Functional Analysis pt. 4

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
synthesized contingency host. Let's already use that one before, in

(00:23):
which case I'm just your running out of bright ideas
host Abraham, and I'm.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Your aren't you excited for another acronym? Host Shane.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do, and we are
in the part the fourth part of a series of
discussions about a tool used by behavior analysts very commonly
in clinical settings and I guess experimental settings, and which
we are trying to determine why certain challenging behaviors happen,

(00:54):
particularly among individuals who might have impacts from diagnoses, trying
to understand how to get their needs met in a
way that is not through those sort of challenging behaviors. So,
if you have not heard anything up to this point,
we will try to do a brief recap on what
we have discussed so far. I do still encourage you
to go back and check out those previous discussions to

(01:15):
have the foundation that you would need to access this discussion.
But I can't control what you do so welcome either way.
If you're joining us for the first time, then I
hope you enjoy what you hear in this discussion. And
if you're a returning person and welcome back, I'm glad
you have continued to seek what we are providing out
for your entertainment and knowledge growth. But that's what we're

(01:37):
up to today.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, we're so excited and ideally and we always kind
of jinx ourselves when this happens, but this will likely
be the last of the functional Analysis series as we
kind of wrap things up, bring it to present day,
and maybe even look at some strong opinions that we
have on this.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
So yeah, we get into our hot takes.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
I'm excited.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, it's I had planned for this to prob be
three discussions, and obviously we needed more than that, so
four feels like it should be sufficient, but I could
be wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah, As you said, we tend
to be long winded. We know a lot about this,
We have a lot of personal experience with this, We

(02:18):
have stories to share and insights to impart upon everybody,
and so we sometimes will go off script a bit
and just elaborate, and that does mean more and longer episodes.
But I thought we were gonna wrap this up in three,
so I think we should be able to wrap this
up in four.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Either way. It is August nineteenth, so happy International bo
or maybe Boo Day. Maybe it's a bobow a balbo.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, it's a balbo bal bun. It's bal buns. We
like bal buons.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
It's an International Orangutang day.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Okay. It is National Aviation Day.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
I love that. It's National Hot and Spicy Food Day.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Ooh, celebrate. I'm here for it. So you're National Medical
Docimmetrist Day.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yes, yes, it is even better. It's National root beer
Float Day. Oh.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
I love a beer float. Someone once took me up
with one of those. That'd be great.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, somewhere is like the perfect time for a root
beer float, or like a like an orange creamsicle float,
like an orange soda float.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Okay, okay, I think I know what I'm doing after
we record.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Today In Australia, Like, you know, they call cream soda spiders.
Do you order a spider? Like that sounds horrifying? I like,
is this a real thing?

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Are you?

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeaheah no no no no, But like I like I was.
I was at a hotel, like, and I was walking
by and They're like, we have milkshakes and spiders, and
I was like, that is horrific. But apparently that's what
they call their cream sodas.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Okay, they just put the spiders in the milkshake.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, yeah, and it tastes like orange.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Oh no, wow.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Fact of the podcast. Hopefully not Hopefully we've got more
contents the podcast. But all right, well, moving on, National
sand Castle and Sculpture Day.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Fun, so fun. They do contest here. It's really cool.
It's National Soft ice Cream Day.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
I like some soft ice cream.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
It's a potato Day, Love me some potatoes too. Some
good foods going on in.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
This food day. Yeah, get to root your float and
some French fries. Oh my god, life is good. It's
World Humanitarian Day.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Oh beautiful. Love that. It is World Photography Day. It's
a good one too.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yes it is. And it is Minority Enterprise Development Week.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Okay, very nice. Yeah, all right, Well, the holidays are
fun and we do them because this podcast comes out
on a holidays day of things, and it's fun to
just communicate those whimsies as a little teaser, a little
easing into the discussion whatever we're going to be talking about,
even if it's a light discussion. I don't feel like

(04:59):
this one particularly heavy. It's technical, but not one of
those more like emotionally heavy episodes that we have done
in the past. So yeah, there's just a fun thing
we'd like to do. So anyway, if you enjoy what
you have heard so far, and you enjoy what we
say after this, and you're thinking to yourself after this
podcast ends, I'd really like to help these guys out.

(05:21):
There's a variety of ways you can do that. You
can leave us a rating, a review, like subscribe, tell
a friend, or join us on Patreon, and I will
talk about those things in a little bit more detail
at the end of this discussion, so that I do
not delay our beginning any further than that. But I
think we've done all the intro things. Are we ready

(05:41):
to talk about fays, Yes we are. Okay, let's do
a quick recap on what we've talked about in the
first few episodes up to this point. First, what we
did is we discussed the fact that the concept of
a functional analysis, before it was an experimental technique, was
largely a theoretical exercise. It was the unpacking the variables

(06:06):
in sort of a discussion format about what could be
happening with some aspects of human behavior. But then in
the nineteen eighties, essentially we get to some studies that
are being published that describe an experimental arrangement in which
variables are tested to try and determine what are the

(06:30):
reasons that some individuals who have disabilities might be engaging
in some challenging behaviors. And in those original studies, in particular,
there were self harm type behaviors. They're injuring themselves, and
they were trying to figure out what is going on
with these individuals.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Right, And the goal of those arrangements were to primarily
isolate variables, right. It wasn't to test lots of variables together.
I mean, just like any sort of experiment, we want
to figure out you know, functional relations or relationships between
those variables that we mean manipulate and the outcomes of
that said manipulation. And so that's essentially what this new
arrangement was designed to do, was to figure out causes

(07:08):
of behavior by isolating singular or at least as close
to singular variables that we could to see if it
did influence behavior one way or another. And what we
found was pretty exciting because it was pretty pretty I mean,
we were able to see pretty clearly that there were
some influences.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, and conceptually the way they sort of thought through
this was all right, there could be social reasons for
this that like, it's something about what other people are doing,
that's why we see this self harm, or it could
be something else. It could be either in a way,
either self stimulatory or and we didn't say this before,
but it could be a medical thing. So it's like,

(07:45):
if this is an internal issue why they're doing this,
we could rule that out from it's a social issue
from why they're doing this. And so in the social
issue we can test either positive reinforcement which is being mitigated,
delivered and otherwise arbitrated in a way I guess by
some other people, some external third party, or negative reinforcement

(08:07):
arbitrated by that external third party. That was the way
we'll sort of break out the social aspects and if
it's not those, then there's something internal going on that's
it might be self stimulatory or it might be And
they didn't really delve into the extent to which they
determine a medical condition, but it could be some kind
of medical condition, right, right, And so which is kind
of clever too if you think about, like, why are

(08:27):
these behaviors happening? Is it something about their social environment
or something about their internal environment. That's a really helpful
way too to just distinguish those variables.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah. Absolutely, And then one of the conversations that we
were having as we were kind of going forward was
also this issue because we as we're talking about kind
of doing an experiment and how quote unquote time consuming
it could be or anything like that, which we did
talk about in debunking some of those things. One of
the questions that kind of always came up was why
couldn't we do this through interviews or why couldn't we
do this through observations? And really the truth was it

(08:56):
just wasn't as robust. You could get some of those answers,
you could get some of those variables, but it just
wasn't as salient as robust as you would get through
that kind of that initial arrangement and kind of messing
with those variables. So while those could be useful tools
as part of the assessment process, they weren't sufficient in
in identifying and solidifying causation as part of this kind

(09:17):
of overall discussion around the causes of behavior.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
And I'm just thinking back to on the basic experimental
arrangement of the functional analysis in reflecting on the episodes
we've recorded so far, I was wondering if we've communicated
clearly enough that essentially in the testing arrangement that they've
developed to try and isolate these variables, the way that
they do that is we are going to strategically and

(09:41):
repeatedly try and apply the hypothesized reinforcement to see if
we can make that challenging behavior increase. And the reason
that they do that is to see, like, does this
happen more when this situation is present? Because if that
if it does, then that that means that situation is likely.

(10:01):
The reason it's happening in the first place was essentially
the hypothesis. And that's the thing that I think a
lot of people struggle with when they first encounter these
is like, Wow, you're deliberately making more happen in these
situations with the challenging behavior that could be really dangerous.
And that got us speak into various types of refinements
and procedures that people have developed around functional analyses that

(10:25):
are things like, we'll reinforce precursor behaviors, so rather than
allow it to escalate significantly, it's what are the things
that they do that are leading up to that high
magnitude challenging behavior and will reinforce those those initial steps
first so it doesn't get all the way there, and
then if that works, then that tells us that that's

(10:45):
still the function, still the variable that's relevant for that behavior,
Why it's happening, that's the cause. But we don't have
to let it get to the point where it's too dangerous.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Right exactly, which I think is critically important and actually
I think that is going to be a good we
kind of get into today's stuff. Another reason why we've
got this kind of new synthesized variation of a functional
analysis and kind of the updated stuff there, because ultimately
came down to like do you need to evoke behavior
to capture the function of the behavior. There's a lot

(11:16):
of comments and a lot of thoughts and a lot
of things that we can unpack with that, but that
is I think also just one of the central concerns
of doing functional analysis, which the Handley article from twenty
twelve also helps to kind of debunk that and spend
a little bit of time kind of like unpacking variations
in like different ways that we can go about conducting
fas in meaningful ways.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, so, for those of you who have been listening there,
we've done a fairly decent handful of referencing studies and
articles that have been published on this topic. Those are
our primary sources that we have used for this discussion
so far. All of those links have been in the
notes so far. I did add some more over subsequent episodes,
so like the first couple of episodes published wouldn't have
all of the references, but the most recent couple should

(11:57):
have all of the references, just because as we we've
recorded this over a few weeks and just updated some
more things as we went through, and so just in
case you were looking for those and didn't see them,
they should be there now. Yeah, wow, that recap took
us all the way to our first ad break.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
We are we are so skilled at this.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
So good. So we all right, well we do have
actual new content to get into for you, but you know,
we've we teased it up so well with our previously
on segments that we have talked ourselves into an ad break,
so we'll see you on the other side. Yeah, okay,

(12:40):
we're back. We have described in great detail all the
things we've discussed so far about functional analyzes, and so
we can get into the bulk of today's discussion. Are
you ready for the segue? Yeah, let's do it all right, great,
So we're gonna start by actually talking about something we
have brought up in previous discussions here, but we're going

(13:01):
to focus on this for a moment, and that's what
we do. Once we have finished the analysis from the
functional analysis, we have done, the experiment, we've isolated. Okay,
these are the variables that tell us what is going
on for this individual when they engage in these challenging behaviors.
What are they trying to get out of this situation?

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Right?

Speaker 1 (13:20):
And we described a few times up to this point
that the purpose is to determine that what is called function,
like what they're trying to get out of it. We
call the function the function of the behavior is they're
trying to get this right, and that from that function,
the most common next step that you'll see in a
lot of the literature that uses Functionalyzies is to teach
the individual to communicate their needs with some kind of

(13:41):
communication method rather than turn to those more challenging forms
of behavior. And sometimes that communication is they might do
a picture exchange, which we have never done a full
episode on, but essentially it's like it says, these are
for individuals who do not use very much vocal verable behavior,
and they might exchange like they might have and iPad
that has a picture they can point to. They might

(14:01):
have physical pictures they can hand to somebody that's a
thing that they need. It could be a break or
a snack, or what attention or play someone, whatever it
is they need. They learn that they can do that
instead of the challenging behavior. Depending on why they were
doing that challenging behavior, we create that communication strategy. They
might also do sign language. They might also say vocally
what it is that they need. There's a variety of

(14:22):
things that they could do. So let's using our We'd
previously described an example of an individual in a classroom,
and what was happening in this situation was that the
teacher would be engaging with other students and the student
would start hitting their head on the desk, and then
the teacher would come over and attend to that student,
and then the student would stop hitting their head on

(14:42):
the desk, but as soon as the teacher left, they'd
hit their head on the desk again. And essentially from
this hypothesized fake situation we concocted the reinforcement was attention
from the teacher. Basically, the student just wanted to have
one on one time with the teacher, and that the situation.
So the function of the behavior was to get the
teachature's attention. So what we might do instead with that

(15:03):
result is then teach the student to raise their hand
instead of banging their head on the desk. They could
raise their hand, and when they do that, then that
results in the teacher's attention. The individual can get what
they need, which is the teacher's attention, without hurting themselves, Right,
that's sort of the purpose in the arrangement. That's the
next steps after we've done that analysis piece.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah, without hurting themselves in a much easier way, less
effortful way. Yeah, there's lots of things there now. Shrewd
listeners and those who are already familiar with these arrangements,
you may already see or know that there can be
an unworkable outcome to this communication training called functional communication
training or FCT. You know, again, of course more initials
to memorize. That is, when the individual requests the thing

(15:44):
that they need, what happens when they are constantly requesting
the reinforcer? We have to kind of like think about that.
If they're constantly requesting the reinforcer, do we continuously deliver
that reinforcer? What happens when the reinforcer is not available
or not forthcoming? Can the reinforcer itself be provided endlessly
and individual is never asked to tolerate times or situations
in which that is not available at all for fear

(16:05):
that they might return to their challenging behavior. That's always
a kind of a constant conversation that we have, is like,
if they're going to ask for it, what happens when
we have to say no? Right, because it can't be
around forever? And that is that is always kind of
like I feel like, if it's not in the forefront
of the discussion about FCT, it's always kind of a
looming discussion as part of that.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, I mean, using our example of the kid in
the classroom, like Okay, So the kid raises their hand,
the teacher gives them attention, and then the teacher needs
to go work with other student. The kids raise their
hands again. They have to stop what they're doing and
come back and pay attention to the student. And then
they turn away to go help other students and the
kids raise their hand again, they have to go back
and pay attention to the student. Like is that sustainable?
Like can we expect? Like the problem is like this

(16:43):
kid's just gonna always be raising their hand to get
their teacher's attention because that's the thing that they want.
And if they don't get that, what do we think
is going to happen?

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Right?

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Right, They're going to eventually go back to the strategy
that worked before, which is hitting their head on the desk,
which is a whole other conversations called resurgence. It's worth
digging into at some point, but you can imagine those
situations people who are listening to thinking like, yeah, but
I mean, you just can't do this endlessly. You just
can't honor every request forever. And you're right. So there
were several attempts early on to explore how we might

(17:12):
teach these new communication methods and account for how to
manage situations when that request doesn't work. But how do
we do that? Do we just provide the reinforcement only
some of the time that they ask, so it's like
they might request and that we don't do it some
of the time, but we do do it some of
the time. Do we just stop providing it for periods

(17:33):
of time and just say, like wollw it's just not available.
Do we provide it in smaller quantities maybe they just
get used to having a little bit less of it,
or we do huge quantities so that they're satisfied and
don't want anymore. Like variations of this were tried in
several experiments that we'll go and outline a couple of
the takeaways from those.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Right, So in nineteen ninety eight, and this was further
developed in two thousand and one, some studies started using
something from basic research literature with rats and pigeons from
the nineteen fifties called a multiple schedule. And I'm sure
that people who are listening to this are like super
stoked to get into schedules of reinforcement again, and those
like simple and complex schedules of reinforcement. I'm sure, you're thrilled. Yeah,
to start like diving into that. For me, it would

(18:12):
bring up some like ooh, some emotions because I remember
studying conjunctive schedules and multiple mixed schedules and I was like,
I hate this. It's a lot, but it's actually like
super powerful. Yeah, I knew you would like it, but
like it's cool. It's cool once you like really understand
how it works. Right, So multiple schedule this arrangement. This
is an arrangement in which, once the individual has learned
a communication strategy, the clinicians then teach the individual to

(18:35):
recognize a signal that tells them that while the signal
is present, their request will be honored. Every single time.
When the signal is not present, their request will not
be honored. So, like, you're going to describe a simple
version of this, so I won't get into that. You'll
probably explain this much better than I will. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, So just to make sure that you, like, we'll
paint a pictures so you hear AU say that there's
a request or there's a signal that says your requests
are going to be honored, and then a different signal
that says as they will not and that's the basic
arrangement here. And just to be clear for those of
you who are maybe already in the know about how
multiple schedules work technically, that is, a multiple schedule can

(19:11):
be a lot of things. It does not have to
be this. This is just the way it most commonly
appears in this particular setting. But you could actually have
like a bunch of different situations, a bunch of different
signals that are all correlated with different schedules of reinforcement,
and that would be a multiple schedule. It doesn't just
have to be on off. There's only two conditions. There
could be a lot of different conditions and they could

(19:33):
all have different signals, and they could all They don't
have to be honored every single time too. It could
be honored every other time, or every variable third time,
or something like that. But the most common way that
this is arranged in this clinical setting is basically on
off during one condition, it's always available during another. It's
not so in a simple version of this, there is
some very clear cue, such as let's say a large

(19:54):
green sign for when requests will be honored, and then
there's maybe a large red sign for when the request
will not be honored, and although some variations demonstrated, you
can simply alter the availability queue. So let's say you
have the green card and the example, and then it's
absence of that then signals that it is not available. Right,

(20:14):
so you don't necessarily need both signals. You could just
have one means that is available and the other one
means it's not, or vice versa. You could just have
the one that says us not available, and when that
one's gone, it just always is. That could also be
a way to do it, and the queue can also
be something fairly subtle and portable, such as a wristband.
There's been some studies that specifically used like a different
colored wristband, and some studies have even explored teaching the

(20:36):
individual to recognize more common environmental or behavioral social cue. So,
for example, if the teachers out their computer, they might
not respond when I raise my hand, but when they
leave their computer, then when they raise their hand, they
will respond and come over and give that attention. So
the basic description of this is like, all right, let's
go at the really simple one. In this classroom, the

(20:58):
teacher puts a green poster board up, and now the
students when if the students aware the green poster are born.
We've taught them how it works. When they raise their hand,
the teacher is going to come to them, but the
teacher does need to deal with other students too, so
then they put up the red poster board and now
whenever the student raises their hand, they do nothing, but
that green poster board is coming back. It'll probably only
be a few minutes too, Like the teacher is going
to go around help other students, and then they're available again.

(21:21):
They put the green poster board back up, and the
student raise their hand, the teacher comes over and we'll
talk to them. And then they essentially learn that like, well,
that red sign is temporary, it will be back, because
there's a very clear queue, like the thing is there,
then it's not, then it's there, then it's not like
it will be back, and they just learn to wait
until it's available again, and then they know as soon
as it's back that they can get the thing that

(21:42):
they need again. But that way it's a much more
manageable situation.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I've been seeing this more
at conferences too, where there are clear signals for like
how people like to be greeted like are you a hugger?
Are you handshake? Are you no contact? And like I've
seen those signals too, where it's like just really clear,
like hey, I can engage this behavior here in this
context because it will you know this is not available here.
This signal four, This is not available here, So I
will not do this here. And so I've been seeing

(22:08):
that more conferences lately, too, kind to help kind of
like discriminate, like who you get how to engage with people.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
I love that I would like, I would like the
hug one, please.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Yeah, I I too would be the hug one. But
I also know that people are like, no thanks, and
that's perfectly fine too.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, many people don't want that kind of attention. And yeah,
and that's why I tend to just keep my distance,
because you know, you don't want to get in so
in space. But if there was someone who I like
was wearing a clear signal that they were like also
the hug type, then I'd be like, get over here,
we're hugging this out and bring it in, baby, that's right.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah. So now colloquially, colloquially, I always have a hard
time saying that word because I just blend all my
sounds together colloquially.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
The three vowels right next to each other that all
make a distinct sound.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
Make that a hard word, it's just a's just a
tough word. Now, you could think of it as teaching
the individual that they just need to wait a little
bit and eventually what they want will be available again.
And there have been many, many studies over the last
three decades showing that multiple schedules are successful at reducing
the frequency of requests only at certain times, but maintaining
that strategy for the individual without them returning to the

(23:11):
challenging behavior. So it's really effective in improving behavior and
shaping behavior in these ways.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, the issue can be that we're concerned that if
we take away the availability of the reinforcement that they
will stop requesting and go back to that challenging behavior, right,
But what we've seen with the multiple schedule arrangements is
they maintain a high rate of the request, meaning that response,
that new behavior we've taught them is working, but they
only do it when the reinforcement is available, and then

(23:37):
we don't see a return to those challenging behaviors, and
so we get basically it's the trifecta. It's that the
perfect All three things that we needed to have happen
are happening right right. So that's why it's been kind
of cool. And I don't have any better cues to
help signal for skip these future ends. Okay, we're back.

(24:06):
We've been talking about the way that you might teach
an individual to communicate what they need and then teach
them to recognize cues that signaled the availability or lack
of availability, such that they learned that the lack of
availability is temporary and that they will eventually get what
they need again, and therefore they have a strategy to
get what they need but also tolerate periods of time

(24:26):
when it's not available. Yeah, all right, so let's dig
into the new stuff here. Yeah, So, in twenty fourteen,
the world of functional analysis and FAS experienced as largest
ever paradigm shift, and I would say rift in the
sort of behavior analysis community, And maybe some people would

(24:48):
would disagree with that characterization, and that's totally fine. There
have been other things that have happened that people didn't
necessarily always agree with in this in these ways, but
this one was kind of a big shit. So a
study by Handley and friends explored a new way to
approach and conduct functional analyzes now like standard functional analysis

(25:09):
analyzes before, they did the same thing where they conducted
an interview to determine the relevant features about the target
behaviors and context, and then they would observe the individuals
in sort of a natural environment for like fifteen to
thirty minutes. Yes, so that was fairly common to how
functional analysies had been done. They did create their own

(25:31):
version of an interview. They did make it so that
it was very open ended. They had a lot of
opportunity for the caregivers, the relevant stakeholders to provide and
elaborate their own thoughts and details on this so that
they could try and use that to tailor as closely
as possible their environments that they create to that individual's
actual circumstance. And then that whole observation thing is actually

(25:54):
not necessarily standard in functional analyses practice, where you just
watched the individual for a little bit. That does happened sometimes,
but they made it just part of the process.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, the way I understood this process is like it's
a little bit more in line with kind of like
the full FBA process that includes an FA. So like
you do your interview, you do your observation, so you've
got your indirect and your direct assessments, and then you
do your test, which is either gonna your functional analysis
or the synthesized FA that we're going to talk about.
So like to me, like that whole process follows in
line with kind of like FBA processes. At least it

(26:24):
is a general as a general rule, yeah, for the
most part, or at least as some of those hallmarks. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
So after they do the interview and after they do
the observation, they create a pair wise assessment or they
created a pair wise assessment in which the tested condition
consisted of every probable situation that might provoke the target behavior,
as well as every probable reinforcer that might follow and
reinforce the target behavior, calling this a synthesized FA. And
basically what they were kind of doing here was like that,

(26:49):
like in these conditions, you could turn the behavior on
and off. Yep. It's essentially what they were doing with
all those yep. You hear folks use those terms a lot,
like you should be able to turn the behavior on
and off really quickly. Now, they alternated this with the
control condition to detect whether or not there were elevated
rates of the target behavior during the synthesized target condition.
And when we say the target behavior too, like the
behaviors we're interested in are not necessarily the problem behavior itself.

(27:12):
It might be related behaviors or like a functional response class,
so it could be lots of like low grade, low rate,
low intensity behaviors that are assumed to be related to
the major problem behavior that they're assessing.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Now. In the original version of the functional analysis, essentially
what they were testing is is this a positive reinforcement
thing or negative reinforcement thing. In this synthesized version, they're
not really trying to determine if it's positive or negative.
They're just trying to show that the target behavior could
be reliably provoked and reinforced in that synthesized condition, the

(27:46):
one that has all the possible triggers and reinforcers in it,
all in one condition, rather than isolating them all across
different conditions. It's just one alternated against that control, and
following that they could then teach the individual to request
that outcome specifically, as we have seen with those other
functional communication training applications, and then after they've reliably done that,

(28:08):
they directly build and practice opportunities for what they call
delay and denial tolerance training to teach the individual that
sometimes they'll request the thing that they want and it
won't be available and they just are going to be
okay with that, and they just build up that tolerance
as well, where sometimes they have to be told no,
sometimes they'll have to be told to wait, and sometimes
they'll get the thing that they want, yeah, and that

(28:29):
they'll just be okay with the fact that those are
the arrangements that they have, and they just do a
nice slow sort of shaping exercise practice to get them
prepared to handle those situations. And so that's again a
pretty different sort of approach to a lot of the
other sort of techniques that have been developed up to
this point.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Right now, the shakeup is almost inevitably going to stir
the pod as, they say. One was a challenge to
the claim that the since sized fas could save time.
Proponents of since sized fas claim that these yielded outcomes
and fewer sessions than the standard FA would be able
to do. However, independent analysis found that this was not
always the case. And that a standard FA might be
just as or even more efficient at determining functions of behavior.

(29:08):
Now that being said, there are a large number of
published examples of the efficiency of the synthesized FA, and
I've gotten to run a couple and it's pretty wild,
Like you can do it like ten minutes.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
They're fast, and the bulk of the peer reviewed literature
does seem to show that they are very fast and
that they're very efficient, and there have been some other
independent researchers showing that sometimes they are not the most
efficient way to go. Sure, So like just throwing that,
I was like, we try to just be as like
clear and what am I open I guess as possible

(29:41):
about like the reality situation, which is like there are
people who argue that this is not that fast, and
there are some studies to show that it's not necessarily
the most efficient, but most of the people who've done this,
most of the studies that are out there that do
look at this, do show they're very fast and they're
very efficient, and they just they do just take less time.
You can pretty reliably from that synthesized FA show that,

(30:04):
as you said, you can turn the behavior on and
off and be like, well, this definitely works moving on,
and then you don't spend very much time on it, right,
that is a thing.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yeah, you kind of let your treatment be your like
your follow up and go like okay, so we were
able to kind of turn behavior on it off really quickly,
like we were able to demonstrate a functional relation here
in this context with these synthesized fas not to go
ahead and do interventions and then let's see what the
rates of behavior look like from there, Like you can
kind of like like that follow up is almost like
your replication piece a little bit.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah. Yeah, so we're kind of we're in this whole
synthesized functional analysis discussion part here, and there's again there
was sort of some many people who did not like
this direction that this was going, and so they were
sort of trying to articulate what about it they had
concerns with. One of them was time, or at least
the claim that it was faster, which again most peer

(30:54):
VOOD studies show that it is, but there were some
that show that it wasn't always just a thing to know.
Another argument that was made again against the idea of
the synthesized FA was that because all possible reinforcers were
delivered at once, there might be a couple of unintended consequences.
The strategy might a be including reinforcers that were not

(31:15):
actually relevant to the target behavior, so they were like,
there's just extra stuff in there that's unnecessary and therefore
make it maybe less efficient, and b actually be creating
functions for the challenging behavior that did not previously exist,
because all of a sudden they were superimposing new reinforcers
as consequences for that target behavior that weren't there before,

(31:38):
but do function as reinforcers, and so now they're reinforcing
that target behavior when they weren't before. And there were
a handful of independent studies between twenty sixteen and twenty
nineteen that showed exactly that that if you did a
synthesized FA the way they did this is basically did
like a standard functional analysis and a synthetized sized function
analysis and then another standard functional analysis, and showed that

(32:02):
reinforcers that were not previously applied to that challenging behavior,
when they started being applied to that challenging behavior, they
started showing up as reinforcers for that challenging behavior later
when they weren't before, Meaning we're creating new functions for
the challenging behavior and new reinforcers rather than trying to
make the behavior decrease. It's now open to a wider

(32:24):
variety of reinforcers, and that that could have some challenging
outcomes for people who are working in a clinical space
trying to support these individuals with better communication techniques. That
was essentially the argument.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yeah, Now, for the first outcome, they compared to a STANDARDFA,
some of the reinforcers used in the synthesized analysis analysis
were not necessarily to determine a clear data pattern. So
like basically there was they added more than they needed
to write.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yeah, you didn't need all that.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Now. In the second case, some individuals challenging behavior started
occurring with new reinforcers during the synthesized FA that were
not maintaining the behavior before the synthesized FA.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yeah, but nevertheless, the synthesized function analysis has been widely
studied across various independent researchers and even across I've now
seen this actually published from people in many different countries
and has demonstrated extremely high reliability and validity, with many
clinicians reporting how much easier it is to implement, how
effective of a tool it has been for establishing behavior functions.

(33:22):
In some cases, these are people who would have never
tried to do an FA, but they did feel like
they could do a synthesized FA, and so where they
would have otherwise maybe wasted time making things up to
try and solve a hypothetical behavior function, they now can
actually do an experimental arrangement to determine a behavior function
and do it faster. So there's sort of speaking to

(33:45):
the idea here that this has been pretty effective. And
although there have been these studies showing that it can
create new behavior functions, there have also been studies showing
that it doesn't necessarily create new behavior functions, and there
is like the extent to which it does create new
behavior functions we don't know yet. And to be fair,

(34:05):
I have not kept up in the last few years
with this back and forth that was happening, and so
it's possible that I missed a couple of articles that
did show like the actual rates of introducing new functions
versus not. But suffice it to say that like just
because you do a synthesized functional analysis does not mean
you will have new behavior functions, right right, It could

(34:27):
be the case, and maybe we need to determine what
are the conditions under which that's likely to be the case.
But for the most part, they've just been refining and
making their techniques better and better and more efficient and
more effective over time. So most of the research that
will be done in this will show ways to avoid
even that potential pitfall, if that is one that is
worth worrying about.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yeah, and they've come up with variations too, so like
just like our like the standard FA, like the analog
FFA that we know in all the variations like latency
based THATFAS and all that, like this process, the synthesized
functional analysis component, the ISKA, if you will, like all
of that. Now there are variations of it that are
latency based. There are trial base there's a few new
ones too that have shown up which are really cool.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
That is really cool. Yeah. Actually I was aware that
they had it made sense, like I kind of thought
that's where they were going with it, But as I said,
I hadn't watched in the last couple of years. As
far as I know, none of them have ads. All Right,
we are back. We have been unpacking. Essentially one of

(35:29):
the last big changes in the world of functional analyzes
was this the synthesized functional analysis, just a different way
of approaching how to do this. So I want to
get also to some some like concerns people have had,
questions people have had in our own hot takes about
this as well. And the first thing I want to

(35:52):
start with is people who are way outside of like
behavior analysis, who have been hearing this and maybe felt
like I just I just don't understand what's happening here.
You keep saying you're reinforcing problematic behaviors. Why, like this
feels like this is not something you should be doing right, sure,
and so I want to do a try and feel

(36:12):
like I can do my best to address this. And
one of the common ways that people have talked about this,
and Handley did in that twenty twelve article as well,
is it's like an allergy test, and an allergy test
you're trying to create a small allergic reaction to something
to see what are the things that are causing your
allergic reactions? Right, So they can't just interview you and

(36:36):
see like do you like what do you think is
making you allergic, and then you tell them and they're like, great,
we'll just treat that. Like that might not work because
you could you might not know what's the thing that's
making you allergic, and even if you think you know,
you might be wrong. So the whole idea here is
like we just need to create the reaction so we

(36:56):
can figure out what's creating the reaction and we can
use that to try and address it in a different,
less harmful way. Right, we'll get into this in a moment.
But during the functional analysis again, like the safety is
still like the number one priority. So it should never
be the case, and not saying that it never was

(37:18):
or that it never is, but it should never be
the case that you allow a behavior to have occurred
at such high magnitude that anyone's in actual danger, Like
you should have enough safeguards in place that when that
challenging behavior happens, it is mild enough or there is
enough safety equipment in place that it cannot actually cause

(37:42):
actual harm to anybody. That is how the ideal would
be arranged. Now, again, probably people have not been as
diligent about ensuring safety as they should have been, and
there maybe are still people who aren't as diligent about
that as they need to be, but it should be
the case that the are relatively low stakes as minimized

(38:03):
opportunities for risk as possible in these situations. And rationale
that most people have argued here is that, like, we
have to be able to reliably show what are the
variables that are contributing to this, which means we have
to make it happen at least a little bit, right,
do you have some more to add to that? Sort
of like, in response to this concern about reinforcing challenging behaviors.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
The thing that I kind of will always go back to
is like behavior is so variable and flexible that like
the effect that you're going to get even at the
minimum effect, the minimal effect that you would get from
a test like this, is easily reversible. Like I think
that's the other side too, is like, and when I
say easily reversible, all I mean is that if we
can change behavior so quickly within an hour, then we

(38:47):
can change it back within even last time. I would imagine,
so like you know, like we are creating kind of
like unique learning histories. But I do think it's I
think it's really important to remember that, like that behavior
change that we see can be to pray depending on
how we intervene following those answers. That's something I kind
of always think about when I think about those arguments,
is kind of go like, well, behavior is not static,

(39:09):
like responses are not static, and responses to environmental contigencies
are not static either, So like that's something that can
change rapidly.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
This is a very good point. Yes, that's definitely a
very good point. And the other thing I think that
I would others have said, whether or not I need
to weigh on this in my own personal opinions, I
don't know, but I think people might ask like, well,
but why do this at all? Like why not just
use the observations, why not just use the interviews? Why
not even just use like you know that you have

(39:39):
some kind of effective reinforce, or just shape up different behaviors?
And I mean, thore are some valid positions to take,
Like I can see you saying like, let's just not
create the opportunity for harm to happen at all and
minimize risk and instead just do what we can with
what we have where there is zero risk, like there's
none whatsoever, because we have we're using the interviews, we're
using the questionnaires, we're using observation to do those things,

(40:02):
and or we're just using reinforcement like a blunt object
to just reinforce different paviors. And I understand that position,
and I do think the response that most people have
had to this is like going back to the example
we used in a previous discussion from Hanley, like, imagine
you in a hospital and you need water and you
can't communicate, and they keep they do all the nice
things for you. They bring you food, you want, nice
pillows and nice blankets, and you're just not getting what

(40:24):
you need, which is water. And that's sort of the
situation here is like we're not addressing whatever need was there.
We don't. We're not if we're if we're just using
reinforcement to just shape a different behavior, we're not necessarily
addressing the motivation for that behavior in the first place.
Like what is the context that is creating this where
we could be addressing that context instead and having this

(40:47):
individual have like a satisfying needs are met type experience
as opposed to just now they're just doing something different,
even though they still might have that need and that
context where the needs are not being met. So that's
one way that people responded to that.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Yeah, absolutely. So like going back to kind of talking
about the functional analysis part of this too, Like these
tests that we're running, they don't actually reflect the natural environment,
Like it's not that systematic, it's not that consistent either.
So when we conduct the functional analysis, we are creating
a completely fabricated context, in a fabricating environment. It's very sterile,
it's very isolated. Yeah, and then providing reinforcement at a

(41:24):
frequency that is extremely unlikely to occur in any sort
of real world situation. So like in an FA, they
will get a punitive reinforcer for every single incident of
the target behavior or the behavior of question or the
behavior that we're focused on. It's extremely unlikely that the
reinforcer for that behavior is available that often in their
day to day experiences at that density, at that rate,

(41:46):
Like that that's just not it's not what really happens
in the real world.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Yeah, just acknowledging that, Like we create this environment to
test it, it is an artificial environment, I mean, at
least with respect to the context in which that behavior
would have otherwise occurred. And going like, using this example
of the kid who bangs their head on the desk,
is it the case that they hit their head once
and then the teacher immediately comes over. Probably not. Probably
what happens is they've learned, they do it a few times,

(42:11):
and then that gets the teacher's attention. And then, many many,
many situations, parents will accidentally shape up these challenging behaviors
where the first time a kid does it, they deal
with it in a way that accidentally reinforces that behavior
right away. And let's just use attention as as an
example one. So, like, we have a child who acts
out in some way that's somewhat minor, and the parent

(42:31):
comes over and maybe lectures them, like, hey, like, it's
not okay to do this, And what the kid learns
is not I get lectured. What they learn is I
get attention. What form that attention takes doesn't really matter.
I got attention. Right, So then they do that thing again,
they act out again, and then the parents likeugh, I'm
not dealing with this, I'm gonna ignore it, and so
that the kid escalates it a little bit and now
the parent's like, okay, now I got to deal with

(42:53):
this right, and then they come over and they are
now they're giving their attention to this thing that has
now increased in magnitude. The kid learns, okay, that one
little act out I had to do to get this
in the first place didn't work. I need to escalate
this to get it to work. So then the next
time they act out and it's a little bit escalated,
and the parents like, ugh, I don't want to deal
with this. I'm not gonna do it. So the kid's like,
all right, we're going even harder. And you can see

(43:14):
that over a few times, this goes from something relatively
minor to something extreme because every time the caregivers are
the people who are the ones delivering this consequence, they're
like trying to hold out a little bit longer, and
the kid or the individuals figuring out, I just need
to push a little bit harder, And so it shapes
up from something minor to something extreme. And it doesn't

(43:38):
take a super long time to get that. It's just
every opportunity they escalate a little bit, or they do
it a few extra times more, they yell and scream,
and then they get what they want, and next time
they yell and scream the parents like, I'm just gonna
wait them out, and then they yell and scream and
break something, and then they get what they want, and
then the parent the next time, they yell and scream
the parents like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna give in.
They yell and scream and break something, and that doesn't

(43:58):
and then they yell and scream and break something and
start throwing that at other people, and now they step
in to deal with it. Right, So, whatever it is,
they just keep escalating and escalating, and every time, like
eventually it pays off. So that's sort of a very
different environment from a functional analysis, where it is like
you do it once the first time, the lowest magnitude

(44:19):
version of this, the lowest intensity version of this, and
you get that outcome every single time.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
Just different, right, right exactly.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
So let's say, for example, that there's a home and
an individual bites their hands so hard it bleeds when
they ask for food, and then they don't get it. Right,
that's normally they bite their hand and that people know, oh,
they're trying to get food. We just need to give
them food. Assuming this is a condition that would even
be tested for in a clinical setting, which is a
big if this is not a very common thing that
you would test in a FA. But let's say that's

(44:49):
the situation in their hand, the situation we're in. This
individual learns that they don't have vocal communication. They but
they have learned they bite their hand, it bleeds when
they ask for food, and they they don't get it all. Right,
in a functional analysis, assuming they're even testing for this,
In that test case, they're in this austere, sterile environment.
None of the people who are usually around them when

(45:11):
they do this thing are there. The setting is different.
All the other contextual features, the furniture, the lighting, the air,
the temperature, the things on the table, the things in
the room, those are all absent, right, And those are
things that are potentially participating in the context that facilitates
that behavior occurring in the first place. Right, So just

(45:34):
to sort of say, like, we're trying to assess this
behavior that occurs in one place, and we're putting them
in an environment that has none of those features whatsoever
at all.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Right, So, I mean it's kind of like when you
watch a show and it's ad free, Like that's kind
of like what the stair, you know, the sterile environment
looks like, but we know most of the time we're
watching a show or something like that, there's some advertisement placements,
there's there's an ad break even sometimes like right now. Okay,

(46:06):
so we're back and we're talking about this idea that
the functional analysis conditions that we run are not necessarily
reflective of like what's happening in real life. Like we're
getting close to like isolating variables, but it's not the
rate of intensity of the reinforcement. It's not all of
those things that people often think it is. So when
we are testing, we're not really testing whether a given
outcome is the thing that is reinforcing and maintaining the

(46:28):
behavior for that individual when their target behavior occurs. What
we are testing is can a given outcome reinforce and
maintain that target behavior. It is a subtle but important
difference because testing what works to reinforce behavior is basically
a preference assessment, although technically in this space it is
a reinforcer assessment. We're actually looking at the effect of
stimulus delivery on rates of responding yes.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
So again this is kind of the hot take. This
is like the thing about which people who feel very
strongly about function analyses who have done a lot of
these might disagree with us, but maybe they'll agree with
this write in and let us know. But the point
here is that we're creating a very artificial, novel environment
to do this assessment, and then we're testing if I

(47:17):
apply this this consequence will reinforce behavior. Now, it's reasonable
to assume that if it does reinforce the behavior, then
it has worked in the past to reinforce that behavior
and therefore might be the thing that does reinforce the behavior.
But it's also reasonable to assume that we just found
a thing that can reinforce the behavior, and it might

(47:38):
not necessarily be the thing that was reinforcing in the past.
Like things can have more than one reinforcing outcome, and
as we saw in the synthesized FA with some of
the research has shown that you can just create new
functions and apply reinforcers to a behavior and have those
reinforcers work to reinforce that behavior, whether or not they
were the thing that was reinforcing it when it happened

(48:00):
that had that person come into the clinic for an
assessment in the first place. So let's just go to
this example of someone who bites their hands. They're like,
at home, what happens is they bite their hand and
then they maybe get food delivered to them that they
were they were hungry and they didn't know how to
ask for food. They bite their hand. They're like, oh,
we need to bring them foods. They stop biting their hand,
and that's their thinking about it. And in the clinic
we see that, like when they bite their hand, we

(48:22):
come and we bring them attention and they're like, oh,
I kind of like this attention thing. And then they're like, well,
I just bit my hand. I got my attention, so
I'm going to do that again. And they bite their
hand and they get attention. They're like, oh, look, we've
clearly shown that attention is why they bite their hand.
That could be a thing that happens, because like we
didn't test the what happens that we bring them food
when they bite their hand, because why would we test

(48:43):
that In a lot of situations, we just want to see,
like if I give them some attention, then like that
is currently working. That might that must be what they're
the reason that they're biting their hand in their natural environment.
But it actually wasn't like there was maybe another thing.
Now I just made that whole situation up of the
person biting their hand and getting attention and whatnot. But
like the point being that, like it could be the

(49:04):
case that we're creating those because we're just identifying can
a thing reinforce a behavior? Right, not explicitly is this
the thing that has reinforced the behavior? But I also
want to go back to the point that in the
natural environment, they're mostly not contacting reinforcement every single time
the behavior occurs, right, And there are very different types

(49:26):
of motivating operations, And they also might be getting different
things out of that behavior in different circumstances. So sometimes
they do this behavior and there's something they're trying to get.
But they've also learned this is a strategy for the
When I do this thing, I get what I need
because in the context, the people who around me just
figure out what that need is. So I bite my
hand when I'm hungry, I bite my hand when I'm tired,

(49:47):
I bite my hand when I want to leave. I
bite my hand when I'm frustrated. I bite my hand
when I want to get out of work. They like,
what they've learned is this is a thing that gets
me what I need, right, And like sometimes it takes
me a few tries, but they'll get there eventually, they'll
get me what I need, you know, most of the time.
That's that's how it works. So it's just I've learned
this is my strategy. So when we go to try
and test that in a clinical setting, it's like something

(50:10):
might work. Is it the thing that has worked in
the past, maybe, Is it the thing that definitely reinforces
this behavior all of the time. Maybe not?

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Maybe not right exactly. So I think it's important to
kind of like think about this as we're talking about this.
It's not the belittle the importance of this work. Finding
a way to get more reinforcement into an individual's life
while simultaneously reducing how much they harden themselves or others
is like the worthy outcome, even if we choose a
somewhat arbitrary reinforcer that is nevertheless highly preferred and valued

(50:39):
by the individual. So this is still important work and
we'll do great work for that person. Now. Similarly, while
this is designed to be an assessment not intervention, I
think that's really important to remember that this is an
assessment not an intervention tool. It is worth pointing out
that we cannot measure and observe behavior in a vacuum
devoid of context and learning. We are always learning, including

(51:01):
during an FA and so our learners are not going
to be isolated or cushioned from reinforcement or learning history.
As a result of this. The individual in the room
is figuring out what we are doing and changing their
behavior based on the circumstances that we've created. So we
create a circumstance to figure out their behavior. They're engaging
in behavior in that circumstance, and they're learning new ways
to engage in behavior inside of that circumstance. So their
behavior is being shaped as part of the process of

(51:23):
being assessed, which is why it's so important to also
keep this kind of as short as possible, because the
longer you do it, the longer learning history shows up,
and the more things show up. So it's a really
complex thing that we can't just be like, oh, yeah,
this is for sure the result of this test, because
there are so many other variables and like kind of
like features of the assessment that can influence behavior beyond

(51:44):
what we originally think.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, they're learning, they're in an environment where they're figuring
us out while we're trying to figure them out right
like that, it is a two way street, So anything
we do shapes their behavior in a new direction. We're
not just assessing like this is what definitely is. And
I have personally observed this many times when conducting functional analysies,
and I always kind of wanted to actually do an

(52:06):
explicit study about this somehow. But what I have observed
is that once the individual starts to figure out that reinforcement,
whatever it is they're getting as the putative reinforcer, once
they figure out that is forthcoming following a specific behavior topography,
like a specific way that they do this thing in
specific conditions, they essentially, like you might predict that like

(52:29):
they you see a huge increase in the behavior. But
what I've actually seen over and over again is they
are exerting as little effort as possible to earn that reinforcer,
whatever it is. I was in an FA one time
with a student who would attack others when they didn't
get their way. So essentially it was like what we
sort of figured out for this individual was their requests

(52:51):
being honored in a specific way was kind of the
function here, And so it was when they didn't get
their way, they would attack other staff, and once they
figure it out, they could get their way by attacking staff.
Their attacks that were things like grabbing, scratching, spitting, kicking,
throwing objects that they were using. They would do that

(53:12):
but using barely any strength at all. Eventually it went
from them like full blown attack to like they would
come over and they would just like slap you on
the wrist or the knee or the shoulder or something
whatever is close by. They just kind of reach over
and just do like a tap, and that full blown
attack in which someone could have and in some cases
even were actually injured, turned into something with a slightly

(53:35):
less gusto than a half hearted high five, just enough
to earn that reinforcer, but taking as little effort as
possible to exert. So the magnitude decreased significantly because they
learned that they just didn't need to work that hard
to get the thing that they wanted. It wasn't that
they were malicious. They weren't attacking people because they wanted
to see harm come to people. They just didn't know

(53:58):
how to get what they wanted in that situation right.
And what they learned was like I attack someone, I
get what I want. I attack someone, I get what
I want. I start to attack someone, I get what
I want. So though, like they're not even escalated at
this point, they're like, we create the evocative situation. They
reach over and they're like sort of light tap on
the shoulder and they don't get it, and they're like,
all right, a little bit harder than that. And then

(54:20):
they get it and they're like, okay, that counts now
as aggression. Now, the rates of aggression that we're measuring,
we basically just measured yes it did happen or no
it didn't. So like when we're counting as we're observing
this to take data and like actually develop data trends,
is did the behavior happen or did it not happen?
And so the rates look about the same, but the
magnitude is decreased from like dangerous to barely counts as

(54:45):
an instance of the behavior occurring right right right, And
I've observed those multiple times with multiple different individuals across
variety of circumstances and behaviors. And so in a sense,
the assessment itself became a kind of intervention, and there
is an actual strategy that some people in clinical settings
have used where you do explicitly put a challenging behavior

(55:08):
on it what's called an f R one schedule, meaning
you reinforce every single instance of that behavior. Because we
also know from schedules of reinforcement that a behavior that
was reinforced every time goes away more quickly when reinforcement
goes away, So you can figure out that, like in
the instance we're describing before of that kid who like
they escalate and escalate and escalate, they'll often like figure

(55:30):
out they have to do it a whole bunch of
times to get the thing that they want to do
it four or five six times. If you stop providing reinforcement,
then like they're four or five six times, they're not
going to do it another four five six times, and
then another four five six times, and another until they're
doing it like fifty times, right, and it's still not coming.
Then it starts to taper off. But if you if

(55:52):
you are reinforcing every single instance of that challenging behavior,
then they do it and it doesn't happen. They're like,
that's weird, I'm used to getting reinforcement. Try it again,
They're like, hold on the reinforcements still not happen. They
try a third time, They're like, okay, what are we
doing here? And then like because the reinforcement tapers off
like it was, it was so dense. Going from every

(56:12):
single time to zero times means that it sometimes is
faster to see that de escalate to nothing. And so
that is an explicit strategy that some people have used.
So in a functional analysis, if you're reinforcing every single
instance that happens, you kind of accidentally intervened, right, because
like it's just it's now on a different schedule than

(56:33):
it's ever been on, and it's also not requiring the
same amount of effort to get them there. So they
just sort of learn the like, all right, it happens
like I ask a little bit like that one little
tap wasn't quite enough. I tap a little bit harder.
That's still not doing. To tap a little bit harder,
and they're like, go even to ask it a little
bit further, Like, Wow, this just isn't working. I guess

(56:53):
I give up. You know, I have seen that sort
of thing happen. So while we treat this as an
assessment tool, which is what is designed to be, and
I think in most circumstances where learning valuable information that
translates directly into clinical outcomes. Philosophically speaking, understanding that what
we're kind of just doing is a reinforcer assessment, and
that they're learning from us as much as we're learning

(57:15):
from them. Yeah, in those situations, if not more, And
it does in fact shape their behavior in a specific
direction that is not necessarily isolating or understanding variables. It
is creating a new learning history.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Absolutely, you nailed it.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Okay, those are sort of the hot takes here.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
I think whenever we are assessing human behavior, I think
gets complex and I think that there are like ripple
effects and outcomes that we don't necessarily always pay attention
to when the goal of the assessment or the goal
of whatever we're doing is is very clear, right, So, like,
if the goal is to figure out the function of behavior,
we might not think about those kind of like tertiary
benefits or those outcomes that actually have a greater effect

(57:53):
than we realize, Like you just mentioned, like increasing the
density of a schedule of reinforcement ultimately reduces the rescis
spont's effort or the intensity of the response that we're
concerned about right, like all of those things. That's not
a side effect that we often talk about inside of
an assessment, but that is an effect that can happen.
I think that's worth kind of like understanding. Is like
when people talk about functional analyzes, they can't just be like,

(58:14):
this is what a functional analysis is. Like, it's like,
this is what it is on the surface, but ultimately
there are all these little effects that you have to
pay attention to and be mindful of and be aware of,
and which is why competency is so important when you
do these things.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
True, very true. Okay, there is a we've referenced this
in the last episode and in this one. I think
I forget which one's exactly in this whole series that
we've been doing. But there's a twenty twelve article by
Greg Hanley in Behavior Analysis and Practice and which he
digs a lot into like myths and lore about functional analyzes.
I know it's a few years you know, it's over
a decade old at this point, but I think it
makes a lot of arguments that people have continue to

(58:50):
use and describe and talk about. So if you have
other concerns or questions or inquiries, that is a good one.
It's a good place to start at least, and then
you can sort of see what else has cited that
set that was published and sort of follow, you know,
at least a couple of articles down and see where
that discussion has evolved. But I do think it's a
very commonly cited article still in terms of those types

(59:10):
of discussions, and has more to say. But yeah, I
think that more or less wraps up what we have
to say about functional analyses. Finally, for episodes, Yeah, yeah,
we did a month of fas not intentional, but it's
where we ended up.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Yeah, it's good though, I mean I think we gave
it the space it deserved.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Yeah, perfect, all right, good, So it was like the
month of August was FA month or something. But yeah,
that's what it is, all right. If you'd like to
tell us your thoughts on functional analyzes or anything that
we've mentioned in here, we would love to hear from you.
You can email us directly at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com,
or you can reach us on the social media platforms,

(59:48):
and I do look forward to hearing from you. If
you're joining us for the first time, you may not know,
but that at the end of our full length discussions,
we do some recommendations. I think it's very fun stick
around for that because it is, like I said, it's
just fun. It's just an enjoyable thing. And plus we
only have like one more set of ads to get
through and then we get to those parts, so we'll
see inside of these ads. Bye, Okay, we're back. We're

(01:00:18):
getting into the credits and then our recommendations. As I said,
you can email us, you can reach us on social media.
We look forward to hearing from you. Otherwise, you can
support us if you like what we're doing. Is you
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(01:00:38):
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(01:01:00):
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Financially is you can join us on Patreon. If you
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(01:01:22):
just be the best and really help us be a podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Ah bellissimo.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
That was Shane blowing kisses, So thank you all.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
This So it was I love you guys. You guys
are great And.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
If you are not one of those Patreon supporters, then
you two can have kisses blown at you by Shane
by joining us on Patreon, so you can do that there.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
See.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
I think those all the ways I could talked about
for you supporting us. Could tell a friend subscribe for
them on their device. That's also very nice of you.
I'd also need to shout out my team and people,
because it takes a village to make a podcast, a
village of podcasters, and that's what I have here. So
thank you so much to the people who make this happen,
writing and fact checking from Shane and myself. Thank you
for recording with me today.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
Shane, Hey, thank you for a month of a phase.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
Hey, you very welcome. Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson.
And our extraordinary, wonderful and credible, remarkable, delectable, delightful and
incredible God Emperor producer person is Justin Who's the best?

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
So handsome?

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Try to come up with a bunch of adjectives. There,
it worked, it did, and I think that is what
we have to say about that. Before we turn to
our recommendations. Thank you all for listening. I guess you, audience,
you also deserve a big shout out and thanks because
you're here. I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Mm hmm, yeah, you're the best.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
All right, Ready, recommend some things or do you have
anything I forgot so you like to add?

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
No, I think that covers it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Recommendations.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
All right, So I'm gonna recommend a movie that I
got to see. I did a double feature where I
saw Spider Man Brandy Day in the morning, and then
I went and saw this movie in the afternoon Lovely
and it was great. And so I'm recommending The Odyssey
by Christopher Nolan. Here's the thing. Christopher Nolan is just
a like he's just got such an eye for film,

(01:03:08):
and I think that, like it's every movie that he's
ever shot is just shot so well, and it's so
interesting and just so cool. And also I just love
mythology and I love the story of the Odyssey in general,
and I think put those two things together and then
you get this really amazing thing. One of the things
I really love about Christopher Nolan is that he really

(01:03:30):
takes time to try to do practical effects for everything
and so and you can see that really clearly in
this movie. It is like there's so many practical effects
for things that you don't think are practical effects. The giant,
the Cyclops is a practical effect. It's just so cool
and so great. And just I mean, Matt Damon is

(01:03:51):
unreal in this movie. So I think, I mean, everybody
is fantastic in it, but I think Matt Damon just
does a killer job of being Odysseus and the gravity
and the hubris that goes along with him, you know,
and I think, ah, just so good. So I recommend
everybody to go see this, like, and I recommend seeing
it in a theater because, like, I think there's something

(01:04:11):
really impactful about seeing it on a big screen. I
also recommend bringing earplugs, maybe because like the loud parts
are very loud. Fair, and maybe that was just the
theater I was in, but the loud parts were maybe
the loudest I've ever had in a movie where I
was like, oh, this is maybe a lot, okay, but
it was great. It was a great movie.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
I second that I loved this. I thought Matt Damon
was outstanding, And yeah, I think he impressively really sank
into that role and the way that made you feel
like he just is this character. Yeah, Like I stopped
seeing Matt Damon very quickly and just saw Odysseus.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
Yeah, and just as you said, it's exactly they're the hubris,
but also the like the values, the drive, like it
just was all there and communicated perfectly throughout. Like Matt
Damon was just a true pro at the Yeah. So
great casting on that I'm recommending. It's my try to
recommend things. I'm recommending a This is a game. I

(01:05:08):
guess you'd call it a board game. It doesn't have
a board. It is a card game. So there's a
game I have mentioned before. It's called Wingspan, also a
card game, but also has boards. And Wingspan is not
a very complicated game. But for people who are not
used to games that are more interesting than like Clue
and Monopoly, then they see this and their minds are
blown all the way open, sure when they see Wingspan,

(01:05:29):
because it does have more than one rule and it
is good, and they're not used to good. They're just
used to Monopoly, sure, and so they are confused. But
nevertheless it's actually it's a very easy game and it's
one of my favorites and it's fantastic. Well, they came
out with a new version of this called Wingspan Pocket,
which is very small. It does not fit in your pocket,
but it is very small and it's just a bunch

(01:05:49):
of cards and it is a very very streamlined version
of Wingspan that is definitely different enough to be its
own game. You can play in like thirty minutes. It
goes up to five people. It works fine at two people.
I have played it a handful of times now and
I have very, very much enjoyed this. So for people
who want who are looking for a game that is

(01:06:12):
really fun and very easy to play, it doesn't take
very long. Wingspan Pocket is so perfect for this. This
is very accessible to people, even if they are not
really familiar with like the world of board games. I
think most people who can read and understand rules can
sit down and learn this game with very little effort needed.
The rules are very well written, the components are really nice,
the box is pretty small, and like I said, you

(01:06:33):
can do this in like thirty minutes so and up
to five players.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
Yeah, all right. So that's Wingspan Pockets, the card Game,
and The Odyssey, the new movie from Christopher Nolan. I
think that's what we have to say about functional analyses.
I think we can close the book on this topic
for now. For now, there's nothing left to learn. You've
learned it all. Yeah, is there anything you'd like that
or anything I forgot before was here? Goodbyes?

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
No, I think we're good.

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
All right, happy functional analyzing. Thank you all for listening
to this. Is Abraham and it's Shane. We're out. So yep,
you've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
Podcast dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.

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Functional Analysis pt. 4

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