Functional Analysis pt. 1

Experimental Functional Analyses (FAs) are one of the most foundational practices in contemporary behavior analysis. It emerged as a more conceptual exercise, but has since come to specifically describe a practice for experimentally evaluating the conditions that give rise to and maintain the occurence of certaing (usually challenging) behavior patterns. Over the next few weeks, we'll unpack the history and science of FAs as well as some of the arguments, criticisms, and controversies therein. Tell us your thoughts and experiences with FAs!

Recommendations

• Abraham: The Bear (Season 5; https://www.disneyplus.com/explore/articles/the-bear-season-5)
• Shane: Fiddlehead - Baby, I’ll Change (https://open.spotify.com/album/1mWHUOXoulUP3q8ReXTAkM?si=WpihrG5CTWKPByLCi6WkyQ)

Holidays (7/29/2026):

• Anniversary of the Army Chaplain Corps
• Cheese Sacrifice Purchase Day
• International Tiger Day
• National Lasagna Day
• National Lipstick Day
• Rain Day
• Hepatitis Awareness Week

Links and References: 

1. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1901/jaba.1994.27-197?sid=nlm%3Apubmed
2. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1901/jaba.1985.18-111?sid=nlm%3Apubmed
3. https://scubed.io/blog/aba-data-collection-methods-explained-frequency-duration-and-interval-recording
4. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1901/jaba.1999.32-175 
5. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jaba.7 
6. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1901/jaba.2011.44-51 
7. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1901/jaba.2008.41-97 
8. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07263869500035621 

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome
to Why we do what we do. I am your
Analyzing Behavior Functions host Abraham.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
And I'm your Rearranged Conditions host Shane.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
We are a psychology podcast or talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do, and today we're
digging in hardcore to the behavior analysis side of things. So,
uh huh, what a treat for everybody?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Really really in the analysis part of it.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yes, exactly, going deep, going deep on that. If you're
joining us for the first time, then welcome. I hope
that you enjoy what you hear in this discussion. And
you're probably maybe selected this because you are also a
behavior analyst and you saw the title and we're like, okay,
finally something I can get up with. And if not,
then I still hope you enjoy us in here. I

(01:03):
do try to specifically explain these things with little jargon
and a lot of explanations, so and when we do
introduce jargon, it's because we're going to use those terms
a lot and do try to define those so like,
this should be very accessible to anybody, and I actually
think we'll be very illustrative and eliminating even to people
who maybe came into the field and just kind of
learned what this thing was but don't necessarily know the

(01:24):
history behind it. There's a lot of interesting stuff to unpack.
So anyway, do you join us for the first time,
that's what you're in for. If you're a turning person,
then welcome back. I hope that you continue to enjoy
what we put out for you and that this feels
of a spirit in kind to I've described in Either way,
if you like to support us, then you can join
us on Patreon, leave us a rating and review, like subscribe,

(01:44):
tell a friend. I'll say more about the ways you
can support us at the end of this discussion. But
if you're joining us on the day that this publishes,
then Happy July twenty ninth. Witch is anniversary of the
Army Chaplain Corps.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah sure, it's also Cheese Sacrifice Purchase Day.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
I actually don't want to know what that is, so
that it can live in my mind as whatever I
am imagining it to be just probably not correct, but
I want it to stay that way.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Uh huh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a nice it's a
nice mazzarell up on a cross.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
You're not far off. I imagine here more Temple of
doom e. But yeah, International Tiger Day is also July
twenty ninth, Yes it is.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's also international or I'm sorry, just national. That's National
Lasagna Day.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Oh I like me some lasagna. That's good, good stuff,
good stuff right there? National Lipstick Day.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Sure. Yes, it's rain Day, which is every day in Florida.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, seriously, And it is Hepatitis Awareness Week. It's raining
hepatitis hopefully.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
No, that sounds like one of the weird plagues that
they didn't talk about in the Bible.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
That's right. Yeah, that's a bad day. That's a bad day.
You don't want to be out in there. Yeah, nope,
probably find that in Florida too, possibly, Texas definitely, joy
all right, definitely Tennessee. I don't know. I'm just throwing
southern states under the bus right now, you know. Yeah, yeah,
places where there's a lot of jerrymandering that has resulted

(03:15):
in a crazy disproportioned amount of conservative representation in places
that do not have that many conservative voters. Because that's
how jerry mandering works. Maybe we need to do an
episode on jerrymandering that feels.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Right, Yeah, that's got to go somewhere.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
It was like a thing that we would do. Anyway,
we're not talking about those holidays is for this discussion,
Nor are we talking about gerrymandering, despite how much time
we have already spent on both of those topics. No, No, Instead,
we're getting deep into the history, the science, the philosophy,
the inner workings, if he will, of applied behavior analysis,

(03:49):
and arguably one of the most fundamental purposes of behavior
science more broadly is to understand why certain forms of
behavior happen and what can be done to change those
behaviors when they are not serving the interest of the
behaving organism. And that's an inherent value that I think
sometimes gets missed. And what the behavior scientist does is

(04:12):
we change behavior because changing behavior helps improve and save lives.
At least that should be the circumstances. Now, there's a
lot to impact inside of that in terms of who's
choosing what improved means and under what circumstances does someone
make that choice, And that's not what we're getting into today.
And so if you do have thoughts on that, feel
free to let us know. But that's not where we're going,

(04:34):
So don't be distracted by the fact that I said it.
I just want to clarify that, Like, when we're doing
this thing, generally speaking, those of us who got into
this profession got into it to be a helping profession,
like we want to help people, And if you think
about all the various other helping professions, they also involve
changing and usually changing behavior and changing something about an organism.

(04:55):
See our Discussions of disability for more about like the
various models and philosophies about that. I feel like I've
dug myself a giant hole I'm trying to climb out of.
Point being, the fundamental purpose of behavior science is to
understand why behavior happens. Let me leave it at that.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, that's fine. This is going to be an episode
largely about apply behavior analysis, specifically the methods by which
we attempt to understand certain behavior forms or what we
call topographies, and more specifically the forms of behavior that
are thought of as problematic or identified as like maybe
having an impact on somebody's quality of life.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah, they could maybe just be described as challenging. There
are some that are like directly violent and have harm
involved in them, So there's like there's those things to unpack.
We'll get into more of those as we get into
this discussion, but there is an assessment performed to understand
these challenging behaviors, and it is called a functional analysis,

(05:48):
very commonly abbreviated as FA. I am sure in this
discussion many times we're going to oscillate between calling it
an FA and a functional analysis. But know that when
we say FA, that's what we're talking about. Functional A
for analysis FA. And what is most certainly two or
more episodes. I'm actually kind of explicitly planning on this

(06:08):
to be three based on how much there is to
even talk about with this. We're going to unpack what
functional analyzes are. They're incredibly storied history and evolution, modern
approaches to functional analyzes and controversies around them. And eventually
we'll even get to our own hot takes about various
aspects of this topic, which I know you're all here,

(06:30):
like you're here for the hot takes. Let's be real,
of course.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, you like when we get spicy.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
That's right, we get on our soapbox. We got things
to say. So that's what we're up to right now.
Is like, for those of you who have been with us,
who are like the behavior analysts among you. You've heard us
talking for a long time. We've hardly have we ever
gone this much in a single direction, but it kind
of has been one that's been on the list for
me for a long time of like, we do need

(06:55):
to get to this at some point, and the timing
felt right. We're here. Yeah, this is not like a
sweet like we've done on normal suites, but it is
going to be multipart. It's going to take a while
to unpack all of this discussion now. I feel like
I breathed through our preamble fairly quickly before we got
into this, and we already have now burned through our intro.
Is there anything that I missed or you'd like to
add or something that's important to help set this up

(07:15):
before we get into the meat of our topic here.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
I think the big thing to understand here and we're
going to really unpack this is this is an assessment. Yes,
Like this is ultimately a discovery process, and like one
of my favorite things about assessment is that it is
a discovery process, which means that we're not when we
talk about this, we are not intervening right at this moment,
Like when we're doing this, it is a discovery. We
are gathering information so that we can better design interventions

(07:40):
for the folks that we're serving when we do these assessments.
So like I think, like just to kind of like
when we talk about this, we are in a discovery phase,
which means we have questions to ask in questions to
answer inside of this and that'll become more apparent as
we talk about the structure and the outcomes and stuff
with this assessment. But it is an assessment and that's
and I think that people tend to conflate assessment and

(08:00):
intervention sometimes, and that's we're not intervening, we are just discovering.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Now that being said, I think in the philosophy of this,
you can make the arguments that even as part of
the assessment process, it can have intervention like effects. That's
not your tension of it, but those things exist, and
we will get actually into that specifically when we get
to the later parts of this discussion, but we don't

(08:25):
need to go there today. The point of this is
that it was designed to be an assessment tool that
would then later inform intervention. That was that's sort of
the point. The purpose, the raison detra if you will.
That's where this thing sort of comes from. But we
actually need to even go back further in the history
of behavior analysis. The term functional analysis has been used

(08:47):
for a very long time, going back probably I think
over one hundred years from some of the dates that
I saw, and an early behavior analysis doing something that
was a functional analysis, calling what you were doing functional
analysis was a somewhat cerebral, maybe conceptual exercise in which

(09:07):
some behaviors or classes of behaviors or behavior topographies they
were described in terms of a variety of variables that
led to the evolution and development of those behaviors, as
well as the maintenance and continued evolution and development of
those behaviors. So, just to say that another way, people

(09:29):
would say they were doing a functional analysis, when what
they were kind of doing was like saying, let's conceptualize
these behaviors to try and understand where they come from,
where they're going, how they got to be the way
that they are, and they kind of just talked through it,
you know, they ad mused through it, they'd think on it,
and they had a lot of important things to say.

(09:50):
There's a sort of applying the principles, we understand about
how behavior works, to an observation of some kinds of behaviors,
often classes of behaviors, and say, let's understand how these
things work together. What's the function of them, if you will,
And so it was it was kind of this conceptual
thing when it was used back at these in these times.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah. So, for instance, what a BF. Skinner's most important
and widely used books is Verbal Behavior, which he describes
as a functional analysis of language. Now, in it, he
proposes that language can be conceptualized as behaviors that occur
in certain context and have specific effects for the speaker,
as media by moment to moment motivations and interactions with
a social audience. So basically, like our language is shaped

(10:34):
by our context and like the audit who we're talking to,
and like what we need to say and all that stuff. Now,
units of language can be categorized by how they work
and probably worth a full discussion at some point in time.
But essentially what he's saying is like a functional analysis
of language, which is really interesting because he's not really
doing a functional analysis of language because it was an
interpretive analysis because you couldn't actually do the functional analysis

(10:56):
of the language at the time, because it didn't exist.
It's a whole thing. But more to the point, what
he's saying is he's analyzing the context and the variables
in which language occurs.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
And yeah, you're you're right. And I think how we
use the term functional analysis today would make it a
little bit confusing to call what he did a functional analysis.
But at the time, again, because that term was more cerebral,
it was more conceptual, like for that time, a functional
analysis was an apt description for that exercise. Sure, but yes,

(11:26):
I think saying it, calling it an interpretation, I think
is perfectly legitimate, like that is equivalently, I guess if
you want to put it that way. Kind of what
he was up to in that discussion was like, let's yeah,
let's try and superimpose a philosophy over classes of language
and say, like, and when we see communication happening, we
can understand that through the behavioral principles that have been

(11:49):
described so far by behaviorism, and that that in and
of itself is a kind of functional analysis at the time.
And really, again, the point of this is not to
dig in on Skinner's verbal behavior, probably something to unpack
in the future. A very seminal thing that is hugely
impactful in the field of behavior analysis and behaviorism more broadly.

(12:12):
But the point is that, like that's what was sort
of described as functional analysis at the time. Now again,
the point really at this point was just that functional
analysis back in the earlier days of the philosophy of
this field looked more like pontificating about behavior environment relations
before the name functional analysis. The term was repurposed to

(12:34):
describe a specific assessment technique, which is what we'll get into,
Like we're headed that direction. But just the point being that,
like that's kind of what was really being said when
people use that phrase functional analysis before it became what
it became as an assessment.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like how people use
the term evil before they call them ads. So we
are talking about the history of functional analysis and behavior
analysis in general and kind of where this came from.
Now we are going to go all the way back
in our way back machine, which I always thought was

(13:12):
a strange thing to call a time machine. I feel
like time machine is way more fun. Wayback machine sounds strange,
But maybe that's from so, you know, from that cartoon
show mister Peabody and Truman or whatever. But we're going
to go all the way back and we're going to
talk about behavior analysis before it was described as applied. Actually,
it was most commonly referred to as behavior modification, and
we did an episode about this forever ago. What we

(13:34):
understood is that you could gradually direct behavior to different
forms by providing or withholding positive reinforcers such as tokens,
special snacks, privileges, or social encouragements.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Strategically, yeah, that is to say that, like, if you
wanted to change what behaviors were happening, you could just
alter or specifically superimpose certain rewards as consequences for those behaviors,
outcomes for those behaviors, and that could sort of direct
the behavior where you wanted it to go. Now, we're
going to er out a little dirty laundry here, because

(14:05):
we're talking about the past and people did not get
a lot of things right back in the fifties. This
also included things like providing cigarettes that could be a
reinforcer that was like a reward that they could earn,
not something that would be done today. And it also
included things like providing or removing aversives they might do
things such as withholding privileges or taking privileges away. They

(14:28):
might even do things such as exposing them to foul
smells or things as far as even like electric shock
to humans. We've talked about this in previous episodes as well.
Go see those for a more in depth discussion about
what was going on there. Suffice to say, in these times,
what they ran into was there was something we wanted
to change about what someone was doing. We can either

(14:50):
provide some kind of punishments to decrease certain behaviors we
don't like, and or we can provide certain rewards to
try and increase certain behaviors that we like or that
we'd like to see more of. And that was essentially
what they could just do. They would just like apply
that thing as they saw fit, I guess in those circumstances.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Right, So, if there was some perceived reason to change
behavior patterns, and we say perceived because many people made
many decisions for people without consulting them or including them, Yep,
someone could orchestrate this. This's is behavior change through strategic
use of rewards and punishments. And you might think this
would not work that easily or that well, and you'd
be wrong. It's honestly surprising and even a little scary

(15:30):
how effectively this works, even among people for whom language
can effectively change behavior. So like, it's pretty astounding to
see this work.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, I mean you really. A lot of people are like, oh,
it's just simple rewards, Like you can't do that much
with that. I'm like, yeah, you actually can accomplish a lot,
even with people that you can just like tell them things.
When you specifically use outcomes, rewards and punishments in this way,
you'd be impressed. Like, how far I mean impressed. Again,

(16:00):
it's a little surprising in some cases, a little scary
how far you can actually drive behavior in ways that
might surprise you. So don't discount it because it feels simplistic.
It is remarkably effective and powerful. Right anyway, not that
we're trying. We've talked about this. We're moving on all right,

(16:20):
as we know, So we're talking about like a long time,
many many decades ago, nearly a center ago. Most often
this was applied to people who were institutionalized or otherwise
had some diagnosis that probably meant some significant impairment. These
are people who often had little language, often little education,
They might have lacked other self care skills, including and

(16:41):
up to the ability to clothe and feed themselves or
even use the restroom the toilet independently. There were wide
swaths of this, but those tended to be the populations
where you were likely to see this kind of work
being done as people who had disabilities. Often they might
have called these profound disabilities, and often it meant that
these were people again who just had repertoires such that

(17:04):
there was relatively little they could do at the time
with very much independence. And to be fair, like, we're
not granted very many opportunities to do anything with very
much independence. They were really not often even thought of
or treated as if they could have those things, and
loved ones weren't consulted, they weren't consulted themselves. Oftentimes it

(17:25):
was just kind of up to the doctor who made decisions,
and then they did the things according to what that
person decided, which sometimes was pretty terrible. So understand that
those that's where this is at. So that's kind of
the population with which you would tend to see this
applied right and.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
At the time, and the absence of behaviorists, these folks
disabilities might be locked in a cell, medicated, quote unquote,
medicated with sedatives, lobotomized, are incarcerated. This is a well
documented in very recent history that I think is really
important to note. This is not three hundred and four
hundred year ago. I mean, this was happening, you know,
on some level many centuries ago, but this was happening

(18:00):
in the mid nineteen hundreds.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, it's like sixties, seven years ago, like sixties.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
And so yeah, So I mean it's this is a
recent history. So despite what sounds disrespectful of people with
disabilities in the way that it was approached by behaviors
of the time, it was actually much better than what
those people usually got. And that's not to excuse it,
but I think the context is really worth understanding here
that like whenever we talk about history, it's always a
delicate situation because like these situations come up in like

(18:27):
we're in a situation now where we know better, so
we try to do better, and in fifty years that's
going to be the same concept that we have today.
Like we're trying to make it so that we don't
have these terrible histories going forward, but it's going to
happen as we learn more stuff. And I think when
we look back at the history that was going on,
you know, you had situations where families had no idea

(18:49):
what disabilities were, and they were imparting different harms, or
they didn't know how to care for their children or
the people that they loved, And so institutions were arguably
a better option for folks that could receive round the
clock care rather than families who couldn't provide that. But again,
that doesn't mean it was good. Yeah, yeah, it was
incrementally better than what was maybe available, but not good.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah. Life for people with disabilities was very very hard
at this time, and they were often not treated with
very much dignity and respect. And so if you had
some kind of diagnosis that and these range widely widely
in terms of what they might be. But like, assuming
you had something let's just say profound like autism, like

(19:33):
you might have described back then, like essentially that meant
you'd probably be sent to an institution. And in many
of these you were given enough drugs that you barely
moved and stuck in a cell and you basically lived
out your days that way. Yeah, behaviorists came along and
they said, well, actually we can teach these people things
we can we can have them do other stuff. We
can teach some vocations, we can have them gain some independence,

(19:56):
and they would just be like, let's do em and
MS or or privileges. Cigarettes will We'll give them these
things as rewards to help teach them, give them feedback
on these new skills that they're learning, and they'll learn
them faster and be able to do this. So while
all of that sounds you're like looking at going none
of this is good. The situation where someone came in
and thought, maybe we can teach these people things, Maybe

(20:18):
we can get them to do stuff that require that
means that they don't have to wear mechanical restraints all day.
They're not like handcuffs, they don't have to stay in
a patent room all day, they don't have to be
on so many medications. Ultimately, it was probably in the
better interest of those people and is not still what
we would have done now knowing what we know. So
just trying to paint the broad context to make sure

(20:39):
it's really clear. As you were saying, like, I think
you said it really well, but I just wanted to
say it again of like understanding where things were at
at the time, and that you know, when they had
nothing else, they didn't know what the future was going
to look like. Back then, this looked like probably the
most humanitarian thing that was going on, right, right, And
now we know better, like we treat people with considerably
more respect now than we did back then, and fully

(21:00):
we'll do way better still.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
Yeah, which is exactly why we are wanting to fight
this current administration from implementing institutions again, right, because this
was not the way to go.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yes, this was bad, exactly. At some point in time,
it finally became clear that like a better approach to
changing behavior was understood. It was to understand why those
behaviors were occurring in the first place. Back then, they
were just sort of like we can use words and
punishments and change behavior, and instead what was happening is

(21:31):
they're like, under what conditions does the behavior occur? And
if we understand that, then maybe we can do something
a little bit differently about this. So it gave rise
to a hypothesis about how we might determine what conditions
gave rise to and maintained some of those behavior patterns.
And a quick language note here, when we're talking about

(21:53):
this idea of like understanding why behaviors happen, This assessment
can only be performed on behaviors that happen, and we
can't assess behaviors that aren't happening. And I know this
seems like an obvious observation, but people have asked me
me personally, and I've heard seen this asked in other
places too. They say, like, why are you not performing

(22:15):
a functional analysis what we're getting to on a skilled deficit?
And the reason is is because you can't assess a
behavior that isn't happening. So the point, just a quick
note on the language here, is essentially what happened is
they sort of figured, we're seeing these behaviors occur, these
other challenging behaviors that's resulting in these people being put
in handcuffs, locked up, or sedated or all of those things.

(22:38):
And they were just like, we'll use can rewards and
punishments to change their behavior. And then they sort of realized, well,
what if we just try to understand why they're doing
those behaviors in the first place, that might then inform
something that we could do differently. Why would these people
play ads? Okay, so we're back Essentially, we described what

(23:05):
gave rise to the hypothesis that we could understand behavior
by understanding why it occurs in the first place. And
then just a quick side note about the fact that
many people might be like, well, if functional analysis is
the way to go, we should do it for everything,
including skill deficess I'm like, yeah, but that's a behavior
that's not happening. We can't assess nothing. We have to
assess something, so it has to happen for us to
assess it. So just a note that make sure that

(23:27):
that's clear.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So the logic of the functional analysis
was to see if providing certain scenarios would provoke the
behavior in question, and if reinforcing that behavior with related
outcomes tend to occur for that individual resulted in higher
rates of that behavior. So basically what they're talking about
is we present a scenario, if the behavior occurs, we
present a related outcome, and let's see if that has

(23:50):
an impact or influences the behavior in some way, and.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
We'll get into specific examples. That makes because that probably
sounds vague if you're not really sure what we're talking about,
but we'll get into some specific examples. I'll just give
you one. Now. Actually, let's just say there's a scenario
where like this person's asked to brusht their teeth and
whenever they're asked to brush of teeth, they throw their
toothbrush or they throw it at the staff and maybe
go and try and punch them. They're like, ah, what's happening.
So yeah, they're like, okay, let's do this. Let's present

(24:14):
the scenario of brushing teeth and then when they if
they throw the toothbrush they attack the staff. Whatever it is,
We're going to provide a very specific outcome and see
if that's why they do it. Just would make the
first one to make the staff go away, And see
if whenever we ask them the brush to teeth, they
want the staff to go away and stop asking them
the brush their teeth, like they wouldn't want to figure
out if that's what's going on. And so that's what

(24:35):
we mean here is like as an example of a
scenario where it's like, let's figure out there's something going on,
and we want to figure out why it's going on.
So let's systematically create the situation and then create applausible
outcome that could be what they're trying to get after, like,
what are they're trying to get out of this behavior
in that situation? Right?

Speaker 2 (24:54):
Right?

Speaker 1 (24:55):
That makes sense? Yes, absolutely, okay, so then yeah, the
logic here would be that if we could identify this
circumstances that produce the behavior and what outcomes reinforce that behavior,
which is to say, what were they trying to get
out of that situation, then we could use those outcomes
that they're trying to get to to then reinforce a
different type of behavior in that situation again, right, and

(25:16):
using an example I just gave. And we're jumping ahead
a little bit here because we'll be talking about this
in more detail, but using the example I just gave,
let's say that they're like, whenever they're asked to brush
their teeth, they attack the staff, and that that's where
the problem exists. It seems like they're doing this because
they want the staff to go away. What we'll do is, well, instead,
we'll teach them that when they ask you to do

(25:36):
something you don't want to do, you can say I
don't want to do that, and then the staff will
leave you alone. Yeah, And then that way you get
what you want, which is they're not bothering you and
they get what they want, which is you're not attacking them,
and everybody wins. Like that's the sereo. And obviously there's
a whole solution of like, well, what do we do
about the brushing their teeth? We'll get to that, but
not us. But like they're saying, like, we'll address that separately.

(25:57):
But the point being that, like, in this moment, what's
happening is they need something. They don't know how to
ask for what they need. What they know is if
I attack this person, I get what I need, right,
And so we're teaching them, Okay, now that we know
what you need, we can tell you to ask for that,
and then you don't have to attack. You can just
get the thing that you need.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
That's essentially where we're going with it. But that's what
I mean by all that.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think it's super helpful. So before
the modern version of functional analysis became popular and widely adopted,
another attempt was developed by other researchers around the same time,
but not quite the same time. Yeah, so car and
Durand in nineteen eighty five, really good year, and they
have bothesized that challenging behaviors such as eloping from the
learning environment and violence could be conceptualized as communication that

(26:41):
the student was communicating something about the situation they did
not like, and teaching an alternative way to ask to
get out of that situation. What allow us students to
get their needs met without running away or hurting other
people or themselves. So they basically said, these are things
that are happening. If we assume this is communication, then
they're communicating that there is something about the situation they
don't like. Let's teach them about way to get.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
That right exactly. Like I said, I jumped ahead a
little bit, but that was essentially what I was trying
to come up with that example. But this is what
they did in that study, is they specifically did that
thing that conceptualized it that way. The behaviors that we
observe that people see as like problematic are communication. They
don't know how to communicate what they need, and so
that's what they have developed. That's how they learned to

(27:20):
communicate what they need is to do something in a
way that was aggressive or they're running away or something.
So they designed an assessment which in this part of
the study, this nineteen eighty five study and which they
introduced tasks of varying levels of difficulty, hypothesizing that it
was the difficulty of the task that was likely the
situation that provoked those challenging behaviors. And what they saw

(27:43):
was they were right. If there were tasks that were
more difficult, those tended to more reliably provoke challenging behaviors.
The tasks that were easy did not. And so what
they did is they then taught the students to end
the task by asking to end the task by teaching
them like, if this is too hard, you can say
I need help, or you can say I can't do

(28:04):
this as too hard, whatever it was, they taught them
some way to request a way out of it or
to get through it more easily. And when they taught
them how to do this, this quickly resulted in zero
or very low rates of those challenging behaviors and very
high rates of the students using their new communication skills
to ask for what they needed. Yeah, it worked like

(28:24):
a charm.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, if I remember correctly, this is the one where
they did the easy thirty three difficult one hydred. Yeah,
that's the one. So for like to kind of like
get into like a little bit of detail on this. Basically,
they tested a couple different conditions. They tested that a
task was difficult, but that's the learner got a lot
of attention. The task was easy but they got less attention,
or the task was easy and they got a lot
of attention. So they tested those three different situations, and

(28:47):
what they found was like some of the learners really
just wanted to have a lot of attention, some of
them really wanted to get away from the task. And
that was really the two big findings they found out
of I think they had six participants in it or
something like that.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
This sounds right, yeah, but it was.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
It was really cool, and I was like when I
first learned about this, I was like I'd already learned
about the other assessment that we're going to talk about,
the other the gold standard, if you will. I didn't
know about this one first, you know, like I didn't
know like that this was already done. So it was
kind of a like I say, already done. I didn't
know that this was like in the works or around
at the time too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Yeah, the actual we're getting into like the actual study,
but at the time, there were kind of people who
were trying different things, because again, the hypothesis was out there,
the idea was out there. They're like, what we can
do is assess what these people need and address it
from that direction rather than just say, let's just use
reward and punishment to get what we want. We can

(29:38):
figure out what these people need, and then we can
use that to help teach them whatever might need to
be taught, yeah, to help address it. And so there
were a couple different ways to approach it. This study
was one of the big ones. That's why I wanted
to include it because I actually think it's one that
is often not known by many students of behavior analysis.
They just learned about sort of what we're going to
talk about is what is considered now the gold standard FA.
But there were other attempts to tell like, figure these

(30:00):
things out, and this was one of the early ones too,
that was right around a similar time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely
separately and published a couple of years before that, car
and Durand eighteen eighty five study what would become what
is widely considered this gold standard of assessments was born,
and this was a WATA Slipher, Bowman and Richmond in
nineteen eighty two published their study which they published in

(30:23):
which they demonstrated an assessment strategy for determining why those
challenging behaviors occurred in a kind of similar way to
the car and durand but with some fundamental differences will unpack.
And this was called Toward a Functional Analysis of Self Injury,
and this was published in nineteen eighty two in the
journal Analysis and Intervention and Developmental Disabilities. That was where

(30:43):
it was first published.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Yeah, and there are a number of people with little
or no language and caught in disabilities that self harm
at pretty high rates and pretty dangerous rates too, and
usually in the form of hitting or binding themselves or
hitting their body parts, commonly their head against hard services.
I am almost positive that you have worked with folks
that do this. I know for a fact that I've
worked with lots of folks that do this. They have
lots of scarring and callouses and head injuries and protective equipment,

(31:08):
and it is it is never easy to see when
it happens, even when you get used to it. It
is never easy to watch somebody do this, and so
it's hardy is Yeah, it's hard to watch. It's hard
to intervene on sometimes it is it can be scary.
It's scary, that's it. Yeah, exactly, it's scary and you
get elevated. It's it's a very difficult thing to be around.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, and like, and these are often people who live
with families who also don't know how to support them,
and they're like just doing their best to try and
prevent these types of behaviors from occurring. But that means
that oftentimes they would bring them to some of these clinics.
And so they designed the study to figure out, Okay,
let's see if we can understand why they're doing this
thing and address it that way, right, and rather than

(31:47):
like just tying their arms to their back so they
can't move, or rather than sedating them with medication, or
rather than just using a bunch of punishments or something like,
let's say, if we can understand what's going on here,
so that the context is like, that is a thing
that happens for some people who have disabilities, that is,
sometimes they do develop those types of behaviors. And then

(32:09):
there was now this new approach to try and understand
what was going on here. So the general logic of
the assessment was that they could determine whether self harming
behaviors of these nine individuals in their study, the nine
individuals with cognitive disabilities and little or no language, if
those behaviors of self harm were more likely to occur
when there was either positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement, or

(32:31):
whether those behaviors occurred regardless of whether there was positive
or negative or any reinforcement.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Right, So, positive reinforcement was conceptualized as in this assessment
social attention. Do they harm the selves when they were
receiving little attention or no attention? And what providing attention
increase the likelihood that they continue to hurt themselves. So
basically it would set up that they would get no
attention or little attention. And when we say little attention,
when we say no attention, we don't mean like they
were completely ignored. We mean like that the attention wasn't

(32:57):
very rich, it was very quiet, like the person that
they were interacting with us maybe distracted. Yeah, the selfagury's
behavior would occur, and then when it would occur, they
would deliver the attention to assess whether or not they
had influence on the behavior, and so what they were
trying to discover was if those were related, then social
attention could be the outcome that they are trying to
get by hurting themselves.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
And what we'll describe each of these conditions in more detail,
like how they're arranged and all the features of like
what this experiment looked like. But yeah, the idea was like,
all right, if we are with them and we remove
our attention from them, do we see that they now
are doing this more often because when they do it,
we then do pay attention to them, like is this

(33:38):
attention seeking behavior? And so we're just going to systematically
do this repeatedly so we can see if every time
we remove our attention they do this, they get our attention,
and they're now more likely to do this. They essentially
have learned, like they're showing us like that's what I'm
trying to get at here, is I just want your attention, right?
That could be a thing that was one of their ideas.
So that was the first piece of this. The next
one is the negative reinforcement condition, and this was conceptualized

(34:01):
as terminating task requirements or demands. So did they observe like,
was it the case that these individuals would harm themselves
if and when they were asked to perform tasks, so
certain tasks, and if so, then if you terminated the
task request, if you removed those demands, would that increase

(34:22):
the likelihood that they were going to harm themselves? And
if so, then the removal of demands like taking away requests,
stopping asking them to do things, that could be the
outcome that these individuals are trying to achieve when they
hurt themselves and they're like, I just I don't like
it when you make me do these things. I don't

(34:42):
know how to communicate that any other way. So when
you asked me to do them, I hurt myself. And
if you stop asking me, then I will stop hurting myself.
But it's it's like I will hurt myself until you
go away, until it makes this go away, right, And
so that was essentially what they wanted to assess here
in the negative reinforcement condition. That was the concept spetualization
of that part of their study.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, So a really good example of this would be
something like you're listening to a podcast, you're listening to
it on normal speed. We present an ad. You might
yell and scream, and then we take away the ad
that might be an arrangement that we might look at
for that.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
And now you're more likely to yell and scream when
we say that we're going to play an ad exactly.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
Okay, so we're talking about the way that this experiment
was kind of arranged. We've talked about how positive and
negative reinforcement were conceptualized in this and we mentioned earlier
that they were trying to evaluate the positive reinforcement contingency,
the negative reinforcement contingency, and also whether the behavior occurred
regardless of the type of reinforcement that was delivered by
somebody else. That brings us to the other condition that
we're looking at. And there was another condition in which

(35:49):
the experiments experimenters simply interacted in a mild, gentle condition,
and they called it the play condition. Individuals weren't asked
to perform any tasks. Attention was freely given. If self
harm occurred in this context, it might be that they
hurt themselves because of something called automatic reinforcement or reinforcement
that the person delivers themselves. Right, it simply means that

(36:09):
there's something about performing the behavior itself that was inherently
reinforcing to the individual. Could be sensory stimulation that is
produced by the behavior or whatever it is. It's basically
like the learner engaged in the behavior, that behavior produces
some outcome that is not delivered by somebody else, and
there's some sensation about that behavior that is produced that
maintains the behavior. So it's kind of like, for those

(36:32):
of you who aren't watching this, I generally kind of
rock back and forth while I'm talking, and that's in
the absence of any context. I'd be doing this if
I was working, or if I was recording a podcast
or anything with Abraham, I just kind of do that
because I like the way it feels right, And that's
kind of like what that kind of circumstance might look
like perfect.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Such, yeah, very good example that's exactly right. Is like
there's something about the action itself that the experience of
that maintains the action that it's like, nobody around you
doing things has anything to do with the reasons to
do that, and so they needed to include a condition
that could potentially determine if that was the case for
any of these individuals. Is like, they're going to do

(37:08):
it no matter what we're doing. They're just they're going
to do it, and that could mean that there's something
about that action itself that is not related to what
we're doing, but something they're getting out of it. Right
now in the experiment, the way the arrangement looks like,
what will describe it, go ahead, like in detail here
what's going on. A single individual, one of these individuals
is in a room with a single experimenter, sometimes called

(37:29):
a therapist sometimes I don't know, but yeah, I'm going
to just call them an experimenter. They're just like a
person who's in the room who's like the person who's
there to change the circumstances to see what's going on
with those behaviors. So anyway, there's a single there's one
person who has these self harm behaviors, there's one other
person in the room who's this experimenter, and the experimenter

(37:49):
would implement one of the conditions that we just listed.
There's the social attention one, that toy play one, the
demand one, or an alone condition, and we'll get into
more about what that looks like here in a second. Now,
at the beginning of each of these conditions, the experimental
would enter the room with the individual and they would
establish some scenario that could potentially evoke that problematic behavior,

(38:14):
whatever the self harm behavior they were sort of on
the lookout for might be. Each of these sessions lasted
fifteen minutes, and in those fifteen minutes they were divided
into ten second intervals, and observers who were usually watching
maybe from across the room, maybe behind some like mirrored
glass of some sort, they would watch and record whether

(38:36):
any self harm behaviors occurred within a given ten second interval,
because again we had fifteen minutes. The entire thing is
broken into ten second intervals, and they would just mark
down if during this interval the behavior occurred, check that
box and say, okay, that's it. And then at the
end of the fifteen minutes, what they would do is
they would report what percentage of the intervals had instances

(38:57):
of those self harm behaviors. So there's watching, and ever
ever retirement occurs, they would check that box or whatever,
and at the end they look and see, all, right,
out of all the boxes that we have, how many
of them had self harm occur And that was the
percentage of those intervals. That was how they measured this
in this study.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Right now, in the attention condition, which they called social disapproval.
In this situation. This was what they called the positive
reinforcement condition, and so they would enter the room and
engage with some of the toys briefly. Then the experimenter
would say something like I have to do some work,
or like they would pretend to be busy, I have
to take a call. This is in the eighties, so
maybe they weren't taking a call, but like, now you go,

(39:33):
I have to take a call and pretend to be
on your cell phone, right, yeah, But they would say
I have to do some work, and they would start
reading something like a newspaper or a book. And if
the individual hurt themselves or engage in the behavior itself,
the experimenter would react with a disapproving statement, something like
don't hurt yourself, or don't do that, or stop it,
you know, something along those lines. Not yelling, but like

(39:54):
a disapproving statement, right, And this would be an attempt
to replicate the ways that staff might interact with them
in their daily environment. It has a quick reminder when
we say the word positive our behavior analyst friends, we
all know this, but if you're listening and you're not
a behavior analyst, and you hear the word positive, and
you think that means good, That's not what we're saying.
In this context, positive only means that something has added
after the behavior occurs. In reinforcement, it means that the

(40:16):
behavior increases in frequency. So positive reinforcement is something is
added behavior increases in frequency over time.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Yeah, and so in this case, what's added is some
form of attention. Yeah, it is social disapproval. But like
the fact that it's disapproval doesn't make a negative. It's
still something that is added afterward, and so therefore it
is positive. And if that behavior increases, then that's called reinforcement.
So that's just to make sure people are clear on that. Yeah,
that was the attention also called social disapproval condition. The

(40:43):
other one was that negative reinforcement condition, which is also
sometimes called the demand condition. And in this one, the
experimenter and the individual enter the room and they'll start
performing academic tasks of some sort. Maybe it could be chores.
I've also seen that done in some iterations, but I
believe in this experiment it was academic tasks. And if
the individual self harm to any point during those instructions,

(41:04):
then the experimenter would immediately stop requesting the performance. Of
those tasks and they would turn their attention away from
the individual. Right. So, essentially they're saying, like, if a
thing that provokes self harm is us asking to do something,
then us taking away that request should be a reinforcer,
a negative reinforcer for that behavior, which means it would

(41:25):
increase the likelihood. So again, with negative this only means
in behavioral terms, that something was taken away. In this case,
the performance tasks, the requests were what was taken away.
They were there before the behavior occurs. We took away
the thing we didn't like, and this is then reinforcement. Again,
if the behavior increases in frequency, reinforcement always means the

(41:48):
behavior increases in frequency, regardless of whether it's positive or negative.
And so as an outcome of terminating those requests, are
they more likely to self harm in the presence of requests?
If so, that would tell us that what they don't
like is being asked to do these specific tasks, and
the reason they're doing them is because when they do them,
it gets them out of doing those tasks.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Right. That's like the example of the toothbrushing earlier. Yeah,
like staff ask the client to brush their teeth, they
start engaging in self harm, you remove the task, Hey,
you don't have to brush your teeth. That's it, that's done,
and then they stop harming. That is essentially what happens.
The task is aversive negative reinforcement. We remove that aversive,
they get relief.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, it's relief, and they're now more likely to self
harm when you ask to brush their teeth because they've
now learned that that specific thing they do gets them
out of the task, right bingo. And so we see
an increase in frequency the self harm because it removes
an aversive situation, which in this case is the request
to perform something.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yes, exactly now. In the unstructured play condition we talked about,
where it's like toy play and stuff like this, there
are a variety of toys on the floor and the
experimenter would simply spend time with the individual, following their lead,
asking them for nothing, but would comment on their play
in a neutral or gently encouraging manner. And this I
think one of the things that we talk about and
you'll see kind of like today, one of the things
that we're taught is that we don't ask them questions

(43:06):
during this correct it's very much so I like the
way you're playing with that that looks like a lot
of fun. It's like you're making statements about what they're doing,
because asking them questions could be considered demand.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
Exactly right. Yeah, the whole point is to try and
make it as neutral as possible. Yes, Like you're just there.
You're not withholding your attention, you're not giving it dependent
on anything. You're not asking them anything or asking them
to do anything. You're just there to sort of follow
their lead. Make it just the most comfortable you can
for them, where it's just chill, chill vibes all around.

(43:39):
What is the goals called the chill vibes conditions?

Speaker 2 (43:42):
That's what it should be called now.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
Exactly right. So again the point here is that if
those self hard behaviors occur more during any one of
those conditions, particularly we think of like the social disapproval,
the positive reinforcement, or the demands like removal of task
requests that can, then that would suggest that the condition
was likely the thing that was provoking that challenging behavior,

(44:06):
and the type of outcome associated with that condition was
likely the kind of reward, the kind of outcome, the
kind of reinforcement that the individual was seeking in those situations.
That makes sense.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
Like skipping through ads, you're seeking to get rid of them.
So here's your chance. Okay, we're back. We've essentially been
describing in detail the different conditions of the experimental functional
analysis in this nineteen eighty two study, and also the

(44:41):
interpretation of what those results might mean as far as
understanding the behaviors when they occur.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
Right, So in this experiment, they also had another condition
in which the individual was left alone in a room
and observe for fifty minutes to determine whether the self
harm behaviors occurred in the absence of any provocative or
consequential conditions. This could suggest that the automatic reinforcement that
behavior was occurring. So, like what we mean by that
is is there was nothing to do. There were no demands,

(45:07):
there was no task, but there was nothing enriching either,
so there was no attention, there was no staff. It
was kind of just like a when you are left
to your own device, is what happens? Yeah, And essentially
that's what they're trying to test. And so we also
call this the we don't really know what's going on,
but it doesn't seem to be related to anything we
are doing reinforcement, meaning that like everything that we're delivering
doesn't seem to have an influence or impact on this behavior,

(45:29):
there's got to be something else that we just all
know about.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yeah, So essentially you can imagine if it was the
case that this was sensory, like self stimulatory in some way,
or there was something about it that the individual is
getting out of it that was unrelated to what the
experimenter was doing, you would likely see this. The self
harm behaviors occur when there's positive reinforcement, when there's negative reinforcement,
when you're playing with toys, and when you're left by yourself. Now,

(45:53):
it is possible that the toy play condition would be
enough of a distraction that you would see less of
the behavior of her in that situation and still walk
away with the interpretation that there was something sensory, self stimulatory,
or otherwise not socially mediated and therefore what you might
call automatic reinforcement about what was going on for that individual.
But if you only saw it in the conditions where

(46:15):
there was social interactions happening, particularly if they were primarily
in just the social positive reinforcement or the negative reinforcement.
That gave a fairly clear, differentiated picture of what could
be functioning as reinforcement, What was the outcome that was
likely the reason for those type of behaviors, Like what
is that individual trying to get out of those situations? Now,

(46:36):
in the study, each of these conditions is presented and
represented again and again in a randomized order until the
individual had experienced each condition multiple times and either what
happened was data demonstrated a systematic pattern, meaning that it
was differentially observed only in certain conditions, or else they

(46:58):
completed twelve days of sets, so that was essentially the
arrangement is they're like, it wasn't thating. You do it once,
you don't do like one time, you do that attention condition,
one time you do the demand condition. You do them repeatedly,
but you rotate through them. So you would do that
toy play condition, then you go do it that a
social disapproval attention condition. Then you might do the alone condition.

(47:19):
Then you'll do that demand condition, Then you do the
attention condition again, then you do that alone condition again,
then you do that social attention condition again, then a
demand condition, then maybe another demand condition. Anyway, you're just
cycling through these until you either see that one condition
is clearly showing a pattern where there's elevated rates of

(47:39):
that challenging behavior in that condition, which would tell you
that's the time that the behavior like, that's why that
behavior occurs is because that situation provokes it and rewards it.
And if not, then you would keep going until you
either saw that or you had done twelve days and
probably what you saw is a wide distribution across all
conditions or at least three of the four conditions.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, one hundred percent. Now they successfully demonstrated systematic allocations
of self harm behaviors across specific situations for most of
the subjects in the study, indicating that they now felt
confident in understanding why the behaviors occurred in the first place. Furthermore,
in combination with the technology developed by car and Ran
in nineteen eighty five, behaviorists could now identify what an
individual needed when they engage in challenging behavior and teach

(48:24):
them to communicate their needs rather than to engage in
those harmful, dangerous behaviors.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
I will get a little bit more into that as
we get through this, Because they become inherently linked it's
not just like, well, now we know what's happening and
done by it's like, now, what do we proceed from
this analysis, this assessment? What do we do with that information?
And so we get We'll talk more about that in
subsequent parts of this discussion. So that was the study

(48:52):
that we just described in relatively elaborate detail, how the
study was set up and what they found. And this
was a very import and study. Now, at first, this
I think kind of flew under the radar. It was
not quite as widely recognized, but it did become recognized
fairly soon afterward. What this was contributing to how people

(49:15):
were approaching trying to understand when behaviors like self harm
occurred and people who they lacked sufficient language to communicate
what it was that they needed in those moments. Okay,
And so this was later republished in the Journal of
Applied Behavior Analysis in nineteen ninety four. That's one of
the most common dates you'll see associated with this now,

(49:36):
and it became one of, if not the most cited
study in all of behavior analysis history and launched a
fundamentally different approach to addressing these types of challenging potentially
you know, problematic behaviors that in the past no one
had any idea what to do about those. Now there

(49:57):
was a very clear direction that was guiding how people
would start thinking about and attempting to provide some kind
of support for moving forward.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean this is a groundbreaking study for sure.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
It was, and yeah, widely study, widely utilized. We're going
to go ahead and pause here for this part of
the discussion because and the next part we're going to
get into. After this happened, there was a massive interest
in how to further refine, develop and evolve these procedures
to be as effective and as efficient as possible and

(50:33):
test their limits when doesn't it work, What can we
do instead? What are the other problems that might have
that we didn't necessarily think about when we were first
putting these together. There's a lot that happened, and so
that'll be the next discussion that we'll come back to,
is getting into that second part where we really dig
into the evolution of this technology and where it sort
of went. But let's go ahead and pause there. We'll

(50:55):
wrap up this discussion, and at the end of our
full length discussions, even when we break them into multiple
par art. We're going to recommend some things because it's
fun and we do it every single time. So if
you're joining us for the first time, surprise. That's the
thing that we do at the end is we recommend
some things, and I recommend sticking around for those recommendations
because they're fun, agreed, and you're here for the fun,
So do that thing. Before we get into that though,

(51:16):
we'll get through some credits and all of that and
let you know what you can do to support us,
which is that, as I mentioned to the top, you
can leave us a rating and a review wherever you
listen to is just give us a maximum number of stars,
say something nice about us if you got the time
and the gusto to do so, and that really helps
us out. We do appreciate it. And if you would
like to take the leap a little bit further, you

(51:37):
can also go tell a friend, maybe take their phone
and subscribe for them, maybe rate us five stars for
them as well. Whatever you know, just do the thing.
But really to take the leap, you can go over
and join us on Patreon. This is a financial commitment
that can be a little one. You can dedicate however
much you feel comfortable with. But if you do that,
we'll be eternally grateful and we will will shout you
out at the end of our discussions for helping to

(51:57):
keep us a podcast. And I don't really mention this often,
but we have really fun names for the various tiers
at which you can sign up. You can be an
armchair psychologist. You can be a pop psychologist. You can
be an undergraduate research participant. Uh huh, it's a good one.
You can be a budding behaviorist. There's all kinds of
things that you can be at the various tiers at
which you sign up. You get to sign up for
the label that you'd like to have, and that's just fun.

(52:20):
But more importantly and why most people are here when
they sign up, is that they get some bonus content
add free episodes, early episodes, and at the end of
our discussions, I'll read the names of all the people
as a shout out for them being so generous and
their support. So thank you and shout out to Mike
m Megan, Mike t, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley
Kerr and Charlie. Appreciate you all so much for everything

(52:42):
you've done. To help us be a podcast.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
Yeah, you're the best, truly absolutely.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Also, thank you so much to my team of people
without whom I could not make podcasts. Takes a lot
of work, takes a village, and I need them so
writing and fact checking from Shane and myself. Thank you
for recording with me today, Shane anytime. Our social media
coordinator is Alma Wilson. And the person who makes the
words that spew out of our mouths turn into a
podcast as Justin God Emperor, producer extraordinaire of wonderful Greatness

(53:09):
from Planet Awesome, and he's so good at what he
does and we appreciate him so much.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Yeah, otherwise you hear us just say about the whole time.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
That is that is exactly what it sounds like. These
are facts. So thank Justin for making this podcast sound
so good and creamy and buttery in your ears. Mm hmm,
all right, I think this we have to say, so
come back for part two. We're going to be continuing
to elaborate on the important aspects of the functional analysis.
We really just barely got to dig into the surface
here and we got through the core foundational study and

(53:38):
which was important, but like there's so much that happened
after this, there's a lot to impact. So is there
anything that I forgot or you like to add before
we transition to our recommendations.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
No, not today.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
Okay, I did forget to say that. If you'd like
to tell us your thoughts on anything we've discussed so
far on FAS, or you like to throw your hat
in the ring in terms of some other things we
might add in the future parts of this discussion, good luck,
because a lot of the we're recording ahead of time,
but we might get to some of it. So you
can read us directly by emailing us at info at
wwdwwdpodcast dot com, or you can reach us on the

(54:08):
social media platforms, and we do look forward to hearing
from you. So do that thing, please do by Okay,
let's recommend some things.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
I'm in recommendations.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
A couple episodes ago, at some point, Shane recommended the
TV show, specifically the episode Gary for a TV show
called The Bear. This is their final season. Season five
wraps up this entire TV show. It was recently released
as available on Disney Plus and Hulu. If you have
never heard of this, this is essentially about a restaurant,

(54:47):
and it is a lot of gorgeous close ups of
people performing very competent tasks preparing food, and it evolves
from kind of like a rundown sandwich shop into so
a super high class highly rated critic Rave reviewed restaurant
over the course of several seasons. It is like anxiety

(55:08):
and TV show form, but also like there's a lot
of heart, there's a lot of depth, there's a lot
of story, there's a lot of character, and some really
great people who are on the show. In the season five,
I felt like ended just masterfully. It felt really satisfying,
It felt pretty complete. I feel like it's hard for
shows to end well, and they stuck the landing pretty well.

(55:29):
So season five of The Bear is available now go
check it out if you haven't already. It's a good
time and I think people who have already liked the
show will like it. People who are new to the show,
I think we'll find it a nice satisfying conclusion to
what was a very chaotic start in the first season.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes. I agree. Huge recommend
bonus recommend on that too, because I fully support that.
It's just lovely.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
Awesome, that's That's what I would recommend is the TV
show The Bear season five beautiful.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
I'm gonna recommend a little piece of music. It is
a band out of Boston called Fiddlehead. They are this
is the singer of a hardcore band called Have Heart,
and he's been doing this for a long time. Fiddle
Heads actually put out more records than Have Heart ever did.
But have Heart was super influential and like current hardcore,
but Fiddlehead is a little bit different, and so they
put out a new EP called Baby I'll Change. And
if you are interested in something that's got like a

(56:20):
nice melodic kind of like nineties alt feel, it's got
that vibe for sure, you know, very introspective lyrics, catchy hooks,
really great guitar work, their drum, their rhythm section is incredible,
just like really technically proficient, and they're not doing anything
like mind blowing. It's like going to go like, oh
my gosh, like these are you know, like it's not
an Ingva Momstein type of situation, but like for if

(56:42):
you're a musician and you listen to it, you go, oh, like,
these guys really know what they're doing and they do
it well, and it's like they're just they have it
locked in so fun. It's only three songs this EP
called Baby I'll Change, and every song on it's great,
every it's perfect. It's a perfect release, so I strongly
recommend it. Cool.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
All right, So it's the Bear season five and the
group Fiddlehead with the EP Baby al Change. If you
want to go check those things out. Awesome, Well, I
think this way I have to say about this for now.
Come back for Part two and then probably a part three.
We're going to continue to discuss and explore these functional
analysis things that make up a huge chunk of what
a lot of behavior analysts are kind of doing out

(57:19):
in the world. I think that's where we wrap this
up now. Anything that you'd like to add or that
I forgot before we say goodbyes?

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Nope, not today.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
Thank you all for listening. I'll see you next time.
This is Abraham When's Machine. We're out.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
See ya.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
You've been listening to Why we Do what We Do.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
we hope you have an awesome day.