Latest / Why We Do What We Do / Functional Analysis pt. 3

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Functional Analysis pt. 3 · Why We Do What We Do

0:03
Speaker 1: You're listening to why we do what we do? Welcome
0:16
Speaker 1: to why we do what we do? I am your
0:18
Speaker 1: exploring all conditions, Host Abraham.
0:21
Speaker 2: And I'm you're isolating those conditions.
0:23
Speaker 1: Oh, Shane, we are a psychology podcast. We talk about
0:27
Speaker 1: the things that humans and non human animals do. For
0:31
Speaker 1: those of you joining us for the very first time,
0:33
Speaker 1: then that was probably a weird thing the way that
0:35
Speaker 1: we introduced ourselves, but it will make more sense as
0:38
Speaker 1: we get into this. We are on the third part
0:40
Speaker 1: of a multi part series of episodes discussing something that
0:44
Speaker 1: is deep in the weeds of behavior analysis practice and
0:49
Speaker 1: literature and sort of understanding called functional analyzes. This is
0:54
Speaker 1: the third one, and so if you haven't heard the
0:58
Speaker 1: last couple that we have done, then you recommend checking
1:00
Speaker 1: those out for some background and conceptual pieces that will
1:03
Speaker 1: be necessary. But we'll also do our best to recap
1:06
Speaker 1: those going into this. And if you're a returning person
1:08
Speaker 1: then welcome back. Then that recap will be because you
1:11
Speaker 1: haven't heard those at least a week or a couple
1:13
Speaker 1: of weeks, and you're getting caught up too, and this
1:16
Speaker 1: way you recall what we're doing as we get into it.
1:19
Speaker 1: But however you got here, we appreciate it. And if
1:22
Speaker 1: you do find that you would like to support us
1:23
Speaker 1: after all of this, then you can do that by
1:26
Speaker 1: leaving us a rating and a review like subscribe, tell
1:29
Speaker 1: a friend, join us on Patreon. I'll talk more about
1:32
Speaker 1: those things at the end of this discussion. But it
1:35
Speaker 1: is August twelfth, as you may or may not know,
1:37
Speaker 1: depending on when you're listening to this, it might not
1:39
Speaker 1: be August twelfth anymore. But when that's publishes, it's August twelfth,
1:43
Speaker 1: which means, of course, Happy Baseball Fans Day. That's me.
1:47
Speaker 1: So they they put oscillating fans in the baseball field
1:50
Speaker 1: and they blow away.
1:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they have like a good windy day depending
1:54
Speaker 2: on where the wind is blowing. That's a baseball field.
1:56
Speaker 2: Batters really love the wind blowing out the center field,
1:59
Speaker 2: you know.
2:00
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
2:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, pictures not so much. It is ibm PC Day.
2:05
Speaker 1: That's a lot of initials.
2:07
Speaker 2: M hm.
2:07
Speaker 1: It is International Youth Day.
2:10
Speaker 2: Except when we were younger, we started a band or
2:13
Speaker 2: we were gonna we were trying to name our band
2:14
Speaker 2: and we were gonna call it youth in Asia.
2:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a band.
2:18
Speaker 2: That is a band and it was we didn't know that,
2:20
Speaker 2: but at the of your like, we're so clever. It's
2:22
Speaker 2: a play on words. So here's the International Youth. Yeah.
2:26
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna call yourselves international youth. I was like, man,
2:28
Speaker 1: that would have been quite the coincidence.
2:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean close enough. I guess it's Julian Fry,
2:34
Speaker 2: Julienne Fry's Day, whoever that.
2:37
Speaker 1: Is, who's frying Julian. It's a middle child day, it is.
2:46
Speaker 2: It's also National Sewing Machine.
2:47
Speaker 1: Day Handy Devices. It is truck driver Day. Oh, we
2:53
Speaker 1: need those people. We do desperately, the bone of the economy.
2:57
Speaker 2: Uh huh uh huh. It is Vinyl Record Day.
3:00
Speaker 1: A nice, I dig it. It is World Calligraphy Day.
3:04
Speaker 1: In case you don't want to read what it is
3:06
Speaker 1: you're presented with in text form.
3:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's World Elevant Day. I love
3:11
Speaker 2: those things.
3:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, selfants are amazing. It is Elvis Week.
3:16
Speaker 2: It is. It is also National Bargain Hunting Week.
3:20
Speaker 1: Mmmm okay for our thrifty folks out there. It is
3:24
Speaker 1: National resurrect Romance Week because before this it was.
3:27
Speaker 2: Dead, yes, and now we get zombie romance.
3:31
Speaker 1: Nice.
3:31
Speaker 2: And it is Save plus sound Week.
3:34
Speaker 1: Did you ever see the movie Warm Bodies.
3:36
Speaker 2: No, but I heard it was really good. It's Nicholas Holt, right,
3:39
Speaker 2: like yeah.
3:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and the whole it is zombie romance, so
3:44
Speaker 1: it was fun. I recommend checking it out. Also, just
3:47
Speaker 1: know what you're getting into, is you go into a
3:49
Speaker 1: movie that is a romance with zombies.
3:51
Speaker 2: So it's very particular.
3:54
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, not maybe for all audiences, but I thought
3:57
Speaker 1: it was very fun, Like it is a adjacent to
4:02
Speaker 1: horror rom com It's somewhere there. Yeah, genre blending and bending,
4:09
Speaker 1: that's always fun. Anyway, we're not here to talk about
4:12
Speaker 1: zombie movies or even necessarily just the holidays. We're talking
4:16
Speaker 1: about functional analyzes, and just to recap what we've discussed
4:20
Speaker 1: really quickly so far in case you have never heard
4:23
Speaker 1: of these and what we're talking about. This is essentially
4:26
Speaker 1: an assessment strategy very commonly employed by behavior analysts in
4:31
Speaker 1: which they create some conditions to observe what could be
4:35
Speaker 1: challenging behaviors, most often with individuals who have limited communication capacity,
4:42
Speaker 1: and when those individuals have some types of behaviors that
4:46
Speaker 1: are very challenging that could be harmed to themselves or others.
4:50
Speaker 1: Or other like related type things. It's like something is severe,
4:54
Speaker 1: let's say, in the way that they're behaving, and we're
4:57
Speaker 1: trying to figure out why are they doing this thing
5:00
Speaker 1: so that we can potentially address how do we get
5:03
Speaker 1: their needs met without them having to do these destructive
5:06
Speaker 1: sorts of behaviors.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and we also covered you know, as we kind
5:11
Speaker 2: of are talking about this, we talked about the arrangements
5:13
Speaker 2: and different variations of these too, because there's lots of
5:15
Speaker 2: different ways that we do this. So like we set
5:17
Speaker 2: up these condidencies, we set up the way we these
5:20
Speaker 2: tests essentially, and then we do them in a lot
5:23
Speaker 2: of different ways because we really ultimately want to find
5:25
Speaker 2: out this concern is happening, right, this behavior is happening.
5:29
Speaker 2: We want to find out a causal relationship, Like that's
5:33
Speaker 2: the goal. It's not a correlational thing. And we have
5:36
Speaker 2: to do this in different ways because a there's no
5:38
Speaker 2: such thing as a one size fits all type of
5:40
Speaker 2: assessment and so so I think that's really important to
5:43
Speaker 2: note too, is like there's some unique flexibility inside of
5:47
Speaker 2: this what could be perceived as a rigorous test type
5:52
Speaker 2: of assessment. So there's some really cool stuff in there
5:55
Speaker 2: as far as that goes.
5:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, we impact a bit of the history of how
5:58
Speaker 1: this developed, starting before it was actually an experimental sort
6:02
Speaker 1: of thing, with it being more of a conceptual exercise,
6:04
Speaker 1: and they called it a functional analysis, and then in
6:06
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two the first study where it turned into
6:10
Speaker 1: an experimental functional analysis. And essentially the idea here is
6:14
Speaker 1: sometimes compared to an allergy test. It's let's test a
6:19
Speaker 1: bunch of different situations and see which ones are the
6:22
Speaker 1: ones where we see that challenging behavior occur, and then
6:25
Speaker 1: that tells us what is provoking it and what is
6:29
Speaker 1: maintaining it.
6:30
Speaker 2: And this is how we figure out you're allergic to math.
6:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. That's also funny inside joke because one of
6:36
Speaker 1: the original studies had to do with how difficult certain
6:39
Speaker 1: academic tasks were. But anyway, the whole point then is
6:43
Speaker 1: that once we understand that, we can use that information
6:47
Speaker 1: to help guide Okay, this is what this person needs
6:49
Speaker 1: in this situation. Now we can teach them to communicate
6:52
Speaker 1: what they need rather than do this thing that is
6:54
Speaker 1: harmful to themselves or others are both, And then where
6:58
Speaker 1: we went from there is essentially various iterations of people
7:02
Speaker 1: exploring what works, how do we change this, what can
7:05
Speaker 1: we make different about it? That sort of thing.
7:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so it kind of led us up to
7:10
Speaker 2: a little bit of where we are at today, which
7:13
Speaker 2: is is kind of understanding how the actual assessment works. Right, So,
7:19
Speaker 2: like we're looking at like we've established these conditions that
7:21
Speaker 2: we test, we've isolated variables, and here we are kind
7:25
Speaker 2: of looking at I think that what we've found is
7:28
Speaker 2: that the isolation piece is kind of a core feature
7:33
Speaker 2: of this. Like I and when I say isolation, I
7:34
Speaker 2: mean isolating particular like related variables to whatever the conditions are. Yeah,
7:38
Speaker 2: we're going to see that across every type of assessment,
7:42
Speaker 2: but we're at the stage now where we're kind of
7:44
Speaker 2: like maybe even moving away from that a little bit.
7:46
Speaker 2: And we'll kind of talk about that today, I think
7:48
Speaker 2: when we talk about the synthesized types of tests. But
7:50
Speaker 2: I mean, it's really come such a long way, even
7:52
Speaker 2: in our years of working in the field, because I
7:55
Speaker 2: know that when we first started, some of these variations
7:57
Speaker 2: didn't even exist.
7:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and so we got into essentially describing what
8:02
Speaker 1: the conditions are. For the most part, there's a condition
8:04
Speaker 1: that tests for positive reinforcement, a condition that tests for
8:07
Speaker 1: negative reinforcement, a condition that tests for self stimulatory or
8:11
Speaker 1: sensory reinforcement, and then all of that's tested against the
8:14
Speaker 1: control condition where it should be no motivation to do
8:17
Speaker 1: these behaviors at all. And then there was latency based fays.
8:22
Speaker 1: There are trial based defays their natural environments or pop
8:25
Speaker 1: up or burst contingency fas. An FA, by the way,
8:29
Speaker 1: stands for functional analysis, in case I hadn't said that already,
8:32
Speaker 1: and so we'll probably call it sometimes a functional analysis
8:35
Speaker 1: and sometimes an FA. But that's more or less where
8:37
Speaker 1: we left off. And that kind of brings us up
8:39
Speaker 1: to the discussion today, where we're going to start by
8:42
Speaker 1: getting into another way to sort of arrange these conditions
8:45
Speaker 1: to test for possible functions, if you will, Yes.
8:50
Speaker 2: And I'm so excited about this because I think that
8:52
Speaker 2: they're so I do think this is such a cool
8:54
Speaker 2: way to discover relationships about behavior, right, Like it's so interesting,
8:59
Speaker 2: and like I would say, as somebody who has done
9:02
Speaker 2: several of these, it's so cool to watch. It's cool
9:05
Speaker 2: to see like some patterns e merge as you're doing
9:08
Speaker 2: these types of assessments.
9:09
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, you really can see when you're observing
9:13
Speaker 1: and participating in conducting these you get to see it
9:16
Speaker 1: with your own eyes, the sort of differentiation that can
9:18
Speaker 1: occur between those conditions where it becomes fairly clear, like, look,
9:22
Speaker 1: this is we're seeing something a pattern emerge. I think,
9:26
Speaker 1: as you said, a trend. So yeah, all right, perfect,
9:29
Speaker 1: I think that gets us caught up to where we're
9:30
Speaker 1: at and so getting into this. Then another way that
9:34
Speaker 1: they might specifically try and assess and determine what's going
9:38
Speaker 1: on for a particular individual is a strategy for presenting
9:41
Speaker 1: these fays where what they want to do is directly
9:44
Speaker 1: compare just one single condition, one set of variables, or
9:48
Speaker 1: like one variable basically and then test against that control condition.
9:52
Speaker 1: This is called a pair wise analysis pai R not
9:55
Speaker 1: par yeah, pair wise, where you have basically just those
9:59
Speaker 1: two things that you're looking looking at. And this is
10:01
Speaker 1: most often implemented historically when a functional analysis was not
10:06
Speaker 1: yielding very clear outcomes and there was sometimes variability across conditions,
10:11
Speaker 1: sometimes there was very little behavior occurring across the conditions,
10:15
Speaker 1: and a way to determine if there was a functional
10:17
Speaker 1: variable related to the contingency to the outcomes that the
10:20
Speaker 1: individuals trying to get to is to expose the individual
10:23
Speaker 1: to that condition only just those variables, and then alternate
10:28
Speaker 1: that with the control conditions. See like, if in this
10:30
Speaker 1: one condition that we're repeatedly going to test, alternated with
10:34
Speaker 1: this control condition where there should be no instances of
10:38
Speaker 1: this challenging behavior occur, can we there see a differentiation
10:42
Speaker 1: happen in the pattern where it's clear that it happens
10:45
Speaker 1: over here and it doesn't happen over there.
10:47
Speaker 2: Right, And so like this one's really interesting because I
10:50
Speaker 2: think historically what we see with the other types of
10:52
Speaker 2: arrangements is it'll go, you know, let's number all the
10:56
Speaker 2: conditions one, two, three four, right, so it might like
10:59
Speaker 2: what we kind of set up the test, it'll go
11:02
Speaker 2: one two one, you know, one two three four one
11:05
Speaker 2: two three four, and then like we'll kind of alternate
11:07
Speaker 2: between those. What's interesting about a pair wise is it
11:09
Speaker 2: to go one two, one two one two for a
11:12
Speaker 2: few data points, and then we'll test another condition and
11:16
Speaker 2: go one three, one three, one three with one being
11:18
Speaker 2: the control and just kind of to see if there's
11:20
Speaker 2: a trend like isolated instead of having that alternation between
11:23
Speaker 2: one and two and three and four and kind of
11:25
Speaker 2: doing that over and over and over again. So like
11:27
Speaker 2: that's kind of what it might look like in practice.
11:30
Speaker 2: I mean, unless unless I'm completely off base there, but
11:32
Speaker 2: it's just to kind of like give people exactly what
11:34
Speaker 2: I like to me, I think it's important to see
11:35
Speaker 2: what that looks like.
11:36
Speaker 1: No, you're exactly right. That was actually a really that
11:38
Speaker 1: was I think a really nice simplified way to describe
11:40
Speaker 1: exactly what the pair wise analysis is between like actual
11:44
Speaker 1: content and ads. We're back. Yeah, So just as you
11:55
Speaker 1: just said, very well, very well put that, it's basically like, yeah,
11:58
Speaker 1: let's j just do yeah one maybe being control conditions
12:01
Speaker 1: and two being the variable and then one two, one,
12:03
Speaker 1: two and going back and forth between those, and then like,
12:05
Speaker 1: depending on how that goes, you might then test another one.
12:07
Speaker 1: And this will be important later when we get to
12:10
Speaker 1: some further innovations in functional analysis implementation strategy, because that
12:17
Speaker 1: idea of like let's just test a thing against a
12:20
Speaker 1: control will come back again later. But yeah, in general,
12:24
Speaker 1: these were applied after a standard functional analysis had been implemented,
12:28
Speaker 1: Like they'd tried to just go through the normal procedures,
12:32
Speaker 1: but it failed to produce any clear outcomes. Like we
12:35
Speaker 1: were running these conditions, but we don't see a pattern
12:37
Speaker 1: emerging now.
12:38
Speaker 2: And if we.
12:39
Speaker 1: Described in a previous discussion that this could mean this
12:42
Speaker 1: quote unquote automatic function, and we described that in the
12:45
Speaker 1: very first episode in the series so far, and not
12:48
Speaker 1: to dwell on the philosophical issues that might be raised
12:50
Speaker 1: by calling it quote unquote automatic, but for those of
12:54
Speaker 1: you who know, you understand, and if not, we did
12:56
Speaker 1: discuss it a little bit back then. But anyway, it
12:58
Speaker 1: could also mean that the reason that we don't see
13:01
Speaker 1: any clear patterns emerge in the functional analysis is because
13:04
Speaker 1: there was insufficient discriminability, meaning it was just not clear
13:09
Speaker 1: to the individual in question what the difference was between
13:13
Speaker 1: the conditions they were supposed to be experiencing. And so
13:16
Speaker 1: if we simplify the arrangement to just one potentially evocative
13:20
Speaker 1: condition against that sort of control or neutral condition, that
13:23
Speaker 1: might help illustrate the possible reinforce or the possible provocative
13:29
Speaker 1: situation and corresponding outcome that the individual's trying to get.
13:33
Speaker 1: And it's like for them, it was just like, for
13:35
Speaker 1: some reason they do this here, and then some reason
13:37
Speaker 1: they do this here, and they don't really understand what's happening,
13:39
Speaker 1: because most of the time these are individuals very low
13:41
Speaker 1: developmentto their language, and so we can't just ask them
13:44
Speaker 1: or explain to them what's going on. And so it's
13:47
Speaker 1: simplifying it to just this is one thing, and this
13:50
Speaker 1: is the sort of neutral nothing should happen thing, and
13:53
Speaker 1: just make that distinction really clear could help provide the
13:56
Speaker 1: circumstances under which it does become more clear to the
13:59
Speaker 1: individual and to the than the clinicians what's going on.
14:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, So for example, let's say there's a functional
14:05
Speaker 2: analysis that had variable patterns, and what we mean by
14:09
Speaker 2: that is like just spiky all over the place, kind
14:11
Speaker 2: of looking like what a Rechdor scale might look like,
14:12
Speaker 2: just like bounce it all up some high, some low.
14:14
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, it's wild. So that's variable patterns with
14:18
Speaker 2: no discernible trends across those conditions. So like you can't
14:21
Speaker 2: figure out what's happening. It looks like every all the
14:24
Speaker 2: behaviors is kind of all over the place. The clinician
14:26
Speaker 2: might try presenting only the very specific attention condition identified
14:30
Speaker 2: in the interview and alternate that condition with the control
14:33
Speaker 2: play or neutral condition like we mentioned. So that's the
14:36
Speaker 2: one two, one two, one two versus one two, one three,
14:38
Speaker 2: one four, and so on and so forth. And if
14:40
Speaker 2: there is a clear separation in the data, it might
14:43
Speaker 2: suggest that the form of attention, or at least one
14:46
Speaker 2: of the forms of attention that are occurring, or some
14:49
Speaker 2: variable there is maybe one of the maintaining variables, if
14:52
Speaker 2: not the maintaining variable. That separation really makes the difference there.
14:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, just being able to see like, Okay, when we
14:58
Speaker 1: have just this one, it's clear that we see that
15:01
Speaker 1: those challenging behaviors existing, but in this other one we don't.
15:04
Speaker 1: So that helps us then differentiate. Okay, now we see
15:07
Speaker 1: some kind of pattern we can then use. If the
15:10
Speaker 1: data do not show clear separation, the clinician might try
15:13
Speaker 1: a different pair wise condition against that neutral control condition,
15:17
Speaker 1: just as you were saying before the whole example of like,
15:19
Speaker 1: let's try this specific form of attention and do that
15:22
Speaker 1: against alternating with that neutral condition, back and forth, back
15:26
Speaker 1: and forth, back and forth. Still don't see anything, all right,
15:28
Speaker 1: Let's try a different type of attention condition and alternate
15:31
Speaker 1: that back and forth. Or let's try a different type
15:32
Speaker 1: of escape condition and alternate that back and forth. And
15:36
Speaker 1: there have been many studies summarizing data from functional analyzes
15:39
Speaker 1: from dozens of experiments, and that's honestly underselling it. Probably
15:44
Speaker 1: hundreds of experiments at this point showing that the pair
15:47
Speaker 1: wise arrangement can be really helpful and identifying a function
15:51
Speaker 1: in which the function of the behavior, like the outcome
15:54
Speaker 1: that individuals seeking, was not readily detectable in that standard arrangement.
16:00
Speaker 1: And so essentially you look at the published literature. There
16:02
Speaker 1: have been many, many, many studies at this point where
16:05
Speaker 1: they summarize dozens of cases at a time and sometimes
16:09
Speaker 1: over one hundred, and then looked at like, how often
16:12
Speaker 1: what was the pattern we saw, how often did it
16:14
Speaker 1: emerge that we saw this, How often did it emerge
16:16
Speaker 1: that we saw this? How often was it the case
16:18
Speaker 1: that we didn't see anything clear.
16:19
Speaker 2: In the data?
16:20
Speaker 1: And then how often in those circumstances was it the
16:23
Speaker 1: case that a pairwise assessment did yield some clear trends
16:27
Speaker 1: or patterns of the data. And there's quite a few
16:29
Speaker 1: that show that they did.
16:30
Speaker 2: Absolutely Now and many of you who have ever worked
16:33
Speaker 2: in a clinical direct service delivery capacity, you know you're
16:36
Speaker 2: working directly with clients, you're working family homes, you're working
16:39
Speaker 2: at schools, whatever might be. You might have had the
16:41
Speaker 2: thought while we're talking through FAS that while this assessment
16:44
Speaker 2: seems ideal and it seems like a great way to
16:46
Speaker 2: develop relevant interventions, it might be difficult or nearly impossible
16:50
Speaker 2: to implement in day to day operations in many places.
16:53
Speaker 2: And I've also heard that funding sources will not pay
16:57
Speaker 2: for additional time to do functional analysies unless it's a
17:01
Speaker 2: private pay space. But that's also a barrier that comes
17:04
Speaker 2: up too, is like not only is there like maybe
17:07
Speaker 2: does it seem difficult to do, but you might not
17:09
Speaker 2: be able to build an insurance company for it.
17:12
Speaker 1: That's a great point too. Yeah, there are variety of
17:14
Speaker 1: reasons people have cited as to why they cannot feasibly
17:18
Speaker 1: implement a functional analysis, and in response to that, first,
17:24
Speaker 1: some scholars have taken umbrage with that argument, and we'll
17:27
Speaker 1: outline one of the most seminal of those in just
17:29
Speaker 1: a moment. But second, there was another innovation was that
17:34
Speaker 1: perhaps the behavior function could be assessed simply by observing
17:40
Speaker 1: a natural environment in which the behavior could occur, rather
17:44
Speaker 1: than creating that evocative situation in sort of an experimental
17:48
Speaker 1: artificial environment. They're like, well, maybe what we could do
17:51
Speaker 1: is we could just watch this person and their sort
17:54
Speaker 1: of normal day to day and see if we can
17:57
Speaker 1: determine just observing them that way why those behaviors occur.
18:01
Speaker 1: Or maybe something that's even easier than that that could
18:03
Speaker 1: be sufficient enough to determine what the function of that
18:07
Speaker 1: challenge and behavior might be, is to just use a
18:10
Speaker 1: sort of standardized questionnaire with the relevant stakeholders in that
18:14
Speaker 1: person's world who might have enough experience and insight into
18:17
Speaker 1: those behaviors that we could glean the function of their
18:20
Speaker 1: behavior without direct observation and without that experimentation. So essentially
18:25
Speaker 1: the direction we're going right now is that people sort
18:28
Speaker 1: of argue, Okay, well a functional analysis seems great, but
18:31
Speaker 1: we just can't do it. So what can we do instead?
18:33
Speaker 1: And the two options are maybe we directly observe this
18:37
Speaker 1: behavior in its natural environment. Maybe we just ask the
18:40
Speaker 1: people who are around what is going on the way
18:42
Speaker 1: that they understand it.
18:44
Speaker 2: But there is an excellent article, and I love that
18:47
Speaker 2: it comes from this person because of their current work. Yeah, yeah,
18:50
Speaker 2: this was actually like a big schism in our field
18:53
Speaker 2: when this person went off to do their other things
18:56
Speaker 2: and actually from what I understand, cause some headbutting between
19:00
Speaker 2: I want to in this person. Yeah, even though this
19:02
Speaker 2: person was a student of iuaas so Greg Hanley and
19:05
Speaker 2: twenty twelve in the Journal of Behare Analysis in Practice
19:09
Speaker 2: passionately pointed out some of the arguments against fays and
19:13
Speaker 2: provided solutions to those arguments. So, like, this is one
19:15
Speaker 2: of those articles. It's just kind of like, oh, here
19:18
Speaker 2: are nine myths that people. It's a really good, like
19:20
Speaker 2: listical type of article. It's amazing. I mean, it's genuinely
19:24
Speaker 2: done so well because it's like, here's an argument, here
19:27
Speaker 2: are some examples in our literature. Here's an argument. Here
19:29
Speaker 2: are some examples of our literature that debunk that. So
19:31
Speaker 2: it's basically like a myth busting article, which is so cool.
19:34
Speaker 2: So yeah, the first argument is that people will say, oh,
19:38
Speaker 2: functional analyzes take too long, and he offered five minute
19:41
Speaker 2: sessions or trial based sessions or latency based fays which
19:44
Speaker 2: are much quicker. So like, there is a solution to
19:47
Speaker 2: that it takes too long argument, because there are variations
19:50
Speaker 2: that do reduce the amount of time it takes to
19:52
Speaker 2: assess the behavior.
19:54
Speaker 1: And actually for all of these like we're only going
19:56
Speaker 1: to list a few that he gave. There are quite
19:58
Speaker 1: a bit more that we're not going to get into,
20:00
Speaker 1: but I do. I did put the article in our
20:02
Speaker 1: links and references for people who want to go check
20:04
Speaker 1: it out because it is really really well written and
20:07
Speaker 1: has some really useful content. So he does provide like, Okay,
20:11
Speaker 1: if this is your problem, here's a potential solution. He
20:14
Speaker 1: also provides like, here's why this is also not really
20:17
Speaker 1: a problem, right, But anyway, we'll get into that. So
20:21
Speaker 1: the next one, that argument is that it's too complex,
20:24
Speaker 1: it's too hard to train staff, it's too hard to
20:26
Speaker 1: implement with integrity, et cetera. And so he suggests that
20:30
Speaker 1: one way to address that is using those pairwise assessments
20:33
Speaker 1: using one of the most relevant condition identified during the
20:35
Speaker 1: open ended interview portion of it. That way, you're only
20:39
Speaker 1: then doing more streamlined implementation strategy.
20:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the arguments that comes up often is
20:45
Speaker 2: that the functional analyses are too dangerous, it's too dangerous
20:47
Speaker 2: to evoke behaviors, and like, there is some truth to that.
20:51
Speaker 2: But what he did was he offered these solutions around
20:54
Speaker 2: conducting assessments in safe places, clear condition signaling, brief sessions,
20:58
Speaker 2: and reinforcing pre behaviors only if you can find a
21:01
Speaker 2: reliable precursor. I think he also in that argument he
21:04
Speaker 2: talked about even identifying an arbitrary behavior that is completely
21:08
Speaker 2: unrelated to the problem behavior and doing an FA on
21:11
Speaker 2: like some like an arbitrary unrelated behavior, and you could
21:13
Speaker 2: still derive a function from that, which I thought was
21:15
Speaker 2: kind of interesting. And he uses I think that argument
21:19
Speaker 2: later to get into some of the stuff that he's
21:21
Speaker 2: doing today which has demonstrated effect. But as somebody who
21:24
Speaker 2: has done fas for dangerous behaviors, I can attest that
21:27
Speaker 2: like if you do precursor fays, or if you do
21:30
Speaker 2: latency based that phays like ones where you do not
21:32
Speaker 2: allow the behavior to occur, you could still get the
21:34
Speaker 2: function out of it. I had to do an FA
21:36
Speaker 2: on a skin picking behavior that was causing wounds in
21:39
Speaker 2: the person. I had to do an FA on a
21:41
Speaker 2: rectal digging behavior that resulted it would go from rectal
21:44
Speaker 2: digging to physical aggression pretty quickly. And then we had
21:46
Speaker 2: to do one on a self injurious behavior where a
21:48
Speaker 2: learner had something like nine thousand, roughly nine thousand incidents
21:52
Speaker 2: of SIB per month. Wow, And we were able to
21:54
Speaker 2: do fas with all three of those and get good
21:57
Speaker 2: effect sizes.
21:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't recall now if in previous discussions
22:00
Speaker 1: we mentioned the precursor behaviors. But essentially the idea here
22:04
Speaker 1: is that in the class of behaviors that are all
22:08
Speaker 1: around sort of in the same vein or the same
22:12
Speaker 1: topography class, if you will, of the challenging behavior of question,
22:16
Speaker 1: a lot of times they sort of ramp up to
22:19
Speaker 1: the high magnitude challenging behavior. And so those behaviors that
22:24
Speaker 1: sort of signal to you like, oh, they're getting worked
22:27
Speaker 1: up now, you can actually reinforce those rather than letting
22:31
Speaker 1: them get all the way to full escalation. Right, And
22:33
Speaker 1: that because they're all sort of part of the same momentum,
22:37
Speaker 1: if you will, you can sort of stop it early,
22:40
Speaker 1: still reinforce that and probably detect a meaningful function of
22:44
Speaker 1: the behavior. And these are actually super handy. I've done
22:46
Speaker 1: a few of these as well, and the research is
22:48
Speaker 1: really clear, Like that's pretty actually as usually that's often
22:51
Speaker 1: very effective for identifying what the reinforcer is that is
22:55
Speaker 1: relevant in this particular situation without allowing it to escalate
22:58
Speaker 1: too far. Yeah, that's definitely one to consider as well.
23:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think precursor behaviors are pretty accurate predictors too.
23:05
Speaker 2: Like there's some Tim Volmer does some really cool research
23:07
Speaker 2: on precursor behaviors and like some specific formulations that will
23:12
Speaker 2: predict them, and like you and I have kind talked
23:14
Speaker 2: about this before where we have talked about precursor behaviors
23:16
Speaker 2: where like sometimes you'll start hearing my voice pitch up
23:20
Speaker 2: a little bit, like I'm almost like preparing to deliver
23:23
Speaker 2: some news that somebody doesn't want to hear, and you
23:25
Speaker 2: can kind of like figure out that it's a little
23:27
Speaker 2: bit of a different cadence than my normal podcasting voice,
23:30
Speaker 2: and that usually means that an AD's coming.
23:39
Speaker 1: So we've been discussing some of the arguments that occurred
23:43
Speaker 1: inside this article that was essentially trying to point out,
23:45
Speaker 1: like these arguments against functional analyzes are there are ways
23:50
Speaker 1: to address the concerns and arguments that people have here.
23:53
Speaker 1: There's like it takes too long, it's too complex, it's
23:55
Speaker 1: too dangerous. He also argued that while functional analyzes do
24:00
Speaker 1: take time, is better time spent than to spend time
24:04
Speaker 1: having not done an FA to then create an intervention
24:08
Speaker 1: that is less likely to succeed and will ultimately contain
24:12
Speaker 1: fewer reinforces for the individual than they would have been
24:16
Speaker 1: able to identify if they had correctly found what the
24:19
Speaker 1: behavior function was by having done the functional assessment itself.
24:23
Speaker 1: And so he's sort of pointing out that like, Okay,
24:26
Speaker 1: it does take time, but that's efficient because otherwise you're
24:29
Speaker 1: going to waste a bunch of time doing stuff that
24:31
Speaker 1: doesn't work very well, and that the individual in question
24:34
Speaker 1: here is now also not having as enriched of an
24:38
Speaker 1: experience as they could have otherwise had.
24:40
Speaker 2: Right. I've actually heard some will call and make that
24:42
Speaker 2: same argument, which is like and it's it's ultimately an
24:45
Speaker 2: ethics argument, right, like, yeah, is it more ethical to
24:48
Speaker 2: avoid doing an FA because you're worried about problem behavior
24:52
Speaker 2: but to waste time on interventions that are not effective?
24:54
Speaker 2: Or is it more is it more ethical to like
24:56
Speaker 2: do the assessment to identify the function and design more
24:59
Speaker 2: effective intervention earlier and like that that's ultimately the ethics
25:02
Speaker 2: question I think I land on, Like when we have
25:04
Speaker 2: these conversations, it's like, yeah, yeah, let's not waste time.
25:07
Speaker 2: Time is a commodity that we don't get back, right, Yeah,
25:09
Speaker 2: So in an article, he provides an analogy to being
25:12
Speaker 2: intubated in a hospital bed and extremely thirsty but unable
25:16
Speaker 2: to communicate. All kinds of people are attempting to help
25:19
Speaker 2: you and make you feel better, getting you a new pillow,
25:21
Speaker 2: changing the TV, bringing you things that you like, but
25:24
Speaker 2: because they don't assess what is you need, they just
25:27
Speaker 2: provide things that are nice but don't actually solve your problem.
25:30
Speaker 2: They're wasting time while you're still thirsty.
25:33
Speaker 1: Right, And so the whole situation there being that like, well,
25:37
Speaker 1: if it's not what the individual actually needs, then like
25:39
Speaker 1: it's all well and good that we're trying to do
25:40
Speaker 1: nice things for them, but like it's not it's not
25:43
Speaker 1: solving an issue. And that's that's the similar to the
25:45
Speaker 1: ethics piece of like I mean that basically is it's
25:48
Speaker 1: just an analogy that he created. But yeah, if you're
25:50
Speaker 1: not actually addressing the behavior function, you're trying to essentially
25:53
Speaker 1: brute force your way through this by just providing some
25:55
Speaker 1: arbitrary something or other for something or other that's not
25:58
Speaker 1: actually getting at with this person need in the situation
26:01
Speaker 1: and therefore why they're engaging in that behavior in the
26:03
Speaker 1: first place. And then, as I mentioned, before. In this article,
26:06
Speaker 1: he provided a multi page table outlining some of those
26:09
Speaker 1: arguments and concerns with conducting a functional analysis, and then
26:13
Speaker 1: some possible solution to those problems. Again, that link will
26:15
Speaker 1: be in our references here, but yeah, so that's essentially
26:19
Speaker 1: a thing to check out if you're curious and learning
26:21
Speaker 1: more about the sort of arguments that are made and
26:24
Speaker 1: how he addresses all of those. He further took some
26:29
Speaker 1: issue with the idea of these descriptive analyzes and these
26:34
Speaker 1: observational assessments and the questionnaires, because we mentioned there's sort
26:38
Speaker 1: of the there's the people who are saying like, well,
26:41
Speaker 1: I can't do an FA. Handley says, yes, you can,
26:43
Speaker 1: and here's how and why. But he also points out
26:47
Speaker 1: in this paper and one of the other things that
26:48
Speaker 1: people have said is like, well, if I can't do
26:50
Speaker 1: an FA, then what I can do is just directly
26:53
Speaker 1: observe the behavior in its natural environment and just record it,
26:55
Speaker 1: take some data, and do an assessment that way. And
26:59
Speaker 1: also maybe what I can do is implement a questionnaire
27:02
Speaker 1: like I can just standardize format, interview the people who
27:06
Speaker 1: are relevant and around this person who around these behaviors,
27:09
Speaker 1: and see if they can provide some insight here. He
27:12
Speaker 1: also pointed out that there are some critical flaws with
27:14
Speaker 1: this that just do not do a good enough job
27:17
Speaker 1: supplementing the functional analysis. But let's get into what those
27:21
Speaker 1: consists of.
27:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's laborate on the observational analyzes piece. So
27:26
Speaker 2: these are commonly what is meant by a functional behavior
27:29
Speaker 2: assessment or FBA. That's when we go in and we
27:31
Speaker 2: do the observations, we do interviews, we come up with
27:33
Speaker 2: a clear objective description of the target behavior of concern,
27:36
Speaker 2: whatever that problem behavior is. We call that an operational definition,
27:39
Speaker 2: and then we might hypothesize a potential function from this,
27:42
Speaker 2: and that might include you know, things like ABC data
27:44
Speaker 2: and whatnot that have given us some like patterns that
27:47
Speaker 2: we have observed or the people have reported to us.
27:49
Speaker 2: But either way, at this point, the clinician observes the
27:52
Speaker 2: individual in some environment in which the behavior might occur,
27:55
Speaker 2: and so we're observing when these events actually happen and
27:59
Speaker 2: kind of letting the play out and capturing some data around,
28:03
Speaker 2: like the variables that are contributing to those moments.
28:05
Speaker 1: So the person who is trying to do this functional
28:08
Speaker 1: behavior assessment or FBA, what this might look like, is
28:10
Speaker 1: they're going to try and go into the environment where
28:13
Speaker 1: that behavior, the challenging behavior, takes place, and they're going
28:16
Speaker 1: to note the full context whenever the behavior should occur.
28:19
Speaker 1: What they're trying to identify here is what is the
28:21
Speaker 1: circumstance that immediately preceded the target behavior, and they call
28:26
Speaker 1: that the antecedent. What is the behavior itself? And then
28:29
Speaker 1: what are any outcomes that are achieved by this behavior,
28:32
Speaker 1: which is the reinforcer or the consequence? And then, as
28:35
Speaker 1: you just mentioned, this is called an ABC analysis. A
28:38
Speaker 1: for antecedent, B for behavior, C for consequence, and it
28:41
Speaker 1: just flows really nicely. ABC analysis easy to remember. It's
28:45
Speaker 1: a simple three term contingency assessment attempting to describe possible
28:50
Speaker 1: triggers and reinforcing outcomes that may be facilitating the occurrence
28:54
Speaker 1: of those behaviors the sound challenging behaviors or target behaviors.
28:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, and for people who don't understanding behaviorism, they might
29:01
Speaker 2: hear that and think that it's a little reductive that
29:04
Speaker 2: they're going like, oh, that's all behavior boils down to this.
29:07
Speaker 2: There couldn't be more reasons for this, YadA ya YadA.
29:09
Speaker 2: And as a behaviorist, I would also say it can
29:12
Speaker 2: be reductive because it may not capture all the things
29:14
Speaker 2: that it needs to capture. It does its job for
29:16
Speaker 2: what it does. It captures information that you can use
29:20
Speaker 2: to develop further hypotheses. But I'm going to challenge every
29:23
Speaker 2: behavior analyst that listen to this that when you go
29:26
Speaker 2: and you are doing a functional behavior assessment and you're
29:28
Speaker 2: doing FBA's and all that, and if you rely heavily
29:31
Speaker 2: on ABC data as the primary driver for your hypotheses
29:35
Speaker 2: and that's like what your go to is, you may
29:38
Speaker 2: be missing some information and it's not sufficient. It's just
29:41
Speaker 2: not sufficient in like the sometimes it is that simple.
29:44
Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong. Sometimes behavior is that simple. It
29:47
Speaker 2: truly is. But there are other times where there are
29:50
Speaker 2: just other variables of play that we often miss in
29:52
Speaker 2: those types of analyzes. So I would just challenge everybody
29:55
Speaker 2: to like think a little bit deeper about the way
29:57
Speaker 2: that you do assessment with those.
29:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll get into some of Handley's specific arguments against
30:02
Speaker 1: depending too heavily on those descriptive assessments as well.
30:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do that now. So, for instance, if the
30:08
Speaker 2: clinician is observing the individual who tends to bang their
30:11
Speaker 2: head on a desk in a classroom. It might be
30:13
Speaker 2: the case that when the teacher is busy interacting with
30:14
Speaker 2: other students and the individual in question is sitting by themselves,
30:17
Speaker 2: they strike their head against the desk. The teacher rushes
30:19
Speaker 2: over to stop the head banging from happening, and the
30:22
Speaker 2: antecedent is the withdrawn or divided attention, like the attention
30:26
Speaker 2: is not there, right, and the behavior is the head
30:29
Speaker 2: strike to the desk. And then the consequence is the
30:31
Speaker 2: teacher providing direct one on one attention whenever that happens.
30:35
Speaker 2: And so this might be the reason the attention is
30:38
Speaker 2: the primary reinforcer maintaining self injury to this individual in
30:42
Speaker 2: that particular context.
30:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, just as an example, like antecedent attention gone behavior,
30:47
Speaker 1: headbanging on the desk consequence, they get attention, right, And
30:50
Speaker 1: so that ABC assessment there would tell you like, Okay,
30:53
Speaker 1: this person wants attention, and that's so they do these
30:56
Speaker 1: they act out in this way because when they do that,
30:58
Speaker 1: they get the kind of attention they're looking for. Right
31:01
Speaker 1: of note, and Handley points this out too, there are
31:03
Speaker 1: some drawbacks to this simple direct observation strategy for one thing.
31:09
Speaker 1: As Hanley points out, and this is definitely true, most
31:12
Speaker 1: people in this individual's life are generally attempting to mitigate
31:15
Speaker 1: the circumstance that produced those challenging behaviors. So there are
31:19
Speaker 1: often few opportunities to actually observe that behavior happening. Right,
31:26
Speaker 1: Like people have figured out, like, here's how to not
31:29
Speaker 1: set them off. This person has spent a very long time,
31:31
Speaker 1: the individual question here sort of teaching the social environment
31:35
Speaker 1: how to not get them pissed off and not engage
31:39
Speaker 1: in these behaviors. And those people have learned from that
31:41
Speaker 1: and figured out like, let's try and avoid it. And
31:43
Speaker 1: so that can actually result in some other complications when
31:48
Speaker 1: trying to do an FBA, right.
31:50
Speaker 2: So FBAs can actually take a really long time because
31:53
Speaker 2: there may be those few opportunities to observe. And I
31:56
Speaker 2: think that's something that does happen. I mean I did
31:58
Speaker 2: an FBA one time. It was five weeks, yeah, because
32:01
Speaker 2: I was told that this person had problem behavior, and
32:03
Speaker 2: it was five weeks of collecting data waiting for the
32:05
Speaker 2: behavior to occur, and then ultimately the behavior didn't occur.
32:08
Speaker 2: That the behavior interest didn't occur at all, Right, or
32:11
Speaker 2: happened once. He was a forty five year old man
32:12
Speaker 2: that said ass one time, and everybody was like, oh
32:15
Speaker 2: oh no, So I was like, he doesn't need services.
32:17
Speaker 2: But it was five weeks of observations, of data collection
32:22
Speaker 2: of interviews and it yielded zero results. Yeah.
32:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's a very long time as opposed to
32:28
Speaker 1: like the cumulative twenty five minutes that might have been
32:30
Speaker 1: spent in a functional analysis. And also, if your target
32:34
Speaker 1: behavior is swearing, then pull your head out of your ass,
32:36
Speaker 1: people like this is this not? Yeah, grow up, it's
32:40
Speaker 1: not that big a deal. All right. Another drawback here
32:44
Speaker 1: that is worth considering when you're looking at doing something
32:47
Speaker 1: like a descriptive assessment or observational assessment of some sort
32:50
Speaker 1: is that there are very very few I'm actually not
32:53
Speaker 1: aware of any, but I have not dug into the
32:55
Speaker 1: literature in a while, but there are very very few,
32:57
Speaker 1: if any, peer reviewed studies that have shown that an
33:01
Speaker 1: effective intervention was developed from one of these FBAs from
33:06
Speaker 1: this observation alone. That doesn't mean that that doesn't happen,
33:11
Speaker 1: Like I think that there are plenty of instances where
33:13
Speaker 1: there are times that they do develop some effective interventions.
33:17
Speaker 1: It is just very underrepresented in the published scientific literature
33:22
Speaker 1: in the extent to which it is effective. So it's
33:25
Speaker 1: not to say that it doesn't ever work, but the
33:26
Speaker 1: science just right now seems to not really back that
33:30
Speaker 1: up as a very valid strategy for conducting this assessment right.
33:34
Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, FBAs are not
33:37
Speaker 2: validated and notoriously fickle in their reliability. And that's just
33:41
Speaker 2: how well they predict the extent to which the future
33:43
Speaker 2: circumstance will again produce the behavior, and that the putative
33:46
Speaker 2: reinforcer will be available and provided such that it can
33:50
Speaker 2: be reasonably concluded to maintain the behavior. Now, this is
33:54
Speaker 2: the thing I think is really important for everybody to
33:56
Speaker 2: hear when we talk about this. FBAs are an important
34:00
Speaker 2: process that we engage in for our work. As a
34:03
Speaker 2: general rule, how people conduct FBAs differs from every single
34:07
Speaker 2: behavior analyst and how they're in the assessment battery and
34:10
Speaker 2: the tools they use and how they approach, and that
34:13
Speaker 2: that's part of why it's so fickle, is like everybody
34:15
Speaker 2: does it a little bit differently. They use the same tools,
34:18
Speaker 2: but they do it a little bit differently, and they
34:20
Speaker 2: do not produce causal relations. They always produce a hypothesis
34:27
Speaker 2: for what we think the function is, and that we
34:29
Speaker 2: can never confirm it through a standard descriptive assessment FBA process.
34:33
Speaker 2: We have to we can only confirm functions through the
34:37
Speaker 2: functional analysis process and can never confirm it through a
34:40
Speaker 2: standard FBA process because it's all observational and.
34:42
Speaker 1: It's always full of ads.
34:44
Speaker 2: Oh, so many ads.
34:53
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. Yeah, so we're just ended on
34:55
Speaker 1: the note that it's very important one too, And I
34:57
Speaker 1: hope I didn't undermine too terribly by that segue that, Yeah,
35:01
Speaker 1: like this, you get a hypothesis, you don't get a
35:03
Speaker 1: confirmed function, and you could potentially attempt to validate that
35:07
Speaker 1: by applying said intervention and seeing do we see some
35:10
Speaker 1: shift in the behavior? But it doesn't actually mean you
35:12
Speaker 1: have identified a clear function. It just means you've identified
35:15
Speaker 1: a possible reinforcer maybe, or you've otherwise arranged some circumstances
35:19
Speaker 1: to have mitigated the instance in which this behavior might occur,
35:24
Speaker 1: which does I think speak to the fact that you
35:26
Speaker 1: nessy doesn't necessarily always change the motivation for that behavior,
35:29
Speaker 1: like the reason for it happening, and therefore is still
35:32
Speaker 1: there's some ethical considerations around is this person getting their
35:34
Speaker 1: needs met. But let's move on from the descriptive or
35:38
Speaker 1: observational portion of this and move on to the other
35:41
Speaker 1: thought of how well behavior could be assessed using just
35:44
Speaker 1: those questionnaires, those interview tools that are structured. There have
35:49
Speaker 1: at this point been a handful of various open and
35:51
Speaker 1: close ended questionnaires and standardized interview tools that have been
35:58
Speaker 1: developed and standardized to attempt to create valid and reliable
36:01
Speaker 1: inquiries that may yield useful insight as to what may
36:06
Speaker 1: be maintaining those challenging behaviors. And again we're like, these
36:10
Speaker 1: are the people who are around this when it occurs,
36:12
Speaker 1: They've seen it all the time. Maybe if we just
36:14
Speaker 1: ask the right types of questions we can get enough information.
36:18
Speaker 1: And the thinking is that if we administer the same
36:20
Speaker 1: questionnaire to a handful of people, then the people who
36:23
Speaker 1: are closest to this individual, and then use their answers,
36:26
Speaker 1: we can actually make some determines about likely functions of
36:30
Speaker 1: that behavior because they can we sort of set it
36:32
Speaker 1: up so they can tell us what are the circumstances
36:35
Speaker 1: when that behavior occurs, what happens after the behavior occurs,
36:38
Speaker 1: and it's not those aren't the exact questions, but they
36:40
Speaker 1: are set up in an attempt to create an opportunity
36:43
Speaker 1: to assess possible behavior functions just by interviewing the people
36:48
Speaker 1: who around when that behavior has happened right exactly.
36:51
Speaker 2: And while these have demonstrated some utility and clinical settings
36:54
Speaker 2: for many people in many ways, they also come with
36:56
Speaker 2: some caveats that they're unreliable. Questionnaires are often unreliable because
37:01
Speaker 2: different raiders will give different answers to the same questions,
37:03
Speaker 2: and sometimes the same raider will give different answers if
37:06
Speaker 2: the questionnaires administered at different times, and notoriously, people are
37:10
Speaker 2: terrible self reporters, So you know, there's there's also that
37:14
Speaker 2: piece too, where people are reporting on a phenomenon that
37:16
Speaker 2: they're very close to they may give different answers depending
37:19
Speaker 2: on how the question is worded. I mean, it's really
37:22
Speaker 2: kind of fascinating. I think it was like even one
37:24
Speaker 2: of the questionnaires that's often used. I don't know if
37:26
Speaker 2: you talk about this with the functional analysis screening tool.
37:29
Speaker 1: I'm not. I did not bring up any specific ones.
37:31
Speaker 2: No, okay, I bring I want to bring this up
37:33
Speaker 2: because I think this is this is an important piece.
37:35
Speaker 2: Like there's some studies that show that the functional analysis
37:38
Speaker 2: screening tool, the FAST, which is often used as a
37:41
Speaker 2: like a screening tool type of assessment. I think they
37:45
Speaker 2: found that related to functional analyzes that were conducted after
37:49
Speaker 2: a FAST was completed. I think the FAST is the
37:52
Speaker 2: most accurate of those types of tools, and it was
37:54
Speaker 2: like fifty two percent accurate.
37:56
Speaker 1: I remember about being fifty yeah.
37:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like about fifty percent of the time it
37:59
Speaker 2: predicts the function. So like that's a questionnaire that is
38:02
Speaker 2: like it's a coin flip, right, yeah, yeah, at that
38:05
Speaker 2: point exactly. Yeah, it's like this might tell us something maybe,
38:09
Speaker 2: but it's hard to tell. Yeah, And to that point,
38:12
Speaker 2: like just as you were saying, some studies have directly
38:14
Speaker 2: compared some of the questionnaires against an actual experimental functional
38:18
Speaker 2: analysis and generally found only moderate correspondence between the experimental
38:24
Speaker 2: like actual confirmational analysis and the questionnaire, meaning that those
38:29
Speaker 2: questionnaires will tell you one thing, and when you do
38:31
Speaker 2: the actual experiment it tells you something different a good
38:34
Speaker 2: chunk of the time, right, And of course I always
38:37
Speaker 2: had this thought when they were talking about this, and
38:38
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, well, it could be the case that
38:43
Speaker 2: the questionnaire is the one that's actually yielding the correct
38:46
Speaker 2: and accurate analysis of the behavior function, and that it's
38:50
Speaker 2: the FA that is incorrect.
38:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, now it does. I mean it could be the case.
38:55
Speaker 1: It does seem a little bit likely because there is
38:57
Speaker 1: substantially more research backing the functional analysis and way more
39:02
Speaker 1: of like validated outcomes that exist there. So it does
39:05
Speaker 1: make sense that the FA, the standard FA, is the
39:08
Speaker 1: tool against which other assessments are compared, such as a questionnaire,
39:13
Speaker 1: to determine are these things yielding behavior function? But just
39:16
Speaker 1: wanted to throw it out there that it's like when
39:18
Speaker 1: compared to an FA, that you'll discriver results. And I'm like, well,
39:21
Speaker 1: that but doesn't tell you. That doesn't technically tell you
39:23
Speaker 1: which one is right. But given the amount of research
39:26
Speaker 1: done validating the use of a standard functional experimental functional analysis,
39:31
Speaker 1: that that is the one that it makes sense that
39:33
Speaker 1: people will lean on that as the comparison sort of
39:35
Speaker 1: match to sample, if you will.
39:37
Speaker 2: Sure, because I think it's important to understand like maybe
39:40
Speaker 2: like the process by which we get those data, right, Sure, yeah, exactly,
39:44
Speaker 2: you know, with like these questionnaires and like with the observations,
39:47
Speaker 2: like we're seeing things play out, but we're not doing
39:50
Speaker 2: any sort of like experimental analysis or like manipulating any variables,
39:54
Speaker 2: like the functional analysis is the one where we do
39:56
Speaker 2: start manipulating or changing some variable in the in the
39:58
Speaker 2: environment to see it effect on that response. And I
40:01
Speaker 2: think that those that is so that's such a critically
40:04
Speaker 2: different process that I think that when we when we
40:07
Speaker 2: compare them, it is a little bit like, you know,
40:10
Speaker 2: the goal is the same to figure out the function
40:12
Speaker 2: of the behavior, but the way that we get that
40:15
Speaker 2: information it's just a little bit more robust to the
40:17
Speaker 2: functional analysis stage.
40:19
Speaker 1: Right now. I fully went into this expecting we get
40:22
Speaker 1: through all that we have left to say about functional analyses,
40:25
Speaker 1: but there is enough left that I think we actually
40:28
Speaker 1: do have content for a whole entire other episode because
40:32
Speaker 1: we still have to get into like what do we
40:34
Speaker 1: do with the results of a functional analysis? And then
40:37
Speaker 1: I teed this up last time and we didn't get
40:39
Speaker 1: to it, but sort of getting into the other innovations
40:42
Speaker 1: that have happened around functional analyzes, which is specifically synthesized analyses,
40:47
Speaker 1: and getting into some of the controversies therein and getting
40:51
Speaker 1: into some of our own sort of hot takes on
40:52
Speaker 1: some of these issues as well. So rather than drag
40:56
Speaker 1: this out into an hour and forty five minute long episode,
41:00
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and stop here. We'll pause here for
41:03
Speaker 1: this episode and we will go into a part four
41:06
Speaker 1: to get into those sections as well, which bully for
41:08
Speaker 1: everyone here. You know, we got so much content out
41:13
Speaker 1: of this topic. I wasn't sure we'd be like it
41:14
Speaker 1: this much.
41:15
Speaker 2: But who to thunk it?
41:17
Speaker 1: Who to thunk it? But okay, perfect, Well, let's go
41:20
Speaker 1: ahead and pause there. And as we're sort of heading
41:23
Speaker 1: toward the end of this, for those of you who
41:25
Speaker 1: have never listened to us before and this is your
41:27
Speaker 1: first time, then way to pick up a spot right
41:30
Speaker 1: in the middle. But hopefully you're getting a lot out
41:32
Speaker 1: of this. Still, at the end of our each of
41:34
Speaker 1: our discussions, we recommend some things. We are people who
41:37
Speaker 1: go about the world consuming all kinds of entertainment and
41:40
Speaker 1: books and movies and music and experiences, and we just
41:44
Speaker 1: like to share those with people, and so we recommend
41:46
Speaker 1: them at the end of our discussions, even though they're
41:48
Speaker 1: not about the topic we were discussing most of the time.
41:51
Speaker 1: And so we'll get to that. And we also, of
41:53
Speaker 1: course have the credits. I even have like it's not
41:55
Speaker 1: technically a listener mail. But it's kind of like a
41:57
Speaker 1: listener mail i'd like to read, so get into that
42:00
Speaker 1: as well. But all right, before we go ahead and
42:03
Speaker 1: make that transition, is there anything that I forgot you'd
42:06
Speaker 1: like to add before and we can get to credits
42:08
Speaker 1: and whatnot.
42:09
Speaker 2: No, I think we're ready to roll into it.
42:12
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're close enough that I think let's
42:15
Speaker 1: go ahead and do one more quick ad break and
42:17
Speaker 1: then we'll come back for the fun wrap up here
42:19
Speaker 1: where we'll get into our recommendations and all that sounds good. Okay,
42:31
Speaker 1: we're back. I apologize for the lack of cleverness around
42:34
Speaker 1: my ad segway, but thank you all for being here.
42:38
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this journey we continue
42:40
Speaker 1: to find ourselves on with respect to the weird and
42:42
Speaker 1: wacky world and deep dive of behavior functions and functional
42:46
Speaker 1: analyzes with behavior analysts. And how many times did I
42:50
Speaker 1: say the word behavior and function in this discussion. If
42:53
Speaker 1: we were playing a drinking game, everyone would be dead.
42:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would be very sick. You would be hospitalized, So.
42:58
Speaker 1: Don't do that. I would like say thank you so
43:00
Speaker 1: much for listening, thank you for joining us. For those
43:02
Speaker 1: people who would like to support us, there are many
43:04
Speaker 1: ways you can do that. You can leave us a
43:06
Speaker 1: rating and a review on whatever platform you listen to.
43:08
Speaker 1: Just click the highest amount of stars. That's very helpful.
43:11
Speaker 1: We do appreciate it. And if you have something that
43:12
Speaker 1: you'd like to tell us your thoughts about this, you
43:15
Speaker 1: maybe correct us on something, provide some feedback about something
43:18
Speaker 1: you maybe didn't like that we said. You don't have
43:20
Speaker 1: to screw up our algorithm. You can just email us
43:21
Speaker 1: directly info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com. And I do appreciate
43:26
Speaker 1: constructive criticism, and of course I accept glowing praise as well.
43:30
Speaker 1: If you'd like to send that are we do That
43:32
Speaker 1: is a way that you can do it. If you
43:34
Speaker 1: like to support us. Other ways you can tell a friends,
43:36
Speaker 1: make them subscribe to our podcast, or just take their
43:38
Speaker 1: device and subscribe for them. But you can also take
43:41
Speaker 1: the plunge and join us on Patreon. If you do that,
43:43
Speaker 1: you'll get some bonus content, ad free episode, some other goodies,
43:46
Speaker 1: early episodes, that sort of thing, and whateveryone's really here for.
43:50
Speaker 1: At the end of each of our full lengths, I
43:52
Speaker 1: will read the names of the supporters or people who
43:55
Speaker 1: have been trucking with us for so long, helping us
43:57
Speaker 1: be a podcast, and we really really appreciate your generosity
44:00
Speaker 1: and your support and just generally being awesome human. So
44:02
Speaker 1: a giant shout out and thank you too, Mike m
44:06
Speaker 1: Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Kiara, and Charlie
44:11
Speaker 1: for all of your continued awesomeness and support and helping
44:14
Speaker 1: us be a podcast.
44:16
Speaker 2: We're beautiful. You're beautiful, and we love you. We're beautiful
44:19
Speaker 2: and you love us is what I meant to say. No,
44:21
Speaker 2: you're beautiful, we love you. Thank you so much for
44:22
Speaker 2: your time and your attention. You guys are the best.
44:26
Speaker 1: And I can say we're beautiful and I love you
44:28
Speaker 1: because I also have a team of people who help
44:30
Speaker 1: me make this, who helped the show come to life.
44:32
Speaker 1: So writing in fact checking from Shane and myself, thank
44:35
Speaker 1: you for recording with me today, Shane.
44:37
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me.
44:38
Speaker 1: Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our person
44:41
Speaker 1: who does the sounds good is Justin. Our audio producer,
44:45
Speaker 1: extraordinary God Emperor Penguin, who's so wonderful and great at everything.
44:51
Speaker 1: He's a delight indeed, and I think that's what I
44:54
Speaker 1: have to say about the credits. Is there anything that
44:56
Speaker 1: I forgot?
44:57
Speaker 2: No, I think that covers it all.
44:58
Speaker 1: Right, let's do a quick kind of a listener mail
45:01
Speaker 1: like thing. We'll do an auditory segue to this. This
45:06
Speaker 1: is actually it's a review someone left our podcast, but
45:09
Speaker 1: it is one of the nicest things anyone has ever
45:11
Speaker 1: said about us, and so I want to share it.
45:15
Speaker 1: Was quite flattered when I read it. And we're a
45:16
Speaker 1: little behind because this is about a month ago. But
45:18
Speaker 1: we actually had to record a bunch of episodes ahead
45:20
Speaker 1: of time because we had some scheduling conflicts for several
45:23
Speaker 1: weeks where we wouldn't be able to record. So we've
45:25
Speaker 1: been releasing episodes while not recording them, and now we're
45:28
Speaker 1: back on track here.
45:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
45:30
Speaker 1: They titled their review informative and fun and said I
45:34
Speaker 1: took a class at ASU from my graduate program and
45:36
Speaker 1: special education ABA and where someone recommended this podcast, and
45:40
Speaker 1: I thought I would give it a try since I
45:41
Speaker 1: commute a lot and needed something to listen to. Not
45:43
Speaker 1: only is it a psychology podcast, but also speaks on
45:46
Speaker 1: daily political issues and horrors that continue to happen in America.
45:49
Speaker 1: I enjoy the candid conversation, informative content, and most of
45:52
Speaker 1: all that I am learning while listening. Shane Abraham have
45:55
Speaker 1: a great dynamic that reminds me a little of John
45:57
Speaker 1: Oliver and Last Week Tonight, as the topics are sometimes
46:00
Speaker 1: to hear but important. Nonetheless, their username is one six
46:04
Speaker 1: for the Bunch Numbers. So anyway, thank you to String
46:07
Speaker 1: of Numbers for that very kind and very thoughtful comparison.
46:12
Speaker 1: Being compared to John Oliver is extremely flattering to me. Yes,
46:15
Speaker 1: So that was very very sweet of you, and I'm glad.
46:18
Speaker 1: I also appreciate people who find a love of learning
46:21
Speaker 1: as we do, and that's kind of what we're up
46:23
Speaker 1: to in this discussion. So hopefully this has been insightful
46:26
Speaker 1: as well what we've been talking about.
46:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, absolutely, and thank you for the kind words.
46:30
Speaker 2: Anytime you all want to share nice words with us,
46:32
Speaker 2: that'd be super cool. Yeah, we love that.
46:34
Speaker 1: We're here for it, do you get Yeah? All right, Grevy,
46:39
Speaker 1: Well let's go ahead and transition then to the fun
46:42
Speaker 1: part here of our recommendations and yeah, cue the music.
46:53
Speaker 2: Recommendations. I am going to recommend a place that is
47:00
Speaker 2: it's maybe a little bit difficult to get to if
47:01
Speaker 2: you're in the States, but you can at the very
47:04
Speaker 2: least still donate money to this place, which I think
47:07
Speaker 2: is cool. And so that is a place called the
47:11
Speaker 2: Bonarong Wildlife Sanctuary in Hobot, Tasmania. So I bring this
47:16
Speaker 2: place up because I think this is such a great
47:18
Speaker 2: example of how sanctuary should be set up and I
47:23
Speaker 2: think it's really cool. So this place was a fairly
47:25
Speaker 2: small plot of land in Tasmania, which is the most
47:30
Speaker 2: southern state of Australia. It's the Island. And for those
47:35
Speaker 2: of you who don't know, the wildlife in Australia is
47:37
Speaker 2: very ridiculous. I was just there for a work trip
47:39
Speaker 2: and I got to experience it. But I say ridiculous
47:41
Speaker 2: because it's just so unique compared to the rest of
47:44
Speaker 2: the world. It's just so so different. We found this
47:47
Speaker 2: wildlife sanctuary kind of like haphazardly. It was last day
47:50
Speaker 2: we were there and we're like, let's go check this out,
47:53
Speaker 2: let's see what let's see what this is all about.
47:55
Speaker 2: And we get there and it was perfect. It was
47:57
Speaker 2: exactly like I said, what a wildlife sanctuary should be.
48:00
Speaker 2: Lots of local animals, they have twenty four to seven
48:03
Speaker 2: care for the animals in terms of like not only
48:06
Speaker 2: care but for rescues, so like they have a hotline
48:08
Speaker 2: where people can go pick up animals for rescues, so
48:11
Speaker 2: it is a rescue as well. They have a hospital
48:13
Speaker 2: on site that they can do surgery for the animals
48:16
Speaker 2: and make sure they're cared for, like especially when they
48:18
Speaker 2: come in with like burns or broken limbs and all that.
48:21
Speaker 2: And they do educational tours, so you buy a ticket
48:25
Speaker 2: and they do tours for free. The folks that work
48:27
Speaker 2: there take you to every animal habitat. They explain the
48:31
Speaker 2: animals and what they do and what they are all about,
48:34
Speaker 2: and it's just super fascinating. So to give you an
48:37
Speaker 2: idea of what they have at this sanctuary, they have
48:39
Speaker 2: Tasmanian devils. They have a huge area for forester or kangaroos,
48:45
Speaker 2: which are quite tall in person. You don't realize how
48:48
Speaker 2: tall kangaroo is until it stands up next to you
48:50
Speaker 2: and tries to eat food out of your hands. But lovely,
48:53
Speaker 2: lovely creatures. There were bare nosed wombats, which, by the way,
48:56
Speaker 2: I fell in love with one named Pebbles, and I
48:58
Speaker 2: wanted to bring her home to her and spend time
49:00
Speaker 2: with her. She was very interesting. They short beaked a kidna,
49:04
Speaker 2: which if you've never seen the kidna, it's like if
49:06
Speaker 2: an ant eater were a hedgehog.
49:08
Speaker 1: It looks what I was actually gonna say, Like I
49:10
Speaker 1: pulled up the website and they got it and I
49:11
Speaker 1: was like, oh, kidd does and yeah, they that is
49:14
Speaker 1: a good way to describe it as an ant eater hedgehog.
49:17
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
49:18
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the one they had only had three legs,
49:20
Speaker 2: so like it would like kind of like drop its
49:22
Speaker 2: butt when it was walking, and I loved it. So
49:25
Speaker 2: they have batongs, they have gliders, they have qualls, and
49:30
Speaker 2: they have like a bird place too. So they've got cockatoos, which,
49:33
Speaker 2: by the way, are just wild there, just like cockatoos
49:35
Speaker 2: are just flying all over the place. Sure there are
49:38
Speaker 2: frog mouths, which are really cool birds of prey. There
49:40
Speaker 2: was a cape Baron geese walking around that had a
49:44
Speaker 2: condition called angel wing, which meant that couldn't fly very well.
49:48
Speaker 2: Her name was Lucy, and she liked to greet all
49:50
Speaker 2: the people that would come in and she was very nice.
49:52
Speaker 2: But my favorite is that they had these like parrots
49:55
Speaker 2: called galas. Yeah, and I'm not saying that with an
49:58
Speaker 2: Australian accent. It was ga la h yeaheah. I'm familiar
50:02
Speaker 2: and they were very cool too, So yeah, Glas. Anyway,
50:05
Speaker 2: it's if you get a chance, please donate to them.
50:07
Speaker 2: They're doing really great work. They're doing great conservation work
50:11
Speaker 2: and the food was all vegan, so they make sure
50:15
Speaker 2: that their their snack bar aligns with their goal and
50:19
Speaker 2: mission of saving animals and conserving the environment.
50:22
Speaker 1: Very nice, that's amazing.
50:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was great.
50:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, I realized that you're the galaw clarification was not
50:27
Speaker 1: for me, that's for audience, But I was and not
50:32
Speaker 1: a super nerd on this, but that is one of
50:34
Speaker 1: the It's a really good card in the Wingspan board game.
50:37
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah.
50:40
Speaker 1: But but yeah, that's that's cool. Awesome. Well, I now
50:43
Speaker 1: I feel like I should have gone first because yours
50:44
Speaker 1: was so much more important than mine.
50:46
Speaker 2: But there's pretty important too.
50:49
Speaker 1: Ban Wong Wildlife Sanctuary. I'm recommending a movie that recently
50:54
Speaker 1: came out. It is the new Spider Man movie Brand
50:57
Speaker 1: New Day. Yes, oh my god, I love this movie.
51:00
Speaker 1: They have just been absolutely nailing it with the Spider
51:02
Speaker 1: Man movies in the MCU and regardless of whether or
51:06
Speaker 1: not it's MCU. And this one was just so extremely
51:09
Speaker 1: fun and well done and I really really enjoyed it.
51:13
Speaker 1: Great cast, some big reveals I don't want to spoil
51:16
Speaker 1: just yet, but action was fantastic. They did they really
51:20
Speaker 1: actually did some more unique ways of showing like Spider
51:24
Speaker 1: Man swinging through the city, and like, after all this time,
51:28
Speaker 1: they're still finding innovative ways to depict what that can
51:31
Speaker 1: and can look like and how cool it is, Like
51:34
Speaker 1: it's really neat to see them just continue to push
51:37
Speaker 1: the envelope in terms of visual effects, in terms of
51:40
Speaker 1: like action, and just such a well done movie, so
51:44
Speaker 1: really really enjoyable if you're at all interested in sort
51:47
Speaker 1: of superhero action movies. This one was super well done.
51:51
Speaker 2: I think there's something really special about Tom Holland because
51:53
Speaker 2: I think he does Peter Parker and Spider Man well.
51:55
Speaker 2: Like Yes, that's always the challenge of like playing a
51:58
Speaker 2: character that has like two stinct personalities, like Batman is
52:02
Speaker 2: like that, like you for somebody to be a good Batman,
52:04
Speaker 2: you also have to be a good Bruce Wayne right,
52:06
Speaker 2: and Tom Holland just does both so well. Like Andrew
52:09
Speaker 2: Garfield was a really good Spider Man. Yeah, but he
52:11
Speaker 2: was too cool. He was Peter Parker. He was very cool,
52:15
Speaker 2: and that was not you know, the case. And Toby
52:18
Speaker 2: Maguire is also another example of like a good Peter
52:20
Speaker 2: Parker and a good Spider Man, but he always looked
52:21
Speaker 2: a little bit older. I think that Tom Holland does
52:24
Speaker 2: a good job of like keeping the youthfulness of Peter
52:27
Speaker 2: Parker and being a good Spider Man and like the
52:29
Speaker 2: Hubrist that are not the Hubrist, but like the gravity
52:31
Speaker 2: that comes along with that character and the tragedy that
52:33
Speaker 2: comes along with that character. Yeah. I mean, it's just
52:35
Speaker 2: it's great. It was such a great movie.
52:37
Speaker 1: Yeah. So all right, Bonnarong, Wildlife Sanctuary and Spider Man
52:40
Speaker 1: Brand New Day probably still in theaters at the time
52:42
Speaker 1: that this comes out, So go check those things out
52:46
Speaker 1: if you're in Australia or just want to go see
52:47
Speaker 1: a movie.
52:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.
52:48
Speaker 1: Otherwise, we have one more part I think to come
52:51
Speaker 1: back to discuss in terms of functional analysies, So catch
52:54
Speaker 1: us next week. I think that'll wrap it up with
52:56
Speaker 1: what with the amount of content we have left, I
52:59
Speaker 1: do look forward to sharing with everyone, but I think
53:01
Speaker 1: that's what we have to say. Anything that you like
53:03
Speaker 1: to add that I forgot before we wrap up.
53:05
Speaker 2: Dope, not today.
53:06
Speaker 1: All right, this is Abraham and it's Sheene. We're out.
53:09
Speaker 2: Siya.
53:10
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
53:13
Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
53:15
Speaker 2: going to WWD WWD.
53:18
Speaker 1: Podcast dot com.
53:20
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome
53:22
Speaker 2: day