← ABA Inside Track
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- [00:00]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Foreign.
- [00:14]
Robert Perry Crews
Hey, everybody. Welcome to ABA Inside Track, the podcast that's like reading in your car but safer. I'm your host, Robert Perry Crews, and before we get to the meat of the show, I just want to let all of our listeners know that this is our quarterly book club podcast. If you are a patron. Thank you. Thank you so much. We are doing this in the winter of 2025. Actually, it should just. I just caught it because it should just be 2025, and if you're listening to this in, like, 2026. Well, thank you so much for listening to the show and subscribing. But, you know, that's all right. You could have listened to this a year ago. Patreon.com Aba InsideTrack and you get 2 CES for listening. Anyway, we're gonna do this book club a little bit differently because before we were able to start recording, we had the chance, or at least I had the ch to the author of our book. So we're going to be talking at length about Susan Schneider's the Science of Consequences. Usually we start with our thoughts and then we get into the book, but we're actually going to start with a inter. An interview with Dr. Schneider talking about the book and her current work. So we're going to do that, and then we'll come back in and have our discussion with our book club group, who I'll introduce then. So sit back, relax, and enjoy our deluxified book club on the Science of Consequences. All right, so I am here very, very excited to be talking with Dr. Susan Schneider about her book the Science of Consequences, which we did our whole book club episode about. We had a nice long discussion about it, but it's nice that we thought. Whatever we thought. But why don't we check in with Susan about the book as the person who created it, or at the very least summed up her. Her research, other people's research into a nice, coherent whole. And speaking of that, Susan, would you mind just kind of introducing yourself to the audience and saying a little bit more about you than I think my bio I did probably won't have done it justice.
- [02:13]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Okay. And I haven't seen the bio, at least I don't remember. But. Right. How far back do you want me to go?
- [02:22]
Robert Perry Crews
Oh, as much as you feel like sharing leading up to the book, you know, this is your time. So you, You. You go into whatever detail you think is. Is. Is helpful.
- [02:31]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Okay. And I'd love to hear more about the discussion that the book club had, too.
- [02:35]
Robert Perry Crews
Jovi.
- [02:35]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, if you can bring any of that up. That would be great.
- [02:39]
Robert Perry Crews
I will, I will.
- [02:40]
Dr. Susan Schneider
I started out in engineering in the 1970s and 80s, but ran into some obstacles because of my gender. So it was good for a while. But, yeah, again, there were enough issues that after a bit I switched over, I should say. I joined the Peace Corps and did that for a while. Yeah, so that was exciting. And then after that, I switched to behavior analysis. I had read B.F. skinner's book Beyond Freedom and Dignity in high school for a psychology class for which we got college credit in our senior year and been very impressed by it. So that was always kind of in the background for me as a possibility. So I got my PhD at University of Kansas working with Ed Morris, and then had an academic career for a while, switched around and then was chatting with people about why there wasn't a book like the Science of Consequences out there that would try and integrate behavior analysis with related fields, including the important role it plays in nature, nurture relations, which I knew something about because I studied that in graduate school, Developmental psychobiology. And I worked for five years as a developmental psychobiologist at Florida International University. So I had that background. I did mathematical modeling of behavior for my dissertation and some of the research after that and various academic institutions and I taught a wide range of classes, including cognitive and social and love teaching Intro, which of course covers everything. And so I thought, you know, here's Learning Principles Operant and Pavlovian, both that are such a critical part of all these other areas of the behavioral sciences. And can we have a book for the public out there that that will kind of integrate everything together with examples that's not too technical, that covers the range and that has some, you know, humor, ideally, and enough of interest, you know. Yeah. So I never thought I would do it. I never thought I would do it, but that's the way it worked out. I. I saw an opening there. I realized, yeah, actually, maybe I have enough background in all these interdisciplinary areas as well as in the core of behavior analysis to do justice to this. So it took me 10 years. Rob.
- [05:29]
Robert Perry Crews
Wow. Yeah, I mean, the book definitely reads as very well lived and well researched. So the 10 years is not as surprising in terms of just the breadth of information there.
- [05:38]
Dr. Susan Schneider
So I am so glad to hear that. Yeah, that was part time at first, of course. I started it in the year 2000 and I finally finished it in 2011. The last couple of years I worked on it full time. I got an agent. I got a Manhattan agent. I was all excited about that. Yeah, yeah. And created a website and read books about how to publish a book about science for the public.
- [06:06]
Alan Haberman
Yeah.
- [06:07]
Robert Perry Crews
Wow. So there's a lot going on. One of the things I was curious about, because we came to this book as a group, we have. We did an episode on storytelling. So. And your book was cited in one of the articles about why don't behavior analysts do more in storytelling. And your book was cited as an example of here's a way to tell stories that are both scientific and readable and understandable. So we do. We did a poll for the year. We do four book clubs a year because books can take a long time to read. And we put Science of Consequences as one of the options. And so that was one of the top choices. So we did that as our. Our second book of the year. And it definitely had that storytelling vibe to it. But I'm wondering when you were writing it. You know, over the span of 10 years, I'm guessing there were a couple different variants, you know, because there were components of the book that I sort of was like, oh, I bet there's like a real good deep dive into some of the genetics, like even more than this. But there are also sections too that I wondered, like, this feels like it's getting a little technical. I wonder, is there a version that was, you know, let's gloss this over. Let's make this more pop psychology than behavior analytic or behavioral or, you know, biological or psychobiological. How. Whichever area of the book it was. Can you kind of tell me about how you went back and forth with making something that tried to hit that sweet spot in between really nice and scientific and really readable to non full time scientists?
- [07:38]
Dr. Susan Schneider
That's a really good question, Rob. And yeah, I went back and forth. There were so many judgment calls about things like that during the course. Course of this odyssey. Right. The, the nature nurture section was the hardest to try and hit the sweet spot because I wanted to cover a topic like epigenetics because behavior analysis principles are very much involved with what goes on with this phenomenon where environmental, you know, actions and experiences affect the likelihood that one of your genes will be expressed to produce the protein it codes for. And there was just. I tried my best. I tried my best to make it understandable and not too technical, but invariably when I got responses afterward about the book, if this came up, that was the section where people said, yeah, it was a little technical. In the nature nurtured section. Yeah, I'm not surprised. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But overall. Right. The mathematical modeling, section 2. I do refer to differential equations at one point, but I don't go into too much detail with that. Right, yeah. This is one of the reasons it took 10 years. I mean, first of all, of course, you have to decide the range of your coverage and then start lining up references and topics you're going to include versus topics that you're not going to include. And that in itself was just. Yeah. Took forever. You know, it helped to get some chapters written toward the beginning of this phase. Like chapter one, I actually wrote fairly early on in the process because I knew what I wanted to cover in that chapter. But the other chapters. Yeah, yeah. And the length of the book related to, of course, how much I was going to cover. Yeah, at first it was, I think, more than the 16 chapters it ended up being. And then I peered that down, I think, to 12 for a while, but that wasn't enough. And so. Yeah, yeah, just. Yeah, it's just an ongoing search for the happy medium where you cover the things that you think are most important to cover in a readable way. And you have chapters, hunks of chapters that fit reasonably neatly and that lead reasonably neatly one into the other, you know, to create that sense of story like we're going somewhere again. There's three overall sections to the book, of course, but. But within each section, I tried hard to have that sense of not just, okay, here's this area and then here's this area and plunk them down at random, you know, to have a more logical order. Okay.
- [10:37]
Robert Perry Crews
So that makes sense in terms of, you know, trying to do that storytelling piece of. There has to be an order to. I'm presenting this information in a way that's building, building. And then here's where it stops and we start the next related but different section.
- [10:49]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, yeah.
- [10:50]
Robert Perry Crews
Now, I know a lot of the content of the book really relies on the research examples to, you know, tell like, so like little mini stories within the overarching kind of, you know, scientific narrative that you're presenting. I'm curious how you chose those samples. Were they just sort of like, these are recent research articles that I think capture the point. They were ones that maybe you're at a dinner party and somebody mentioned. I read an article in, you know, in Nature about, you know, whatever the. The topic was, you know, some of the. Some of the animal research. Right. And. And you said, oh, that sounds like I'm going to look into that. That's going to capture it. Because someone who doesn't know science, like, I Do is bringing it up. So it must have valence for, you know, the. The broader audience, or was it kind of just like. Nope, I like this research. That's the one that's doing it.
- [11:38]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah. I had done a lot of reading myself over the years at that point. I had kept notes, I taught all these courses. I was reading the literature, and of course I did a lot of literature searches. I mean, the book ended up with over 700 references.
- [11:56]
Robert Perry Crews
Well, that's what my wife said, because I usually finish the books first as the group, because then I have to lead the discussion. And she's like, I'm not gonna get this book is so long. And I'm like, don't worry. There's like 120 pages of references. It's not as long as it looks.
- [12:09]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Exactly. And that was the choice of the publisher to have that in that font. I think if they'd made it finer print, it would have been more typical, but. Right, but this way, of course, it's easy for people to track down a reference. Oh, yeah, right. Yes. But as to where I got them all from. Right. Of course, sometimes just literature. Searching for examples a lot from my own reading and from my own teaching. I did have a number of people who very kindly helped me along the way. People who were experts in areas where I was especially less expert, like some of the applied areas. I knew the basics. I went to Kansas after all, you know, and I taught some of that. But yeah, so I had people also in other areas, like developmental psychobiology, that I could consult. And they sometimes had suggestions too. But mainly, yeah, I would. I would get together things that I thought would work for a chapter and come up with a draft and then shoot it out there and then, you know, and. And see how. How the research findings that I had located, you know, fit in. Could I, in fact, write about this particular finding in a way that made it work for that chapter? Right. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And I kept detailed documents on my computer with ideas for each chapter, which again, changed when the chapter changed somewhat. But yeah, and so I. I'd have a lot to pick from. And, you know, not everything made it to the final version. It was a winnowing process. I had more than I could use, basically. So I just did my best to pick examples that would illustrate the concepts. Well, I thought, and be fun to read about where possible, have applications to people's ordinary lives or to challenges like the last chapter. Or of course, I included climate change and other societal level challenges. That's not typically an area that a lot of behavior analysts work on, but our principles apply there like everywhere else. And so that was one of those areas where I had to read outside of the field.
- [14:40]
Robert Perry Crews
Now, I know one of the dangers, and this came up when we were sort of, you know, doing some of our own research, research review on storytelling or how to disseminate information. I mean, it's one of the things that we. We do on the show every week. Do you ever feel or did you ever get nervous that you were spending too much time trying to make interesting stories and then maybe not capturing the idea? And if so, how did you kind of pull yourself back and kind of use an example to illuminate? Like, was. Was there like a strategy that you tried to use? Did you sort of, like, put the example, describe it to yourself, to kind of reflect on? Is that capturing the general idea of, say, nature, nurture, or some of using some of the consequence, you know, responses you lay out that relate to, say, climate change or, you know, other societal ills that sort of. In the back half of the book, like, what. What were those steps? So, for example, if I were going to write another book. Well, I haven't read a book, but if I were going to write a book and I wanted to do good storytelling, I didn't make it too fluffy. I didn't just make it story after story, and they don't really lead to anything. Like, I'm just curious because it feels like such a hard task.
- [15:53]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, it was. It was. Yeah. Yeah. I think Skinner's own article about how to discover what you have to say. Right. Really captures a lot of the nuance for anyone writing any kind of project. You know, you get the ideas down. You know, if it's a database book like this is, then you got your references somewhere, and then you kind of shift them around and see what order might work. And then you actually make a stab at writing, and then you realize, oops, nope, that's not going to work, and you switch things around and I mean, sometimes things change to a different chapter entirely. Yeah, it was very much trial and error. I mean, I had a fair bit of writing experience at that point, but mainly academic writing, right? Not through the public. But I've always been a reader, and I like nonfiction as well as fiction. And so I saw how people like Stephen Jay Gould, to make a. To give a shining example there, you know, was able to write very good science for the public in a very readable way. And there's a number of other people who've been very Successful with that. Stuart Weiss, Paul Chance. To name two behavior analysts who've been very successful in reaching the public with their books. And so. And in all kinds of other areas, of course. So I had models to go from, and I tried to make my book kind of like theirs. Again, I didn't want to go academic. I didn't want it to be a textbook, but I. And I loved hearing prior, but I wanted it to be more in depth than, let's say, let's Don't Shoot the Dog, your classic, you know, million book bestseller, I think. Yeah. Back in the day.
- [17:58]
Alan Haberman
Yeah.
- [17:58]
Dr. Susan Schneider
And such a wonderful accomplishment. But that was a short book that just took some of the basic principles and then had a great range of applications with people as well as with animals. But I wanted to do something more in depth than that. More like a Stephen Jay Gould, basically. So. Yeah. And then as I actually started putting it together, and then once you get a few chapters actually written, Rob, then you have a voice for that book. And then the other chapters all have to match that. So that really helped. Once I had the first few chapters written, and they weren't. And they weren't like chapters one and two, although chapter one, I think, was one of the first ones. They were scattered throughout the book there. But nonetheless, I, you know, I had a way of writing for the book and a length, too. I don't know if you noticed, but the chapters are roughly equivalent lengths. Books don't have to be like that. Sometimes authors have really short chapters and then a really long chapter.
- [19:11]
Robert Perry Crews
Oh, I think of, you know, reading Verbal Behavior, and you get to chapter three. Why is this like 200 pages? But it's like, this is too long. It's only chapter three, man. Let's hurry it up.
- [19:22]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, I didn't want really long chapters, but I didn't want really short ones either. I wanted, you know, again, a happy medium there. And once I had a first, a few chapters actually written, then that was a wonderful way for me to see, okay, here's how these remaining topics I want to cover can fit in to that kind of length and format. And, and, and, and then, you know, things just fell into place at one point. It was beautiful. The 16 chapters, the three sections. Yeah. And then it was just a matter of, you know, the writing did.
- [19:57]
Robert Perry Crews
Now, did you find. When you're speaking about voice, did you find yourself writing and thinking, well, let me write this with the voice that I would teach in, which is going to be very different than, like you said, writing a research paper or you Know, a letter to a friend.
- [20:10]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right.
- [20:11]
Robert Perry Crews
Did you find that you were sort of capturing that voice or was your writing for the public voice different even than your teaching voice?
- [20:18]
Dr. Susan Schneider
It was kind of like teaching intro psych, I think. I mean, not that that can't be technical sometimes, but you know, you've got often students from all different areas. They're not all psych majors by any means. And so you have to reach them in the ways that get them interested in the topics and learning the science that's important for them to learn. But it's not like a senior level or graduate level course where you really get into the weeds and very technical and do academic readings.
- [20:50]
Alan Haberman
Right.
- [20:51]
Dr. Susan Schneider
So yeah, I guess that's the closest I could say. I just, just loved teaching intro psych because I could make all these connections and not just learning principles, of course, but that was one of the main ones because they are applying everywhere. I mean every single chapter in the psych textbook there's going to be learning principles, you know, operant, respondent or both. And, and I wanted students to see how everything fits together. And, and, and I valued these closely related sciences like cognitive and social and psychobiology and biology and economics for that matter, like behavioral economics and all that. And, and, and being able to show how all of this relates. I think it's just such a satisfying, important thing because there's so many applications everywhere and it still is a source of joy when I see that somewhere and a source of disappointment when I don't.
- [21:59]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah, I know this section, I think the three, well, sorry, the four of us, we had four folks doing the discussion of, of the book. I know we found the first section the most interesting is not quite the word, but I mean certainly the second section was more on, you know, kind of the science of consequences specifically related to behavior and schedule. So again that, that was very, very, you know, familiar to all, to all of us, all of us behavior analysts. And then certainly the third chapter, we've done other reading on consequences and bigger picture things. It was very interesting. But I think it was that first chapter and really thinking about the nature, nurture, the power of, you know, genes and how consequences can affect genes and genes therefore affect consequences and therefore it affects evolution that I think we all were just the most rapt interest about because it was so different, you know, nothing there because you know, the goal was not to, to write something no one had ever spoken about necessarily was to summarize. But just seeing it all in one place was, was fascinating. I mean, I don't Think you could. I was gonna, I was gonna ask the question, like, were you thinking of starting the book differently? But I don't know if you can, because so much of what that, what the book is about has to do with that just universal consequence of human development and evolution. I, I'm, I'm sort of curious. Was that just something that you felt you'd been talking about an intro psych or you just thought that captured that idea of bringing together all the sciences? Were you ever worried that maybe that go beyond what people could handle in a book about consequences?
- [23:40]
Dr. Susan Schneider
That was certainly a challenging part to write, but you absolutely hit the nail on the head there, Rob. This was so exciting for me personally when I first discovered it in the mid-1980s when I was a graduate student at University of Kansas. Right. Ed Morris has always been interested in that area too. I took a graduate course in developmental neurobiology with a neuroscientist who was in the department at that time. And that just. Yeah. I could tell you if I, after the book tour, if I hadn't felt that it was important for me to work on climate change and really switch to that because it is such an existential crisis for the future. Yeah. For now, for that matter. Right. What I would have liked to have done would have been to go back to developmental psychobiology because it's just such a fascinating area and you have all these scientists from all these different areas working together productively, integrating these different sciences and showing how much flexibility there is. And so much of it is driven by learning principles. And so behavior analysis is a really important part of that mix. And it's just such an exciting area. But yeah, I decided to do climate change instead. But I'm glad that I did get to work in that area for a while. Sure.
- [25:17]
Robert Perry Crews
I know one of the things that I was sort of going back and forth with while reading the book was whether I thought this should be classified as a radical behaviorist book or whether that's sort of a silly question in that. Well, radical behavior. At the end of the day, radical behaviorism is really what is happening in real life. But we have to give it a name so that, you know, the, the cognitivists and the mentalists of the world don't get too offended that we're, we're honing in on their turf. Is that something you've ever felt in, in terms of writing the book or in general? Or do you really think there is a place for like. No, this is radical behaviorism, this psychobiology, like you Know, binning our sciences.
- [26:00]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, I, I sometimes, yeah, you could see that there's reasons to do that. But I prefer just to have science and everyone working together productively with our different special backgrounds, of course, different areas of expertise. But I actually, back in 1987, I think I published a paper on the term radical behaviorism, a history paper on how that term came to be. That actually, I think probably after the book is my most cited work, although I have of course did a number of empirical papers and a number of other conceptual papers too. But yeah, that's, that's gotten a lot of reads now on Researchgate was in the behavior analyst. Right. And of course the term really means thorough, radical not in the sense of extreme, but radical in the sense of including private events and not being, you know, other forms of behaviorism that did not. Skinner did always include private events. And so I, I hope I wrote the book in the way that. And I think from the feedback I've gotten, I seem to have succeeded to some degree anyway in making it accessible and fear to all of these related sciences as well as the core behavior analysis.
- [27:34]
Robert Perry Crews
I definitely, I agree it was a science book that happened to have a huge focus on behavior and the impact of everything that, you know, everything around us. You know, I mean, the organism in the environment. Right. You can't write about it without talking about environment and then internal external states.
- [27:52]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right, Exactly.
- [27:55]
Robert Perry Crews
Susan, I'm going to ask you. This is kind of related to one of the questions that I was, you know, planning to ask, but I think I have to tweak it a little bit. I'm going to ask. It's a little bit of a professional courtesy question. I have to change it. So while we're talking about the idea of, you know, certainly genes and the environment and development and evolution as consequence as well as respondent and operant conditioning, something I have run into a lot more recently. It's not a new phenomenon. I'm not, I didn't find it. You know, it's. It's been the same issue that's been going on since back in the 50s and the 60s when it comes to behavior versus mental states is just this return to the idea that operant behavior has to do with when we're being good and bad little, you know, humans and everything else is. Well, but you can't explain the anxiety that people are having or the stress that people are having through operant principles and through the principles of behavior. That's its own magical thing. Often I am told this and then somebody Gives me a very specifically behavioral explanation of how they're going to treat the behaviors that are recurring. However, they just happen to magically live in the mind. So therefore, don't worry about it. Rob, that's not your. That's not your scene. How do I go about having these conversations with people in a way that is focused on the science of consequences rather than just my getting offended at their lack of understanding of operant behavioral principles? Because I'll be honest, I've got a professional development day coming up in about a week or two, and I'm already planning to, you know, stand up and yell at the speaker because I know that's what they're bringing to this talk. And I'd rather not because, you know, I do like my job. So help me out here. How do I put it all together in a way like you did without just sort of making it like a fighting match?
- [29:58]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Oh, boy. Yeah, yeah. And I agree on trying to avoid that if possible, certainly. Oh, gosh. We've tried so hard over the years to get operant principles accepted in colleges of education. Right. When you talk about emotions and things like anxiety, of course, I think it's helpful that cognitive behavioral approaches are the main data based way of addressing these. Right. And that certainly includes behavior analysis as well as cognitive and other parts of psychology. So. Yeah, if finding places where most people can agree is a good place to start. Right. Yeah. And to avoid the fighting. And at some level, it's just language. If. What if what people do is effective, then how they talk about it may not be ideal. But if that's what you've been raised with, I mean, like Skinner said. Right. The organism's always right, you know, and people just, on the face of it, don't think about behavior environment relations acting over time like behavior analysts are trained to do. Yeah. And so that's part of it too, I think. But yeah, I mean, this is not something I've had to do. I hand it to all of you who do. And again, just behavior analysts have always had to work across disciplinary lines. Right. And in some areas we've been very effective with that, like speech language. Right. Pathology. Not to say it's always perfect, but we've had had a lot of success for decades in that and some of the other areas, too. Behavioral pharmacology, obviously. Whereas in education, certainly we have. I mean, thank goodness for. Okay, yeah. You know the one I'm thinking about here, that's in a third of the schools now. I'm blanking on it.
- [32:08]
Robert Perry Crews
PBI. You think of PBIS or.
- [32:10]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Pbis, yes. Positive behavior support. Yes, exactly. Thank you. And I know that that's not just behavior analysis, but hopefully it's good science for the other aspects of behavioral science that's in there. And certainly there's a lot of positive reinforc.
- [32:26]
Alan Haberman
Which.
- [32:27]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Which sounds good to me. Again, I'm not an expert on that, although I do try and go to those talks at ABA when I can. This was another source of great information for me over the years. I've been going to ABA every year since 1985.
- [32:42]
Robert Perry Crews
Wow.
- [32:43]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [32:44]
Robert Perry Crews
That's great.
- [32:45]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.
- [32:46]
Robert Perry Crews
Do you have, like, a shirt or something that, like.
- [32:49]
Dr. Susan Schneider
I ought to. Well, was it the last one where. It was my 40th year, so I did get a little sticker or something. That's good.
- [33:01]
Robert Perry Crews
That's good.
- [33:03]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:07]
Robert Perry Crews
So any sort of, like, specifics when talking about things like feelings or sensitivities that you might use as a good example, having had so many examples in your book, using so many examples to describe any that come to mind when you're trying to talk about consequences and their impact on, you know, thoughts or those kind of human ephemera.
- [33:31]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right. Well, first of all, for emotions, I cover the various places in the book, but especially in the chapter on classical conditioning. Right.
- [33:41]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah.
- [33:41]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Because there's so much involved with classical conditioning, which would be nice to think it's in some of the colleges of education. I don't know, I think they just.
- [33:53]
Robert Perry Crews
Go Pavlov and dogs. Anyway, moving on. That's. We're not doing any more with it.
- [33:57]
Alan Haberman
Yeah.
- [33:57]
Dr. Susan Schneider
That's not going to be real helpful, is it? Yeah, because there's, I mean, going back to Skinner's era, some of the research he did himself with emotions, with classical conditioning. Right. Condition suppression, things like that. Right. So. And I can't believe I'm remembering all this because believe me, for many years now I have focused so much on climate change.
- [34:21]
Robert Perry Crews
Just, it's just, it's in there. It's in the repertoire or the relational frames or enough stimuli related for your, you know, cue your memory. Right.
- [34:29]
Dr. Susan Schneider
It must be. It's kind of encouraging. I'm getting up there in years now. So. So anyway, so, so, so there's. There are so many examples. Right. Operants and Pavlovian processes interacting and. Yeah. Feelings are real and animals as well as people and how you deal with problematic feelings, you know, is often cognitive behavioral therapy, which is based in part on learning principles. Right. And it asks for private events like thinking. Just a classic Example there, when you ask a kid to do a simple arithmetic problem in their head, like how much is two plus two? And you know, you don't have to see them write it out, you know, or a simple multiplication thing. You have to, you know that whether they say it out loud or just think it, that a lot of the same things are happening in the brain. And now with these amazing science fiction, neuropsychology, neuroscience techniques that they have, they can show this. Right. I mean, it doesn't really add to the explanation, but we can flesh out what's happening in the brain. And of course, it's not just the brain. It's the rest of the nervous system, it's the, the glands, it's all the other body bodily systems. Right. That are involved too. That's, that's, There's a great book, by the way, called Blaming the Brain. Yeah, the, yeah, because that's something else. I noticed sometimes that neuroscience now, I just love what they've accomplished in that area, but it kind of supersedes everything else when people are trying to explain behavior. And we know that that is not a good or thorough approach, that you need all the environmental aspects too. So. Yeah. Anyway, I'm, I think I'm kind of rambling here.
- [36:33]
Robert Perry Crews
No, but I, I, I, I sort of hear the, that central idea of part of it is, you know, turning into the skid. And I think a lot of behavior analysts, when they, you know, they're freshly minted behavior analysts or they're just focusing on the behavior and just oper. It is hard to then be able to switch gears because so much of what you're getting from your environment is people talking about everything's the brain and everything's these magical homunculi feelings. And how do you explain that without making it sound like you're discounting their existence? So I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna sort of take a, a page from the book and just turn into the skid and just immediately like, and you know what, brain behavior, bam. I agree, it's all together, but let's focus on the, what's going on in terms of like, bigger picture rather than getting too hung up on. These are two different things or these don't go together the same way or the way you're describing it is not the right way or because we don't necessarily know how every aspect of the, you know, the neurons going, going across synapses to lead to behavior, but we know that's a piece of it. So let's Just let's all agree on that. And then like you said before, focus on, you know, what are the results we're getting, what are the changes we're seeing. And. Okay, I like that.
- [37:45]
Alan Haberman
Exactly.
- [37:46]
Robert Perry Crews
Good. I. I agree. I agree with that completely. So I. I'm hoping it is not too hard. Too hard to do. I think sometimes. I'm sure you've. You've faced this across the years where people just, they. They want to die on that hill of. No, the way I'm describing it is the only way. And everyone else is wrong. Even though we're talking about the exact same thing in. In 99. Like. Like, you know, the mouse and human genome being so similar.
- [38:11]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah. It's so important to build bridges and find common ground. And so often in other areas, we have to use different terminology, for example, because that's what people in those areas are used to. And so. And for their part, too, you know, when they're working at the edges of their discipline, they have to do the same thing. It's just a reality we all have to deal with, I think.
- [38:40]
Robert Perry Crews
So I.
- [38:41]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Good luck with that. What you do is so important. And again, you know, we have such a great science with so many applications, and there's just so much documented success out there. And I'm so glad that people like you are out there in the schools helping all these kids and teachers, you.
- [39:01]
Robert Perry Crews
Know, and the, the thing that I think makes me the most frustrated is so many of those techniques are very effective, and I've seen their effectiveness. And while they're not being described through behavioral principles, that's okay. Like, I'm okay with that. You know, I've worked with enough professionals over my own career. It's, you know, similar to yours in some ways. Just. You work with so many different people. You have to let some of those, you know, who's in charge, who's right kind of arguments go. But it just. Sometimes. Some years I feel like I'm great at it. And some years it just rubs. Like you just hear someone say, well, it's a little beyond behavior. And there's that tone of voice that you just, Just. Just getting under my skin. You know, talk about respondent responding condition. I'm like, oh, here we go. I'm having a. I'm having a little reaction. I'm salivating and I'm about to bite.
- [39:48]
Dr. Susan Schneider
You know, oh, I can empathize.
- [39:54]
Robert Perry Crews
So I know we spent a lot of time talking about the book, but I did want to also hear about how you made the shift into work on climate change and what that, what that entails as again, someone who is very aware of climate change. To be honest, I don't want to talk about climate change because it is very scary. Like you said, existential crisis. But I'd love to hear about kind of the work that you are doing right now and some of the learnings about consequences and how that is going to result in the better, brighter tomorrow. I know we all would, would like to think is around the corner if we, you know, again, if we think about our consequences.
- [40:28]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yes, indeed. Well, back in the 1970s, I had a course in solar engineering when I was an engineer at Illinois Tech. And then after I got my bachelor's and before I got my master's in mechanical engineering, I worked at US Steel and did pretty, excuse me, high level energy efficiency task for a summer job and the continuous caster in the steel mill. And so also I was, you know, I had a background in science generally. Okay. So in the late 1980s, then when Jim Hansen of NASA testified to Congress about the reality of climate change, I took it seriously. I read one of the first books for the public about climate change, Bill McKippen's book, the End of Nature. Wow. He was the presidential scholar at ABA this year, of course, and I was on a symposium with him, which was a big thrill, right. And I started to follow it because I could see, yeah, this, this is real, this is going to be a problem in the 21st century. We need to act on this. And I've been an environmental activist and social justice activist my whole life. So that's been on my radar for a long time. Rob. I used to, you know, just kind of do that kind of activity on the side because I had jobs and then I had the book, and then for three years a very full time job doing the book touring. And then when that started to get more manageable, I said, okay, what's the most important thing I could do with my life? And I'm able to switch to what I think is most important. And again, it would have been nice to go back to development psychopathology really would have, but there was just no question. This was around 2015, 2016. And yeah, we were clearly not doing enough for climate action and there was not enough emphasis on the behavioral science side because, heck, in the 1970s I studied solar engineering. The basic physics there hasn't changed. We have economies of scale now, they've got better methods of engineering these panels, you know, but the basic science has been there for a long time. So in many respects, meeting this challenge of climate action is a behavioral problem, mostly policy, because that's been the most effective change process around the world for getting greenhouse gas emissions down and getting us moving toward this great transition to sustainability, including mainly renewable power. Right. All the other elements to it. Such a wicked problem. Again, there's just so many things that need to be done. It's not just a few. Right. And again, the worst problems are delayed. Right. I mean, we're suffering now because of all the greenhouse gases put up there in the 20th century, in the early part of the 21st century. Right. So it was just very clear to me that we needed more behavioral scientists working in this area. So I do all kinds of reading and of course, behavioral sciences all across the disciplinary range, you know, from economics to all the variations of psychology, including behavior analysis. So we all have an important role to play. And in fact, behavioral economics is, I would think, the interdisciplinary approach that dominates in behavioral science approaches. But a big part of that is community level change, where you have an OBM kind of project for sustainability in a local business, a local government, a school district or a particular school, neighborhoods, healthcare systems, that kind of level where it's not just individual by individual, but you can really scale up. And then hopefully while you're scaling up these sustainability solutions. And these are behavior change projects, right? Yeah. So this is, this is our bailiwick here, along with those of related behavioral sciences. Right. Hopefully people involved in those projects then start thinking more about this challenge and start, you know, electing policymakers, making the policy changes that we need to hopefully this goes together, change working from the bottom up there and change at the policy level from the top down, because we need it all as fast as possible. According to the ipcc, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is of course the main body of scientists. I mean, I do all kinds of things with climate change and have now for many years. One is tabling and I always like to point out that according to the most recent IPCC report, we have to cut global greenhouse gas emissions 43% by 2030 compared to 2019 to stay on track for that one and a half degree limit in global warming, which we're already at 1.2 now. And in fact, this last year, temporarily hope at 1.5. And it's just, I mean, well, I.
- [46:22]
Robert Perry Crews
Could go on and on and on.
- [46:23]
Dr. Susan Schneider
About climate change, believe me. Anyway, I hope that answers the question that does.
- [46:29]
Robert Perry Crews
I know one of the areas that I always feel a bit distraught when talking about climate Change is so much, especially when you talk about something like behavioral economics and looking at sort of what are the incentives. It does feel that so many incentives these days are lined up against policies that can meaningfully impact climate change in a, in a positive direction. Positive. By, you know, lowering the temperature.
- [46:56]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [46:56]
Robert Perry Crews
And it does feel like a lot of the behavioral changes that I or my family make, you know, we're using less micro, less plastics, we're trying to recycle more, we're composting more. It just feels like one of those, like that's great. It's not going to do it. That's not really where the change needs to happen. I mean, is it really one of those situations of we don't want to change our behavior back to wasteful, you know, over consumerism. But is really the change going to have to. It really does just have to be at those kind of like big scale, kind of interlocking behavioral contingencies. And if so, I mean, I mean it makes sense. It's an existential crisis.
- [47:33]
Dr. Susan Schneider
It is, it is. Electrifying everything is one of the big goals because you can make the, the power sources for the electricity renewable and I include nuclear in that because it is low carbon. And I think it's got to be part of the mix realistically if we're going to get close to meeting this, this deadline basically. Right, yeah. For what individuals can do. There's been research on that, a lot of quantification out there. Again, I give a lot of talks about climate change. So I can say buying less stuff for the developed nations, although that's hard to quantify. There's a famous article by Wines and Nicholas in 2017 in environmental research Letters. That's a main, one of the main journals, Right. That has basically the five big ones for individuals being having a sustainable family size using green energy, driving less, flying less and eating a more plant based diet. In particular eating less beef. Beef is just off the charts. It has a huge carbon footprint. Chicken is actually better than some dairy. A lot of people don't realize that we're vegetarians who think they're doing good by the planet. But some cheeses are really not good. I mean this is still cattle we're talking about. Oh, yes, yeah. Right.
- [49:14]
Robert Perry Crews
So yeah, you know, that really took me a second. If like cheese comes from the ground. No, it's. Sorry about that. I really, I kind of was following the vegetarian path and I got a little.
- [49:26]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I've been mainly vegan for a number of years myself. I Still have do sustainable seafood which has a low carbon footprint. And, and no one's asking anyone to give up beef or meat entirely. You know, it's just in some nations, like the US is one of them. We, you know, we need to cut down on our per capita consumption of these things at the same time as we need to try and bike more. I try and be a role model here, right. I was a commuter cyclist from high school on wherever I could be. These e bikes now that are available are really revolutionizing transport around the world. So especially in cities, of course, where you don't have really long distances to go and they're much more carbon friendly. I bought a used electric vehicle four years ago, used Chevy bolt, which I love. And so that's also important. I'm getting a heat pump next year. I have heat pump, water heater, I have solar panels and yeah, I cut down on mowing in California. Oh gosh, lawn services there they have laws now to try and get people and lawn services to get off fossil fuels because those things are really inefficient. Those lawn mowers and those leaf blowers in addition to being really noisy, which is funny because this is how places like Washington D.C. got ordinances and Sacramento either prohibiting them or limiting their use more because of the noise than because of the carbon pollution than the air pollution. But there's electric alternatives. And so you have. Right. You know, you take the, the curates approach with the rebates, like the inflation reduction act focuses on for things like solar panels and electric vehicles, et cetera. And then you can have regulations which has actually been pretty effective according to the climate policy books that evaluate all of this. And we need social norms to change. So people and related scientists who are expert on getting that to happen and social marketing, gosh, community based social marketing, this is a big thing in the behavioral sustainability world. And we need to get more funding for that because there's really good messaging out there with framing and all this, that again, not all that behavior analytic. Although some of our principles are still there. But this is an important part of reminding people cues, things like that, stimulus control basically, as well as the incentive side. And then there's a lot of discussion about, okay, are we at the point now where we should be scaring people more so that this is your kid's future? This is already so harmful around the world is so unfair. Developing nations didn't cause this problem. They're suffering disproportionately. Where I was in the Peace Corps, I got sent to The South Pacific, they're losing their coral reefs. Okay. I could go on and on. Anyway, behavior analysis has an important role to play here. So that's one of the things I do, is try and get more behavior analysts into this field, you know, and helping to get these community level changes that we need.
- [52:48]
Alan Haberman
That's.
- [52:48]
Robert Perry Crews
It's fascinating, Susan. I know we don't have, you know, enough time to go over all the different ins and outs, but I appreciate giving us kind of the 10,000 foot view of some of the work going on and some of the consequences at play there. So thank you so much for that.
- [53:01]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Thank you for giving me the opportunity. This really is something that everyone needs to work on to the degree that they can. I hope they will.
- [53:10]
Robert Perry Crews
And my last thing I wanted to ask is you mentioned, sort of offhand, I think some of it ended up in a little footnote at the bottom of the page on one of the sections is that you had lunch with B.F. skinner and you brought your own lunch and you shared it together. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that story before I let you go, if you don't mind.
- [53:32]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Absolutely, Rob. That's actually on my book website, scienceofconsequences.com I was very fortunate to get to know Skinner early on. So I knew him during the last 10 or so years of his life. We would get together at Alba sometimes and talk. But in this case, this was after I had written him, since I read that book when I was in high school, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. And I was in engineering school, graduate school at Brown University, and that wasn't that far from Harvard, of course. So, yeah, I, I forget if he suggested it or I did, but, you know, we agreed to get together and I went to his office right. At Harvard and we chatted. He was always interested in environmental issues. That was one of the things we had in common. And, And Right. I had misunderstood his instructions. He was actually planning for us to go out to eat, but I took a lunch and so we played this like peanut butter and jelly or something. We ate it right there in this office and it was great. It was really so special for me.
- [54:50]
Robert Perry Crews
Oh, wow. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing. I just thought that was the coolest anecdote. So thank you for bringing it, sharing it with us and adding some more details. PB&J and Skinner. That's someone's blog or something. Well, Dr. Susan Schneider, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about the science consequences, to talk about your current work with climate change and to share some other some anecdotes from your career. We really appreciate getting this chance. It was really, really excellent. I know you have a conference coming up this weekend, I believe you mentioned.
- [55:26]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Or there's a conference, the Citizens Climate Lobby Conference, and this probably won't be released before then. But it's a Saturday afternoon Eastern time and that's a really good nonpartisan organization and I'm looking forward to it.
- [55:42]
Robert Perry Crews
Excellent. Well, Susan, thank you so very much for for talking with us today. We really appreciate it. And thank you for the book as well.
- [55:49]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Thank you for hosting, Rob. Really enjoyed this discussion.
- [56:06]
Diana Perry Cruz
Hi. Do you want to be a bcba, also known as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst?
- [56:12]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Sure.
- [56:12]
Jackie
We all do.
- [56:13]
Diana Perry Cruz
Now you can come to Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts to get your graduate degree just minutes outside of Boston.
- [56:20]
Jackie
Choose from any one of these courses.
- [56:22]
Diana Perry Cruz
Masters of Science in Applied Behavior Analysis.
- [56:25]
Jackie
Master's of Science in Special Education, dual degree in Special Ed and aba, or.
- [56:30]
Diana Perry Cruz
Be eligible for your Postmaster Certificate.
- [56:33]
Jackie
You can complete your degree and be ready to sit for the exam in two years.
- [56:37]
Diana Perry Cruz
And our 2022 graduates had a 92% pass rate on the BACB exam.
- [56:42]
Jackie
Come enjoy approved fieldwork placements, ethics, mini handbooks, PhD levels, professors, small class sizes, and a service trip to Iceland if interested.
- [56:51]
Diana Perry Cruz
And don't forget, our program is accredited by the association of Behavior Analysis International, or ABAI, as a Tier 1 master's degree program.
- [57:00]
Jackie
Don't delay. Supplies are limited. Learn more at regiscollege. Edu.
- [57:05]
Diana Perry Cruz
Again, that's www.regiscollege.edu regiscollege.edu one more time www.regiscollege.edu.
- [57:16]
Jackie
See you there.
- [57:24]
Robert Perry Crews
Well, that was a great treat. We don't always get to talk to our authors, though. When we do, it is always so much fun to kind of hear about the process of the book, where it came from, what they're hoping to share with audiences, whether that was what we got out of the book as well. So very exciting to talk to Dr. Schneider. Before we get into the rest of our book club episode where we'll be discussing the book at length, I want to remind our listeners that ABA insidetrack is ACE and Quaba approved. By listening to this episode in its entirety, you can earn to learning ces. All you need to do is go to our website aba insidetrack.com or click the link in your podcast Episode Notes and put in some key information, including two secret code words. I'm going to give you the first one of those now. It's Yule. Y U L E Tis the season. Yule. Or is it the season? It's kind of over right now. Right. And depending on when you're hearing this, it may be way over, but at the time of our recording, it's on our minds. Yule. All right. Oh, and don't forget, if you are a patron of the show, you also will have a code word in your RSS feed on your podcast player for 2 CE discount. So no charge for you patrons. The big thanks for us, but you still have to listen to the rest of the episode, which is coming up right now. All right. Hey, everyone, welcome back. We hope you enjoyed that interview with Dr. Schneider. And now let's get into our main book club discussion. But I couldn't do that without my book club crew joining me, as always, are.
- [58:58]
Jackie
Hey, Rob, it's me, Diana Perry Cruz. It's 2025, which means I'm gonna go first in the second place. Introductions.
- [59:07]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah. And I am now third. I am rounding it out, the trifecta of co host. But not today because it's a book club day.
- [59:17]
Jackie
Do you want to say that means.
- [59:19]
Alan Haberman
And that's like. And that means I'm here. Oh, sorry. That means I'm here. Alan Haberman, your book club guy.
- [59:26]
Robert Perry Crews
All right, well, we got the crew together. We have been reading and we finished and now we're recording our discussion of the Science of Consequences by Dr. Susan Schneider. And we're going to start kind of with a little bit of a bio about the book, where it came from, and then we'll talk about our thoughts and then we'll get into some details about the book. So this book was published in 2012, and the reason it entered our poll for this year for the 2025-26 year as voted on by our patrons was because it was mentioned in an article by Heinlein that we did as our episode on storytelling. And it was mentioned that the Science of Consequences was a good example of how behavior analysts could do a better job using stories to explain key behavioral principles. So we threw it on there and said, well, we love stories and we love that topic and we love dissemination and we love new ways of disseminating to beyond just an audience of behavior analysts. So let's see if this book does it. And so that's what we're going to be talking about today. Dr. Susan Schneider is a got a degree in mechanical engineering from Brown and then a degree in psychology in the University of Kansas. And she also worked in the Peace Corps. She currently is teaching at Western Michigan University and has been doing a lot of work recently as a for non profits related to climate change. And that's sort of her kind of her big push now is science of consequences plus ecology equals solutions to climate change. And she has been a big. She's published a lot on the idea of consequences and on context and systems theory. So she's definitely behavior analyst. And she also has a fun story on her webpage describing back when she was an undergraduate or an engineering graduate student. A brief anecdote is that she was close enough to go to Harvard to visit B.F. skinner and he said, yes, please, let's come and have some lunch. But she misunderstood his instructions and brought a bag lunch to eat while meeting with Skinner and the two of them shared that lunch. So she is. She's og behavioral scientist here and she had, she had a shared lunch with B.F. skinner. But is that enough to write a book about consequences? I mean, yes, probably. All the other stuff probably helps too. So let's get into kind of general thoughts. Who'd like to kick us off with some general thoughts on the science of consequences? Kind of from the context of. Is this a book for behavior analysts? Is this a book for non behavior analysts? Is this a book for everybody or possibly a book for nobody?
- [62:04]
Diana Perry Cruz
I'll go first. I think this is a, this is a fun read for a behavior analyst. I don't think it is like a I'm going to learn something new about behavior analysis book about behavior analysts.
- [62:18]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right.
- [62:18]
Diana Perry Cruz
But I love the interplay between the different fields. So I thought that was really interesting and something that I haven't like conceptualized before. I think that this would be. If I was gonna like give someone this book to read, I would give it to undergraduate students in like an intro psychology course who don't necessarily know about behavior analysis, but maybe this would be their first fiore into looking into behavior analysis. So that's who I think it would be good for. Or like, maybe my, you know, like some of my relatives might enjoy this book, but I don't think it was specifically written for a behavior analyst. Like, it's not like only a behavior analyst could read this book. Absolutely not. Right. It is a, it is a walk. It is a meandering walk down a coastal path.
- [63:11]
Jackie
Of consequences.
- [63:12]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah, of consequences. Right. There's going to be a lot of things that we see, see along this path, and sometimes it diverts to the ocean and sometimes it diverts to the wood, but we always get back on the path.
- [63:27]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah.
- [63:27]
Jackie
I mean, I Feel like this is a book for anybody personally. Here's what I say. I think this is a book that could be enjoyed by anyone, but written by very few people in the whole wide world. So I feel very lucky that Dr. Susan Schneider took the time to write this book because her voice comes through so clearly and enjoyably in this book. You, like, feel her personality through her writing, which is great. And I know that, like, that's why this is recommended is because it does such a good job of storytelling. We don't have another book really like this in our field, to my knowledge. And what it reminds me me of the most is the style and approach of someone like Malcolm Gladwell. Right. So it's taking really big picture theoretical ideas and distilling them down. Like she has to distill them down. Right. But then she's turning that around into exemplars. It's exemplar after exemplar after exemplar, explaining to us why we should care about these bigger theoretical concepts. And it's done in a way where anybody can have something in there that they read and say that makes sense to me. I have a similar story or I have another way of looking at that, or I never thought of it that way, but this could be applicable in my own situation. Right. So I think that there is a lot to take away from, from this book and a lot of people could. It's really accessible to a lot of people.
- [65:20]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [65:21]
Alan Haberman
For me, I, I sort of felt that this was a, a patchwork quilt where the common motif was consequences and sort of the science of behavior. I feel like the two really strong parts of this book are for four people in our field are the glossary. Because I feel like her definitions for these things and then obviously her examples that, that, that she's referencing them in throughout the chapters are very accessible for, for us to be able to. When we are supposed to avoid jargon, they. That would be very helpful. I also felt that the emphasis she has on evolutionary biology and just like biological examples is something that we as behavior analysts, we don't do that as much as we definitely should. And so that was another strong point, that we have a lot in common with the natural sciences and we should be really close to that. Yeah. And I think just the only thing that somewhat detracts from the book is it's from 2012 and there's been so much change in our, in our field and our science in that time. But it's a book for anybody. And as a good intro to just behaviorist thinking that it's still a. Still a good, strong read, as, like Jackie said, for. Especially for, like, undergraduates who may be wanting to explore psychology and be exposed to behaviorism.
- [66:56]
Robert Perry Crews
I think for me, one of the. One of the challenges I run into when I read a book is that at this point in my life, we've done so many book clubs and podcasts about articles, goals, is that I either read books because I just want to learn something kind of fun and then immediately use it, or I read books because I need to discuss them at length on this show. Those are kind of. Kind of the books that read anything for fun. Oh, no. A lot of the things I read for fun, I read because there's something I want to learn out of them that is fun. Like, I. I find learning fun. I'm not. I'm not against learning, but there's learning for fun and then there's learning for fun. Plus, I then have to, you know.
- [67:31]
Jackie
Host a show about sometimes care too.
- [67:33]
Robert Perry Crews
Much, a long discussion. And with this book, I actually found. When I went back to read my notes and sort of remembered how I had documented my thoughts on the book as we went through it, the things I wanted to remember and anecdotes, it really clicked much better in that format of like, oh, yeah, this kind of. Yeah, this is like. Like Jackie said, this is kind of that walk on the coast and at the end, you know, kind of a fun little journey. But as I was reading it, when I'd read it in chunks, it would be. It would be interesting. And then when I tried to look at it as a cohesive whole, I sometimes would struggle because I think I was trying to read it for the purpose that perhaps it was not documented for this is not a book like, even like something like Anthony Bigland's Nurture Effect, which is another book that. That's for everybody. That book had a very much a structure of, I'm going to teach you some things and give examples, and now you have more information and you will go act on that. Whereas I feel like the Science of Consequences, its mission was not so specific. It was very much like, when you're done, you will understand the idea that we interact in systems and that how those systems interact with us changes so much of every aspect of our lives, from evolutionary perspectives down to how you hang out with your spouse. And it was more of just getting that concept rather than when you're done with this, you'll understand schedules of reinforcement, and you'll definitely understand and, you know, by the end, I think that it definitely had that goal. More of, okay, but now that we know this, why aren't we using this knowledge to make the world a better place? So it did sort of start coming to that.
- [69:04]
Jackie
I don't think that was the point of the book either. I think that the thesis of the book is the influence of consequences is indisputable for biological creatures, period. Right. And that's what it kept coming back to. Like if, if she were arguing in a courtroom, that would be the argument. And she lays out so much evidence and science, science backed evidence as well. There's tons of footnotes in here that I, as a, as the jury reading this book, I have to agree with her in the end.
- [69:41]
Robert Perry Crews
Did you disagree about consequences before?
- [69:43]
Jackie
No.
- [69:45]
Alan Haberman
And if I feel there was, if she were to ever do another example, I feel this is just for me. I feel like she would do a great job of adding a sort of like bow or another layer using like functional contextualism, which people weren't really talking about.
- [70:00]
Jackie
Yeah.
- [70:00]
Alan Haberman
At this time. But I feel like that would be a great, I mean she would be really good at explaining that mindset and tying consequences to that broader picture of functional contextualism.
- [70:12]
Diana Perry Cruz
Absolutely.
- [70:13]
Alan Haberman
Yeah.
- [70:14]
Jackie
Yeah.
- [70:14]
Robert Perry Crews
Well, I think it's, it also the book kind of reads like, like a really good keynote of. At the end of that keynote, you're not supposed to say, I've learned so much about top. You're supposed to say I am so excited about topic. I want to learn more. And, and I don't want to, I don't want to kind of denigrate the book and that there were so many examples. So if you want to drill down on a few of them, you're definitely going to be able to learn more. But I don't know if that's the point. I think the, the examples, the switching from animal to human, different context, different subjects, the, the quickness of the chapters I think really is more to just give everyone a, as thorough a flavor of how consequences impact lives than to teach any one of them to, to you. But you know, if you, you know, I, I know I personally was very excited to learn more about some of like the neurology piece, consequences related to genetics, because that's not something I, I often, you know, I don't think I've learned about that or really thought about that since graduate school. Usually it's more about consequences and you know, society, social behaviors. So that, that part was, I think probably the most I learned from the book in, in the way we think of learning from a book. A lot of good examples, a lot of good animal research. So there was a lot there. So, again, if you are a behavior analyst listening to this and you say, well, should I read this book? Because I will learn so much about consequences. I mean, you might, if. If, you know, you'll listen to the rest of this discussion and you might hear some parts that sound like a good kind of primer, great. But if you just sort of want to get an example of different ways to talk about consequences in a very thorough way, I think we. We had had fun with different sections of the book. And if you find a section you don't like, this book moves really fast. So don't worry, there'll be another anecdote or section that you'll be picking up very soon after. So it definitely moves in a way you don't think of.
- [71:58]
Diana Perry Cruz
Rob, do you want to tell us what those three sections are?
- [72:04]
Robert Perry Crews
Yes, I do. Are we all ready? Everyone good with their thoughts?
- [72:07]
Diana Perry Cruz
We are good. Yep.
- [72:08]
Robert Perry Crews
All right, so in terms of the makeup of the book, we've got three sections. There's one looking at sort of the biological picture of nature and nurture and how consequences impact us at a biological and a neurological and a genetic level. The second section looks a lot at schedules of reinforcement and impact on behavior. So that would sort of be the behavior analysis light section of the book. And then the final section is really on the applications of consequences in the lives of organisms at the individual, and then at the last chapter at the societal level. So again, kind of starting with individual interactions in a number of ways. So autism treatment, addiction treatment, social, you know, discrimination, and then climate and overfishing. Right. It starts getting at the big, big picture issues in the book. So, again, I think part one was the most interesting to me personally. Did. Did any of you have a part that you said that's the one that I would. If I. If I were going to reread a part that's the one I'd reread part one, probably. Then I made a face like, no, I know this. I don't need to. I'm moving on to the next book that. Was that out of your face?
- [73:18]
Jackie
No. I don't know if I had a favorite part, that's all.
- [73:20]
Robert Perry Crews
Okay.
- [73:21]
Alan Haberman
Yeah. I mean, I thought. I thought. Thought part three was just sort of interesting to see a broader application that so. And then part two, really just the behavior analysis light. It's nice to go back and be like, oh, yeah, there are people who maybe haven't had exposure to this, and I need to have their perspective on what these things mean.
- [73:45]
Robert Perry Crews
I. I think that was a challenge in reading the book, though, is we know everything that's in part two. Do you know? We know schedules of reinforcement. And while I don't know every example of animal research related to schedules of reinforcement, there's nothing brand new out of there. So for me, it was like, well, this is a fun way to explain it. This feels like it makes sense, but I don't know if it does because I can't take out our context of there. So that'll be something we can look at. We get there. All right, so part one, Consequences and how Nature Nurture Really Works. So the first chapter really gets into a lot of the origins of consequences and really talking about how. And I think this book definitely does this throughout. The idea of sort of humans are not some sort of like, magical creature that is. Has evolved to be beyond any of this. You know, much like the flatworm that 500 million years ago had the. The first. You know, what we'd consider high neural features can learn about consequences. So can you. You can do it too. If a flatworm can do it, you can as well. And you know, really this time at.
- [74:54]
Jackie
The tardigrade, though, because I just love that little guy.
- [74:57]
Robert Perry Crews
Can he. Does the tardigrade learn from consequences?
- [74:59]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Oh, of course.
- [74:59]
Jackie
Yeah. He's way more advanced than this flatworm, but he's just so adorable. Have you seen his picture?
- [75:04]
Robert Perry Crews
He's like a little bear.
- [75:05]
Jackie
He looks like a little teddy bear. So he's got a weird, like, alien suction face.
- [75:08]
Robert Perry Crews
He looks like Zuckus from Star Wars.
- [75:10]
Jackie
I know this is unrelated. I just wanted to talk about it.
- [75:13]
Robert Perry Crews
Okay. They. There are no tardigrade examples in this book.
- [75:16]
Jackie
So half a. Staring.
- [75:17]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah, half a star off. And then sort of going into the idea of. I mean, this chapter sort of just talks about the idea of like, wow, animals. Look at all these consequences. Look at this consequence. And that consequence from primordial times to the present.
- [75:32]
Jackie
Expected that she was a. A biologist or a chemist or something, not a mechanical engineer as her undergrad.
- [75:39]
Robert Perry Crews
Oh, yeah.
- [75:40]
Jackie
Well, just because there's like a. Or I don't know, an ethnologist or I don't know exactly what it would be, but she knows a lot about a lot.
- [75:50]
Diana Perry Cruz
She knows way more than I have ever imagined. Knowing this first, like, three chapters, I'm like, oh, and then when you went and looked at that, like, reference section, I was like, there's half the Book right there.
- [76:03]
Jackie
Yeah.
- [76:03]
Robert Perry Crews
Oh yeah.
- [76:03]
Jackie
There are so many studies that we have talked about on the show referenced in this book too, which was cool.
- [76:09]
Robert Perry Crews
And it does, I'm assuming it was to be more readable. It does not spend a lot of time saying here's a study, here's a citation you should read. It's sort of like, you know, my friend or this, you know, this scientist did a study with dolphins or this scientist did a study with butterflies or salt organ producing fruit fly. Right.
- [76:26]
Jackie
They just sort of like one sentence.
- [76:27]
Robert Perry Crews
Here you go. Yeah.
- [76:28]
Jackie
And then it'll have a little footnote. So you could, then you could go off on a whole tangent reading about all of the things that she's referencing, but she just references them like, like so quickly.
- [76:37]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah, well.
- [76:39]
Alan Haberman
And I feel like you could, especially chapter one, you could sum it up as. Selectionism is an essential idea to what consequences are. Even though they don't necessarily on the surface relate. They really are. Why selectionism. Selectionism matters. Which is like evolutionary selection is essential to behavior.
- [77:07]
Jackie
For sure. And you know, we're familiar with the three levels of selection in that sense. But other people reading this book might not be. And she doesn't get, she doesn't talk about it in that, in that way. But that is how it's structured.
- [77:18]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah, yeah.
- [77:19]
Alan Haberman
Between the anthropology, biology, evolutionary references, it's all referencing basically that.
- [77:27]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah, I did like in the first chapter, sort of the, the idea of sort of what are some, what are some context related to the consequences that all organisms seem to respond to and the idea of variety as a consequence, having choice or control as a consequence. So really thinking of sort of those higher order pieces because I think when we talk about consequences or I think most people, I mean working in education, when most people think of consequence, they're either saying A, a punishment in, in the kind of the old, the old sense of the word or B, oh, well, I'm giving them attempt paying attention or giving them a candy or yelling at it or giving them a toy. That kind of abc part of the consequence. Not really thinking more about consequence. As the environment shifts in the environment, what kind of components of the environment, how do you change quality?
- [78:14]
Jackie
Consequences.
- [78:14]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right?
- [78:15]
Robert Perry Crews
Yes, yes.
- [78:15]
Alan Haberman
Yeah.
- [78:16]
Jackie
But consequences are happening all the time, whether they're programmed or not.
- [78:22]
Robert Perry Crews
Exactly. But that's kind of the first chapter really. Just throwing out the idea of hey, these things are everywhere and all organisms respond. And here's some of the. The factors that play into consequences being repetitive or not and then moving into evolution, moving to the next Chapter. Anything that we missed on chapter one? I mean, again, this is not a book that we're going to be able to sort of like. And then some of the big thesis here, because it just moves. Here's a lot of examples around a theme.
- [78:51]
Jackie
Other than there being no tardigrades.
- [78:53]
Robert Perry Crews
No, no. Okay.
- [78:55]
Alan Haberman
No, I have to say there's a gene called Klingon because scientists have humor that I thought was worth mentioning.
- [79:02]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [79:03]
Robert Perry Crews
Was that in chapter one, the Klingon gene?
- [79:05]
Alan Haberman
I think so.
- [79:06]
Robert Perry Crews
I didn't write that one. Didn't make it in my notes.
- [79:09]
Diana Perry Cruz
You probably chuckled but didn't write it down.
- [79:12]
Robert Perry Crews
I don't even remember. I might not have picked it up.
- [79:15]
Jackie
Right. We didn't say that yet. She's really funny. And she talks in the beginning of this book about how one should vary their writing style. Right. To keep everyone's interest. And she kind of explains how to do that. And then she just demonstrates it throughout the whole book by doing exactly that. Yeah.
- [79:36]
Robert Perry Crews
All right, Moving into chapter two in the first part, Consequences and Evolution, the cause that Works Backward, which Sounds like a terrible 50s sci fi film. And, and this, this I really, I really did like, because there's so much nature nurture conversation that I think when an average person who sort of doesn't study behavior or study anthropology or study biology, it becomes one of those, well, it's in us. And that's what you're going to do. Right. And it just feels like that. Like that's very almost hardwired in our conversation about nature nurture. And I really like these next chapters in terms of looking at, well, yes, that's kind of true, but it's also not true. And it's a little more complex. But let me lay it out for you in ways that are good, fun examples that explain how it does work, but also works in different ways. So, you know, in terms of things like, you know, and here's an example. Duck mother imprinting call. A lot of birds, a lot of birds in this first section. And the idea of, well, even though nature would say that birds are born with the ability to imprint to their mother, it actually is related to the consequences of what sounds they heard ahead of time. And we can change how they imprint or don't imprint based on what sound, what bird calls they heard. So there's got to be a nature piece there, but there's also got to be a nurture piece because we can, we can, we can affect it as outsiders or as people changing the environment. So again, lots of examples like that, bird songs, different bird songs, butterflies. So again, butterflies prefer yellow at birth, but they can learn through consequences to find nectar based on the color of a flower that's not necessarily yellow. So again, there's that nature nurture pull.
- [81:20]
Diana Perry Cruz
I. I really appreciated the birds, the bird section here because I recently got into being a birder during the pandemic, and I bought a bird book and I'm just practicing bird calls and trying to identify the annoying bird that was waking me up in the middle of the night. It was a robin, by the way. Oh, okay. Yep. And I just appreciated how, you know, she. She brought it back to something that we might all kind of know about, right? These examples. She, like, set the stage, told us about the birds, and then we all kind of know about birds and bird songs. And, you know, the female and the male do different things for different consequences. And I just really love how she set it up. And it felt really relatable.
- [82:05]
Jackie
I. I felt like she was giving us examples that were of high interest to her.
- [82:11]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right.
- [82:11]
Jackie
Maybe she's best friends. Maybe. Yeah. But not. Not more best friends than you and me, though.
- [82:18]
Diana Perry Cruz
No, no, absolutely not.
- [82:19]
Jackie
No, no, no.
- [82:20]
Diana Perry Cruz
100.
- [82:20]
Jackie
Good.
- [82:20]
Robert Perry Crews
Just checking that one's genetic. That's not a consequence.
- [82:25]
Jackie
But like I was saying, like, I feel like not many people could. Could have written this book. Right. And I. I'm coming away from it thinking that just because I feel like I know a lot about her through this book by the examples that she has chosen to provide to us. And I don't know, she just seems really like unapologetically herself throughout this book, which I just really loved.
- [82:56]
Diana Perry Cruz
Awesome.
- [82:57]
Robert Perry Crews
I think when in this chapter we start talking about evolution and selection pressures, is that something that everyone here had already thought about in terms of kind of consequences? Because reading this, it was like, yes, this is how I think of evolution. Selection pressures must have to do with consequences, though. I don't know if I ever verbalized it or vocalized it as, ah, it's another type of consequence. So much as just sort of what I learned in science class of like, well, you know, evolution selects based on who can survive. But I never really put it together. It's like, yes, and that survival is a consequence in terms of who can access more of a resource, who can breed more. So I sort of never thought about it in terms of consequences. Like, that's the science I do versus just like a separate biology. Thing that I happened to know was, did anyone else feel that way? Or that's just me.
- [83:48]
Diana Perry Cruz
That's you?
- [83:49]
Jackie
No, that's just me. You know, that's what we teach is these levels of selection. So there's selection by phylogeny, which is like based on genetics and then there's selection of ontogeny which is based on behavior of the individual and then there's selection at the cultural level. So to me they're all tied together. But I think that the, the idea that gets misplaced here is that there is something that an animal or a species is evolving toward.
- [84:20]
Alan Haberman
Right.
- [84:21]
Jackie
As though there is some ideal version of that species. And when that the species gets to that version, then they're going to stay there. Right. But there's no, there's no forward planning in evolution. It's just the current genes that are presented and what is selected for best through. Through evolution based on what is currently available. And then random mutations could occur that end up being more advantageous and then those genes get selected for. But it does, it's not. There's no like pre planned system going on here.
- [84:58]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right.
- [84:58]
Jackie
Which I think can get tangled up in the idea of evolution. It's just like whatever is out there, the best, the best version is going to get picked if it's important.
- [85:08]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right. You know, I think that's also how people see when they talk about reinforcement too.
- [85:13]
Robert Perry Crews
Right.
- [85:15]
Diana Perry Cruz
Where you know, reinforcement. When we provide reinforcement, we're reinforcing the selected past. Right. We don't know if this point, it will then increase the future likelihood of the behavior because it's not the behavior yet.
- [85:26]
Alan Haberman
Right.
- [85:26]
Diana Perry Cruz
It hasn't happened. The future hasn't happened yet. So like this consequences. I I don't know who told me this once, but I think I used to think like you Rob, until someone said this like we're only selecting based on the past. And I was like, oh, maybe that was like a few years ago when I was probably teaching it incorrectly. But I felt that I, I see parallels with how we feel with consequences versus how we think with like reinforcement and punishment. Right.
- [85:58]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [85:59]
Alan Haberman
I was just gonna say Robbie really should read Evolution and Contextual Behavior Science because I think it'll like. It's a good book that'll help. Help you have a general about that just help you in general. Definitely. But just given the thing things you're interested in, I think that would help. But no, I just referring back to the book here, I think what I really enjoy about this, this chapter too is they just. She hints at some ethology and some information science of like the signals. And that's something else that we don't appreciate in our field enough in the skill acquisition of becoming a behavior analyst that, like. No, that there are. That, like, we. Part of our mammalian brain involves a lot of signal processing for both biological reasons. And then we can. We can abstract that away and talk about information science. But, like, there's a pretty good section about, like, signals that she tops off the chapter, and it's really, really, I think, interesting and. And a good, good couple pages.
- [87:14]
Robert Perry Crews
All right. And did you know that there is apparently a theory that the Cambrian explosion, in which there was just this huge variety of creatures evolving, potentially may have occurred due to the evolution of the learning through consequences itself? That kind of blew my mind that that was even a thought of, like, wait, consequences was an evolutionary step or learning from consequences was an evolutionary step. Wow. But that makes sense in terms of. Well, creatures had to evolve to have enough of a neural pathway to be able to process information and then show signs of learning through stimulation around them. But. But that was. That was pretty neat.
- [87:54]
Jackie
Yeah, pretty neat. Like, our kids have these little things called hex bugs. Do you guys know what those are? Yes. Alan looks sad.
- [88:04]
Dr. Susan Schneider
No, I.
- [88:05]
Jackie
Like, they're, like little robot things that are shaped like bugs, right? And they are a robot. They. And. But they're just. They're just powered by a battery, right? So the battery just makes them, like, buzz around. And so if they. They just buzz around and if they hit into something, then they will respond and they'll, like, just kick themselves back, basically, and, like, go in a new direction. But they're. So my kids, like, put them in these mazes that they make and try to get them through the maze. But there's. It's frustrating because there's no learning that occurs with these little guys, right? So they can't see what they're doing, and they will just keep bumping in and bumping in and bumping into the same spot or, like, go through the. The pathway and then turn themselves around and go back out of the maze the wrong direction, etc. And I know, like, it's just interesting to look at them and think, like, there is so much that goes into even, like, the tiniest little organisms that can respond to stimuli around them. It involves discrimination and it involves learning, which you don't necessarily think about until you watch something like this, which clearly has none of those components and see, like, how ineffective it is at behavior. Leaving. See, I brought it around.
- [89:22]
Robert Perry Crews
Just responds. You either create the maze that can move through or you don't. All right, so moving on to the next chapter on genes and consequences. And again, I think we kind of talked in the, in the intro section about this first section kind of having the most, either novel or at least not recently reviewed information. But talking about Genesis again, I think it took a lot of information that I knew about genes, about the genome, about chromosomes, and combined it with what I know about human behavior. And I realized that these things can go together in a way that I probably, you know, none of it felt like, yes, I've never heard anything close to this before, but I don't think I've seen it sort of laid out this way. Just this idea that our genes aren't that dissimilar than any other organism and how our proteins are expressed through our genes and our gene codes. Certainly that is something that will just happen from a biological standpoint. But how so much of the environment and the consequences of the environment will determine which of our genes get expressed, how they get expressed, whether they get fully expressed or differently expressed, and how just that level of variety or selection at that level will impact development over time for certain organisms, like the fruit fly, but even for us will impact sort of, you know, different components of our own development cycle and our own, you know, our own development.
- [90:45]
Diana Perry Cruz
One thing I love is the opening. It says, we share half of our genes with the banana. That means. And then I thought that the titles in this, the subtitles in this chapter were on point, meet your genome getting turned on. Like, those were funny.
- [91:03]
Jackie
She's really funny.
- [91:08]
Robert Perry Crews
I know. One example was, I mean, they, they had a bunch of gene examples. There was no Klingon gene, I don't think in this, in this chapter. No, I was wrong.
- [91:16]
Alan Haberman
It was in this.
- [91:17]
Robert Perry Crews
It wasn't this. Oh, was it in this? Okay, I remember. I know that the one I wrote that was interesting was the, the cfos gene where, you know, you'd have your two. You'd have two rats and they do an obstacle course. And one would just learn to do an obstacle course through, you know, operant conditioning. They get a reward for moving through some sort of chaining process. And then one just sort of would run around for the same amount of time as the first rat. Just sort of running, running around and running around with no learning. There was no learning. They just ran around. And then at some point they stopped running around and this through that, they.
- [91:50]
Jackie
Could observe the maze.
- [91:51]
Robert Perry Crews
Yes, yes.
- [91:52]
Jackie
Right.
- [91:52]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah, yeah.
- [91:53]
Alan Haberman
And there was a control group, group that. Don't forget that.
- [91:56]
Robert Perry Crews
Oh, yes. And when learning from consequences occurred, this gene, the cfos gene, would Be turned on. But when there was no learning involved, even though it was the same amount of sort of same topographical movement access, that gene wasn't expressed. Which. That. That part kind of blew my mind. The idea of just something as simple as, like, running through a maze or not running through a maze with the same consequences at play would impact gene expression. But, wow, when you think about it that way, yeah, I guess consequences sure are important. And then I stopped reading because I learned my lesson. They're important.
- [92:33]
Diana Perry Cruz
I mean, it hits all those three levels of selection. Right. So it's just a really nice demonstration, these early chapters of how the interplay across three levels really affects behavior at all levels.
- [92:47]
Alan Haberman
Right.
- [92:51]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right.
- [92:51]
Alan Haberman
But it's also. It has to happen. Like, there has to be a biological mechanism for why consecration works across. And it just. It's one of those, oh, this is apparently how it does, at least in the motor cortex. It has to do with gene expression. So it's also a. What. It has to be that way, like, for our.
- [93:13]
Dr. Susan Schneider
For.
- [93:13]
Alan Haberman
For selectionism and evolution and us as biological creatures to be affected by consecration, there has to be a biological component. It's not magic. And so she gives us a little peek into the window of that.
- [93:28]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right.
- [93:29]
Jackie
We have to be sensitive to contingency.
- [93:32]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [93:33]
Alan Haberman
All the way down to our genome.
- [93:34]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah.
- [93:37]
Jackie
Fascinating.
- [93:38]
Robert Perry Crews
Do you think there's a reason that she went from gene and then. I don't want to jump ahead if people want to talk more about genes, but I thought the chapter four on neuroscience and consequences, that while in some ways, I mean, I think I kind of brought it all home, that when you think about it, as important as our brains are, the idea of evolution and genes feel like more important than because we can't have genes. We can't have brains without genes. We can't have genes without evolution. But I guess we started big and we get more specific. Right.
- [94:07]
Alan Haberman
But I was like. But I think. I think it does make sense because, I mean, for our current concept of what learning is and by, like, gene expression in the, like, brain and nervous system affects us, Affects us as individuals and us as practitioners, because we help people often who have differences in the way that their genes are expressed through their nervous and neurological systems.
- [94:38]
Robert Perry Crews
So, I mean, how did folks feel about this chapter specifically? Because I know we've talked in the past about, you know, people love hearing explanations based on, well, your brain and your brain pathways. And I think most people can name, like, one or two parts of the brain, and those are the ones that get brought up all the time. And I personally get a little tired of the oversimplicity of how brains work to describe everything. I think it lends itself to either too much mentalism or to blaming brain organs for behavior in ways that, while I feel the goal is to take the blame off of an individual for being, like, good or bad, also misses the other point of, well, if you put it in the brain, where's the teaching going to come out? You know, Then it just feels like it's hopeless. It's in their brain. What could you do? I don't think this chapter did that at all, but sort of. What were your general thoughts about your feelings about neuroscience, your feelings about describing behavior through brain pathways and your, Your.
- [95:41]
Alan Haberman
Your.
- [95:41]
Robert Perry Crews
Your backgrounds and your learning history about behavior? Like, how did this chapter come off for all of you?
- [95:47]
Diana Perry Cruz
I can tell you that I did a little digging because I was looking at this and I said, oh, I wonder if this was the time when the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior started to publish neuroscientific studies. And it was. So this is like when this book was written, like, probably a few years earlier than when this book was published. This was the time when you started to see studies in the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior looking at fmris, looking at brainwaves and how. And when consequences are applied, how that changes the brain and the neural pathways. So, so it makes.
- [96:30]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Sorry.
- [96:31]
Diana Perry Cruz
So it makes sense that. That this chapter would lead after the gene chapter, because this was relevant at the time that the book was written and this was something that people were talking about in the field, albeit maybe not applied researchers, but definitely basic researchers. And, and basic. I guess there's no basic clinicians, but, you know, basic researchers and those translational researchers were talking about this at the time.
- [97:00]
Alan Haberman
Well, and I think she also just really highlights why neuroscience is where consequent, like the science of consequences plays out the most, because this is where she highlights, like, the use of methylphenidate. And she comes back to the CFOs, and she, like, she's just talking really about, like, stuff that happens with consequences really tends to happen in the brain or be very important in the brain. And here's all these reasons why that really, all of us, I mean, people might not be familiar with CFOs, but they get the. Can get the basic premise. And then, oh, people know about ADHD or have a con. Have. And have a sense of that like a stimulant affects behavior. So I think it's a very reasonable sort of jump that she's making to be like, and this is the next most important sort of area to talk about.
- [97:55]
Diana Perry Cruz
And you cannot forget the cutest mouse on page 62 is the cutest little mouse picture I've ever seen. I'm reading along and I literally turn the page and I go, so, yeah.
- [98:10]
Jackie
There'S little cartoon drawings in this book.
- [98:12]
Robert Perry Crews
I know. It was usually when I. When I read these books, you get, like, tables, or you have graphs, or you have maybe more kind of scientifically labeled pictures. But now it's just kind of pictures of, Here's a. There's a dolphin and someone waving at the dolphin.
- [98:29]
Jackie
Illustrations by Renee Reyes.
- [98:32]
Robert Perry Crews
Renee Reyes. Okay, but they're just.
- [98:35]
Jackie
They're just like, she also draw the picture. I was thinking that too.
- [98:38]
Diana Perry Cruz
And I was like, if she did, I want this, and I would make it as a T shirt.
- [98:44]
Jackie
Well, either way, it's adorable.
- [98:45]
Diana Perry Cruz
Page 62, adorable, adorable little animal eating what looks to be Cheerios. It's probably not, but so everyone can see it. And I would make this into a T shirt.
- [98:59]
Jackie
You know, I mean, we always talk about, like, the circuit. Circuitous nature of reinforcement. Right? So you provide reinforcement and increases behavior. Why did it increase your behavior? Because it was a reinforcer. So we. We do run into the danger of defining a behavior through its process and utilizing that same definition. To me, having a window into what's happening in the brain helps us avoid that type of securities. Circuitous definition. Right? Because for different folks, things may operate as better reinforcers or less of a reinforcer or coming in with a stronger EO to potentially act as a reinforcer. Right. And the reasoning for that is going to be related to genetic differences and neurotransmitter differences in the brain and the effects of different reinforcers. It could be different across individuals due to the way in which those consequences produce different neurotransmitters in the brain. So to me, I don't have an issue with this. I mean, if Skinner were here today, he wouldn't say, don't look inside the brain. He just said before, we didn't have the technology to do so. But consequences are operating at whatever level, whether they're visible to us overtly or covertly.
- [100:31]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right.
- [100:31]
Jackie
And the same issue for stimuli that are inside and outside of the skin and behavior that's occurring inside and outside of the skin as well. So it's an artificial barrier.
- [100:41]
Diana Perry Cruz
On. On page 71. It's like the last paragraph. I know you love that, Rob. When they, like, take it home and she's like, B.F. skinner and others noted long ago that neuroscientists studying behavior would not get far without partnering with X expert who understand fundamental behavior principles. Science of consequence will be enhanced by the new neuroscience discoveries. But the principles of consequence hold just as they always have.
- [101:06]
Robert Perry Crews
Well, this is, this is the kind of neuroscience and, and discussion of, of, you know, neuro behavior that I like, where there is a through line of here's how the brain works and it leads to behavior, and here's how behavior impacts the brain. And there's just sort of that back and forth. What, what I find frustrating is like you said, Diana, when we sort of are just like, this is too complicated, let's just ignore the brain, which is no good, or the flip side of who cares about behavior? The brain is firing, therefore we do these things because of brain. That's, that's sort of where I, I don't like either one of those options. And I did find this chapter really, really fascinating in terms of the combination of both. And we've talked about other, you know, we've talked about Sidman working with neuroscientists back in the day. So this isn't new to the field, but it does feel like one of those areas where I guess 20, 2012 is when we started kind of getting back into, into building those relationships and building that collaboration more, at least publicly.
- [102:08]
Alan Haberman
And if I, if I had to sort of, as we've talked, I've realized why I think her writing about neuroscience is more enjoyable and less frustrating than some of what you mentioned. Rob, if she does a very good job of just sticking to correlation, she never says, and this causes this a hundred percent of the time, which always behave. That feels very comfortable to us as behavior scientists, behavioral behavior analysts, because we know that that's correlation is the best we get. So. And she does a lot of. This is interesting. And here's a correlation with a strong implication. And then if we go up the ladder a little bit, here's another correlation that's really, really important. Don't forget this. So I think that's another strength of her writing, especially in this section. She's just giving you really good correlational information.
- [103:06]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [103:08]
Robert Perry Crews
All right. So that gets into consequences on the scale of the developing organism. Let's move on to part two, called There's a Science of Consequences question mark, which is an odd title for part two, because I've already read a third of your book, Dr. Schneider. I'm pretty sure that's. I figured that was part of it.
- [103:27]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right.
- [103:29]
Robert Perry Crews
And this is sort of the behavior analysis light section of the book. So I don't know if we. We want to go. I mean, we can. We'll say a chapter and kind of name some things that we liked about it, but we probably don't need to go into as much depth. But this might be a great time for folks because there are so many anecdotes, experiments for us to name a couple, like either per chapter, per section, you know, or a few total, that we really enjoyed that we thought captured the idea of. I want to explain how consequences work to someone who's not in this field. Which of these examples or which of these do I think would have done the best job if I had to pull one out and say, you know, I read recently and I think this captures the idea. So chapter five talks about schedules, consequences on schedule. Simple principles with surprising outcomes. I know one thing I was shocked at is I really expected this to be. There are many types of schedules. Here are some examples. And then maybe at some point have a table with like, all right, we're going to talk about mixed schedules and contiguous schedule. And Nope, not. It's just sort of at some point they're like, by the way, a bunch of schedules. Here they are. I didn't name them. They just all kind of do different things.
- [104:35]
Alan Haberman
I just, I love the. In the very first page, he hints at the fact that none of us, no matter how strongly you might think you understand the principle of consequences, you can be affected by your behavior can be affected by consequences and you not realize it. And I think that is a fact about consequences that is taken for granted, not even taken for granted. That is ignored by so many in our field and in related fields where like, what matters is, does the behavior change in relation to the consequences, not is the person aware of the consequence? It's like, well, that's not the principle that we're using. We're just like, we know that applying consequences can change behavior and if we do it in an ethical, responsible way, we can get socially acceptable outcomes. And I like. She basically lays that out on the first page in a very subtle way. And I appreciate that.
- [105:33]
Diana Perry Cruz
I also appreciate how she combines some of the schedules that animals will adhere to and then how that might be changed when. When there's like the idea of. Of language that comes in. I think that sometimes is forgotten when people talk about schedules that we're always going to follow. Like the FR schedule. We're always going to follow the VI schedule, right? But then with language comes in rule governed behavior and it makes a little more Wonky, I guess.
- [106:05]
Robert Perry Crews
I sort of like the arbitrary nature of some of the rules that are created. I don't think it was this chapter. I'm trying to find it in my notes, which chapter it was. But the idea of someone in the study, it was one of those sort of like you're going to earn tokens or you're going to earn something by pressing the button or doing some sort of arbitrary task. And how, even though the point of it, the point of the study was to sort of look at like matching law or something, this guy just made up a rule about. We know. I think the point of the study is you're going to see will I do this horrible task for longer than anyone. So the consequence I'm getting out of this is I think I'm going to show everyone that I'm the best participant that you have. And this guy's just like blowing the day. The scientist, he's not actually getting anything fun from it. Yeah, it's a persistent way later that's.
- [106:49]
Jackie
Like chapter 12 or something.
- [106:50]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah, but, but, but I mean it's, it's a little similar to the beginning, but, but that idea too, of, of just, just because we have. Yeah, like, like you were saying, Jack, just we have schedules of reinforcement doesn't mean people don't just respond in different ways. And why would that be? And then we get a little bit into why, you know, how we can only pay attention to so many things.
- [107:08]
Jackie
I think that's why Allan is saying that he'd love to see an update here that really brings in like a larger contextual perspective, because that's absolutely. What she's getting at here is that our behavior is not just easily going to adhere to a simple schedule of reinforcement because there are no simple schedules of reinforcement in place. We're all responding to multiple schedules at any given time in the context of larger conditional discriminations and rule governed behavior, etc. So it's, you know, the way behavior operates is simple on its face, but we're never operating in a pristine clinical environment.
- [107:51]
Diana Perry Cruz
Though the one little tidbit that I loved in this chapter was when she was talking about, okay, if you figured out, you know, like how so many people don't know the schedules are existing, but if you can figure it out, then you can more intelligently enjoy the reinforcer in exchange for less effort. And then she's like, like. But oddly, the feeling of victory afterwards is often fleeting, followed by a letdown and a pause. I just like that. And I like, I have Felt that I have been there, Susan. That has been my life.
- [108:21]
Robert Perry Crews
Well, like they say, Jackie, on page 83, wisdom is knowing when the consequence is worth the effort.
- [108:27]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right. I know. It's just like, I liked that too, because then it was like. It doesn't mean the consequence wasn't effective. It just. That's the schedule. Right. That you're on. And so there's that post reinforcement pause there. But I like how she brings that, like, real worth in. And that's my favorite in chapter five.
- [108:48]
Robert Perry Crews
Moving on, chapter six, the Dark side of Consequences.
- [108:52]
Diana Perry Cruz
I hope, I hope that these were all like shower thoughts. Right. Or like long walk thoughts. Like, I hope that she wrote the book and then she was like, no, I'm going to rename these chapters and subtitles because they're like on point. If she just wrote them down first time, I'm a little mad at her because it seems like they're too good. So I'm hoping that's something you can, we can ask her is if she had to revise the subtitles a ton.
- [109:20]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah.
- [109:20]
Jackie
I mean, I think this book reflects a lifetime of thinking and observation.
- [109:24]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah, you're right.
- [109:25]
Jackie
You can't just write, you know, sit down and write this thing.
- [109:28]
Alan Haberman
Yeah.
- [109:28]
Robert Perry Crews
And I thought this chapter, at least from the beginning, was really just going to be about sort of like it's like a coercion and it's fallout light. And parts of it were. But that wasn't exactly the point. It almost took a, you know, like a 50,000 foot view of the dark side of consequences. Not as if they were necessarily evil or bad or wrong, but that they exist and they can lead to behavior just like any other consequence. And whether that is good or bad is related to the context in which it happens, not that the fact that it happens.
- [110:02]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah. And this chapter also, I was pulling it back in 2015. There was an article by Baron and Galizio, I think that was published in the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior. And it was about like, is. Is negative reinforcement necessarily bad or is, you know, like, that was like the whole chapter and how talking about negative reinforcements everywhere and people usually assume and you assume it's like a bad thing, but if we can learn to work around it. So then when I read this article, when I read this chapter, I was like, oh, you read Baron and Galicia white bad because it had a very similar ring. Or maybe that's what people were talking about at that time. But it had, it was that. It was like this chapter, that article were like on a straight Path, which is cool. I don't think she mentioned it, but maybe she did.
- [110:51]
Jackie
Well, if it was 2015, it would have been after.
- [110:53]
Diana Perry Cruz
Oh, yeah, right.
- [110:55]
Jackie
But maybe there was a predecessor article that.
- [110:57]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah, maybe.
- [110:59]
Alan Haberman
And I also think she hit hints at in this chapter. And again, I think this goes back to my wish for functional contextualism, that verbal behavior about consequences can change our responsiveness to those reinforcers in a really dark way. So it's just like, oh, Rob. Like, every time I see Rob, he. You know, he's always so friendly, and he gives me, like, a piece of candy out of his pocket because he's so friendly. But then if I were to find out that it's because he's trying to affect my pathway on the way to work through behavioral modification, I'm probably like, screw Rob. I don't want his stupid candy anymore.
- [111:36]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Because it's.
- [111:37]
Robert Perry Crews
And.
- [111:37]
Alan Haberman
And the only difference is that I now have, like, additional information. Like, I have verbal behavior to apply, and it changes the context. And she hints at that in that sometimes something that seems good, you can get, like, gossip can turn a friend into an enemy and things like that. And I think that that's, again, something that we. We do not consider often enough in our field. And she does a good job at sprinkling that kind of information in.
- [112:05]
Jackie
Yeah. And one of these chapters, she quotes Hamlet and saying there's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so as well.
- [112:13]
Diana Perry Cruz
This chapter, it is this one.
- [112:14]
Robert Perry Crews
That's a Shakespeare quote.
- [112:15]
Jackie
I'm on point.
- [112:16]
Robert Perry Crews
Just telling you. Just want to sound smart, you know?
- [112:18]
Jackie
Thanks.
- [112:20]
Alan Haberman
Well, you don't. I mean, sorry. Never mind.
- [112:24]
Robert Perry Crews
The bard. You might have heard.
- [112:26]
Jackie
God, I have to go.
- [112:30]
Alan Haberman
Yeah, negative reinforcement. Speaking of, I'm gonna log out.
- [112:32]
Robert Perry Crews
Bye.
- [112:34]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Oh, wait.
- [112:35]
Robert Perry Crews
That can't be the best example of negative reinforcement. What did you all think about the owner who put a bunch of mousetraps on his couch so that his dog would not sit on the couch? And what happened is the dog learned. If I put a blanket on the couch, I can set off all the traps and then sleep on the couch anyway.
- [112:51]
Jackie
That's amazing.
- [112:52]
Robert Perry Crews
You can teach your dog how to, like, rearrange furniture. I mean, negative reinforcement can't be all bad.
- [113:00]
Jackie
It's a smart dog.
- [113:01]
Robert Perry Crews
I don't remember.
- [113:02]
Jackie
Terrible.
- [113:03]
Robert Perry Crews
Figure that one out.
- [113:04]
Jackie
I can't believe the owner would have done that. That's horrible.
- [113:06]
Robert Perry Crews
It seems like a lot of work for a very small problem.
- [113:11]
Diana Perry Cruz
People do that. People will do that if they don't want their dog to get on the like, countertop. They'll line them with mousetraps or with tin foil. With cats, too. And it's supposed to, like, scare them off. I just think that my dogs, if they get scared, they're never coming into that room again. So I'm like, you'll just be somewhere else. You'll. You won't be in the house anymore.
- [113:32]
Jackie
With tinfoil. They just don't like the sound.
- [113:35]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah.
- [113:36]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Or.
- [113:36]
Diana Perry Cruz
I don't know. I don't. I don't have cats, so it's reflective.
- [113:40]
Alan Haberman
Maybe.
- [113:40]
Diana Perry Cruz
I don't know. I haven't done it because my dogs don't get on the counter.
- [113:45]
Jackie
Well, your dogs are big.
- [113:47]
Robert Perry Crews
I know.
- [113:48]
Diana Perry Cruz
They could just, like, go like this.
- [113:51]
Jackie
Are you standing up?
- [113:52]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah.
- [113:53]
Jackie
Okay.
- [113:54]
Diana Perry Cruz
All right. Chapter seven.
- [113:56]
Robert Perry Crews
Chapter seven, Choices and signals.
- [114:01]
Diana Perry Cruz
I'm impressed that she brought in the matching law here and did it in a way that I understood. Matching law. Like, we should just reread this little section, because I find the matching law sometimes easy. And then I read it again, and I'm like, what? And I get confused when they, like, pull out all of the big equations and when they talk about, you know, k. And I get nervous. But this was a beautiful summation of the matching law. So if you have, like, supervisees and you have this book, like, print this off. It's nice.
- [114:33]
Jackie
I actually read it, and then at the end was like, are we talking about the matching law? And I went ahead and went, go back up.
- [114:39]
Robert Perry Crews
I think she does.
- [114:40]
Dr. Susan Schneider
She names.
- [114:40]
Robert Perry Crews
She names matching law. She says matching law at some point.
- [114:42]
Diana Perry Cruz
So what can.
- [114:44]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah, yeah.
- [114:46]
Jackie
But it was smooth. It was so smooth.
- [114:48]
Robert Perry Crews
I liked her example of the matching law, as when you're watching tv, and her example is there's two shows, A baseball game and a nature documentary. And you're going to switch between the two based on what's happening in each. So it's like, oh, they're changing pictures. They're warming up. I'm going to watch the nature documentary. Documentary. Oh, it's. It's an ad. I'm gonna go back to the baseball game. Oh, look, they're. They're doing something exciting. And that's my. I think that's my favorite matching law example of switching between channels, which now you can't do because now you have to switch between streaming services. That takes too long. The response efforts too high. So you're just gonna sit there and watch whatever slop is on.
- [115:22]
Jackie
Well, you could watch one on your phone and one on the big tv.
- [115:25]
Robert Perry Crews
Oh, okay. Maybe that's the new matching Logs on my phone and the TV.
- [115:29]
Alan Haberman
Or you switch between Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok. If the algorithm stops. Stops being so good, you just switch between apps.
- [115:40]
Diana Perry Cruz
My algorithm right now, I don't know where it came from. It's hilarious.
- [115:45]
Jackie
Mine's crap. Yes.
- [115:48]
Diana Perry Cruz
Mine's like homesteaders.
- [115:52]
Jackie
Which.
- [115:52]
Diana Perry Cruz
I mean, cool gardeners, which. I don't have a garden. It's just a very interesting.
- [116:00]
Alan Haberman
Yeah, but maybe it's because it's novel stimuli that's. That's enriching for you.
- [116:05]
Diana Perry Cruz
It's not. I'm turning it off. I'm like, okay.
- [116:06]
Robert Perry Crews
I don't. I don't trust the algorithm to think about behavior that way so much as, like, what. What are they.
- [116:11]
Diana Perry Cruz
The only thing that they have right is puppies.
- [116:13]
Robert Perry Crews
What lever are we pushing the most? And that's what we're gonna. We're gonna give you.
- [116:18]
Jackie
It makes it so you can't, like, hate watch anything because then it thinks you like it.
- [116:22]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah, that's true.
- [116:26]
Robert Perry Crews
Speaking of hate watching things, various signals. That's also in this chapter, discussions of. Of whether, you know, humans like things that are signaled or not. I like that. I did appreciate sort of the discussion of signals and the idea of how that impacts our choice. You know, the example of rats who will actually choose signaled, mild shocks over unsignaled, less intense mild shocks because there's a sense of that control. Or that's one reason. I mean, that's one possible reason that's not necessarily right. And how that can. You know, what signals we have signals for. Human signals of completion can be important. You know, the example of. And I love this because I always wonder this myself, so I appreciate it. That was in this book, the idea of, do people give more money when they see the. Like, our church needs a new roof thermometer, or our school needs new playground equipment thermometer. And it's clearly like 100 bucks. And their goal is 10,000. Do people give more money because they feel bad? Like, that's terrible, or do they give more money when it was at zero, and then the next day they come by and it's at like, 7,000? Is that when they give? And it does seem like research would tell us it's probably more of the. No, people want to give money when it's gone from nothing to something high and it's getting closer to the goal? Like, that is more of the signal. You attend to that more, and that might change your behavior. To donate versus the. Look how pathetic that drive is going. Let's just keep on going. Let's not give them any money. They'll never make it. So those are the kinds of signals I'm most interested in and I'm glad they were examples in this chapter. Any other signals or anecdotes or choices that then you noted?
- [118:12]
Diana Perry Cruz
I did like, I did like they said like with the matching law too is like dieters will avoid commercials that talk about rich foods.
- [118:21]
Alan Haberman
Right.
- [118:21]
Diana Perry Cruz
And smokers will steal, will steal clear of the, the smoking hangouts and they'll allocate their responding to other places because of the negative connotation. Right. That they're not going to receive reinforcement in those in those areas. So I like that. I like those examples.
- [118:40]
Robert Perry Crews
I think the smoker example, Jay, that goes into kind of the next, into the next chapter as well.
- [118:44]
Diana Perry Cruz
Well, you know what the smoker example was the last paragraph, bringing it into chapter eight.
- [118:51]
Robert Perry Crews
What I did not recognize that.
- [118:53]
Dr. Susan Schneider
That's great.
- [118:55]
Robert Perry Crews
Well, let's, let's go to chapter eight. Pavlov and Consequences. An essential partnership. So this chapter is all about classical conditioning, which I appreciate a review of classical conditioning every now and again because she mentions in the book that sometimes it can be hard to discriminate. Is this classical conditioning? Is this operant conditioning? Because they sort of all go hand in hand. It's sort of like we were talking about with like, well, is this the brain causing this behavior or is it the consequences? Well, it's kind of a little bit of everything. It's a melange, if you will. And when we talk about classical conditioning, certainly we're talking about, you know, the response of kind of reflexes, so unlearned behavior being cued by some stimulus in the environment. But how, even in that context, it's not so simple. It's like, well, it's the knee jerk reaction. And that's it. That's all we have. Because something like emotional behavior, while that would. Would fall under classical conditioning, it also can come under operant control as well based on signals. So it's all kind of a mix mix mashup, which was really fun to read about. I don't know how much someone who doesn't know the differences or think about the differences would have cared as much or whether they would have just focused on some of the examples.
- [120:10]
Jackie
Right. Because it's not as simplistic as operant behavior is learned. Right. And everything else is reflexive behavior because learned behavior can be operant or response. But with operant behavior, we're going to see changes in behavior based on contingencies that are provided. And with respondent behavior, it is largely going to be elicited by the stimulus once that relation is established. So that sometimes I think can get oversimplified in people's minds. I don't know if that was your question that you asked. This was the chapter that had that super sad example about the dad ODing. Right. Because they, he got the opioid medicine in a different location.
- [120:59]
Robert Perry Crews
Yes.
- [121:00]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right.
- [121:01]
Robert Perry Crews
Which is, which is kind of one of those sad, you know, that folks in recovery can get told like, listen, you haven't been on drugs in a while. If you take them in a new place, you're going to, you're very likely to OD because you're taking more than your body can handle here. Whereas if you were home, it could take that, you know, because you've setting. Yeah, the set that setting. I think I know. One of the examples I liked was looking at the placebo effect as kind of respondent behavior in that your brain, you know, here, you're going to get this medicine, it's going to make you feel better. Yes. In some ways that is respondent because your brain just fires in pain centers the same way whether you're told you're going to have something. But it can't just be a reflex because a lot of that also is based on the history you have with doctors giving you something and saying, take this and you'll feel better. And it having some sort of an active ingredient that leads to your feeling better. So it's sort of a little bit of everything needs to be a part of that placebo effect. It's not just one or the other. And I don't know, when you start trying to break that, then I feel like I try to play the game of like, yeah, but which one is this? Which one is here? And then it just, is that just one of those questions of like, don't bother. It's not worth, just appreciate. It's all there.
- [122:23]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah, I think it's hard. I, I, I am like that too, Rob. And all of the examples I try to like tease it apart and say, okay, like what part of this is respondent? What part of this is operant? But I think like most of it's operant. We can say that, right? Most of it's operant. But the internal bodily sensations usually are more reflexive. But it's still too hard, right? It's still too hard to like tease them apart. So I don't think, no.
- [122:50]
Alan Haberman
And I, and I think that they, they give the example of the rats who are allergic to egg whites. That's paired with flashing lights. And then the flashing lights induce a similar immune response. And that, I mean, that people, I think some people are like, oh, well, that's like classical conditioning. Like. Well, no, that seems related to like a stress response based on learned history.
- [123:15]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right.
- [123:16]
Alan Haberman
Like. Right. So like, I think that, no, I think that that's probably stress and a strong enough stress to. But yeah, so it's really hard to like, those are, those are good examples of. Those are verbal models we have for types of conditioning that maybe in application are important to remember but might not always be clear cut.
- [123:40]
Robert Perry Crews
I mean, I think when we talk about the differences, I feel like when it was first introduced to me back in, you know, like early psychology classes, it was sort of to try to teach the idea of like, well, one is sort of about like learning and one is sort of just like, I don't know, it just happens. They're paired together. There's nothing you can do about it. Which is not, not really true. It's slightly true, but it's not really true. Nor is it really relevant as to why would you discriminate between the two types of conditioning. Clearly this, you know, both of them will happen whether you're planning for them or not. So it's more about just sort of having an understanding of the development of these contingencies. But who cares to some extent when it, when it comes down to how is this impacting and helping people?
- [124:23]
Alan Haberman
I feel like in this section, if she had talked about salience, which is something we don't talk about a lot in our field, like it's in there, it's in the Cooper. I just was reviewing it. But they basically say salience is determined by the organism. So it's kind of hard to know what's going to be salient until the organism has responded to the, to the environment. I feel like this would have been a good section for that because I feel like this is that, that what is a salient signal. This would have squared right into this, this area in terms of just like wishing. If I wanted to use this to teach more advanced students something, man, this would have been a great chapter to like have had someone give an external perspective on that for.
- [125:09]
Dr. Susan Schneider
True.
- [125:09]
Jackie
And then she does go on and talk about like differential observing response and things like that, which I think can or should be tied into salience, but.
- [125:19]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right. Yeah, they talked about that a lot.
- [125:22]
Jackie
In chapter nine, which we could move into. Yeah. I would just want to say that I, I Think that this distinction here is really important, Rob, because, you know, as behavior analysts, we are often asked to come in and work on behavior that can be very big, very explosive. But there are times in which that behavior is largely going to be categorized as emotional responding and may not be as sensitive to contingencies or consequences as we've been taught. So, you know, learning what the distinction is there and thinking about the complexities that we can see in responding is important because there may be times when that. That.
- [126:11]
Alan Haberman
That.
- [126:11]
Jackie
Like this chapter starts with her saying, I spent some time in Fiji. And then when Fiji came on the. In the Olympics, right. When the Fiji flag came by, I was overcome with emotion and I stood up and yelled, Fiji. Which is so, like, so cute and endearing.
- [126:30]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right.
- [126:32]
Jackie
But, you know, she was overwhelmed by, you know, that surge of. I don't know what it is inside your body, right? Like that feeling that you get when you're just, like, overwhelmed with emotion. That's a. A respondent response, right. To hearing Fiji. Like that was her response. And so sometimes when our. Our clients are responding, it is. It is that type of response. Right. And it may or may not be wholly behavior that can be modified via consequences. So thinking about the larger, once again, contextual situation in which responding is occurring and the stimuli that are present, there is an important picture in. In properly planning for behavior intervention.
- [127:23]
Robert Perry Crews
All right, well, let's start wrapping these. This part up with chapter nine, observing and attending.
- [127:30]
Diana Perry Cruz
This one was my favorite chapter.
- [127:32]
Robert Perry Crews
I know it would be. Jack, you love observing. Always observing. What did you. What. What. How did it do? How did it do in terms of someone who is a pro observer?
- [127:41]
Diana Perry Cruz
It did great, actually, both in your.
- [127:42]
Robert Perry Crews
Personal and professional life.
- [127:44]
Diana Perry Cruz
I feel sad that I did not get to read this article or this chapter while I was writing my dissertation, because I think it would have been really helpful in the beginning to kind of of give me an overarching view, because I thought this was more cohesive than many of the other articles that I read. Imitation and observational learning and the idea of the mirror neurons. I thought this was so helpful. So I loved it. It was my favorite chapter of the whole thing. Yeah, I was surprised.
- [128:17]
Jackie
That makes sense. Because your dissertation is on observational learning, right? Yeah, for the audience. Yeah.
- [128:22]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah. And the pictures in this one were great, too. I'm just saying pictures in this one, again, I'm in love with these cute pictures.
- [128:33]
Robert Perry Crews
When. When she talks about imitation and whether animals imitate. Maybe some animals can imitate, but most of what animals do. That looks like Imitation is not imitation. I didn't quite understand the distinction between imitation and. Well, that animal is copying that animal, but it's not imitation because it's biolog, it's biological instinct. I, I wasn't quite sure I understood the difference between them.
- [128:56]
Diana Perry Cruz
Well, I think, I think they're talking more about the. There's like, there's the instinctual behavior that will persist even when it's not reinforced. Right. So like the instance of there's like a pig and the pig will root and that's like. It's not a learned response, it's an instinctual reflexive response. So the animal can get food. Right. And even if someone reinforces something, that behavior that might be in contrast to that, so you can't do both at the same time, the animal will always go back to that instinctual response. So that's what I think she's saying, that even though they're doing the same response, it's not necessarily imitation because the reinforcer is the behavior itself and not the act that it looks similar to someone else.
- [129:45]
Jackie
Yes. So just because two organisms are behaving in a similar way in temporal contiguity to one another does not automatically mean that it is imitation. So an imitate, an imitative response must be controlled by the model that precedes it.
- [130:03]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right.
- [130:03]
Robert Perry Crews
Oh, so the examples of, you know, the birds learning how to open, the shorebirds opening oysters, would not be imitation.
- [130:12]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right.
- [130:13]
Robert Perry Crews
Because they're, they would naturally like stick their beaks into things, but they might learn from their parent, but they're not.
- [130:20]
Diana Perry Cruz
Learning to follow the behavior and not, and not because of the model.
- [130:24]
Robert Perry Crews
Okay, so there's learning there, but it's not imitation.
- [130:27]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yes.
- [130:29]
Robert Perry Crews
Okay. Thank you.
- [130:31]
Diana Perry Cruz
You're welcome. That was hard for me too, by the way. That took me like three years to get. So I.
- [130:36]
Robert Perry Crews
Well, when you explained it, it made more sense. I. It didn't quite. It sort of just is a one off line of like a lot of these things aren't imitation anyway. But I just talked about animals observing and learning through observation and I was like, wait, what? Why is this not the same thing? They're like, I don't know, birds going down when they're flying. That's not imitation. Birds go down when they fly all the time. That doesn't count.
- [130:55]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah, hilariously, I went down a huge rabbit hole for like two weeks where I only looked at birds. Do you remember this, Diana? And I was like, I'm going to include this. And I had like 50 or 60 articles of like Birds. Birds and porcupines and raccoons and doing all these instinctual behaviors. And then my advisor was like, that's not even imitation. And I was like, great. I'm grand glad that I could write this whole other paper. Now, that is part of writing a.
- [131:23]
Jackie
Dissertation is that you accidentally write or research a whole other paper.
- [131:27]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah.
- [131:28]
Diana Perry Cruz
So that happened. So that's the only reason I know about it, Rob, is because I, like, went into it big time, like, well.
- [131:34]
Robert Perry Crews
It was worth it because you taught me the difference. So thank you.
- [131:37]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah.
- [131:40]
Robert Perry Crews
All right. The final chapter in this section, thinking and communicating, chapter 10. This section really did build nicely on it, on itself, over and over. This one really hit home with some of the animal studies. I. I think I. I kind of want to ask Dr. Schneider, does she have pets? Lots of pets. Did she enjoy, you know, is she birder? Did she enjoy watching animals?
- [132:02]
Diana Perry Cruz
Definitely a birder.
- [132:04]
Robert Perry Crews
Because the idea of, like, dogs can respond to a thousand words. I never.
- [132:10]
Jackie
Not all dogs.
- [132:10]
Robert Perry Crews
Not all dogs.
- [132:11]
Jackie
That dogs.
- [132:12]
Robert Perry Crews
That dog did.
- [132:12]
Jackie
That dog learned.
- [132:13]
Robert Perry Crews
Well, if one dog could do it.
- [132:15]
Diana Perry Cruz
Potentially one of my dogs.
- [132:16]
Jackie
Other dogs, they need to be taught. Yeah, I know.
- [132:19]
Robert Perry Crews
They didn't just learn.
- [132:20]
Diana Perry Cruz
One of my dogs, I don't actually think would reinforcement is not silly enough for her, but one of them would definitely learn.
- [132:27]
Jackie
Not every dog. And then, like, some of the varying types of monkeys can also have a vocab of that size. But then she was like, but they can only talk in two or three word sentences.
- [132:39]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah. She was like, way to go, humans.
- [132:43]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [132:43]
Jackie
Like, no matter how much you train.
- [132:49]
Robert Perry Crews
But here, talking about language and. And how, you know, for humans, how the social attention is such a key component. It's a key consequence for why we continue to use language. You know, the example of a boy raised by deaf parents who could sign perfectly fluently, but the parents just left the TV on so that the child learned spoken English and no, because there were no consequences around.
- [133:11]
Jackie
That's such a great example.
- [133:12]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah.
- [133:13]
Jackie
Oh, wow. And then. And then it came back to meaningful differences.
- [133:19]
Robert Perry Crews
Yep.
- [133:20]
Jackie
Right. Alan, full circle for us.
- [133:25]
Alan Haberman
Exactly. Yeah.
- [133:26]
Dr. Susan Schneider
That's.
- [133:28]
Jackie
That was Alan's first book club.
- [133:30]
Alan Haberman
Oh.
- [133:30]
Robert Perry Crews
Long time ago now.
- [133:31]
Alan Haberman
Long time ago. And I just remember I found the 5 million word difference.
- [133:36]
Jackie
That's right.
- [133:36]
Alan Haberman
Oh, yeah.
- [133:37]
Robert Perry Crews
We couldn't find it because it's the very last.
- [133:40]
Alan Haberman
Basically the very last page of the book.
- [133:46]
Robert Perry Crews
And then, you know, talking about, you know, communication, how we learn to communicate our internal states through consequences, through both, you know, visuals paired with internal states, metaphors.
- [133:57]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right.
- [133:59]
Robert Perry Crews
And then Passing on consequences, you know, now we can pass on consequences through rules. And here's my example. It's in my notes here. Here's my example of the guy who just refused to stop pressing the button or do. I didn't write down what their activity was, but who just. Who just kept going because he thought the study was on how persistent he was as an individual, and he wanted to be seen as such. But even here is some brain. A little bit of talk of brain about language, but not too much here. Just the idea that certainly our brains are involved in language. And that's part two.
- [134:36]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Good.
- [134:37]
Alan Haberman
Speaking of what we've been talking about now, I can't help but thinking, hey, boy, is Diana trying to tell me that we've come full circle? And so this is my last book club.
- [134:50]
Robert Perry Crews
Your own superstitious rule.
- [134:52]
Diana Perry Cruz
I love that we're doing it on air. That's. Yeah, that's the only rule.
- [134:58]
Alan Haberman
I was like, stone, Stone cold, Diana.
- [135:01]
Robert Perry Crews
Gosh, you're not going to cut it out or anything.
- [135:03]
Alan Haberman
It's all there.
- [135:03]
Jackie
I didn't mean it that way.
- [135:04]
Dr. Susan Schneider
No, know, that's funny.
- [135:06]
Robert Perry Crews
Allan already knows what the next two books in the. In the. In the year are. All right, well, that's. That's behavior analysis light section. And I think even in that there were a lot of great examples that.
- [135:19]
Jackie
Not that light.
- [135:20]
Robert Perry Crews
No, no. Well, you're right.
- [135:21]
Jackie
That's behavior analysis interpreted is how I would word it.
- [135:26]
Robert Perry Crews
I love some of the. I want to keep some of these examples.
- [135:28]
Jackie
I feel like students studying for the exam. She, like, read a chapter of Cooper and then read a chapter of this.
- [135:35]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yes. Right. This could be their companion. Like, what did that mean?
- [135:39]
Jackie
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [135:40]
Robert Perry Crews
Or maybe use this to think of metaphors or kind of cue their own metaphors that they can develop. Is like, this is how you're going to talk about it with the family, based on your own life experiences, not just from this book. Not just from the technical jargon.
- [135:52]
Alan Haberman
If I had to, like, highlight a killer line. It's competing consequences vie for our private behaviors, just as for our public ones. That. I really like that line. Yeah, in this section.
- [136:07]
Jackie
Good one.
- [136:08]
Robert Perry Crews
All right, now we bring it all together for part three, shaping destinies. And speaking about shaping destinies, I wrote a blurb in my. In my notes here. Was this section, one in which you found talking about attention and learned consequences. Did you find yourself paying more or less attention to each of the chapters based on your own interests or based on possibly other consequences? For example, I counted When I, When I read these books, I put sticky notes on the pages I want to come back to and like, either reread or sort of like think about and then summarize or combine to. To put my notes together. For the episode and the animal chapter, I only had five sticky notes for the 12 pages. That's half a note per page. But the chapter on education, I had 17 sticky notes. For the 18 pages, I had one per. I doubled my, my sticky note volume there. And some of that, when I thought about it, was what could be the consequences of play there? Was it that I more interested in talking about education? Even though technically I would know more about education, I would know more about that chapter. Was I able to pay attention to the cues? Was it the learned consequence of, oh, it's a chapter on animals. Well, I know Jackie's going to talk about that chapter, so I don't need to pay attention at all. She'll do all the talking.
- [137:24]
Jackie
Or is it. You are approaching the end of the book, so your rate of responding increased.
- [137:28]
Robert Perry Crews
I put that in my notes.
- [137:32]
Jackie
I did not know that.
- [137:36]
Robert Perry Crews
Yes. So a lot of reasons there. But did anyone, anyone find themselves sort of changing their pattern of reading or thinking in these last sections when it was such a. Here are real ex. You know, we talk about real examples. But like, here's kind of the daily work that we often do kind of put. Or our focused interests. Here it is.
- [137:55]
Diana Perry Cruz
I don't, I don't think I did only because I didn't give myself enough space to finish the book in a way that I could do that. So I was like reading this book this weekend as my child was sick. So I was like, okay, I have two days. I need to write these many chapters per day to finish the book. So I think if I had given myself a little more space to read the book, I might have done that, but I didn't.
- [138:18]
Alan Haberman
And I think in not a bad way that I almost. I often tend to have when it comes to making notes opposite response. It's like, I don't know as much about that. I want to go read more. Mark it as opposed to. I remember that. That's comfortable. I don't need no notes.
- [138:37]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah.
- [138:38]
Alan Haberman
So because I'm always like, I don't understand because I tend to have a. Ah, what's this biology stuff? I gotta go back and read more or I gotta remember about that. So.
- [138:49]
Robert Perry Crews
Diana, did you have a similar pattern or different. No, just you. You read a book and now you're here to talk about it.
- [138:56]
Alan Haberman
I know.
- [138:57]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah. She had a meeting.
- [138:57]
Jackie
There was one of these chapters that I was really into.
- [139:02]
Dr. Susan Schneider
And it was.
- [139:08]
Robert Perry Crews
That's why you need to use sticky notes.
- [139:11]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right.
- [139:12]
Jackie
I think the chapter on education that was my.
- [139:15]
Robert Perry Crews
That's my most interesting probably.
- [139:17]
Jackie
Yeah. Because it was highly relevant.
- [139:22]
Alan Haberman
I. I just really like the like 161. The very first page of this because it's like what a better explanation for like act type approaches of avoidant. Avoiding the unpleasant is not a way to live joyfully and very well. Yeah, it's a very, very. I just really like, I have this page like open and like it's one I wanted to talk about because I just love.
- [139:56]
Jackie
I talk to my students about this very idea and we talk about avoidance behavior.
- [140:05]
Diana Perry Cruz
Right.
- [140:05]
Jackie
Experiential avoidance. We talk about it in terms of self care and I think it's useful for them, although it's not always what they want to hear. I think maybe it was the self control chapter actually, now that I'm going back through. Which has a really good marshmallow test picture thrown in there.
- [140:21]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Super cute.
- [140:21]
Robert Perry Crews
It's the style though. Like the kids sitting there. No, no marshmallow for you.
- [140:26]
Jackie
I think that was the self control chapter. I think maybe that was the one I was very engrossed in when I just.
- [140:32]
Alan Haberman
I think that something that's. Especially students and developing behavior analysts really have to understand that escape and self control and self care. Escape and self care are not the same thing often. Like.
- [140:46]
Dr. Susan Schneider
No, they.
- [140:47]
Jackie
Exactly.
- [140:47]
Robert Perry Crews
That's a great. That's well said.
- [140:50]
Alan Haberman
Like self care may actually mean. I'm going to sort of give up some pleasantries because what's most important to me right now is focusing so that I can enjoy those things without them interfering in my life.
- [141:05]
Jackie
Yes.
- [141:05]
Alan Haberman
And my progress later because I don't have enough like fluency in this skill. So it's really important that I disrupt my own routine and get. Get through X, Y and Z first. And that's actually self care. Not. I'm going to turn off the book and ignore everything because it's too hard.
- [141:29]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [141:29]
Jackie
Yep. Agreed. It's not self indulgence. Yeah, right.
- [141:34]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [141:35]
Robert Perry Crews
So basically this section. Just because like always we get the last section of a book, we sort of start running out of recording time. But this really broke it down. This, this I think section had the most. Here is the table. There is no table. But if there were going to be a table, like the last couple pages kind of have that table vibe of like. Here are all the ways this book has talked about how consequences impact human behavior. And here are some examples of how this could be relevant to complex big systems. And then it sort of breaks it down into the chapter sections on everyday consequences, chapters on self control, chapters on education and work, chapters on addiction, autism and other conditions. And then finally, chapter on consequence on the grand scale, society, the long term and the planet.
- [142:27]
Diana Perry Cruz
So I'm glad that that one was the ending one because it really brings into play the three levels of selection that we talked about. Right. And so she like mirrored Skinner's three levels of selection. She started off in that first part talking about that phylogenic level, the level of the genes. And then the middle of the book was talking about, you know, the level of operant. And the third level was this cultural selection. And so I just love that. And I'm sure she did it that way on purpose without. And she was like, I hope somebody notices. Right. Because she doesn't say it.
- [143:00]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Right.
- [143:01]
Jackie
We noticed.
- [143:01]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah, but we noticed. Right. The three. Three parts. Three levels of selection.
- [143:06]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [143:06]
Diana Perry Cruz
And how they, you know, interweave through each of the chapters. I just thought that was like, real spot on, Jackie.
- [143:13]
Robert Perry Crews
You know what? Speaking about the part I came to. This, this. This part about. I forgot to mention endangered species, undercover crows and the family dog applications for animals. I for. I totally forgot to even mention. That was one of the chapters in this section of which my favorite anecdotes were those about rats who learned to do mind detection. And they were so good, they got licensed in mind detection. So really they had to teach them how to fill out a form and pay their yearly licensing fee.
- [143:41]
Jackie
I'm sure you can still do that.
- [143:43]
Diana Perry Cruz
Behavior analysts. Go and train those mice in Tanzia. We had a friend that did that for a while.
- [143:49]
Jackie
The mice are so light that they don't set off the mines as they detect them. So it's safer too.
- [143:57]
Robert Perry Crews
Alan, you mentioned kind of self care. There's some parts of self care, but let's.
- [144:01]
Alan Haberman
Let's all.
- [144:02]
Robert Perry Crews
You know, if we have something else that was in one of these chapters because we can't go into each chapter in detail because we're get running low on time. Certainly. I said I love the education chapter and really the discussion about the combination of rules and consequences being a key to behavior management. You can't just give kids rules and then have random consequences and expect to see a change in behavior. You can just give them consequences and not tell them the rules and still see a pretty good change in behavior. However, why would you do that to the poor kids? Why not combine the two.
- [144:35]
Jackie
I love the folks who make these schools that they're like I'm going to build this from the ground up the way that it should be and include like best educational practices and have really clear, clearly laid out, you know, contingencies and systems and you get to see these things actually in action when because in our day to day school system it's a lot of murkiness that's going on in there. Shout out once again to project follow through and direct instruction. Those are mentioned here. So nothing that I didn't know necessarily in this chapter but it's just like such good reminders like all over the place. Like, like, like you, you do you, you start to think that contingencies don't really touch you and your day to day life in the way that they actually do. But contingencies control everything that we're doing. We just don't realize it. So it was a great reminder in that sense.
- [145:34]
Alan Haberman
Like literally we never stop responding and learn like it's just all the time.
- [145:40]
Jackie
Yeah.
- [145:43]
Robert Perry Crews
I certainly appreciated. The summary is on page 257 to 259 when talking about how are we going to save the planet? Which again knowing now after reading the book that Dr. Schneider is really interested in climate change and ecological change. The idea of like let's do a quick summary of all the concepts we talked about. The idea of adding and subtracting consequences, how do we use signals, how do we use schedules, how do we set up commitments, how do we use our experiences, what kind of learning histories, how do we set up social support, how do we use models. Right. And for each of these sort of, and this is how you could use it for talking about something like climate change or recycling or whatever kind of the ecological overfishing. Right. You know, with ideas like well you have variable rewards for how we dispose of our trash. Or we could use sexy Robert Redford as a model of good environmental behavior. I added the sexy I, you know, I don't know Susan Schneider's feelings on Robert Redford other than a ecological friendly model.
- [146:38]
Diana Perry Cruz
I think he said, you know.
- [146:41]
Robert Perry Crews
Yeah, yeah. Any other example Alan?
- [146:45]
Jackie
Go ahead Alan.
- [146:45]
Alan Haberman
Yeah, I, I just, I, I, I, I, I pretty sure she doesn't mention it. I would have loved to hear her talk about maybe the example of places I think in like in Japan and some places in Europe where littering was a problem that they actually took away trash cans and it helped it improve littering because the like societal pressure not to be the one that litters because There was no, like, there was no opportunity to be like, oh, it blew out of the trash. Like it was very clear that what.
- [147:18]
Dr. Susan Schneider
You took, took in was what you're.
- [147:20]
Alan Haberman
Responsible for taking out. Would have loved like talking about that. I feel like she would have done a really good job of breaking that down as like counterintuitive and part of things because it just came to mind because she talks about littering some, but she didn't have enough time and I understand that. But it is sort of one of those, the absence of that brought that to mind, which she talked about earlier in another chapter. That the absence of something brings it to mind.
- [147:44]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [147:46]
Robert Perry Crews
All right, well, let's do some final thoughts and then we'll wrap up with the final line. Let's, let's go around the horn. Danny, why don't we start with you? And by horn, I mean the person sitting next to me.
- [148:02]
Jackie
Was my takeaway.
- [148:03]
Robert Perry Crews
What's your takeaway? What are you going to do with this book now that you've read it?
- [148:07]
Jackie
I think if you have someone in your family who enjoys these types of anecdotal based books, I mean, no, it's not, it's not anecdotes though.
- [148:19]
Dr. Susan Schneider
It's.
- [148:19]
Jackie
It's just, it's storytelling is what it is, but it's based in science. Right. But if you have someone who enjoys a storytelling book in the style of, let's say Malcolm Gladwell or Oliver Sacks, they might enjoy this book. And maybe you have people in your family that are always like, tell me what you do again, I really don't get it. This could be the book for them.
- [148:43]
Robert Perry Crews
What do I do? Everything. Read this book and find out how. Yeah.
- [148:47]
Jackie
So, you know, very often the sticking point for people fully understanding what it is not, not what we do, but what it is that's like unique about behavior analysis is their understanding of the idea that consequences are at the root of all responding and behavior change. Right. So this would be the book to give someone to try to help them really understand that critical point of our theoretical views. Unfortunately, this is coming out after the holidays.
- [149:24]
Diana Perry Cruz
Yeah, I like the COVID It's Domino's and I always judge a book by its cover. I'm not gonna lie. I usually say this in the beginning and I love this cover and I love that the, the like the science of consequences in black and then the other parts in red. And I just, I love the COVID and I, I appreciate how the book flows without getting too boring. Right. It's hard to read a non fiction book. I Think. And so this was my morning read and because I read non fiction in the morning, so I don't. So I want to put it down. But I did not feel like it was so boring that I was like looking for the next page. Right. It was, I thought it was entertaining. I was laughing. I thought the subtitles were good, the examples were great. And so I think this would be a great book for anyone that's interested in like delving in. Right. As those undergraduates love. If I taught an intro to say class, this would be the book I would give them.
- [150:31]
Dr. Susan Schneider
Yeah.
- [150:35]
Alan Haberman
Yeah. No, I think she makes a lot of what we do accessible and could give people a lot of like talking points. It's like, well, what do you mean? It's what you do is like these birds. It's like, well like we as humans are responsive to signals and we have certain drives. And I think that I like, I like in some of her examples in, in toward the end like when she talks about ADHD that although there's reasons that the research needs to be improved, that like the idea of changing the biology and applying behavior science together can really improve outcomes for people more than just focusing on one or the other that she talks about in ADHD intervention for instance. And I like that she came full circle with some of that. And really that's what. What we do is hope to make our interventions work better and make to help have people have better outcomes in life. So I think she did a good job.
- [151:40]
Robert Perry Crews
All right, well that brings us to the last line of the book because no matter whether it's non fiction or fiction, if you don't have a last ending line, your book ain't nothing. So how did this ending line go? It was okay. It was a lot of Skinner quote, so maybe not my favorite ending line, but it was definitely within the themes of the book. So in that case it definitely matches and, and didn't leave me sad that I had read the book because I'd enjoyed a lot of what came before and then it ended fine and I could go back and find the sections of the book and the anecdotes and the, the research based anecdotes I should say that were of interest to share with others. So here it is. This is page 260 of the book. Consequences will be part of humanity's grandest endeavor. How can we best use what we know? Skinner said regard no practice as immutable change and be ready to change again. Accept no eternal verity experiment. And when we fail, the real mistake is to Stop trying. Let's keep learning. Let's never stop trying. The end. And it says the end. And the book closes and it's the end of the movie.
- [152:44]
Diana Perry Cruz
Then there's.
- [152:44]
Robert Perry Crews
And that was. That was the Science of Consequences by Susan Schneider. And that's the end of our book club podcast. Thank you all out there so much. Much for listening. We hope you are hearing this whenever you're hearing this. If you're hearing this in the year 20, the early 2025, then thank you so much for supporting us on Patreon. Don't forget to get a link in your patron feed for 2 CES. For listening to this podcast, you get 2 CES for no additional charge. Thank you so much. If you are hearing this in the far future, you perhaps are hearing this on the free feed and that's great. We're so glad you subscribed to the show. But if you'd like to get those ces, you're going to need your code words. But you're also, if you want them for no additional charge, you would need to join us on Patreon.com ABA inside track. All right, I'm going to give everyone the last of those code words. It is Shire. S h I r e. It's where Sam and Mr. Frodo came from. Mr. Frodo. I should have done the whole episode like that. So good, right?
- [153:50]
Jackie
We already did that one once. And no.
- [153:52]
Alan Haberman
Oh, I was like wrong and wrong accent, so.
- [153:56]
Robert Perry Crews
Oh, sorry. All you have to remember is shire. All right, well, you're not as hairy.
- [154:03]
Jackie
As the hobbits, but otherwise I'm fully living hobbit.
- [154:06]
Robert Perry Crews
I definitely had a second breakfast this morning and I named it as I tacked it. Second breakfast. Or was it a man? No, it was a tax. I just grabbed it. I didn't ask. All right, well, that's the end of our book club. Thank you, Diana and Jackie and Alan for being here as well. As always, thanks to Dr. Susan Schneider for joining my discussion earlier in the episode. Appreciate that and thank you all so much for listening to the show. Don't forget to click the link if you'd like to get cease to go back to our webpage where you can find all of our previous book clubs and all that jazz. Some thanks to Dr. Jim Carr for our intro, for recording our intro song, Kyle Stere for our interstitial song, Dan Thabit of the podcast doctors for his work, and of course again, Dr. Susan Schneider for writing this book. We'll be back with another with our spring book club on. I believe we're doing Divergent Minds. We'll be back for that in just a few months time. But until then, keep responding. Bye bye.
- [155:13]
Jackie
Sa.