Month: May 2018

Beer and Behavior Analysis

/ Chris Sawyer, M.Ed.,BCBA / 2 Comments

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There’s been a shift in culture towards beer recently. Twenty years ago, if you saw the title “Beer and Behavior” you would absolutely expect a scathing speech of the abuses of the drink. This is not going to be that. I assume everyone reading this to be responsible. I’m interested in modern context. The beer industry has grown, become more varied, and those varieties have become more available. Craft brewing has taken off to previously unforeseen heights and different styles and personal recipes of beer are becoming available to the public like never before. It’s amazing. People are demanding more beer, and craft brewers are making it.

Now when there’s socially significant behavior out there, it can be studied. When people engage with their environment, their society, over something they want and will pay for it’s worth knowing how that works. I wanted to see how we could apply some of the concepts we use in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to get an idea of it. Behaviors as the consumers, and behaviors as the provider. That’s where Midnight Oil Brewing Company came in to provide the setting for studying and some insights on what the process is like on both sides of the bar. That night, in particular, they had nine of their craft beers on tap and full-house of people engaging in operant behaviors to gain access to them.

Now let’s talk behavior.

Beer can be a Reinforcer. Think of a reinforcer as a type of stimulus that resembles a reward. What makes a reinforcer special is that it maintains or increases the likelihood of the behavior that precedes it. Think of it like this-

A person walks up to the bar and asks for a beer, maybe a Serenity session ale, the bartender pours that beer and hands it to them.

Assuming that the beer is what they like, and they find it reinforcing, the consumer would be likely to return to that same bar and order again. That’s reinforcement. To break it down further- The consumer’s behavior (requesting) operates on the environment for access to that beer. Access to the beer is socially mediated by talking to the bartender and the eventual exchange of money, but if they get access to the beer and like it, the reinforcement acts on that requesting behavior’s presentation in the future. The requesting behavior happens again or might even happen more often. There was a big if in there though. The beer had to be enjoyable, or reinforcing, to the individual for it to work. People have different tastes, and as you may be aware, not all people like all types of beer.

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Beer Flights can be a Preference Assessment for Reinforcers. A preference assessment is a tool used to figure out which stimuli are reinforcing at a given time. This is done by a presentation of a varied set of stimuli to an individual, which they have access to and engage with, and eventually, you get a hierarchy from that. By looking at what gets chosen more, you can tell which stimulus a person likes best at that given moment. Preferred stimuli make for great reinforcers for behavior. Now at a taproom or bar, we can use these preference assessments to determine our own hierarchies of the types of beer we enjoy. This can help us weed out the types we do not like, which help us not select them in the future, from the types we do like.

A person has a flight of 9 beers in front of them. They try all nine, but only like and continue to drink the Stouts, Porters, and Saisons.

On the other side of the bar, a bartender can observe a person with a flight of beers, and use the information from watching what beers were selected and consumed at higher amounts, to make better suggestions for that person’s next choice to order. A little rapport building goes a long way. (I know that I tend to order more of the suggestions of a bartender that understands my preferences. Personal opinion-data point of one.). On the business side of things, having consumers choose a selection of beers they enjoy repeatedly can have long-term reinforcing tendencies on their return and future consumption. Imagine an example of a person mistakenly trying a few beers in a row of a style they dislike. This could punish beer seeking and buying behavior- the opposite of reinforcement. Knowing where to guide a consumer is useful information. The trend of behavior can go in both directions, and a preference assessment could be key in making the experience enjoyable for everyone.

Taprooms can employ J.R Kantor’s Setting Events to create an environment to facilitate engagement from consumers not only as paying customers but prosocially with one another. Some people call this ambiance. Some people call this the “feel” of a place. In early behavior analytic research, behaviorists like J.R Kantor were interested in antecedent stimuli, “things” in the environment that could either prime behavior, or discriminate (select) specific behaviors to occur. These are stimuli, variables in the environment, that may influence certain behaviors to occur over others.

Larger spaces with a higher number of tables could lead to a higher retention of served consumers, more bartenders responding to requests could lead to higher rates of (responsible) beer requests, larger tables could lead to groups forming, televisions playing a specific program could retain specific like-interested individuals, and play-oriented items like boardgames could provide alternative sources of reinforcement and retain consumers on the premises for longer.

The potential is endless, and many of these examples would have to be fine-tuned and tested for practicality, but these are all things that could be set in place before someone even steps foot in the door. Antecedents are powerful things. But Setting Events aren’t the only concepts out there that explore them- there are also Motivating Operations. We’ve talked about Reinforcers, and even Punishers. These are stimuli that have an effect on future behavior, but there was a great researcher named Jack Michael that noticed that there are factors that can momentarily affect the value of those stimuli, and the behaviors seeking them.

Thirst and Hunger can be Unconditioned Motivating Operations. When you see the word Motivating Operation, take the common well-known word of “Motivation” to guide your understanding of it. Unconditioned just means that it is something innate, or not learned. Unconditioned Motivating Operations (UMOs) are often based on natural biological drives, and in taprooms and bars, the most common ones we see are based on deprivation and satiation. Thirst is a great example of a UMO.

If a person is thirsty, a beer is more likely to be a strong reinforcer, and their behavior to seek it out is more likely. The same with hunger, as a UMO for food-seeking behavior, and food as a reinforcer.

The same, however, can go for satiation. If someone is full, that satiation acts as a UMO and abolishes the seeking behaviors and reinforcement value of food or drink.

Beer can involve Conditioned Motivating Operations too. Conditioned Motivating Operations (CMOs) are just like Unconditioned Motivating Operations; they momentarily alter the value of a reinforcer- like beer. The only difference is that these are conditioned, or learned. The research on these has been back and forth. Some say their effects are noteworthy, and others say these theories don’t hold much water. I think they can make a great way of conceptualizing how preferences, or reinforcement values, can be affected by a person’s learned history. To that end, I’m going to try and make a taproom, or beer example, for each type of CMO.

Surrogate Conditioned Motivating Operation (CMO-S)- A surrogate CMO is something that alters the value of a reinforcer because it has been paired with an Unconditioned Motivating Operation, and takes on its effects. Here’s a craft beer example:

Unconditioned Motivating Operation- Deprivation. The value of beer is going to be higher.

Surrogate Conditioned Motivating Operation- “Last Call”. The value of beer is going to be higher due to a paired deprivation scenario (UMO) in the past.

In these conditions, we can speculate that it would have a behavior-altering effect in the same way deprivation does, and a value-altering effect on the beer as a reinforcer for requesting right before time runs out. A deprivation (UMO) has been paired with the “Last Call” stimulus enough that it takes on some of that effect.

Reflexive Conditioned Motivating Operation (CMO-R)- A reflexive CMO alters the value of its own removal. Behaviorally, this is called “discriminated avoidance”. Learned avoidance to a specific thing. Basically- a person is presented with something, they’ve experienced it in the past as something aversive or bad, and they want to get away from it. Just the presentation is enough to cue behaviors to avoid it. Here is a personal Beer CMO-R I’ve experienced.

Conditioned Stimulus- A saison in the middle of a beer flight, which ruins the flavors of otherwise amazing beers tasted afterward.

Reflexive Conditioned Motivation Operation- Seeing the word Saison on a beer flight list. All behaviors that can get the bartender to NOT include it are altered (more likely).

Saisons (NS) are okay types of beers on their own, but again, personal data point of one, ruin the palate for the tastes that follow it when they are in a beer flight (CMO-R). The presentation of a saison in a beer flight is enough for someone (me) to engage in behavior for its removal.

Transitive Conditioned Motivating Operation (CMO-T)- A transitive CMO is something a little broader, and looser, conceptually. It involves an alteration of the value of another stimulus. Generally, through improvement. Like the other CMOs, this is also based on a persons learned history. Some traditional examples like to go for the blocking of a behavior chain, leading to another stimulus to solve it becoming more valuable. I much prefer the “My Friend Has That Beer And Now I Want It Too” transitive conditioned motivating operation conceptualization. For this to work, it requires a learned history of a friend that often selects delicious beer. This delicious beer paired history also has a discriminative quality of “being better” than the persons first choice before. Their friend just picks the better beer every time. It’s not fair. Let’s play it out like this.

Person’s Requesting Behavior: “I’d like an Insomnia Stout”.

Friend’s Order Afterwards: “I’d like you to layer this Doc Brown Ale with the Dark Matter Stout on top.”

Transitive Conditioned Motivating Operation- This value altering condition (Friend’s Order) may not have physically blocked the first response (Person’s First Request), but it is a stimulus presentation with a value altering effect strong enough create the need for a stimulus change.

Person’s Second Requesting Behavior: “NO WAIT! Cancel that first one. I also want that Doc Brown Ale with the Dark Matter Stout on top.”

What do you think? Has that happened to you before? Could it be explained by the transitive conditioned motivating operation? I think it just might.

So we’ve gone through some Behavior Analysis, and we’ve gone through some Beer. Do you have any other examples of common human behavior that could be explained by these terms, or others, behavior analytically?

Questions? Comments? Arguments? Leave them below!

References:

COOPER, JOHN O.. HERON, TIMOTHY E.. HEWARD, WILLIAM L. (2018). APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS. S.l.: PEARSON.
Wahler, R. G., & Fox, J. J. (1981). Setting events in applied behavior analysis: Toward a conceptual and methodological expansion. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,14(3), 327-338. doi:10.1901/jaba.1981.14-327
Big Thanks:
to Midnight Oil Brewing Company

Getting a Behavior Analyst House-Call

/ Chris Sawyer, M.Ed.,BCBA / Leave a comment

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Behavior Analysis is different from other psychological therapies. First, it is considered a natural science, meaning that its interventions rely in manipulation of real world variables that can be observed. This removes some of the stereotypical therapeutic long talks on a couch for viable behavior analytic therapy, but don’t sell behavior analysis short just yet.

The best evidence based practices in applied behavior analysis can be found in the natural environment, both studying participants behavior across those environments. It looks at the patterns of either prosocial behavior that can be therapeutically reinforced , and identification and reduction of maladaptive behaviors which get in the way of a fulfilling life.

One of the founding psychologists of behavior analysis, B.F Skinner, wrote in “Science and Human Behavior” (1951) about both the experimental setting for behavior analysis, and the paramount importance of seeing behavior in the environment in which it behaves. Doing tests in a lab may be helpful to get behavior analysts some solid and clinically controlled data sets, but it could never tell them if those skills or patterns would generalize a certain way in the world outside. There’s an importance to that. One of the founding dimensions of behavioral analytic science demands that the products have Generality meaning that the effects of therapy occur across environments and time. The benefits of therapy must outlast the clinical visits. This is helpful to the clients and consumers of behavior analytic therapy (ABA) for obvious reasons; you want the therapy to work in the places you need it most.

ABA practitioners use two broad tools to shape the direction of therapy a Behavior Plan to identify maintaining factors for maladaptive behaviors, and a Skill Acquisition Plan to build up the better patterns, skills, and coping behaviors to replace them. It is all about identifying the problems fast, and implementing actionable change. To that end, they need all the information they can get. Location matters.

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When it comes to the location of services, both for client/consumers, or perhaps the children of client/consumers, age becomes a factor in where this therapy takes place. In many cases this could happen in a school setting, or clinical center setting. This is a practical and commonplace service location for clients of therapy of younger ages. The school setting does have naturalistic opportunities that the clinical setting does not, and having the opportunity to receive therapy in both has its benefits. Clinical settings can focus on the skills that can be practiced with controllable conditions and stimuli that do not have the scheduling drawbacks of an academic setting. School settings have the benefit of natural peer environments, and natural contingencies for task demands if behaviors are dependent on those factors. What is often overlooked, however, is the home setting. I practiced as a School Counselor, and although certain types of therapy worked in the school setting and helped the students, once they walked out the door, the practitioner had no idea. It was all self-report from homes, and those can be misleading.

The benefits of having a house call from a behavior analyst (BCBA), and getting ABA therapy at a residence, is that the practitioner can see the conditions outside of the clinical and academic sphere that may be relevant to either stifling patterns of prosocial behavior, or feeding into the maladaptive behaviors. Sometimes the home environment is rich in information and reinforcement history that an analyst can work with. Routines, schedules, and practice can all be built into a home visit to work on the things that need the most work. Sometimes the privacy and comfort of the home also helps with going through dry runs of new skills without the social pressure of the outside world. When a Behavior Analyst comes in through the front door they are interested in getting to the bottom of the problem behaviors, teach socially relevant alternatives, and most of all, to help. I’ve seen first hand how just a change to familiar scenery can open up dialogue and planning for therapy directions that might be uncomfortable, or even embarrassing elsewhere, so never underestimate the power of an environment change on behavior.

Some Practitioners might not be able to deliver consistent services in the home, but even one occasional house call, one single visit, could open the lens on new conceptualizations on the therapeutic framework. I’ve experienced this countless times. As a practitioner, you think you know what’s going on, and then you’re in the client’s place of residence and a big piece of the puzzle falls into place. This is advice to any behavior analytic practitioner; if you have the opportunity to make that house call, don’t wait. It could change your entire idea of what is going on and save hours on dead end functional analysis hypotheses. House calls can also get the broader family involved with services that they might have otherwise been unfamiliar with. This opens up dialogue, and questions, which could lead to greater support both inside and outside of the home. There is a well known tenant in behavior analysis called dissemination. That means, this natural science works best when people know about it and understand it. Spreading the word, and being correct in the delivery of what ABA therapy is, is important. There is no short supply of misinformation out there. A home visit with the family, willing to participate, can break down the barriers of hesitancy, and show just how effective and useful this therapy can be.

So potential clients and consumers? If you can swing it, call for a home visit.

Behavior Analysts and ABA practitioners? Don’t be afraid of house-calls. You’ll be kicking yourself for not doing it sooner.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Leave them below.

Interest in ABA therapy for resources in getting services, or practicing? Feel free to email the address below.

References:

Cooper, John O, Heron Timothy E.. Heward, William L.. (2018). APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS. S.l.: PEARSON.

Skinner, B. F., & Skinner, B. F. (1951). Science And Human Behavior. Riverside: Free Press

Photo Credits: http://www.Pexels.com

“They’re Just Tired”- The Worst Scapegoat Explanation for Behavior

/ Chris Sawyer, M.Ed.,BCBA / Leave a comment

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Why are they acting that way? “They’re just tired.”.  It’s one of those cliches that never goes away. It’s just so easy to use. You can use it for any situation at all to explain away patterns of maladaptive or cranky behavior. Screaming? Tired. Throwing things? Tired. Hitting their siblings? Tired. It’s the explanation that’s got it all-… Except that it’s not exactly true all the time. Exhaustion does exist, sleeping poorly does affect behavior, but there’s a risk in assuming a cause without looking at the exact conditions surrounding the behavior. It’s more work to do so, but it’s worth it.

In Behavior Analysis, we call that kind of thing an “explanatory fiction”. It’s not directly untruthful, but it avoids reality through ease and circular reasoning. Why do they do that thing we don’t like? Oh! They’re tired. It’s not hard to see the practical ease in that either. Everyone in their life has been cranky or acted miserably when they’ve been stretched too thin. The problem comes from the assumption. That assumption takes away all the curiosity and the need to dig for a more sophisticated answer, and it also leads us to a bias of expectation. We’ll ask around post hoc to confirm the broad theory.  Did they sleep well last night? Oh! Well, there was that one time when ____. Anything we get that conforms to our “theory of tiredness” will close the book. Open and shut case. We miss the real reason. We miss the real point. There’s risk in that. We miss out on catching the patterns that become habits that hurt further down the line. We blind ourselves to teachable moments.

The way to avoid all of these pitfalls and to explore the real reason behind these target behaviors is to begin the search right when we spot it. It would be even better if we could give context to what happened before the behaviors occur. A great psychologist named B.F Skinner called this the Three-Term Contingency, and it is a great way to actually get an idea on the triggers, causes, and/or maintaining factors for behaviors that ought not to happen. These are broken down into three things to study: the Antecedent which occurs before the behavior (“What exactly set this off?”), the Behavior which is the exact thing we are looking at, and the Consequence which happens after the behavior occurs (“What did this behavior get or what did it let them escape?”). Now it’s not just enough to ask the questions. We should probably document it too. Write it down. Take notes. Get numbers. How many times are you seeing this specific behavior? We call that Frequency. How long does that behavior last? We call that Duration. We can use this information to inform our conceptualization on what the behavior’s function is. By finding the function, it can lead to us adapting not only the environment to aid in decreasing the behavior but also aid in helping the learner find a better way to engage for what it is they are after. Even if it is a nap.

Let’s talk Functions of behavior. In Behavior Analysis, there are 4 common categories that make it a simple framework to work with: Attention, Access (to something/someone), Escape (to get away from or avoid), or Automatic Reinforcement (which is internal/invisible and mediated by the self). A pattern of behavior that occurs again and again, regardless of how they slept the night before, might lead us in the direction of one of these. Or more than one. A behavior can also be “multiply maintained”. We can either see this as a complication or as a better truth than a simple off-hand answer. Assuming that fatigue and tiredness are the leading factors only gives us the solution of a nap. That may delay the behavior’s reoccurrence, but if you see, again and again, it’s time to take the step and look deeper. The nap is not the answer, only a temporary respite from the behavior. The contingency and history of reinforcement haven’t gone anywhere. Bottom line: It’s more complicated than that, and probably isn’t going away that easily.

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Trade the Nap for some Differential Reinforcement

Now it’s time to get serious. If we’ve gotten this far, and tracked behavior observably as possible, and ruled out our original assumption of an internal factor like “tiredness”, then we need an answer we can use in the world of the awake. Thankfully, behavior is like dinosaurs, it can undergo extinction (that means go away), or it can get stronger if you feed it (reinforce it). The “bad behaviors”, the maladaptive ones that are not a help to the learner or their situation, can be extinguished by simply avoiding the thing that reinforces it. What is it after? Don’t let it get that. What is it avoiding? Don’t let it avoid that either.

Hard work, right?

But that’s not the end of it. You can’t just take away a behavior and leave a void. You need to replace it. So, when it comes to a maladaptive behavior that aims to get something, and it’s adapted to get that thing, you find a better behavior to replace it. The “bad behavior”? Doesn’t get it. The “good behavior”? That gets it. That’s differential reinforcement; reinforcing the good useful stuff and not reinforcing the other stuff that isn’t helpful or good. Here’s a handful of techniques that follow that principle:

The ol’ DRO (Differential Reinforcement of Other Behaviors): This technique is where you reinforce the “other” behaviors. Everything except the thing you want to go away. If you’re targeting a tantrum, you reinforce every other behavior that is not tantrum related. Some people even fold in some timed intervals (preplanned periods of time) and reward gaps of “other” behaviors so long as the target behavior does not occur. Can they go 5 minutes without a tantrum? Great. How about 10? Progress.

“Not that, this instead!” DRI (Differential Reinforcement of Incompatible Behaviors):  This isn’t a large net like the DRO procedure. This one is where a set of behaviors are picked because they make the target “bad behavior” impossible. Let’s say our learner plays the bagpipes too loudly and is losing friends fast. What’s a good DRI for that? Anything that makes playing the bagpipes impossible. Try the flute. Or jump rope. Or fly a kite. Hold a microphone and sing. It’s all the same just so long as it’s physically impossible to do both the replacement and the original target (bagpipes, etc) that we aim to decrease.

“The right choice” DRA (Differential Reinforcement of Alternative Behavior): This is the laser targeted, surgical precision, version of the DRI. It follows a similar principle: Get a behavior reinforced that is NOT the maladaptive one. Except for DRA, this behavior is a single target, and it’s most often one that is more effective and socially appropriate. DRI doesn’t care if the new behavior and old target behavior share a function or purpose. DRA would, in most cases. You aim an alternative better behavior to take the place of the old maladaptive one.

 

The research on all three are varied, but they are tried and true ways to get one behavior to go away while getting other better ones in their place. Some are easier to use in some situations than others. I invite you to explore the research. It’s fascinating stuff. It’s also a lot more effective long-term than assuming the explanatory fiction and hoping it goes away. Why not take action? Why not take control of real factors that could be used for real good and change?

But not right now. You should take a nap. You look tired.

 

 

Just kidding.

 

References:

Cooper, John O. Heron, Timothy E. Heward, William L. (2007) Applied Behavior Analysis. Upper Saddle River, N.J. Pearson/Merrill-Prentice Hall.

Image Credits:

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