Functional Analysis pt. 2

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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
automatically reinforced host, Abraham, and I'm.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Your alone condition Shane All.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
There's so many problems with the way I describe myself.
That's okay, We're moving on. We are a psychology podcast.
We talk about the things that humans and non human
animals do. And this is a part two episode. We
have been talking about something inside of behavior science in
which an assessment is conducted to attempt to determine why
certain behaviors happen, particularly when there are people who can't

(00:50):
just say why those behaviors happen, and so they conduct
some kind of an assessment to try and learn what
is going on for those individuals. It's called a functional analysis.
And so if you did not hear the first part,
we dig a lot into the history, concepts, a little
bit of jargon, and the foundational and seminal study that
kicked off this. So if you do not hear that part,

(01:12):
I do recommend checking it out. We'll do a brief
recap at the beginning of this discussion, so in case
you don't remember or you haven't heard it, you'll at
least have a little bit of context to help set
up for this part because we're going to be building
off of that discussion today.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, so yeah, we'll give
you the ins and out and kind of where we're
at leading up to all the cool new stuff that's
going on.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Right. So, if you're joining us for the first time,
then welcome. I do recommend you go back and check
out that episode and then you'll be joining us for
maybe the second time. But either way, you found yourself
here and I appreciate you being here. If you're a
returning person, thank you for coming back. And if you
like to support us, and you haven't done that already,
you can leave us a rating and review, like subscribe,
tell a friend, join us on Patreon. I'll talk more

(01:54):
about those things at the end of our discussion today.
But this is a part two, but it still comes
out on a different day of the week than Part one.
Matter of fact, this one comes out on August fifth,
So Happy Green Peppers Day.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yes, of course, love Green Peppers. It is International Alberino Day.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (02:11):
No idea. We're gonna leave it at what it is,
just like cheese Sacrifice Day.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
It's okay, very good. It is International Traffic Light Day.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
I have fast. It's National Oyster Day.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
M go support your local oyster by giving it.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Go pet your oysters.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
You'll plus your oysters. All right. National Psychiatric Technician Appreciation Day.
Well that feels. That feels very relevant to our topic.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yes it does. So does National Underwear Day.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Nice. And it is work like a dog Day, which
is to say, lay on a couch, chew a bone,
take a nap. Yes, have someone take you out to
go poop in the yard.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
That is working like a dog.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
All right.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Anyway, we don't just talk about holidays. We also talk
about we don't science things, and we don't poop in
you know, well we don't. Maybe some people have listened
to us. Probably not, Yeah, some people do it. We
as a species. Okay, let's do a brief recap. So,
as I mentioned, we've been describing in this discussion so
far something called the functional analysis. What that is, where
it comes from? And so as a brief background here,

(03:20):
long long ago in behavior science, calling something a functional
analysis was more like a conceptual exercise to just try
and like think through what are the circumstances, certain classes
of behaviors tended to occurb. That was kind of all
that it was. But then at the time also you
had people who had disabilities. Some of them were very

(03:41):
impacted by those disabilities that had meant a lot of
limitations for them. They were hospitalized, they were lobottomized, they
were medicated into a coma basically, and along came behavior
analysts behavior as scientists who are doing our behavior modifiers
there was kind of a more popular name at the time,
and they're like, well, we can use rewards and punishments
to direct these behaviors to do these other things. Those

(04:04):
kind of where things started before there was sort of
a more assessment based functional analysis.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yes, and then around the same time you had Iwata
and friends as well as car and Durand started developing
a technology for us to be able to critically evaluate
and really deep dive into the conditions under which this
certain type of behavior occurred. And they looked at the
conditions before and after a behavior occurred, and they looked
at isolating those as much as possible. Now, Card and

(04:33):
Durand is the nineteen eighty five article that kind of
started to really kind of evaluate this and develop a technology.
But this was also in development in nineteen eighty two
with Brian Iwata and his friends, and so they came
up with kind of what we understand today is the
gold standard of a functional analysis, which has multiple conditions,
and what it does is it looks at setting up

(04:53):
a circumstance for behavior to possibly occur and then delivering
some outcome as a result of that behavior occurring and
seeing if that influences behavior in some ways. And they
did this with really three different types of outcomes. It
was either positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, or we don't know
what we're doing or what's going on as behavior, so
we're gonna we're gonna see this play out commission and

(05:16):
it changed the world. It changed the world to be
par analysis in ways that we cannot possibly begin to enumerate.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
I mean, we could possibly begin to, but that's as
far as we make it. Before we were a live
well and that's another episode in the bank. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
it was very profound. And yeah, just as you said,
I think an important thing then maybe a lot of
people don't necessarily think about with respect to the functional
analysis is it was essentially these behaviors that are happening,
which in the original study was was primarily self injury,

(05:45):
is like self harm behaviors. They're either happening because there's
some positive reinforcement for it, there's some negative reinforcement for it,
or there's some self sensory stimulation that is happening as
an outcome for it. That was the hypothesis that drove
the development of the framework for that assessment. It's like,
let's create those conditions see when the behavior occurs, so
we now understand why the behavior occurs, right and with

(06:05):
the technology developed by car and Durand who conceptualized these
behaviors as a form of communication, essentially that these are
people who are saying, they were trying to communicate, we
need something. We don't know how to ask for what
we need, but we do need it, and right now
the way that we've learned to get it is doing
these types of behaviors, and they're saying, well, okay, once

(06:25):
we know what you need, we can now teach you
to ask for that in a different way. And so
that was the intervention that was born out of the assessment,
and we'll get into those a bit more as later
parts of this discussion. But essentially what we did in
the last episode is describe in fairly great detail how
that experiment was set up, the different conditions, how they worked,
and because it'll be relevant for today, I'll just briefly

(06:47):
describe that in the original assessment, these were fifteen minute
conditions where they rotated between whether they got social disapproval
as a form of positive attention and reinforcement. They got
removal of demands, which was escape from a condition that
was the negative reinforcement or demand condition. They had a
toy play condition, which was essentially a neutral everything is

(07:08):
chill vibes session, and then there was like, yeah, all
by yourself, do you do these self injury behaviors when
just there's no one around to do anything with you
type of thing to try and figure out if that's
the automatic piece. They were fifteen minutes long. They were
usually randomly rotated. Every time that the challenging behavior was observed,
there was a specific type of outcome that was provided

(07:30):
by the person in the room, unless it was two
of those sort of control conditions, the toy player alone,
and that when they observed a higher percentage of intervals
with that self injury, then that indicated that that was
the condition that under which the behavior was most likely
to occur, that was the most likely outcome that that
individual was seeking in those moments, and that was it.

(07:52):
So fifteen in intervals. They were divided up in these ten
second intervals per session, and they repeated each of those
conditions until they either had clear differentiation between the conditions
meaning that the self injury only occurred in one condition,
or they had twelve days of sessions that they had
experienced those conditions. The last part of this then, is

(08:15):
that this study was later republished in nineteen ninety four,
and that was sort of like really kicked off a
lot of new research in this field.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's why the I WANTA study
is often cited as nineteen eighty two slash nineteen ninety four,
because it was published, it was published, it was republished,
and really, I mean, like you said, kicked off a
whole set of research that was specifically focused on functional
equivalents and making sure that we were teaching skills based
on circumstance.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Okay, so that is as much I think of a
nutshell as I can do about the last hour long
discussion that we did Yeah, is there anything that I
missed you felt like was important that we communicate before
we dive into part two.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Let's see, we had some recommendations at the end of it,
which was really nice. We talked about how the current
administration is trying to institutionalize people and we don't want
to go back to that because it was bad. No,
I think you covered it. I think we did it.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Great, perfect, Thank you all right? Perfect? So let's go
ahead then, and essentially the next part here is understanding
what happened after that big study sort of came out
because there was a lot left to learn and new
challenges faced by people who were at tempting to implement
these types of strategies. But whole what a groundbreaking and

(09:35):
like foundational seminal article this was. It really changed the
name of the game. In this discussion, we'll essentially be
expanding on what came after. So when technology is when
new technologies such as this one emerge, there's often a
substantial interest in determining what we do with this, like
how do we improve it, how do we refine it,
what do we need, what do we not need? How

(09:56):
do we make it more efficient? And they're a hardly
better exams this than there are with functional analyzes, which,
by the way, I forgot to mention this, but we
might call them fays because that's a very common way
that they're talked about, is just to abbreviate functional analysis
as FA FA, so you might hear that just to know.
So anyway, there are hardly better examples of the refinement

(10:17):
process than is what happened with FAS. So will briefly
enumerate some of these refinements and experimental arrangements that have
evolved the implementation standards of this experimental FA and that's
actually that is a qualifier that is sometimes attached to
functional analysis as to call it experimental because it is
set up like an experiment. You have essentially test and

(10:38):
control conditions that are alternated to help establish a pattern
that differentiate data trends in only certain conditions to illustrate
and a numer like help understand what's going on as
opposed to just functional analysis, which as we mentioned KITE
maybe could refer to something more conceptual in nature and
not necessarily in experiment. So this is sometimes called an

(10:59):
experimental functional analysis or experimental EFFA.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah. I think another term too that we want to
make sure that everybody is aware of because I think
you said this just now, which was new technologies. When
we talk about technologies, I think people automatically assume that
what we're talking about is something like electronic like the
advance Secures advice that look a device, And it's really
important understand that a technology is also something like something
that we do. Yeah, it's basically like some something new emergency,

(11:24):
the sign something that is useful and pragmatic that can
be used to you know, improve somebody's life, change behavior,
stuff like that that's also a technology. Like a token
economy is an example of a technology that we use
in behavior analysis because we can take this intervention and
we can apply it in a in a different place.
So like I think that, I think that's really valuable
to remind everybody about too, because technology does have its
own connotations.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Such a good catch. Yeah, I wasn't thinking about that
beer exactly right, that like a strategy is a type
of technology. There's it's a it's a different way of
doing it, Like there's this whole form of expertise that
can go along with a new strategy, a new way
of doing things. The antithesis of technolo logical development as ADS.

(12:09):
All right, we're back, So we barely started to really
get into the new discussion here, but we felt like
it was really important to ensure that we had recapped
the foundation. It's been a week since that episode came out.
Maybe you're already familiar with this, maybe this is new
to you, but we just wanted to make sure we
had enough sort of foundation that we could proceed with
the next part of this and have that makes sense

(12:29):
because it's building on what we've talked about last time.
So that took the majority of our initial part here
before we had to take our first AD break. But
here we are. We're getting into now the new stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yes, so there are a few major methodological shifts in
that PAS that have become essentially standard practice in several
other versions of that FAS that have been attempted. So
I think it's really important though, Like just because this
was done and it was developed and it was incredibly
useful at the time that it was developed, doesn't mean
it stayed like that, because remember, science does not have
a finish line. So we're going to start with some

(13:01):
of the major procedural shifts that occurred. So first that
we talked about was, and this is really important you
brought this up in the recap, is the session length.
So in the original study, each condition or sometimes you'll
see the term condition and session used interchangeably, but condition
is really a better term. But each condition lasted fifteen minutes.

(13:21):
And there was an early attempt in nineteen ninety one
by Northrop and friends to streamline the FA process by
conducting shorter sessions that were only five minutes long, or
shorter conditions that were only five minutes long. However, several
different studies attempted shorter session durations, and in nineteen ninety nine,
Whillas and i Wata published a study demonstrating that reducing
sessions to ten minutes produced identical data to fifteen minutes. Further,

(13:45):
reducing sessions to only five minutes yielded only minor discrepancies
from the fifteen minute observations. So thus I sow, thus
I don't need to say both of those. Thus, most
contemporary studies use five minute sessions for each condition, yielding
a more efficient procedure and analysis. So basically what this
is saying is originally fifteen minutes, we don't need to
do fifteen minutes we were able to shorten it.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like we got it down to ten,
that already lopped off thirty three percent of the time
we were spending, and it turns out we can actually
get it down to five. And because that was like,
your data were likely to show similar patterns at five
minutes as they were at fifteen minutes, I was like
that that's a lot more efficient. We can get a
lot more done in a lot less time because we

(14:27):
apparently don't actually need that much time to do this.
So that it was like a really important refinement to
determine that they could do that. So it's not that
every single study is going to do this, but it
is fairly common that if you were to look at
a relatively recent study that used a functional analysis as
part of their methods, which you will very undoubtedly find

(14:49):
if you're looking in behavior analytic research, then it probably
used a five minute interval for their functional analysis. Not
always right, but a huge amount of the time. Right now,
So that was one of the first major changes is
that the standard setup was fifteen minutes. Now the standard
set up, regardless of anything else you're doing with that

(15:12):
function analysis, is probably five minutes right, major caveats in there,
we'll get to some of the other refinements that have happened.
But a second thing that changed and changed fairly early
on in this was the measurement strategy. Now, as we
described in the original study, they divided this fifteen minute
session into intervals, specifically ten second intervals, and then they

(15:33):
calculated the percentage of intervals in which the target behavior occurred. So,
just as a quick description of what that meant is like,
across fifteen minutes, there was a timer running and every
ten seconds they entered a new interval, and if that
behavior occurred during the interval, the would essentially fill in
the box to say yes, the behavior occurred, And then
they could calculate, of all those ten second intervals in

(15:55):
a fifteen minute window, what percentage of those had album
that challenging behavior the self harm in the original study occurred. Okay, However,
it quickly became apparent that this is not super sensitive
to changes in actual frequency. So, for example, let's assume
that we are measuring something like self harm and that

(16:17):
that behavior occurred once every single second. That would be
ten instances of that behavior in a ten second interval,
But it would only be recorded as one interval. So
imagine we're going to do a five minute session. There
are three hundred seconds in a five minute session, meaning

(16:37):
that there would be three hundred instances of a behavior
that occurred once every second. But what that would show
on a interval recording would be one hundred percent of intervals,
which is a lot. We understand that's very high. But
take this other example. What if that challenging behavior had
occurred once every ten seconds, but it occurred once every

(16:58):
ten seconds, that would be thirty instances of that behavior.
It would also show one hundred percent of intervals. Three
hundred and thirty are pretty different numbers.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Those are different numbers.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yeah, that's a wide range for your percentage to show
the exact same amount of challenging behavior occur. From thirty
times in an observation to three hundred times in observation,
that's not very sensitive, right, So essentially, researchers found that
counting each instance of behavior that occurred across the entire

(17:35):
five minutes and then instead converting the number of instances
to a rate per minute, that was a much more
sensitive way to measure behavior. So essentially, when they sort
of made this discovery of like, look, we can really
measure moment to moment changes here that it's going to
be a lot more sensitive to trend if we just

(17:57):
count every instance and then convert it to account permit it.
That became the standard for how people generally conducted these.
The overwhelming majority of FA studies published now use a
rate permittent instead of the interval recording method because it's
so much more sensitive at capturing the changes and rates
of those behaviors and the magnitude of the changes in

(18:19):
those rates.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah, makes sense. Now. The third change is the condition ordering.
So in the original study and for a while, the
order in which conditions were presented was either random or
quasi random. And there were some exceptions with this, and
we'll talk about that in a little bit, but basically
it was like, you know, when we talk about the
escape alone, play and control conditions, what would happen is
they would randomize that. Yeah, so it wouldn't be escape alone,

(18:43):
play control, escape, you know, whatever. It would go escape, escape,
attention alone. You know, like, it would randomize it in
lots of different ways. But in nineteen eighty four, it
would suggested that the order in which sequences were presented
might be important for obtaining clear results, And finally, in
twenty thirteen, a study by Hammond and friends clearly empirically

(19:04):
showed that results were clear and obtained more quickly if
they were presented in the order ignore, attention, play and demand,
So ignore being the alone condition, attention being the social disapproval,
play being the toy play that we talked about earlier,
and then the band being the escape or demand condition.
This has become the generally accepted standard procedure for conducting
an FA.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yes, with some exceptions, but yes. Essentially, what they sort
of realized was how you end one condition potentially set
up how that person was kind of activated to go
into the next one, and that you would have some
carryover effect if you weren't actually planning these out very
strategically right, like what was the mo for one became
the setting event for the next one, and so you

(19:47):
might accidentally create some artifacts by having the sequence set
up to accidentally promote or inhibit the likelihood of some
of those behaviors occurring. And so they did an analysis
of these fixed versus random patterns and empirically showed, yes,
you actually if you do this fixed pattern you are

(20:08):
more likely to obtain differentiated results where data were primarily
observed in only one condition, and you are more likely
to obtain that outcome more quickly than if you had
those randomized sequences. And so yeah, it just became like
everyone's like, oh great, we'll do that from now on,
Like that sequence moving forward makes sense to me perfect

(20:29):
And so that's generally the one of the refinements. So
essentially the three of you we've numerated so far from
the original study. That changed were that they reduced from
fifteen minutes to five minutes, They started counting every instance
of the behavior and converting that to a rate per minute,
and then finally that the order in which they presented
the provocative situations became fixed because it allowed for clearer
differentiating the results. And that became essentially if you pick

(20:51):
up a journal article in the last fifteen years or so,
maybe ten years since all these happened, like those will
be essentially what you'll see most of the time when
you're looking at functional analysis. With a major glaring exception,
some people are probably yelling at about their speakers, and
we will get to that. I promise, don't worry, don't worry.
We'll get in there, okay. But there was one more

(21:14):
that I want to discuss. There's a fourth and final
major procedural change, and actually it's worth noting, and I
understand people will say this. I know this is not
one that has been as widely adopted. So where the
other three, you'll pick up a study like you will
see those three very like arrangements as the new standard
for how to do an FA. This one's less consistent,

(21:35):
but it is there.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
It is.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
It did set the context for a new direction in
standard FA procedures, and it has been used in many
different settings, so it's like maybe more being adopted. But
this is with respect to that alone condition in which
the individual was left alone for the duration of that condition,
right that we just left them in the room and
say what happened? Now, okay. The identified purpose this condition

(22:00):
originally was to identify the potential for automatic reinforcement, which
is to say, if we're not there, we're not interacting
with them, we're not doing anything, and they're still doing
that behavior, then that that's probably because there's something self
stimulatory about it, there's something they're getting out of it
that's just the byproduct of that is a sensory experience potentially,

(22:22):
that's what we think. Okay, there's that, so okay. So
that was the whole point, right, is that like if
we leave them alone, we'll see what happens. There was
kind of a problem that actually emerged fairly early on
with just leaving a kid alone in this weird austere
room like these are almost always set up in like
a session environment the majority of the cases, particularly in
these studies, where it was like a padded room, and

(22:44):
it was because a lot of the time they were
engaging in self harm, and so we didn't want to
leave them with sharp corners and a lot of things
which with which they could injure themselves, and that include
hitting their head on the floor, head on the walls,
et cetera. And so these were like very sterile, austere,
padded environments that were very out of the norm for
where that individual spent most of their time, right, And

(23:07):
so what happened is they take them into this room
and they just leave and like shut the door and
basically wait outside the door, so that in case the
kid did try and leave most of the time these
were kids, by the way, in case the person did
try to leave, they could like they wouldn't be able
to just run off the property and get hit by
a truck or something, so they're like they're still staying
by for safety, but for the kid's experience, they're basically
alone in a strange room. Well, that can be a weird,

(23:31):
distressing environment for a kid to find themselves who already
doesn't really understand what's going on. There's a very strange
set of people doing a very strange set of things,
and now they're just like left alone in a room
for a long time, and they're like, what is going
on here? I don't like this? And so there was
kind of a problem with this idea of them just
being left alone in the alone condition because they might

(23:54):
actually see a huge spike in a bunch of random behaviors,
which could include the self injury behavior that were much
more a product of the fact that they were in
this weird, distressing environment that they've just been tossed in
and left alone, and not having anything to do with
something provocative that someone's doing to them or that they

(24:15):
want to change or anything. They're just like a very
novel place to be that is not very comfortable and
strange and unfamiliar, right, And so instead what they did
did they switched to that was something that was more
like an ignore condition. And so it happened is they
basically go in and the person's in the room with
them still they just pay no attention to them whatsoever,
no matter what they do. Unless it becomes like untenable

(24:38):
in the level of danger that is happening, then they
probably intervene. But the idea was, if we're going to
do this alone condition instead of being alone will be
in there, we just won't interact with them, and so
they call it and ignore. Okay, just need to set
the context for.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
That, sure, sure, yeah, I think it's super valuable.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Perfect all right, So in this new ignore condition and
you can ignore these ads, Okay. So I was just
describing the fact that there's this new development with respect
to the standard procedures for a functional analysis and FA

(25:18):
they had done this alone condition instead of change to
ignore condition. That's actually kind of tangential to the point
I'm trying to make here, which is that the modification
was with respect to that ignore condition. Well, there's this
twenty thirteen study published by Queerim and friends that proposed
that assessors could actually start the functional analysis process with
an extended alone slash ignore condition. Depending on whether you're

(25:43):
doing one or the other. Most of the time it's
ignored anymore. And again this was identified as an automatic
reinforcement screening condition. The hypothesis was that if low rates
of the target behavior, whatever they were there to be
assessed for, if there was not really occurring during the

(26:05):
extended ignore loan condition before they got into any of
the other conditions, then those behaviors were unlikely to occur
during those conditions during the FA, allowing the experimenter to
use then only the three other conditions attention, toy play
which is the control condition, and escape from demands. And

(26:27):
in addition, if they did start the entire FA process
by that extended ignore condition, and they did observe high
rates of that target behavior occurring, then there was like
a fairly good likelihood that that was already going to
be automatically reinforced behavior, which is to say, sensory stimulation

(26:49):
or something of the you know, some kind of sensory
input that they were getting from that experience or whatever
it was, right, that's the general hypothesis that was floated
out there. Anyway, So they're like, well, if that's what
we're trying to get at, we can just do that
whole all those conditions right up front, just do a
nice long process where they're give an ample opportunity to
if this is something they're getting out of this, we

(27:10):
can do it now, and if they if they do
observe it, then we can probably conclude without doing the
rest of the analysis that this is probably automatically reinforced behavior.
It's probably sensory, it's probably self stimulatory, and we don't
have to do the rest of the assessment now. For
the experiment they did, and they did the normal standard
functional analysis, so that what they could do is see,

(27:31):
if we observe it here, well, we also observe it here,
can we reliably determine that this probably is And they
had a very high correspondence. If they observed those target
behaviors during the extended ignore condition, then they also saw
them in the other conditions and definitely in the ignore
conditions during the rest of the FA and they could
reasonably use those to inform this was probably self stimulatory

(27:52):
and if they didn't observe it in those conditions at
the beginning of the process. They also didn't observe those
target behaviors during the alone or ignore conditions during the
regular FA, and they did see some other kind of
differentiated outcome in the other conditions. And so they reasonably said, like,
we propose that when you start your functional analysis procedure,
just do this nice elongated extended ignore condition. You don't

(28:15):
see any of those behaviors. Just don't do that condition anymore.
Just do the remaining three. Do that attention condition, the
toy play control condition, and escape from whatever the situation
is demands type of condition.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Yeah, And I think that makes sense. I mean, because
ultimately this is in service of like I mean, you're
trying to discover the features that reinforce or occasion behavior, right, Like,
that's ultimately what they're trying to do. But there is
something valuable because I think the implication here is not
necessarily that you don't need this extended alone condition. It
is another way to save you time, yes, to get

(28:47):
the results of your assessment more rapidly and not waste
time on conditions you don't need.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Exactly right, that was exactly right, perfect.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
So, although the pre screening condition is not as broadly
incorporated as some other refinements. It is still a relatively
systematic change that is often used when conducting fas, and arguably,
I think anytime you are in a space where you
can save time to get to well enformed interventions, you're
better off. And so I think this is just one
of those things that like it makes sense to adopt

(29:16):
that as part of your FA standard exactly right.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Yeah, And you probably noticed a theme that a lot
of these refinements were toward efficiency. It was like, how
can we make this a quicker and more effective process
where we can get to intervention, treatment supports, what have
you more quickly so that we can we can reduce
the amount of time this individual is existing in conditions

(29:40):
where they're having to experience this challenging behavior. Is a
potentially a very high volume.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah. I mean there's a conversation inside of this where
it's like you're balancing treatment utility versus practical utility, right,
Like what is ultimately going to serve the most effective
treatment versus what is going to be the most useful
in a treatment context in terms of like like practical use,
and like it does not benefit anybody to have extended
long assessment periods that delays access to treatment that's going

(30:06):
to be useful, right, but it also doesn't benefit anybody
where the treatment is not useful in itself. So we
have to strike a balance between those two things.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Exactly right. So people probably hear this and maybe the
whole entire time you've been asking or screaming, I don't
know that you've been experiencing and having the thought like yeah,
but at the end of the day, you're also providing
a lot of reinforcement to self harm behaviors. I hear you.
We will get to that in the discussion where we're

(30:35):
going to get more into things like some of the
ethical implications, some of the other considerations. Some of the
different approaches people have taken to this are hot takes,
Like we do have something to say about that piece, right,
because like this is not a new criticism people who
have been responding to this for a long time. We'll
get to what others have said about that piece of it.
But just just know that, like I hear you, it's

(30:56):
coming up.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah, we're gonna get to it. Don't worry.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yes, there's so much to say about so much of this.
So anyway, we're now at the point where we have
introduced a lot of refinements to try and streamline and
increase efficiency in this process so that we can have
as quick of an assessment as possible that guides to
as an effective a treatment or intervention as possible. That
what results as an outcome of this assessment is data
that tells us what supports are likely to be effective

(31:22):
for this individual. Okay, yes, there's that. There were other
innovations that occurred to also boost the utility and effectiveness
and robustness and what have you of these functional analyzes
in which researchers attempted to refine, revise, alter these functional
analysis protocols to work in other environments and situations. So

(31:45):
we're going to discuss three major ones here in sort
of the detail. Because these are like, the reason I
separated these from those other refinements are these are like,
these are totally different approaches all together, like how to
conduct a functional analysis. The refinements we discussed are like
how to make the existing process more efficient. These are
how to do a different process, if that makes sense.

(32:08):
So that's why, yeah, I separated these in their own thing.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
The structure of these are very different. I would say
that the critical feature that you're going to find in
all the functional analysis variations that we're going to talk
about are that all of them include at least one
test and one control. Yeah, right, like that is a
core feature of functional analysis. I you've got a test,
you've got to control, and then everything else is a
variation from that theme, you know. But the standard DEFA

(32:30):
is kind of its own thing. And then the first
one we're going to talk about here is latency based defas,
which I love doing because you don't have to manage
behavior as long true, which is really nice, and you
don't have to worry about delivering as much reinforcement. So
as some people may have considered, as we've been talking
about this, some behaviors are too intense to allow them
to happen fully or even really at all. Nevertheless, it

(32:51):
has been generally considered the most ethical course of action.
And there's debate about this, and I think it's really important,
but generally speaking, it is the most ethical to attempt
to understand the function of behavior, what the individual gets
out of it, what they need, before trying to proceed
blindly to treatment, Because getting the wrong treatment delays effect
the treatment, and it also puts the person at risk

(33:12):
because they continue to engage in the behavior or the
behavior worsens as a result of not having a function correct, right,
So like you have the argument is there? Okay? Yeah,
So a modified version of FA was developed to attempt
to capture the behavior without really letting it occur.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah. So that's kind of the thing is, like some
of these some of these behaviors are so intense that
they a single instance would be an intolerable amount of
that behavior occurring, Okay, And so they developed these latency
based fas so established in a twenty thirteen study by
Thomasin Sasse and friends. In this arrangement, the experimental presents

(33:48):
the provocative situation that again may escalate the behavior that
could be like seriously dangerous. And then they start a
timer and as soon as the onset of the behavior begins,
like as soon as it even starts, it hasn't like
fully even exploded yet. It's like on the verge of starting,
they provide whatever the putative outcome or reinforcement is for

(34:12):
that condition and terminate the rest of the session before
I can escalate anymore. The more quickly the behavior occurs,
the more likely that outcome is the effective thing that
the individual is seeking in those moments. I don't think
we really explain this super clearly in the original studies.
That essentially what happened is like, let's go back to
that social disapproval condition that is in the normal situation,

(34:34):
and let's go with the refinement of like a five
minute condition of that socialist approval. So they come into
the room and they're interacting briefly for a little bit,
and then the person, the experimenter or the therapist whatever,
the tech says I can't talk right now, I'm busy,
or I can't I can't hang out with you, I'm busy,
and then they withdraw their attention. If the individual in
this room then demonstrates the target behavior of concern, let's

(34:59):
say self harming again, then the tech will come over
and they'll provide attention, but they only do it for
like twenty or thirty seconds. They're just providing this, So
don't do that, please stop, You're gonna hurt yourself. It's
like usually, I mean, it depends on a wide variety
of factors, but how they respond is informed by an interview,
which we haven't talked about. We'll try I'll try to
remember to make sure we get to that in the future.

(35:20):
But essentially how they respond is informed by what was
normally or supposed to normally be. This how people would
respond when this individual would do this in their normal environment.
But anyway, they'll only do that for about twenty seconds.
Then they withdraw their attention again, and so then the
individual could again immediately do that self harm behavior. And
if they do, then the therapist immediately comes over and

(35:40):
addresses it again, and back and forth they go for
the entire five minute interval. So you could have like
a maximum instance in which they they will do self
harm and receive some outcome for it that could be reinforcing,
and then it's withdrawn and then they do it again
and they receive enforcement again, and they do it again
and they receive it again. Could do this up to

(36:01):
three times a minute. If they're really really efficient, it'd
be once every time, Like assuming it was a twenty
second interaction for the social disapproval, they could do that
up to three times a minute to really maximize how
much attention they could get to how much effort it
took for them to do the thing, the self harm behavior.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Right.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
All that is to say that in these latency based ones,
there is no opportunity for repeated opportunities for that behavior
or escalation is like they start to get worked up
and you're like, boom, reinforcement, whatever the thing is, whatever
the outcome is, we deliver it right away before this
can escalate, and then we stop. We're not doing it again, right,
And it's how long did it take before I provoked

(36:40):
you to you starting to escalate? And that's the latency piece.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Right, So it'd be like, you know, we present an ad,
how long does it take for you to start skipping
through the ad? Okay, so we are back. We're talking
about latency based that phase. And really the feature is
that when we present the evocative or the provocative stimulus
to whatever's going to escalate the behavior, we start a timer.

(37:05):
We record when the onset of the behavior, we deliver
the reinforcer right away so that the behavior does not
continue to escalate, and that is the end of that session.
Like once the behavior starts, that is the end of
that session. Because it's supportant for everybody to know, latency
is for the time between the stimulus and a response, right,
So that's why it's called a latency based AFA. It's
the time between when we present that evocative stimulus to

(37:26):
the time the response starts. Now related to this, Najowski
at All in twenty thirteen identify that there are some smaller,
lower stakes behaviors that reliably precede escalation to higher magnitude behaviors.
They could reinforce those less intense behaviors as functional proxies
for the target behavior of interest and obtain clear, differentiated
results which could proceed to an effective intervention recommendation. So

(37:48):
I imagine what we're talking about here as a precursor.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
FA right, Yep, that's exactly what that is.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, precursor FFAs are really cool and coming from a
place where I work with folks that have that really
severe behavior, like these are life saving tools. Yeah, being
able to identify related precursors to a behavior can save
somebody's life. You know. I've done fas for like rectal
digging behaviors and eye gouging behaviors, and it was because
we had these tools that we were able to do
it and figure out the functions.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah. I was actually going to share a story of
like someone that I did work with who they were
a very large person and they would often run to
places where there were hot water. Whether we were sharp objects,
they would try to run out the door. If they
got escalated, they would attack and they would like punch, hit, scratch, bite.
They got really intense and they would really really badly

(38:34):
into themselves. But before they did that, they would reliably
bite their thumb, and so it was like as soon
as they were getting agitated, they would bite their thumb,
and you knew, okay, we are now on the escalation trajectory.
So what you could do as part of a functional
analysis is reinforce the thumb biting and only that, and

(38:55):
we didn't let it get past that point because that
was functionally the same as the rest of the behavior.
The outcome for that was the same as the outcome
for the bigger, more escalated behavior. At least that's what
the research seems to have shown, is that like, we
can reinforce those precursors and then it doesn't have to
get to the point of severe danger because the lower
stakes want to bite your thumb, which is also like problematic.

(39:16):
Like this he would scar himself from some of the
biting he would do, but like that wasn't getting the
point where he was cutting himself or running into traffic.
So it was like, we can reinforce the lower magnitude
version of this before it escalates, and then provide an
intervention based on the fact that we can presume that
the outcomes of the same because they're part of the

(39:38):
same class of behaviors. It's just part of the escalation
ramping up.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
And it's super important to understand when we talk about
synthesize that phase later.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
True, that is so important to understand that precursor piece
because that is such a key element to It's not everything,
but it is a key element to the synthesize that
phase when we talk about that in the next episode.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Perfect, yes, thank you for teeing it up so beautifully.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Okay, So that's that's getting That's like the latency based
fays as well as those precursor fays, they were kind
of related in a lot of ways, so I wanted
to incorporate them there because with the with the latency base,
like you often want to stop it before, like you're
basically reinforcing the precursor in that as well. But at
that point you you terminate the assessment so that you
aren't necessarily getting out of hand, right, Like, how many

(40:21):
times are you willing to allow someone to stab someone
as part of an FA? Zero times zero is the
right number. No stapping.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
It literally can't happen.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Yes, it can't happen. So it's like you you stop
it before it gets to that point. Okay. Another kind
of similar way that these are set up, but they're
technically their own class of things is called a trial
based functional analysis. Now, functional analyzes were and usually are
conducted in these as I mentioned, highly structured, tightly controlled

(40:50):
settings with many safety precautions in place, right, Like, like
I said, the padded rooms, they're like lots of staff
on hand, there's very little in the environments they could
possibly hurt themselves with or somebody else. But in reality,
that's not where or what the situation is like when
those type of behaviors tend to occur for that individual, right,

(41:13):
they're not usually like they did not start life or
let's spend most of their time in these patterned rooms.
Usually they're at home, they're in school, they're in a
grocery so, or they're in an actual place with a
lot of stuff around them and a lot of potentially
dangerous stuff, and so that's just not similar to the
situation in which that individual's challenge of behaviors tend to occur.
So there was this nineteen ninety five study by Sigafus

(41:36):
and Saggers and they pioneered a different presentation for their
functional analysis functional analysis assessment that they called a trial
based functional analysis.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
Yes, so in this arrangement, the experimenter first presents a
calm setting event that is unlikely to evoke a problem behavior.
Then the experimenter presents the evocative situation, similar to a
latency based FA if it's our behavior occurs, the pre
selected outcome is delivered, and then the session is terminated.
These usually last only one to three minutes and have
the similar benefit of stopping the behavior before it escalates uncontrollably.

(42:11):
So it does allow us to kind of evaluate the
context in which the behavior is evoked without seeing the
follow up of the dangerous behavior that might continues to occur.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
And again they can kind of do these now more
out in normal environments. So it's like, this is the
situation we're in, We're all prepared and ready to go.
We're going to just present the vokave situation. See if
it happens, and then if it does provide that that
potential reinforcer, and then we'll call it done for that trial. Yeah,
like it was just a one and done. Does this
reliably produce the behavior? Can we reliably provide something that

(42:43):
would reinforce that behavior? And then that trial can complete.
If it doesn't produce that behavior and there's no opportunity
for that putative consequence or the outcome, then we could
reliably say that probably is not the situation, That's not
what that individual is going for, right, Yeah, Yeah, but
they can do these in those more naturalistic environments. Grocery stores.
Schools is actually a very commonplace.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Schools. I was going to say, schools is probably the
most common you'll see that.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
Yeah, I think that those most likely with this is
happening is in schools. And then they can get to
use that assessment data to suggest and inform a potential
intervention package that they might have then put together to
support this individual's communication or environmental arrangements that are less
likely to cause the kind of distress that results in
self harm or aggression toward others. Right, absolutely, all right,

(43:30):
the final sort of arrangement we're going to describe that
was kind of a different take on this is again
similar to this trial based FA. These are natural environment
would also called like pop up or FA burst contingency
functional analyzes, and as I said, these are are very
similar to this idea of the trial based functional analysis.
It's in a natural environment where this is likely to happen,

(43:54):
but these can be arranged for their much longer, so
it's sort of just given an opportunity, you are there
observing the whole time. They're not really planned, but given
the opportunity, you jump in when and if that target
behavior naturally occurs as part of the sort of regular
daily situation. So the experiment might observe for a long
time and again they're doing this same environment that's highly

(44:17):
likely to evoke that behavior of concern here, and then
when it does again, they provide the outcome they're attempting
to measure regarding whether or not that is the thing,
that is what the individual is attempting to obtain. What
are they seeking to get out of this? What do
they need? Can we identify that by providing it when
that target behavior occurs, systematically providing it.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
And this requires some staff training as well, So like
if it's happening in natural environment, and there's like staff
or caregivers. Like what they are supposed to do is
when that behavior does occur under whatever conditions, they are
supposed to deliver whatever outcome, like immediately, they're supposed to
drop everything, and like basically their response is contingent on
the burst of behavior that occurs. And that's essentially what

(45:01):
happens is like the minute the behavior starts to occur
in whatever condition, because the conditions are longer, we are
prepared to do an attention condition at this time. So
we are going to when this behavior occurs, we deliver
attention and see what the rate of behavior is that
in that particular condition, so or if it persists. So
it's an interesting one. It's a fairly new one, but
it is one that does exist because it is occurring

(45:22):
in naturally natural environments, and it is something that is
pretty unique. And ideally this occurs when, if my understanding
is correct, it occurs when it's difficult to capture naturally
occurring mosh. So like this might be something where like
you know, you have a hard time kind of like
setting up that evocative situation, and you know there are
certain situations that are a little bit more difficult, like

(45:43):
you know, maybe going to a doctor's office or something
like that, So you might do something like that where
it's less it's it's similar to trial based, but it's
a little bit different because you are programming in a
different way. We kind of thought about this before the
show too, and like in the middle of the show,
there are studies on this, but it's kind of unique
and kind of like its own thing, and it is
I think currently being further evaluated.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah, just as you said, like, the conditions under which
this makes sense as an approach are just as you're saying, like,
if you try to manufacture the conditions, that might not
be enough to actually create the context of which that
behavior is likely to occur. So you can't do the
actual assessment because you never get to observe it. You
never get to attempt any kind of arrangement that would
allow you to get an assessment other ones in which

(46:25):
just might occur. Are like you don't have a space
to try and conduct that functional assessment, so the best
you can do is go into the space or it
currently exists. This might make a lot of sense if
you are in a situation where even if you had
a space, for whatever reason, you couldn't get the person
to that space, and so you just have to show
up where they are, Like if it's not safe to

(46:45):
drive them, for one, if they don't have transportation. There's
a lot of reasons that you couldn't necessarily get them there,
but you want to be able to assess this anyway.
So there are a variety circumstances under which this makes sense.
And you can also imagine like how much more valid
it is to be like, well, this is we didn't
manufacture anything. This just happens. Yeah, it happens, and like
we get to be there, so we can capture the
opportunity to see, can we do an actual assessment analysis

(47:09):
of this when it happens. That's got more validity to
an approximation of what kind of outcomes are most likely
the ones that are occurring here that would tell us
something about this this behavior right exactly. Okay, So those
are some of the major adjustments that have been attempted
to find ways to bring utility to functional analysis to

(47:32):
address some of the issues that came up with functional analyzes.
We have a lot more to say about this. We
haven't even gotten into the fact that, like, similar to
this idea of natural environment, what about just observing and
not manipulating anything. There's a name for that too. Then
we'll talk about that. And there are data that have
compared those observational assessments to experimental assessments to questionnaires. There's

(47:55):
actually a lot to impact inside of those spaces. Of course,
many of you, I'm hoping, if you are behavior analysts,
will also be wondering, well, why haven't you talked about
the synthesized FA yet or the ISCA or the PFA
different names for the same thing. We are going to
get into that next time. That'll be a part of it.
Like there's a lodge unpack with that, because that also
came with that was such a major shift and how

(48:19):
functional analyzes were conducted. It kind of created a schism,
like there is kind of a camp of people who
are like, we'll go this route with functional analyzies and
other people who are like, no, we're not going that
route with functional analysies. Yeah, So getting into the controversy, well,
I think will be its own huge discussion we need
to unpack because there's a lot of nuance there and

(48:39):
a lot of smart people making a lot of great
observations and smart points on both sides of that discussion,
And I think we just want to be as transparent
and objective as we can be about what's going on, right,
And I mean, I'm happy for us to kind of
weigh in on some of these aspects of things, but
I do think like let's just sort of unpack what's
happening as part of it, and that will require a
lengthy discuss that we want to save for its own thing.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
Yeah, most definitely.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
There's also like some of the refinements that have come
from the interventions that have been developed out of these.
There's a wide array, but there's some that I think
that are particularly interesting that are worth spending a little
time discussing. And we've got our own opinions to share
on some of these. So there's plenty for a whole
nother discussion here that we're going to save for next time.
So never don't you fret if you're a worried we
hadn't gotten to your favorite stuff yet, We'll get there.

(49:25):
And if your favorite stuff is behind us, well, then
keep coming back because we've got fun things to say
as well.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Yeah. Yeah, And if your favorite stuff is adds, that's weird.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
All right, we're back. We're wrapping this up. We're wrapping
up this particular discussion for part two. We do have
a part three. Part three should finish it up. I
think we'll be able to fit everything we need to
in that part of the discussion. It's possible this will
go part four, but I really don't think there's enough
left for that to be the case. But I'll leave
the door open. If there's something we missed. If you
like to chime in and share some stories to give

(50:00):
us some context, to help us unpack something that maybe
we said incorrectly, or a citation that we got wrong
or missed, feel free to email us. You can contact
us directly at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com, or on
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blowing your mind so far and you're like, man, I've
never learned so much in one place, well, congratulations. We're

(50:22):
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(50:42):
which is very cool, then we appreciate that. We love
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If you don't want to know that it's you want
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you want, or you can put your name, and either

(51:03):
way I'm gonna read it. So a giant thank you
and shout out to the people who put their name
as Mike, m Megan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, Kiara,
and Charlie. Thank you all for your support, for your
continued support, for your loyalty, for your generosity, for being
just generally awesome humans. And we appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
You're perfect and we love you.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
I did not say this before, but we were going
to recommend some things. We did this at the end
of every discussion. Hopefully you're a returning person and you
know that by now, but if you don't, then that
is a fun thing that we're about to do. After
the credits, I also would like to say thank you
to my team of people, without whom I could not
make this show. So writing in fact checking from Shane
and myself. Thank you for your help and for recording
with me today.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
Shane, Hey, anytime, happy to do it.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. And the person
who is extraordinary, amazing, wonderful, awesome, perfect on, creable and
just the best overall audio engineer is Justin. Thank you,
Justin for making us podcasts sound like good podcasts do.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Yeah. Yeah, we only sound good because you do good.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Yes, despite my best efforts, it turns into a podcast,
and that's thanks to Justin's magic. All right, I think
I said the things. Is there anything that I missed
or you would like to add before we get to
our recommendations. No, let us recommend some things.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Oh, I'm so ready recommendations.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
All right, I'm recommending a board game. I kind of
tried to strategically over the last few episodes, like I
recommended a show, a movie, a board game, an album.
I'm trying to spread out the love a little bit.
This is a board game. It's actually not a new
board game. This has been out for a little while.
It's not that old. It's maybe like, I don't know,

(52:46):
it's fifteen years old, thirteen years old, on ten years old,
something like that. It's it's oldish, but not that old.
It's called Zulkin. It's spelled tzl k apostrophe.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
I n.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
This is based on the mind calendar.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Mmm.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
And it's this cool gimmick that I really like, which
is that on the board you have these plastic gears
that interlock and every time you take a turn. Once
everybody has taken a turn, they're putting out their pieces
on the gears. Then you move the gears one space
and then that changes what you could potentially gain from
having been on those gears. And then you take your turn,

(53:24):
and then you move the gears again and so and
you've only so many times that you can put your
pieces on gears or you're taking pieces back from gears,
and you're basically doing that for four rounds of the gears.
They have little stickers so you know how long it's
been per round. But you do that and then and
it's just a really cool idea. And basically you're doing
a thing where you're like collecting resources to do certain

(53:47):
things you want to collect other like build buildings or
you want to move up a temple, or you want
to build technologies, whatever, you can do whatever you want.
But the point is you sort of choose to collect
some resources and then you get to just move the
little gear around again, and that just moves your pieces
down different spaces that give you different abilities that you
can then take. So you kind of have to calculate out, well,

(54:07):
how long do I want to wait on this gear
before I get moved to the space I want or
I get moved past the space that I want, Yeah,
and then choose at that point to how you're going
to interact with your options. Just a really cool neat idea,
A really fun little system that's been developed and it
looks really cool and really fine and it's not particularly expensive.
This is the publisher is called check Games or CGE,

(54:29):
and so you can check out those. But that's Zulkan
zupboard game.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
That sounds so fun. I love that.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
So I'm going to recommend a series of four books
right now, currently eight, because I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed and
I am I can't help but be obsessed and so fair.
I'm going to continue to talk about Dungeon Crawler Carl
until I turn blue in the face because I am
having so much fun with this series. So by the
time you hear this, I'll have read the first four

(54:56):
books and they are called in order, Dungeon Crawler, Carl,
Carl's Doomsday Scenario, The Dungeon Anarchist Cookbook, and The Gate
of the Faral Gods.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Beautiful.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
And this book series is one of the best world
building book series I've ever read in my life.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
I mean it is truly like it talks about like
at some point in time they go on talk shows
because because remember the because I've talked about it before,
but I'll talk about it again. The whole premise is
that Earth has now been reclaimed by a private organization
to reclaim all of the resources. So like every Earthling
has now become enslaved by this alien organization and they

(55:37):
are forced to compete in a dungeon crawl similar to
dungeons and dragons, and there are eighteen floors. It's like
a game show. Like it's a game show. Yeah, it's
a reality game show. So it's broadcast across the entire universe.
And of course, because it's being broadcast as a reality show,
there are advertisers, and there are sponsors, and there are
all the things that go along with that, and so

(55:59):
it's just it just gets more absurd and more ridiculous
as it goes. And so I am about to finish
the Gate of the Parah Gods, which there's at some
point in time, there's a haunted sex doll. There's all
kinds of things that are happening in this book. It's
just it gets really really obnoxious and absurd, and I
love it. I love it. I am just like I can't.
I don't normally care about spoilers, but this is one

(56:21):
of those things where I'm like, I don't want to
read anything about this book until I finished the eight
books because I don't want any spoilers. So I'm like,
I want just to be surprised by everything that happens.
And it's like I get the same feeling that I
get when I read The Dark Tower the first time.
M that's awesome, which is just like, I'm so excited
to see what happens next and I don't want anybody
to spoil it for me. So anyway, it's a really
good time. It's a lot of fun, and I suggest

(56:42):
everybody start reading it. You're to hear me talk about
it a lot.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
Yeah, it's been so widely recommended to me by so
many people, so many times. It's definitely like very high
on the list of like next things to read. And
I'll probably burn through really quickly like you did. But
that's super fun, so great. I'm looking forward to it.
I recommended Zulkan, the Board, gamelk Apostrovia I n and
then you recommended Dungeon Crawler Carl. The are apparently eight books.

(57:06):
You're recommending one through four as an ongoing recommendation, so
it will come back again.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Yeah, it's an ongoing recommendation. It will come back every
time I finished a book, it will be the recommendation.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
Very good, very good. All right, Well that's awesome. As
I said, you can tell us your thoughts by emailing us.
Thank you all for listening. I think that's what we
have to say. Is there anything you liked out or
that I forgot before we wrap up?

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Nope, that's it perfect.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
This is Abraham and this is Shane. Come back for
part three next time we are out see yuh.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
and we hope you have an awesome day. B

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