People have a tendency to hold onto assumptions about others; not forgetting how someone has behaved in the past. While we behaviourists often say “the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour” that only holds true assuming we do nothing about it. By removing or adding to the physical and/or social environment, or by teaching alternate skills, we can effectively change behaviours for the better.

Over the weekend, Toronto’s Mayor, Rob Ford tweeted a message to say Happy Thanksgiving and a reminder to “drive safe”. There’s a bit of irony in his post given our Mayor’s past driving behaviours which have caught the public eye. He’s been caught reading while driving and has ignored the open streetcar doors that require drivers to stop behind them as passengers get off. Following that post came the flood of cynicism as people recalled his past mistakes; many doubtful that he can drive safe himself. He is labelled a bad-driver and perhaps in a joking way, we harp on his past mistakes. If we are so cynical of him driving safe, will we ever give him credit when he does? Do we interact with and approach Mayor Ford as someone capable of having their behaviour be changed? If not, then what else do we expect?

I ask these questions because in my professional life, I support individuals with challenging behaviours. What follows them around constantly are behaviour-based labels.

He’s a runner. She’s a head-banger. He’s a hair-puller. She’s difficult to work with. He’s so challenging.

Sometimes people interact with the individual with these labels in mind and therefore, nothing changes. They express doubt that the individual can learn not to display the challenging behaviour when someone like me comes along and wants to re-arrange a few things in an effort to decrease that behaviour or increase a more desirable one. Labels are hard to shake. And just like the assumptions get repeated and reinforced, so do the challenging behaviours. People become entrenched in these self-fulling patterns and nothing changes.

If you expect nothing else, you change nothing, and nothing else will come. If you expect that something else is possible, you behave in ways that change the circumstances, and behaviour change can come.

Which side of behaviour change do you want to be on?

If you’re a behaviour analyst (or studying behaviour analysis), the following scene might be familiar:

What do you do?

I am a behaviour analyst.

Oh. [pause] What is that exactly? 

Well, I look at behaviours that people want to decrease, or the skills they want to increase. I analyze the situations in which they occur, or not occur, and then I help develop plans to either increase or decrease that behaviour.

I don’t know if my explanation describes fully what I do, but when you have 5-10 seconds to describe your profession before people become bored, that’s the most succinct schpeel I have.  Sometimes that’s enough small talk for one person and we move on to something else.

So, how about those Blue Jays?

Still, others are intrigued and we may go into it a little more.  

When I think about what I do, I have lots to say. I try to make use of anecdotes and analogies to explain what I do while refrain from using too much jargon (though, I still try to use correct terms where fitting).  A teacher colleague, in her attempt to explain my role to a student we were supporting, provided a most-fitting analogy: “She’s like a road sign-maker”.  

To quote Tom Cochrane, “Life is a highway” (a little Canadian reference) and on that highway are many exits, routes and detours a person can take; each representing a possible behaviour.  It is my job to plan or consult on which route may be easiest, effective and most efficient for our ‘driver’.  

Along the way, I may put up road signs that help guide our learner in a direction that works for them, sets the pace or that warns them of inconvenience or danger ahead.  We might consider these antecedent strategies.  

In some cases, I come along with a bulldozer and clear a whole new path for our driver. This sets them up on a different route; yet, still arriving at their intended destination.  We may call these replacement behaviours or alternate skills to teach.  He or she will still need a map and road signs to help them navigate, but at least this route is safer for acceptable for all.    

And finally, I often wave our ‘driver’ in with indications that he or she is on track and almost there.  Sometimes my flag may signal them to slow down or it redirects them to pull-over and check their map.  When they have arrived, we wave the checkered flag and celebrate their accomplishment.  Even driving has its consequences, teaching the learner which route(s) ends up working the best.

If you think of behaviour analysis as a road map, you can see that any number of routes are possible. There is no one way to get us where we want/need to be.  The road conditions are always changing and behaviour analysts are there to assess the situation and plan accordingly.  

Today, I was sign-maker, road-paver and a flag-waver.    

I like this road analogy.         

Related Posts:

Behaviour Analysts talk shop

I want a government that considers behaviour analysis

Are you a driving instructor?

Time for another season of #ABAchat. Consider joining us on Wednesday evenings at 9 p.m. EST on Twitter to discuss topics and issues related to the science and use of applied behaviour analysis (ABA). The schedule of topics is as follows:

March 14, 2012 - Why ABA? How did you get into the field of ABA? What pivotal moments have defined your career, use of ABA?

March 21, 2012 - Ethics of ABA (moderated by @behaviorbabe)

March 28, 2012 - Teaching requesting (manding) and other communication skills

April 4, 2012 - Joint attention 

April 11, 2012 - TAGteach (Teaching with Acoustical Guidance; moderated by @behaviorbabe).  Check out this site for more: http://www.tagteach.com/  *further articles are coming.

April 18, 2012 - Data collection - how do we make it easy and accessible for everyone to gather?  Related article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2790945/pdf/jaba-42-04-827.pdf

April 25, 2012 - “Isn’t reinforcement just bribery?” and “rewards ruin intrinsic motivation” debate.  *Read up on Alfie Kohn’s and Daniel Pink’s views on rewards/motivation and Philip Strain’s rebuttal, ‘A Not So Good Job With “Good Job”’.

May 2, 2012 - Non-contingent reinforcement (NCR) or fixed-time schedules of reinforcement.  Here is a related article: http://www.jeabjaba.org/jaba/articles/1997/jaba-30-01-0127.pdf

May 9, 2012 - ABA in the work setting - are we practicing what we preach?

There has been recent discussion within Twitter as well as on other blogs on the integrity and ethics of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA).  People such as myself can be very passionate about our work and the science behind it. Through many of my tweets and statements here, you know my position on ABA as a science and that it is not something that is done to someone. ABA is often misunderstood as only an autism therapy, a “bag of tricks”, an aversive control procedure or that it degrades the human experience of the individual. When I see a statement such as this however, I recognize that it is the experience of the person making them. People only know what they have experienced. If questionable practice exists under the guise of ABA, then people should be seeking clarification and call on the ABA practitioner to explain themselves. Our responses however must not be defensive or dismissive.  It is our duty to inform, but not call the other person’s experience “wrong”.  There is no right or wrong. There is asking and knowing. There is opinion and there is fact.  

Behaviour analysts should be open to questioning and skepticsm of their practice. It is part of maintaining the “science” behind what we do. Human behaviour is complex and we cannot possibly know everything about a person’s learning history or pick up on every environmental variable. Therefore, nothing we do is absolute or perfect, especially when we are talking about translating ABA in the lab to ABA in the community. We make our best clinical judgements based on the data we are presented with and the evidence of practice given a similar set of circumstance. As Sidman (2011) highlighted, at any given time we must be able to back up what we are claiming to be effective and therefore we better know the theoretical underpinnings and research behind the ABA-based intervention we are implementing.

For example, if we are suggesting using a token economy as part of an intervention, we should have data that has guided how many tokens we are using, how much or how long before the individual is provided with the reinforcer and we must understand the principles behind schedules of reinforcement and delaying gratification.

A good ABA practitioner should also be checking in on their practice making sure they have not fallen into patterns of assumptions or routines. ABA is not one-size-fits-all, and so there must remain some degree of skepticism that what worked before may not work in another situation. That skepticism must also carry through when we interpret the results in the research and in our own cases. 

The integrity and ethics of the field relies on behaviour analysts pouring over the available evidence and data to make their decisions and when they are not confident in how to proceed, them seeking supervision and peer consultation (Bailey & Burch, 2011). We are required to properly explain everything we are doing and have the approval of the people involved before we proceed (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2010). ABA practitioners not meeting these (and many other) guidelines are doing a disservice to the field and may have their practices questioned.

There is no defending ABA when its practices are haphazardly implemented and the desired results are not achieved; or worse, there is harm done to the people involved. When this happens, we should not be defending the science; rather, we should be calling out the practitioner on getting it wrong. In the meantime, I can continue to inform others of our science, practice with the utmost integrity and remain open to other possible explanations for learning and behaviour change. 

References:

Bailey, J. & Burch, M. (2011). Ethics for behavior analysts (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Behavior Analyst Certification Board. (2010). Behavior Analyst Certification Board guidelines for responsible conduct. Tallahassee, FL: Author.

Sidman, M. (2011). Can an understanding of basic research facilitate the effectiveness of practitioners?  Reflections and personal perspectives. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 44(4), 973-991.

The last function to be discussed in the ‘Why Does He Do That?’ series is tangible. 

On any given day, we act in ways that get us the things or activities we want and the items we need.  The behaviour can be as simple as pressing the button to turn on the TV or as complex as packing your bags, getting to the airport, boarding a plane and landing at your dream destination (though, that might be considered escape depending on the circumstances).  When we suspect the function of a behaviour is tangible, the three-term contingency might look something like this:

Antecedent: deprived of the item we want (i.e., we haven’t had it for sometime, or haven’t had enough to meet our needs) and the desired item is either in sight, has been mentioned by others or has has come to mind.

Behaviour: We reach for, or approach and take an item.  We ask for the item from someone or perform certain duties that have been asked of us.  Or, sometimes we may yell, scream at others, make demands or threats, throw ourselves on the floor and maybe even cry.

Consequence: Someone gives us what we want or the environment offers what we need (and doesn’t deny us taking it)

If it is stuff we are after, we will demonstrate a behaviour that has resulted in stuff coming into our possession.  And boy do we have a lot of stuff!  The more we have, the more we keep getting it seems.  This is due to how easy it is to be reinforced with stuff.  Our physical and social environment have evolved to make access to things even easier - drive thrus, ordering on-line, Superstores, more TV channels. It’s stuff, stuff and more stuff.  When we are so easily reinforced by stuff our tangible-getting behaviour increases and we acquire even more stuff. Soon, we come to expect this new level of stuff; rarely do we try to scale back. And when we do, it is hard work!  Ask the people who are trying to lose weight, quit smoking or need to live on a limited income (as a side note, applied behaviour analysis can be of assistance in these areas of behaviour change).

I say it’s time to put ourselves on a thinner schedule of reinforcement when it comes to accessing our ‘want’ tangibles. We can demonstrate some form of restraint by delaying gratification.  I don’t need to eat that cookie right now.  Or we start offering people just a little bit less in their environment.  No, I don’t need the supersize humongous gulp size. I’ll take a small thank you very much!  Too bad our environment has so much to offer for our ‘wants’ and the people who profit from delivering such ‘wants’ are not going to start limiting their supply for society’s benefit any time soon.  

We are definitely a tangible-obsessed society, but we can live a life of less is more.

Related Posts:

Baking got me this tangible:  http://behaviouristatplay.tumblr.com/post/7056349014/this-reinforcement-is-bananas-banana-bread-the

Got game?  http://behaviouristatplay.tumblr.com/post/5758647085/three-term-contingency-of-the-day-new-videogame

How about some pie?  http://behaviouristatplay.tumblr.com/post/4281903290/ive-been-waiting-for-key-lime-pie-all-week

We took a break from #ABAchat during the holidays and I am looking forward to getting it up and running again. We are a group of behaviour analysts, students, consumers, parents, educators, etc. who gather over Twitter on Wednesday evenings at 9 p.m. EST to discuss topics relating to applied behaviour analysis (ABA).  Join us on Twitter and follow the hashtag, #ABAchat to read what’s being discussed in the field.

The schedule of topics is:

January 11, 2012 - history of ABA; dimensions of ABA that are still current (see  http://seab.envmed.rochester.edu/jaba/articles/1968/jaba-01-01-0091.pdf and  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1286071/pdf/jaba00102-0014.pdf for details)

January 18, 2012 - caseloads and service delivery

January 25, 2012 - motivation (here’s an article on the subject:  http://www.mee.tcd.ie/neuraleng/pmwiki/uploads/People.Robert/TPRVol60No2-Whelan.pdf - an interesting take on the motivating operation)

February 1, 2012 - smoking cessation

February 8, 2012 - ABA vs. Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) - same or different? (here’s an article on the background with ABA and PBS:  http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ800989.pdf)

February 15, 2012 - Over-generalization

February 22, 2012 - Procrastination

February 29, 2012 - TBD*

*If you have any other topics or questions you’d like to discuss feel free to tweet me (@behaviouratplay) or drop a suggestion in my ask box.  I’ll update with relevant articles/readings if I come across anything or if someone shares something with me.

Looking forward to this season’s #ABAchat!

~Tricia-Lee 

We are four days into 2012 and I can see that many people have resolved to change some aspect of their behaviour. People seem motivated to increase their fitness level or to eat more healthy. Some have chosen to focus on cutting back on a bad habit in their life or removing negativity altogether.  My only hope is that people set themselves up for a realistic change, and that these expectations are informed by data.  

When people randomly select their goals without any reference to their current level of performance - referred to as the baseline data - they are likely to be met with disappointment when they find themselves not meeting their expectations “soon enough”, “quick enough” or at a level they were hoping for.  Often what is happening is a failure to recognize (i.e., reinforce) early accomplishments - smaller changes in behaviour that can eventually lead to the larger goal. You can give yourself this credit by measuring your current level of performance and setting your expectations slightly higher or lower (depending on whether or not you are aiming to increase or decrease a behaviour).  Once that smaller goal has been met, you can give yourself that pat on the back and choose to either maintain your current level of performance or increase/decrease your expectation.  

For example: I am striving to write more blog posts this year.  I have been blogging about applied behaviour analysis for just over a year and have made 102 posts as of January 1, 2012. This is on average two posts a week. A realistic goal for me would then be to write three posts per week.  I may stick to this goal for the remainder of the year, or after a period of meeting three posts per week, I can challenge myself to increase my postings to four per week.  Either way, I would consider myself a success.  

There are a number of great social media platforms that allow you to measure and keep track of your own data.  I am currently using www.fitocracy.com to keep track of my workouts.  After a couple of weeks tracking my circuit routines I have set myself up to increase the machine weights by 5 lbs and maintain this weight for one week before increasing by another 5 lbs.  The site allows me to report on my workouts and receive achievement badges and “props” from fellow friends and users - a great source of motivation that is actually keeping me going.  

One Hundred Push-ups hundredpushups.com is another site/app where you can establish your baseline level of push-ups and increase your performance week by week in realistic steps. My baseline is a nice and easy four push-ups (don’t laugh!). This means I’ll be training myself according to the rank level 1 program the site has designed which is about five push-ups after the first week.

I may be aiming low but if I can squeeze out just five push-ups by next week, I’ll consider that a job well done.  It seems less ambitious but the point is to aim low. You have more of a chance to be reinforced, less of a chance at failing, and you can always change your goal as you go along.

I would wish others “good luck” on meeting their goals but that wouldn’t be very behavioural of me.  Instead, I will offer myself as a source of reinforcement for those that seek social praise and acknowledgement.  If you tell me your goal and report the progress you are making I am happy to provide my own version of “props” and encouragement!

Related post:

New Week Resolutions:  http://behaviouristatplay.tumblr.com/post/4234289337/new-week-resolutions