Episode 297 - Matching Law

Summary

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ABA Inside Track – Episode 297: Matching Law (January 8, 2025)

Episode Overview

This episode of ABA Inside Track takes a deep dive into the Matching Law—a fundamental concept in behavior analysis describing how organisms allocate behavior among available reinforcement options. Hosts Robert Perry Crews, Diana Perry Cruz, and Jackie break down key research articles, grapple with the mathematical intricacies, and reflect on the Matching Law’s relevance to practitioners, clients with autism, and even basketball players. Lighthearted banter helps demystify a topic that often intimidates due to its quantitative roots.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Is the Matching Law? (00:59–07:22)

• The Matching Law explains how individuals (and animals) distribute their responses between two or more behaviors based on the relative rates of reinforcement obtained from each ([06:10]).
• Rob introduces the idea with quirky musical metaphors about song choice and reinforcement bias:
  • Rob: “I have a bias, a reinforcement bias, one might say.” ([01:29])
• Intimidation Factor: Hosts acknowledge the Matching Law’s mathematical reputation. They note many practitioners find the equations daunting, especially the generalized matching law and hyperbola formulas ([07:06-07:21]).

2. Reed & Kaplan (2011): “The Matching Law: A Tutorial for Practitioners” (07:42–30:28)

Purpose & Structure ([07:42])

• Jackie leads a comprehensive and accessible breakdown of this article, which aims to simplify the Matching Law for clinicians.

Main Concepts

• Basic Matching Equation:
  • Allocation of behavior is proportional to the allocation of reinforcement ([14:13]).
  • e.g., Kids playing on the playground: they spend more time where it's more fun—i.e., more reinforcing ([11:18]).
• Historical Roots: Traces back to 1960s pigeon research and variable interval schedules ([12:57]).
• Strict vs. Generalized Law:
  • Strict: Works best with perfect matching; equation is straightforward.
  • Generalized Matching Law: Accounts for biases (e.g., color preference, side preference) and sensitivity (overmatching or undermatching) using logs and extra variables S and B ([17:35]).
  • “What they found is that it happens like that a lot, but not all the time. So not all the time does it match perfectly. … And so this is where they needed to … help the equation along.” – Jackie ([15:53])
• Clinical Relevance:
  • Helps predict preference, informs reinforcement strategies, and can identify biases and confounds when reinforcement doesn’t operate as expected ([20:33], [24:10]).
  • “If clients demonstrate overmatching, they're probably not contacting the programmed reinforcers…” – Jackie ([20:45])

Takeaway

• The tutorial is “kind of a tutorial and kind of complicated for practitioners,” but invaluable for building foundational knowledge ([07:47]).
• Memorable Quote: “There's a reason we didn't pick [the technical primer] for the episode.” – Rob ([28:30])

3. Application 1: Social Preference in Children with Autism (Morris & Vollmer, 2022) (33:42–52:39)

• Diana reviews a study applying the matching law to social preference in children with autism via a “split room assessment” ([34:08]).
  • Procedure: Child can choose either side of a room, one with an experimenter providing social interaction, one without. Analysis quantifies preference and sensitivity to social reinforcement ([37:34]).
• Unique Adaptation: The study uses the matching law to infer preference for or aversion to social interaction, with implications for non-vocal individuals ([40:39]).
• Results Overview:
  • Some children preferred social side (positive slope).
  • Some avoided social interaction (negative slope).
  • Some were indifferent.
  • Noteworthy quote:
    • Diana: “It's not good or bad to like social interaction … It's just a preference.” ([44:48])
• This nuanced view reinforces the need to individualize social reinforcer assessments, especially in clinical settings serving autistic individuals.

4. Application 2: Matching Law in Basketball Shot Selection (Alferink et al., 2009) (52:39–65:14)

• Rob reviews a study using basketball stats to explore the generality of the matching law outside the lab ([53:37]).
• Study Recap:
  • Analysis of shot selection (two vs. three-point field goals) at team and individual player levels.
  • The matching law accounted for much of the shot distribution variance, especially among better-performing players/teams ([61:59]).
  • Persistent bias toward three-point shots, highlighting “quality” of reinforcement ([59:18]).
• Rob’s candid reaction:
  • Rob: “I do think this might be the most pointless article I have ever read in my entire career.” ([53:37])
  • Diana: “Because the data are there...it's very hard...to find places in the ‘natural environment’ where you know pretty clearly what the reinforcers are…” ([53:39], [54:02])
  • Discussion on correlation vs. causation; matching law is descriptive, not necessarily predictive or instructional for game strategy ([62:17]).

5. Big-Picture Conclusions & Dissemination (66:27–69:37)

• Matching Law grants powerful insight into why people (and animals) behave as they do when choices are involved—across basic research and applied settings.
• Quantitative details are helpful, but practitioners can benefit from more general application to understand client preferences, bias, and sensitivity to reinforcement.
• Diana:
  • "We are not special organisms. We behave just as other organisms do, and our behavior is going to follow reinforcement just like other organisms..." ([67:37])
• Jackie: “It's always important to know about it, know that it's out there, and remind ourselves that it's out there. … when we are stuck…we can refer back…” ([69:37])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Daily Relevance:
  “In almost every instance of our lives, choice is always present … There's always multiple behaviors that we could choose from.” – Jackie ([10:08], [11:18])
• On Math Anxiety:
  “I think anything with equations sometimes can be scary...especially...the generalized matching law and the hyperbolas...even me, I'm like, why do they have to log things?” – Jackie ([07:06])
• On the Role of Research:
  “I really appreciate all those cancer researchers doing all that work...but I don't understand what exactly they do...But when they say we have the best tools possible, I trust them.” – Diana ([25:32])
• On Basketball Article Skepticism:
  “I appreciate that they’re being honest that these results are interesting but aren’t necessarily going to change how we bet on basketball in the future.” – Rob ([64:37])
• On Practical Use:
  “If you chase me down with a matching law article, I run to the other side of the room!” – Rob ([66:13])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamps | |----------------------------------------|--------------| | Banter/Intro/Theme | 00:13–05:05 | | Definition & Relevance | 05:05–07:22 | | Reed & Kaplan Tutorial Review | 07:42–30:28 | | Morris & Vollmer (Social Allocation) | 33:42–52:39 | | Alferink et al. (Basketball) | 52:39–65:14 | | Dissemination & Reflection | 66:27–69:37 | | Recommended Past Episodes ("Pairings") | 70:10–73:00 | | Lighthearted Close | 73:03–75:49 |

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Related Past Episodes Recommended (“Pairings”) (70:12–73:00)

• Basics Series on ABA Inside Track:
  • Episode 126 – Behavioral Economics (with Derek Reed)
  • Episodes 175 & 195 – Token Economies
  • Episode 143 – Stimulus Equivalence
  • Episode 223 – Generality and Generalization
  • Episode 248 – Delayed Discounting
  • Episode 256 – Acceleration Charts Explained
  • Episode 86 – Behavioral Momentum

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Episode Tone and Takeaway

Reflective, honest, and playful, the episode demystifies a “scary” topic and encourages practitioners to engage with the Matching Law—not for its equations per se, but for the conceptual richness it adds to understanding choice and reinforcement. Listeners walk away with greater comfort integrating the Matching Law into clinical reasoning, plus a few laughs (and cake-or-cupcake debates) along the way.

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Transcript

[Jackie]

Foreign.

[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 with me, as always, are my fabulous co hosts.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Hello, Rob. It's me, Diana Perry Cruz. You might recognize me from living here with you in your house.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yes.

[Jackie]

And it's me, Jackie, who does not live here. And I just sneak in through the window every week, and then you just find me sitting.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

We would let you in the door, you know.

[Jackie]

No, I don't want that.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I know.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Just wait down here.

[Jackie]

I want to. I want to be elfish and sneak in through the window.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, boy.

[Jackie]

Well, now we could sing. We could sing Lilitha Etheridge, Come to My window.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No, we're not going to do that.

[Jackie]

Well, Rob.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

But we could.

[Jackie]

But we could. And we could look at the alternative behaviors. If I came through the window, and then every time I came to the window, Diana came in and sang Melissa Etheridge with me versus if I came in through the door and I just came in through the door and everyone.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Just sing a Three Doors down song.

[Jackie]

Yeah. So I might allocate my responding differently based on the rate of reinforcement right there.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I mean, for me, I would select a track that is playing I want to come over versus come to my window 100% of the time.

[Jackie]

Time I love.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I'm very sensitive to the tunes of I Want to come over versus Come to my Window, which is, you know, meh. You know, I have a bias, a reinforcement bias, one might say.

[Jackie]

So you would always pick, even though if it was harder, you'd always pick I want to come over.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I suppose. I mean, I suppose if you experimentally manipulated through some parametric analysis, like what I would do before getting to hear that song, I suppose my rate of responding might change a little bit.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

What if I always said, to hell with the concert plans?

[Jackie]

That's what I say, too. At the concert, I always thought it.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Was like she was going to her concert.

[Jackie]

Same.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Right. But it was. It's consequence.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No. If you want to hear a podcast about the discussion of this song, you can listen to my old podcast before we did ABA Inside Track, which was a podcast about songs. This is a podcast about behavior analysis and behavior analytic research, where every week we pick a topic and discuss it. And in case you couldn't get it from our thinly veiled commentary, we're talking about the matching law today, which is an episode that kept being the episode we kept saying, oh, no, we're out of room. What episode? Kick to another month how about the matching law? Except we finally ran out of Runway, and guess what, everybody? We didn't want to do the matching law for episode 300 because what a downer. So we're doing it.

[Jackie]

It's not a downer. It's not a downer.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Matching law.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Rob's old podcast was called They're Playing Our Song.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yep.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It's great. If anyone wants to check that out.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yep. You can find the. If you actually look through the ABA inside track archive. I posted one of the episodes as a tester to make sure the feed worked. So you can listen to it there or you can search it.

[Jackie]

That's cute. You can hear me talk about my favorite song.

[Robert Perry Crews]

What if we just. Instead of recording this, I just take the two Melissa Etheridge episodes we were referencing? Smushing together, we call it a day.

[Jackie]

We make them Melissa Etheridge mashup.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You get to pick which one do you want to download, and then that'll be the matching law. We'll match it to the generalized matching equation. It'll be great. And then.

[Jackie]

I love that.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And it will be just as relevant as one of the articles we're going to be talking about today. But anywho, that's what we're talking about. It's the matching law, which. Everybody, I don't mean to get down on the matching law, because I think the matching law is bad or dumb.

[Jackie]

Get down.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I love the matching law as a law, and as a principle, do I like reading research about the matching law? Sometimes, but not all the time. And I took the article that I'm not super excited about talking about. I took that one for the team. The basketball team, if you will.

[Jackie]

Oh, I like that article. We should have switched.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Really? Yeah, it is.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Don't be like that.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Don't be like what?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Weird. We should be supportive of the articles because people went to a lot of work to write them.

[Jackie]

I actually really like that.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I have done almost 300. We have done more than 300 episodes of this podcast, if you count book clubs and everything else. And I think I have been the most positive human being on the show more often than not. I'm. I'm gonna take this one as my negative episode. I'm calling it. I'm calling it. It's mine. All right. Anyway, can't take that from me. Anywho, what episode. What episode is this? It's about the matching law. What articles are we reading? Diana, tell us.

[Jackie]

She surprised yet again.

[Robert Perry Crews]

She's Louise.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

All right, fine. I will tell you. They.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No, I don't want to know anymore. Who cares?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I'm going to talk in the order that I think we should discuss them.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Okay.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Okay.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Which is coming order that's in the notes.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Nope.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Really?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

All right.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I think we should discuss them in the following order. The Matching Law, a tutorial for practitioners by Reed and Kaplan, published in Behavior Analysis and Practice in the year with no ears, which was 2011.

[Jackie]

2011. I want to be 11. I wish I was born in 2000.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Make the math either easier.

[Jackie]

Yeah, I was 21 then, but it actually is pretty easy because I was born in 1980 and today's my birthday.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I know. Oh, I didn't know if you wanted everyone to know.

[Jackie]

Today is your birthday. Today is my birthday, and we're talking about hey, Jackie. And I'm not.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

There's no better way to spend your birthday than talking about the matching one.

[Jackie]

I know. I know. Yeah, I know. We were gonna switch it around. I was like, no, let's make Derek Reed proud.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Okay, well, we're gonna try, and we're gonna follow up that one. The matching law provides a quantitative description of social time allocation in children with autism by Morrison Volmer that was published in Java 2022. And to round it out, generality of the Matching Law as a descriptor of shot selection in basketball by al Farink, Critchfield, Hit and Wiggins. And that was in Java 2009.

[Jackie]

Cool.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I had that as our second one.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Do you want to go? You can have it be second. I guess. You just seem like you don't want to discuss it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Well, I have to discuss it because we only have three articles, and we all have to discuss something. And I wrote a lot of notes, and I put a lot of thought into this one.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Okay.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And I thought, why don't we end on the one that I think is a much more interesting application of the matching law, but if you'd like to end with me being a grump, it's.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Not an application of the matching law. None of this is an application of the matching law. It's an uncoverance of the magic.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Why are you making this worse?

[Jackie]

I'm not.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I'm trying to help you understand what we're doing.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You know what?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Go second.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No, I appreciate. Please, please mansplain to me more about the matching law. I'm sure it'll make this conversation all the more entertaining.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

You know, no one has asked us to talk about the matching law, but I don't think that's because people might not be interested to hear.

[Jackie]

I think they're scared.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Matching law is scary.

[Jackie]

I think anything with equations sometimes can be scary. Especially I don't think this. The simple matching law equation is scary. Makes a lot of sense.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It is. It is still scary. I'm not a math person.

[Jackie]

Yes.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

And you have no background in quantitative truth.

[Jackie]

I guess you're right.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Jackie]

But when you get into like the generalized matching law and the hyperbolas, that gets a little bit. Even me, I'm like, why do they have to log things? What's this little S? What's the big K? It's not a big K. It's actually a little K. But yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So let's start there. Then let's talk about Reed and Kaplan.

[Jackie]

Sure.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You're going to take the lead on. On that discussion.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Because it's a n tutorial for practitioners.

[Jackie]

Think.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I think they probably should have called it something that's kind of a tutorial and kind of complicated for practitioners would have been a more accurate description.

[Jackie]

I. One thing I want to say about behavior analysis and practice in the 2000s was that I loved that they had a ton of these tutorials for things that were so confusing and scary because they had it for CMO, CMOs. They had a tutorial now for the matching law. And I just think it's a nice way to allow people to get into these more complicated and nuanced phenomena. Or I guess. Right. Without. Without having to, like, go by Cooper again. Right. Or. And Cooper doesn't really even give you everything because it can't. So I really love this tutorial. It does get a little weedy because the matching law is a little weedy. But I. Yeah. One thing I appreciated about this article overall is they were like. They would. They did it in the beginning. It's like, wow, I actually understand the matching law. Until we get to generalize the generalized matching law. This is how I teach it too. I'm always like, I understand. And then I get here, I'm like, hold up.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Maybe they should make two articles. One is just that first part so everyone can read it and be like, wow, I'm so excited. I can't wait to read the second one, which is all the other stuff about the generalized matching line. It's a little confusing, but at least, you know, it might get a little hard. But that's okay.

[Jackie]

Right?

[Robert Perry Crews]

I'm not that big a dummy because I read the first article pretty well.

[Jackie]

Yeah. But the nice thing is it one.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Thing I found Matrix Reloaded helpful.

[Jackie]

Yeah. I didn't watch. Don't call Matrix. But the first. The one thing I like.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Have you ever seen something and you were like, this is changing cinema and I love it? And then you watch the next one and you're like, what the hell is this? This is the worst. And I don't care about the first one even more now. It's a negative movie.

[Jackie]

No, but I can't say that about the third Anne of Green Gables film.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Okay.

[Jackie]

She goes to war and does not follow the books.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I thought that was a package film and they just made it Anne of Avonlea.

[Jackie]

No, Anne of Avonlea is a different one.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Don't mess with Jackie.

[Jackie]

Don't mess with.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No, I only haven't saw the first.

[Jackie]

Two, and it's my birthday. We're watching it when we get home now.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So Anna Avonlea.

[Jackie]

And then there's Anne of Green Gables, Part three, the Continuing Saga.

[Robert Perry Crews]

What is it called?

[Jackie]

The Continuing Saga.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, yeah.

[Jackie]

It's not as good if it doesn't follow the books. I mean, it's okay, but it doesn't follow the book. I know.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Gilbert gets scarlet fever.

[Jackie]

Yeah.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

But anyway, spoilers. Oh, my God.

[Jackie]

No, that's in the second one. Because the third one, he goes to war.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Okay.

[Jackie]

Anyway, I like that they have a really hard equation. They try to explain everything, and then they give you an actually, actually appropriate example. Yeah. From the research that is clinically relevant. Right. Because the people that are reading these articles are practitioners.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

They're.

[Jackie]

They're not like basic researchers that already know about the matching law because they don't need to read a tutorial. Right.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So be so sad if they did, wouldn't it?

[Jackie]

They were like, oh, my God, I've.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Been doing all these experiments with pigeons. Wrong. For all these years.

[Jackie]

Yeah. So, in essence, the matching all really just looks at choice, like how behavior allocates to alternative reinforcers and responses. Right. So in almost every instance of our lives, choice is always present. Right. There's. It's never that we have to do only one behavior. There's always multiple behaviors that we could choose from. Schedules, Multiple schedules, a whole lot of variables. And what we decide to do is usually based on our history of reinforcement or punishment. And so by examining behavior and the allocation of reinforcers with those behaviors, we can actually determine preference. You know, so they gave a really good example of kids playing on the playground. And you just observe the kids, and wherever they spend the most time, they probably like that the most. That's what they're saying. Right?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Jackie]

And I'm like. I get it. I'm, like, feeling so Smart now. Feeling really smart. Right. And so they say this is important because if we can observe this over time, we can have a history of reinforcement and we can have a history of aggregate responses. And that can help us predict and explain why someone's engaging in the present choice or the present behavior that they're doing. And it might help us to predict what they're going to do in the future. So that's always helpful. This is not new. The matching law has been around for a long time. So researchers have been talking about the matching law since the 1960s. This is when they were looking at basic research with pigeons and key pex. Oh, my gosh. Today when I was writing, writing this, it took me like five full minutes to remember what the key peck that was called a key peck. I'm like, the pigeon was typing. I'm like hitting it. And I just could not. Couldn't think of it. And so what they found is that choice could be predicted and explained through looking at the relative rate of reinforcement for each response. And like we would expect. Right. You saw more allocation of responding to denser rates of reinforcement than leaner rates of reinforcement. Right. And so they discovered this in basic research with two pigeons pecking on keys. Right. Each key had its own variable interval schedule. And for all of you, remember the variable interval schedule, you have to satisfy two requirements. For those studying for the BACB exam, you have to satisfy the time requirement, and you have to perform the response after the time requirement has been met in order for reinforcement to be delivered.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yes.

[Jackie]

Just want everyone to remind that because.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It'S not a time based schedule, it's.

[Jackie]

Not time based, it's variable. So those two things have to be met. So there was two schedules, one in each key. They were independent of each other, and so they just. One was denser, one was leaner. They did that on purpose. And when they plotted the relative rates of reinforcement over the responses, they found a near perfect correlation. So they had.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Right.

[Jackie]

That's amazing.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah. So it's like we know that behavior or we believe that behavior is lawful and orderly. Right. And not only is it lawful and orderly, it's so lawful and orderly that we can actually apply a formula to understand how behavior is going to operate under a set of conditions.

[Jackie]

Right. So if you were going to graph this, the x axis, I always have to do this. I have to, like, make the graph. Even now it's like, like 20 with your hands.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yep.

[Jackie]

Is the relative rate of reinforcement, and the Y axis is the relative rate of responding. And they Found a perfect correlation, as when the rate of reinforcement goes up, the rate of responding goes up. So then they have this like diagonal line from the middle of the graph that goes up and that typically equals one if it's perfect matching.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Jackie]

Okay. So then they made this equation to suggest this best fit line and it's behavior one over behavior one plus behavior two. Right. Because there's not always just one behavior, there's usually other things that you can do would equal reinforcement one over the total amount of reinforcement. So reinforcement one over reinforcement two. And they want to remind us that it doesn't have to just be response, it could also be time to represent duration. Right. It's just like how you would be measuring it. And so that was the beginning of the matching law.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Jackie]

Which is beautiful. And they suggest that it's not just in this clinical setting that we see that in research, but we also see it in the natural setting. And they demonstrated through research in the 90s that they looked at appropriate behavior and inappropriate behavior and they looked at the amount of reinforcement that was occurring or being provided for each. And they saw that there was a great example of where whatever behavior was receiving more reinforcement, was happening at more times. So they had aggressions and mans. Right. But with. They think that they're functionally dependent, meaning they're serving the same reinforcer. Right. Aggression is trying to get something. Man's trying to get something. And they looked at allocating responses and they saw a near perfect line, which is beautiful.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Jackie]

And crazy when you think about that that would happen. Can you imagine like being late at night, looking at your cumulative record in, in your lab and in the 60s and being like, oh my gosh, look at this beauty. But anyway, we don't. That's not. Yeah. So anyway, maybe they did that, maybe they did that.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Maybe.

[Jackie]

But what they found is that it happens like that a lot, but not all the time. So not all the time does it match perfectly. Right. So it might slip upwards or it might slope downwards, or it might not even equal one. Right. And so this is where they needed to kind of help the equation along to help predict behavior. That's what we're trying to do here. Predict behavior in the future is then they added some. The generalized matching equation. So they had a little bit more here. And one example what that might happen here is if a right handed child is expected to sort pictures from a pile on either the right or left side of the table. The child might demonstrate a bias for the right, given their handiness. And another thing That I have found is if you are a child that loves the color pink. Right. And there's like all of the responses you could make. And there are pink things. You're going to do all the pink things first and then do the other things. So that might be something that you need to. You're going to see a different slope there because of bias. And so what they did here is they wanted to account for those biases in the equation. So they did a log of behavior 1 over behavior 1 plus behavior 2 equals s log over reinforcement 1 over reinforcement 1 over reinforcement 1 plus reinforcement 2 equals log B. Yes, the generalized matching equation. So the S represents the best fit line. Right. That slope. Hopefully it equals zero. Or we want it to get as close to zero as. I mean, as close to one as we want. Right. Because that means that we can predict what's behavior. And then B represents the Y intercept or the bias.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah. So bias can make it move up and down on the Y intercept. So this helps to account for like a side bias, like you're saying.

[Jackie]

And so here this is really helpful because if this can also look at sensitivity to reinforcement. Right. So if it's very, very high or very, very low, that might show that the student. The slope. Yep, the slope is very high or very low. It might show that there is an overmatching or an under matching.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Right.

[Jackie]

So meaning it's going to be over the slope line, that perfect one, or under that slope line. And they have a really nice figure that shows all of the deference of strict matching, a bias for overmatching or under matching, and some of the things that you could be biased toward. Right. A certain color space in the space effort, rate of reinforcement, the quality of the reinforcement, the delay to reinforcement, and the effort of the response to engage in that reinforcement. And so previous research, they pull out here and show that these dimensions may be idiosyncratic reinforcers for responses. So let's say you are looking at the rate of response to the rate of reinforcement, and it looks like pretty good, but then you see a little dip and you're like, I wonder why that dips there. You could go in and now vary those specific variables and then use that to account for what you're going to do in the future in your treatment plan. So I just like that. And if you don't see that variable, if you don't see that change in bias, then you can just use those reinforcers as substitutable for those different responses, like the aggression and the manding. But if you do, then you have to isolate some variables first. And so some more relevant research that they looked at, which I totally, totally agree with, is that they looked at students in master tasks and if they had mastered tasks, they weren't engaged in these master tasks. But if they had a harder task, even if you added more reinforcers to those harder tasks, they still engaged in the less effortful task because it's, it's easier. Right. So that would show more of a bias. Right. Based on effort. And so in that instance, you may be like, oh, according to the matching law, I'm just going to throw me more reinforcers at this behavior and it's going to work. But here that may not work. And then students may engage in more off task behavior. Right. More, you know, the behaviors we don't want to see because they're less effort, but they're still providing the same quality of reinforcement. So. Sure. Something to think about. So the S is the sensitivity. Reinforcement represents the amount of change in behavior. So when S is close to one, that's great. That's what we're looking for. Right. And overmatching is when the S is greater than 1. So the slope is more. When it's under matching, the S is lower than 1. And if it's really, really far away from the line, it may indicate that there's indifference to reinforcement.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yes.

[Jackie]

At completely. So you might really need to think.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

About if your slope is zero, that's bad, then you don't really have a reinforcer right there. Yeah. Instead.

[Jackie]

So that's helpful for practitioners.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yes.

[Jackie]

If clients demonstrate, maybe they'll be like.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Oh, well, it's helpful to understand why you get the results that you do.

[Jackie]

Yes. Yeah, it's always, it's always helpful. It's just that you might not be looking at it through this lens. Right. If clients demonstrate over overmatching, they're probably not contacting the programmed reinforcers associated with each of the behaviors specifically on that relatively leaner schedule of reinforcement. And the good example that they had was they have a student and they're allocating almost all of their responding to the, the therapist that had provider had provided more reinforcement and greater quality of reinforcement, like 90% of. But then for the other therapist, they didn't even get to experience that sort of reinforcement. So it might, you know that that might be a problem when you're talking about satiation. Right. And thinking of all those different variables. So you would want to do that. And so this is part the, the last kind of like page and a half is where it gets weedy. When they start talking about looking at the variance that's accounted for, they're like, yes, it's pretty good. The generalized matching equation is really good. If you're looking, you can actually look at the variance that can account for these equations. And this is where if you're not mathy, it gets a little harder to understand.

[Robert Perry Crews]

There is something about some of these papers on complex topics where I'm wondering why somebody didn't step in and say, this is brilliant. Please, like stop. Leave everyone with the win of a. Now I understand. I know that that's not want to tell them, but that's okay. Write another article. It would be okay. You don't have to get it all into the one. Especially if you call it tutorial. If you're going to call it a tutorial, it really should end on a. And now you know, everything you need for tomorrow and come back later next month or next quarter and we'll give you a little bit more.

[Jackie]

Yeah. So this one, right. It's. It's really just looking at again, trying to see how much you can predict based on this equation. And they said they can predict up to like 98% using the generalized matching equation in the real world. Right. Which is very impressive. Yeah. The closer that you can get to one, the more you can predict behavior. Right. And it can let you know that it's the reinforcer rates alone and not something else. So then moving, I think even farther to try to predict more behavior is the Herrnstein's hyperbola. And this is used to account for behavior when there are not just two instances of behavior. So there's a lot. Right. So now they've added the be. It's like a little fancy E. And that's supposed to account all the behavior that could be in the environment and then the re. Right.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

All the reinforcement.

[Jackie]

All the reinforcement that can be. So with the sum of all the B's into a K and the sum of all the reinforcers into the re, they've made the Herrnstein's hyperbola. Right. And so that one is very similar. It's just B1 equals K times R1 over R1 plus re.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It's very simple.

[Jackie]

It's simple but hard.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Jackie]

Right. And so here you're not looking at this perfect slope, but more of a curve. Right. A hyperbola is an open curve that curves upward away from the origin and then continues. And then it will decelerate until it's a flat horizontal line. Right. So it kind of looks like A curvy curve.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Jackie]

And it's going to be nearly parallel with the x axis. And here they. This part was very confusing for me, but they brought it home with this really nice implication for practice. And they were like, okay, look at. Differential reinforcement doesn't always require extinction, but you have to have a different way to provide different amounts of reinforcement to the appropriate behavior and the inappropriate behavior. So you're going to reinforce more than the other. Right. But there's also going to be other reinforcers that are going to impact this behavior in the clinical world. And so that's where you might see that. That flatlining. Right. You only can provide so much of a reinforcer, which is true.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No, it's very true. And. And I think that take home point is valuable. One of the challenges I always think I have with the matching law is once I get into. So what's the matching law? Well, it's sort of how we allocate behavior. Oh, is there an equation? Yep. I don't really need to know it, though. I'm just looking for the idea that people will allocate their responses to, you know, differently based on reinforcement as one factor as well as some other factors. And there's a whole graph if you want to get into it, but you probably don't need to if you want to just go live your life.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It's true that. I mean, that's true. That's very true.

[Robert Perry Crews]

But I think that's one of the reasons I rarely want to engage much more than, like, the first half of this article with the matching law, because it's one of those, like, this is really cool to know. I don't need to know more than do. I need to know more than this. And I. I don't know if I do.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

No. Well, it's the same way that it's like, I really appreciate all those cancer researchers doing all that work to make sure that we have the best tools possible to fight cancer, but I don't understand what exactly they do. Right. But when they say we have the best tools possible, I trust them.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yes.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Right. It's obviously not the same stakes, perhaps. Right. But it's the same idea, which is someone saying, we have a lawful and orderly understanding of how behavior operates. Can we show it to you? Yeah, we can. Do you want to see it? Maybe not.

[Robert Perry Crews]

If you're going to show me an equation with a log in it, and I'm not trying to relive high school, I don't think I need to.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Like, it's on the Backside. It's behind the wall. Right. Like these researchers have shored up the idea that we can understand and predict.

[Jackie]

Behavior and using it in something that's already like the mathematical equation that it very rarely is wrong.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Jackie]

Right. And that's kind of crazy.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Discussion of bias, discussion of sensitivity, like knowing having those as concepts that I can think about in terms of, well, someone's saying, yeah, but sometimes this kid does this and that doesn't make sense. It's like, well, as humans, as opposed to robots, there are reasons that we might not match perfectly to this equation. There's going to be some bias inherent in the scene we see with pigeons. You know, it'll come in, in, in the other articles we discussed. So I, I do appreciate kind of having a scientific underpinning as to why that could be rather than just like, I don't know, behavior, which is a terrible explanation.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Getting into the nitty gritty of the numbers is where I start going. Yep, okay, great. Keep going. What do I do with this? Thank you for the concepts and I appreciate that. If I needed someone to do my numbers for me, you could.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah. So, you know, most behavior analysts are clinically practicing behavior analysts and they, and including us, like, rarely contact this type of work. So it's like a. Behavioral behavior analysts are already a super small portion of the population and then probably proportionally about the same as the number of people in behavior analysis who are quantitative behavior analytic. Very little researchers. There's not that many folks who are doing it, but I am glad that they are doing this work and I appreciate that Reid and Kaplan have presented it to us and included a lot of examples here that can make it, you know, transferable, I guess, over. If you're not busy enjoying making formula and fitting curves Right. In Excel.

[Jackie]

I do also love it when they provide additional resources and one of them, I think, highlights the difference in this article. Maybe it's your second article, Rob, that you're going to read. It is the, the review. Oh, no, it's the technical primer on the matching law for researchers. That one seems terrifying.

[Robert Perry Crews]

There's a reason we didn't pick that one for the episode.

[Jackie]

But yeah, so I like, I like that they, they also give you a tutorial on using Excel to do the analysis, even though Excel has been. Is a little outdated. But we could probably update that. Right?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah. My article used Prism.

[Jackie]

Yeah. And so I just like that they have, they have ways that we can access this basic literature in a clinical way, even though it's. It's not always.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah. And it's not easily accessible to be honest, even finding this information. So Jackie and I took a class in quantitative analysis of behavior kind of around this time, probably around 2010, right before this article came out. No, it's not. It. It was not. It was not out and I wish it was. Jason Baray was our professor and he lament very often during that class that there wasn't really any textbook or like set of materials that one could easily study from and teach students about quantitative. So we were lucky again to have him as well that he could walk us through this. But I remember him being shocked that we did not know how to make formula in Excel. Yeah, but we didn't.

[Jackie]

We didn't.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Now we do.

[Robert Perry Crews]

To always assume that everyone should be able to do many of the things that seem to come so easy to him. Thank you, Jason.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

For thinking the best of all of us.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

And we didn't say it but like Baum and Rocklin are like the originators of the original matching law. And then Herrnstein for the generalized.

[Jackie]

Right.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

And then Rob, your article, the predecessor article is Bray and Bulmer. Right, Jason? Yeah.

[Jackie]

Well, I can say that Bomb Acts was the. The seminal article on generalized matching equation.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Oh, sorry.

[Jackie]

Yeah. But Herrnstein did the hyperbola.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Oh, okay. My bad.

[Jackie]

Well, just to.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

That was really good, Jackie.

[Jackie]

Someone would have erratted us.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Thank you. So we've got a good. A good handle on the basics of what one might need to know about the matching law. But what does that mean outside of the lab? Let's take a little break and when we come back, we're going to talk about two uses of the matching law to describe behavior in real life. I guess pigeons are real life too, but you know what I mean. Real life. We'll be right back. Hi.

[Jackie]

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[Diana Perry Cruz]

Sure, we all do.

[Jackie]

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[Diana Perry Cruz]

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[Jackie]

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[Diana Perry Cruz]

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[Jackie]

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[Diana Perry Cruz]

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[Jackie]

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[Diana Perry Cruz]

Come enjoy approved fieldwork placements, ethics, mini handbooks, PhD levels, professors, small class sizes, and a service trip to Iceland if interested.

[Jackie]

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.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Don't delay. Supplies are limited. Learn more at regiscollege.edu.

[Jackie]

Again, that's www.regiscollege.edu.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Regiscollege.Edu.

[Jackie]

One more time, www.regiscollege. edu.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

See you there.

[Jackie]

Bye.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And we are back talking all about the matching law. But before we talk more about the matching law, I want to remind our listeners that ABA InsideTrack is ACE and Quaa approved. And by listening, you're able to earn one learning credit. All you need to do is finish listening, then go to our website, abainsidetrack.com or click the link in your podcast player to put in some key information about yourself, as well as two secret code words. And the first one right now, in honor of Jackie's birthday. Cupcake. C U, P, C, A K, E. If you had a big slice of cake and a little cupcake and the responses were the same, what would the matching law predict that you would take? I don't know. That seems specific to you. Maybe the cupcake. We'd have to repeat it over and.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Over, and then I would need to know flavors.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You get sick after a while. Like, I don't think this experiment's doable. Everyone would satiate so quickly on cupcakes or cake. So you know what? Let's just leave it as the code word cupcake. All right, so we talked at the beginning. Jackie led us in a discussion of Reed and Kaplan's tutorial on the matching law. But what could we do with the matching law now that we have some understanding of it? And so we've got two studies. Diana, I. You know what? Let's go with your order. Let's start. Why don't you discuss Morris and Vollmer's matching law article on social time allocation.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Are you sure?

[Robert Perry Crews]

Let's do it.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Because I don't care that.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You know what, I don't know how many times we have to record this podcast and we'll see which one we choose each time and we'll graph it and maybe it's a hyperbola.

[Jackie]

We're not doing that.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Not reinforcing JK there's just so much.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Silence in this episode because no one says anything.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

All right, let me find my article then.

[Robert Perry Crews]

If only there was more logs.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Oh, you should make the. You should make the picture. Be Ren and Stimpy. I love.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, that's a good one.

[Jackie]

I love.

[Robert Perry Crews]

It was going to be a picture of people making a graph with their hands, like Jackie did, because I thought that was funny. But I'm gonna do. I'll do the log one.

[Jackie]

I make a graph with my hands.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Any.

[Jackie]

Anytime I think about graphing, I literally have to make it.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I have to do that. When I talk about left and right.

[Jackie]

Same.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It's all right.

[Jackie]

All the things.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah. Okay.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, I got it. Okay, here we go. Start. Not really, because all my computers tied into a recording. I'll show you later.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Okay, fine.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I have it. I have it open.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I'll see you when the listeners get to see it. Okay, so I want to tell you about this Morris and Vollmer article. And let me also note that this is like the third in a series of articles similar to this on this topic. I just happened to choose this one kind of arbitrarily. But if this floats your boat, you can go back and listen or find or read other articles that do a similar thing. Okay, so what they wanted to do here was look to see if the matching law could be applied to understand response allocation for eight children with autism in a version of what I have always called the split room assessment. And they. I will describe what that looks like, but it was in order to measure sensitivity to and preference for social interaction for these individuals. They had been doing this work for a while. So almost all these children had already been exposed to this. And they had a lot of footage of it. And as they were using that or, you know, looking at that footage, they said, you know, I wonder if we can't use the matching law to explain how everyone is operating within this room when there are two sides of the room. One experimenter, and the experimenter interacts with the child only when the child is on that side of the room. Right. So you have two responses that are happening here, which is standing near the experimenter and standing away from the experimenter, and two presumed reinforcers available for each of those things. One which is social interaction and one which is being alone or avoiding social interaction. And so they wanted to determine if they could utilize the matching law to see if behavior allocated as might be expected and whether that application could also be used to determine the preference for social interaction for each of the individual children. So, like I said, I have history with this as being as calling it the split room assessments. That's what we called it when we were using a version of this for research a long time ago. And it's very similar what they did, except when I did it, we had two experimenters. So other than that, it's almost exactly the same. So what Happens is you put a piece of tape down the center of a room. It's like a smallish room. Most likely, ours was small. Theirs had a table and two chairs on each side and toys on each side. And the child would be brought into the room and kind of like lined up right in the middle of the room. And then depending on where they went in the room, there would be different consequences. So in the version I did, there was one side of the room where there was an experimenter present, but they just didn't interact. They just, like, read a book. And then the other side of the room, there was an experimenter present. And when the child went over there, they would play with them and interact. Theirs was slightly different in that the experimenter would move between the different sides of the room on a variable but predetermined schedule. So when, whichever side of the room the experimenter was on, when the child crossed the tape and entered into that side of the room, the experimenter would provide social interaction with them. It was kind of less than I just described, where in the version I did, it was like a lot of playing together. In this one, it was like, oh, I'm glad you're here. Over here to play with me. Oh, look at what you're doing. Right. It was kind of like observational statements. And then there was another level where if the child manded in, in whatever format to have the experimenter join them and play, then the experimenter would join them.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So more like what we think talk about. When we talk about sort of pairing interactions, you don't just jump in and like, let me grab all your toys and play with them. Won't this be fun?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah, Unless.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Unless manded to do so.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yes. So they had to emit, like, really specific mands to have, like, more interaction. They called this an assessment of sociability is kind of how that they talked about it. And they said it was being used to measure the relative reinforcing efficacy of social interaction for each individual child, recognizing that the reinforcing efficacy of social interaction for each child likely is idiosyncratic per individual. So that was a big portion of this study. You know, when we've been talking about, like, the standard matching law and like, the pigeon research and everything, the reinforcer is food because the pigeons are held to, you know, some percentage of free feeding weight. And in doing so, it's very clear that food is going to be a highly motivating reinforcer. But in the real world, we're talking about all different types of things that may Be reinforcers. Question mark. But not everybody likes the same stuff. So we can't go in necessarily with that same automatic assumption or level of. Of assumption on what's going to function as a reinforcer.

[Jackie]

Right.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

So we're like, maybe social interaction will be reinforcing. We actually don't know. Using this type of, you know, overlaying this type of equation here could help us determine that as well. Let me see here. They also know that the individuals in the study had all varying levels of communication ability. And so this was a good way as well to test for non vocal verbal individuals to determine preference. I'm always interested in finding additional ways that we can determine preference for a non vocal verbal individual. So it's good to know that this could fall into that area. They give us a lovely table where they show us the various matching law equations. There's the simple one. Hang on, let me look to see what they called all of them. I didn't write that part down. Okay. Strict was the first version that Jackie talked about. Time based was another one that you didn't discuss. Oh no, you did. I'm sorry, you did. Yeah, but they list that one out separately. So rather than B for behavior, we have T for time. Then we have the generalized matching law, which adds in the log and the, the. The A and the B parameters. And then now we have this one here, which is what they are calling the sociability matching law. It's just like the generalized matching law. So don't get too worried about that. Except rather than having time and reinforcement, we have P&th. I read this article several times. Nowhere could I find what P and TH were. Except finally this morning when I woke up out of bed, I said th is therapist and P must be participant.

[Jackie]

Boom, you did it.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I don't know if I just keep missing it in the study or if it's supposed to be implied and I'm just dumb dumb for not knowing what they were talking about so they were not trying to break it down so much and measure each individual supposed reinforcing statement by the therapist or anything like that. It was much simpler than that. They were just measuring what side of the room was the kid on. And was it the same side of the room as a therapist is pretty much how it broke down. Okay. I was very proud of myself that I like finally sorted that out. And then after that they tell us, so now that we have this equation, now we can think about how the matching law would be applied here and think about what it would mean if we got these varying slopes and how well the behavior, you know, matched on to the map matching law or to the. To a slope of 1. So if we had a slope greater than 0, then that would indicate that social interaction was at least somewhat reinforcing for that individual. Because, remember, as Jackie said, if it's a slope of zero, then it's neutral. Right. Then the thing that you think is a reinforcer is just a neutral stimulus. And we wouldn't expect the child to either move toward the social side with the therapist or away from social side. So if it's greater than zero, then that would be, like, positive toward the social interaction being reinforcing. If it was a slope of one, then that would indicate that social interaction would be what they called potently reinforcing or, I'm sorry, greater than one. Potently reinforcing. And then if it was a slope less than zero. So neg, you know, negatively oriented or for anyone listening at home, like, a slope of one looks like a strong increasing trend. Right. A slope less than zero would be a somewhat decreasing trend in terms of just thinking about the direction that the. We would need to draw the fit curve line. So that would mean that social interaction would be at least somewhat aversive. And then a slope less than negative one would show that social. Social interaction is aversive because in that case, the individual will be actively moving away.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I will allocate all of my responding to getting the hell away from you.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And when. And then when I have experience with this. Some kids, that's absolutely what they do.

[Robert Perry Crews]

What were you doing wrong?

[Jackie]

Nothing.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Oh, I just took data. I was. It wasn't me. Oh.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, okay. It was some other. Some other therapist who was.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I think I ran the camera for the. I honestly don't even remember the, like, where these studies ended up.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Throwing somebody else on the.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It may have been a file door study. No, there were multiple therapists in the version I did, and they rotated who was on which side. So no one developed a confidence.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Nobody had to be the one that was. That's the bad therapist.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

That. The way they did it in this study is better, really, too? Because that is another potential variable present there. Because they were two different people. We didn't have identical twins like they do in Face off on Netflix. I know you don't know what I'm talking about. That's okay.

[Jackie]

I don't either.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It's a makeup artist show. Oh, it's okay. It's. It's a tangent.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I care about that show. About as much as I care about the matchalon basketball.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

All right. I don't know what I was talking about.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, no. We've all moved to the other side of the room.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Stop it. Okay, so, right. So it's not good or bad to, like, social interaction. Right, Right.

[Jackie]

You like it or you don't.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yep, exactly. It's just a preference.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I mean, as long as you are running it as an experiment like this, as opposed to usually this child does love social reinforcement, then you'd be curious as to why your matching law is not playing out. It's because.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Well, that is interesting.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Unpleasant. Yeah, not the student.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Remind me to bring that back up at the end. Yeah. So some kids really like social interaction. Some kids really don't. And I absolutely saw that pattern emerge when I was running a version of this was all I was trying to say.

[Jackie]

You know what would be really funny is if it was a party and all the people are on one side, and then there was just a, like, a book and a glass of wine on the other, and Diane and I went into the room, we would instantly split.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah, right.

[Jackie]

Yep.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I also want a puzzle.

[Jackie]

Yeah, okay, that's good.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And then occasionally the crowd would have to move to the other side and someone have to grab the wine and book and move them to the other side. And then, and I would say, graph your allocation over time.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

My wine.

[Jackie]

My wine and puzzle.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Okay. So just as with the generalized matching law, the sociability matching law has a B parameter which accounts for bias. So in this case here, it would be side of the room bias, and then an A parameter which accounts for slope, which here represents the preference for or against social interaction. So the way I just described the steep or the non steep slope. And then just to quote straight from this thing, so you guys get the full picture, the following things could be determined using this equation. One, the amount of variance accounted for by equation four to determine if additional independent variables were needed to explain social time allocation. Two, participants, patterns of switching to the social and alone sides following an instance of a therapist movement. Three, the relative duration of visits to the social and alone sides of the room and for the percentage of session on the social side. All right, so they're very excited. They have this whole thing set up. Now we need to see does it actually work? Meaning does it actually demonstrate what they want us to demonstrate? Yeah, Right.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Can they match? Can they match the difference?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Does it actually match? Yeah, Sorry, I didn't know what I was trying to say. We had eight participants. They were all Aged three to eight, they all had ASD diagnoses. Two were identical twins. They like snuck that piece in and like asterisks in the table, which I thought was funny. And then as I've already described, the room was set up. So I presume that they were the same toys on both sides of the room. They didn't say that, but it seems obvious to me that that would have to be the case.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I thought it was mentioned somewhere, but yeah, maybe it wasn't.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It's wherever they decided what P&TH were called. It's in that section.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

So the start of the session, the therapist would already be in the room. They always started on the left side of the room. They said for procedural integrity reasons, which I think means that they got confused sometimes about where they were supposed to be when. And so they were like, let's just have you always be on the list.

[Robert Perry Crews]

We were a great therapist. Did not know their right from their left though.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

All right, it could have been me. Someone else would bring the participant in, stand them in the middle of the room and say, go wherever you want. And if they went to the therapist side, that's when they got the social statements that were kind of generic unless they asked specifically for something. And if they went on the alone side, then the therapist did not interact with the therapist, switched sides on a time based schedule and would say, I'm going to play over here now. And sessions were eight minutes long is how that all went down. So the dependent variable, there were two things here. It was the duration the participant was on the left side of the room and the duration that participant was on the social side of the room. Because you just subtract from that and you get the rest of the information, basically. And so then they measured the number of times that the participant kind of went back and forth, basically by measuring what they called the risk ratio, which was dividing the probability of social or avoidance switches within 10 seconds of the therapist movement, which was the conditional probability by the probability of social or avoidance switches during any 10 second interval, regardless of therapist movement, which was the unconditional probability. So if this child was just flitting about, right. And moving back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, then sometimes they would be on the side with the therapist. But it wouldn't necessarily be because of the therapists being there to provide social interaction. Right. It could be that they were just a busy bee. So in order to determine that component, that's why they did this whole breakdown. So is it when the therapist moved, then they moved. And that. Then that would indicate they're probably more sensitive to that reinforcement and. Or that it functioned as reinforcement at all. Okay. And so then you might be wondering what happened. Right. There are tons of graphs in here. I'm mostly just going to stick to.

[Robert Perry Crews]

These are results where it's like, anyway, there were lots of results, all of them slightly different.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And in the end of the day, any one result is irrelevant compared to the goal here, which is. Does this seem to fit up with our matching law expected curves?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah. And, I mean, I'm like, kind of a data nerd. Right. But, like, this is even more data nerdy than me. But, you know that they were excited. Right. They definitely wanted to analyze these data every which away. And they did so, and they all got published in here. But what I can tell you is for our eight participants, they were able to fit their behavior across. I don't know if I said, I think there are five sessions for each participant. Fit their behavior across these five sessions pretty clearly, really onto matching law curve for everyone. And everyone's data looked a little bit different. Is the other piece that you should know about too. So behavior. Everyone's behavior was sensitive to reinforcement, some more so than others. So, for example, a few folks, like Lola and Lydia and Booker were three participants for whom social interaction did seem to function as a reinforcer. And that we had slopes here that were not quite one, but were definitely positive and closer to one than not one, basically. So for all three of these folks, it looked like they preferred to be on the side of the room with the therapist. And social interaction did function as a reinforcer. And then we had Felicity, whose data were all they were not quite the slope of her alignment, it's not quite zero, but it wasn't super far off zero. So for her, it may. And her, there was a good amount of variance as well within the data across her session. So good indication for her that the presence of the therapist may really not have made a lot of difference for her movements around the room. Yeah. And she may not have been particularly sensitive to the presence of the therapist. And then we had four participants. Well, let me say we had Chloe, Cedric and Edward, all for whom had a negative slope to their line that was pretty similar to the first three that I described, except inverted. So they had a stronger preference toward social avoidance from the therapist. Although they did. It wasn't. Let me just say it wasn't as drastic a slope as Daniel. So Daniel had a very steep negative line for his graph which indicated he was highly avoidant of social interaction. So it was really idiosyncratic across individuals. Yet even though going into it they didn't know whether this was going to function as a reinforcer or not, they were able to determine or discern through this process whether social interaction was reinforcing and in doing so also fit their preferences to the matching law graph using this split room sociability assessment, which was cool. And then there were lots of other graphs. But I'm going to stop there so that you get to talk about basketball.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Okay. I liked that article a lot. I think the kind of the social split room assessment is always an interesting idea. I like the idea of looking at the matching law to have a more quantifiable means of. I feel like I'm getting a dissemination station. I'm not yet more quantifiable means of looking at that relationship is fascinating. So I say all of this as preamble to the article I'll be discussing, which is Alpha, Nick, Cuchfield, hit and Higgins in generality, the matching law. It's a descriptor of shot selection in basketball. And I say this because I want everyone to know that I'm not down on the matching law. I do think this might be the most pointless article I have ever read in my entire career. I'm sorry. You know, sometimes I'll throw out an idea. What? No, I feel like being like, I'm not mean that this is a bad article, that it was done poorly. It is an article that I kept scratching my head saying why not only was this done, but why is this the third or fourth article looking at this relationship?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I can tell you why.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Why?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Because the data are there.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Okay? There's a lot of data out there. There's not a better relationship for the matching law.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It's very hard, as we've been describing, to find places in the quote unquote, like natural environment where you know pretty clearly what the reinforcers degree that you do with these data.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Then perhaps.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

And you have so much of them. Right? So you have.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I would have a basketball game 50% more if in the introduction they'd said it's interesting to look for ways to study the matching law. The NBA or NCAA basketball gives us a huge data set where we can explore that. However, there were many phrases in here that made me believe that this is something that I should be saying. This is so important and I am so glad this research was done.

[Jackie]

Done.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And perhaps that was an editor thing. We've got to make this sound like it's something that people want to read or need to read. But I don't know, it just, the whole thing just, it bounced off me harder than I think anything I've ever read before. In terms of. At the end I just said okay and ellipses. So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm down on this one. I'm not down for, for very, very specific reasons, not due to bad articleness or anything.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It's a gold mine of data. Right.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Okay, great.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

And it has varying responses available to look at for response allocation with really clear differences in reinforcer.

[Jackie]

It's a amount. Yeah, it's one. I think it's one of the best ways to systematically explore the matching law in a clinical application. Right, because it's so cut and dry.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, but it's not even cut and dry. That's my other problem is I read through this whole article thinking, aha, this will. At least, the very least this will say the matching law explains how teams are good or bad at basketball. And then even at the end the authors do have to warn now be careful, this is correlative. There are a lot of other factors that go into basketball games other than the allocation of a two versus three point shot and how sensitive a shooter is. Which spoiler, that's the whole thing. It's. The more sensitive a player seemed to be as to whether they took more twos or threes did seem to impact whether that was probably considered a good player in terms of more play time or a good team in terms of how they rank. And this goes into anyone to be a ball hog, which you know. And at the end of this they've been able to say and this is how we know that Michael Jordan's one of the best basketball players ever at the matching law. That would blow my mind. But they can't say that because just because you know, whether you should take more twos or threes doesn't necessarily mean you are now basketball team because there are a lot of other. Other factors also.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Defense.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Exactly. A lot of defense. So it all comes down to it. We've got a study in which it's like, look, this is kind of neat, I guess. And at the end, have we learned anything? Big shot so bounced off me much like a basketball. It just, it bounced real bad.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Okay, why don't you give us the quick, quick version here.

[Robert Perry Crews]

There's an original study, Volmer and Beret, which looked at basketball shooting Uof at University of Florida basketball players in 98, 99 to see how do basketball players allocate their shots, dots to two and three point field goals to see, hey, is this allocation based on frequency of reinforcement as we'd expect through the matching law? And that's cool because you know what, that hadn't been done. Why not do it? Then there were two more studies including this one to look at the exact same, exact same kind of relationships. However, this study, they want you to be aware this study used the generalized matching law and really wanted to look at a lot of different factors. So strike one is this is kind of like is this really a socially important thing to study? Strike two, do multiple studies in one article. All right, I hate that.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

So okay, well I did pick this.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Article out for you specifically because it had multiple studies.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

No, I was like, well should we.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Do my favorite topic?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

No, I was like, should we do Vollmer and Beret? And then I thought, well, that one is, is an older one. If we talk about this one, we'll kind of be like rolling that one up into this one as well. But you did because you already mentioned it. And I thought this one was cool because it talked about like varying schools.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You are. My definition of cool is decidedly different, I think.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

All right.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Anywho, Multiple size one.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Anyway, these, these authors worked really hard on it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So are they paying you? They've written a lot of other articles. I know Tom Critchfield's written a lot of articles which we have effusively praised on his show. So I hope he's. I don't think his feelings will be hurt. This one wasn't my cup.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Why don't you pick the one study that you want us to know about?

[Robert Perry Crews]

Well, they all kind of relate. I'm just going to go very quickly through them all because none of them are so different. So once you go over one, you kind of can just hit the, hit the results. So the first study really was looking at what if we just kind of replicated the original Beret and Volmer article looking at Division 1 basketball and they looked at the 2005-2006 season, they had a bunch of teams. You had to have made some percentage of your two point and three point field goals to have your data included in the matching law. And most of the time they also found that the generalized matching law did account for variance in shot selection, but they did find a pattern that is going to hold true through most of the studies, which is the gr. The matching law never was a perfect fit. So there's always some under selection in terms of how the Players allocated their shots, which makes sense because they are not machines, they're human beings doing this. And you know, under a lot of other kind of competing reinforcement given times defense, for example. So they're not going to probably have a perfect fit. And there is a bias for the three point shot versus the two point shot that cannot be explained by the matching law itself.

[Jackie]

I can explain it well, I mean.

[Robert Perry Crews]

They do then talk about the fact that they see this is the same as you would see in basic research in that usually there's a bias among organisms for reinforcers that have a higher quality of reinforcement. Three being bigger. Yeah, two. Which I feel like the study was like anyone who thinks that they can make all the threes and allocates their shots that way, I might be a bad player because so many people can make those shots.

[Jackie]

It's true.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So study two. But what if we did the same thing but we looked at the explanatory flexibility of the equation such as will this model account for situation specific effects in real life? Like would we see more or less matching for teams that were successful versus unsuccessful or players who were good and bad, I. E. Played more or less, played less, and then also who were at a higher versus lower level of competition. So college basketball has various divisions with Division 1 being the most competitive, 3 being the least competitive, or I guess if you're the intramural league, you'd be the least competitive, but Division 3 kind of being the lowest. So what if we did the same study, we matched everyone's, we took all the players, we used our matching law equate generalized matching law equation for their two versus three point shot allocations. Looking also at all of those factors. Again, you see the generalized matching law did account for most of the variants for, you know, match for most of the players. And you did see that the generalized matching law did account for the variance that you would see between best and worst teams, while there was always some under matching. So the same as in study one they did. And they bias for the three. They did see that the generalized matching law accounted for more of the variance with the good team. So better teams seem to have more orderly players. So we said, you know, we're humans, not robots. But the good teams had players that took their shots and allocated their shots to where the reinforcement for them was going to be, I. E. They probably were better at whatever shot they were taking. They spent more time on it, or they had more positional, you know, we don't know exactly why, but they had more kind of Environmental awareness of I'm better off taking a three here versus now. I'm better off trying to do a layup and get a two here than. But whatever reason they allocated their shots more effectively. You saw this with the teams that were better. You saw this with the players that had more play time. Again, some of the bias for threes varied a little bit from year to year. Not, not sure quite why. And you saw this cross D1, D, D2, D3 and for regulars then for substitute players only got a little bit. So again that could be more that they had more, more more they met the contingency more often in terms of the shots taken. Not quite sure but. But the more orderly shooting, right, could be more training. The more orderly your patterns of shooting, the better overall you and your team did. Again, that's not cause causal, but that is correlational. Although there is a great quote here, several of the relevant findings correspond well to lay impressions of basketball, which to me almost sounds like, I guess anyone who watches a lot of basketball could also have predicted the matching law without knowing the matching law exists. Which again is like, well if anyone could have made this assumption, why put it in a paper? Don't you want to sound smarter than just anyone watching tv?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

But anyway, sometimes that's what science is. Yeah, I guess science.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I guess I would not have phrased it that way if I wanted to say. So this does seem to be in line with that. That sounds a little more. I don't know, whatever. So then what if we looked at individual players rather than teams? So if we had player careers as our data points on the matching law line versus individual each individual sort of player within a team own being, their own being a data point. So they took the 50 best NBA players from 79 to 2007. Why 79 you ask? Fun bit of trivia. That's when the three point shot was introduced. So you can earlier I didn't either. So There you go, 1979, the three point shot shot. And what they found again was even for the best players, and these are the best players who played for a long period of time enough that they could, you know, get a graph on the generalized matching law equation. You saw again that most of the variants in individual player shot selection saw some level of under matching, but not always a bias for the three. But again you did see that it did explain a lot of the differences. When studying individuals versus aggregate data, the bias estimates really varied. So some players like Charles Barkley loved the three, had a bias for it. Magic Johnson did not have a bias for either shot. Michael Jordan had a bias for the two point shot, which again, I'd like to talk to a basketball fan to say, say, do you remember Jordan doing more twos than threes? Mostly. All I know about Jordan, he's always do those cool slam dunks, right? So that makes sense as a lay basketball fan to explain how this could be. But again, this is all very interesting and isn't it cool to know about the biases of these individual players related to their shot allocation? And the matching law does appear to speak as to it has something to do with the good versus the bad teams. But again, how well does this actually predict anyone's like later performance? Are team versus individual analysis that different? Do we care enough to look at that? And also we don't know that while we know that the GML is going to account for most of that shot selection variation that we see in basketball players. Like I kind of already said, we don't necessarily know that this therefore leads to good versus bad team. So is shot allocation a key function of that or is it just one variable of many? Which is interesting in some ways but also so kind of a thud to end with. I know scientifically you can't make a giant assumption of and because matching law teams good equals or teams bad, which would be the fun statement to make but it's not real and would be bad science. So I do appreciate that they're being very honest that hey, these results are interesting but aren't necessarily going to change how we bet on basketball in the future. Though I suppose that might be a factor you want to take into account in your office final four pool this March. So anywho, the matching law can look a little bit more ad at some bit of cause and effect relationships in real world context better than say descriptive methods. Though again, it is not, you know, foolproof. It does not tell us all the answers. So that was the study. All right, fine, sounds good. Thank you so much. Let's wrap it up.

[Jackie]

It was written well.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Oh yeah, of course.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I'm not knocking this. I feel like everyone is like oh man, I like, I have like a bone, I have a bone to pick with, you know, all with Alphanik, you know, like I like, I don't like him or Alpha Nick, like, like you ran over my dog or something. No. Oh, it was a really well written article and it looked at the question it wanted to answer in a very thorough and readable and understandable way. I don't know why it just felt Very big. Like, I don't. I just have not shrugged or bounced off an article so much. I just wanted to bring it up for anyone who thinks that I'm too positive about everything. I'm not. Trust me. Listen to the previous 10 minutes. So I.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

So do you think you would read more articles that.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No. Actually, this article made me never want to read articles again. We're not getting to 300. I'm not reading anymore. I'm done. Now.

[Jackie]

I'm done Article.

[Robert Perry Crews]

The last article I ever read. Now do I want to read more articles about basketball?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

About the matching law?

[Robert Perry Crews]

About the matching law.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, I. Like. I, I know.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It's okay. You can. You can allocate your responding away from. From. Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

If you chase me down with a matching law article, I run to the other side of the room. The conditional probabilities say maybe. Anyway, let's talk about matching law in the dissemination station.

[Jackie]

Forgot that was my job.

[Robert Perry Crews]

That's your job.

[Jackie]

My only job.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Well, no, you had to describe the matching law, which was the hardest of the articles to do. Well, matching law. It's neat. Do we need to know all the quantities? Like, if you listen to this and said, I feel like I know a little bit more about the matching law. Learning about, you know, biases and thinking about applications potentially in social reinforcement and avoidance. Interesting stuff. I don't need to memorize that equation for I shall never use it. Okay, cool. I think we hope you learned a little bit more that way. But if you are so quantitatively inclined, you can dig really deep into looking at behavioral allocation across lots of important contexts, maybe you'll be the one to answer the question of. Is shot allocation the most important predictor of whether your basketball team is good or bad? In which case, get on DraftKings as fast as you can, I guess, because you, You. You've cracked the code. But if you just listened to all this and said, that's cool, I'm glad I learned a little bit more about the matching law. And now I'll go back to just kind of remembering that's a thing. I don't know if that's necessarily bad. That's just. That's how you're allocating your responding tomorrow with your paper, with your stack of research articles to read.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I enjoyed reading that there were a lot of different human applications for the matching law. Right. Because I feel like you learn about it in school and you're. And you say exactly what you said, Rob, that's cool. But that's mostly for pigeons. And then you kind of don't really worry about it anymore until Jason Barret is surprised that you don't know how to fit curves in Excel. But there were a lot of examples in these articles of ways in which human responding also adheres to the matching law. And I think that is a really good thing to remember. Right. We are not not special organisms. We behave just as other organisms do, and our behavior is going to follow reinforcement just like other organisms behavior is. So I feel like, you know, we all just did the Science of Consequences book club as well, and that was the heart of that too, which is consequences really matter, and they're all around us and they're operating all the time. Do we always know all of the pieces that are present? Not really, but it doesn't mean that. But the forces with which behavior is flowing aren't lawful and orderly. Both of these come back to that same point, which I think is a good reminder for all of us, we have a lot of ways in which behavior can be altered if we stop and think about it. So saying like, it happens out of the blue or I just can't change this or there's no way to understand or fix this is likely not the case.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Well, let's just say if I'm ever at, like, a Babbitt party or Derek Reed or Jason Beret or, you know, any of the authors here want to corner me and start talking about matching law, I promise I will not run to the other side of the tape line on. On the room. I will stay and listen. I'm not averse to matching law discussion, but I probably will do more of the nodding and oh than I will actually sharing anything of mathematical value when it comes to the matching law.

[Jackie]

Cool. I don't really. I think I agree with you that I think it's always important to know about it, know that it's out there, and remind ourselves that it's out there. And so when we are stuck on a specific case or client, we can refer back and use the. The application, the clinical applications, to kind of provide another alternative to what we're currently thinking about for our clients. That's what I would say. Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, let's wrap it up with pairings.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

All right.

[Jackie]

Yay.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

There's no song for pairings. Yeah. So now it's time for pairings, which is the section of the show where I remind you of some past episodes that you might want to check out if you found this one to be titillating. We've never talked about the matching lot before. Oh, Rob didn't like that.

[Robert Perry Crews]

It's not the phrase I would have real head.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Real head scratcher. We never talked about the matching law before, but I would like for everyone out there to know that we have a whole section in our previous episodes page called the Basics where we review some of those harder to tackle concepts that are, you know, basic concepts in our field. But we do so hopefully in a way that makes sense or is like a refresher for you perhaps, because you already learned all that. You're already BCBAs many of you out there.

[Jackie]

Students just reviewing.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah. So there are several episodes in there that I think are related to this or also like good refresher ones too. So those are the ones that I've stuck in here for you today. They include episode 126, Behavioral Economics with Derek Reed. Episodes 175 and 195 where we talk about token economy Emmys first alone and then joined and absolutely schooled by Jason Beret.

[Jackie]

We were totally schooled.

[Robert Perry Crews]

It was the most that he came on the show to be like, you're all very wrong. And I'm gonna tell you. As opposed to the very friendly and informative way.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Oh my God, that episode is so.

[Jackie]

It's so good.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Everyone should go listen to 195.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I think we were taught. I think is is a more described.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

We were definitely taught.

[Robert Perry Crews]

We were taught so good.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

It's so good.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You'll be taught too if you're listen to episode 195.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah. Episode 143, stimulus equivalents. Episode 223, generality and generalization. Episode 248, delayed discounting with Amy Odom. And episode 256, acceleration charts explained with Jared Van.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You described that those are all. A lot of those are in the basics section.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yes.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And oh, basics. Those are all things. You know. Those would still be topics. I would say you can be taught a lot because we don't talk about our basics all the time. And it's nice to kind of go back and review them as you've gained your own level of knowledge about this field and maybe gotten a little rusty with the basics.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Maybe it's. It's a reversal experience. Some of these are the basics in the sense that it's more translational research.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yes.

[Jackie]

I can't believe you didn't put our behementum studies in there.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Oh, yeah. I'll do that too. Okay. Also episode 86 in which we discuss behavioral momentum with writing these in the.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Notes, even though she just needs to.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Say the momentum Bill Ahern.

[Jackie]

Well, remember, for posterity.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yes. Yeah. And then our snack today is birthday pie.

[Jackie]

Oh, yes.

[Robert Perry Crews]

What's a birthday pie?

[Jackie]

It's a pie for your birthday because I don't like cake.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So it's literally just a pie. But it's at a birthday time.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yep. I was gonna let you pick the flavor.

[Jackie]

Strawberry rhubarb.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Ah, there we go.

[Robert Perry Crews]

It's a good one.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Please enjoy.

[Robert Perry Crews]

All right, well, thanks everybody for listening to our episode on the matching law. Thanks to Jackie and Diana, as always for being here to discuss and thank you all listeners for listening. We hope you enjoyed ABA InsideTrack. Why not subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to get your podcast? You can leave reviews at all of those places. You can also find us [e-mail] where you can find links to all the articles we discussed, all of the research articles we discussed, and emails and all that good stuff. We're also on the socials as ABA InsideTrack. If you want even more ABA InsideTrack content, then head on over to patreon.com abainsidetrack trek, where you can subscribe at any level to get access to some of our kind of fun extra listener features like our quarterly listener choice polls. But if you subscribe at the five dollar and up level, you get access to those listener choice episodes in a raw video format where you get to see all the zaniness, plus get a free ce. And speaking of the science of consequences, if you want to get access to our 2 hour extra long podcast book clubs every quarter, you can sign up at the $10 level to get those right when they come out, as well as to get two additional CES. So if you're doing the math, folks, that's three CES per season just for being a patron. That's patreon.com abainsidetrack and finally, some thanks. Oh, wait, before we get to the thanks. Ah, you thought I was over. You need the second secret code word if you're interested in ces. And that is stabby. S, T, A, B, B, Y. Where'd that come from? Well, Jackie lent us one of those, like, Reiki mats.

[Jackie]

It's not a Reiki mat.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Reiki mat.

[Jackie]

That's ridiculous.

[Robert Perry Crews]

What's a Reiki? Something else.

[Jackie]

Yes, it is. So I let you borrow my Shakti Mat.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Shakti mat?

[Jackie]

That's the word it deals with acupuncture.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yes. And it was sitting right next to where I was taking notes when I wrote this and I said those things. Look, stabby. And I said, that's the code word for us. So stabby is your code word?

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I thought you were feeling stabby.

[Robert Perry Crews]

What, like I'm. No, that's violent. No, those things are stabby. They poke you.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Oh, people say that online if they're just annoyed.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I'm feeling stabby.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Yeah, I like that.

[Jackie]

I'm gonna use it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, I don't care for that. That's too.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I mean, extra annoyed. Raging.

[Jackie]

I mean, I'm angry.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I want to stab you with some. I don't like.

[Jackie]

No, I'm feeling stabby. I'm there.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

I feel it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

That's what I just said. That's. No. Folks, be safe out there. And that's the end of the show. So go do something safe. Thanks. Thanks. Final thanks to Dr. Jim Carr for recording our intro outro music, Kyle Sturry for interstitial music, and Dan Thabit of the podcast Doctors for his amazing editing work. We'll be back next week with another fun and filled episode, but until then, keep responding. Bye.

[Jackie]

Bye.

[Diana Perry Cruz]

Happy birthday.

[Jackie]

Sam.