Analyzing The Behavior of Everything with Dr. Scott O'Donnell (Part II)

ABA on Tap is proud to present Dr. Scott O'Donnell (Part 2 of 3):

Dr. Scott O’Donnell, PhD, BCBA-D, LBA, is a dedicated behavior analyst, educator, and therapist recognized for his advocacy in expanding the reach of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) beyond traditional settings. He is the founder of SAOBA, LLC, and currently serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Temple University.

Dr. O’Donnell’s career spans over a decade, with a focus on diverse populations including inner-city youth, athletes, and individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD), and Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD).

Dr. O’Donnell is a strong proponent of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Relational Frame Theory (RFT). He frequently utilizes behavior analytic techniques to address mental health challenges such as depression and anxiety and emphasizes the importance of data-driven, compassionate practice. His published research includes work on:

• Sports performance and concussion management.
• Integrating consumer behavior analytic models into corporate settings (e.g., Disney).

A lifelong resident of Philadelphia, Dr. O’Donnell is an active volunteer, currently serving as Vice President of the Fox Chase Civic Association. He is also involved in shaping the future of the field through SEBA (Scientific Evaluation of Behavior Analysis), advocating for diverse representation within the behavior science community.

Dr. Scott returns to ABA on Tap, and discusses everything from prior guests on the Tap, to the idea of freedom and human agency. This brew is flavorful and promises a delightful intellectual buzz. Pour heavy, pour more and ALWAYS ANALYZE RESPONS

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Microsoft. So without further ado, back to that analyzed request. All right, all right. This is your ever-grateful co-host, Mike Rubio, and welcome back to part two of our very exciting interview with Dr. Scott O'Donnell. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

So I guess it depends on how you measure it, right? Because a lot of times you look at anxiety as behavioral things of like somebody's having anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

It's still behavior, you know, still in our wheelhouse.

unknown 1:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

That's interesting. Is it? I mean, so I does it does it start with a sort of you know, I don't I don't want to get uh too far into the weeds here, but does it start with some notion of a sympathetic nervous response, which would then be respondent? And then what does that mean in terms of what your environment does as a result of those the demonstration of those behaviors? So I don't know. I mean, I this gets this gets I think this is a really important question, and in terms of you know, we're we're there's a lot of crossover between what we do and mental health, and mental health is sort of a you know an important buzz phrase right now. But it's it's hard to to bring those worlds together sometimes, which is what made Matt such an interesting guest. He's he's really exploring those things in a way that you know seems to bring the behavior analysis in. You know, and I I I sort of relate to it in the way I bring my developmental pieces in when I'm working with clients, is there's a there's there's a sort of mixing there that's hard to describe. I have a hard time sometimes, you know, just relaying the technology, the terminology correctly because of that uh difficulty in crossover. But yeah, what what are your thoughts overall?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Well, I I go to exactly what you said, how does it start? Right, and from the way I see it, it's it starts as a respondent relation. Okay. Now, I have no doubt like later on, you know, maybe there's some opera relations there too. But I encourage you, and I'm gonna go even older. I'm gonna go to one one of the older articles that we have in your house. I'm gonna encourage you guys to read Estees and Skinner, 1941. It's a great article, probably like six pages, it's not really long. It's a great article on Estes' E S T E S on anxiety. And what they did was they had rats pressing uh levers on an FI schedule, right? So it was consistent pressing, but not like you know, very frequent, you know, presses, um, but consistent. And then they had they did a two-minute tone and they followed it by a shock. And the shock did not coincide with the response. So it's the key it so it's not negative reinforcement. And then when you see successive sessions resulted in this, like I I I would just scroll right to the graphs there, Mike, if you're looking at it, you see this like depression, right? I'm marked depression of behavior during the tone. And you could easily see that on a cumulative graph. And it's kind of interesting. They did this, they did this with uh the same rats who were uh satiated. So so you don't see like when they had like low drive, they said, you don't see like as much of a depression, you can't tell as much, which I thought was kind of interesting, and maybe that's relevant to practice too. And then there was they did the extinction procedure, so they had successive sessions of exposure to the tone without the shock, and this resulted in it resulted in extinction eventually, but the recovery to like where it was normal and not having that dent in the cumulative graph was delayed. So I you know, I I kind of look at anxiety like that, that we should be looking at respondent relations, we should be talking about you know, unconditioned stimulus and you know, unconditioned response, conditioned stimuli, and conditioned response. But overall, I thought that was it would be an interesting talking point so we could kind of segue here to like direct causation because Matt was talking about how we think about something and then we make a plan and carry out the plan, right? And I would say that's like top-down causation, right? So you're talking about thoughts controlling muscles that lead to action, right? That's what we're talking about. We're making that assumption, right? But there's there's another way to look at it, you could say bottom-up causation, and that's neuron fire neurons firing cause thoughts, and neurons firing cause muscles to move, right? So there's another way to look at it, but respondent relations are bottom-up causation because it's a stimulus response. We're talking about a stimulus that results in uh a reflex response, right? So I would put that in the category of bottom-up causation, not top-down causation, where like, hey, we're where our thoughts are controlling our our muscles, and then that leads to action. But back to the difference is really where it all starts. And I'm sure there's there's more of it, uh, more overlap too between the two after a while, if you're anxious for a while.

SPEAKER_03 5:30

But you made me think about the idea of so the trauma is another very popular word right now, right? Right. And how that sort of represents, I guess, both of those models of causation that you're discussing, or it seems to say that, meaning that over time, with something happening so frequently over time, you're either gonna habituate and and and satiate and ignore it, or you're gonna become overly responsive to it. So I used to maybe think of that. But just so that it helps anybody out there, you were talking about some quantitative properties of anxiety, SDs and Skinner. And uh, there's the whole article's on there. I think it's Appalachian State, their psych department that has it up for free. So if anybody wants to go out there and look at it, I'll be checking that out later for sure.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Yeah, not real long. It's like you know, four or five, six pages, something like that. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Well, come on, and it's gonna be hard question, Scott. I don't have a yeah, it's like well initially.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

We're gonna go down a rabbit hole today, just to let you know. This is this is just this, this is just a start, guys. It's gonna get deep. We're gonna get real in.

SPEAKER_03 6:31

We're just uh edge of the rabbit hole right now. Okay, I like it.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

And then I would ask you is behavior analysis direct causation or indirect causation, right? And so this is different than top down or bottom up. Direct causation is like one thing directly affecting another. So if I hit like a combo shot on the pool table, like then my the one ball hitting the other ball into the pocket is direct causation. But indirect causation would be like, what's the ultimate source? Well, that's me playing pool with the Q, and I hit the and the Q tip hits the cue ball, and the cue ball hits the other ball, and the other ball hits another ball, and that ball goes goes in. So the reason why I'm talking about this is because with radical behaviorism, the ult we go to the ultimate source, right? Which is the ultimate source is the environment, and that creates a sensory input. So both operating respondent relations begin with a stimulus. Either way, yeah, we begin with a stimulus, a USCS, right? So there's a stimulus input. So so maybe we shouldn't look at it so much. And I I do act a lot, I do act all day long, but I do you know bring this into act that, like, hey, you know, we can be conditioned to stimuli, and that will result in like you know, our bodies doing something, whether we decide with our brains whether our bodies want to do it or not, like our bodies are going to do this because it's a stimulus response relation. Does that make sense? Yeah. Kind of.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

So well, where does where does so in terms of then now I guess uh repeating any sort of behavior within that model, so where where does the uh the reinforcement part fit in?

SPEAKER_01 8:12

For what for Hadia's example, right?

SPEAKER_03 8:16

So like no, like the idea that getting the ball on the hole is one thing, just moving everything around the table and hoping for some slop is another. I don't know how that if that captures anything of what you were saying there, but I guess in terms of now, you know, looking at the cause is one thing, and then looking at now that occurring again would be my next question. Is what what you know obviously there's a an aspect of reinforcement, but you know, again, where where does it where does it all come together?

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Well, I think these are perspectives to take, really, kind of like lenses to look through, you know. And depending on how we look through it, we might see something different. So I guess it and which is it works really well and to you know to segue into this. I have some questions for you guys.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

All right.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Okay. All right. So my question is do you believe in this stuff? Do you believe in behavior analysis? Do you really believe that our behavior is determined by our phylogeny, ontogeny, and culture? You believe that our actions are controlled by the environment without any other source.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

I I do believe in. Do you believe in determinism?

SPEAKER_03 9:29

I I I I'm gonna say a blanket yes. And then I'm going to recognize the general notion that in no way can I claim that that always explains everything to me. There's always a margin of error, there's there's gonna be some sort of unknown, and then I've got to be pragmatic about it and say, okay, so what did I what did I actually enact here? What did I do in terms of the the significance to you know whatever I'm applying it to? So that that's where I would go. Yes, I firmly believe in it, and then like any other model, I I know that I it doesn't explain all of the variability or variance for me.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

So my understanding of determinism is that there's an environmental change for that precedes all behavior, right? So is that kind of what you're asking? Is do we believe that there's always some objective environmental change that precedes all behavior?

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Just my Yeah, um I mean I have more questions. Is like I'm gonna ask you after this, but is that yeah, yeah. Do you do you believe in you know determinism? Yeah, do you believe in it?

SPEAKER_00 10:36

I I think so, with the exception of maybe things like dreams, I think are kind of hard to wrap my head around because I don't know what the environmental change uh is that sparks things like that. But more, but any behavior that's like conscious probably has some sort of environmental change, but I could be convinced. That's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Well, do you believe in free will?

SPEAKER_00 11:03

So determinism would say no, right? Determinism would say there's always some relationship there.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Well, we'll we'll get into that. So maybe there's some different flavors of determinism. We've only only really been shown one flavor of determinism, you know, when we learn about behavior analysis, but there are some different flavors. But yeah, do you guys think there's free will? Is there any is there any room there?

SPEAKER_03 11:25

Maybe that's what speaks to that margin of error that I was talking about, right? So the you know, the the the I'm gonna have to quote lyrics here, but the idea that you know you choose not to decide, you still made a choice. And that's kind of where I'll sit is yeah, maybe that's the margin of error for me. So yes, I think that if I observe my environment, I'm gonna find some environmental tie. And then, you know, what what part of me then would make me go against the tendency to respond in a consistent way, right? So the idea that most of the time I do this and then sometimes I don't. I might comply with you know a law enforcement officer just to make sure that I don't cause myself any other trouble, and then at which point am I gonna push back? So that's you know, these are these are awesome questions. As a behavior analyst, it it's hard to wrap around the idea of free will, and then I I've got to give it its due. I've I've got to give it its place.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

I think that's where Skinner said ABA or behaviorism isn't the science of behavior. He said it was the philosophy of the science of behavior, right? To acknowledge that there isn't it isn't as predictable as yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

I just I just want to I just want to correct you on that, Dan, because you say that before. Radical behaviorism is the philosophy of the science of behavior, right? So that is a f radical behaviorism, is not applied behavior analysis. Because he didn't make applied behavior analysis, he was into the experimental analysis of behavior. And and radical behaviorism is made up of several, a bunch of philosophical assumptions. And they're they're required, you know, if you're going to do a behavior analysis, like selectionism over creationism. We're we're selectionist, and we don't believe that we are created by you know one thing, uh, evolution over a creationism, pragmatism over realism, determinism over libertarianism. We'll get into that a little bit. Parsimony over complexity, empiricism over introspection, and philosophical doubt over dog dogma. And I like to think of these philosophies as like they're like lenses, right? And if you look through, you like you could look through this philosophy, look, and it's like a point of view, and you look through it and you see something different. And if we could look through the like the lens of realism, we could we could also look through the lens of pragmatism, right? We could look through both lenses and we'd see something different if we're looking through the lens of realism and and we'd be asking, like, how real are these stimuli, especially when your brain is filling in so much of the information we know our brain fills in a lot of the sensory information, or we could look through the lens of pragmatism and say, instead of asking how real it is, we just say, is it useful? How useful is it? But I like to say that we're capable of looking through either of these lenses, but it's important that we align the lenses of behavior analysis. Because if you align the lenses, you can create a tool like a telescope or a microscope or something like that. And if you align enough lenses, then you could create a powerful tool, powerful enough to conduct a science like behavior analysis, right? So it's so seeing it through these perspectives is is kind of important. And I'm not saying that you have to, I mean, I believe it. I'm not saying that you guys have to believe in it, but determinism is one of them that I figured I figured we talk about, especially if we're going to talk about freedom and free will. Determinism insists that all factors are are considered, right? And and that's necessary because if we're doing equations, we need to have all the variables, right? And understand what all the variables are. So that's necessary. And without it, there would be other controlling variables that either don't exist or in the physical world or aren't undiscovered. And and without determinism, ABC data sheets wouldn't work, FBAs wouldn't work, FAs wouldn't work, they'd be useless. There would always be doubt, there would always be other variables in there, and then we wouldn't be able to figure anything out, or assessments wouldn't work, we'd be left guessing. But there are different flavors of determinism that you guys probably don't know about. And I'd I'd direct you to Slifey et al. S-L-I-F-E 1999. He's got a really good taxonomy of determinism and goes over four different types. I'm gonna go over them really quickly. And we've been taught about metaphysical determinism, and that's what you were talking about, Dan, that all events are the necessary outcome of antecedent events, like that. It has to happen that the antecedents happen that way, and then then then the event happens that way. But there's also other kinds, there's metaphysical probabilism, right? And those are that's events are determined in a stochastic, kind of like on a normal curve, right? And different levels of evolution result in different random variations along this normal curve. There's also scientific determinism, which is the scientific method will lead to the discovery of order and prediction. And because we're using the scientific method, and because we're using a quantitative analysis numbers, right, then that in and of itself is bringing order to things, right? Like we're using a system that brings order to things, so we should expect that we would see things orderly. But there's also functional interdependence, which is like, you know, really that we can't really prove causation. Even if you had like the one billiard ball hitting the other billiard ball, there could always be that situation where it looks like that, there's magnets under the table, and and there's uh a speaker creating that sound and everything happening at the same time. Looks just like it, but that's you know, not really it. So I guess with with determinism, we compare deter determinism, and we always say versus versus something when we're saying these lenses, like look through this lens instead of this lens. For determinism, the opposite would be libertarianism. And libertarianism says that choice situations include the possibility that we could have done the other thing, we could have done otherwise, or that it was a probability that we could have done the other thing. And they say that the choices we make determine who we are, that there's self-forming. And these self-forming actions result in our own free will because they arose from our choices. And libertarianism believes that not every event has a cause of antecedent, making it inevitable. But behavioral analysts choose determinism over libertarianism because it allows us to conduct the science. Because it, you know, allows us to say, like, oh, there's not all these other variables out there that we can't figure out. And it's really necessary for you know prediction and for accounting for behavior and things like that. So there are some ways to rectify determinism, like society kind of has an issue with determinism, you know, and you guys have talked about it because if someone, you know, like it's all about the control, that control term. And if it a society really kind of has an issue, especially in the judicial system with determinism, because if someone doesn't have control over themselves, then they shouldn't be, they believe that they shouldn't be responsible for themselves. So you have that thing where people can claim they're, you know, they're insane, insane or something like that, and and get off and they're not responsible for their actions. But there are some ways to rectify determinism. There's compatibilists, people who believe that moral responsibility and freedom are compatible with determinism, that that that more than one response option generally does exist, and freedom is not the ability to do otherwise, but that you had more than one response option, right? So that that's what that's how they see it. And there's also revisionists who see like that free will is something that is learned like a social skill. Like there's cognitive and social functions of it, which I can like, you know, I can understand, I can relate to. And it's a behavior in which we ask ourselves, what do we do? And seek answers and make an act of choice based off of like us asking ourselves. And this is kind of really uh relevant to Skinner's problem solving analysis, where where we can actively think about things and create antecedents, even though we can't see these antecedents, right? That like bring us us closer to the answer, kind of like taking steps in a math formula. And this gives us agency and this gives us autonomy. But really, like in the in the long run, I think like the problem is something that you guys talked about, like that idea of control. And Skinner talked a lot about how control was always the problem in the main ejection, behavior analysis. Um people don't like that the idea that their behavior is controlled. Even though you go to church and church controls your behavior, you're raised by your parents and they control your behavior, your teacher in the classroom controls your behavior, uh, your child has needs, and those needs control the parents' behavior for fulfilling them. And when you when you play video games and video games, it's really fine control of the behavior. If you move your thumb just the wrong way, you're lose, you're you're done, you know, you're cooked and you and you lost. So our behavior, like I see our behavior is determined by previous history, the environment, the up and opportunities, you know, brought to us at at that time. But there's always that concern for that science that controls human behavior. And that's like really the label of our science. We predict and control behavior, and that old argument was a controller, but I really feel like control is probably not the right right word for it, or maybe like that. We're us controlling them is probably like, and I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example of this. So if I asked you to come and mow my lawn, you guys, you know, what are the chances you guys would come if I said Mike and Dan, come mow my lawn, come over my 17 degrees out there, right? Yeah, all right. But if I paid you a hundred million dollars, sure. Okay, right, so you'd be both but then the question is like, who's controlling who? Because I had to pay you a hundred million dollars for you to do it, right? Yeah, so like, and if I if I offered you a hundred dollars of five hundred dollars and you chose five hundred hours, right, is that control? Like, because you're just choosing the you're choosing the better option for you, you know. Would you call that control? Where we would code call that control, right? We would say that's controlled by the environment, and someone would say, like, no, I'm choosing the better option. Someone gave me an option between 500 and 100, so I'm choosing 500. Right? So, I mean, it kind of and it kind of makes sense that you're gonna do things better that the way that's better for you, but we we call that control. So I kind of think of it like think of it a little bit different, is is like like you're already under control, like I'm not. Trying to control your behavior. In fact, like in fact, for generalization, I need to return the control of your behavior to the natural environment. You're just under crappy control. Right now, your behavior is being controlled really crappily and it's not working out for you. Right. So maybe we could get it controlled in the in the right way by the environment in the right way, in which you're like much happier.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

There's a lot of sociopolitical themes that come up with what you're saying, and I think you sort of alluded to some of those. And I and even in some of the examples you're giving, so you know, within the the the two options or the the the two fees for mowing the lawn, right, back to your point that there's options there, which then constant begins to constitute the idea of free will. I have options to choose this one or that one, and the idea that I'm choosing one that's better for me, whatever that means, maybe in terms of monetary value. And then that now speaks to that intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, the idea that, you know, what would make me choose to go mow your lawn just because Dr. Scott's a cool guy, right? And and it's not 17 degrees. So yeah, there's you I I've got a million things to say. I'm trying to pick one good one, but the socio-political themes that come up with what you're saying, we alluded to some of those earlier that I think fit the current. I think there's a lot of important questions. Uh and I and the one thing I wanted to say too is I think that what in what you were describing, I kept thinking that we have to you you said lenses, and we have to create these models, I think, in order to be able to take a snapshot of those things with which we're observing, knowing that we're not going to capture all the variables, and even our best, most comprehensive equation is gonna end with a plus E at the end for some level of margin of error. You're not you know that nothing is going to capture all the variance, all the variability. But if it captures enough, then we can apply this notion of control, the idea that I can predict, I can bet the right team based on my analysis, you know, 30% of the time. Wow, that's a certain, that's an incredible level of control when we're talking about gambling. And then that wouldn't bode so well for you know a teacher in a classroom with a problematic student who's only completing 30% of their work, for example.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

So you know, you said the equations, you mentioned the equations, and like and like I've seen equations, I mean, I've seen stuff that is, you know, capturing and accounting for 99% of Votani's pitches, whether they're like fastball and breaking ball, and and like play calling in the NFL, whether it's a runner pass, and you know, accounting for and predicting all that stuff. And you know, just to let you know where we're at, like with those equations, uh, I think it's kind of interesting that that we we can't predict the next response. We can't predict what someone's going to do next, but we're very good at predicting these general patterns of behavior. So we can use a matching law and kind of like, you know, look at like what we would call a molar view of things, and we could use our quantitative analysis of behavior and be able to predict behavior on a molar view, which I think is like really fascinating. And we have like generalized matching law, we have delayed discounting and probability discounting, you need to predict choices, we have behavioral momentum to predict extinction, we have functional analyses to predict current and future operant functions, you know, like you know, it's kind of our goal, but in that like that we can only look at it on a molar scale, and we have used, you know, like Newtonian physics to create behavioral momentum equations. I think about how in quantum mechanics, when you look at things in like a molecular uh scale, like you they're saying you can't figure out the position of a molecule of an atom, you know, and that because it's all about probability, it could be in one place or the other. And maybe that's the same way with behavior. When we look at behavior on a molecular scale, we can't predict what happens next, only probability, you know, of like it could be this one behavior or the other, and and you know, what the probability of that is.

SPEAKER_03 25:53

That's interesting. In that sense, the idea of even instructional control is now based on the past, not necessarily the next response. That's I mean, I think that that captures a whole lot of it in terms of again having to create a model with which we then observe, uh, track some, you know, quantify some sort of uh some level, quantify to some level, and then that's how we define it. So it's always reflecting back, not necessarily moving forward. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

I mean, the the ABC is always gonna have some variability in it, right? Maybe you you go to work every day, but so antecedent, whatever, nine o'clock in the morning. And if you want to get into the thought, you know, the radical piece, you think, okay, I'm gonna go to work, then you go to work, consequence, you get paid, but there's some variability. Maybe you're sick, maybe something happened, so it's not gonna be able to be predicted with a hundred percent. Nothing's really gonna be able to be predicted with a hundred percent. So I guess that's kind of what you're getting out with the free will put piece.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Yeah, like if like over overall, we're pretty close to a hundred percent. Like if we're predicting things on a molar scale, like we're looking at behavior over longer periods of time and you know, stuff like that. Like so a bit like larger patterns behavior, but just when we look at it closer, like I, you know, it's even even with animals, even with in the lab, like even if you have the most controlled conditions that you still weren't gonna be able to predict with that what that little chick or that bird is gonna do next. So I don't know, it's an interesting place to be in behavior analysis, but I I think that is kind of like makes so much sense because that's what you see in quantum physics too. It's like really it's kind of the same thing that they can predict, you know, generally what atoms are gonna do together, but if they're gonna look at like what a single atom is gonna do, it's like really hard. You know, they're they're not able to do it and they can only predict it in probability. But there's some concepts I think ethically to consider here, like because we talk about like agency and autonomy and person and you know being person-centered and stuff like that, and our therapies and stuff like that. So, like that I feel like that ties into it. Like, agency is that they can make decisions and act independently, right? And then autonomy is empowering them to make their own choices, where you know, we teach them we teach them to do this. So it that is determined by the environment if we're teaching them autonomy, but you know, so these things can be you know determined by the environment, but they lose to free will, and then even like it being sort person-centered and like their self-determination. But but you guys kind of when you think about it, you guys really promote autonomy and but and people like with autism and intellectual disabilities. Do you look at it that you're making them more free? Because that's kind of the way I look at it.

SPEAKER_03 28:33

It's man, that's a huge question, and I'm glad you asked it. Because it's a constant it's a constant evaluation for me. It's it's moment to moment. It's because ultimately it's it's me and and and the parents, right, kind of deciding what's best for these for these uh individuals. And and there's a there's a certain restriction that that's gonna hit inevitably based on that individual's uh you know overall motivation to engage in a certain task. So I'll give you a really simple example of the idea that that it might be really functionally relevant for a 13-year-old to learn to fold his t-shirts. And then you have to ask yourself the question does the family fold their clothes to begin with? You know, so there's like an application piece to it where okay, yeah, this makes a lot of sense and and it it it's it's correct, and this assessment tells me that this is a particular skill or we can get into developmental milestones, and then it always comes down to I've been talking about optics a lot. I it always comes down to what uh can I get this individual, this child, for example, to do that then provides them more access to more access and then more access to reinforcement you know from their environment. And uh we've been doing a lot of work in schools, and and a lot of that isn't necessarily that I you know come up with some that I'm able to motivate some drastic change or that my staff is, but a lot of times it's what we change in terms of now a new perspective from their environment, say they're teachers. You know, so the idea that Johnny does this, this, and this, and now Johnny doesn't do this as much as I thought he was, and now I'm giving Johnny a whole new level of access. And so it's you know, it's interesting to back to your question. I I I hope that that's what we achieve, that we are uh providing you know individuals with more options and more freedom. And then I would counter that. I would I my margin of error there would be that it's a constant evaluation of am I doing this, how much of this is for them, and then how much of this translates into what I think and what their parents think is best for them, and how does all that, how does it all play out? You know, and I hope that made some sort of sense.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

It seems like yeah, it does. Yeah, it feels like with with a question like that, what we're trying to do is just reinforce parents for being consistent with the A's or but maybe the C's, the consequences, and then with that, we're promoting autonomy to say if you do behavior A, you get consequence A. If you do behavior B, you get consequence B. So we're not telling you what behavior you need to do. We're setting up environments that are going to be consistent enough so they're predictable, and you have the autonomy to choose whatever behavior you want or whatever consequence you want through the behaviors that have been associated with that.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Yeah, I'm lucky. I have my colleagues at Temple, Matt Tinkani and and Art Dowdy wrote an article with Matt Broadhead in 2024 about how ABA promotes autonomy in people with disabilities. And you know, I was reading that and I was thinking how like people in ABA have fought for the right for an appropriate education for these clients. And we're constantly, like you said, evaluating, you know, our programs and our education. I mean, unlike teachers, teachers they evaluate the students. We're evaluating ourselves and our and our ability to teach them. We take that technology of teaching approach, that there's no such thing as a bad student, just you know, just as a bad teacher, and we do preference assessments and we do reinforcement assessments, and we believe coercion has its fallouts and we avoid it and stuff like that. And and I, you know, all these things that like that we do in autism, and like I feel like that's that's like what we're doing. We are helping them be more free. I I get it that sometimes that fight for freedom is not without bloodshed, you know. When you look at the American Revolution, what what do we have to go through to have freedom? So I understand that, like, yeah, there's probably some pushback on it, but it doesn't mean that it's not worth a fight worth fighting.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

For sure. It's um I agree. Yeah, yeah. I also think about too, like when we think about autonomy or or the masking, which is a common thing that kind of goes with that, because I feel like the masking ideas were challenging somebody's autonomy. It comes with, and and again, these are questions that they've been first posed to us right now, so I haven't had like a lot of time to prepare answers. Like it. But my thought, yeah, I love it. It's hopefully I don't, you know, put my foot in my mouth. Is that that autonomy piece is so in the example, right? So we tell parents or we support parents on setting up consistent antecedents and more so consequences for certain behaviors. Is that is that now affecting somebody's autonomy? So now we're parents are saying parents are setting up situations where certain consequences are contingent on certain behaviors that the parents want, and therefore to access those consequences, they have to engage in those behaviors to get access to the consequence. Are we now changing somebody's autonomy to be able to do what they want because that's not gonna get the consequence in the environment currently? Did that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 33:56

Well, I guess you're changing well, I feel like they're already under the control of the environment, so you're not changing their autonomy, you're just shifting the control of the environment so they have other you know behaviors they can engage in.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

But then if historically, at least sometimes in practice, I feel like ABA has been very rigid with the behaviors that they can engage in to say you can only do X behavior to get reinforcement where maybe there are a lot of generalized behaviors that the environment presumably would accept, but maybe in the the practice at that time it's been so rigid that we're only accepting X behavior when maybe we could accept XYZ behavior, which might lead to more autonomy.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

I mean, if you go if you go back to behavior mod, I don't know, it's it depends on the way you look at it. I mean, some some people have looked at it as like, well, what's the most effective and efficient way for me to change this behavior? And if you go back to behavior mod, that's when they use punishment. Do we use punishment too? But that was like really literally just us taking our technology directly out of the you know the experimental setting and you know applying it. So we didn't we didn't have like the same like, oh, maybe we shouldn't be using you know punishment, but but then again, I've seen people make the argument that if a if that's the quickest way to help a client, and then when you think about it, you do want to have a a right to how would I put it have engage in a little pain for long-term reinforcement. By that I mean like think about like a a a vaccine or something like that, right? Like there's no immediate immediate benefit for a vaccine. In fact, it hurts. You get a piece of metal stuck in your arm, and then you get you know, some liquid squirted in into your arm. But there is a long-term benefit for it. And like we should, you know, that should be someone's right to be able to do that. Like I can I can put up with the short-term pain so I could have this long-term benefit.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Yeah, if you're a bicyclist, you probably go to exhaustion, right? It's probably uncomfortable, it's probably painful, but you do that long enough, you build up tolerance, and then you can bike farther. So sure, that makes sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:10

And uh you mentioned agency, and it it it inevitably makes me think of Ben Dura's work and sort of the social cognitive piece to that. So that might I might have to revisit some of that now that that you mentioned that. He had the so there was the uh the three models, I guess, that he broke down. I'm sure are out there. I don't know if he was the originator, but the there's the idea of personal agency and then proxy agency and then collective agency. And I think we sort of alluded to all three levels of that in terms of you know the idea of free will and then how interdependent our notion of free will is on others in our environment in many ways. We have to count on certain people to do certain things, uh, maybe act collectively to do certain things in order for us to actually achieve that free will. So it it's really layered. And I and I go back to your example of lenses, which I think allow us to take, you know, I don't know if this analogy or this this metaphor will work, but the idea that through a microscope you're gonna look at a virus and you can see the virus and you can see the form and you can see what it looks like and you can call it something, and then it still stands to see what that microorganism does in terms of its communication and proliferation from uh organism to organism, right? So it's it's like you can look at something in a lens and understand it in a certain way, and then it still has to go out and and do something for you to see what it's worth or what what what its value is.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Mm-hmm. Yeah, no damn. So I know I talked I know I talked about free, I just dropped like five bucks. Whoops. And I I know I talked about free will. I figure I'd talk about like freedom, how that applies to freedom. Yeah. I was hoping to start with like what Skinner thought about freedom. So he thought it was an illusion. He said we're we're under the control of one thing or another. But but then he talked about how freedom is a feeling that is generated under very specific environmental conditions, and it's a matter of the contingencies of reinforcement. And the the feeling of and arranging these contingencies, if you can arrange these contingencies, you can make people feel more free or less free. But I always I think feelings, like this is my opinion on feelings. Feelings are an unreliable guide. If anything, you might go outside. Say I go from inside to outside, you know. I'm in my basement, I go outside. It's daytime outside. I'm gonna be like, oh, my eyes, you know, it's like so bright out here, you know. But then I start walking around for a minute, right? And it's not so bright, and I'm okay. The sun didn't get any dimmer, it was still the sun. Like it's just the feeling change. Right, and I use this example a lot for my with my clients. We talk about getting in the swimming pool. I say, Have you gone gone swimming before? Yeah, sure. Have you ever gotten a swimming pool that was too cold? And they're like, Yeah, I'm like, Are you the type that jumps in or do you get in a little bit of time? And they tell me which, and I say, and I say, All right, after you're in there and you start swimming swimming around, like what happens? And they're like, Oh, you're not cold anymore. I'm like, Did the water temperature change? And they're like, No. I'm like, okay. So the water temperature is the same, but the feeling changed. So how reliable is that feeling and telling you what is gonna what is going on around you?

SPEAKER_00 39:22

That's interesting because my initial thought would be the feeling is accurate for your perception at that time, and then so like the feeling is accurate for the amount of light that's entering into your eyes, and then as that changes, which I guess the question is, did the environment change? Not necessarily, but kind of did, because your eyes are now changing as a result, or yeah, that's an interesting, interesting thought. I don't know if you wanted to add on that.

SPEAKER_03 39:49

I have to go back into my my brain and behavior piece, and to some extent, I guess a lot of it might hinge on or be related, associated with your level of arousal or excitement at any given point in time. You might use the word uh agitation or elation along with that. What what it what's your state of arousal when these stimuli are are hitting you, when the sun's hitting your face, or uh, you know, whatever other examples we went over, and and I guess how does that then influence your perception of whether it's water temperature or or sunshine in your face, or you know, if you're if you're driving, you got enough glare on your windshield, and that sun through your face is terrible, you gotta bring your sunshade down. But if you're kicking back by the pool and you know you just took a cool dip and now you're warming up in the sun, that's and you're closing your eyes, it's gonna be wonderful, right? So yeah, I would I would go back to again something that we it's it's harder for us to measure. You know, I spent a lot of time doing fmri research, and that again, that's a lens that measures uh you're inside a huge noisy magnet, so the idea that that's any sort of uh typical condition goes right out the window, it's a huge compound. But yeah, the idea is how prepared, what level of preparedness, excitability, arousal are you at as you're receiving these stimuli?

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Yeah, how we define feelings, I think, is is kind of important, right? Are we talking about happy, sad, comfort, discomfort?

SPEAKER_01 41:10

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and and this is it really extremely important with my work with clients because they're you know coming in and telling me about these like really strong feelings and stuff like that. So, you know, it's important for us to put feelings in a rightful place. And one of the things I say to them is like it's you know, I tell them those examples and I tell them about habituation, right? That like we could have a feeling then we can habituate to it. And then I talk about feelings as like, yeah, they they might be telling us something that's going around on around us, right? Which is, you know, we're talking, we are talking about stimulus response relations, so it kind of makes sense. Yeah, they're giving us some information about what's going on around us, but they need to be in the rightful place that like that we can't trust me, and it doesn't tell us intensity, it's not gonna reveal intensity because of habituation.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

I think I can side to that. I I think I can agree with that. Yeah, their feelings are very fluid. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

They could they come and go, same with thoughts, thoughts come and go and they change in a minute. Same with feelings, feelings can change too, you know. And I I guess the most important thing is like you wouldn't want to ignore it. You want to want to completely ignore it because to ignore that is to be like putting your hands over your eyes or putting your hands over your ears and not listening, you know. So it is like something from the environment that is like, you know, and you're getting information from it. But at the same time, you can't trust it or let it, you know, guide your actions. There's some there's times every single day where where we'll go with a feeling or go without the feeling. You guys might have been in your nice comfy beds this morning, I think, or at least you can imagine sometime that you were, and you probably had the feeling that I don't want to get out of bed. But you did it anyway. And because you had all these important things to do. Mike probably has the kid running around asking for breakfast, you know, or something like that from him. Dan probably has, you know, the the female next to him who says, I gotta get out, you know, and leave, you know, I have to go home. I should have, I didn't know I was gonna stay over last night, you know. And and you get and you guys, you guys get up despite being comfortable, you go against the feeling. So it's a skill that we all have, but it's also a skill that like I guess the easier thing to do would be to go, you know, go with it. Like, oh, this feeling is so I'll just go with that, because that's the information you're receiving at the time. But I I teach people to instead of listening to that feeling, to sometimes go with it, sometimes go against it. Depends on what they want, what's important for them, you know, with their values and stuff like that, and what they're trying to achieve.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

It it's just a quick aside, it's uh you know kind of uh speaking to our satisfaction currently professionally, but to that feeling, right? I I I love sleep and I love when I get a nice deep sleep, and even when I get a good amount of hours and I feel rested, I still have that feeling, right? I wake up and it's like, well, I could lie here a little longer and it's all good, and you know, my wife. She's got my daughter and she's doing okay. And and then inevitably these days there's that task, that next thing. Oh, I've got to call so-and-so, I've got to check in with so-and-so, I've got to finish this report, I've got to check in with Dan about this. And you know what what distinguishes this now is I guess we're I've got my own agency, pun intended. But the idea that set up thank you. The idea that now I won't want to do these things, so those things propel me to get out of bed. As much as lying down and kicking back and getting more sleep is is is wonderful, those are motivating pieces. Where in the past, you know, for whatever reasons, those tasks were always like, oh man, I'm gonna have to interface with so-and-so. I'm gonna have to persuade so-and-so about doing it this way and not just kind of going with the standard operating procedure and you know running the same old thing that has been annoying me or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Did you see my uh team's message?

SPEAKER_03 44:52

I did not.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

Oh, I I was doing billing and I was like, oh, dude, Mike's notes are all like I was so surprised Mike's notes all caught up with his notes.

SPEAKER_03 45:01

Yeah, yeah. There you go. There you go. I am I am uh I am infamous for like again from a procedural perspective, just hating the idea of like medical notes or because it's it's it's all it always seems so far apart from my my value system and saying, you're doing this in order to ding me on something to then come back and recoup some money at some point, and I'm doing it for this purpose. And there was always such a you know, there was a big difference between those two motives. And now I just feel like hey, I'm gonna do these notes the way I want to do them, knowing that just by sheer length and volume, they're probably gonna satisfy these folks. So yeah, we're good, we're good, you know, and I feel good about that. So again, I you know I'm feeling a lot of free will.

SPEAKER_01 45:44

I'm enjoying it. And then I guess certain conditions were arranged, you know. But like Skinner also thought that that uh he saw freedom as like that escape from aversive control, which is kind of what you're talking about. Here's this uh aversive control over your notes and you know the escape from that and not being freedom. He also saw like free yeah, he saw like he also saw freedom as no contingencies of aversive control, as in like including like when immediate reinforcers, you know, that are long-term aversives, like drugs and alcohol and stuff like that, you know, they can control behavior too. Uh when you think about it, and I guess you go back to like what Clockwork Orange or whatever, you know, some of those some of those old stories.

SPEAKER_03 46:29

I love that movie. We could we could do a whole episode on the the uh the concepts and premises in that idea. I mean at the end there, we're talking about free will. At the end there, they put him through the I mean they put him through the ringer and trying to modify his behavior. And uh, at least ultimately for me at the end there, they they they didn't really break that spirit, right? The idea that he still had that deviancy in him and and it was it was still underlying, despite now being in full compliance in society in in many ways. I forget what happens at the end, but it's sort of they leave you with that spark of like, oh, wait a minute, that that guy, that that same Alex is still in there, that character's still in there. So they tried to break his I guess his deviancy would be the best way to put it, but I think at the end there, that the the the moral is you you can't really, you know, that that that still was I I think of it like in even in terms of aggressive behavior or hitting, you know, where a lot of times parents will tell me, Yeah, we just want that to go away. And it's like, well, yes and no, you don't want it to go away fully. There's an adaptive uh element to being able to somebody, and at some point you're gonna want your kid to be able to do that, although you don't want them doing it, you know, 50 times a day to their sister's face, for example.

SPEAKER_01 47:36

Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, Skinner used to think that like people wanted to be controlled in a very specific way, but I kind of disagree with that because I think I think if he also said like count he came up with this term counter control and it and he saw it as like proof that people would seek to control if it's reinforcing. And you know, that's kind of like the way I I see it, like people would for the most part, people would rather control than be controlled. But there are situations in which, like, hey, if it's not rewarding to control things, like you know, if it's like a lot of effort, if someone just I don't know, you know, you could think of a place where where you just want someone else to do it, you know, where it just makes it easier for you if someone else does it.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

My girlfriend and I are very different in that. So like I am like I will pay people. I a lot of times I just and she wants to do it her herself. So yeah, I feel you on that.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Oh, really interesting. Interesting. But Skinner differed from some of the other people in when he was talking about freedom. Baum had some words on it. He talked about free freedom from restraint, like you know, being freed, you know, if you're a servant or a slave. And then he also talked about free will as behavior unconstrained by past or future events. And some of the things he he mentioned was like really kind of interesting. That like we talked about we were talking about free will, and he says free will requires unpredictability, but unpredictability does not imply free will because you know we have had studies where we've taught pigeons, you know, Paige and Nuringer did pigeons in 1985, then Nurringer did humans in 1986, we were teaching people to act more randomly. So I just want to make sure, like, you know, we that's not the same thing. Acting more randomly is not like free will, it's not agency, it doesn't like suggest any freedom, it's just acting more randomly, you know. I don't know where it leaves us there.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

So is it possible then from free it's funny, we're talking about free will, I can't help but think of free willy, but we talk about free will. So is it possible that there isn't free will, but things could appear to be free will. We just didn't notice the deviation in the antecedent or that person's perception of the antecedent or perception of a potential consequence that led to a different behavior. We're trying to make sense of things that don't make sense.

SPEAKER_01 50:04

Yeah, there's a well, there's a the literature on you know free will too, which Skinner was big on that, like and I'm kind of big on that too, to be honest with you, because you know, if I was going to take a like perspective on it, then I would usually include like relational frame theory and you know, and and how that would frame free will. Because I could ask you guys, and I've done this with my class before, like, could you guys behave more freely right now? Right? And I've I've had I've had students like we're like, yeah, sure, doc. And they kick their feet up and they put their hands behind their head and they're like, Yeah, I'm gonna act more freely, you know, or like if you're gonna act in a way that has more free will. And they have an idea what that looks like. They have an idea like where they're at right now and what it would be if they were to be more free or act more free, right? And you know, for me, if they have an idea of what that is, then that that's certainly some like rule government behavior that they they can behave in a certain way. So I guess it kind of like makes it, you know, makes it a thing. You know what I mean? And and Skinner thought that too, like that there's a liter that one important thing is the the literature of freedom, like that we have, and we should be paying attention to that because it gives us an idea of like what will be free. And even even on like our our country has this value of freedom, like you know, it's in our national anthem, and you know, we talk about freedom, it's in it's in our important documents, and like and I just want to let you know, before I continue, I just feel so lucky talking to you guys about this, living in the city of Philadelphia, being able to talk to you on the 250th, you know, the year, the the you know, 250th anniversary of our country, you know, I could go downtown and that's where they did the declaration of independence, and that's where they took took the stand of like really where freedom and our our country really started. So I kind of like see freedom that that's like a value, like a value of our country. Like if we were gonna look at our country as an organization, as what our nation is really built on, and something that and it's a value because values aren't goals, goals are things you achieve, and then you're done. You know, you can check it off your list. But it's something that we continually strive for and we never reach. It's not just a feeling, it could be many feelings. It could be it could include pain and suffering.

SPEAKER_03 52:18

Ouch. We gotta stop there as this concludes part two of our interview with Dr. Scott O'Donnell. Please do ensure you return for part three and always analyze responsibility. ABA on staff is recorded live and unfiltered. We're done for today. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. See you next time.