If you're like me, you are seeing more and more news articles about the challenges schools are facing with students engaging in problem behavior. For example, not too far from my home, a school district in Vermont recently proposed to shorten the school week in order to provide teachers with extra time to prepare for, and perhaps recover from, challenging behaviors in the classroom setting. As we've discussed many times before on this podcast, clearly there is a role for Behavior Analysis in the...
Dec 21, 2021•2 hr 32 min•Ep 173•Transcript available on Metacast Mandy Mason 's road to discovering Behavior Analysis is a little different than most of my guests. When her daughter was diagnosed with Autism, she literally traveled the globe to find out how best to help her. I don't want to spoil the story too much, but what I will say is that Mandy's search for an effective treatment changed not only her daughter's life, but the lives of countless others. That's because once Mandy discovered ABA, and combined it with the power of Precision Teaching and Preci...
Dec 06, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep 172•Transcript available on Metacast If you're a BCBA supporting kids in public school settings, or even if you're a parent who has kids in school, you probably already know that sound classroom management is hard to come by. This phenomenon is perhaps more acute as schools have to contend with the disruptions in continuity imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. As such, it is reasonable to ask what Behavior Analysis has to offer when it comes to helping teachers spend more time teaching, and less time dealing with conduct problems. Luc...
Nov 18, 2021•2 hr 39 min•Ep 171•Transcript available on Metacast In the ninth installment of the Inside JABA Series, I'm joined by Drs. Claire St. Peter, Jeff Tiger, and many-time guest Derek Reed. Unfortunately the JABA Editor in Chief, Dr. Linda LeBlanc, was not able to join us, but she did choose some very cool articles for us to talk about. The articles are: Vaidya & Armshaw (2021) . Surface electromyography and gamification: Translational research to advance physical rehabilitation. Gravina et al. (2021) . Increasing adherence to a standardized rounding ...
Nov 03, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Ep 170•Transcript available on Metacast This, my friends, is a conversation that I've been looking forward to sharing with you for quite some time. In this episode, I'm joined by Drs. Mara Vanderzell and Erik Jacobson from the Upstate Cerebral Palsy Center. As you'll hear right out of the gate, we started the episode off by attempting to operationally characterize the Boy Band pop music genre. You read that correctly... but, don't worry if you're not a fan of Nsync or 98 Degrees... there's a lot of fantastic insights into the clinical...
Oct 25, 2021•1 hr 29 min•Ep 169•Transcript available on Metacast My friends at the Virginia Association for Behavior Analysis were kind enough to invite me to moderate their panel discussion at their annual conference that took place last April. One of the fun parts of moderating panels like these is being able to share it with the wider Behavioral Observations audience. This event was no exception. The 2021 VABA panel featured Drs. Nasiah Cirincione-Ulezi , Christine Barthold , and T.V. Joe Layng . In our chat, we fielded questions from VABA attendees, which...
Oct 08, 2021•1 hr 28 min•Ep 168•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Jim Moore returns to Behavioral Observations in this session. And I'm so thankful he had the time to chat, because this episode is jam-packed with great information for practitioners at all experience levels. We spent a few minutes catching the audience up on some of the changes in Jim's life since his last appearance on the show. In particular, we discuss his new job as Chief Clinical Officer of Apollo Behavior and his move to the Atlanta area. Afterwards, we managed to touch on several imp...
Sep 28, 2021•1 hr 27 min•Ep 167•Transcript available on Metacast I'm not a gamer... well, at least not at this stage of my life. But that aside, I really enjoyed this conversation with FIT doctoral student, James Riswick-Estelle . We talked about his he got into ABA in the first place, a brief history of eSports, the current status of eSports, and then, how he uses behavior analytic principles to enhance the performance of athletes. To be honest, I was blown away with how vast and popular eSports is right now. So popular that Florida Tech now has their own de...
Sep 15, 2021•59 min•Ep 166•Transcript available on Metacast In Session 165, I spoke with Brett Yarris, founder of The Bx Movement and co-founder of the Pro Football Network . I first heard about Brett when he was featured on The Controversial Exchange podcast with Ryan and Dimitri. In that episode, I recall how passionately Brett advocated for a wider application of our science, and in this regard, he is really leading by example. In this episode, we discussed how he found his way into Applied Behavior Analysis, how his frustration with the status quo le...
Sep 02, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Ep 165•Transcript available on Metacast Earlier this summer I had the chance to chat with Dr. Kelsey Ruppel , who is a Senior Consultant and the Director of Operations at FTF Behavioral Consulting . After I stopped getting tongue-tied in the introduction, we were able to cover a wide variety of topics, including: How she got into ABA. Pro-tips for remote consultation. A quick review of the Preschool Life Skills curriculum. Her research on addressing emerging problem behaviors, i.e., the development of the BALANCE program . More pro-ti...
Aug 26, 2021•1 hr•Ep 164•Transcript available on Metacast Sara Litvak and Dr. Ellie Kazemi return to the podcast - this time together - to catch us up on what's new with the Behavioral Health Center of Excellence, or BHCOE for short. Specifically, we discuss how the BHCOE has grown since Sara last checked in with us, how Ellie joined up with the organization as their Chief Science Officer, how the BHCOE determines quality standards, documentation guidelines for clinical records, ethical marketing practices, why the BHCOE is the "nicest place to complai...
Aug 10, 2021•1 hr•Ep 163•Transcript available on Metacast Jul 29, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep 162•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Natalie Parks from Behavior Leader stopped by the podcast again for another fun conversation. In her previous appearance , we talked about the importance of providing feedback "the right way." And in this episode, we extend that theme and discuss the work that she and her colleagues have done in helping several fire departments in the St. Louis area improve their operations. In particular, we covered: The challenges of consulting in a shift-work setting. The cultural idiosyncrasies of fire d...
Jul 23, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep 161•Transcript available on Metacast Jul 06, 2021•2 hr 41 min•Ep 160•Transcript available on Metacast In Session 159 of The Behavioral Observations Podcast, Michael Maloney returns to the show. We spend a few minutes catching up since the last time we spoke ( see Session 129 ), but then pivot to his recent collaboration with the Canadian charity organization, the Amorak Society . With help from the Rotary International's literacy initiative, these partners deployed Michael's reading program, The Maloney Method, to over 2500 children in some of the poorest areas of Bangladesh via a smartphone-bas...
Jun 12, 2021•50 min•Ep 159•Transcript available on Metacast Rather than writing up a compelling introduction to this episode, I'm tempted to say, "just listen to the whole thing!" and leave it there. In Session 158, I chat with one of my oldest friends and Auburn classmate (obligatory "War Eagle!"), Dr. Jim Murphy from the University of Memphis, about the impossibly-broad topic of Substance Use Disorders (SUDs). Fortunately for us, Jim has spent over 20 years studying this issue from Behavior Analytic/Behavioral Economic points of view, and he has develo...
May 27, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep 158•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Becca Tagg from Del Mar Behavioral Health joins me to discuss the unique approach her agency uses to train early-career BCBAs. This conversation was inspired by the interview I conducted with Dr. Mary Jane Weiss last year, in which we talked about how cool it would be if the field had an ABA equivalent of a medical residency model, so that BCBAs can learn about practicing with a variety of populations. As you'll hear in the interview, Becca heard this and reached out to say that this is exac...
May 18, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep 157•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Adithyan "Dithu" Rajaraman joins me in Session 156 to discuss his work in the Practical Functional Assessment/Skills-Based Treatment literature. Dithu is a former student of pod-fave Dr. Greg Hanley, and as one might expect, Dithu approaches his work with a similar degree of humility and open-mindedness. He earned his Ph.D. at Western New England University, and is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County As we discuss in the first few minutes of the show, I ...
May 04, 2021•1 hr 28 min•Ep 156•Transcript available on Metacast In previous appearances on this podcast and elsewhere, Pat Friman has told the story of Father Flanagan, founder of BoysTown. According to Pat, Father Flanagan often made the following statement when describing his philosophy of helping troubled youths: "there is no such thing as a bad boy, only bad environments, bad modeling, and bad teaching." For the Spring 2021 issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Dr. Linda LeBlanc invited Pat to expand on these remarks in the issue's lead pape...
Apr 26, 2021•2 hr 39 min•Ep 155•Transcript available on Metacast I had a great chat with fellow Auburn University alum Dr. Alice Shillingsburg. Alice has been doing great work in the field for decades, as you can see from her bio below: Dr. Shillingsburg currently serves as Sr. Vice President of Children’s Clinical Services and Training at May Institute. She received her PhD in clinical psychology from Auburn University and completed her predoctoral internship and post-doctoral fellowship at the Marcus Institute. She previously served as the Director of the L...
Apr 13, 2021•55 min•Ep 154•Transcript available on Metacast In Session 153, , which I'll get to in just a minute. But to set the context for our conversation, I'd like to start by noticing that I often see the quote by Skinner, "When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it," posted on social media quite frequently. In fact, when I plugged that quote into Google, it returned almost 9 million results ! Now, I could be wrong about this, but this notion of following one's interests would seem to fly in the face of developing a s...
Apr 05, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep 153•Transcript available on Metacast Are you consulting Google to determine how to keep your clients and co-workers safe in this seemingly never-ending Covid-19 pandemic? Well, lucky for you, my guests in Session 152 have done the heavy lifting and thoroughly researched best practices in risk-mitigation in ABA clinical practice. My guests for this episode include Drs. Zahra Hajiaghamohseni , Mary Caruso-Anderson , Jennifer Sweeny , Sarah Duarte , and Christy Evanko . These Behavior Analysts hail from all over the country and came t...
Mar 17, 2021•1 hr 27 min•Ep 152•Transcript available on Metacast In Session 151, I chat with Dr. Nasiah Cirincione-Ulezi about a range of topics, but we spent the majority of the time discussing her recent paper in Behavior Analysis in Practice titled: Black Women and Barriers to Leadership in ABA . Nasiah is the CEO of two organizations, Ulezi, LLC and Pivot 2 Inclusion . If you haven't read her paper yet, please pause this show and go do so. It's a sobering account of some of the struggles faced by Black women in our field. Nasiah highlights her findings in...
Mar 08, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Ep 151•Transcript available on Metacast In Session 150 of The Behavioral Observations Podcast, I got a chance to finally interview Dr. Vince Carbone. In our conversation we covered a lot of interesting topics. Instead of covering the ins and outs of Verbal Behavior - the topic it's fair to say that Vince is best known for - we talked about the history and evolution of the field of Behavior Analysis. Specifically, we discussed how he transitioned from aspiring baseball player to Psychology student, what the field was like when he first...
Mar 01, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep 150•Transcript available on Metacast I've known that the 5th anniversary of the podcast has been coming up for quite some time now, and I've been wracking my brain on how best to commemorate this milestone. After considering a few different options, I eventually decided that there was no better place to start than by looking back at the first episode of Behavioral Observations, my interview with Dr. Greg Hanley. In this episode, we discussed the origins of what is now called the Practical Functional Assessment approach, back when i...
Feb 22, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep 149•Transcript available on Metacast So the title of this show may be a bit of a misnomer. Let me explain... In Session 148, Shira Karpel and Shayna Gaunt, founders of HowToABA.com , join me to talk about one of my favorite topics: supporting the newly-minted BCBA. As you might know by now, that's very often my closing question of the podcast. In this episode however, we pretty much spent the entire time talking about strategies for helping early-career professionals succeed. So what is the misnomer all about? As it turns out, the ...
Feb 18, 2021•1 hr•Ep 148•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Behavioral Observations, I chat with Drs. Florence DiGennaro-Reed, Derek Reed, and Gregory Madden. While we talked a bit about their new book, An Introduction to Behavior Analysis , we framed the discussion around the process of teaching itself, textbook notwithstanding. Before getting into the content itself, let me introduce our guests: Dr. DiGennaro-Reed is an Associate Professor in and Chairperson of the Department of Applied Behavioral Science at the University of Kansas ...
Feb 10, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep 147•Transcript available on Metacast In the sixth edition of the Inside JABA Series, I'm joined by Inside JABA regulars Drs. Linda LeBlanc and Claire St. Peter, as well as Dr. Jesse Dallery, to talk about the paper he and his colleagues published in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. This paper fits nicely in JABA's ongoing series on Public Health and Telehealth, and is a great example of the potential for Behavior Analysis to be used for so much more than the type of work many BCBAs are doing currently. ...
Feb 01, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep 146•Transcript available on Metacast In Session 145, I speak with Deidre Sturm and Anne Denning from The Consultants for Children , an agency that supports individuals with ASD based out of Colorado. Together, Anne and Deidre tell the story of how they completely revamped their agency’s approach to supporting individuals with problem behavior. After not seeing much success with their existing functional assessment practices, they dove deep into the work of Dr. Greg Hanley and his colleagues. After taking all the online professional...
Jan 21, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep 145•Transcript available on Metacast I've been wanting to interview Dr. Carl Hart ever since I first heard him speak at the 2015 Mass ABA conference. Put differently, when asked who would be a 'bucket list' interview, Carl Hart was usually the first name that I answered with. Ever since learning about Carl's work, I've admired his ability and willingness to advance science-based arguments in the popular press media. If this is your first time hearing his name, let me share a little of his background information. Carl is the Ziff Pr...
Jan 12, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep 144•Transcript available on Metacast 
