Hey everybody and welcome to ABA Inside Track, the podcast that's like reading in your car, but safer. I'm your host, Robert Perry Crews, with this episode 27, and I'm joined as always by my fabulous co-hosts. It's Diana.
And it's Jackie. What's up guys? How goes it?
Great. Good. Fine.
How are you? Negative. Negative.
We have a react to it. It's from Star Wars. I'm cool. So this week...
All of us are suddenly laughing. I love that. Niner.
Niner. I assume that the podcast land is... Don't crash everybody. It was hilarious.
I know. While you were saying our opening credits, I was wondering what other people do in their cars. it's like reading in your car but safer and i was thinking what do people do in their cars besides driving i know sometimes people are reading that's super dangerous don't do that people don't text and drive i changed my pants in a car once while driving i was i was at like a light so it wasn't your pants why did you know i was going i was i i was it was in high school and i worked at the wellesley college club so i had to change into my my work pants so you weren't actually driving Because you can do a ton of things at a stop sign.
Well, I was moving, I had to coast a little bit forward and then stop. So there was braking and taking my foot off the brake and hitting the gas going on. Sometimes I eat salad while I drive. That's pretty tough.
It is. I don't do anything. I just drive. I'm actually a pretty bad driver, so I need to really...
pay attention. I can't even use cruise control. Let's put that out there.
Cruise control messes me up. I don't do that. It never feels like it's working for me. I press the button and then my car will start slowing down on the highway.
Then I'm like, what am I doing? And then I start thinking of something else. It's a bad idea.
Time to sit back and relax. Sit back and relax. Enjoy the tunes. Or your behavior analytic podcast.
Right. There's so many of them. And speaking of behavior analytic podcasts. We're one.
This is one and you're listening to it. And you're going to be listening to us talk about research, which is what our show is. We talk about behavior analytic research.
And this week we're going to be talking about stereotypy as reinforcement. Now, before we get into the two articles we'll be reading, we all know that there are a lot of different treatments for stereotypy. We are not going to do an exhaustive review of different stereotypy treatments. What we are going to do is talk about... two articles that look at some recent updates to one possible treatment and we found to be a pretty pretty interesting one the two articles we will be reading well we won't be reading them we'll be discussing them we already read them the two articles that we will be discussing this week are treating stereotypy in adolescents diagnosed with autism by refining the tactic of using stereotypy as reinforcement that last part was in quotes by potter hanley augustine clay and phelps from the journal of applied behavior analysis 2013 and our second article effects of multiple versus chained schedules on stereotypy and item engagement by slayton and hanley and this is hot off the press from the journal of applied behavior analysis 2016 oh i guess not really it's 2017 now that was the winter though but 2016 just seems so old now it's passe so passe time for a new year 2017 in which i like 2016 just so you know it was there were a lot of positives i think in 2016 Right.
You're right. You're right. Including extension research, how we can use stereotypies as reinforcements. Right.
What are the highlights, you might say? Yeah. I think this is actually a controversial topic because if you talk to anyone outside of the behavior analytic realm, they're like, what?
You don't want them to engage in problem behavior. You're going to let them engage in problem behavior? Oh, see, I hear it the opposite. I always hear it as I don't want to change the fact that my child engages in stereotypy. Because it takes away from who they are.
That's how they communicate. Or it makes them happy. And I want to be happy. Oh, I have not heard either one of these. Okay, so that's weird.
So we've got some controversy. But between both sides of the controversy, we're running the gamut. So I have tried to do this before in my practice, use stereotypies reinforcer. And it was met with lots of resistance. So, interesting.
But you guys don't have that same feeling. Yeah, I would think that actually this treatment would be more well-received by a lot of parents than some of the alternate ones that are out there. Yeah.
That's not speaking to effectiveness. That's just in terms of how other treatments are described. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I feel like this is pretty progressive in the behavior analytic field to think about using stereotypy as a reinforcer. I do too.
Yeah. In any case, I'm guessing most of our listeners have had experience treating stereotypy or have worked with students with stereotypy, but just in case, maybe they are brand new to the field or they're behavior analysts working outside of the realm of special education or specifically working with children with autism, but would one of you like to do a quick definition of what stereotypy? I would love to. People diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder will often engage in repetitive acts or things that may be non-functional in nature. These repetitive acts are collectively referred to as stereotypies, so they could be anything in the motor range or in the vocal range.
So it could be jumping, it could be rocking, it could be hand flapping, it could be ear pinching. It could be saying the same word over and over again. So these are all good examples of stereotypic behavior.
And usually, not always, but usually, stereotypy is automatically maintained, meaning the behavior in itself is the reinforcer. Yeah, so it will continue to occur outside of any social contingencies. Right, it's not socially mediated, which is tough, right?
Because there's nothing that we can use. Yeah, so that... can really limit the treatment options that you have available because most treatments that are out there that are working to decrease problem behavior are going to be working to break the response reinforcer relation as it currently stands. So if you throw something and you're doing that to escape from a demand, then you no longer allow escape from demand.
You replace it with something else and you should see throwing decrease. But if the reinforcer that's maintaining stereotypic behavior is some type of automatic proprioceptive stimulation, then it's... really hard to divorce the action of stereotypic behavior from the internal reinforcer that you might be receiving and that is where you get into some really sticky situations where you don't have a lot of treatment options available to you and a lot of the times punishment is used because it's one of the only options that we have well that we had you know and not a lot of people love to use punishment yeah that's a whole other topic right i think yeah and of course we were talking about punishment in the terms of Applying a consequence that's going to decrease the future probability of that behavior occurring, not something that is necessarily aversive in its qualities.
Yeah. And one nice thing about using stereotypy as a reinforcer is that we may be incorporating some sort of punishment because we are looking to decrease stereotypy, but we're also incorporating differential reinforcement. Yeah. Our reinforcement-based procedure, which is aligned with our ethical guidelines. Yeah.
Now, one of the things I know is that... we all engage in stereotypy to some extent i do yeah i write i when someone talks to me and i'm listening really intently i will write it will air right the last word that they say on the table so like you'll be talking and i'll be like you say i'll be like i'll be like like and i'll write it in cursive oh yeah i've never noticed this about you sometimes do it on my leg so that you can't see it uh that's pretty awesome yeah yeah what about you me I mostly script. I can see that. I have a lot of scripting behavior.
And you might think, oh, well, Rob, you're doing it because you're trying to get a laugh out of the group. So if I'm in a group with you and I start quoting things from movies or scripting lines from movies, and you think, oh, it's because you're trying to get a laugh out of the group, guess what? No.
Could care less if you were there or not. I would do it anyway. I agree. I have seen you script. In the absence of any social reinforcement.
I stopped giving you any type of social feedback long ago. And it hasn't changed the rate of the behavior? I think most of my reinforcers are actually automatic. I know.
Oh well. Everyone else knows too. I don't know what I do as my self-stimulatory behavior.
I bite my lip, I think. Yeah, you don't really have any that I can think of. I have so many.
I do, but I've just shaped them. You say poem. They've been shaped by... the community to be socially acceptable and i guess that's really the when it comes down to it that's the problem with stereotypy is that if you are typically developing or even if you donna you did the you did some of the work on on kind of looking at that looking at that graph the trajectory of stereotypy from young children to i did not participate in that graph but i know exactly what you used i know you've used it in presentations that's mcdonald 2004 Not me, McDonald. Becky McDonald.
Yeah. Yes. I have to look to see if I have that number.
The year correct. But the general graph, I know you've used it in some of your other work. Yeah, so I can describe that quickly.
So they took a typically developing sample of two-, three-, and four-year-old children as well as a sample of children, same age group, diagnosed with ASD. And what they found was that for typically developing children, stereotypy decreased as the children aged. So when they were two-year-olds, the level of stereotypic behavior for both children with a diagnosis and without was pretty high. And roughly the same, but for the typically developing children, that level of stereotypic behavior decreased every year. And for the children with an ASD, that number increased every year.
So the discrepancy by the time they were four was actually quite large. And I think that plays out in the research articles that we'll be discussing. In terms of the longer stereotypy goes untreated, the more an individual with autism will have a difficult time completing any task. independently well not all individuals not all but you're increasing that probability there are certainly uh some that are going to fall into that group and the challenge with stereotypic behavior sure it's not hurting anyone right kids do it when they're excited and sometimes they're just happy and that's when you see it you know and it doesn't appear to be causing anybody any harm and there's certainly something to be said for that but on the flip side of that if you're engaging in a repetitive behavior that doesn't appear to have any clear social function you The more time you're engaging in that, the less time you're going to be engaging with toys or your environment functionally.
Or with other peers. And if we're looking to place kids in a less restrictive environment, then behavior that is really overt and different is going to potentially pose a challenge for their integration into that environment. And be stigmatizing.
Yeah, exactly. So those are the two big considerations when we're looking to decrease stereotypic behavior. even though it's not necessarily causing any type of physical harm.
Let's get into the discussion of this possible treatment, stereotypy as reinforcement. So, Jackie, why don't you start us off by talking about Potter Hanley, Augustine Clay, and Phelps treating on stereotypy in adolescence with the tactic of, quote-unquote, using stereotypy as reinforcement. Yeah.
Shout out to Jackie Potter. Way to go, Jackie. Yeah.
You did a good job on this. You did. Very specific.
This is a very specific article. It's 17 pages long. Would you say it's elegant? Yes.
That's like the utmost. It really is. Yes, I agree. Someone says, no one ever has said anything that I've written has been elegant.
So this is elegant. Yeah. This is dreamy. It's a lovely study.
It's a lovely study, and they really covered all their bases. They collected data on everything. Legitimately. It was like, did they blink their eyeballs?
We took data on that. But yeah, so this was Jackie's dissertation. She graduated from Western New England.
This was a replication and extension of a previous article conducted by Hanley and colleagues in 2000 where they looked at a component analysis to get rid or to decrease stereotypy by using stereotypy as a reinforcer by adding differential reinforcement of activity interaction paired with blocking. The Hanley and colleagues'studies showed really promising results, which was exciting, but they really needed to replicate it for a variety of reasons. First off, this was the only time that they used function-based treatment to look at trying to treat and decrease stereotypy while increasing socially acceptable behavior.
So we need to make sure that it's going to work with other kids rather than these, you know, just three kids diagnosed with autism. I think it was two out of three it was really successful with in the original. Yeah.
And then we also need to make sure... Two out of three ain't bad. Always got to get that saying in. We see that the Hanley in article is extraordinarily successful for two out of three participants. However, a component analysis needs to be completed to make sure that all of the components within that treatment packet are necessary.
Blocking is one of the components and a lot of... Lay people, non-behavioral analysts, don't really love the idea of blocking because it's, you know, more of an aversive procedure. It's pretty intrusive.
Yeah, you have to maybe, you know, lay hands on students and it's not necessarily the best option. It reads so, like, peacefully, you know, one second down or one second on their shoulder. But even reading it, it always just sounds like, you want me to do what? You want me to just, like, hold their hands down?
That seems kind of weird. Even knowing what other treatments are available and what can be effective, it always sounds so, such a strange choice. It also can be limiting as far as the generality of these treatments because all of these are addressing motor stereotypic behavior.
And when you're attempting to block vocal stereotypic behavior, it's a whole different ballgame. It's not so easy as doing it. You can't hands down vocal. Yeah.
So it's another thing to consider. If blocking was a major component, then this may have much more difficulty moving over to addressing vocal. Yeah. Stereotyping. So the nice thing about this study is that it replicates and extends the Hanley study by doing that component analysis to see if all of these different components are necessary for the treatment package to be successful.
And they also looked at more. complex leisure skills which is nice that we're moving more closely to something that's more functionally appropriate because in the Hanley article I think they were using very rudimentary leisure skills which is fine I mean these are still not too complex right but they were one step further they were one step further so can I just tell you something that whenever I hear treatment package I always picture it like wrapped up like a gift box with a big bow on the top and then when you talk about component analysis i imagine like opening the box and taking out all the like the little pieces of your gift i mean like oh here's a differential reinforcement nice yeah i don't i just realized that that's actually how i think of it but there's a chance that when you do a component analysis that the entire gift including the box and wrapping paper is actually part of the gift itself right or maybe you just want the blew my mind the tiniest box inside so maybe like you're getting like a ring oh right it's in that kind of package it's in multiple boxes so that's a good example of when the treatment package is only that tiny little ring yeah or you could take the whole package apart and then there's nothing there or just the wrapping paper and tissue paper is all you needed right it's like when i was when i was a young person and my my mom would wrap our picture frames and hang them on the wall for christmas you know like i don't know why Should I grab your picture frames? Yeah.
Oh, as decoration, but there's no gift. Well, I always used to think they were gifts until I'd open them up and then they'd just be like, oh, that's the picture that was hanging on the wall. Wah, wah.
That's awesome. Yeah. Another nice thing about this study, though, is that they looked at social validity. You love that. I love that.
You know I look for it everywhere. It's my most favorite. They covered pretty much all the bases here. Yes, everything.
Was social validity, was that segue from the Christmas presents? Because you want to have a social validity check on your Christmas? Yeah.
Which of these presents did you prefer the most? You don't mind just filling out this quick survey. One to six. I'm going to mail it back to Santa.
Do you think that my mom should wrap the pictures and put them on the wall? One. Being no. I'm probably going to give that a one.
Four. Being yes. I'm going to say no.
I still want to now. Even when I go over to her house now, it's been like, what, like 30 years? I want to go and unwrap all of them and be like, no, these aren't present. You're ruining it for me. In the study, they had three young men diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.
They talked to caregivers. They did informal reports. They did direct observation.
And they ran a functional analysis to ensure that stereotypy was occurring and was not socially mediated. So they ran an alone condition. Stereotypy persisted, demonstrating that stereotypy was automatically maintained. So they really covered their bases there.
So covered. Yeah, completely covered. And they took data on everything. Mm-hmm.
Probably won't talk about everything they took data on. Yeah. But they took data on literally everything. Stereotypic behavior. Stereotypic behavior during activity interactions.
Stereotypic behavior during free access. Item engagement. Simple item engagement.
Generic functional engagement. Literally everything. A lot of acronyms happening.
Tons of acronyms. GFE, SFE. Yeah, there's a lot of acronyms, but it makes sense because they looked at a lot of stuff.
They also took data on any blocking attempts, any hands-down procedures, and they finally took data on the prompts that were given for activities. So they took a ton of data. Way to go, them. And then they started this component analysis. They started off doing inactivities only.
This is one of my favorite kind of start-off points because haven't you always heard that, oh, the kid's engaging in stereotypy because he's bored. So if you just throw some toys at him. Right, well, that's what they say. Like, you just need an enriched environment. Right, and that made sense back in the 70s when everyone prior to that had absolutely nothing to do.
Right, yeah. And they probably did see a decrease in stereotypic behavior then. Yeah.
Because they're like, oh my god, finally, a puzzle. I have something to do. Something. But nowadays, that problem is, we're much less likely to encounter it.
Right. So here, they even did a competing items assessment to... ensure that the participants engaged with the items in the activities only assessment so that was pretty awesome so they just put them all out on the table and the student hung out with them and they took data on engagement as well as stereotypic behavior then they added some prompting in for the next condition so they had the activities and then the experimenter would prompt the student to engage with those activities functionally so yeah so they you would prompt the student to engage in some sort of functional engagement every 30 seconds.
After that, they did another, they added another component in where they had the activities, they had the prompting every 30 seconds, and if stereotypic behavior occurred, then they would block that stereotypic behavior however they did so. And then the final condition was the whole entire treatment package, tied up with a pretty little bow, where we're looking at the activities, the prompting, blocking, and differential reinforcement of generic functional engagement. So Jackie, for folks listening at home, could you take a second and describe some of the stereotypies that they were looking at in this study?
Just because I know one of the things that when I'm researching stereotypy treatments myself, I am usually looking at a very specific topography of stereotypy and it helps when it's described, and it almost always is in the research, because I want to ask myself, well, it sounds like it worked for... body rocking but mine is more about finger waving and they should be the same because it should be the same probably the same even though the topography is different but maybe i would block it differently and i'm worried about how there's always a challenge of potential intermittent reinforcement when you're using blocking right chances are that's going to happen right you're going to miss some or they're going to be too quick you can't get in there in time so depending on the topography you could have a better chance of having intermittent reinforcement So here they had a variety of stereotypic behavior. They were looking at hand flapping, finger tapping, ear holding, spit play, jumping, body pressing, mouthing, spinning objects, contorting face. So really the gamut of all stereotypic behavior. But almost every other topography I think I've ever seen is right in that paragraph as a description.
And it's wonderful that they videotaped it because they were very strict about the ending and beginning of the stereotypic behavior. It is one second. Yeah, I also liked that it was one inch.
Right. You could move your hand away one inch. One inch or one second.
Yeah. Which is pretty significant. So they were really watching it. And mind you, if they were blocking with one hand and the other hand was engaging in stereotypy, it would count both with stereotypy and a block attempt. So that's nice that they counted that.
I'm imagining they must have had one of those cameras where you can twist the dial to make it slowly go ahead frame by frame. I don't know how you would even just like I'm going to look at the camcorder or my cell phone, you know, go second by second. I feel like scoring some of those would be very difficult. Yeah, probably torturous.
One might say. That's why y'all have your PhDs. I'm like zoned out here because I am experiencing PTSD from my own.
From the one second play code? Yeah. No, no, not even my master's. It was a frame by frame.
Mine too. Yeah. So then they were looking at stereotypy and they were also looking at simple engagement. So simple engagement just was counted if they were just touching the object.
So were they even in contact with them? If they were, great. If they were in...
engaged with the item in a non-functional manner so if they are waving in front of their face in stereotypic manner it would count as simple engagement and stereotypy so they're really covering their bases right then we have generic functional engagement and this is manipulation of an activity as it was intended or designed so if it's a shape sorter i'm sorting shapes and i'm not flapping shapes in front of my face and you can bet that the list of like those actual operational definitions was Probably really long. Probably super long. It didn't just say.
As it is defined. Right. Yeah. And then there was specific functional engagement.
This was the emission of a particular response that was specific to each activity. So we want you to do this specific thing. Yeah.
And then they also looked at prompting that specific functional engagement. So that was scored differently than the specific functional engagement, if it was prompted or not. There's a lot going on, but it's pretty cool. It pays out when you get to those graphs.
It sure does. Because... Wait for it, wait for it. Because the graphs are amazing. Let's just talk about John.
He's one of our participants. Before we talk about John, Jackie, I just want to let everyone who's listening know, in case you hadn't heard or you're new to our show, that ABA Inside Track is a continuing education source. So if you are listening to this, you can apply for continuing education credits. Now, to do this, you need to listen to the episode, and you need to have found two secret code words that we'll have hidden throughout the episode, just to make sure no one's doubting your commitment to listening to the whole shebang. And the first of these secret code words is stars, like twinkle, twinkle, little stars, S-T-A-R-S.
If it's nighttime, look outside. They're probably stars, or maybe not. It's hard to see them if you're in the city. Stars. And with that, let's get back to our discussion of John's results.
Oh, here we go. John. So these graphs are pretty nice. For John, his figure one, the top panel represents stereotypic behavior.
The second panel is the simple engagement recorded as percentage of the session. And then the third panel is generic functional engagement. And then finally, they show us prompts.
So what we can see is activity only. Was not effective at decreasing stereotypy. It was pretty high.
Oh! Right. Right.
He did engage. Yes. With the items.
He was definitely, he was up to 100% of engagement, simple engagement with the items. So probably engaging in stereotypic behavior with the item. No generic or prompts, obviously.
Yeah. And then when prompts were added into activities plus prompts, you saw no change in. stereotypic behavior decreased percentage of simple engagement really no change in generic functional assessment uh engagement like slight but not i mean yeah not really it's like one it went from zero to one yeah and then they were providing prompts so the prompts are higher and then when you're looking at activities plus prompts plus blocking you don't really see much of a change You only see that change when you add in that differential reinforcement of the generic functional engagement. Then you see stereotypic behavior down to near zero rates.
And they've actually done a multi-element there or an alternative design where they had activities only as well. And in the activities only condition, stereotypic behavior is really high, but it remains low in that treatment. So you need, for John, when you're looking here.
I love that they included that. Me too. Right. So it's, you can definitely see.
Yeah. That it's everything. Yeah. And it also gives you that added information about, no, we didn't eliminate stereotypy. It's still occurring outside of the context of this treatment as we are showing here when we just have activities present.
Right. So there's no chance of you leaving this article thinking like, wow, this is going to cure it forever. It's not. It's just setting up the right contingencies to have it remain low during that period of time.
Right. And they were able to. thin the schedule reinforcement out to an fr2 schedule so that's pretty nice too so jackie what did the reinforcement of stereotypy look like because i know they just described it as sort of the access and i think they turned the student away from the table right yeah so i actually remember watching jackie putter run this and it was pretty intensive so she would stand behind the student and literally just be like shadowing them she'd have to be continually shadowing them at all times and i think i remember the one when he was building something So she would have to deliver prompts. If he engaged in stereotypy, she'd have to do hands down.
But then once he engaged in whatever functional engagement was required, then he would turn away from the table and have 30-second access of stereotypic behavior. And then once that was over, she would turn him back to the table again, and stereotypy was no longer available. Okay, thank you. Because when I read that, it felt like the kids must have been some sort of, or adolescents, I should say, like magic rotating chair that would just spin them and be like, now you're over here now. No, it was just a regular chair.
It required an adult to be there to... Yeah. Yeah, to prompt, you can turn.
But she made it really clear, because when he was working, she was really... She wasn't touching him, but she was right there. She was, like, real close. Yeah, and then when it was free time, she clearly moved herself away. Oh, good.
I always like having these little insights, either when we have our guests on or when you folks know the authors, because I know when I read these, it always sounds so much more complicated than I think it really is. And then when you describe... Nope, just kind of...
yeah kid to the side that's all it was nothing special it's both more complicated when you read it and more simple yeah absolutely right because yeah getting to these final versions of these papers where everything works beautifully and you're like why didn't i think of that this seems like the perfect treatment took so many iterations and pilot tests to get there crying probably crying but once once you get that formula the actual pieces themselves aren't quite as complicated as it might read Yeah, usually when you get to a design of your study that works and has accounted for everything, then it might actually be relatively... simple in its structure because you've you know taken out all the extra stuff you didn't need but then when you're trying to write out something that's a complicated procedure it's going to read complicated even if when you're just watching it it's not necessarily anywho yeah well thanks yeah for second participant patrick they actually didn't do the component analysis they just ran the entire treatment package and saw similar results tiny graphs yeah very small graph but they saw the same results which were awesome that they had really high levels of stereotypic behavior in the activities only condition and near zero rates when the treatment package was in place yep which is pretty nice and again for edward our final participant we saw similar results than with john you know we went through the entire treatment package and the only thing that was effective about reducing stereotypy and increasing engagement was the entire treatment package you So you needed everything in order for stereotypy to decrease and engagement to increase. Yeah.
And then that could make folks ask, well, if we need all these pieces, then isn't that just indicative that differential reinforcement is the most important component? But you have to remember that in order to only allow access to stereotypy during the breaks, which is the differential reinforcement, you have to be blocking it the rest of the time. Right.
Yeah. So it's like a yin-yang thing there. You need the blocking in order for the behavior to act as a reinforcer.
Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah.
And then they wanted to generate more complex leisure skills. Sure. And so before the analysis, John and Edward experienced different contingency arrangements and reinforcement schedules. And so what they did is looked at the most effective contingency arrangement and paired it with shaping to make sure that they could move into this more complex leisure skill. Yeah.
All the while still... blocking a stereotypy and providing them as a reinforcer. I love how that got like a paragraph mention.
Right. Whereas that probably could be a study all on its own. Right.
How they determined. Hey, we just did this. Yeah.
Because they each had different results. Like one of them, the material should be present during breaks and one not. And different DRA or DRO schedules and all sorts of stuff.
Right. That was just, you know, one little thing they did. One little thing, just a little. What they showed was that, you know, they did see increased. engagement without prompting and the reinforcer was thinned so they had more before they could engage in serotopy which is the dream for everyone really for both participants so I love that that was you know in there but not the it wasn't like the golden nugget but it was like a hidden gem totally that they engaged in it and that was the middle of the treatment package right yeah it's pretty awesome And what I also love is that they did spend a significant amount of time in the article on the social validity assessment.
Yeah. Which is nice. They talked to the participants in a concurrent schedule as well as relevant stakeholders.
Oh, my gosh. I wrote that down that I think relevant stakeholders should be an awesome band name. All right. Yeah, right.
You're really reading for content there. It's right there. You're like band name. Noted.
Yeah. I'm always thinking of new ones. Yeah, so basically what they found is that all of the participants preferred the treatment package.
And so did the relevant stakeholders. And blocking only was the least preferred. And also the least effective. It's nice when it works out that way.
I know, right? Yeah. The setup here for the treatment preference assessment, I guess, was really similar to when we talked to Alan about choice. Yeah.
They had the initial link. where they could pick between the different schedules and then they access that. And Greg, I'm going to end up talking about it too, but Greg has done this now several times. Right.
And I love it. Started Hanley in all 2000. Yeah. And so many of his studies include this component. And I think that it's really wonderful because of course we should ask people what they prefer. Especially if it's effective.
If it's effective and they hate it, it's less likely that it's going to be effective for a long term. Yeah, because the folks who are implementing that treatment may also find it more aversive if they feel that the participants are not enjoying it as well. Yeah, absolutely.
I just love it. I mean, I know that Greg has done a lot of wonderful things, but I feel like as time goes on, this is going to become more and more a really important component of the work. that he has done just because it's such an empowering thing for the folks that we serve yeah and it's something that we forget sometimes i think we're like oh it's effective great yeah we're done i mean anecdotally i know probably in the past at least two years maybe three years I've seen a lot more articles that have had some measure of social validity, and they're not always this terminal link schedule where there's a real assessment of preference of a treatment. Maybe it'd just be a questionnaire, but it is something I see researchers taking into account more, thinking about, even if it's not the most complex or accurate representation, at least trying to get at that social validity. I think that's a positive change.
Yeah, it doesn't have to be complex. Hopefully it'll be accurate. I see it a lot for relevant stakeholders, but less so for the individual that we serve. But I just love it.
And it produces a cumulative record graph, which I also love for different reasons. One thing that we should talk about, though, is this took a long time. Yeah, you think?
Took a very long time. So they said that they had over hundreds of sessions, you know, increasing the complexity of those leisure skills, running the social validity assessments. So this may not be for the faint of heart.
When you have to get something done in a week. That's where, like we were discussing before, the idea of treatment for stereotypy. The earlier you could start a treatment like this, if you choose this is the treatment that you think is of most benefit to your client.
The earlier the better. And the longer you wait. I think they used the fact that they were adolescents in the title for a reason to point out that they are much older.
Therefore, this took so very long for a very, it was a pretty minor product. I mean, they were working. so much more i mean what they would go from like 20 30 seconds on task behavior to seven minutes nine minutes so much much longer time but that was just to engage in relatively simple leisure skills yeah and it was putting together those stars do you guys know they're like i drew a picture of them but no one out there can see it but it's they're like velcro like plastic velcro six orbed stars yeah i'm talking about okay and then the other one was you putting together like mega blocks yeah so they weren't really complex tasks but it did take them a really long time to learn and they weren't age and they weren't age appropriate tasks i think they even mentioned in the article so it was positive getting there yeah so it's positive moving in the right direction but not adolescent yeah not adolescents yeah and i can imagine if you describe this to someone who's just a practitioner say in a school system or in a private school that doesn't have as many resources you would balk at this treatment and say like that sounds great i'd love to do it but you right we're not gonna have the resources to do this this is too too much right and just and even just watching you know a session like you got to be on on in quotations yeah you gotta be there and trying to get every instance of stereotypic behavior you need to be reinforcing all of any simple engagement any generic functional engagement it's just a lot for and if you're running this all day that would be Pretty hard and fairly arduous. It sure would. Yeah.
So an elegant study, fabulous results, but in terms of the day-to-day utility, very complicated. But luckily, this isn't the end of this line of research, and our next article is going to go into some other, not necessarily directions, but in some extra extensions of this work. So let's move into our second article, Effects of Multiple vs. Chained Schedules. on stereotypy and item engagement.
So, Dinah, you're going to be talking about this one. This sort of isn't quite the direct sequel to the last article. It's more like a spiritual sequel, spiritual successor, would you say?
Yeah, I think we could think of it as a spiritual successor in the sense that it does look at using stereotypic behavior as a reinforcer. Right. But it adds some other elements, too.
Let me tell you what those are. Please list them in alphabetical order. I can't do that for you, Rob. That's how I do a component analysis.
I look at my treatments in alphabetical order. Alphabetize them? No. Wouldn't it be wacky if that's how we did that? That would be dumb.
Okay, so I don't need to go through the whole background of stereotypic behavior again? You do not. Because we did that? Okay, good. So I'm really just going to pull out the two main points that Slayton and Hanley talked about in relation to their particular article, which was this.
First of all, They felt that it's very, very difficult to eradicate stereotypy altogether. We may block it, but thinking that we're going to catch every instance of behavior and that blocking it will successfully decrease it is probably not totally... Feasible. Thank you.
Yeah, I agree. Oh, I forgot that word for a second. Feasible, exactly.
So what they suggest is that what we may want to consider instead... is establishing stimulus control of stereotypy so that we can present particular situations in which it is okay for it to occur and not occur versus hoping to completely make it disappear. Which makes sense because I engage in stereotypic behavior, but not when it's socially unacceptable to do so.
So if I'm in a really big meeting, I'm not writing imaginary words on the table. Right. Right?
You've never seen me do it, but I do it all the time. But I just, I hide it. It's one of those things that you have to, you know, when can I turn it on and off? So that's what we learn to do as typically developing individuals.
So it's nice that they're making that. you know more socially acceptable do you script movies and meetings all the time yes so it hasn't worked for rob no i've never learned the difference between my different audiences you know there's no stimulus control over this it's just it's just there it's great life's a movie write your own ending uh it's from the it's from the muppets i wasn't trying to be flipped to diana you learn what quotes work best i guess so maybe it is under some stimulus control like monty python You want to save that for a meeting with co-workers. Dungeons and Dragons.
Dungeons and Dragons, you want to save that for meetings with... No one. No one, maybe.
Just kidding. No, I meant you could quote Monty Python at your Dungeons and Dragons meeting. Oh, okay, yes.
I thought you were saying you could quote Dungeons and Dragons. I don't think, I wouldn't know a quote from Dungeons and Dragons, because you write your own adventure every time. Okay.
Right? Wizard of Oz, though, you can script Wizard of Oz at a meeting with the CEO of a major corporation. I think it might go well.
Okay. One time. What do you mean one time?
Oh, you're one time with the CEO of the major corporation? Your only meeting where you quote Wizard of Oz and you never get invited back. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, when they throw me out, I say, be careful or her house is going to fall on you.
I'll get you, my pretty. Hey, little dog, too. So number one would be established stimulus control.
Maybe that's even more important than we thought. And number two, they also feel that it is appropriate. to work on increasing item engagement.
Absolutely. So that also... Dovetails?
Oh my gosh. What's wrong with me today? It's a good thing you guys are married. I know. It's a good thing I'm freeing my mind.
Dovetails right off of Potter et al. in continuing to address increasing functional engagement. Right. Okay, so those were the two main components of what they wanted to look at here. So they decided to do that by making a comparison between two different schedules.
So both of them had access to stereotypy as the reinforcer at the end, and both of them had signaled times in which stereotypy was going to be blocked and allowed. But the only difference between these two schedules was that in one, moving into the free access to stereotypy condition would be non-contingent on any type of responding, and in the other, moving into the stereotypy access condition was contingent on a particular level of responding in the previous condition. Right?
Right. Okay, good. All right. So the first one that I just described where stereotypy is blocked and then you move into access to stereotypy with no contingency in place, that's a multiple schedule.
Okay. And then the second that I described where stereotypy is blocked, you must also complete some type of response and then contingent on completion of the response, you move into the stereotypy can be access condition. That's a change schedule.
Both of them are signaled. They're signal schedules. If anyone is trying to reflect back, there are two others that are similar to this, which are the mixed schedule and the tandem schedule, and those are unsignaled.
But both of the ones we're going to talk about today are signaled schedules. The only difference is non-contingent moving between the conditions or contingent moving between conditions. Good comparison and review.
Thanks, Jackie. So what they wanted to do here, they had two participants. One was Mark, who was age 11, and the other was Molly, who was age 18. Both engaged in significant levels of many varied topographies of stereotypic behavior.
So some of those topographies included repetitive arm and leg movements, such as knocking, tapping, clapping, waving hands in front of face, wringing hands, raising and lowering arms, shaking arms, or kicking. as well as repetitive head movements, which included shaking their head from side to side, tilting head back and forth, and whole body movements, including rocking, bouncing, and jumping. I just read that verbatim from the article.
So there was, again, as in the other article, quite a range of behavior. Again, it was all motor behavior, so we have to take that into consideration when we think about this. Okay, so there were three different deep-ended variables that they were looking at here.
The first was motor stereotypy, including all of those different topographies I just talked about. They actually did a frequency count. Amazing. Yeah. Because when you read this, you're like, okay, this is a life study here.
Oh, this was someone's PhD dissertation. What? There's only two participants? And then you get to that section.
They say, we did a frequency count of all of these different topographies of stereotypy and a frequency count of every instance of item engagement. And you say, oh, okay. Now I understand why you only had two participants.
That's insane. Apparently these were all discrete behaviors that had a clear beginning and end, and that is how they were able to do it as a frequency measure. So it ended up being a rate. It was frequency per minute, both for motor stereotypy and item engagement.
And then they also looked at latency to respond in these conditions for both of those two behaviors based on condition or schedule as well. So that's what they were looking at. In the initial part of this.
of each schedule. That's what they called the S-condition. And in that part of the schedule, all stereotypic behavior was blocked by, again, doing some type of physical touch for one to two seconds and attempting to interrupt the behavior.
If they missed the opportunity to interrupt it, they went ahead and did the physical intervention as well, sort of to try and keep that relatively stable. When they were in this condition, they each had access to particular items. They were items that they should be able to engage with independently as they had that history, but they would also at times engage in stereotypic behavior with the items.
So for Mark, they chose leisure items that were appropriate for him, which included puzzles, beads to string, and blocks to build. And for Molly, remember she was 18, so they chose some vocational tasks that were appropriate for her, which included folding newsletters, counting items into a bag, and stuffing envelopes. So those were available during the initial condition where they were blocking the stereotypic behavior for both schedules, as well as they were also available during the free access to stereotypic behavior too. All right, so before they got started with the actual treatment, they did a functional analysis for the stereotypic behavior.
And I'll go ahead and tell you the results of that now. They saw responding highest in the alone condition, which indicated that behavior was most likely not sensitive to social contingencies. It was probably automatically maintained.
Next up, they moved into the actual analysis here. In baseline, they had to go ahead and set up these two schedules, right? So even though there were no, no blocking was in place and there was no additional reinforcers in place, they went ahead and put in all the signals that were going to become the signals for the schedules. So for one of the conditions, they had a two-sided card that was green and black. And for the other, what would be the other schedule?
They had a two-sided card that was white and yellow. So they had those present. Each one was present half the time. And they also had another one that had 10 tokens present too.
And this was because they were going to be using tokens later on. So they wanted to see if having the tokens present, did that have a differential effect on responding as related to the materials as well. So during baseline, sessions were six minutes long. And every minute they just flipped the card, either the green. and black card they had the green side and then the next minute they flipped it to the black side these were all just measures put into place to make sure that there was no type of differential responding to any of these components they had no meaning at this point in time so there shouldn't have been and there wasn't which is good because you wouldn't want them to be only responding in the green condition because green's their favorite color right so they went ahead and took care of that they were i liked that they included the tokens as well because i feel like that would be easy to overlook But they thought of it, so good for them.
There were no concerns there. Stereotypy occurred at high rates during this time. And then from there, they moved into the treatment conditions, in which, again, they had the multiple schedule and the chain schedule.
After they did the baseline, they associated the two cards with one of each of the conditions, which they chose at random. And in both schedules, blocking occurred. for the stereotypic behavior in the S-condition, which was the first portion.
So I want to make sure that that's clear to everyone. Blocking was occurring in both. In the chained condition, they had tokens present for responding, and this was either responding with the leisure materials for Mark or the vocational materials for Molly.
They did not prompt any item engagement. I thought that was interesting. So these were tasks that they should have been able to do independently. Mastered tasks.
Yes. So they were sort of kind of relying on... on that a little bit.
So they had no plans to provide prompting. Initially they started with an FR1 schedule for tokens and they shaped that up into finally For Mark, an FR10, FR4 schedule, meaning he needed to complete that set of 10 tokens four times in order to access the reinforcer. And for Molly, an FR10, FR2 schedule, which means what you'd think it would mean.
After they completed these schedules, they then moved into the next phase in which they had free access to whatever they wanted to do. But that included stereotypic behavior during that time. And that was for 30 seconds. The other component to note here was in that first part, the S-condition, there was a response cost in place as well.
So if they did engage in stereotypic behavior, all the tokens were reset. Resetting is the worst. I get so sad.
That would be my downfall. Would it? Yeah. I thought you got lost small. I know.
It seems very effective. Oh, yeah. It's super effective.
Yeah. So that was an important component as well. Okay. So that is the chained condition. When it was the S minus, they had one side of the card present.
When they moved to the S plus, which was the free access, they flipped it to the other side of the card. And then the other schedule, which was running concurrently, was the multiple schedule as well. There was still the S minus condition in which all stereotypic behavior was blocked. But to move into the S plus condition, it was not. contingent on any responding what they did instead because you may wonder well how did they know to move they yoked it to the length of the previous chained schedule when you talk about yoked that means that they use the same amount of reinforcers that were delivered in the chain schedule in that multiple schedule yeah yeah just in case people didn't know what yoked was because two oxen are yoked you Yeah.
By that thing, that wooden thing that they wear. Yep, two heads, one wooden thing. Yeah. Pure bliss. It's not yoked, like an egg.
It's yoked. Y-O-K-E-D. Wow, I never even thought it would be that.
Oh, really? I encounter that sometimes. Oh. Yoked.
You know, like when you throw eggs at things to pull them along. I've yoked you. Yeah, right?
Nobody wants to be yoked, so. Just a little yolk. Oh, gosh.
We just dad-joked it everywhere. That's it. That's done. Turn off that mic. I love puns.
My favorite. You guys want to know the results? Yeah.
After that yoke joke, I don't know if I really... I do. You guys are the worst.
I just want to say before you get to the next section, Diana, since you guys have all shared a story of some weird, bizarre picadillo you have when you read your research, Anytime I hear a yoked schedule, I imagine that the oxen are yanking this poor participant along to follow a reinforcement schedule. Oh, really? That's the thing that pops into my head.
That's what's in... he's in the wagon? Yeah, he's in the wagon and going along and they're plowing reinforcement up. Oh, nice. There we go.
Is he carrying a bucket of eggs? No. I usually picture my oxen with eggs, just in case I get the wrong yoked. No, as a student of New England farming in the pre-Civil War era, I understand the difference between a yolk, the egg, and a yolk with your oxen.
I've also read the Caldecott-winning Oxcart Man multiple times. It's pretty good. It's a child's book. It's the last novel I read. The Oxcart Man picture book.
We'll call it a novella and leave our differences there. The Old Man of the Sea and Oxcart Man, very important. Okay. They both won awards.
Well, did this work? It totally worked, Jackie. Oh, I love that. Yes, it works. That's how I remember how to yoke a schedule, Jackie, of course.
It's very important. Oh, the results. The results.
Of this research. For both participants, Mark and Molly, stereotypical behavior was high in baseline, very high for Mark, and variable for Molly, I will say. And that was across both the S-and the S-plus condition. Remember, there was no difference. And schedules.
There was no differential responding based on the cards. Yes. So moving into treatment, it was a multi-element design with chained and multiple schedules.
For both participants, stereotypic behavior was higher in the multiple schedule than in the chained schedule, although it was lower in both than it was for the rates that they saw in baseline. They were technically both were effective schedule in terms of... significant decrease of rate of stereotypy however like you said diana the the chain schedule was fasterly more effective that's not that's not it more effective both saw an immediate decrease but for the chain schedule rates approached near zero or at zero That rarely happened with the multiple schedule. And you have to think that that response cost piece had a big component there.
Folks, here's a tip for some readers. Bar graph and line graph, I don't know if I always like them together. I do, actually.
What? I get so confused. It's just a double axi. I know a double axi, but when you've got the bars and the lines, I have a hard time with scale.
I think it's probably my problem. So I get the overall gist of it, but it feels like an apples and oranges comparison. And it's just a little too busy for my taste. It can be a lot to look at.
Yeah, for sure. So item engagement, they were looking at that per minute in baseline for both participants. It was at or near zero rates.
Once they implemented the two schedules, they saw an increase in both schedules for item engagement. Although... For Mark, it was arguably higher in the change schedule than in the multiple schedule. And for Molly, it was hard to say if there was really a difference there.
They were pretty close together. And they were able to, again, fade that FR schedule out for both of the participants. For Mark, it was up to an FR 40. And then for Molly, it was up to an FR 20. So that was pretty nice to see as well.
The other thing that they looked at, and this was also... Also... Some really cool data where they looked at latency to respond.
Reading this section, I think, really drove home one of the most significant differences, I think, between the two different schedules. Yeah. The latency to stereotypy and the latency for item engagement was pretty phenomenal.
Yeah. And they did that because it's hard to know necessarily if you are blocking stereotypic behavior if that behavior is coming under the control of the... the signal stimulus that you have in place, or under the control of the first redirection of stereotypic behavior. So the best way to determine what's happening there is to look at the latency to that first instance of stereotypic behavior from the outset of that treatment condition. Because if you're seeing a long latency to stereotypy, then you may be able to make the case that the behaviors come under control of the signaled cue versus the actual blocking.
So that's why they wanted to look at this. And you can see in the graphs for Mark and Molly that behavior on the chained schedule was generally under a longer latency to respond for stereotypy than under the multiple schedule, which is what you would expect to see if behavior had actually come under control of the conditioned stimulus. So that was exactly what they wanted to see. And then they also...
One more graph to talk about. And I wrote cool next to this one, so I definitely want to mention it. They also gave us a cumulative graph for stereotypy and engagement. And they broke down an individual session so we could see when during that session was stereotypy occurring.
They shaded out the S-plus condition where there was free access to stereotypy. And you can see the comparison between the two for the chain schedule where responding was contingent. on access to stereotypy. Stereotypy occurred almost exclusively in the free access condition, whereas during the multiple schedule, stereotypy occurred really pretty much throughout the condition. It wasn't isolated specifically to the free access.
Right, which leads me to believe that maybe it was more under the control of the blocking than of the schedule itself. Yeah. I think it's important they put that in because you look at that graph, and though you definitely see that the rates of stereotypy under the change schedule were lower, you might say, well, they're not that different.
And then item engagement was the same or about the same for at least one of the two participants. So I guess one's kind of better. But then when you look at that latency graph, it is clear that the change schedule is the superior of the two.
And I guess, like you both said, that's the hypothesis that it would be anyway. But I think that really drives home that point. Because again, latency to stereotypy is pretty important. And then this included preference for treatment assessment, pretty much just like what Potter et al. did as well.
And they got very similar results in that the participants in this study also preferred the condition in which the contingencies produced the reinforcement versus just having free access to reinforcement. Which is an important point. Yeah, I think that's what we've seen time and time in the literature.
Yeah, folks prefer for their behavior to produce something. Right. I don't remember if this article or the other article cited, I think it was a 2000 study where they looked at individuals preferred contingent. Yeah, that's the Hanley et al. 2001. Several others as well. It is in this one.
It's at the end. In this article, unlike our first article, this felt more, oh, okay, I could do that. We could run this.
It seemed like a much simpler application. And it may have just been because of the participants. I mean, as they said, I think of their limitations. These were two participants who already had some independent skills. So perhaps that is a big component.
If you have some independent skills, this is a treatment that you could probably readily replicate yourself. whatever your environment. So start early, teach skills early is also a take-home, I suppose.
Yeah. But it's not really a take-home. I guess you would want to do that regardless of whether research told you to do so. And this really builds upon the Potter and All study too. So, I mean, as you think about research, it's big in the beginning and then it refines itself as it goes on.
So, I mean, of course it seems easier because they've worked out all the kinks. Asked a slightly different question. There was a great quote in here, which I'm going to read to you guys if that's okay with everyone.
It says, the primary implication of these findings is that signaling an appropriate time and place to engage in stereotypy will likely lower the rate of stereotypy in conditions in which stereotypy may be undesirable. However, this strategy is not likely to lead to practical stimulus control of stereotypy unless the chance to engage in stereotypy is earned for refraining from stereotypic behavior. And I thought that was really important, too. I don't know if you guys have had experience with trying to set up these types of signaled conditions. A little bit.
A little bit. I know even a couple years back, I'd gone to a presentation where it seemed that the ability to have stereotypy under stimulus control was sort of mixed. Some studies were finding, yep, you can do it. Some studies were finding, no, not really. And I think it was certainly before this article.
It may have been. Right around the time of Jackie Potter's, while she was doing the research that I saw that talk, it was a little ways back. Yeah, because I've definitely seen it out there and worked on it myself where you have something that's signaling whether a stereotype is going to be redirected or not.
And it makes sense. It seems like that would work and would be enough. But this is indicating that just that consequence of blocking versus not blocking may not be.
Enough to really establish this as an effective contingency and that you need to have something additional. You need to refrain from stereotypy for this period of time and then you can access it. And that is just really good information for all of us to know, I think. Well, thanks, Diana.
Thanks, Jackie. Let's end our episode. And we've got to do this quickly because we're running a little bit long. Let's pull into dissemination station.
short trip short trip we're here so given these two articles and given what we've learned about the use of stereotypy as a reinforcer do you feel that this is a treatment that has been researched enough to say that this is a valid choice of treatment for the average practitioner are there areas that you would like to see further research or future research, whether it's something you thought of while you were reading the articles, whether it's something in the discussion section that the authors themselves felt they should look at next? I think using stereotypy as a reinforcer could absolutely be an effective treatment. I love the idea because stereotypy is going to occur. You're never going to get rid of it, unfortunately. It's just not something that's going to happen.
So using it to your advantage is one way that stereotypy can still occur. but not interfere with learning. However, there are some obstacles that I don't think we've fully addressed in the research.
I think more research needs to really delve into, like, do we need to block every response? Maybe we can thin out the schedule of blocking at some point to make it more doable for practitioners in a non-one-to-one setting or if you have pretty high rates of stereotypy, and look at when it will break down. So I think that would be a... The next step is looking at this treatment package and seeing like how bad can we do it and it still work really.
I know say like response interruption redirection I've seen if you get you can get down to like 70 percent you could miss miss 30 percent episodes of stereotypy and not redirect and still actually get a pretty decent right so we might want to interesting because then it is working on an intermittent schedule right or could you just operate on a response cost. Right, or do you need all of it? Schedule versus the blocking. Maybe you do a component analysis where you just look at response cost versus the entire treatment package and add response cost to the treatment package.
Maybe you combine Potter's study with Slayton's study. Yeah. I'm also concerned about vocal stereotypy.
Oh, yeah. Would this work at all? I don't think so, to be honest.
I mean, it's very challenging to block vocal stereotypy because if you don't have a student that engages in any sort of imitative. function or imitative compliance or compliance right so if you're like say red say red say red say red they're like blah blah blah like blue yellow so i mean that's not really helpful that's much more challenging because you can't get in there yeah trying to break that response reinforcer relation is even harder right what if you looked at some of the old sensory extinction research and use blocking as some sort of a white noise response it might not serve the same function so Well, the noise. I mean, someone's vocal stereotypy. You mean use white noise as a blocking response?
Yes. So that they can't really hear their own vocal stereotypy. Could that be a potential means of blocking?
Maybe. I mean, it's going to depend, right? Because is the stereotypy overt plus covert?
So are they saying it out loud and saying it inside where we can't see it? So then the white noise is going to do nothing, right? Yeah. So then they're just going to be. scripting thomas in their head as well as scripting thomas out loud that's a good idea yeah i like that well i mean that would be the concern is that if they suddenly stop having any stereotypy whatsoever are they but they're not engaging in the you're even the generic functional response or the generic response right okay yeah maybe it's all now uh-oh we just made this all covert this is even worse than it was i mean we can we can deal with the same way we just not we can't deal with it with a white noise machine we'll have to think of something else You have to put the white noise machine into the ear so it goes right into the brain.
Find another competing response in a sense. Or if it's covert, maybe it's not as hard to at least do the prompting. Maybe they'd contact some of the other components of the treatment. Definitely well worth looking into.
Covert stereotypy can be a good end goal as well. Right. Just say it in your head.
Don't say it out loud. People do that too. But then you may look creepy too if you're like... I've had the Elmo song going this whole time.
I know you have. Yeah, I can't get it out. I've had the Choc-Count, not Count Chocula.
Oh, the Count. Count von Count. The Count when, I have not even actually heard it, but Diana's been singing it all weekend.
Stomp, stomp, what's the number? Stomp, stomp. Yeah. So I've actually not heard it, but I've heard stomp, stomp, what's the number, many times. Sorry about that.
It's okay. But that's true. Did you find there were any giant limitations in these studies?
I mean, they listed a number. None of them seemed anything beyond just these are early studies and there's always more research to do. They were mostly just looking at additional directions to go with the research. These are both really well done and complete studies.
Right. And I mean, the labor intensive portion of the Potter study, I think it will take a long time. There's a limitation that functionally may not be appropriate for general clinicians. I think for me the biggest take-home was that there's something to keep an eye on that targets stereotypy more functionally and that comes at it from not a complete lack of any punishment in the procedure because there is the response cost, there is the blocking component, but with a real eye towards a reinforcement component being included as a part of the package.
That's the big building block. Yeah, definitely. And I like that because I know a lot of the treatments I've seen that have had any effectiveness have all had a real big punishment component or they've just been a punishment component.
And while the goal is, well, if we punish that behavior, the goal is to reinforce a bunch of other behaviors. So you're not completely ignoring it. It's still not quite the same, quite the same as these treatments. And so that was nice.
That was a nice positivity. And punishment really only works when it's in that specific setting. We can. Punish the behavior at school, but at home it's going to probably increase dual fold.
Yeah. Right. And that was one of the limitations of the Slayton study here was that similarly you needed someone present right there in order to implement this treatment. You know, so talk about stimulus control.
Once that person is not there, it's going to be very clear to the participant that there's no way to redirect or block stereotypy and it's going to go right back up. You know, that's not a limitation as far as the design of the study. It's just the nature. what we're working with here. Right.
But it's definitely something to consider if you are working with a classroom of students and want to implement this. It's going to be really hard. Yeah. All right, folks. Well, this was a lot of fun talking about stereotypy as reinforcement.
And I hope our audience enjoyed the show. If you did, we would really, really appreciate it if you would subscribe to our show, if you would leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast. We actually had a nice jump from, I think... maybe six people to closer to 20. So thank you so very much if you've been leaving us a review.
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Speaking of CEs, you probably are looking for your second secret code word, right? If you're applying for them. And that second secret code word is Oscar.
All this Sesame Street talk really, really did not veer too far off. Oscar, O-S-C-A-R, whether it's your Oscar Mayer Wiener or your Oscar the Grouch. Or the Oscars that are happening.
Oh, that's right. They happened. Congratulations to insert movie title.
And of course, insert best actor and actress. They were great. We loved their films. Oscar, that's enough of this show.
I hope you enjoyed it. Like I said, leave us a review. You can email us at abainsidetrack at gmail.com or you can go to our Facebook page or Twitter account. We've been trying to post a lot on the Facebook page because one of our goals is, as always, dissemination of behavior analysis.
And I think for those of you who are practitioners, who are not, always, you know, working in, say, a research setting or a university setting, it can be very hard to find this information. So we really want to share as much as we can about behavior analysis, the field in general, science in general. So please check that out and feel free to like, share and all that, all that other jazz. Am I missing anything in terms of the social media outlook?
You got it. We got it all. Woohoo.
All right. Well, Jackie and Diana, thanks so much for being here and talking. Thanks, Rob. About these articles?
Absolutely. All right. So also, big thanks to you if you have gotten through our whole episode and have been listening intently. We appreciate it. It's really nice to have so many nice emails from folks.
So thank you so much. Well, Jackie, Diana, thanks so much for being here. Thank you all at home for listening in.
We'll be back next week with a preview episode to see what we're talking about next time. But until then, keep responding. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.