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ABA Inside Track
Episode 324 - Behavioral Artistry Revisited w/ Dr. Amy Bukszpan
01:25:22
We had so much fun the last time we talked about behavioral artistry, we decided to do it again. And this time, we brought one of the folks that’s leading the charge to better define just exactly what we DO when we act as behavioral artists....
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
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.
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A
Hello, Rob. It's me, Diana Perry Cruz.
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C
And it's me, Zach.
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A
Oops, sorry.
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C
Sorry.
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D
I went. I went for it. And Diana was still talking.
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B
JAG was bragging about what a professional podcaster she was, and she's. She's rushing her intros. This is. It's all going to come up in her performance review. We just finished Supervision September on the show, so it's probably a good time to give Jaggie her annual performance review, you know, right before we start recording, too, just to just put her in the right frame of mind. No, I kid. I kid. We're not doing performance reviews because we're none of us that. That professional. Except in our day jobs. In our podcasting job, it's all fun. Fun and games. Somebody loses an eye, which is hard to do on a podcast. But this isn't a podcast about safety rules for your bodily functions or anything. It's a podcast about behavior analysis and behavior analytic research where every week we pick a topic and then discuss some relevant research articles. And sometimes we pick a topic that we actually have had a chance to talk about before, but we are lucky enough to get to revisit it with someone who is a master of the topic, who knows all about it, who has more to share, who can tell us what we did wrong in the last episode. And we can remind you, don't listen to that old one. Just listen to the new one, because we got the expert here. And this time, and this is definitely an article. An article and episode that we will be very much enjoying the expertise of Dr. Amy Bookspan. And, Amy, I should have asked you how to pronounce your last name before we started recording. Did I get it even close to right?
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C
Oh, you did it perfectly. And you did honor to the accent, too. It was perfect. Yeah, it was good.
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B
Well, Amy, thank you so much for coming on to talk about and revisit behavioral artistry.
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C
Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me. After listening to your first episode, I was between delighted, excited, and seething a little because of multiple things. And I was in the car and I was like, don't drive angry. Don't drive angry. And I had to, like, exhale. And I was, like, super excited because people have told me that the first episode had come out all about behavioral artistry. And then I listened and I was like, oh, I have answers. I have answers to so many of these comments. And then also I was like, it's buck span and all. Not leaf at all.
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D
We fixed it in an errata.
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C
In a future errata.
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B
We fixed it.
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C
We're so, so sorry. No. You know when you'. You pour your heart and soul into something and you're like, oh, well, we're.
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B
Going to set the record straight. Your. Your name's right here in the title. It'll always. If you search Behavioral artistry and, you know, this should show up now. Everyone will see that.
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A
Yeah.
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C
No longer seething. But I'm okay.
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D
I would have been too, though, to be fair, I would have been too.
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C
Yeah. So appreciate it. I mean, you guys, honestly, it was a really lovely episode, the first one, and I think that was a. A listener's pick on that topic. Yeah, it was really cool to see the interest and hear the interest in behavioral artistry and something that I had come across and have landed on so closely and have dug really deeply into. So it was really exciting.
- [03:35]
B
Beautiful. Well, we're very excited. It was a topic. I think I found one of the earlier articles before we found your article and some of the others, and it just was one of those, oh, no, actually, may I read. It was your article. It's all hazy now as to the exact inception of, you know, let's do this topic, or let's throw this topic out to the listeners, see if they're interested in this one. But it was just one that you read about it, and it sort of hits on that idea of, hey, this makes perfect sense. Let's see what we got. Let's see what we can learn about this topic and what people are doing out there. And I, I think you and your colleagues are probably the only folks who are really looking into beyond just like, wow, what a fun idea. Anyway, discussion article done. Move on. Like, you're the only ones kind looking at the research and experimental design of using teaching Behavioral Artistry. So we're very excited to get to hear how that process goes, because as we've learned, when you're trying to learn something or do something experimental on a topic that could be a little vague, it's not so easy to set your definitions and do the work, to sort of teach the skill in a way that everyone will read and say, yes, that's exactly what it is, and you have exactly taught the skill now as opposed to, you know, just opining about, oh, wouldn't that be great? Which, you know, it's Fun too. But you only need so many of those articles.
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C
I mean, for sure. And certainly in where the field is taking us right now, where we have so many soft skills that are coming out and we have people. You know, my research came out of looking at compassionate care, looking at responsive practices and cultural humility and cultural responsiveness. And we were talking about all these things and that's where all this is popping up. And then I was like, well, wouldn't it be great to know how to teach these pieces? I am by trade always will be in my heart, a hands on practitioner. I'm applied. I might teach and I might lead research and do all these things. But if it doesn't somehow wind up in the practitioner's hands and we can't get it there, that's not where my, my heart desire lives. So I really was like, let's do research on how we get it there and let's figure out how we can stop talking about it and put it into action. And that's really where this all came from. I am a. I don't know if you want to call it a Richard Fox acolyte. I mean I got introduced to Translating the Covenant 1996 article. And I think I. It was 1998 when I was introduced to that article and fell in love with Richard F. And what he was doing and then started looking into his line of research and everything he had done and started digging things up. And that's how I found behavioral artistry.
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B
Yeah, so, okay, so. So you're kind of old school behavioral artistry. You didn't sort of find it after the. You sort of found it as you were learning more about just his, his overall body of work. Because this as a concept is in 85. Right. Was kind of the first time you sort of coined the phrase.
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C
Yeah, it's an 85. It was a lecture that he gave, the Jack Tizzard lecture. 1985, I think it was in Australia. It's hard to. Hands on one of the original. I have it if anybody wants it. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that I went through many routes to get it. But yeah, no, I, I was really immersed. My first mentor. So I started engaging in behavior analytic work. I was, I was like a behavior technician before we had behavior technicians in the 90s. I was. Started babysitting little kids and then they got a diagnosis. I was probably 17 or 16. He said, hey, we have this thing called behavior analysis. Do you want to teach these kids? And I was like, that Sounds great. So I started and didn't know what I was doing. And then through all these avenues, met my mentor, a gentleman named Jimmy o', Brien, who, first thing he gave me was translating the Covenant when we started looking at work. And it was. I mean, it was absolutely the first article that I read. And I was like, yeah. And we. We worked together. And the whole purpose of our work was we worked with children, we worked with families, worked in developmental centers with adults. But we cut on, like, how do we get this through to people? How do we explain? How do we train? And it just made sense. Everything that Fox had said early in that 96 article, which Critchfield then says, and that we keep repeating about jargon, free language, but everything was like, no one said, how do we do this? So again, I just went. I was like, love this guy. No one's putting this. We're doing pen to paper, but we're not actually putting action to it. So I started looking into it and came across Callahan's article, which I think is the one you're referencing. The Behavioral Artistry Examining the Relationships paper.
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B
Yes.
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A
Yeah.
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C
So that's the first one that now everybody cites that goes back and talks about behavioral artistry, and it talked about personality traits and how behavioral artistry, these seven concepts align to these personality traits. And it talks a lot. And Fox worked out with Callahan on that piece. And what they also did that very little, I don't think many people know, is that Callahan and Fox had put together a research project after that, and that kind of fell apart. They never published it. But I spoke with Callahan and that's where started to build my research from there out.
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B
So, Amy, it sounds like unlike many of us who, like, I know for me, learning about behavioral artistry was something of. There always was that like that X factor of like, some people got it and they're great and some people don't got it and, you know, maybe they're good talking about behavior analysis or they're like solid. And, you know, I have a couple students that they tend to do a nice job with, but I'm not going to put them on any of like, the. The kids who are like, you know, struggling to learn or have like a higher rate of challenging behavior because I know, like, their skill set feels more limited and there's just something missing. Right. And I know when I found. I think it was the Callahan, the 2019 Callahan. And then going back and reading the Fox, I was like, oh, okay, this is it. This is. This is. These are the ideas that have just been floating around my head and people have now gone to the trouble of, like, just writing it down. But it sounds like you kind of knew of the existence of this line of work. Some of these labels, some of these terms. You kind of knew that a lot earlier in your kind of overall, you know, clinical journeys. Was I hearing you right or am I describing that right?
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C
Yeah, it was something that I, we had been. The, the group that I'd been working with had been examining for quite a long time. And interestingly enough, again, a lot of this came from a strong influence from my mentor, Jimmy o', Brien, who coincidentally, I host a podcast with him these days called Skinner's Locker Room. You can let me plug that a little. But anyway, he and I always talked about, like, if we're going to get the direct care professionals to do anything, if we're going to walk into a New York state run developmental center, if we can do, if we can affect any change, we need to talk the way that everybody can understand. So we were always rolling that back. And, and he came from Vince Carbone being his mentor, which is like the, if you know anything about Vince and the way that he trained, this is the opposite of what he, he's very particular and specific about how you, how you talk about things and what you say. So it was like, whoa, you've gotten that close to the fire. You haven't got burned yet, but we're gonna go. We're a pullback now. It's like the ultimate, you know, aversive. But it's, it's worked out because, you know, there we had kids working overnight or like the third shift at the developmental center doing man training. And we had, you know, the, the, we had forensic lockdown units with individuals we were working with. And you know, when you were talking about third shift at developmental center, typically these are the least trained staff. They have least access to training because there's overnight shift. I don't know how many behavior analysts or clinicians go in overnight to do training with these staff. So we're talking about, you know, that. And it's a very challenging job. And overnight shifts are not great. And if we could get those direct care professionals to engage in what we wanted to in behavior analytic practices, we knew we were doing something right, really, about pulling back all the jargon and pairing with them and becoming reinforcing people to them, but also like taking on these qualities of behavioral artists to then train. And that's really where it all came from. It was like, what are these Indicators that make us better leaders, that make us better trainers, not necessarily at that time, better technicians or clinicians with our staff. And that's one of the pieces that Fox talks about in that original 85 lecture, is that it's, it's not about, he talks about the natural change agent and, but it's not always about just like carrying out the program. It's like people that make good leaders, and it's good about people that make good supervisees and all of those pieces. So that's like where we came from and where this landed and why it was such a topic that when I started to, when I saw Callahan bring it back out and all, and then I reached out to him, I was like, this is so cool. Why is nobody else doing this? Just, it just makes sense. Right? And that, that whole thing you were talking about, the IT factor, you know, I, I do think that there are people. Yeah, you're like, you're, you can go and play all day with a kid. You can go be a, you're awesome for a teen, teens. And like, you're a great teacher for high school. You fit in there, but not here. And started to think like, well, what. How do we define it? What does that look like? How do we apply this? And is there truly an IT factor? Or are these just skills that we've learned and honed in over the years? Because I've always been a high school teacher and those behaviors have gotten shaped over time. I've always been a preschool teacher and those behaviors got in shape over time. Or can we teach how to engage with this subset of kids, this population, appropriately, and you utilizing the guidance of behavioral artistry?
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B
Well, let's. I want to take a step back before we get too much into this, because if you haven't listened to the last episode, we're going to go. That one goes more in depth as though, what is behavioral artistry and what did Fox say about it? And we'll certainly do a little bit of that to start, but we're really going to focus mostly on your research, Amy, and sort of how to teach the skills. So we've got two articles we'll be discussing, and then we'll do a little, kind of a little more defining the terms, and then we'll get into the research a little. So, Diana, what are our two articles that we'll be talking about today?
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A
Why, sure, let me tell you. We have two articles to inform our conversation today. They include utilizing the teaching interaction procedure to train special education teachers in behavioral artistry that's by Bookspan, Leaf, o', Brien, Lewis, Christensen, Lord Axe and Weiss. And that was published in the new and improved fancy version of Behavioral Interventions just this year. It's got a new typeset face and everything. And then we will also touch on the article previous article entitled Training Behavior Technicians to Become Behavior Artists through the Teaching Interaction Procedure by Booksman Anderson, Moon, Kaplan and Leaf. That was in the old looking Behavioral Interventions 2023.
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B
I know they the glow up is really nice on behavioral. I don't, you know, I didn't read as much, didn't read as many journals non podcast related this summer. But when I pulled that one I was like man, they did a great job. They really formatted this. This looks very slick.
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A
The things that excite us are you.
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C
You have Bill Ahern to thank for that.
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A
That's right.
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C
Well, he's really taken, he's taken the reins there and really done a great job. And he also loves that I'm doing this because Fox was one of the original editors of Vaval Intervention, so.
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A
That's right.
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C
That was quite an exciting full circle piece. Let's geek out a little, huh?
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B
You look at a lot of journals, you know, you notice these little things and it's just, it's all right. Not everyone has to enjoy that as much as we do. So Amy, would you mind doing kind of a quick just summary what is behavioral artistry? And maybe, maybe even just starting with like what was Fox specifically talking about? Because I think you, you've made some, some real nice additions to sort of what behavioral artistry might be. How we might want to define it a little differently in modern times. But like what were the, what were those original kind of, you know, bullet points?
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A
Right.
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C
So behavioral artistry in a nutshell. Fox is talking about why do we write these glorious basic behavior plans. He was working in a developmental center, very challenging population there. Everything, the science, behavior, everything says that this should work. Why is it not working? And he said it's not the way that you're writing our programs. The programs are perfect. It's the individuals that are carrying out the programs. And not that they're poorly trained, it's just that some people are what he called natural behavior change agents or behavioral artists, and some people aren't. And he paired that with seven characteristics of what a behavioral artist is. And they go through things like my favorite, being sense of humor, liking people, which is what my original research worked off of celebrating small victories, being optimistic, being persistent, not internalizing or being subjective and then doing whatever you can that's necessary to facilitate behavior change. So that's what he was originally doing. That's what he was looking at and talking about. And he said that those will help you be. Facilitate change in individuals you're working with. But also at the same time, if you adopt those behaviors overall, you'll be a better leader and you'll be a better employee and so on.
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B
So when you think about behavioral artistry now, you know, from 85 to the modern. The modern day 2025, when we're recording this, do you find those are still like the valid ways to. Well, maybe valid's not the right term, but sort of you sort of see those as like, these still are kind of the six or seven key terms. Have you sort of thought about them more as like, well, some of these might morph as we sort of think about modern times versus the distant 80s. Have there been any changes kind of in. In that regard, at least in your opinion?
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C
Yeah, I think that there's some that, you know, morphed into the language that we use now. Like, I think about like the research and our language around responsive practitioners. And I think that some. I would include that responsive piece and maybe take out some of the pieces about being. Doing whatever is necessary. Maybe the language would change. But I do, I think optimism. I've had people ask me what is the most important piece out of all the seven tenant white tenants that he said, And I think optimism still rings true for me. I think you have to be optimistic. I think you should. He says fox always said, like, looking for the pony. It's like a little kid on the birthday morning and raffing's like, gotta be a pony. It's gonna be a pony. And like, I think when we lose the optimism along with celebrating those small victories is when we're doubting the abilities of the individuals we're working with or the individuals we're supervising. So I have in my head rearranged them into the levels of importance and what I see fit, But I do think that they all ring true. But I think there's ways that we in our present day language might redefine them, but they're equally as important. And I think that the way in the research that we started to define them and put responses behind them makes sense. But again, it might just be a semantics game and we might be doing this another research and just calling it something else too. So I'll give that up.
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B
Yeah, I know we've talked sometimes on the show and certainly when we talk about supervision A lot we talk about our soft skills. Our soft skills. And while I think behavioral artistry captures a few of those soft skills, it does feel like behavioral artistry kind of falls more under that umbrella term of soft skills rather than it being them. Because soft skills, I think, similarly, is one of those things of. You kind of know it when people are talking about it. But if someone were like, you know, no, define it quickly, write it down, write two sentences so that everyone will always know what it is. It's sort of. It's like, well, it's like those skills that are nice, kind.
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A
You know it when you see it.
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B
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely got that know it when you see it kind of. Kind of category. But I mean, would you consider behavioral artistry a soft skill? Or would you consider soft skills sort of separate from behavioral artistry? Or they're sort of a Venn diagram mess? Or. Or who cares? This is too much. Defining terms that maybe don't need that level of definition. What do you think?
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C
Yeah, no, I would say who cares? But honestly. But also, no, they. It's soft skills. It all lives within soft skills. And so it's. It's. Now, I think that there is, like, is a rapport building. Is it. Does it come down to pairing? Is it. Does it felt like those pieces, like, maybe start to tease out. But I do comment in the discussion parts on both articles that it helps to look at and saying, hey, we can't teach soft skills. So then I do agree that they do fall within soft skills, and we're teaching these behavioral responses that, yeah, we can say, you see it, you know, when you see it in soft skills. But now we can go, hey, we can. We can teach somebody to, like, take it easy and have a sense of humor and be fun and. And do all these things. And it sets a precedence, I think, for that. So I would. For that to happen, it has to be a soft skill, then.
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B
Sure. Now, specifically in your research, kudos to you for not saying, you know what, there's only been, like, one article on this topic since, you know, the late 80s, early 90s, you know, so Callahan's 2019 article. Maybe I could write the second discussion article where I'm like, what's the part that Callan didn't get into? And I'll write my two cents. You probably could have gotten that published on its own, because I'm guessing that the editors must look and be like, is anyone written about this? There's only one article. Sure. One more discussion article won't Hurt. But you did the harder thing of saying, let's actually teach this. Let's use an experimental design. Do you ever go back in time and wish, man, I could have gotten like one or two more just discussion thought pieces out of this one? I shouldn't. I jumped too close to. And I went too quick.
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C
No, not at all. No. Because I've had the opportunity to improve teaching in the school that I did the second paper on and the text that we worked with, the first one, and then being able to expand it and see the applied work get better and people pick up on it and do it, I think it's, for me, I find the importance there. We can talk and we talk. And I have nothing wrong with a discussion paper and I've written my fare, been part of it, but I really, again, if it's not going to be applicable, we can't apply it. I would rather just move to that part now. Maybe, certainly it could have been easier to get, you know, to think through some of the definitions and like, where we are with ioa. That's one of the biggest problems with the study, both. But it did demonstrate that we could do certain things. And why not? Why sit and wait and just keep talking about it rather than getting some action behind it and doing it well?
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B
So once you decided on that, I'd love to hear. I think we'd all love to hear. How did you come about with, all right, we've got to operationally define these terms. We can't just write in this. Oh, you know, it's like this. It kind of looked like that. You know, you have to get very precise if you're going to get something published. If you're going to get, like you said, ioa, that's any good.
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A
Very dear reader, you would agree with us.
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B
If you saw it, you'd know, here's a picture.
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C
That's what we said. Yeah. Watch this video.
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A
And you would.
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C
You'd be able to tell if you saw it and say, sure.
- [23:49]
B
So that might work. That might work when the government is trying to define things. But in science, you know, you got to have the clear definition. So I'd love to sort of hear how you were able to start that operational definition and also if you're able, kind of how that process changed from your first to your second article. Because I definitely noticed as I was reading the 2025 article that really you'd taken a lot of stock on what went right in 2023, what still wasn't quite hitting the goal of teaching behavioral Artistry. Whether it was the definition or some of the procedures, you know, there was a lot of iteration in there. So I kind of love to hear just the start of that process and the development of it.
- [24:28]
C
It started with a component analysis, really simple. I, I read, I tried to get my hands on every article that I could think of that was defining certain soft skills and looking at them and examining them. And I had the, the beauty of being in touch with Callahan and he sent me his definitions and what they were working on in the article that their research that didn't quite go the length. So I had that and watched a lot of videos and did a lot of observations and talked to a lot of what we would term experts in the field to get lists of what these behaviors would look like. And you know, a lot of, a lot of conversations around what does it look like when you're attending to a task or attending to another person and do we have to be always looking at that person or turn. So started with these large lists of components and then started to match them up and like what worked in certain places, what was a supportive tone of voice, what did this look like and what did it specifically look like for the population? So the first article we looked at very young children, they were three through five, I believe, in a center based program for kids with autism. So what we were looking at there and defining as behavioral artistry and how it worked was specific to that population and the preferences of those kids. And something that you all pointed out on that first episode and something that we were reconsidering when I looked at the iterations was when we look at larger populations, older populations, our behavior changes. Right. Like regardless of who we're, we have, we have to have audience matters. We know this. So had to reevaluate and broaden the definitions so that it made sense for high school students with multiply diagnosed multi high school students. And then we had very little kids too. We had preschool classrooms that we were in. So how could we look at definitions that made sense for practitioners of these teachers in these different settings as well. So we got had to widen it and get more flexible. Still looking at the core component analysis that I had pulled and then reconsidering. So the first article looked at just that one aspect of liking people and we broke it down and what is liking people look like into three components and then overlapping components inside of that and then started bringing in that piece of optimism and celebrating small victories into the second research article because it was like those were pieces we certainly Missed. So what does that look like? And then the definition started to evolve there. So pulling in more attributes from the original seven elements of behavioral artistry and then also responding to the growing population of individuals who are working with.
- [27:27]
B
There definitely was like going back to that 2023 study. It was very funny because the two articles are very. Or the two methods in general, they're similar. There's a similarity of we're going to teach these skills, use the tip procedure, which we'll talk about in a minute. And you know.
- [27:44]
C
You guys got jokes, you know, hanging fruit, Very low hanging fruit.
- [27:55]
B
Oh boy.
- [27:55]
C
Just gonna leave it at that.
- [27:57]
B
Yep, yep. You go back to the old one if you want to hear some of this. Great job. You know, sort of the, the kind of, you know, we're going to teach these. We taught, again, behavioral technicians to teaching special education teachers. It was sort of, you know, slightly different activities. The discrete trial versus the morning meeting time in, in the updated article. But there was something that felt. And I don't know if you could have gotten to the 2025 article without having gone through the 2023 article, but there was something about the 2023 that almost felt like it was too specific. It was looking like too closely at very small components of this. And you even said it in the, in the discussion section of the most recent article. Almost more like a response class rather than like, we need to look at every little bit of. What does it mean to like someone? Well, of course you provide attention and you possess a pleasant tone of voice and you engage in a lighthearted exchange. It was like so specific. And the 2025 article, even though I had that similar kind of overall design and what was being trained, there was something about the definitions and how you were looking at these more naturally occurring activities that again, I hate being like. It just felt like, oh, yeah, this is okay, I get, I get how to teach behavioral artistry. Oh, this makes perfect, perfect sense. It just, it seems to just have more of that cat. And maybe it was because, like you said, you weren't just looking at one factor of the behavioral artistry. You were sort of adding some others in. Maybe it was more of the slightly looser time of day that, you know, the students were learning. It was a classroom rather than individual one on one sessions. But there's just sort of something about the, the, the jump between the first to the second one that it just seemed like you learned so much from doing that first article. Am I totally making up a story about how you wrote these two articles? Or is there anything to sort of be how you designed the first one, learned, and then iterated on it for the second one?
- [29:48]
D
And it seemed to me that the first one, like, that's a hard skill.
- [29:53]
B
Oh, I don't know how you scored any of this stuff. Like, I'm reading it over and over. I'm like, how did you. Wow.
- [29:57]
A
Yeah.
- [29:58]
D
I would have picked the ones you did in your second article first because they seem easier. I would have been like, what's the easiest thing that I can do here? But, man, you picked the hardest.
- [30:07]
C
So I definitely. I think I grew as a researcher, number one. I think that's the biggest thing is I. I learned what my errors were, and I learned that I. I put myself in a hole from that first one. And if we want to do anything practical and work, we have to make a procedure that is more applicable. You know, it's generalizable. Right? Like, I. I look at, like, we. These curriculums we have out and the research behind very successful curriculums. And there we have. In this setting. In this setting. And then we have. And we have to change it for parents that are doing it. We change it for here and there. And I took a step back, and I was like, look, I gotta let. I gotta let go a little of what I'm controlling. And I think it was very close to me because it was a setting I was. I was more familiar with at the time. And it was. You know, it was. It was one setting, one set of participant kids that we had, those confederate students. And it was really directed at, how could we be successful with this small population? Then once. Once I decided to start looking at schools and. And how we could really affect change across school staff that were really unhappy and caregivers that were unhappy with the school staff and the students and their outcomes and start to look across these classrooms. You got to go, whoa, I got to let go of some of this. And how do we create curriculum more so than a research project that can address the behaviors of these instructors across different types of students? And that's really where it happened. And it was really amazing because I think about the studies as not just studies on behavioral artistry and be able to teach them, but it's also to bring in the teaching interaction procedure. It's expanding the research on the teaching interaction procedure and showing, hey, we can use this intervention effectively with teachers. We can use it effectively with behavior technicians and multiple teachers and all of these other pieces too. So it allowed me to demonstrate that as well. But it definitely was like me shaking loose the reins and going, oh, I don't have to live in liking people just because that's where a lot of people are pulling their references for compassionate care from, or they're, you know, and that's what Callahan was looking at, doing his research. And, and it's okay to look at things called optimism and try to demonstrate what optimism looks like. It's okay. Like what is celebrating small victories than providing a pro, like a praise statement. It just makes sense, right? Like we're using reinforcement all the time. So those things just lend themselves really well to the second project. And I actually did a third research project that I've yet to write up.
- [32:58]
B
When you were coming on the show, Amy, you didn't want to like speed that one up.
- [33:01]
C
So it's on my list on the wall behind me of things I owe that I have to write. I think that like lots of us have, I, I, I blended behavioral artistry with the work of a colleague of mine from Endicott called Jessica Royer and she wrote with Mary Jane Weiss and they did how to do assessments and they were looking at how, you know, we keep that compassion alive. And I blended behavioral artistry with those pieces and did a study on master's students doing open ended assessments.
- [33:34]
D
That's awesome.
- [33:35]
C
Yeah, the data was amazing. The master students learned really quickly. We did two confederate parents. One was a very open parent and one was a very reserved parent and were able to teach over a zoom platform, behavioral indicators of behavioral artistry along with those responses that Royer and Weiss looked at. So that's another one. So you're so cool. I had a good legacy of people that I've worked with. I've been very lucky to have very good researchers and supportive people in my life that have helped me too.
- [34:13]
B
That's awesome.
- [34:14]
A
Awesome that, that's a really cool body of research that Jessica has going as well.
- [34:19]
C
So yeah, she's one of our besties. Oh really? She's the, she's, she's super smart, rad and awesome and all those, those 90s superlatives.
- [34:28]
B
Hey everyone, Sorry to pause the podcast, but I want to remind all of our listeners that ABA inside track is Ace and Kwaba approved. By listening to this episode, you're able to earn one learning credit. Woohoo. All you need to do is finish listening to the episode and then go to our website abainsidetrack.com or click the link in your podcast Player notes section. You'll need to enter in some key information, including two secret guest code words. These are both from Dr. Book Span. And the first of those words is scorpion. S C O R, P I O N. It's like an arthropod that can sting you. It's creepy looking thing. Or it could be that dude for Mortal Kombat who always says get over here and he wants to pull you closer with his spike attack. No one before the show got my reference. Write in if you did Scorpion. And now we're going to take a little break and when we come back, more about behavioral artistry. We'll be right back.
- [35:33]
A
Hi.
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D
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A
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D
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D
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A
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D
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D
Again, that's www.regiscollege.edu regiscollege.edu. one more time, www.regiscollege.edu.
- [36:43]
A
See you there. Bye.
- [36:51]
B
And we are back talking with Dr. Amy Booksman, all about behavioral artistry. Let's continue that conversation now. So you sort of broadened kind of what you were looking at in terms of behavioral artistry from the first to the second article. But one thing that did stay consistent was the use of the TIP procedure. And I will say the same thing in reading about the TIP procedure as I did in BSD, I think it may do the 2025 one. I feel like I had a good sense of this. Okay, I get why TIP versus, say, behavior skills training. Because when I look at the list of this is the TIP procedure and this is bst, they don't look that different from each other. So why? Because I think on the previous episode, we've been a lot of time like, why tip? Why we use tip? Why would be tip? Why not just bst? So, Amy, why? Why? I like tip Fine. I think especially with the group that special education teachers. Yeah, it made perfect like that one just. Oh, I got it. Okay. TIP makes more sense than bst. But I'm curious, what was the original thought behind using TIP versus just bst?
- [37:52]
C
Yeah.
- [37:53]
B
And if you wouldn't mind just reminding everyone how they are different industrial.
- [37:57]
C
So TIP is the teaching interaction procedure. And really what sets them apart, and we have this conversation very often, is with behavioral skills training. The difference is you have a unique rationale with teaching intervention procedure that you don't have with behavioral skills training. And there is a wealth, a wealth of articles that demonstrate that behavior skills training works and it's effective. And you know, I will be. I will say the most obvious thing is I'm in Justin Leaf's. I was in Justin Leaf's lab and does a wealth of research and they're teaching interaction procedure. I'm not going to say that that didn't play into doing it, obviously. Right. You're in someone's lab and you work on similar projects. But certainly it's nice to broaden the wealth and to show that this other piece does work, this other intervention, and that a unique rationale develops. Establish like the establishing operation for a teacher to buy in or behavior tech. Somebody that has limited time for professional development, limited time for training. If you make it important to them, that buy in becomes substantial. And I really felt that especially in the school setting where we had to work within a certain refined amount of time creating that rationale that was curated for the teachers in those classrooms really made a lot of difference. And they felt that this was an important training for them to improve their teaching and the outcomes for their students, the behavior technicians. I feel the same way that delivering that rationale that was unique for the student that they were working with, unique for what they were doing, really created that the meaningful piece that was disconnected. Because I can teach, I can tell you, hey, this is behavioral artistry. It's important. Research has shown this. But when I start to tell you, hey, you're gonna have more fun when you do this. The student's gonna have a lot more fun. We are looking to see if this decreases burnout in teachers. We think that it probably will. You're gonna have a lot better responding in your students. Then you're like, oh, yeah, this is my classroom. This makes sense. And with a behavior tag, this is like, usually they have like some type of ownership over their clients too, which develops over those years. And they're like, yeah, I really do want my kid to be successful. I want to be successful. And five hours a day of doing this can be really boring. So why not engage with the kid when he's using sensory sand instead of sitting next to him, watching him do it, making comments about what he's doing. So they started to see that dynamic change. And that's really, I think the heart and soul of the teaching interaction procedure is that rationale and being able to say, look, under these circumstances this might be a better additional step. And maybe there is no difference. Maybe we. I don't know if it's worth anyone's time to do a comparative study of teaching the skills with BST versus teaching interactive procedure. I don't think that's a good time spent anywhere. But it's, it's good to know that when we tie that rationale in, it did become per, like purposeful. And we know that because of the social validity responses that I got.
- [41:11]
B
So Amy, a quick question I had because one of the other differences in the two studies was in the 2025 article, you had these behavioral coaches who were working with the special education teachers. So you, your role was to train the coaches who were BCBAs who had never done the TIP procedure, working with these. I don't know if they knew the teachers they're going to be working with or if that was sort of an, you know, it was an assignment of someone they were familiar with. I wasn't quite sure. And then they had some rationale. You know, you would give the rationale as to why they should use the TIP procedure to teach these behavioral artists skills of, you know, paying attention and you know, the optimism piece. And then they would have sort of a generic rationale and then they would also give specific rationales as part of their TIP procedure when they were running it specifically with the teacher. How much of that was scripted or was that just sort of a happy byproduct of you're going to be able to give this reason? And I'm sure you can give two more being individuals who've been in this classroom and might know this teacher or know the struggles that they're going with.
- [42:14]
C
Yeah. So the behavioral coaches came out of, if you look at the data like from the first study, we don't significant drop offs after. And this was, this is what happens. I, I mean how many research studies show maintenance six months later or you know, 12 months later? We show three data points and we're like, oh great, it was maintained.
- [42:32]
B
Let's move on two days later going good. All right.
- [42:35]
C
Yeah. So we had, we had some drop off in maintenance. And I was like, you know, what maintains these behaviors is that your supervisor is in the room and you're doing what is getting reinforced. That's not what we show in research. But I was like, we got to do this. And I want it to be someone that's familiar to them. So there is that authoritarian piece that they understand them, but they also will follow what they. And it played a little bit into there. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't actually don't know if that did or not. But anyway, it seemed like it. It could. And I was working at the. At the time, I was. I was talking with Nick Weatherly, and he has, you know, really great work, behavioral coaching, and especially behavioral coaching in the classroom. And it. And it. And it got me thinking. I was like, this is really going to help maintain these behaviors and responses. These are people from the school, and it's a lot more natural, and they understand the ongoings of this program and the classroom dynamics better than I could ever create a script that's going to speak to the rationale. So what ultimately happened is they, the behavioral coaches, there was one at one school, one at the other. Their involvement in each, in those classrooms was minimal. They're like part of, like, the rescue response, you know, that they have, like, when you go code red and everybody runs in, that's kind of what they do in those programs. But it was like, let's change up the dynamic of how we use these behavior analysts in the school. They're behavior coaches. They're going to do this, and they would come up and, based on what they were observing during their observation periods, come up with those more specific rationales. So at first, when I trained them, I gave them some recommendations of what these rationales could be like. And then as the procedures and the project moved on, they were able to curate those rationales that were specific to what was going on in the classroom, what they were observing each day. So they would go through all the steps of the teaching interaction procedure each time they did intervention. But that rationale might change slightly because of what they observed that they did well. And you're always giving feedback as well, similarly to bst. So this went well. This didn't. Here's the unique rationale for today and why we're focusing on what we're focusing on. So it was really a beautiful piece. And I think that that's one of those things, again, make it so applicable to school setting and utilizing school staff, rather than me coming in and trying to come up with a unique rational, like, rational, like, why does it make sense? Let's use who's There.
- [45:11]
B
Yeah, it was very organic reading and it's, it's so funny to think about, you know, I mean, because we read so many articles like, well, things have to be this way and they have to be exactly replicable. And there's something to be said for, well, this was a replicable procedure, but there were details of each teacher interaction that you're not going to be like, well, this is the one I said to this teacher and I'm in a totally different classroom or age group, so I'll assume this is the same one for, you know, having to build in that level of variability. I mean, that sounds like behavioral artistry in action as well as that's what I was thinking. Useful as it's good research plus actually meaningfully changing behavior, like a socially valid way, which I know we'll get to the social validity part, but it just, it like hit all the, it kind of hit all the targets of like, what do you want to do in a good study? Well, you want to actually do something meaningful.
- [45:59]
C
But it, it's what also led to like the poor ioa. And you know, as a researcher, I was like, this is, this, this is cruddy. But as a practitioner, I understand what's happening and then we have steps that we can go in the direction, you know, and like that's been. I think it's pub. It's been published and it was questioned in by the reviewers. And ultimately everybody understands it's soft skills. A, it's flexible. B, if, you know, we have to understand that and if we're curating a science that can save the world, we have to be a little flexible at the end of the day. So what this is going to look like in practice, it has to be. Have room for that. And we're, and you know, as a tenant of good research. IOA is important, but I'm happy that it was able to. I mean, when I say bad IOA, we're talking like, yeah, mid-80s. But it's not what's important.
- [46:56]
A
Right.
- [46:56]
C
We're not taught.
- [46:57]
A
So, yeah, because it, it takes courage to tackle these types.
- [47:02]
B
A real problem.
- [47:03]
A
Yeah, a real problem. These types of skills that are difficult to operationally define. And you sort of know going into it that that's a potential risk in doing this type of research, but it doesn't make it less important. It makes it more important that we're branching out and tackling these Sort of harder issues in order to further expand our science in really important ways.
- [47:23]
C
I appreciate that.
- [47:26]
B
So, in terms of the procedure, just for folks who haven't had a chance to read the article yet, in the 2025 article, the intervention was the TIP procedure to teach the behavioral artistry skills of Target, which mostly were around the kind of the liking someone, as well as some of the optimism piece. So it was, you know, attention, supportive tone of voice, and then the redefined positive support behaviors, which I like. There was a raising eyebrows and nodding, a smiling, which was similar to how you define lighthearted exchange in the previous study, but there was something about the eyebrows. P. I can't remember if eyebrows were in the 2023. But there is something about when people move their eyebrows around, it, like, really does send that signal of whatever you're doing is great. Not the way Jackie's doing it. On the video right now, that looks like Jackie is sarcastically like, wow, you really did a great job.
- [48:14]
A
Rob has very expressive eyebrows.
- [48:16]
B
That's why I'm a behavioral artist. My eyebrows say a thousand words.
- [48:23]
C
There is something about an expected look that allows people to like, okay, we're. We understand. Yeah, I just saw you do it. That. That allows somebody to go like, oh, I'm. I'm on the right track. And it's along with the nodding, and it's along with all these other things. And, you know, we. When we work with kids that. And adults that are expressing themselves all different ways, we have to be open to all sorts of ways that we're signifying approval, and that's one of them. And we do it naturally. But also what I found was it was so hard for some of the people we were training to, like, engage. They were like, they would do one thing, they would have a good tone of voice, and then they would do another thing, and they'd interact. And then they were. They didn't emote anything. And I was like, if you could do one thing, I would rather you just nod your head in some type of approval or show them that, like, hey, yeah, I'm waiting. Like, when we teach little kids, I would say, like an introverbal. We're like, row, row, row. And like, you're like, what comes next? You naturally do this look. So it just meant it made sense. And we had a lot of students at the school in the 2025 article with those participants that were using speech output devices and a lot of training around, like, how to communicate with the student, not the speech output device, not to communicate with the iPad, not to communicate. Some of them had old school Dynavox. And like, you're not looking at the device and saying, talk to me through this. You're looking at the individual. And some of that nodding in the eye movement and the eyebrows comes out of just having to give a certain behavior to the teacher, the participant. That's a human response to another human, not to a device. Because there's so many times where I just see somebody talking to and like looking at the machine, I'm like, no, look at the. Look at the person you're teaching here. So that also. It's a natural response. But it also was something that specifically was a human to human kind of indicator of approval. You don't realize that you're doing. I think sometimes as a teacher, you know, I'll be like, no, no, no, I'm talking to the kid. No, no, you're staring at the device while you're asking him how his day was. Like, there's a way that you can do this too. So that's where that came from. And I think when you just observe people, you start to see these little things that we do. Yeah, so that's a great point.
- [50:50]
A
Yeah.
- [50:50]
B
So procedure wise, you sort of would use TIP procedure to teach the coaches. The coaches would then use the TIP procedure to teach the teachers. The big difference seems to be in terms of, you know, the role play with the behavioral coaches was always going to be role play and then they'd reach mastery. And then when they were working, the coaches were working with the teachers, they would move from sort of that initial training where they gave the rationale, they labeled the skills, they talked about behavioral artistry in general, why it's important they do sort of the model and then, you know, modeling and then they do role play and feedback, roleplay. And then after that they'd start moving into those observations of the. The morning meeting time and then give feedback after that. It was after school. Right? It was.
- [51:29]
C
So the way it was set up is the, the every study started the same way. It doesn't matter what classroom they were in, what age group, whatever. They didn't. The, the, the coaches in the second study, as it was, they did an observation and we chose, I chose morning meeting as the time doing the observation because it. Class interaction and the way that these two. There were two sites in the second study, an upper school and a lower school. And everybody had morning meeting around the same time and they're covering. It doesn't matter if you're a little kid to a High school student morning meetings are pretty much typically the same. We have a group, we're welcoming everybody who's in school, who's not. What day of the, of the week is it? What's the weather? You might be answering more diverse questions as you get older, but it was it, it allowed for the same 15 minutes of every day and similar topics. So we have a behavioral coach in there. They observe and taking. Did this behave, did these behaviors occur? Yes or no. And all the behaviors that we were looking, the supportive tone of voice, this engagement, all the, the three pieces all had a help happen simultaneously. So we're going okay for this minute?
- [52:38]
B
Yeah.
- [52:39]
C
Didn't for that one? No, it didn't. And then we're taking that percentage of interactions that behavioral artistry was demonstrated. Then in the afternoon after school, behavioral coach sits down and engages in the teaching interaction procedure with all those steps that you just went through. And then we repeat and then once we hit a certain level of mastery, we no longer did teaching any longer. But the behavior coach still went in there recorded. So we would have that. And thanks to winter break reemergence of the flu and Covid, we actually had really extended maintenance. So I was able to see these. Like that's typical for school, right? Like, it was such a. I was like, wow, 22 days later, it's still maintained. 30 days later, still made. So that was like a really awesome way of seeing that. But yeah, and it's a, it's a very, it was a very effective and efficient way of training. And that was one of the pieces I was really important when we went into a school using the time and the resources the school had, not asking them spend extra money, extra time making these teachers wait around, adding more PD to their busy day. And again, those types of. We, we got responses for the social validity that we wanted from those teachers saying, hey, this was worthwhile. I'm really enjoying this. I'm sharing this information with my parents. I want my parents to be trained. And it had a really great trickle down effect.
- [54:09]
B
At least two responses that were like, I wanted to quit this job or I was burned out so bad and just doing this, doing this training got me so excited. Which definitely kind of goes with some of the fake it till you make it part of favorites you like, you know, if you're spending most of your day like smiling and nodding and raising your eyebrows and looking interested, it's hard to not be like, I'm kind of in a good mood now. I kind of enjoyed, you know, this positive so. And I'll tell people that, like, that's so fakey. I don't care about their thing. I'm like, well, if you look like you care, at some point, you actually will find yourself caring.
- [54:38]
C
Yeah.
- [54:38]
B
Legitimately. Whether or not you're like, I don't need you to be like, so honest with your, with yourself. I don't need you to do any deep dive. I need you to do the following actions because the impression they give is one. That you do care.
- [54:50]
C
Yeah.
- [54:51]
B
And you will eventually start to pair whatever emotionality goes with this with the, the physical. The physicality of it. A little off from Bayrel artistry, but sometimes that's.
- [55:01]
C
No. I, I think it's a really. It's an important point. I think you made it in the previous episode as well. It's like, aren't. Or if we're just teaching these behaviors, aren't we teaching, like, just like response class? And then like, we don't really. It's not meaningful. And, and that, that question has come up a lot. And I think you're, what you're saying is actually, it's, it's spot on. Like, when you're, when you're smiling and you're engaged and then the, Your students are engaged with you, you can't help but enjoy what you're doing. And I took another measure that we didn't publish, which was active student responding. We did a pre. And then post. So, like, pre training of the teachers. How much were the students responding? And like initiating responses and then afterwards. And that jump was so high. And you just like. And that's one of the things that I'm missing that I am like, one of my next steps when I get back to doing new research is like, student outcomes. We did so much of the teacher and the behavior tax, and I'm dying for somebody. I mean, I've had a lot of people reach out to me and say, hey, we're expanding on this. And I'm like, do the student outcomes. I want to see the student outcomes. That's. That's where I'm missing it. We. We saw, We. We just saw it. And you could. The videos tell. I could go back and recode all the videos and we could, we could pull that data. It's. It's pretty impressive to see. And then as the teachers get those responses, you can see the teachers becoming like, they're naturally smiling. Those aren't fake smiles. You can't, you can't fake those at a certain point. And, and they really seem they Liven up. They're relaxed. It goes from oh, somebody taught me this script to I can ad lib and I'm having a good time teaching. And I feel self resilient and responsive. And all these pieces that Fox originally wrote about would happen to somebody that is a behavioral artist too. So he was prophetic and said, if you were to do this, this is the type of person you become. And, and it really help. And it happens, you know, and, and that was a really nice piece to say. And people were called, you know, you want to look at how people are calling out or if they're coming in late and attrition and all these other pieces, that it has a larger effect too. And I will tell you, the school program that I did my study at invited me back to be a consultant there with their teachers and their leadership and to go back and teach the rest of their, the leaders how to do this and the directors and things like. So they were very happy in the administrative side. So it has this resounding effect that I couldn't be more proud of. A research study with cruddy IOA, which.
- [57:47]
B
Again wasn't that it wasn't like 0% IOA. We just kind of. No, it was. I hear you though. You get used to those studies where it's like it has 100% IOA with like a range of. Where like the range is like 97 to 100%. Yeah. When you're doing something in real life, especially for something that's going to fall into that soft skills category.
- [58:05]
C
Yeah.
- [58:06]
B
There are going to be times when they're. Well, their eyebrows really raised genuine enough. You know, it can be tricky.
- [58:13]
C
But somebody that's never seen that's. And that's the thing, like, you know, going further into this research, we're going to extend. And you want to look at these participant teachers or technicians or whoever's behavior. You're looking at leadership. I'm very big into looking at sports coaches now too. And like, what is, what does behavioral artistry look at, look like in sports and performance? It's unless somebody knows the nuances of someone's specific behaviors. And like you can really see it's really hard to measure some of these responses unless you're actually there. Because what could be a smile for me could be a grimace for somebody else, could be like a little smirk. So in my discussion of the last research article in 2025, it was really about anything. It talks to why it became more flexible overall. But I think we have to become more flexible in these definitions and what. What is the importance? Like, what are we looking at on a grand scale? And like, what are the. What do the skills really look like? And does it matter that they're that specific? Do. Are we in the ballpark and. Or do we need somebody that specializes in recognizing what these six participants really are? And do I have to, you know, do we have to get into those really specific, specific pieces of training? Because if we did that, we still wound up where we were. So it's one of those. Those pieces that I have mulling around in my brain constantly. And like, you know, if we're going to go large, which I would love it to be, and like, people adopt a curriculum of how to engage in this in behavioral artistry, I think it has to be. I have to take the reins off a little and go, these are generically what we're looking at while at the same time having some type of level of quality control.
- [59:58]
B
Yeah, I totally hear you there, Amy. And I think you really nailed kind of a thought I have. Anytime I'm thinking about behavioral artistry or teaching behavioral artistry of there has to be that weird middle ground that's a little bit mushy of there has to be a definition. But if we get too in the weeds about exactly what it looks like to show that you like someone, are we really teaching behavioral artistry? Are we running the risk that we are just teaching people to emit sort of random responses that aren't really tied to, you know, it's almost like, well, if I'm going to teach AI to do behavioral artistry, it would like just like stick his eyebrows up and down, like, who knows what like, virtual person would do, like, wouldn't quite get it. And it would be one of those, like, uncanny values of like, no, thank you, teacher. I don't want. Don't look at me, please. I don't want your attention because. Because there is. That you need to have that level of. I almost want to say sloppiness to it, but without being sloppy in. In the sense of it's variability that you're variability. I was like, sloppy, though. I wish we could redefine sloppy as not being like really garbagey, but like, just like a Lucy goose. Man.
- [61:07]
C
You also said mushy. Did you say mushy too?
- [61:11]
B
Maybe mushy. Maybe that's the one.
- [61:13]
C
Mushy, swishy. Um, I, I once you said AI. I was thinking about that Disney movie that came back, like when you have that cute little robot. Or maybe it's like Pixar movie. Like that's. And it, and it starts to emote and you're like, oh, it's so humanistic, this robot. But like that's, yeah. You start programming for these behaviors. It's not. That's the thing. It's like, what, what gives us, oh, a wide enough sphere to say, yes, we're doing it. And it's still that connection. And that's really what it comes down to. And I, like, I kept thinking about how do you have a therapeutic connection without saying certain things? Like, what do we have? Like, if I wanted, if I was a sub in a classroom, if I was a sub with a kid or an adult, what would I do that would earn the trust with this person and that we would have a good time? And like that's like these are natural behaviors, you know, the natural behavior changes and like that you would just do. It's not something script is like, hey, how are you? I'm great. You know, and then nod and then do this. But it, they fall within these skill sets that, yeah, we can teach, but they're just human interactions with one another. And sometimes you look at people and just like, where is the emotion here? And that's why we have to be different than writing a code that an AI robot can, can follow up and do because it's the humanity and behavior analysis is really where it is.
- [62:42]
A
Yeah. And Wall E is probably.
- [62:44]
C
And Wall E. That's what it is.
- [62:45]
B
Wall E. Wall E's got those great eyebrows. His eyebrows.
- [62:48]
C
He has a great eyebrow here is why. Yes, that's, that's why I was thinking Wall E. I started thinking about ET.
- [62:55]
B
Talk about a mushy character.
- [62:57]
A
ET.
- [62:58]
C
He's very, ET's eyes would go wide.
- [63:04]
A
Yeah. Because it's, it's not the topography of the behavior, it's the function. And it, and it has to do with the relationship that you're establishing there. Right. Because like, in my mind as you were talking, I was like, I'm, I was thinking about connection and I was thinking about respect between the two parties. Right. And then you used synonymous, practically words to say we're building trust and we're building a reinforcing relationship. Right. And all of those things really are like tied together at the core of what, of what I think this is. And that can look so many different ways for the two people involved. So if it's young kids, it's going to look different than if it's high schoolers. Right. But it's all has that same core to it.
- [63:45]
C
And if it's master students taking an intake assessment with a parent that just got a diagnosis, which is that other piece that I haven't written written up yet, it looks very different too, because. But it's a very true, like, I don't know you. You're a complete stranger. This is the first time we're meeting and I have a set of questions I'm supposed to ask you that are personal about, you know, something that's very, you know, close to your heart. So these were all things that I'm like, how, how do we get people that are in roles of, you know, these professional roles are seen as a certain, like elite positions. And how do you, how do you bring that back and like reduce any power inequalities too? And, and just say, hey, we're just two people. Me working with you and trying to, you know, do the best I can for you. And that's where I like it all. I think all of this stemmed from. And like, yeah, going all the years back from what I was doing is like, how do we connect with people that are in tough jobs, working with tough populations? And that's been like, like a, a 20 year span for me.
- [64:55]
B
Well, Amy, I think this is a good place to move into the next section of the show, the dissemination station. Oh, we're there. How nice. Wow, that train had some great eyebrows. Thanks, train.
- [65:07]
D
You're welcome.
- [65:07]
B
I put it on Thomas train.
- [65:09]
C
He's like, hello, welcome.
- [65:12]
B
I want to get on this train and just ride it anywhere. It doesn't matter where. Generalize. You know, my riding on the, on the train, it's great. So, Amy, you talked a little bit about kind of some thoughts you have for future research, some other areas, you know, you'd like to see other. Either other researchers or yourself and your team kind of looking at behavioral artistry in the future. I, I'm kind of curious. Like, it sounds like you're more of a mindset of looking at more of the package, like behavioral artistry as a whole, rather than trying to drill down and be like, let's look at just being optimistic all of its own. Right? Am I. Was I hearing you? Hearing you right. Some thoughts on how you could check optimism?
- [65:53]
C
Look, I'm one person, so I have, like, I have. I could. Would I love to go through and define all seven pieces and teach them? Absolutely. I mean, the, the optimism piece. I mean, I think again, like I said, celebrating small victories, I think that's an easy task. I think some of them are more difficult and Say, staying objective is a huge one. So I would love to see research on that. I do think that there's a training package here and a curriculum. And I. I am working on a greater piece on that presently. But I am. I'm also interested in seeing other people just getting trained and applying it to paras and teaching assistants and leadership roles. I mentioned before coaches working on a research project now where we're looking at youth league coaches and how using skills of behavioral artistry improve how they communicate with the kids that they're like in soccer, it doesn't have to be so intense. So there's a bunch of little pieces that we've got going on that I would love to see more just simple research on. Like, let's apply these things. Let's. Let's see that like this will work with this smaller population or this will work with this larger population and where we can expand. But yeah, I mean, I'm thinking big and small. I think it's. Applications of behavioral artistry are endless right now. And I would be so excited to have a student reach out to me and go, hey, I'd love to do this. Can you read this over? What are your thoughts? I mean, I'm. It makes me nothing but excited to see these components being brought out and people working on them.
- [67:33]
B
Oh, great. Well, it's. I mean, you've certainly got the definitions here in the updated article that I think even further capture that. Whether it's mushiness or that specific, specific mushiness of behavioral artistry, the TIP procedure seems like it's a really great place to start for folks who are, you know, like, we're, you know, we've done BST for over and over and over, thousands of times. It sounds like really looking at that motivation, kind of the motivational statement, really thinking about the context of the why, really adding that in. We're kind of doing the TIP procedure at that point, so we could just add. Add that in and hopefully get similar results. Although potentially someone wants to just do bst, no rationale, and see what happens. That might be its own study, though I think we'd all agree, like, it doesn't take that long to add a rationale to why you're teaching something. So why leave it out? Even if you're like 2% better, if you take saved 30 seconds, like, okay, is that worth it? You know, everyone loves a good rationale.
- [68:30]
A
I would be interested to see what, what might be the barriers to demonstration of behavioral artistry, because it could be different for different people. And it's, you know, for, for these participants here, it clearly was like a skill deficit for them at least in how the data are presented. But is there other, are there other things going on there? Right. Are they feeling like they have to do it a certain way because like that's how our field's always done it. Right. Or they Are you seeing reactivity or they like just not self assured in their role as a, as a teacher? And are there different factors that are like contributing towards that? And maybe there will be, I don't know, variations therefore and like curriculum might look like in order to get them where they need to be.
- [69:15]
C
Yeah. I would also say I, I try to get this published. I went initially to a special education journal. I was really gung ho that I didn't want it to live in behavior analysis. And the special education journal said absolutely not. They were like, this is too behavior analytic. We think you missed out on some educational pedagogy. Even though a lot of my source content came from education. So I would love to see how we can bridge that gap and really get some of this training more into the education journals and build that out there too. And I came from a special ed program, so it just made sense to me. But getting that feedback was surprising and it was surprising to some of my co authors. So that's the other thing is like, like how. What does it take to bridge that gap between behavior analysis and special education to get us that us all in the same place?
- [70:13]
B
Yeah, you gotta hyper mushify terms. I guess it's the only.
- [70:17]
C
I take away all jargon, every behavior analytic word. I don't know.
- [70:22]
B
I mean, I don't know, maybe say behavior. It's like genuine care or just call it something else that might. Is that it? Because I, I feel like I've seen terms that are way less defined in educational articles and everyone eats those terms up. And I, I'm not throwing shade. Like those articles suck compared. But they, they definitely. You read them and you're like I don't. What the hell are you talking about? Like, is it this? Like, is this what you're. This feels more like. I mean, maybe it's just me. I'm in education, same as you may be. Special education and behavior analysis where I do get antsy when someone just like oh, you know, we've just got to be more kind. And I'm like, I don't. What does that help me out here? I think I know what that is, but I don't want to do it wrong. For the next year. And then in my evaluation, like, you were kind enough. Like, well, I tried. I read the thing say, be kind. I thought I was doing it.
- [71:11]
A
Yeah.
- [71:12]
B
But yeah. Yeah.
- [71:13]
A
So much eyebrow work I have.
- [71:15]
C
I will write a rubric. Right. Like, I'll have a behavior artistry rubric and we'll score it across and then I will attach that to it. I mean, maybe that's what it takes. But that, it was so. It was so confusing to me. I'm like, this is. We did it with special ed teachers. This lands in education. So, you know, again, I would, I would love to see research that is done within the field of special ed or education that takes it and we can, we could plop it down there. And maybe it takes changing the language and making it mushier and softer and even more dynamic as it is to get it there, because I think it. That's where the greatest impact might be.
- [71:51]
B
Yeah.
- [71:52]
A
And.
- [71:52]
B
And we didn't even talk about, like, some of the generalization results that your teachers got, because I get to generalization. You know. Okay, we're doing a morning meeting. Okay, great. You know, we didn't talk specifically about the results, but you published two articles on this. Clearly the results were good enough. They were very good.
- [72:06]
A
Results were great.
- [72:08]
B
But when you get to the generalization of, we're doing morning meeting and now we're going to see, hey, just try it during ELA or social studies. Just reading that sent me sent chills. It's like, well, why would they ever. Those things are not at all the same. Like, teaching academic skills are not morning meetings. We're not talking about the weather. Like, we're going to teach decoding skills or we're going to teach, you know, we're going to teach capitals or something like that. And then for them to get, you know, pretty, pretty great generalization results, I think you had some people who were like, you know, like 70% versus their 80 or 90 in acquisition. That's not great for. And we never ran it at something totally different because I know one of the concerns I'll often hear from teachers is that's all well and good for X time.
- [72:48]
C
Yeah.
- [72:48]
B
But when I'm doing academic teaching, that takes 100% of my concentration. I can't be thinking about all these other skills. And clearly that wasn't the case for maybe these are the six best teachers that ever lived. But, you know, I. I'm guessing you'd get similar results in a lot of other studies when you made that jump. And that just Feels like almost like that magic bullet of you learn it here, now use it anywhere. I mean, that's, that's. That's magic. When you can. When you can teach teachers a skill that they can just start doing all over the place.
- [73:18]
C
And they were doing it across like that. We conducted that study two and a half years ago, and I was able to check in with those teachers, and they were still doing it. Like, that's what's crazy. Like, they, the ones that were still teaching at that program were still engaging in the same behaviors. And I will say, too, they were, like, excited to actually see me. Which being the researcher, not the person that did the delivery of it was pretty awesome. They're like, oh, you didn't put us through hell. This wasn't mind numbing. This was actually beneficial. And I was like, that's really awesome. Like, they didn't cringe when they saw me. Which tells you a lot about what they thought about the out. You know, being part of it as a participant. Right, right.
- [73:55]
A
Something will not maintain unless it's contacting naturally occurring reinforcers.
- [73:58]
C
Correct.
- [73:59]
A
And so that's exactly what happened.
- [74:02]
B
And again, Amy, that's not to keep you even longer. But now I'm thinking, okay, like, we've done episodes on things like baseline classroom conditions in which, you know, you got to have a high degree of positive praise statements to your feedback to the students, which is very hard. I find teachers have a really, really hard time with that one. They're like, no, I'm totally nice. I love working with my kids. I love my students. And you're showing them the data and it's like, it was terrible. You were mean all the time, you know, and you feel bad. I mean, hopefully you don't present it that way to any. To anyone ever. But it almost feels like, what if instead of saying, you got to have your four positive statements to your one feedback? It was more that general sense of, hey, are you showing with your eyes that you're liking what they're saying you're showing, you know, with a smile, like, what if we, you know, go. Going back to something we talked about is we don't quite know how much behavioral artistry equals academic excellence.
- [74:53]
A
Correct.
- [74:54]
B
Well, what if we sort of smush those together and it doesn't have to be like, good job doing blank. I love how you did blank. It could just be that, like, huh, the nod in the eyebrow. It's like, could that be enough of that positive of reinforcement through the social. You know, that. That movement to both be a Behavioral artist as well as kind of keep those high ratios. Right. Could we do that for teachers? You know that that would be a huge help for them because I think that's a lot easier to explain how to do than you got to get this ratio. We're gonna get a behavior specific craze. Here's your self monitoring system. That's like 50 things you're now asking a teacher to do. And they'll try, but it's, it's a lot that you're not the only one who's asking them to do things. So I kind of love to see maybe a marriage of some of those ideas there.
- [75:36]
C
Yeah. And I think you're absolutely right. I think it falls along the same lines of when we have a new technician or therapist working and we're asking them to build rapport and we're telling them don't place demands and you're like, hey, I'm going to clock every demand that you just place. When we ask you not to clock the demand and just narrate what they're doing or just sit and play with them. It's the same thing. Right? So again it's, it, it's, we can be, it's about being proactive in our language rather than reactive all the time and, and demonstrate and ensure like we probably don't need to do everything occurring simultaneously. And there's another study. Right. Like you just pointed out. Let's just say how good is it that we just can nod our heads or raise our eyebrows or smile once in a while. Like I would love, I would love just to track smiling in the classroom or smiling with a therapist like you're working with a 5 year old. Why aren't you smiling? Why do I mean, and that's the core. Right? Like you look like you're miserable. I always say when I do these presentations we talk about, I talk about resting face a lot because like, like, like we all know that you're like the nicest, friendliest person in the world. Why do you have that look on your face? Just look at that around and you know that's like as natural language contingent as you could get.
- [76:50]
A
Right.
- [76:51]
C
You know, like I'm, I, I try to be like very matter of fact about what we're looking for because that's, that's how I think relatability also works. But yeah, I think we could get really simple and have a lot of success with teachers and therapists that way.
- [77:05]
B
Yeah. Well, Dr. Amy Books fan, thank you so, so much for coming on. It sounds like, we're going to have to do Behavioral Artistry 3 and cap off the trilogy. It'll hopefully be better than the sequel. Unlike most trilogies where it's like, it kind of goes downhill a little bit. Well, you know, keep going up.
- [77:21]
C
Yeah.
- [77:22]
B
Will have more eyebrow movement. You know, just like our eyebrows are going to go up and up and up. But maybe I should.
- [77:28]
C
You guys would agree to be on my podcast one day.
- [77:31]
D
Oh, yeah.
- [77:32]
B
We're always happy. We can raise eyebrows and smile and you can hear it in our voices.
- [77:38]
C
Awesome.
- [77:40]
B
But so for folks who want to reach out to talk more about behavioral artistry with you, maybe they have an extension that they want to try out and they kind of want to get. Get your feedback and then also certainly sharing about your podcast. We love. We'll do the plug section, which, you know, not everyone always has plugs, but you got some, so let's do it.
- [77:58]
C
You can reach me at my emails the easiest. A buckspanmail.com. that's. That's my best. Most often checked and I will always respond. I have a website called behavioralartistry.com and Banana Champagne apps as well as my coaching where I use the.
- [78:18]
B
I saw that when I was. I was, I was, I was just. I forget what I was looking up or I needed to find a resource or something.
- [78:26]
C
I was in the email, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [78:28]
B
Somewhere. And I was like, that's what a. Cool. It's a great name. Cool.
- [78:32]
C
That's all. That's a whole nother conversation. But that's. Yeah, that's. But that you can see the, the research and access to a lot of the research is on behavioralartistry.com and then there's contact us links on both of them. But that's, that's. That's the best way to get in touch with me. And then, yeah, my mentor and I, Jimmy o', Brien, we have Skinner's Locker Room where we have a podcast that it's all about sports, human performance and wellness. And we look at it as behavior analysts and we've had some really interesting guests on. And we just get into the weeds and we talk about whatever we want. Sometimes it's like two hours off the rails. But my God, Rob would love that.
- [79:13]
B
That's all. That's all I want to do.
- [79:15]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [79:15]
B
Why are they limiting. Why do my co hosts limit the amount of time we.
- [79:19]
C
Oh, my goodness. I'll tell you what. Sometimes it's 10:30 and I'm like, wow, we're still going after three hours. But you just, it's, it's super interesting. We've talked about everything from addiction to postpartum depression. And we just had Merrill Winston on. He was talking about being an expert witness. So very cool stuff like that. We're just like running the gamut. So I'd love to have you guys on. We just talk about, I don't know, baseball, fantasy football, any of those things, if those are interesting.
- [79:45]
B
That's not any of us. I, you know, we, we've tried to get into disc golf a little this golf.
- [79:52]
C
I mean, collegiate sports practices and whatever.
- [79:55]
A
Else, but this, I'm sure we can find a topic.
- [79:57]
C
Yeah, yeah, please.
- [79:59]
B
Fiddly winks. All right. What is this?
- [80:01]
C
Very good, but.
- [80:03]
B
All right. Well, Amy, again, thank you so much for coming out. We really appreciate it.
- [80:06]
C
I appreciate it too. Thanks so much for having me.
- [80:08]
B
One more time, we want to thank Dr. Amy Booksband for being on the show talking to us all about behavioral artistry. We have since made amends about mis citing the previous article, but we hopefully have. Have doubled over that mistake from the previous episode both in Arata. But now we've been very clear who wrote, who wrote those articles. Primary author, I should say, on those articles. But it's a great topic. We really do hope we can have another discussion about behavioral artistry sometime in the future. And of course, check out Skinner's locker room and behavioralartistry.com for even more with Amy. And finally, let's wrap up our show with pairings. Diana, take it away.
- [80:46]
A
All right, it's time for pairings. Pairings is the part of the show where I tell you about past episodes that you might want to check out if you enjoyed this one. So we have a few episodes that relate to this topic and they include episode 294, which was our original episode on behavioral artistry. Episode 287 where we discuss compassionate care for your trainees, teaching them how to engage in compassionate care practices. Episode 214, which is also about engaging in compassionate care practices and teaching those. And that was with Dr. Jessica Rohr and Dr. Mary Jane Weiss. Episode 111, which was all about behavior analytic language, which came up a few times in this episode, so I threw that one in. And then episode six where we discussed pre session pairing with Dr. Amanda Kelly. And then more recently, episode 245, we talked about rapport building. And as part of pairings, I also like to recommend a snack. So today, Rob, you're my only contestant for this game. I'm going to Tell you three snacks, and you need to tell me the secret special ingredient that make them all special.
- [81:58]
B
Okay.
- [81:59]
A
Okay. So the three dishes are Mac and cheese, sauteed spinach, and a chai latte or pumpkin spice latte, if you prefer. Either one is fine.
- [82:15]
B
Is it? They're all kind of mushy.
- [82:18]
A
No. Oh, no, no, no. They have an ingredient.
- [82:20]
C
Oh.
- [82:21]
B
It's sauteed spinach in them.
- [82:22]
A
Or they can have an ingredient. So it's like milk. No, no, cream. Spinach could have milk, but that's not the ingredient I'm talking about. So it's like sometimes you would have this dish and you're like, this was delicious. What was that special secret ingredient that must have been in here to make it so good?
- [82:44]
B
Eyebrows.
- [82:45]
A
No, you're on the right track in that it is related to our topic, but only thematically.
- [82:50]
B
Is it love?
- [82:52]
A
No, it's not love. The ingredient that could be present in these is all nutmeg.
- [82:58]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [82:59]
A
So you could add a little dash of nutmeg to Mac and cheese, sauteed spinach, and also your fall latte of choice to just amp it up. It adds that little extra certain something just like you can get when you teach good behavioral artistry skills.
- [83:17]
B
So I should eat more nutmeg is what you're saying?
- [83:19]
A
Yes.
- [83:20]
B
Okay.
- [83:20]
A
That's the secret ingredient.
- [83:22]
B
Oh, okay.
- [83:22]
A
Yeah. And that's it. Thanks for playing pairings. Please enjoy.
- [83:29]
B
I was gonna say that's.
- [83:30]
A
I couldn't remember my ending catchphrase.
- [83:32]
B
All right, well, thanks, Diana, and thanks to all of you so much for listening to ABA Inside Track. If you haven't, please subscribe to the show on your podcast, player of Choice.
- [83:40]
C
Choice.
- [83:40]
B
You can also subscribe on our Patreon page, patreon.com ABA InsideTrack, where you can subscribe at any level. But if you subscribe at the five dollar and up level, you're able to get access to our listener choice voting and as well as our listener choice episodes and a free CE every quarter. If you subscribe at the ten dollar and up level, you not only get that, but you get all of our book clubs as soon as they are released. We do four of those a year and you get two ces. Again, no additional charge, just as a thank you. And joining at any level gets you all the episodes a week ahead of time and access to our polls. I think we just had our poll for the fall listener choice. Hey, that's where behavioral artistry originally came from, from the listener vote. So come on and join so you can have a say in our next couple of cool episodes this year. We also want to thank a few other people. We want to say big thanks to Dr. Jim Carr for recording our intro and outro music, Kyle Sturry for interstitial music and Dan Thabit of the podcast Doctors for his amazing editing work. Before we go, don't forget you need that last secret code word if you want C E's and it is black. B, L, A, C, K. It is the opposite actually. No, it's not an opposite of any color. It's all the colors. They all make black because they all smoosh together and they make black. It's dark. It's like night. It's a great, great color for the fall right as we're getting into at least in New England, getting into those darker, spooky nights black. All right, everybody, we'll be back next week with another fun filled episode but until then, keep responding. Bye.