In the world of Behavior Analysis, Rose Griffin is a unicorn of sorts, which is the unofficial mascot of those select few who hold both Speech Language Pathologist and Board Certified Behavior Analyst credentials. For 20 years, Rose supported students in public school settings, but these days, she is concentrating on taking all the knowledge she's acquired and sharing it in the form of podcasts, online trainings and courses, and much more. In this interview, Rose and I discuss how she got into s...
Oct 18, 2022•56 min•Ep 203•Transcript available on Metacast After a brief hiatus, the Apollo Case Study Series returns to Behavioral Observations for its fifth installment. In this episode, Dr. Jim Moore shares his approach to modifying existing clinical programs that aren't making progress. More specifically, we talk about the temptation to go out and purchase the 'new shiny thing' (as in curriculum, assessment protocol, data collection systems, etc...), and what things to consider before deciding whether making such changes is an appropriate course of ...
Oct 05, 2022•48 min•Ep 202•Transcript available on Metacast Would you rather earn preferred items or get them for free? More technically stated, would you prefer response-contingent reinforcers over response-independent ones (and to further split hairs, if the preferred items are provided response-independently, are they really reinforcers?)? It turns out that there has been some basic and applied research in this area, and some studies demonstrated participants' general preference for earning reinforcers as opposed to simply getting them for "free." My ...
Sep 30, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep 201•Transcript available on Metacast I’ve always maintained that this is a show that is all about the listeners and the guests, and so it is with that in mind that I’m thrilled to share the following interview segments that were nominated by so many of you. We did have many entries, so I couldn’t fit all of them in, but I genuinely appreciate all of you who took the time to write in and share your thoughts. While I’m expressing gratitude here, I’d be remiss to not mention the support that I’ve received from podcast sponsors, especi...
Sep 26, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep 200•Transcript available on Metacast If your social media consumption is anything like mine, you've likely seen some feel-good stories in the media as of late that report on non-speaking students - generally students with Autism - who are graduating from college, giving valedictorian speeches, and so forth. Unfortunately, what's often underpinning many of these cases is a form of Facilitated Communication, or FC for short. What is FC? Glad you asked! In today's episode, Dr. Jason Travers , Associate Professor at Temple University, ...
Sep 19, 2022•1 hr 24 min•Ep 199•Transcript available on Metacast If you're anywhere in the upper part of the northern hemisphere, you already know that fall is in the air. And with that comes the annual return of students to their community schools. As such, I thought it would be fun to bring on fellow New Hampshire behavior analyst, Elissa Johnson , to talk about the work she's doing in school settings. Elissa is the Director of Behavioral Health for Constellations Behavioral Services , which was founded right here in the Granite State. As an aside, long tim...
Aug 31, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep 198•Transcript available on Metacast The full title of Merrill's talk is, "Whitesplaining Racism: Part Deux! Logic, Disproportionality, Avatars, Hate Crimes, and Uncomfortable Feelings." As you'll learn in this episode, Bruce was in the audience for most of Merrill's talk, and was so enthused with it, he wanted him to review its main points here on Behavioral Observations. So we did just that, and Bruce was kind enough to join us as a discussant. But in the first segment of the show, we get to know a little about Bruce and his back...
Aug 19, 2022•2 hr 41 min•Ep 197•Transcript available on Metacast If you care about the future of ABA, it's important to understand not only its strengths, but also the myriad challenges the field faces. And to that end, I can't think of a more difficult challenge the field of Applied Behavior Analysis has right now than figuring out how to adequately measure outcome quality, and how this relates to funding ABA services. My guest for Session 196 is Amanda Ralston, and she's been thinking a lot about these issues for quite some time, and she was kind enough to ...
Aug 15, 2022•50 min•Ep 196•Transcript available on Metacast In the fourth installment of the Apollo Case Study Series, Dr. Jim Moore and I are joined by his fellow Apollo clinician, Jennifer Freedman . Jen is a newer BCBA, and we spent most of this episode talking about the advanced training and professional development she's received while working in Apollo's unique clinical model. Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTube In particular, here are just a few of the topics we covered in this wide-ranging conversation: How Jennifer learned advan...
Jul 28, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep 195•Transcript available on Metacast According to the Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts , Code Element 1.07 states: "Behavior analysts actively engage in professional development activities to acquire knowledge and skills related to cultural responsiveness and diversity," and that "they evaluate their own biases and ability to address the needs of individuals with diverse needs/ backgrounds..." In order to provide some direction in this effort, the guests for the 12th installment of the Inside JABA Series, Drs. Corina Jiminez-Gomez...
Jul 21, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Ep 194•Transcript available on Metacast If you've been tuning into one of the many Inside JABA Series I've done over the last few years, you're undoubtedly familiar with today's guest, Dr. Claire St. Peter . Claire is a Professor as well as the Director of Graduate Training at West Virginia University. According to her university bio , Claire's "primary research interest is the assessment and intervention of challenging behavior. She is particularly interested in the development of effective interventions for challenging behavior disp...
Jul 13, 2022•2 hr 48 min•Ep 193•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Jim Moore returns in the third installment of the increasingly popular Apollo Case Study Series (which by the way, is also Session 192). In this episode, we cover quite a lot of ground, such as: Jim and his team's practical approach for language intervention How Jim encountered Relational Frame Theory by accident How rigid language repertoires can contribute to problem behavior How one does not need to be dogmatic as it relates to specific camps (i.e., Verbal Behavior vs. RFT; Isolated FA's ...
Jun 30, 2022•56 min•Ep 192•Transcript available on Metacast Why do people lie? It's an age-old question that's been asked for perhaps as long as our species has had verbal capabilities. In this episode, Dr. Corey Stocco from The University of The Pacific joins me to discuss the existing scholarship in this area, as more specifically, the work that he and his colleagues have done in this area. Specifically, we walk through a recent paper that was published in Behavioral Interventions, Further Evaluation of Contingencies on Lying About Homework Completion....
Jun 16, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep 191•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever felt the thrill of rolling a 20-sided die? If you're in the general demographic of a Behavioral Observations listener, I'd guess probably not. However, it may not surprise you to learn that being the cosmically uncoordinated and socially challenged kid of the 80s, I certainly have. Which is why I jumped at the chance to speak with Session 190 guest, Rob Harvey, about how he uses role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons (D&D for short), to teach social skills to his clients. If...
Jun 03, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep 190•Transcript available on Metacast Oh boy, as the kids these days say, this show is a straight up banger. Dr. Jim Moore joins me again in our second installment in the Apollo Case Study Series, where we go deep into all things functional assessment. Right out of the gate, I want to note that we do spend time reviewing both functional analysis and treatment data of clients that Jim has worked with in the past. We do the best we can to narrate the these data, but you're going to want to go to the show notes of the episode to see wh...
May 19, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep 189•Transcript available on Metacast This was a fun one for sure. In Session 188, I chatted with Drs. Jill Dardig and Bill Heward about a whole host of topics, including their new book, Let's Make a Contract: A positive way to change your child's behavior . In this conversation, we covered: How Jill and Bill discovered Behavior Analysis, especially at a time when it wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now. How they of course met each other (yes, there is a love story here). Why they wrote an earlier iteration of this book titled, Sign He...
May 12, 2022•2 hr 37 min•Ep 188•Transcript available on Metacast In Session 187, Steve Ward joins me to discuss how to help individuals - in particular, individuals with severely limited communicated repertoires - who demonstrate challenging repertoires that are colloquially referred to as Anxiety. Given that tortured sentence, you can probably already imagine that in this episode, we discuss how Steve conceptualizes what exactly Anxiety is, especially in populations who cannot verbally report on their private verbal behavior. More importantly, we discuss how...
May 05, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep 187•Transcript available on Metacast In Session 186, I am joined by Chrissy Barosky, Clinical Director for Bierman Autism Centers . In this episode, we discussed how their organization adopted a Precision Teaching approach for their learners. You heard that correctly, a large multi-state organization transitioned all of their data collection practices to the Standard Celeration Chart. So in this show, we dive into how Chrissy and her colleagues managed to pull this off, what they learned during the process, and the benefits they've...
Apr 22, 2022•59 min•Ep 186•Transcript available on Metacast In Session 185, AKA Inside JABA Series #11, I'm joined by Drs. Linda LeBlanc, Jeff Tiger, and Javier Virues-Ortega for a deep dive into automatically maintained behavior. This session was inspired by the study Javier and his colleagues published in the Spring 2022 issue of JABA (Virues-Ortega, Clayton, Perez-Bustamante, Gaerlan, and Fahmie, 2022). In this episode, we discuss the nature of, and challenges with automatically-maintained problem behavior. And this is tackled from both conceptual and...
Apr 15, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Ep 185•Transcript available on Metacast I'm really excited to introduce a new special podcast series that I'm publishing with Dr. Jim Moore of Apollo Behavior . In this series, we're going to talk about a lot of practical topics that we hope will resonate with BCBA's of all experience levels. We have great plans to discuss topics like supervision, functional assessment, skill acquisition, and much more. Real world challenges that just about every practitioner faces. In this episode, we focused on a clinical problem solving model that ...
Apr 08, 2022•1 hr•Ep 184•Transcript available on Metacast I've seen posts on social media here and there about World Behavior Analysis Day, but honestly I did not know a whole lot about it. And this is why I was really excited to sit down and chat with WBAD President, Elizabeth Drago, for a deep dive. It turns out that WBAD is more than a 'high five' amongst like minded behavioral scientists. In fact, the WBAD Alliance is doing a lot for dissemination, especially internationally. So as you might expect by now, we get into that and a whole lot more in t...
Mar 20, 2022•47 min•Ep 183•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Kevin Luczynski joins me for a really fun conversation in Session 182 of The Behavioral Observations Podcast. If you're not familiar with Kevin, he is an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the Director for the recently initiated Virtual Care Program at the Munroe Meyer Institute. In this episode, we cover the following: How Kevin discovered Behavior Analysis. How Kevin endeared himself to his then co-worker, now wife, and previous BOP guest, Dr. Nicole Rodri...
Mar 17, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep 182•Transcript available on Metacast In Session 181, Dr. Francesca Degli Espinosa, Ph.D, BCBA-D, joins me for a wide-ranging conversation that in my opinion, got better and better as it went on! If you're not familiar with Francesca or her work, she is director and consultant at ABA Clinic Ltd. , adjunct professor at the University of Salerno, and a guest lecturer at Queen's College, Belfast, and Pennsylvania State University. She is regarded as an expert in Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior, and will be one of the featured spe...
Mar 02, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep 181•Transcript available on Metacast This recording was a fun and way-overdue Patreon member hangout with the incomparable Dr. Merrill Winston. In this episode, we discussed how Greg Hanley influenced Merrill's departure from his previous employer, how he wanted to do more than be considered as the restrain and seclusion guru, his new enterprise, Winston Behavioral Solutions , when it's OK to break the rules, and much more. As a matter of fact, we spent the most amount the hangout discussing what makes a good behavior plan (and con...
Feb 22, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep 180•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. John Michael Guercio joins me again to discuss a topic that we briefly covered in his last appearance; Behavioral Relaxation Training. In this show, John does a deep dive into this work, drawing on the research of Drs. Roger Poppen, Duane Lundervold, and of course John himself. Along with the aforementioned Drs. Poppen and Lundervold, John is the co-author of the third edition of the text, Behavioral Relaxation Training . He is also the author of Assessment of Adult Core Competencies: Teachi...
Feb 14, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep 179•Transcript available on Metacast In Session 178, we're going to hop in the time machine and take a trip back to April 2021. That's correct. This episode of The Behavioral Observations Podcast comes from the recorded panel discussion at last year's Verbal Behavior Conference. The panel consisted of Drs. Pat McGreevy, April Kisamore, Nicole Rodriguez, Alice Shillingsburg, Hank Schlinger, and Vince Carbone. With regard to Vince's appearance on the panel, I'm told that he really never does them, so our hosts at the Central Texas Au...
Feb 08, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep 178•Transcript available on Metacast As far as podcast go, this episode was kind of tough to write a headline for (a task that I probably devote way too much time to doing!). My guest in Session 177, John McElwee, has been in the field - to paraphrase a line from Aubrey Daniels - before there was a field. John has had a long and productive career that's had some very interesting twists and turns. He's still going strong these days, and learning new things to help individuals with a wide variety of developmental and behavioral chall...
Jan 31, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep 177•Transcript available on Metacast In the 10th (tenth!!!) installment of the Inside JABA Series , Dr. Linda LeBlanc and I are joined by Drs. Jenn Austin and Dithu Rajaraman to discuss the paper they co-authored with Drs. Holly Gover, Tony Cammilleri, David Donnelly, and Greg Hanley. The paper is titled, Towards Trauma-Informed Applications of Behavior Analysis , and you can find it in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. If you haven't seen the paper yet, check out the abstract below: Despite a growing ac...
Jan 18, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep 176•Transcript available on Metacast As noted in the first few minutes of this episode, Dr. Florence DiGennaro Reed has been one of the most-requested guests by audience members, and I'm thrilled to have her back on the show for a one-on-one chat. Dr. DiGennaro Reed , better known as Flo by friends and colleagues, is the Chairperson of the Department of Applied Behavioral Science as well as the Director of The Performance Management Laboratory at the University of Kansas. In this interview, we chat about her unique early experience...
Jan 04, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep 175•Transcript available on Metacast Hi folks, as I note in my opening comments, my friends from ABA Inside Track and I got together again for a Year-In-Review episode. Perhaps in keeping with our mood, we kept this year's review somewhat light. Instead of discussing the weighty issues of Behavior Analysis, we talked about what we've been up to in 2021. Jackie and I talk about our Covid stories, Diana shares her go to source on all things pandemic, and Rob and I talk about what we're seeing in schools these days. We also talk about...
Dec 29, 2021•2 hr 31 min•Ep 174•Transcript available on Metacast 
