to just go downthis one road.
I want to look at the problemfrom underneath and from the
side, and from on top and fromway back and close up.
When you take all those viewsand put them together, you have
(37:57):
a much better idea of what'shappening.
In the grand scheme of things.
How does this person fit intothe world, into their world
specifically?
The other problems arerepertoire problems.
This is here's as an examplefor somebody who is quote
(38:18):
high-functioning, great languageworking on grade level.
There can be repertoireproblems, but they're usually
sophisticated ones, likesophisticated social interaction
, things they haven't figuredout, sophisticated ways of
asserting yourself, like beingassertive instead of aggressive.
(38:38):
That's pretty sophisticated.
Many adults don't know thedifference.
There may be repertoireproblems, but there's not
repertoire problems in terms ofoh, they can't do almost
anything.
We're talking about people whocan do almost everything that a
typically developing person cando with, maybe a few problems
here or there.
(38:59):
Other individuals theirproblems are so big because
their repertoire is so small,it's so restricted, and then
they have giant repertoire as abehavior problems CB.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
I mean, if that's not in place, I suppose everything
else is going to be like withouthaving the skills, you're dead
in the water, right?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
AC Pretty much.
Then you're just left withthese behavior management
strategies If you're not lookingat and saying, okay, what don't
they know how to do and how isthat impacting this behavior
problem?
Everything doesn't impact itequally.
A simple thing, like for kidsthat do property destruction or
(39:38):
other misbehaviors, to get staffto come over those same kids.
Very often they don't have asummoning response which is just
like this or come here oranything like that.
They don't have that but theylearn to do is misbehave and the
adult comes closer.
That's a repertoire problemthat if that's not addressed the
problem will never go awaybecause they have no other way
(40:00):
to make people coming over toyou.
And getting people to come overto you to approach you without
you having to approach them,it's kind of a big deal.
Kids learn that very early.
They learn to stay where theyare and make somebody appear.
A lot of our clients withoutlanguage.
They don't know how to do thatand that's absolutely a
(40:23):
repertoire problem.
It's like gaping holes in allkinds of areas.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
What about the behavior analyst repertoire?
Problems with going in thereand supporting this stuff,
Because we have a lot of newpeople in the field.
I was learning on the job and Idon't ever think that was that
great in the area.
I remember we had to call youin and I'm still calling you in.
It's not the man.
What are the key things?
It's just a lot.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It is a lot.
Here's what I think the keythings are.
The way that I do it is to notbe in a rush.
I know there are contingenciesoperating on behavior analysts.
This program has to be done bythis.
It has to be written by thistime.
Medicaid has to look at thisand the insurance company has to
review that.
(41:12):
I understand there's all thesemedic contingencies going on,
but by the same token, if you'rein a rush to judgment, to stick
something in a function box,you're likely going to miss a
bunch of things.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
You're going through so much.
Our OBM approach is the coursethat you've got to get the
information up front man.
You've got to buildrelationships with people.
You've got to establishyourself as a reinforcer.
Those fundamental initial stepsare huge if you're going to put
them in these instances.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Again, we don't fix the person.
We say it all the time and weforget about it.
We don't fix the person, we fixthe environment.
Yet when we go into theclassroom, what do we ask to do?
Are we asked to fix theenvironment?
No, we're asked to fix that kid.
Then they point to them.
They're not saying when you goto the classroom, they don't go
Polly, could you please fix allof this?
(42:05):
They go.
I want you to fix this, it's aleaky pipe.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
If I go back and look at everything that you laid out
there and this is what Anikaand I hang our hat on when we go
out and look in the schoolsreally these behavior plans and
all the approaches, we'relooking at the main thing that
needs to be fixed.
If we're going to call it a fixand I don't want to insult
anybody really are the adults inthat classroom, the adults in
that school.
All those things that we'retalking about means the adults
(42:32):
are going to have to dosomething more or less or
differently than they're doingright now If they're going to
get any sort of sustainablechange in that learner's
behavior, because Merrill's notgoing to be there for the whole
time.
You're going to come in, you'regoing to make some
recommendations, you're going todip.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
And the thing is you can exactly, you can put this
like any behavior and now ananalytic tool, which is all this
is.
It's just a way ofconceptualizing stuff.
You can apply this problemapproach to the teachers to the
staff problems with reinforcers.
Here's an example For some ofthem, their reinforcer is not
creating meaningful behaviorchange.
(43:05):
Their reinforcer is a quietclassroom and so the thing is
that's a problem withreinforcers.
You don't have the same one Ihave.
It could even be problems withthe versives.
Okay, what's aversive to theteacher may not be aversive to
me, right, you know so.
Like a kid curses at me, that'snot really aversive to me, like
punching is, but not cursing.
It may be aversive to theteacher and then you can't say
(43:28):
teacher, you're wrong, becausecursing is aversive to you and
because of your learning history, cursing upsets you.
They're not wrong, but it is aproblem with different
reinforcers and aversives.
We're not blaming people and wedon't blame the student either
for having reinforcers that wedon't agree with or aversives
that we think are unusual, ornot responding properly to the
(43:52):
same aversives we do.
Right, the children are not badfor doing this, but it's a bad
problem.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah Right, this is really an important piece, I
think.
Again, sliding into my worldnow and Anika's, when we go into
these classrooms where, likeyou already said it, we call it
behavior myopia, but, likeeverybody's, you know, they take
their behavioral lens off whenthey look at everything else.
Instead of that student, I'mlooking at everybody in that
(44:19):
environment as a learner.
And what do they need to domore or less differently?
What are their reinforcers?
We at your point, what aretheir aversives?
We need to understand thatstuff because, again, we're
going to need change in theirbehavior.
We're going to get changed inthe behavior of that learner,
anything that's sustainable, andwe forget about that stuff.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, I mean it's kind of what some people call an
ecological analysis, Like as anexample.
I am repeatedly.
It must be the power of ourscience, but I am amazed when I
see a kid in with behaviorproblems in the midst of many
other children with behaviorproblems and that kid still gets
(44:54):
better.
That to me is amazing that thatever happens because of the
we're not taking, the we're notdoing an ecological approach and
looking at the kid's socialenvironment and saying, look,
this environment promotes andmaintains their worst behavior.
(45:14):
It's like the Boys Town modeland Pat Freiman would talk about
it.
They don't take a troubled teenfrom an inner city and bring
them to the middle of nowhereand place them in the midst
living with other children withsevere problems.
They place them with a familywith kids who have begun to get
(45:39):
over their problems and fall inline with the values of Boys
Town.
They have perfect role modelsand they have nobody modeling
inappropriate behavior and theyhave lots of models of
appropriate behavior and theycan see people being successful
and getting privileges.
(46:00):
That's a very differentenvironment to place someone in
than place them in anenvironment with people that
have behavior that match theirs.
That whole model is insane tome, but I think things develop
that way because of resourceissues.
We have this teacher and sheteaches these kinds of kids, so
(46:22):
they're all going to be with her.
It's not an argument to sayevery child with misbehavior
should be placed in an includedclassroom, and that's actually
another area of problems.
That's part of the book.
That's one of the bonusproblems.
Problems with inclusion.
It's not that inclusion is bador a bad concept or can't be
done properly.
It's that it's so often doneimproperly to the detriment of
(46:44):
the child and those around them.
That's more the problem.
But there are many benefits ofinclusion.
One is the one I just touchedon.
You have a lot of good rolemodels and there's nobody
modeling bad stuff.
I think people reallyunderestimate the importance of
that.
(47:05):
A lot of times the teacher islike I don't want them bothering
the other children.
It's just like I understandthat.
But by the same token, beingaround these children who have
well-developed repertoires andare socially appropriate, that
could be one of the best thingsto help this kid get better.
(47:25):
Of course, simply being aroundwell-behaved children won't do
it.
It's not osmosis but the pointbeing there isn't multiple
examples of problem behavior andthese children likely won't
engage with them the same wayanother child will, who has a
short fuse and a lot of problembehavior.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah, I've seen this happen.
I know that you have time andtime again where a kid gets sent
to a self-contained class andtheir behaviors get worse.
Man, because they have a lot ofgreat role models in there for
challenging behavior.
People are like, well, whatshould we do?
I'm like, well, number one, Idon't think the kid should have
been in there in the first place.
But to your point though andyou were the first, I remember
(48:07):
you laid out a model a whileback.
I'm not sure where you got itfrom if it was your model about,
and you actually did a talk oninclusion, delusion, seclusion,
and you gave some very practicaladvice for when somebody should
be included and when theyshouldn't.
I'm like this is great, becauseeverybody was like inclusion is
the right thing to do all thetime.
(48:28):
Well, hold on, and it's rulefollowing.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Yeah, that's the blind rule of following, and
yeah, there are situations wherethe child won't really benefit
at all, and then there are, andit will actually cause more
disruption and problems, andthen there are situations where
the child will benefittremendously.
There just need to be certainsupports in place and certain
proper attitudes of all theconcerned parties, and that's
(48:55):
actually well.
I talked about repertoireproblems.
One of the other ones we gotlike 10 minutes one was teaching
in curriculum problems, whichyou recognize and that's more
like it's either you're workingon the wrong thing and that's
contributing to these behaviorproblems, because it's too
difficult, you don't make, youmake too many errors and you're
missing some key components, andalso it's not functional for
(49:18):
you, you, the learner, you don'tknow where it's going, you have
no idea, and the example wouldbe a nonverbal child being asked
to learn to write their name,which is absurd.
It is.
It's absurd, it's the bestthing I can call it and a waste
of time and it makes childrenangry.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
It's like asking me to do calculus F, you man.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Right, it's like me teaching you how to write
Chinese characters and you'renot interested in any Asian
culture at all and you're nottraveling to China.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
And you're like Merrill.
Why do I?
Speaker 2 (49:47):
have to write these characters and I'm like shut up
Paulie, and just draw that thingthat looks like a TV on a stand
with things coming off, but Idon't know what it means, it
doesn't matter, Trust me, justdraw it.
Okay, Well, this is what you'redoing with a child with no
language teaching them to writetheir name.
You can't tell them how cool itis to put their name on their
art and to write their name ontheir thing so that other people
(50:08):
can't take it, which is notreally true, but anyway, it's a
lie that we tell children, ifyou put your name on it, no one
could take it.
But the thing is you can't evendo that with someone with no
language to motivate them towant to write their name.
So that would be an example ofa curriculum problem.
A teaching problem just meansnot having the basics of
teaching error correction,prompting, fading, shaping,
(50:31):
reinforcement, stuff like thatyou know the basics.
The other thing was problem withpunishment, and all I say on
that in the book is that what Ialways say is that punishment is
not a bad thing, it's part ofsociety.
Again, you don't get a checkfor not murdering people, but if
you murder someone, they'regoing to dole out the punishers.
It's just the way the worldworks.
It's the way all societies work, you might say.
(50:54):
I think they shouldn't be thatway.
That's fine, run for Congress,but the rest of us have to live
in this world for now, which hasbuku punishment and whether or
not it's effective doesn't evenmatter for the people who use it
.
It's that you're going to haveto deal with it.
I'm not saying that thepunishment used by society is
effective.
(51:14):
In many instances it's not.
In some instances it is, butwithout it, chaos, no speed
limits, no speeding tickets forspeed limits.
Do you have any idea what themortality rate would be If, just
suddenly, I just want people toappreciate a simple punisher
like a speeding ticket.
Right, whether it's effectiveor not, it's intended to
(51:37):
decrease behavior.
Imagine for a moment if youwould an America where there is
no speed limit and you can't getany ticket for speeding.
Do you have any idea what thefatalities would be like.
I'd be afraid to be on the road.
It would be like Mad Max.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Well, you're actually pulling into one of the points
I make when I'm talking aboutthe importance of systems and
the same thing.
Imagine a cop pulling overpeople and giving them the car
accidents all the time.
You're giving people ticketsall the time and you're sending
them back to driving school.
You're spending license,sending something to jail.
Then when you zoom out, you'relike wait a second.
There's no rules on the roadright.
There's no lines, there's nogreen light, yellow light, red
(52:12):
light.
There's no system that generate, rule, govern behavior and
bring behavior under stimuluscontrol.
We're blaming the performersand not taking a look at the
system.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Yeah, sure, yeah, how clear is it what the speed
limit is?
How often are the signs posted?
They do a lot of things likethis.
Now they put up the signEverybody hates them that tells
you the current posted speed andyour speed.
You don't get a ticket, but youfeel guilty as hell for setting
(52:41):
it off.
Yeah, but that's to assist withthis kind of problem.
The other areas of the bookwere just like the last four
things and I'll just listen whenI'm going to them but they were
problems with diagnoses.
Not that the diagnoses arenecessarily a bad thing, but
they can create a number ofproblems.
(53:01):
I list some of the problemsthat they generate and I list
some of the uses that diagnosticlabels have.
Talk about problems withinclusion.
It's not always a great idea.
Sometimes it's fantastic, butto say everyone should be in an
included classroom becausethat's a rule that everybody
should follow, that's absolutenonsense and not in the child's
(53:22):
best interest and very often notin the best interest of the
other children.
Every child has to be takenindividually, looked at how the
match of where you're going toplace them, how they're going to
function, what kind of skillsthey have, what kind of supports
they're going to have.
And the last one this is theone that you and Anika met with
problems with the players.
Problems with the players,because that's where you come up
(53:44):
at the very top level.
And I'll use the quote from DonBayer.
And he said and I just keepfinding it more and more true.
It sounds overly simplistic,but there's so much truth to it.
He says all things being equal,when all the grownups are in
agreement, the kid tends to getbetter, like sometimes, even if
(54:04):
they agree on the wrong thing,it's at least consistent.
You know everybody's doing thesame wrong thing.
Good, job.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
So you know at least, you have some management right.
You like predictability, man,if everyone's doing the same
wrong thing perfectly.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
At least the management's good, you know.
So I mean, you know there'sconsistency in staff, so, and
you can just fix that by sayinglook, you're getting everybody
to do the same thing.
Great, they're just doing thewrong thing.
I'd like you to get everybodyto do this same thing, right,
and then you just plug it inright.
But that's not usually the casewhere, oh my god, this
management system is absolutelyperfect, you just happen to be
(54:45):
doing the wrong thing right,that's not usually what it is,
is it?
Oh man?
I mean, that would be the bestcase.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
Well, merrill, I want to thank you, man, for coming
on here.
Brother, and I know you arejust such a wealth of knowledge
and you know, again, you're thefirst person I want to call when
there's some you know bigbehavior challenges going on.
I know you've helped a lot ofschool districts and
organizations avoid lawsuits.
You know you've helped a lot ofkids, you know from from
(55:11):
preventing them from beingrestrained, and you know
achieving their goals and havinga quality of life and quality
of learning.
If people want to reach out toyou, man, if they need your
services, how do they get intouch with you?
Speaker 2 (55:22):
Oh, thanks for asking .
They can go to the website,which is
winstonbehavioralsolutionscom onone word, a very long word,
winstonbehavioralsolutionscomand it's very easy there to
schedule time with me.
Anyone can schedule a free20-minute Zoom meeting to talk
about a presentation you mightlike, or just to discuss a case
(55:43):
to see if I can help with it,and after that people can just
they can buy my brain by thehour if they.
If they like.
It's very I'm very accessible.
It's very easy to get anappointment with me.
You can schedule it yourself.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
Man, I love you coming into meetings and like,
did you get to have I writepeople that you just had?
You could balance thesemeetings and these are the IP
meetings where you got an angryparent, you got an angry
administrator, angry teacher,and you would just bring them
all together under what I wouldcall shared values.
Right, when you would makepractical, just common sense of
them, explaining things, andeverybody would kind of calm
(56:20):
down, man, it would move thingsin a real great direction.
So if you guys are havingchallenges out there like that
and there's lots of that goingon around the country, man
Merrill's your guy.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Well, thank you very much, Paul, I appreciate it.
Yeah, brother.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
I appreciate you coming on, man.
Thanks a lot, man.
I'll see you next week at StoneSoup.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Yes, sir, I will, and I hope everybody attends and
put on a great conference andit's for a great cause.
Welcome to the thoughts and rants of a behavior
scientist show Hosted by WallStreet Journal in USA Today.
Best-selling author, dr Pauley.
Okay, thanks for joining me onthe thoughts and rants of a
behavior scientist podcast.
I'm your host, dr Pauley.
I'm here with one of myfavorite guys in the whole wide
world, dr Merrill Winston.
(00:20):
What's up, my brother?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hey, feeling is mutual, pauley, how you doing.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I'm good man, I'm good.
I'm sorry I didn't get to hearyour talk.
A couple weeks ago they they'dlined us up at the same time and
yeah, and they've, and, and youknow, we're gonna be talking,
we're gonna be doing a talktogether and in a week and a
half at the stone soupconference, and they'd line us
up again at the same time.
So I'm not gonna get to hearyour talk.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And no, it was multi-track.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah, there's two.
There's two going on, unlessyou know, but anyways, what?
What you're a nick and I aredoing a talk on A tough talks
about.
You know, when you've got tomeet with somebody if they're
having some performancechallenges, so I'm really
looking forward to that.
It's next.
It's a week from Friday.
What's your talk about?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
my talk is gonna be about Behavior analysis, looking
at mental illness, and thetitle of that talk is it isn't
what you got, it's what you do,and so I'll be.
I'll be taking people throughthe way that I.
I conceptualize mental healthproblems as a behavior analyst
so that I can work with others.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Right, man, I'll probably have to.
I never, man.
I mean, I do podcasts, I do myown videos.
I never come back.
I don't listen anybody else'spodcast and almost I don't watch
videos.
Man, I'm like this, I guess mytime, man, but I want you, I
really want to hear your stuff.
It's always so great, butanyway, anybody that's Turing in
, hey, come check us out a weekfrom Friday, so it should be.
(01:45):
You know we get some coolthings off, or I know there's
some others other stellarpresenters out there that are in
the stone soup lineup.
So I actually asked Meryl tocome on today to talk about how
he deals with behaviorchallenges.
A lot of times I'm out in aschool district and my my focus
is zoomed out.
I look at things throughsystems and organizational
(02:07):
behavior management lens andthey say, hey, you know, in
Everly We've got this kid thatda, da, da, da, da.
I'm like and it's always themost challenging kid and like
you need Meryl Winston.
You know Dr Meryl Winston isthe guy for this.
I'm not the guy for that.
We're on opposite ends of the.
You know, in the polls here,although it's all science, it's
just how we apply it.
So I thought I'd love to hearabout how you go about your
(02:27):
business, you know.
So that's what we're here forsure.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Well, this, this, the approach that I take, is a
little bit different than some.
It probably has commonalities,because I think, after a while,
people figure out things thatare real and they figure out
ways to conceptualize problemsthat are more fruitful.
So I wrote a book back in 2012called adventures in special
education, and it came from myexperience Working in special
(02:56):
education in the Palm BeachCounty school system.
However, everything I talkabout and the way I organize it,
it's for everybody.
It's not just for kids inschool, but the all the examples
and things like that wereschool-based.
But the way that, you know, Iview things is broader than a
traditional functional analysis,which is very important, and
(03:20):
Brian Iwata, who passed recently, he gave us, he gave us
something that, like, we couldnever repay.
You know, and Even though, what, what?
The way I view things, it goesa bit beyond the functional
analysis.
I, I believe you know JimJohnston used to say this thing.
I mean, he didn't invent thephrase, but he liked it and I do
(03:42):
too, and that is we we have.
We can see as far as we do,because we're standing on the
shoulders of giants, and BrianIwata and recently also Hank
Penny Packer were two of thosegiants whose shoulders we
continue to stand on.
And so everything I do here andwhat I propose to people, it's
(04:02):
not to say, oh, don't do thefunctional analysis, that's old,
that's not, that's not true atall.
The functional analysis isreally good for getting a good
start on finding out what are wedealing with here in a basic
sense.
But every anyone who's done onecan also know sometimes they
come up goose eggs, sometimesthey come up every function and
(04:23):
then where are you?
And so they're.
What I'm proposing is that therethere's just the functional
analysis does not contain badquestions.
It's just, in my opinion,they're not enough.
They're not enough questionsand there's certain kinds of
issues that the functionalanalysis was never intended to
get at.
So the way that I look atthings is in terms of problems,
(04:48):
and you know we used to have acriticism in the field, we
probably still do, and in somesense, in some senses it's a
valid criticism, and that usedto be by traditional
psychologists and they'd say,well, behavior analysis.
Yet you know you have all thedata and you have this and it
comes from experimental and allthose kinds of things.
But One of the problems inbehavior analysis is that you
(05:15):
guys are only treating thesymptom.
You're only treating thesymptom, you're not getting at
the Underlying causes.
And my point is that, well, Idon't know if they're underlying
causes, but there there areother causes that sometimes we
are not aware of or don'tconcern ourselves with, and so
my whole feeling is thatsometimes that is a valid
(05:37):
criticism.
If you're just saying, let'sjust find a procedure that's
good for getting rid ofallotment, well, maybe you could
, and maybe you could come upwith a simple, powerful
procedure that stopped it.
It doesn't mean you understandthe allotment completely.
And even if you did afunctional analysis and you say,
well, we're thinking isalloping to access tangibles,
(06:00):
you know, even that is not acomplete analysis.
Okay, you know, aren't theretangibles in the room?
What kinds of tangibles?
Why is he only want to accessthose?
Why aren't the things he wantsto access in the room?
All those other kinds ofquestions.
And one of my points is thatthere's all kinds of ways to
analyze behavior, not just theways that are codified in
(06:23):
people's assessment tools not inmine, not in anybody else's.
I made my own tool as well.
That's not the only way to lookat things.
That's not correct andeverything else is wrong.
It's another way to look atthings, taking different
perspectives, but anyway, backto the initial one Can I
apologize on?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
yeah, I'd like to, paul.
Yeah, so I, of course, fromorganization behavior management
we look at like performancechaining, and up the chain, I
think about like man, I can'tlook at that child's behavior
without zooming out and alsolooking at, of course, the
teachers behavior and the theeducator support behavior, that
this student, that the schoolleader behavior, district leader
behavior, there are these mediccontingencies and all these
(07:04):
other variables that areimpacting the performance.
But all those people down thechain, how do we even get this
point in the first place?
So you know what you're saying.
You know is like, yeah, man,this is the way business should
be, but it's not no, it isn't.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I was just thinking about that earlier today.
You know, like what you andAnika and Matt do, these things
are necessary because, like anyanalysis I do of an individual
child, that's going to requirepeople to do specific things in
a specific way.
That won't happen if thereisn't a system of management to
support it.
You know it, I know it, andanybody who's been in school
(07:37):
settings know it, and not justfor schools, anywhere there is.
Poor management Doesn't makefor the best behavior analysis
Period.
You know, is it possible?
And have I seen pockets ofexcellence in a school, in a
classroom, where one teacherreally had their act together
(08:00):
and they were awesome and theclassroom was run well?
Yeah, but that's the exception,that's not the norm.
You know that.
I know that.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Everybody points to that, so she's doing it.
Well, it's one person.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, right, right, I've seen.
You know there are pockets ofexcellence everywhere, but if
there's only one pocket ofexcellence in a sea of darkness,
it's not enough, you know, andso this is part of the problem.
So you know, what I like to sayto people is that, regarding
analyzing behavior, is that Iknow behavior is our thing, but
(08:33):
when someone says, okay, what'sthe problem, well, he's got
really bad headbanging.
Okay, that's not the problem.
The headbanging is never theproblem, never, never.
It is a serious problem thatmust be solved.
That has occurred because ofanother set of interrelated
(08:53):
problems, and many times wedon't identify all the problems.
And it's not that you have toidentify every single relevant
problem.
You may never be able to, butyou do have to be able to
identify enough problems thatcan be worked on reasonably,
right, because or as many as youcan reasonably that can be
(09:19):
solved, because the moreproblems you identify and solve,
the faster, the more durable,the more generalizable is going
to be your behavior change, youknow.
And so the whole idea is that,yeah, the SIV is a problem.
Yeah, the aggression is aproblem Nobody's saying it isn't
, but it's the end result ofanother set of interrelated
(09:41):
problems, and this was one ofour criticisms, more so for
methodological behaviorism, whenyou just ran in and started
throwing reinforcers andpunishers at people.
And if you throw big enoughreinforcers and punishers you'll
get behavior change very oftenright.
But it's not very elegant, it'snot very sophisticated and it
doesn't mean you reallyunderstand what's going on in
the person's world, and it'salso oftentimes not
(10:03):
generalizable.
Right, right as well.
So I just and we can just chatabout each one briefly but I
identified and this is again,this is arbitrary, it's not
based on research or anythinglike that.
It's just another way oflooking at things.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Well, you've had some pretty deep experience, merrill
.
You know what I mean.
Just because you know I meanit's based on my experience.
It's just not research.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
It's based on clinical experience.
But the areas, they're abouteight areas.
So they're problems withreinforcers, problems with
versives, problems with chronicversus intermittent behavior,
which is the presentation I do,problems with adults, problems
with peers, repertoire problems,teaching and curriculum
(10:48):
problems and problems withpunishment Not that punishment
is a problem and doesn't work,but just like reinforcement it
goes wrong 700 ways.
And that's kind of the way Iorganized it and the reason I
said that is that some of thesethings transcend function.
So, as an example, sometimesthe problem is not identifying
(11:10):
what's maintaining the behavior.
The problem is that what'smaintaining the behavior is
really bad for the person andeveryone else.
That is like signs of damage.
You like to make people cry,you like to hurt people's
feelings, you like to see thingsdestroyed.
So in that case, like makingthe teacher cry by insulting him
(11:35):
, by insulting her which I'mthinking of that because I know
a really good teacher whoeventually became a behavioral
analyst and she just lost it oneday and broke down crying
because everybody has theirlimit and it involved a kid who
cursed at her pretty badly andat some point she just couldn't
manage it anymore.
(11:55):
But anyway, as an example, theproblem there is gee, I don't
know what's maintaining thebehavior.
That's not the problem.
The problem is what'smaintaining the behavior
shouldn't be that is, we'remaking a judgment call as
members of society, saying weare collectively saying, if you
love to make people hurt, that'snot a good thing.
(12:17):
Like we're saying that to kidsat school, like bullying.
Bullying is all about signs ofdamage.
So the problem in understandingbullying is not gee, what's the
function of the bullying?
It's to produce signs of damage.
But the problem is not we don'tunderstand the function.
The problem is how do we getthis person that is accustomed
(12:38):
to and seeks signs of damage?
How do we get them to switchover to signs of joy, like hey,
that's a cool shirt man.
Ah, thanks, we're telling a jokeand making somebody laugh or
helping somebody who's thenappreciative and says, hey,
thanks, nobody else helped me.
Those are more like signs ofjoy, signs of happiness, and a
(12:59):
lot of the individuals we workwith, their behavior is not very
controlled by those things.
So, as an example, if you sayto them hey, buddy, great job
getting this done, many studentswill immediately become
inappropriate.
And the reason is that's notone of their reinforcers.
And the real problem is wedon't understand what's
(13:20):
maintaining their behavior.
The real problem is we knowwhat's maintaining their
behavior.
We don't know how to get it tostop doing it.
We don't know how to get themto switch from this kind of
social reinforcer to this kindof social reinforcer, and the
functional analysis doesn't helpus in that.
It helps us in other thingsright, but it doesn't help us
recognize those issues and itdoesn't help us figure out what
(13:43):
to do with those issues, justlike the functional analysis
doesn't really help you figureout exactly what replacement
behavior to teach.
That's and people fall down onthat a lot Because it can be
difficult depending on thecontext.
But that was that's someexamples.
Other examples of problems withreinforcement are just it's
being used improperly with theperson Limited reinforcers.
(14:07):
Like we've all worked withindividuals, there's only really
one thing they want.
They only want trampoline, andtrampoline is not always
available.
But that's a that would be acategory of problem with
reinforcers.
What's the problem?
He's only got one.
You know, like one main one,right, that you can use.
Well, that's kind of a problem,right, as opposed to somebody
(14:30):
who enjoys a variety of thingsand will work for a variety of
things.
Right, that's much easier,right?
So, point being, there are someproblems that are problems just
with reinforcement and they'rekind of okay with other things.
They have an odd reinforcer asan example, right, they have one
that's maybe dangerous, likekids that like to play with fire
(14:53):
.
Well, there's nothing wrongwith playing, but the particular
thing you're playing with iskind of a problem, right.
So that would be, you know, andwhat's the behavior maintained
by?
Well, access to positivereinforcement, but what's the
problem?
The positive reinforcer iswatching things burn.
So this as an example.
So this that's kind ofclinically where I'm at with
(15:17):
what are the problems, right,and that's why I say this is not
meant to replace a functionalanalysis, but it's meant to
perhaps augment one Otherproblem area.
Did you want to say anything orask a question, paulie?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Because you're making perfect sense, man.
You're right on this stuff,yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Another problem and I say this a lot and this is
actually probably about, I don'tknow, just spitballing, but
like 80% of our problems, theseare problems with aversive
stimuli, like so much becauseyou do crisis management, like I
did for so many years, inaddition to classroom management
.
But so many problems with thepeople that we work with comes
(15:59):
down to their response to whatare common aversive events.
Okay, we ran out of orangejuice, there's no more cookies.
Okay, the movie got canceled.
Everyday disappointments for usthat make us go man, it makes
somebody else destroy theclassroom, so.
(16:21):
But here's what they have incommon they're both aversive.
The difference is a lot of thefolks we work with they don't
cope with aversive stimulationvery well at all, and I don't
mean like super nasty eventsbeing screamed at, being beaten.
So what I'm talking about?
I'm talking about everydayinconveniences and things that
(16:42):
you and I would just say, man, Iwas so pissed off yesterday.
Well, that's all we get.
That's all we get.
We just get pissed off and wemove on.
We don't break expensive things, we don't get into fights with
people, we don't try and hurtpeople, right?
These are the differences andso a lot of the problems that
(17:06):
our students and clients arehaving.
They don't cope with aversivesvery well at all.
Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
So if you were to go in there and in lieu of doing a
functional analysis, but even ifyou did a functional analysis
and they say, well, here's theissue, under these conditions,
here's what's going on, and yousolved the problem there.
But it seems like you'd reallyneed to focus on some sort of
pivotal behavior, maybeself-management, right, or you
(17:34):
need that to generalize to otherversus.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, and all probability so a lot of and I'm
working with a lot of them thesedays, it seems.
But a lot of kids they havewhat anybody might call a hair
trigger, and that is they'llescalate to a high level of
physiological arousal veryquickly over what you and I
would say is basically nothing.
(17:58):
In other words, they are cryingover spilled milk.
Not only they're not crying,they're usually beating somebody
up or destroying something, butit is.
I'll give you a perfect example.
The other day the story wasrelated to me of a client.
They ended up getting takenbecause of a series of poor
decisions, but they ended upgetting taken away by the police
(18:19):
in Hancox.
You know what the whole thingstarted with?
Another girl at the schoolkicked his football and he had a
problem with that.
Nobody cursed him out, nobodystole his money, nobody tried to
attack him.
Someone kicked his football andso the thing is well, nobody
likes people messing with theirstuff.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
But are you going to ask?
Are you going to?
Speaker 2 (18:42):
escalate to the point that law enforcement has to be
called.
So you know, this is kind of aperfect example of a problem
with the versus and is it aproblem with self-control
behavior?
A lot of times, yeah it isPeople don't know what to do
when they become upset.
Or perhaps they know what to do, but especially if they're
higher functioning and have goodlanguage, they may know what to
(19:05):
do.
But what's easy, convenient andfamiliar is going into a rage
over anything.
It gets reinforced, you know,causes a lot of disruption, and
so it may be a combination ofpoor self-control, but also it
may be reinforcement of aberrantbehavior, where, when you
scream enough and have a fit,things happen.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Right, it does right.
Yeah, I think I copped thisfrom you.
You said, like you know, whenpeople are escaping things,
they're not escaping into theblack hole.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Right, something else is going on.
That's actually yeah, but I gotthat from McGreevy, from Pat
McGreevy, you know.
He said they're not escaping tonothing, they're not just
sitting there and thank God Idon't have to do anything
anymore just sit there.
They almost always begin to dosomething else.
Try to access some otherreinforcer.
That used to be Pat's argument,for sometimes, instead of
(19:59):
teaching break, you're betteroff teaching, asking for an
alternate activity becausethey're going to end up doing it
anyway.
Oh yeah, they're not going totake that break and go out and
smoke a cigarette.
You know, like people workingall day that kind of a thing.
But that would be.
That category is problems withthe verses, and most of that
(20:21):
category is people not dealingwell with very common verses and
you have to teach them how toRight.
Another problem is sometimeswhere especially with people who
might be related, oppositional,defiant or antisocial that
(20:42):
sometimes what happens is and Ithink teachers don't have enough
appreciation for this there's awhole category of problems that
falls under this heading.
What should be aversive to youisn't.
Now, if you're going to be amember of society, certain
things need to be aversive toyou, because if the things that
(21:02):
are aversive to most members ofsociety are not to you, you're
going to end up in jail.
Okay, because the things thatwe all worry about, they don't
worry about.
I don't know if you've everseen the movie Goodfellas, but I
just saw it the other day.
Joe Pesci's in it, right, andJoe Pesci asks a guy do you know
(21:25):
?
who I am and he's like, well,yeah, I know, and he goes.
No, you don't, I'm the guy thatdoesn't care about going to
jail.
And what Joe Pesci was sayingis the things that are aversive
to everyone else, that everybodyelse is afraid of doing and
getting caught, they are notaversive to me.
And what he was intimating isyou need to be worried because I
(21:49):
will mess you up like nobody'sbusiness and I'll do it in
public and I don't care if I getarrested.
And so what Joe Pesci was kindof saying is your aversives are
not mine and because of that youneed to be very worried, right,
but this is extremely true ifyou look at criminal behavior.
(22:09):
Right, they don't want to go tojail, but the thought of it is
not as aversive as it is to youand I.
They're willing to, they'rewilling to risk it, right.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
And like how about school?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
suspensions.
Pauly, think back when you werea young man, little kid, I
don't know about you, this is myjoke.
I never got suspended.
And you know why?
Because if I had got suspended,I wouldn't have gone home, I
would have gone to find a newfamily.
Okay, I wouldn't have been ableto face my father.
I wouldn't have been.
I mean, he wouldn't have beatme, but he would have screamed
(22:44):
at me and he would have beenextremely unhappy and it would
have been very, very aversive.
Okay, I never got suspended.
The kids that I work with today, they're not worried about
being suspended and a lot of theones are not worried.
How is this going to affect myapplication to the university
where I want to go?
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Right, they're not worried about that either.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
That's not aversive to them either.
Neither is getting an Fsometimes, right.
So if you one of the problemsand this is why it's a problem
with aversives, in a manner ofspeaking, that is, if people
don't value what you value, whatis aversive to you won't be
aversive to them.
So if the teacher, as anexample, values academic success
(23:28):
, that's why he or she became ateacher.
They want to produce academicsuccess in their students, right
?
And failure to them theteachers is aversive, but a
failure to the student him orherself if failure to them is
not aversive, you have amismatch of motivations again,
right, I desperately want you tosucceed and for you to fail is
(23:53):
aversive to me.
And then, from my point of viewas a student, I am not worried
about grades and see, that'skind of part of the problem is
that getting an F for a goodstudent will send them into a
tailspin.
For a straight A student,getting a B will send them into
a tailspin because they're sosensitive to academic aversives
(24:13):
and failure and a poor grade andthings like that.
And some people love to performand love to achieve, others are
more motivated by fear offailure and for many of us it's
a mix of these things right, butpeople are different on this
and for some things maybe you dowant to achieve and some things
maybe you only do them likestatistics in graduate school.
(24:34):
I didn't do it because I lovedit.
I worked at it because of fearof failure and getting kicked
out of graduate school.
But the thing is no one cantell me, merrill, you should
love statistics, right?
Or just like no one can tellthe kid you should fear failure.
And then the kid suddenly fearsfailure.
So that's another problem withaversives, people that have
(24:59):
different values from us.
They often have differentreinforcers and different
aversives and it creates thismismatch because we're like, hey
, straighten up, or suspension,and then from the kid's point of
view it's like I don't get yourthreat.
This is not a problem for me.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Right, it's the Disney syndrome, yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
You know, yeah, so it's right from the ditch to
Disney, right.
So that is kind of a problemwhere you know people have to
learn to respond to.
You know typical kinds ofaversives.
Like a successful person would,we all encounter them.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I wonder how you think it's shaped up.
I mean, there's a couple ofobvious ways, but how much of is
that?
They become desensitized to theverse, whatever it was aversive
at one time.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
It might have been aversive, or after enough
failure you might just stoptrying and not worry about it.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And yeah, like, when I do, I'm not going to get it.
And then how much of it is thatthe reinforcement was a power
enough to drive their to pulltheir behavior towards it.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
And it's probably a combination of.
The thing is, yes, you do needreinforcement, but in the real
world, okay, there are aversivesand they enter into all of our
contingencies of aversives are.
Our laws are based on aversives, and so the thing is you can
say you don't agree with it, butyou still have to abide by it,
(26:19):
and it's the way things areworking.
I don't know how it is for you,polly, but I don't get a check
from the government for everymonth that I don't murder
somebody.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Okay, but if I do murder?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
somebody, the punishment hammer will fall
quickly, okay, but there is no.
You know, polly, there iscapital punishment in our
government, but there is nocapital reinforcement.
This you can be certain of youknow, and it's just it's
interesting, man, thisdiscussion.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
I don't want to derail our conversation here,
but just came to my mind.
I think, about a number ofnumber of adolescents that are
struggling now and I wonder whenit's the number seems to be so
large.
When I speak to other people,including my own son, you know,
I look back and what could I do?
More or less or differently,you know, and I wonder how much
(27:09):
of it is that we've become kindof like a helicopter society,
right, and meaning that when wewere younger and you know, like
my mom would send me out and youknow I'm not saying it's the
right thing to do, but it seemedright at the time like be, be
home when the streetlights areon.
I lived in rough neighborhood,man, and so I made a lot of
mistakes and I fell and I gothurt and all this stuff.
(27:30):
But I developed resiliencyalong the way, right by, you
know, by overcoming thoseaversives and you know, I think
that's an important, you know,piece of the puzzle.
I think, you know, because justthinking about people listening
here and saying, well, theyshouldn't have to tolerate
aversives, well, I think that'sa problem, you know, because
they're just part of life.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
You're absolutely correct.
Aversives are part of life.
Don't confuse aversives.
Can we curse on here?
Yeah, Don't confuse aversiveswith being an asshole to
somebody, okay, or being cruel.
They're not the same thing.
If you're being cruel tosomebody, by its very nature
there's usually all kinds ofaversives in it.
But there's all kinds ofaversives in all kinds of things
(28:12):
we do with people our ownchildren, in our relationships,
in society in general, and youhave to be able to navigate them
.
The other thing that I tellparents is regarding aversives
is we're not talking about youshould suck it up and be able to
tolerate terrible things, no,but you should be able to
(28:33):
tolerate common things.
And the other thing is if youwant students to achieve and I'm
using that word specificallynot finish their math, but if
you want students, your clients,to make achievements, okay,
then they are going to have tosuffer some aversives, because
(28:56):
it's not an achievement if youdon't suffer in some manner.
Suffering doesn't mean painnecessarily, Although it might.
If you're doing an exerciseprogram or you're learning
martial arts or you're trainingfor a marathon, suffering might
mean pain right.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I would argue that the more suffering you go
through I don't want to overgeneralize this, but to
accomplish something, the biggerthe accomplishment it feels.
The important is to me.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah, the issue is for everybody listening, you're
going to suffer, you're going tobe subjected to aversive
stimulation.
The question is is it unduesuffering, is it intentional
suffering or is it unintentional?
Unintentional suffering is kindof nobody planned it.
You made somebody upset andthey screamed at you okay, and
that's unintentional suffering.
(29:42):
Intentional suffering is sayingI'm going to go work out, I
haven't worked out in a whileand man, I'm going to be really
sore tomorrow.
I probably won't even be ableto get out of bed.
Okay, but that's intentionalsuffering.
It's all suffering.
Okay, but intentional sufferinglevels us up.
Now, suffering endlessly withoutachieving beats the human down.
(30:08):
Okay, and a lot of childrenexperience that as well.
So, suffering by itself,needless suffering, stupid
suffering, cruel suffering a lotof people are experiencing that
, but just like regularsuffering, with support from
someone who's been through that.
Hey, I know the math is hard,gosh, I remember I hated it, but
(30:32):
you can get through it.
I'm going to teach you a coupleof tricks, okay, and you help
them through their suffering andthen they achieve and they feel
great about it.
Yeah, and then they're able totolerate other kinds of typical
suffering and inconvenience andstuff like that.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
That's the resiliency piece of it.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yes, yeah it is, and kids especially are quite
resilient.
But again, people shouldn'tmisconstrue.
A lot of people when they hearthe word aversive they think
automatically nasty.
No, aversive can be the mildest, tiniest irritate.
Your tag in the back of yourshirt.
If you cut it out, it was bydefinition aversive.
It just wasn't painful orhorrific, but it's aversive.
(31:11):
So we have to remember not toattach baggage to these words
when talking about them.
The other areas just kind ofquickly and aversives and
reinforcers by themselves, arevery large areas to cover Would
be problems with chronic versusintermittent behavior, and the
reason I split them up isbecause very often when
something's happening 200 timesa day, it is very different
(31:34):
fundamentally in nature thansomething that's happening once
every two weeks, okay.
And so I split them up indifferent categories as
different kinds of problems.
Like a kid that bangs his headin every single environment
multiple times per hour would bechronic.
That's a different sort ofproblem.
It usually has a different kindof a context.
(31:55):
As an example, most of thehigher functioning kiddos that
you'll work with who may begetting a fight sometimes right,
they don't get into a fight 87times a day, okay Typically
developing individuals who havebehavior problems, but no
particular diagnosis or delay.
They tend to have problems thatare less frequent and more
(32:18):
intense, like we do, and sousually the problems we have are
not super high frequency, someof them are.
Just because you can talk welldoesn't mean you don't have high
frequency behavior problems.
Some of those problems aretalking just too much or the
wrong things, and it is a highfrequency, but things like
(32:38):
aggression, getting into fights,stuff like that usually are at
a lower frequency for thosefolks.
But anyway, there are differentcategories of problems, because
one of the big things is thatif somebody's only doing
something once a week liketearing up the classroom, but
only once a week, it means themotivator, the MO, is only there
once a week.
And then the question is whySomeone who's misbehaving all
(33:00):
day long has needs that aregoing on all day long that
aren't being addressed.
If all their needs wereaddressed, they wouldn't need to
misbehave, they would just kindof sit there and be happy.
But anyway, that's another kindof two ways of looking at
problems, and the only reasonfor making up these arbitrary
categories like chronic andintermittent is just so we can
(33:22):
start looking in different areasand starting to rule out some
things, someone who only doestheir behavior once a week, it's
likely not a communicationthing.
Communication things, behaviorproblems that serve to
communicate.
They're usually communicatingall day long because they have
problems all day long and theyuse their behavior problems the
(33:44):
same way we do when I talk.
So anyway, that's the way.
I split that up Other problems,a problem with adults or a
problem with peers.
And the only reason I splitthat up that I got from
classrooms as well because I'dfind some for a lot of kids.
Maybe you knew some of themwith other children.
They have non-stop behaviorproblems With an adult that they
(34:07):
like reasonably zero and you'veknown some of these kids.
And one of the issues is theadult is competent socially and
not mean, and if the kid makessome social missteps the adult
handles it gracefully.
If a child makes some socialmissteps around another child,
(34:30):
they will destroy them.
They're not as gracious as theadult and a lot of the kids feel
safer with the adult.
They like the adult sense ofhumor, they prefer to talk with
the adults and they may even bea little bit more sophisticated
and don't like talking to theirpeers.
But the thing is, if you knowthat it never happens with
(34:51):
adults and it's always withpeers, then it's likely not
something that just cuts acrosseverything Like oh, they do it
for attention.
Well, if they never do it withyou, even when you don't give
attention to what's going on?
So a lot of times these issuesare things like the adults don't
.
(35:11):
The adults give me morereinforcers and reverses and the
kids mostly give me a versus.
In other cases I've heard ofjust as many where I'll ask them
this just to steer theconversation.
I'll just say, and if they cananswer me instantly, I'm usually
fairly confident that they knowwhat they're talking about.
But I'll say does it happenonly with peers, only with
(35:33):
adults or equally with both?
And sometimes they'll instantlygo oh, only with peers.
And to me that rules out allkinds of problems and rules in
all kinds of other things,Because what it means is they
clearly don't need their problembehavior to get along with
grownups.
They only need it with theother kids.
And then that suggests there'ssomething about the way the
(35:55):
other kids are behaving towardsthem or the way they're behaving
towards the other kids becausethey're histories.
But anyway, it's just a way toget people thinking of broad
areas where people are competent, where there's no problems, and
other areas where there areproblems.
And of course, sometimes likeif the individual has almost no
(36:15):
language, the problem almostalways happens with everybody.
Other reasons that sometimesproblems only happen with adults
is that their peers don't blocktheir access to reinforcement,
that is, the peers don't tellthem what they can't do and the
peers don't deliver demands.
That's the adult.
So sometimes it's an adultfocus problem or the supervisor
(36:41):
focused problem, the authorityfigure focused problem, Because
the authority figure all daylong is telling me what I can't
have and is telling me what Ineed to do, and both of those
are sources of aversivestimulation.
So, anyway, that's.
The only reason I split it upthat way is to point to possible
problem areas with interaction.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Well, so now we've got a.
I mean you've really broadenedthe scope here.
When you look at that lens man,it brings a lot of things to
the table and just shows you thecomplexities of human behavior
and the complexities of beinglike a good consultant, being a
good behavior analyst.
When you go into thesesituations, how would somebody
(37:22):
take this information and put itinto their own repertoire,
because it makes sense?
It seems like this should begoing on already, right, first
and foremost, that we're lookingat these variables.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
It's a way that I look at things just, and here's
the reason why I want moretreatment options.
I want to have more angles toapproach the problem right.
I don't want to just go downthis one road.
I want to look at the problemfrom underneath and from the
side, and from on top and fromway back and close up.
When you take all those viewsand put them together, you have
(37:57):
a much better idea of what'shappening.
In the grand scheme of things.
How does this person fit intothe world, into their world
specifically?
The other problems arerepertoire problems.
This is here's as an examplefor somebody who is quote
(38:18):
high-functioning, great languageworking on grade level.
There can be repertoireproblems, but they're usually
sophisticated ones, likesophisticated social interaction
, things they haven't figuredout, sophisticated ways of
asserting yourself, like beingassertive instead of aggressive.
(38:38):
That's pretty sophisticated.
Many adults don't know thedifference.
There may be repertoireproblems, but there's not
repertoire problems in terms ofoh, they can't do almost
anything.
We're talking about people whocan do almost everything that a
typically developing person cando with, maybe a few problems
here or there.
(38:59):
Other individuals theirproblems are so big because
their repertoire is so small,it's so restricted, and then
they have giant repertoire as abehavior problems CB.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
I mean, if that's not in place, I suppose everything
else is going to be like withouthaving the skills, you're dead
in the water, right?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
AC Pretty much.
Then you're just left withthese behavior management
strategies If you're not lookingat and saying, okay, what don't
they know how to do and how isthat impacting this behavior
problem?
Everything doesn't impact itequally.
A simple thing, like for kidsthat do property destruction or
(39:38):
other misbehaviors, to get staffto come over those same kids.
Very often they don't have asummoning response which is just
like this or come here oranything like that.
They don't have that but theylearn to do is misbehave and the
adult comes closer.
That's a repertoire problemthat if that's not addressed the
problem will never go awaybecause they have no other way
(40:00):
to make people coming over toyou.
And getting people to come overto you to approach you without
you having to approach them,it's kind of a big deal.
Kids learn that very early.
They learn to stay where theyare and make somebody appear.
A lot of our clients withoutlanguage.
They don't know how to do thatand that's absolutely a
(40:23):
repertoire problem.
It's like gaping holes in allkinds of areas.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
What about the behavior analyst repertoire?
Problems with going in thereand supporting this stuff,
Because we have a lot of newpeople in the field.
I was learning on the job and Idon't ever think that was that
great in the area.
I remember we had to call youin and I'm still calling you in.
It's not the man.
What are the key things?
It's just a lot.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It is a lot.
Here's what I think the keythings are.
The way that I do it is to notbe in a rush.
I know there are contingenciesoperating on behavior analysts.
This program has to be done bythis.
It has to be written by thistime.
Medicaid has to look at thisand the insurance company has to
review that.
(41:12):
I understand there's all thesemedic contingencies going on,
but by the same token, if you'rein a rush to judgment, to stick
something in a function box,you're likely going to miss a
bunch of things.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
You're going through so much.
Our OBM approach is the coursethat you've got to get the
information up front man.
You've got to buildrelationships with people.
You've got to establishyourself as a reinforcer.
Those fundamental initial stepsare huge if you're going to put
them in these instances.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Again, we don't fix the person.
We say it all the time and weforget about it.
We don't fix the person, we fixthe environment.
Yet when we go into theclassroom, what do we ask to do?
Are we asked to fix theenvironment?
No, we're asked to fix that kid.
Then they point to them.
They're not saying when you goto the classroom, they don't go
Polly, could you please fix allof this?
(42:05):
They go.
I want you to fix this, it's aleaky pipe.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
If I go back and look at everything that you laid out
there and this is what Anikaand I hang our hat on when we go
out and look in the schoolsreally these behavior plans and
all the approaches, we'relooking at the main thing that
needs to be fixed.
If we're going to call it a fixand I don't want to insult
anybody really are the adults inthat classroom, the adults in
that school.
All those things that we'retalking about means the adults
(42:32):
are going to have to dosomething more or less or
differently than they're doingright now If they're going to
get any sort of sustainablechange in that learner's
behavior, because Merrill's notgoing to be there for the whole
time.
You're going to come in, you'regoing to make some
recommendations, you're going todip.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
And the thing is you can exactly, you can put this
like any behavior and now ananalytic tool, which is all this
is.
It's just a way ofconceptualizing stuff.
You can apply this problemapproach to the teachers to the
staff problems with reinforcers.
Here's an example For some ofthem, their reinforcer is not
creating meaningful behaviorchange.
(43:05):
Their reinforcer is a quietclassroom and so the thing is
that's a problem withreinforcers.
You don't have the same one Ihave.
It could even be problems withthe versives.
Okay, what's aversive to theteacher may not be aversive to
me, right, you know so.
Like a kid curses at me, that'snot really aversive to me, like
punching is, but not cursing.
It may be aversive to theteacher and then you can't say
(43:28):
teacher, you're wrong, becausecursing is aversive to you and
because of your learning history, cursing upsets you.
They're not wrong, but it is aproblem with different
reinforcers and aversives.
We're not blaming people and wedon't blame the student either
for having reinforcers that wedon't agree with or aversives
that we think are unusual, ornot responding properly to the
(43:52):
same aversives we do.
Right, the children are not badfor doing this, but it's a bad
problem.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah Right, this is really an important piece, I
think.
Again, sliding into my worldnow and Anika's, when we go into
these classrooms where, likeyou already said it, we call it
behavior myopia, but, likeeverybody's, you know, they take
their behavioral lens off whenthey look at everything else.
Instead of that student, I'mlooking at everybody in that
(44:19):
environment as a learner.
And what do they need to domore or less differently?
What are their reinforcers?
We at your point, what aretheir aversives?
We need to understand thatstuff because, again, we're
going to need change in theirbehavior.
We're going to get changed inthe behavior of that learner,
anything that's sustainable, andwe forget about that stuff.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, I mean it's kind of what some people call an
ecological analysis, Like as anexample.
I am repeatedly.
It must be the power of ourscience, but I am amazed when I
see a kid in with behaviorproblems in the midst of many
other children with behaviorproblems and that kid still gets
(44:54):
better.
That to me is amazing that thatever happens because of the
we're not taking, the we're notdoing an ecological approach and
looking at the kid's socialenvironment and saying, look,
this environment promotes andmaintains their worst behavior.
(45:14):
It's like the Boys Town modeland Pat Freiman would talk about
it.
They don't take a troubled teenfrom an inner city and bring
them to the middle of nowhereand place them in the midst
living with other children withsevere problems.
They place them with a familywith kids who have begun to get
(45:39):
over their problems and fall inline with the values of Boys
Town.
They have perfect role modelsand they have nobody modeling
inappropriate behavior and theyhave lots of models of
appropriate behavior and theycan see people being successful
and getting privileges.
(46:00):
That's a very differentenvironment to place someone in
than place them in anenvironment with people that
have behavior that match theirs.
That whole model is insane tome, but I think things develop
that way because of resourceissues.
We have this teacher and sheteaches these kinds of kids, so
(46:22):
they're all going to be with her.
It's not an argument to sayevery child with misbehavior
should be placed in an includedclassroom, and that's actually
another area of problems.
That's part of the book.
That's one of the bonusproblems.
Problems with inclusion.
It's not that inclusion is bador a bad concept or can't be
done properly.
It's that it's so often doneimproperly to the detriment of
(46:44):
the child and those around them.
That's more the problem.
But there are many benefits ofinclusion.
One is the one I just touchedon.
You have a lot of good rolemodels and there's nobody
modeling bad stuff.
I think people reallyunderestimate the importance of
that.
(47:05):
A lot of times the teacher islike I don't want them bothering
the other children.
It's just like I understandthat.
But by the same token, beingaround these children who have
well-developed repertoires andare socially appropriate, that
could be one of the best thingsto help this kid get better.
(47:25):
Of course, simply being aroundwell-behaved children won't do
it.
It's not osmosis but the pointbeing there isn't multiple
examples of problem behavior andthese children likely won't
engage with them the same wayanother child will, who has a
short fuse and a lot of problembehavior.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah, I've seen this happen.
I know that you have time andtime again where a kid gets sent
to a self-contained class andtheir behaviors get worse.
Man, because they have a lot ofgreat role models in there for
challenging behavior.
People are like, well, whatshould we do?
I'm like, well, number one, Idon't think the kid should have
been in there in the first place.
But to your point though andyou were the first, I remember
(48:07):
you laid out a model a whileback.
I'm not sure where you got itfrom if it was your model about,
and you actually did a talk oninclusion, delusion, seclusion,
and you gave some very practicaladvice for when somebody should
be included and when theyshouldn't.
I'm like this is great, becauseeverybody was like inclusion is
the right thing to do all thetime.
(48:28):
Well, hold on, and it's rulefollowing.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Yeah, that's the blind rule of following, and
yeah, there are situations wherethe child won't really benefit
at all, and then there are, andit will actually cause more
disruption and problems, andthen there are situations where
the child will benefittremendously.
There just need to be certainsupports in place and certain
proper attitudes of all theconcerned parties, and that's
(48:55):
actually well.
I talked about repertoireproblems.
One of the other ones we gotlike 10 minutes one was teaching
in curriculum problems, whichyou recognize and that's more
like it's either you're workingon the wrong thing and that's
contributing to these behaviorproblems, because it's too
difficult, you don't make, youmake too many errors and you're
missing some key components, andalso it's not functional for
(49:18):
you, you, the learner, you don'tknow where it's going, you have
no idea, and the example wouldbe a nonverbal child being asked
to learn to write their name,which is absurd.
It is.
It's absurd, it's the bestthing I can call it and a waste
of time and it makes childrenangry.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
It's like asking me to do calculus F, you man.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Right, it's like me teaching you how to write
Chinese characters and you'renot interested in any Asian
culture at all and you're nottraveling to China.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
And you're like Merrill.
Why do I?
Speaker 2 (49:47):
have to write these characters and I'm like shut up
Paulie, and just draw that thingthat looks like a TV on a stand
with things coming off, but Idon't know what it means, it
doesn't matter, Trust me, justdraw it.
Okay, Well, this is what you'redoing with a child with no
language teaching them to writetheir name.
You can't tell them how cool itis to put their name on their
art and to write their name ontheir thing so that other people
(50:08):
can't take it, which is notreally true, but anyway, it's a
lie that we tell children, ifyou put your name on it, no one
could take it.
But the thing is you can't evendo that with someone with no
language to motivate them towant to write their name.
So that would be an example ofa curriculum problem.
A teaching problem just meansnot having the basics of
teaching error correction,prompting, fading, shaping,
(50:31):
reinforcement, stuff like thatyou know the basics.
The other thing was problem withpunishment, and all I say on
that in the book is that what Ialways say is that punishment is
not a bad thing, it's part ofsociety.
Again, you don't get a checkfor not murdering people, but if
you murder someone, they'regoing to dole out the punishers.
It's just the way the worldworks.
It's the way all societies work, you might say.
(50:54):
I think they shouldn't be thatway.
That's fine, run for Congress,but the rest of us have to live
in this world for now, which hasbuku punishment and whether or
not it's effective doesn't evenmatter for the people who use it
.
It's that you're going to haveto deal with it.
I'm not saying that thepunishment used by society is
effective.
(51:14):
In many instances it's not.
In some instances it is, butwithout it, chaos, no speed
limits, no speeding tickets forspeed limits.
Do you have any idea what themortality rate would be If, just
suddenly, I just want people toappreciate a simple punisher
like a speeding ticket.
Right, whether it's effectiveor not, it's intended to
(51:37):
decrease behavior.
Imagine for a moment if youwould an America where there is
no speed limit and you can't getany ticket for speeding.
Do you have any idea what thefatalities would be like.
I'd be afraid to be on the road.
It would be like Mad Max.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Well, you're actually pulling into one of the points
I make when I'm talking aboutthe importance of systems and
the same thing.
Imagine a cop pulling overpeople and giving them the car
accidents all the time.
You're giving people ticketsall the time and you're sending
them back to driving school.
You're spending license,sending something to jail.
Then when you zoom out, you'relike wait a second.
There's no rules on the roadright.
There's no lines, there's nogreen light, yellow light, red
(52:12):
light.
There's no system that generate, rule, govern behavior and
bring behavior under stimuluscontrol.
We're blaming the performersand not taking a look at the
system.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Yeah, sure, yeah, how clear is it what the speed
limit is?
How often are the signs posted?
They do a lot of things likethis.
Now they put up the signEverybody hates them that tells
you the current posted speed andyour speed.
You don't get a ticket, but youfeel guilty as hell for setting
(52:41):
it off.
Yeah, but that's to assist withthis kind of problem.
The other areas of the bookwere just like the last four
things and I'll just listen whenI'm going to them but they were
problems with diagnoses.
Not that the diagnoses arenecessarily a bad thing, but
they can create a number ofproblems.
(53:01):
I list some of the problemsthat they generate and I list
some of the uses that diagnosticlabels have.
Talk about problems withinclusion.
It's not always a great idea.
Sometimes it's fantastic, butto say everyone should be in an
included classroom becausethat's a rule that everybody
should follow, that's absolutenonsense and not in the child's
(53:22):
best interest and very often notin the best interest of the
other children.
Every child has to be takenindividually, looked at how the
match of where you're going toplace them, how they're going to
function, what kind of skillsthey have, what kind of supports
they're going to have.
And the last one this is theone that you and Anika met with
problems with the players.
Problems with the players,because that's where you come up
(53:44):
at the very top level.
And I'll use the quote from DonBayer.
And he said and I just keepfinding it more and more true.
It sounds overly simplistic,but there's so much truth to it.
He says all things being equal,when all the grownups are in
agreement, the kid tends to getbetter, like sometimes, even if
(54:04):
they agree on the wrong thing,it's at least consistent.
You know everybody's doing thesame wrong thing.
Good, job.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
So you know at least, you have some management right.
You like predictability, man,if everyone's doing the same
wrong thing perfectly.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
At least the management's good, you know.
So I mean, you know there'sconsistency in staff, so, and
you can just fix that by sayinglook, you're getting everybody
to do the same thing.
Great, they're just doing thewrong thing.
I'd like you to get everybodyto do this same thing, right,
and then you just plug it inright.
But that's not usually the casewhere, oh my god, this
management system is absolutelyperfect, you just happen to be
(54:45):
doing the wrong thing right,that's not usually what it is,
is it?
Oh man?
I mean, that would be the bestcase.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
Well, merrill, I want to thank you, man, for coming
on here.
Brother, and I know you arejust such a wealth of knowledge
and you know, again, you're thefirst person I want to call when
there's some you know bigbehavior challenges going on.
I know you've helped a lot ofschool districts and
organizations avoid lawsuits.
You know you've helped a lot ofkids, you know from from
(55:11):
preventing them from beingrestrained, and you know
achieving their goals and havinga quality of life and quality
of learning.
If people want to reach out toyou, man, if they need your
services, how do they get intouch with you?
Speaker 2 (55:22):
Oh, thanks for asking .
They can go to the website,which is
winstonbehavioralsolutionscom onone word, a very long word,
winstonbehavioralsolutionscomand it's very easy there to
schedule time with me.
Anyone can schedule a free20-minute Zoom meeting to talk
about a presentation you mightlike, or just to discuss a case
(55:43):
to see if I can help with it,and after that people can just
they can buy my brain by thehour if they.
If they like.
It's very I'm very accessible.
It's very easy to get anappointment with me.
You can schedule it yourself.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
Man, I love you coming into meetings and like,
did you get to have I writepeople that you just had?
You could balance thesemeetings and these are the IP
meetings where you got an angryparent, you got an angry
administrator, angry teacher,and you would just bring them
all together under what I wouldcall shared values.
Right, when you would makepractical, just common sense of
them, explaining things, andeverybody would kind of calm
(56:20):
down, man, it would move thingsin a real great direction.
So if you guys are havingchallenges out there like that
and there's lots of that goingon around the country, man
Merrill's your guy.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Well, thank you very much, Paul, I appreciate it.
Yeah, brother.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
I appreciate you coming on, man.
Thanks a lot, man.
I'll see you next week at StoneSoup.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Yes, sir, I will, and I hope everybody attends and
put on a great conference andit's for a great cause.
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