Episode 326 - Difficulty During Transitions (Fall 2025 Listener Choice)

Summary

ABA Inside Track – Episode 326: Difficulty During Transitions (Fall 2025 Listener Choice)

Date: November 12, 2025
Hosts: Robert Perry Crews, Diana Perry Cruz, Jackie McDonald
Main Theme:
A deep dive into the behavioral challenges associated with transitions—whether between activities, settings, or demands—commonly experienced by children and individuals with developmental disabilities. The episode highlights key peer-reviewed research, assessment methods, the ambiguous nature of “transitions,” intervention strategies, and case studies, while discussing why transitions so often trigger problem behavior.

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Episode Overview

ABA Inside Track’s hosts discuss current research on difficulties during transitions, unpacking why these seemingly mundane moments (like moving from preferred to non-preferred activities, or between spaces) can evoke refusal, disruption, or aggression. The conversation is guided by three recent articles, each bringing a different lens to understanding and treating transition-related behaviors.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Do We Mean by "Transitions"?

• Variety in Definitions: Transitions may refer to a change in activity (e.g., from play to work) or a physical move from one location to another (e.g., classroom to playground)—or both. This ambiguity complicates both research and practice.

  “Sometimes a transition just refers to a switchover of activity, whereas sometimes a transition refers to physical movement from one space to another, potentially with active change in activity. And so I think that can make it really challenging.” (A, 04:47)

• Functional Complexity: Is the problem the act of moving itself, or what is coming next? Articles explore both possibilities and the overlap.

2. Article Summaries and Key Findings

Article 1: Waters, Lerman, Havanatz (2009) – Visual Schedules & DRO/Extinction

Purpose:
Test the effectiveness of visual schedules alone or in combination with extinction and differential reinforcement (DRO) for reducing transition-triggered problem behavior.

Participants:
Two 6-year-old boys, both with a history of transition difficulties across settings (school, home, daycare).

Findings:

• Visual Schedules Alone: Not empirically sufficient to reduce problem behavior in this context, matching previous research indicating "advanced notice" (e.g., two-minute warning) isn’t always effective.
• Extinction & DRO: Some reduction seen but not always ideal—DRO is not inherently function-based, raising ethical/practical questions.

  “DRO is actually a punishment procedure, so it’s not function based… I would teach a Functional communication response for both [functions].” (C, 15:35)

• Combined Intervention (Visual Schedule + DRO + Extinction): Showed the greatest reductions in aggression/disruption.
• Takeaway:
  • Visual schedules are helpful as cues for what’s next, especially for developing independence, but may not be enough when the transition itself is aversive.
  • Advanced notice and visual schedules “seem humane and nice,” but practitioners must not assume they're always effective.

Article 2: Paulsdottir et al. (2023) – Experimental Analysis of Task Refusal Across Transition Types

Purpose:
Examine whether transition escape is distinct from standard escape from task demand, and test interventions.

Participant:
Single case, 12-year-old girl with ADHD and developmental delay.

Key Methods & Insights:

• Preference Assessment: Determined “high,” “moderate,” and “low” preferred academic tasks.

• Demand vs. Transition Analysis: Task refusal wasn’t triggered by the “low preferred task” alone, but by a transition from high to low preferred (e.g., switching from a more liked to less liked academic task).

• Treatment: Brief, embedded “break” before the low-preferred task (e.g., 10-15 seconds) eliminated refusals.

• Interpretation:

  • Revealed that it’s not just “escape from demands,” but the abrupt switch (“rich to lean schedule”) that’s problematic.
  • The “predictability” and signaling of the less-preferred task exacerbates problem behavior; unpredictability (via breaks) may help.

  “If all [a schedule] is doing is cueing ‘Hey, by the way, guess what’s coming up? Something you hate,’ that might be hard…” (A, 18:39)

Article 3: Wilson et al. (2025) – Case Study: Moderating Transitions with a Middle (Moderately Preferred) Activity

Purpose:
Test if transitioning from a highly preferred to a low-preferred activity (iPad to bus) could be improved by inserting a moderately preferred activity (“stepping stones”) in between.

Participant:
12-year-old girl; problem: climbing furniture when transitioning to the bus (safety risk).

Method:

• Preference assessment: iPad (high), stepping stones/tickles (moderate).
• Trial-based FA: Varied escape conditions (including physical transitions).
• Control: iPad → Bus; Treatment: iPad → Stepping Stones → Bus.

Results:

• Control: High rates of furniture climbing during iPad→Bus transitions.
• Treatment: ZERO occurrences of climbing when “stepping stones” added as an intermediate step.
• Limitations:
  • The SD (“let’s go to the bus” vs. “let’s do stepping stones”) was different between conditions; uncertain if results were due to the activity or the SD change.
  • Mechanisms unclear; could involve emotional momentum, response effort, or simply breaking up aversiveness.

Quote:

“The most amazing graph is in this study... The control condition… high rates. The treatment… zero. Huge differentiation in this graph.” (B, 46:48)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the challenge of generalization in transition research:

  “I am a little surprised that there hasn’t been more, like, deep dives into some of the factors going on in more of a sort of, like, line of research… It felt a little disjointed.” (A, 23:30)

• On the limits of ‘universally good’ interventions:

  “Sometimes people just do things because they feel nice and sometimes they don’t matter… [Visual schedules] seem very humane, exactly right, yeah. But if all it’s doing is cueing, ‘Hey, by the way, something you hate is coming up,’ that might be hard.” (A & C, 07:26–08:23)

• On the humanness of transition avoidance:

  “I think that’s the human condition right there.” (B, 25:41)

• On expanding treatment creativity:

  “Maybe, Cody, you can tell us. Tell us what the mechanism is… Because some other things I would have loved to see was, like, what if you added more treatment options?” (A, 49:14)

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Applied Takeaways & Practical Conclusions

• Thorough Assessment is Critical:

  • Determine if behavior is truly escape from a task (“I don’t want to do this”) or escape from the transition itself (“I don’t want to switch”).
  • Function-based interventions work best, but avoid rote reliance on extinction/DRO without teaching replacement responses.

• Don’t Overestimate Visual Schedules:

  • Helpful as cues and for predictability, but often insufficient for deeply aversive transitions or those already triggering refusal/aggression.

• Embedded Breaks and Step-Downs:

  • Inserting a brief “neutral” or “moderately preferred” activity between high- and low-preference tasks can significantly reduce problem behavior.
  • Even low-effort solutions (e.g., a 15-second “errand” between hard transitions) may work.

• Gentleness, Individuality, and Empathy:

  • “What you see as a minor transition may be a huge psychological hurdle for your client… Treating these situations with kindness, I guess.” (B, 53:08)
  • Gauge the experience from the learner’s perspective. Small process changes matter.

• Need for More Research:

  • Only five participants across all included studies; transition research is in its infancy.
  • Definition ambiguity persists (“What is a transition?”); more work needed on functional nuances.

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Memorable Moments & Timestamps

• Defining Transitions & Setup: 03:24–04:47
  • "What is the topic…your victory lap?" (C, 02:24)
• Visual Schedules & their Limits: 06:15–09:21
• Transition Escape vs. Task Escape Conceptualized: 24:06–26:16
• Pigeon Studies as Analogy: 28:05–29:16
• Stepping Stone Case Study Results: 46:48–47:45
• Final Reflection on Empathy and Individual Experience: 53:08–54:53

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Suggested Further Listening (Pairings)

• Episode 18: Transitions pt. 1 (“Moving from point A to point B”)
• Episode 249: Alternatives to Escape Extinction
• Episode 87: High P, Low P Instructional Sequences
• Episode 320: Why Jackie Hates DRO
• Episode 1013: Activity Schedules Book Club

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Final Thoughts

While much remains to be explored, this episode offers a guidepost: Assess transitions rigorously and individually. Recognize the difference between task aversion and transition aversion, don’t rely solely on “nice-sounding” interventions, and when in doubt, insert a gentle ramp or neutral step—sometimes a stepping stone really is the bridge between “no way” and “okay.”

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[Produced faithfully in the energetic, conversational, mildly irreverent tone characteristic of ABA Inside Track.]

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Hey, Everybody. Welcome to ABA InsideTrack, 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.

[B]

Hello, Rob. It's me, Diana Perry Cruz. Hi. Hi.

[C]

Hi. And it's me, Jackie McDonald.

[A]

Oh, boy. Wow. We're just coming in with all the energy.

[C]

I got energy, despair.

[A]

I got no energy. Diana and I both had our flu and Covid shots yesterday and then went to bed being like, let's go to bed early and I bet we'll feel fine. And then I did until about noon today. And I am crashing hard.

[B]

So just also want to acknowledge that we are extremely fortunate and privileged that we live in Massachusetts and are able to access.

[C]

Yes, I had a two hour medical procedure today where during the medical procedure, there was a fire alarm and everyone had to leave. And so I had to take my little IV bag with my little IV stand and geriatrically walk out the building and walk down the stairs and hang out in the parking lot.

[B]

I never thought about what would happen. Yeah. If that had a fire alarm in that scenario.

[C]

That. So I'm just hanging out. Just. Nurse keeps coming over and being like, oh, you got to keep your arms straight because you're blocking all the mess.

[B]

Oh, jeez.

[C]

It was ridiculous. And for all you listeners out there, I was on season three, episode nine of How I Turned this Summer.

[B]

I turned pretty.

[C]

And I was sure because I'm there for over two hours that I was going to finish, and I did not. I only got 10 minutes into the last episode.

[A]

You'll get there.

[B]

And Jackie's fine, by the way. I'm totally fine.

[C]

It's. It's proactive.

[A]

Yeah, but this isn't a. This isn't a medical podcast or an aging podcast. It's a podcast about behavior analysis and behavior analytic research where every week we pick a topic and discuss some relevant research articles. Except for weeks like this, because it's not a preview. I use that same spiel. We do previews, too. This one's not a preview. This is actually a full episode chosen by our listeners. So for those of you who subscribe to us on Patreon, you. You have the option every season to pick from a bevy of choices. And Jackie, your topic was the big winner.

[C]

It never is. So this is big, big time for me.

[A]

What is the topic that our listeners chose? Your victory lap.

[C]

Victory lap is transitions. I just transitioned from sitting to walking.

[A]

Oh. But our listeners can see you. Because another bonus is if you are on the Patreon page and subscribing at the $5 and up level, you're able to get a a raw cut audio video version of the podcast as well as a secret code to get this podcast for. The podcast is always free, but the CE you'll get for listening is free, so you get to see some extra bonus material.

[B]

We don't know if the video is an enhancement or a deterrent really, but it's available.

[A]

That's where the code word is for the video, mostly because A, I think people like watching videos these days and, and B, it's a lot easier to put it there than to have like five different files that look exactly the same except one of them gives you a free CE because it's easy to mix those up.

[C]

It's so true. So anyway, I'm glad you're watching and you can see my great hair day today.

[A]

Yay. Hooray.

[C]

Every day is a great hair day for me.

[A]

So we're talking about transitions and we're talking about difficulty during transition. So problem behavior episodes, challenging behavior, refusal to transition, and the analysis of the function. Why? Why are transitions so hard? So we're going to be talking about three articles that get at this topic a little bit. We did a previous episode on this a long, long time ago. So these are some more recent articles on the subject of looking into the magic of transitions. Diana, what are we going to be discussing today?

[B]

All right, we have three articles to talk about. They include an experimental analysis of task refusal, a comparison of negative reinforcement contingencies and transitions between academic tasks by Paul's daughter Magnussen, and Sven Bjorn's daughter that was published in Behavioral Interventions 2023.

[C]

You did a great job on all those Icelandic last names.

[B]

Thank you. Also, separate and Combined Effects of Visual Schedules and extinction, plus Differential Reinforcement on Problem Behavior Occasioned by Transitions by Waters, Lerman and Havanatz. That was in Java 2009. And finally, treatment of Challenging Behavior during Physical transitions, a case study by Wilson Fed, Frederico, Perrin, and Morris. And that was in Behavior Analysis and practice very recently. 2025.

[A]

Okay, so let's start with the the Waters, that's our oldest article, has a lot of good kind of background information, but I think one of the key concepts that comes into the idea of a transition is is there something inherently difficult about moving from point A to point B? But we're also talking about the idea of transitions in moving from activity to activity. So I think one of the things that can be tricky and these articles kind of Go back and forth in terms of their focus is sometimes a transition just refers to a switchover of activity, whereas sometimes a transition refers to physical movement from one space to another, potentially with active change in activity. And so I think that can make it really challenging. I know a lot of individuals can. Can sort of get tied up in like, well, is the issue they just hate going somewhere or is the issue they hate what they're going to? So these articles do a little bit of digging as to is there a difference between the two of them? Is there not a difference between the two of them? Maybe there is sometimes, maybe there isn't other times. So we're going to, we're going to keep at that because we have talked about transitions that include a movement component. And there's, you know, a lot of hypotheses around what they are. There's some analysis, functional analysis tools developed. But let's see what our new authors have to say. Jack, why don't you kick it off with our 2009 Waters article?

[C]

So you are all gonna go when you hear what this article is about because. And if you listen to a previous episode, we talked about how much I hate differential reinforcement of other behavior.

[A]

Yes. And there's a whole title about that.

[C]

Yep. And that was just recently in the September, the October issue issue, the October month monthly. But here they caught me because I was looking at the title and they just said differential reinforcement. And I was like, this sounds interesting. And only until you get to the procedures do that they even tell you that it's differential reinforcement of other behavior. And when I got there, I was like, what?

[B]

What?

[C]

So know that I was, I was tricked. But I'm also glad that I read it because it's always good to keep your mind open. Right?

[B]

That's right.

[C]

On research and so many, many of the, many of the previous research studies that looked at transitions and some of that we've talked before looked at antecedent interventions. Right. And one of them said that advanced notice giving the two minute warning was effective. But hilariously, some said the two minute warning was not effective. Right. So it's very idiosyncratic.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is one of those situations of like, well, everyone does it. It sounds nice. Kind of like when we talked about validation on the show, like, sometimes people just do things because they feel nice and sometimes they don't matter. Sometimes people do things because they feel nice and they actually can screw up your entire treatment.

[B]

Detrimental.

[C]

So it's that one.

[A]

Detrimental is a better word to screw up your entire treatment. This Is why I'm not a professor.

[B]

Why, why I'm here.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

But so two things that people typically do clinically when we are doing a. When we're talking about transitioning is either given advanced notice or use a visual schedule. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And few studies have empirically demonstrated that visual schedules are effective at decreasing transition related problem behavior. There was one research study that showed a decrease in non compliance, non compliant behavior during transitions with a visual schedule. But they didn't identify the function of the problem behavior prior to treatment. So they're unsure if it was the visual schedule, if it was the instructions, if there was something else. Yeah. Isn't that the way it always is? You're like no. Yeah.

[B]

I love the idea of using a visual same.

[C]

It's so easy too.

[B]

Right? Yeah.

[C]

And it just tells you what's going to happen.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Seems very humane.

[B]

Exactly right. Yeah.

[C]

I love the idea.

[B]

See it a lot in preschool classrooms. Additional visuals.

[C]

See it everywhere in my life. I use visual schedule. Right. So McCord, Thompson and Iwata looked at the function around problem behavior during transition. This was in 2001. And they thought that behavior may be maintained by avoidance of non preferred activities. Feel that. Access to preferred activities. Also feel that. Or escape from the transition itself. So they said okay, when I'm looking at. Also feel that.

[B]

Right. You're like I don't want to get in the shower.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And you get in the shower. You're like don't want to get out of the shower ever.

[A]

Well, if you want to hear us talk about that, that is actually an article that we discussed way back when.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Oh, the McCord at all.

[C]

Yeah, that was in the original transition episode which we'll talk about later. But, but so this purpose of this study was to evaluate the separate and combined effects of visual schedules and a function based intervention for problem behavior. I might say that it's not a function based pro intervention, but we'll talk about that.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

So we've got two six year old boys that served as participants. They engaged in problem behavior during transitions across all of the settings in their lives. Right. They were like across many settings. School, home, daycare, they really like list everywhere.

[B]

Great.

[C]

They communicated with one to two word sentences and one communicated with full sentences. Both of them could follow one step directions, match pictures to objects, expressly label objects. Both had a history with visual schedules and a history with pictorial items during the study. So they didn't have to train them on that, which is always nice. Right. The FA and treatment sessions were done two to Three times a day, three to four days a week. They were conducted in the classroom that the boys were in. When the other peers were out of the room. I'm like, did they have to miss recess? I hope not. That's what I'm thinking.

[B]

I hope not. Right?

[C]

I'm hoping that they're like, everybody's going somewhere else. But it's not recess. So the materials that they used for the study included photographs with words for each activity, a picture book for the schedule. We've all seen that it's like the big binder with the three ring binder. Right. With the Velcro on it. And a small plastic bag for one participant because he liked to put the whatever he did in the baggie. Which makes sense. These, remember these resembled closely to what was used in the classroom. So they had preferred and non preferred activities that they, they found from asking the teachers and observation. But hilarious that they didn't do an assessment of these. They only did assessment of the edible reinforcement they were going to use, which I found funny. They're like, it's important for us to do an edible reinforcement, but for these activities that we're going to use, we're, we're not gonna listen. Right? Right. Yeah. So who knows? The preferred activities included playing computer games for Vern and listening to music for Jimmy. The non preferred activities for both participants included academic tasks. No surprise there. They used a multiple stimulus without replacement preference assessment to identify food items. And they use this during the treatment evaluations. If the student transitioned appropriately, which doesn't seem function based to me, I'm just gonna put it out there, but we'll talk about that in a minute. And the highly preferred items were candy and potato chips for them. So the dependent variable was aggression for both of them and disruption for one participant they measured the occurrence and non occurrence during transition. IOA was really good. They had one low ioa and I wonder if it had something to do with disruption. Cuz aggression seemed very like. It's like hitting, punching, kicking. Disruption was a little more vague. So I'm just wondering if maybe that. They didn't say that, but I was just wondering.

[B]

Yeah, could be.

[C]

That's a wondering for me. Yeah. So the FA looked like three conditions similar to the previous research. They had two minutes of pre transition activity, the transition and then two minutes of post transition activity. So they had an activity initiation with location change. So that was a transition from no activity to a non preferred activity. And then if problem behavior happened, they returned to that original location. So that was a Test for negative reinforcement. Right. Or avoidance. They had activity termination with location change. So they moved from a preferred activity to nothing. And that removed. If the problem behavior occurred, it moved back to the activity. So that was positive reinforcement. And then they had a control which was no activity to a preferred activity. And hopefully that one. Everyone's like, yay, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

They presented each of them three times for a mean session length of 14 minutes. This is one thing I really appreciated about this study is they included how long each of the sessions lasted and how long the conditions lasted. Because for clinician replication it's really nice to know like, okay, this is probably going to take around this much time. Yeah, I like that. So results suggested avoidance of non preferred activities and access to preferred activities. Surprise, surprise. Both. Right. So the treatment act, the treatment evaluation. They had two minutes access to the preferred activity. Prior to each transition, they delivered the verbal prompt of music and or computer is finished. It's time to work. Following any completed transition, the participant was required to work on the non preferred activity for at least two minutes with no problem behavior occurring in the last minute before returning to the preferred activity. So this was around 17 minutes with a range of 12 minutes to 39 minutes for this.

[B]

Oh my.

[C]

Yeah. Okay. Does that make sense?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Baseline looked exactly like the fa. They had a visual schedule identical to baseline. Oh yeah. The baseline look like fa. So then the visual schedule condition looked identical to baseline with the exception of the visual schedule. Right. They had the pictures on there, what they were going to do. They, they were physically prompted to move the pictures so that they could say that they had contact with them. And then they had the other condition, which is extinction and differential reinforcement of other behavior. So right. Then they said in that one the participant had to move, they had to comply with the transition regardless of problem behavior. And the therapist delivered praise and preferred food. If the participant completed a transition without engaging in problem behavior. This one was 120 seconds for one participant and 25 seconds for the second. Finally, the procedures described above were combined when the visual schedules were used in conjunction with extinction in dro. I'm going to argue here that extinction may be a function based treatment, but it doesn't teach anything. I'm really not on board with that since I think behavior analysts should first and foremost teach something. A DRO is actually a punishment procedure, so it's not function based. So then I thought to myself, what would I do here? And so maybe because there's multiple functions, both positive and negative reinforcement, maybe I would teach a Functional communication response for both. Right. Maybe I would teach delay denial. And again, this is an older article, so.

[B]

Yeah. What. 2009.

[C]

2009. So it's a good, it's a good like beginning point. But to say that it's truly function based when we're using a dro and edibles. I. I'm not 100% sold.

[B]

No. Well, they don't know the function.

[C]

They did, they did the FA to the transitions and they said it's both escape of the non preferred and.

[B]

Okay. Yeah. So they multiply maintained. So we still kind of. Yeah.

[C]

We still don't know.

[B]

Right.

[C]

But it's hard. So they tried, they, you know, extended the literature by doing the FA and, and by showing that the visual schedule alone doesn't work. So the visual schedule alone looks exactly like. Baseline rates are high. Kids are crying.

[B]

Yeah. And I would be kind of interested to see like when is the visual schedule helpful? I think in some instances it can be.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But not in the situations where there's already a issue with the transition. Right, right. It's more so if you're in a classroom with some, you know, lower verbal learners. Right. Who still have some good visual discrimination skills, then perhaps adding that as a visual instead of just having it be an auditory transition might make those transitions a little bit smoother. You might have a better comprehension of it if you were to ask. Right. But that's kind of different than a situation like this where you have active problems already. Function of escape from the transition or the task or whatever. It might be that I wouldn't expect to see full change just by now show. Now I'm just making sure you understand that I'm asking you to move to something you don't want to do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. Great. I got it. Now I definitely don't want to go. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, I think one thing that really didn't come up too much in the context of this research. And so I'm going to let you listeners know this now in case they're wondering this question, because it did come up when we talked about this years and years ago, is that sort of. I don't want to say it's like an apocryphal sort of function, but that sense of some children with autism just hate moving through space like there's that sense of any change. It's just the idea of change is somehow anxiety provoking or somehow aversive. So could be, it could be. I don't think any of these articles are really looking specifically at is there some sort of like, odd rule, governed behavior or sort of, you know, anxious, private event going on in the context of the transition, which would be the sorts of situations where you think, if I'm going to use the treatment, the behavioral treatment of visual schedule, that would probably have to be somewhat of the function of like, you're able to sort of escape or to kind of abolish whatever control those private events have on. On behavior, perhaps, you know, could be otherwise. I think when we think of schedules, honestly, we should probably start with thinking about them as these are cues of what behavior to do next, which can be helpful as like part of a chain of events and growing independence. But if all it's doing is queuing, hey, by the way, guess what's coming up? Something you hate.

[C]

Yeah, that might be hard, but. Oh, go ahead.

[B]

I was just going to say, like to speak to your point, Rob. There is like, really interesting research out there looking at eye movement technology, and it's. Amy Clin is the person who does that research. But they examined how difficult it is for individuals to disengage from an activity and move to something else just with. By tracking eye movements. And that typically is harder for autistic individuals than others. So there might be something to difficulty with transitions at a neurological level.

[A]

Yes, but that's not really being. I don't think any of these articles necessarily look at. So if you're going. And you're like, well, well, when are they going to do the article where they talk about just sort of the general fear of a transition? We're not doing it in this episode.

[B]

But I just wanted to throw that in.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not. And I'm not discounting that as a potential function. It's more a matter of just. We're not talking about that as something that's occurring in these research studies. Yeah, so.

[C]

So when.

[A]

So turn off your podcast players now. Go do something else.

[C]

When they just did the DRO and extinction, they did see some decrease in responding, 69% for one participant, 83% for another participant. But they saw greater reductions in problem behavior when they added the visual schedule and the DRO and extinction components.

[B]

Great.

[C]

And they posited that the DRO alone with the DRO with the visual schedule minus the extinction wouldn't have worked due to the contacting, reinforcing, contingencies only after the extinction was implemented. So I think that this is a great start on talking about transitions, given that it was written a long time ago in 2009. But I know extinction is function based, but DRO certainly is not. So I would have thought about a different thing that we could teach because I love teaching.

[A]

I know. I know what you do.

[B]

All right.

[A]

Thanks, Jackie. Well, I'm tired of the past. Let's move into the future. But before that, we'll take a little break. And then when we come back, the presence of research relating to transitions. We'll be right back.

[C]

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[A]

And we are back talking about transitions and difficulty during transitions. But before we do that, I want to remind all of our listeners that Aba InsideTrack is ACE and Kwava approved. By listening, you're able to earn one learning credit. All you need to do is finish listening and then go to our website, abainsidetrack.com or click the link in your podcast player. That'll take you to a place where you can enter in some key information, including secret code words. The first of those code words is barracuda. B, A R, R A C U, D A barracuda.

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Is that a fish?

[A]

Yes, it's a fish with sharp teeth. Oh, bite ya. All right, let's continue on, shall we? Moving into the modern era of research in the 2024 study of Apollo's daughter and a bunch of other folks looking at again, task refusal in the context of transitions between academic tasks. Now, I know sometimes when we do this show, depending on who's sort of like the kind of producer, like, who's bringing the articles, who's like, starting the discussion off, sometimes we get to do More or less of like a deep dive into the whole breadth of literature. I know. One thing that I found a little frustrating about the state of articles and research related to transitions is that the definition of transition changes. We haven't already said this. Changes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Article to article, topic to topic. And it kind of feels like everybody's going off in their own little direction in which everyone's learning a little something, but not necessarily putting it together into a coherent whole yet. And for a behavior that is going to happen all the time and is so often a source of distress for individuals and for caregivers, I am a little surprised that there hasn't been more, like, deep dives into some of the factors going on in more of a sort of like, line of research. It's like, I don't know. We did this study. What do you think? Hey, I did a study too. I like this study as well. It felt a little disjointed because almost.

[B]

Everyone has transitions every day, no matter how you define it. And very often those are real challenges for people. And yet they have to continue occurring. Yeah.

[A]

So going back to, like, the 2001 studies that we talked about in a previous episode, it was all about the, you are here and now you are moving through space right there. All of these articles are more about the, well, maybe you're moving somewhere, who knows? But you definitely are transitioning from one thing to another. And I did enjoy a lot of this article in terms of really getting at the nitty gritty of, okay, but who cares, right? Why does it matter? If it's escape from a task and I'm switching tasks, it's still escape. Do we need to, like, get into the difference between a transition escape and just plain old escape? And I think this article points to. No, there is actually a very, maybe not subtle difference, but there is a difference between transition escape maintained behavior and what we sort of think of as just general escape maintained behavior. And we need the pigeons to show us the way. So one of. I love that they start off with looking at an older study or not that oldest study, Melanson and Fahmi, looking at 2,000 FA outcomes over the past 40 years. And they're like, everybody hates stuff and is escaping from everything. That's the most common function.

[B]

I mean, fair.

[C]

I feel that. I think.

[A]

Was that the title of the article, Everybody Hates Stuff? No, I think. I'm sure it was a fancier title. But escape tends to be a very common function. We don't want to do a lot of things that we are told to do. They could be very aversive. And a lot of individuals will engage in a variety of behavior to avoid or delay. That's my. Whether it's mildly or severely aversive stimuli.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's the human condition right there.

[A]

Now, one thing that comes into play is, okay, but escape. Is escape from something the same when you are just escaping from the task? Or is there an actual difference between hey, you, get over here to do this task you hate versus hey, you, here's the task you hate. Is the escape actually any different? Are the differences in responding? Because that could spell out a difference in how we respond. What our treatment would be, I should say, does the location change really matter? Can we add that to a typical FA to see is there a change in target behavior? And you know, there have been plenty of studies in the past looking at that, at that very factor of. It's not just the escape from something. It's the escape from the transition to something. New York or an escape from New York. I'm not going to walk over there and see Escape from New York, but if you play it in front of me, I actually would watch Escape from New York. I would do both. But that's just me.

[B]

It's a good like, for me, it's like going downstairs in our house. It's like a huge transition. Yeah, I know. I will put off going downstairs to. To do things for a really long time, especially if it's late at night. So I think that the response effort component is an important one to consider here.

[A]

Yes. So this study kind of wants to look and can we quantify to some extent, or can we differentiate between the transition to a less preferred activity versus the other interaction between, hey, you have to stop doing one thing and then start another. So which one is the transition? And if so, does that change how behavior might or might not occur or be reinforced? And so to go back to a study by Perrone and Courtney in 92, looking at response pauses in pigeons, which I'm always impressed when people are like, this is a real world problem. I wonder if there's a random pigeon study that answers the question, wow, when you can do that, congratulations, because I don't think I'd ever go back that far. So in this study, the researchers varied the magnitude of reinforcement on an FR schedule with a schedule in which there was lots of food, which was the rich schedule, and there was not a lot of food, which was the lean schedule. And they had two different schedules. They had the mixed stimuli. So again, Sorry. A mixed schedule in which there's no stimuli that will tell you, hey, on a fixed ratio of peckin, you're gonna get food. Which food? I don't know, who knows.

[C]

And it concur. It concur at a random. This, it's a component schedule and it can concurrent. It can occur at a random sequence. It doesn't have to occur.

[B]

Thanks.

[C]

Cause Diane and I are teaching this currently.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And then the multiple schedule in which it's like, hey, look at this pigeon. Peck the keys and you'll get the rich schedule. Hey, pack the keys, you're going to get the lean schedule.

[B]

Right.

[C]

So the, the multiple schedule signifies that a reinforcer, I mean that the discriminative stimulus will signify a reinforcer is available. And the two plus schedules can occur again in random order.

[A]

So and the results of the study. That's very good. The results of the study, the longest pause between pecking was in the rich to lean multiple schedule. So again the large reinforcer was delivered. And then the signal, by the way, the next one's gonna be crummy. That's typically where they'd see the pause in which they just see a decrease in responding and you see this pattern. There was a follow up study where they looked at dawdling behavior in which again, you usually have this kind of, oh, everything's great. What a rich schedule of reinforcement you're on. And by the way, I'm about to tell you it's going to get worse. That's often when you'll see dawdling behavior, which is the pigeon pecking equivalent, I guess in humans is dawdling. I dawdle, everyone dawdles. That's pretty common. Pigeons peck and humans dawdle.

[C]

My God, that's my neck mug. Pigeon's going to peck, peck, peck, peck, peck.

[A]

So the question we kind of come back to is, all right, is the issue here that the paws of the dawdling is some sort of an escape from demand? Or is it the fact that you're signaling that I'm about to enter a rich to lean schedule of reinforcement? And why would you care? Well, because if you get it wrong and you teach someone, hey, you should ask for a break. When this task is presented, it may not actually be that effective a treatment because it's the transition context itself that is the problem. And just being like, hey, by the way, something crummy's coming up, you should ask for your break may evoke problem behavior because you're like, oh no, you remind. Thanks for reminding me I better skedaddle or dawdle in this case. Whereas if you just were sort of like, anyway, oh, look, something happened, it's not as much fun. But you didn't know that till it was presented. It might be okay, kind of the equivalent of, I guess I do my laundry if it were right in front of me. But if you're like downstairs to it, it's really signaling, oh, it's so awful. But if we're just magically in front of me, I'm like, oh, I'm doing laundry now.

[B]

Okay, so skedaddling, where you run away to your room and then mess around.

[A]

I guess that would be skedaddling, yes. So the purpose of the study, after all that preamble was to do an experimental analysis of task refusal around some academic demands with. And this is another problem with this line of research, the number of participants is very low. So we've got one participant in this study. This participant had a developmental delay and they researchers looked at academic tasks as a rich to lean transition. And they did a demand analysis and a transition analysis. So this was a 12 year old girl as their primary participant diagnosed with ADHD and developmental delay. This was all run in her typical classroom at school. And the dependent variable they were studying was task refusal, which was, you know, looking away, saying, I don't want to do that, no, you know, or just asking for a break would also be considered task refusal in this study using a partial interval sample method in a multi element design. So they began by running polite refusal. Polite refusal. They began running the preference assessment. They did an MSWO because they were looking for what are the high and low preferred academic tasks from the daily education program that the participant would engage with. So they would kind of run throughout the study because what work was or was not more or less preferred would shift a little bit. So they'd sort of do three repetitions of five trials at the start of each week. Whatever was picked first was sort of just, here's the things, which one would you want to do first? The student didn't actually do the work. It was just, hey, what do you think? Which one sounds best? And the first one picked was considered highly preferred and last was low preferred and third was moderate. So in between those one to five and they do extras if they were getting weird responding. They also then did a demand analysis. So they'd have four different conditions where they'd present the tasks with low, moderately preferred and highly preferred academic tasks as well as a control. And they'd just be These little three minute sessions where they'd say, now we're going to do flashcards, now we're going to do writing. If there was any refusal or non responsiveness, they take the task away. Okay, you don't have to do that. And they'd praise correct responses, just like during a typical workday, sorry, school day. And they'd go through the different kinds of tasks and the control was just, here's a bunch of toys and you get attention, just like a typical control. And they looked at the percentage of intervals with task refusal. So again from this you're going to get a sense of which tasks were actually the, you know, most led to the most escape or task refusal, I should say. Then they ran their transition analysis and here is where they looked at what happens with the refusal or the task. Yeah, task refusal with high to low preferred academic tasks. Low to high preferred academic tasks. A high to high preferred academic task transition and a low to low. So okay, just putting it all together. So they'd start working on one thing for a bit, for two minutes. Now we're going to work on blank. They do that for two minutes. After two minutes they'd be like, anywho, now we're going to work on this other thing for three minutes, same thing. If there was no response, they'd prompt after another one. They'd say oh, okay, task refusal. Or if they just said no, I'm not doing that or I don't wanna, oh okay, you don't have to. For 30 seconds, just like in the demand analysis. And then you looked at the percent percentage of intervals with task refusal for that second task because there's your transition. And then based on those results, they decided the treatment that would be appropriate would be either an embedded break or a no break between the high to low preferred academic task, which is where they were seeing most of the refusal. And in that it was just sort of 10 to 15 seconds where the experimenter would say like I'm going to get a pen or oh, I got to go get something and sort of break, you know, just have a natural break between the presentation of the tasks. Then they would present the second task. So to see if that was effective. So during the demand analysis, the participant emitted task refusal in one of the 10 sessions with the low preferred task and none in any of the other conditions. So again, low preferred task. It seemed to sometimes be unpreferred, but it really didn't matter that much. Whatever the task was, the student was relatively compliant with the tasks in the transition analysis. The only task refusal noticed was during the high to low transition. That was in about 60% or 59.7% exactly, of intervals. And the other conditions, low to low, high to high, low to high, never saw any task refusal. So it really was the switch from the high to low transition that was the issue. It was not the presentation of any one type of work. It was literally, we're doing something that's more preferred and now we're doing something that's less preferred and it's being somewhat signaled and now we're doing this.

[B]

Yeah, makes sense, man. Right. Like everyone. No one wants that, but I think.

[A]

That'S where we get at. Like, is that the same as just escape from the task? Because the issue was not the task.

[B]

I don't know. I mean, because, I mean, Hanley also talks about you're never escaping to nothing.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right. You're always escaping to something.

[A]

Well, these are both escape and in.

[B]

This case, you're escaping in order to continue with something that's highly preferred.

[A]

So the treatment evaluation where they just sort of had the, the break, you know, you'd only see that task refusal on that one type. They start. They sort of never saw a problem when they had the embedded break. They. They would in the other one. So if they just sort of put a break in of like, all right, we're working on blank. And then after two minutes, I gotta go do something real quick. 15 seconds and they'd come back and now it's time for the next activity. Usually they, they didn't see any task refusal in that situation.

[B]

Seems like they had a lot of options for this participant in terms of addressing this.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, this is pretty low, low tech, easy, easy treatment option of just.

[B]

Yeah. It's not a situation where it's like, we can never. Yeah, you know, she will never get dressed. And that's like a huge transition challenge for us. Right. These are kind of.

[A]

It's very. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

I can think of many ways that this could be addressed, but it's good to still get the research.

[A]

Yeah. So again, this would be a case where just looking at escape from demands as a function would not actually have resulted in any responding. It was the transition specifically from high to low preference activity. So it was really the starting and stopping that was kind of the aversive stimulus being presented to some extent. And again, like we said, that's interesting. But again, one participant. Is this actually going to be an efficient analysis for anybody else? Would this be useful? They also, I would say preference assessment and they brought this up as a limitation. They never actually tested preference in the sense of now you have to do the task you picked. They just said which one would you want to do? And then the work was not presented in that preference assessment. So might that have changed the responses? The sessions were very low. So was there an EO for escape that they were able to set up? You know, the total work was like five minutes. And technically in an FA you're sometimes running five minute sessions, although those tend to be less accurate fas. So maybe we'd want to replicate this with the longer session that was a little closer to how long the participant would actually do engage in the work tasks. You know, would it change? So it's not just high to low, it's high for a long time to low to a long time. Would there be a difference between high for a long time to low for a short time? Yeah, signal, not signal. There's a lot of little things that you could be looking at in your demand analysis and knowing that this can be a pattern you see might be valuable to look at that information for when you're Escape analysis doesn't really give you any information. Like they don't hate all this work. They're not running away from all of it. It's just a component of it. So you can probably dig down deep with some of it.

[B]

You should go back and read the Compound schedules chapter of Cooper Heron and Humor if you want to get into all that, because everything you just described are different examples of different types of compounds.

[A]

I don't even remember that chapter at all.

[B]

No one does.

[C]

No one does.

[B]

Only us. Because we just test taught it.

[C]

Taught it. And it was so hard and I feel like so proud of myself when I'm the kahoot that I made and I was answering it and I got it right. I felt so validated.

[B]

It is challenging. And it's challenging because there's not always like real world applications from the tandem.

[C]

There's none.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So for tandem. I know, I know. But these examples are, are good, at least for this ones that have signals. Yeah. Okay, go ahead.

[A]

Oh, so I mean, I guess that this is another article pointing to the idea of. Hey, if you're thinking my great treatment of telling someone they're about to do something different is why they're going to change that problem behavior frown upside down to a positive behavior compliance. No. Probably won't work. If that's your treatment, you may be in some trouble there. Because the advanced warning could actually enhance the predictability.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

As Opposed to the break here where it sort of went from one situation to another, it was much, it was a little bit less predictable that it was happening. In that regard, it may be that the unpredictability is, you know, more preferred and creates a less aversive condition. Again, the break between transition, even though being effective. I'm curious, you know, the authors thought it was maybe minimizing the abruptness of the change. I'm not sure how much it did or did not cue. I mean, it didn't cue that a transition was about to occur though I would assume if you ran this every time, every time my teacher is going to give me something I don't like, they seem to can't find their pen all of a sudden, write something down. So you probably need to keep it relatively unpredictable, both in the time allotted to the different task as well as your behavior to signal a change in something else. But then my other question, and we're going to answer in the last study is what if we just went instead of high, right to low in some sort of amorphous transition state in between, what if we switched from high to moderate before we went to that?

[B]

All right, don't steal my thunder item.

[A]

I didn't. I'm asking questions. I'm just asking questions like any good podcast.

[B]

Okay, thank you, Rob. I. That was my segue. So the Wilson et al article was looking specifically at challenging behavior during these transitions because again, there's just not a lot of research out there on this and very few examples when we are looking at, you know, maybe more significant or potentially dangerous challenging behavior. So that's what they wanted to address here. They also just mentioned one other article that we didn't review today. But if you're like thinking you want this to be a area of study for you, you could check out Wood and Simon 2023. In that study they were just analyzing transition times and they looked at all of these different combinations of like low to moderate, moderate to rich, rich to moderate, moderate to lean, lean to moderate, etc, so you can go back and take a look at that. But in that one they weren't, they didn't have a challenging behavior that they were addressing specifically. So that's what they wanted to look at here. Once again, it's a case study. So just like yours, there was only one participant. I'd just like to note that she was also a 12 year old girl. Maybe when you're a 12 year old girl, you don't want people telling you what to do.

[C]

Maybe when you're a 44 year old, you don't want people telling what to do too.

[B]

Exactly. Maybe you just like to be left alone, please, to do your things, please.

[A]

But a break may not be effective because the issue is you're going places.

[B]

Maybe you don't want to. So the, the specific situation that was at issue in this case for this participant was transitioning to the bus specifically. However, it, they had a hypothesis that it was probably making a type of physical activity transition. That was sort of the larger issue for them. They were. The problem they were working to solve was the bus. Right. And the challenging behavior that they were seeing was climbing on the furniture. And it was happening with enough frequency that it was potentially unsafe behavior. So that was why they wanted to intervene here. And they did all the components. So you guys were worried that didn't happen in yours because this is like 2025. Right. So they did a stimulus preference assessment to look at what might be most preferred items. They did do it with picture cards. So there's that piece they, they evaluated tickles, chase, iPad and stepping stones. IPad was the most preferred and then Stepping Stones and Tickles were moderately preferred. So all of those will make an appearance here. And then they did a very brief trial based fa actually wasn't that brief. They, they, they gave it its due course, but it was very appropriate and you know, relatively easy, I believe, for them to run in the, in the school that they were in. So they, I mean it was a.

[A]

Standard trial based FA where you repetitively go through the different.

[B]

Yes, they had four conditions. They were two minutes each or until the behavior occurred. But they did each of the conditions 10 times. So they, they were not messing around.

[A]

No.

[B]

They evaluated access to attention, access to tangibles, escape from academic demands and then escape from physical transition demands.

[C]

All of them.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So you can trial based FAs. Man, they always make me feel, I actually love them. Trial bay. I don't hate them, but they always make me feel like the equivalent of when you're like, oh no, the highway that'll only take me 10 minutes to get where I'm going is backed up. I'll take back roads that'll take me an hour, but I'll feel like I'm going somewhere the whole time. Trial based debates always give me that feel of like I'm constantly doing different things and I'm like, this took you like three weeks to do, man.

[B]

Yeah, because they, you know, did it 10 times. They ran 40 sessions of this. Yes. So you can imagine what all those look like. Except maybe the escape from physical transition demands. So for that one, they couldn't really do the bus, which was the actual like area of concern because you only got one shot at that a day and that would have taken super long time. No, it's is going outside to the bus. Yeah.

[C]

I was like, girl, you got the bus twice.

[B]

Well, one was transitioning to school, which I guess that part wasn't the issue. It was going, getting back on the bus for whatever reason. We don't really know.

[A]

Making school too fun. You got to make school horrible like it's supposed to be. So kids are like, get me on that bus.

[B]

So they sort of subbed in another activity which was asking her to come out in the hall and do a physical ed exercise, which was, it was just throwing the ball 10 times fun. So it wasn't anything too taxing, but she did not really want to do that. So they saw the same climbing behavior in that context as they were seeing at the transition time for the bus. I thought you were going to say something.

[A]

No.

[B]

Okay, great. So unsurprising. The graph is super clear. It's just like a giant bar graph only for the physical transitions. Everything else was at zero and you're like, okay, that makes sense. So they had pretty good idea of what the function was. Now they didn't go into more detail on why that might be. Right. We don't really know. Was it going to be a really long bus ride? Right. And so there was like something about it that was like not fun or aversive.

[A]

The question would be who cares about the bus if just physically saying we're going in the hall and throwing a ball around led to the same pattern of behavior? It wasn't anything about the bus, was it the threshold of the room?

[B]

Yeah, I don't know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So we don't. You're right, I don't. We didn't. It didn't get into in this article. But instead they moved on to looking at treatment. What did they want to do here? So they did a multi element design and they just compared two things because I think they had, you know, a good idea of how they wanted to approach this. So they had a control condition which was basically what had been happening up until this point in time where they were asking her to transition from a highly preferred activity to a low preferred activity. And that was the iPad to the bus. And then they compared that to another activity where they added in a moderately preferred task in the middle. So she still had the iPad, but now they moved from the iPad to the stepping stones to the bus. That was it. They compared those two things and looked to see the number of furniture climbing occurrences that happened in comparison yours.

[C]

Sounds like such a fun article.

[B]

Yeah. There are other details I want you to know. In the control condition, the SD was, it's time to go to the bus. In the treatment condition, the SD was, it's time to do the stepping stones. And then they said, let's go get your backpack.

[A]

See, here we go. That's not the thing.

[B]

I was gonna come back down to it. She could do the stepping stones for 30 seconds. And they also did tickles. And then I also want you to know that in the control condition, the stepping stones were still present. So she could have walked on them, but there was no sd and she never did.

[A]

She said, ah, I won't pick stepping stone.

[B]

Thank you. Yeah.

[A]

Song. It's old.

[B]

It's pretty old. And they don't really talk about what happened when she engaged in furniture climbing, how that was redirected, or what they did in order to have that end. That didn't come up.

[A]

Hmm.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. Now, the most amazing graph is in this study, second only to the trial based FA graph that they had. So it looks like an ISCA graph because it's just like.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Two very brief data paths. Yes. Yes, that's what it is. So the con. I'm sorry, the control condition, which was just iPad to bus, she engaged in high rates of furniture climbing. Two or three every time, every transition. And they had three of those data points. And then they had the treatment condition, which was iPad to stepping stones to bus. And here it was zero. No furniture climbing ever in that one. And they had three of those. And so again, huge differentiation in this graph. I feel like they must have been like, can we really submit this graph?

[C]

It looks hypothetical.

[B]

Yeah. Like the first graph you would ever look at.

[A]

I'm just practicing how to make a graph in Excel.

[B]

That's what it looks like.

[C]

Exactly that.

[B]

Yeah. I'm so beautiful. Yeah. But no, it's. It's real. And they got good ioa and all of those things also occurred. So the limitations here, and they note these as well, is the SD is different. Right.

[A]

So I want to hear the backstory. Why was the SD different?

[B]

I don't know. Because you. We really don't know if that sd, because it had a longer history with problem behavior transitioning to the bus could have occasioned some of that response. So the original SD of let's go to the bus was used only in the control condition, not in the treatment condition.

[A]

I want to see a reversal where they say, let's get on the bus.

[B]

They acknowledge that this is a potential concern.

[A]

Yes. And that it might have made the entire treatment.

[B]

Yeah. And then they also talk as well that they don't really know what the behavioral mechanisms at play here could have been to produce the results that they saw. So, you know, this study just didn't lend itself to being able to sort of parse that out. We would have had to do something. Something different or something more after they got these treatment effects. So maybe the stepping stones sort of like decrease the EO for climbing because they had some similar physical properties related to them. Maybe this kind of worked like a high P, low P sort of scenario. And by building in more opportunities there, they saw an increase in likelihood. We don't really know. This was a brief little study. I really liked it. I'd love to see more of these. I love a case study.

[A]

I'm curious. I'd love to, you know, maybe. Maybe, Cody, you can tell us. Tell us what the. The mechanism is, like, was the story, you know, someone was working on something and this just sort of happened to be the treatment. Because some other things I would have loved to see was like, what if you added more treatment options? Because a lot of times in, you know, schools, certainly where there's lots of buses, this is a pretty common occurrence.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So I'd love to see. Well, what if they just stayed with the high P sequence of get your iPad, let's take your iPad to the bus. Like, would you have still seen that transition? Because potentially now the transition is high P to not really low P, like low p plus high P. So would that have changed behavior? Would that have led to more consistent.

[B]

Transitions exchanged for some other, like, moderately preferred, like, toy transition? Toy that could be held on the bus for the iPad once you got there.

[A]

Yeah. So, I mean, and this is great because I feel like I see a lot of treatments like this where it's like, we're going to go from something you like a lot to something you like fine. And now here's the. Here's the kicker. It's something you don't like at all, or you at least seemingly don't like at all.

[B]

I know a lot of kids that have done bus to playground to inside the school.

[A]

Exactly. Or, you know, let's bring the transition item. So it is nice to see. Hey, look, research that actually looks at that phenomenon versus we just do this. It seems to make sense, I guess. But then we're left with the. Well, yeah, but why would it make sense? Like what about it makes sense? There's a lot of factors that we could be looking at here.

[B]

Yeah, but good. More research in this area is seriously my take home point.

[A]

All right. Well, you know the best part about that study? If you got like three more participants, you could do like a really nice extension replication.

[B]

Let's replicate it.

[A]

Maybe you don't want to use a trial based fx. It'll take you the rest of time to schedule those bus visits. All right. Thank you, Diana.

[B]

You're welcome.

[A]

All right. Well, it sounds like it's time to move into the dissemination station.

[C]

We're here.

[A]

I don't know. I don't know. I. I kind of think, you know, some of our summary pieces are going to be. There is something to be said for looking at that high P2 low P sequence in your analysis, if probably only if you are not seeing what we'd expect. That kind of escape maintained typical pattern of like time to do work. I hate this work. If you're seeing it only in the context of the transition, you may need to do some of the demand analyses and some of the articles here. I think you could probably pick out some of the components of these analyses to really study that more closely and fine tune your treatment. I don't, I don't know if it's something you need to have as like your fifth or sixth condition on every single analysis you're doing, because I think, I would guess if you're seeing a pattern of just the presentation of certain demands leads to escape maintained kind of behavior patterns, the transition may or may not be relevant. And I don't know if we have enough information to say that it is always going to be a relevant context that we want to be paying attention to, versus we kind of assume some amount of transitioning just by dint of the switch between activities. I'm not sure.

[B]

Yeah, I, I think I would. I know like we were saying, there's different definitions, right? Across many studies of what constitutes a transition. I, I think that how that person interprets that, what they view as a transition is the most important piece versus us getting wound up in how we're going to define it, right? And maybe that's weird, but I really do think like there's a, can be a big difference in perception. So for example, if I am working on something and I need to like retrieve a document or save a document, and that document is like three folders away in my stuff, like I'M gonna need to go like three folders deep in a different part. I'll put off doing that because it feels like too much and like I'll lose track of what I'm doing. Or it's like a journey that I'm not ready to go on, to be honest. And no one can see that. That's entirely inside my head. Right. But it is real and I've been able to like reflect on that in my own behavior. So I'm just leaving that as who knows what is going on for your client. That you're like, what's the big deal? Right. Just put your shoes on and we're going to go to the van. But it could be like the hugest roadblock for them. And we don't necessarily know. So treating these situations with kindness, I guess. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, well. And we only have like five total participants in the transition.

[B]

Yeah. We need more research. This is a really interesting area. Really practical.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm really probably why it won.

[A]

Yeah. And I'm sure everyone listening, they're like, wait a minute. That's it. That's all there is. What the heck? I thought you'd tell me all the magical answers. And I mean, you know, you got some stuff in here. I think you got some good assessments that you could try. If you're finding this as a challenging behavior. It's based in evidence based methodology, functional analysis methodology, preference assessment research. So things you already know how to do. It's just here's some extra extensions you can sort of put into your case. Conceptualization and some ideas of why how the treatment might differ. When you're looking at that transition from high P to low P demand escape versus what we think of as just sort of a typical escape from demand situation.

[B]

Yeah. I think the more things that you can do to make that transition feel more gentle for that person is where you want to go with it. And that might look different for everybody. But, you know, like I used to. This isn't the same type of transition necessarily. But like I used to teach a waiting program and the waiting program would say that was like dictated to me. Was. Would say like, they need to be able to sit for X amount of time. Like 30 seconds or. No, it was two minutes with nothing to do.

[C]

I wouldn't be able to.

[B]

And finally, like as the bcba, I was like, why are we doing this? Like, I don't sit. I don't even sit for two minutes with nothing to do. No one sits for two minutes with nothing to do. Right. Why are we asking that of them. They should be able to have something to hold or to play with or to do while they're waiting for the other big thing. Right. And transitions are a little bit like that as well because you have to move from one thing to another in some capacity. So give them something to do.

[A]

All right. Well, there's a little bit of a wrap up, but there's still a lot more to learn. So I guess it's an episode. We'll hopefully have a trilogy going here. Hopefully it won't take another 10 years.

[B]

It might.

[A]

Whatever.

[B]

If we need more research together, let's.

[A]

Move into the last section of the show. Pairings.

[B]

All right.

[C]

Hello.

[B]

It's time for pairings.

[A]

I've been talking to you for like a whole hour.

[B]

Sometimes I say da, da, da, da. But I just didn't say hello this time.

[A]

Podcast almost over? No, it's fine.

[B]

Pairings is the part of the show where I tell people about past episodes they might want to check out if they found this one interesting. The episodes where he's talked about things, or at least somewhat related to this, include episode 18 where we talked about transitions the first time around. But that one has a weird name. It's like moving from point A to point B.

[A]

Challenging behavior. Yeah.

[B]

Okay, that's it. Episode 249, Alternatives to Escape Extinction. We talk a good bit about differential reinforcement. Episode 310, pictorial and video preference assessments. Episode 7, trial based functional analyses. Episode 320, why Jackie Hates DRO. Episode 1013. That was our activity schedules book club. And finally, episode 87. We discussed the high P, low P.

[A]

Instructional sequence that was the sequel to episode two, hi ho, hi ho, where we went to work.

[B]

And I also like to recommend a snack to go with this episode. Lately, I've been trying to have my colleagues here guess the thematic nature of the snack. So the snack today is pumpkin ice cream.

[A]

Why you have to transition to the fall to get it.

[B]

Yes, that's right.

[C]

Oh, ideally because you have the ice cream and then in the fall you have to have pumpkin.

[B]

Right. It's a bridge snack from summer to fall, which is where we are right now.

[C]

That's right. In October.

[B]

Yep. Well, fine. You know, Massachusetts or New England eats the most ice cream year round.

[C]

I'm not gonna lie. I ate ice cream every single day in August.

[A]

It's the best.

[C]

Had some.

[A]

Yesterday was awesome. I'm going to go get pumpkin ice cream.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But luckily I was like going to do laundry, but I'm going to go from this to pumpkin Ice cream, then laundry. Laundry.

[B]

Oh, okay. This was pairing. Goodbye. Please enjoy.

[A]

That's not how we end the show.

[B]

Goodbye.

[A]

Anyway, that's it. Turn off your bugs. No. Thank you so much for listening to ABA InsideTrack. Thank you all who voted for this topic. We really loved doing it and we're glad that you voted for it. So we hope you're really happy. Even if we didn't answer every single question there ever might be about transitions. Oh, well, we're on the right track, I think, and we'll get more research in the future. If you haven't, Please subscribe to ABA InsideTrack on your podcast player of choice. Or maybe you even wanna join Our Patreon page, patreon.com abainsidetrack where you can subscribe at any level to get access to the podcast a bit ahead of time. A week ahead of time. And you can subscribe at the other tiers, the $5 or $10 tiers, to get access to everything ahead of time. Get access to all of our voting. Once a season we've got a vote on this. Once a year we do our book club votes. And if you're at the $5 and up level, you get a raw video version of this podcast as well as one learning credit for free. For no. Well, no additional cost I should say, for these and all our listener choice episodes. And at the $10 and up level, you get our book clubs the moment they come out, as well as free CES for listening to that one too. Again, that's patreon.comaba inside track and I am hoping. I can't promise anything because anything I've promised in the past few months has kind of not gone great. But the goal is to maybe get some new patron merch, some updated refresh in the merch that goes for our patrons. Because if you're a patron for a period of time, you get special mugs and stuff. So we're going to try to update that because we are coming upon our 10 year anniversary.

[C]

I'm sad that we're up there. I hate it when they update logos, just so you know. Well, people want to but say we were.

[A]

I mean we haven't seen the final, we haven't seen any designs yet. So maybe we'll say these are all bad.

[C]

I just hate it when people update things. Like when they're like new look. And I'm like, it's like same great thing, new look. I'm like, no, I can't find it.

[A]

So we were, we were at The Thompson center just a week ago. And some someone was kind enough in talking about dissemination. They put up some of the best behavior analysts podcast. And oh, look, there we were. And seeing our logo, I was like, did a child make that Look?

[C]

I actually still love it. I'm sorry. I still love it. We are children, you know.

[B]

Oh, man.

[A]

If you see us at Babbitt or you a Babbitt, I'm going to try to hand them out because I don't want them in my house anymore. Some of our classic original design T shirts, which are literally just that logo. And I'm like, do I just throw these in the garbage? Because it is just a box of crayon looking junk. I want a new logo to celebrate. Anyway, that's.

[C]

We have to vote.

[A]

We have to vote. All right, we'll vote. Not you folks.

[B]

Democracy around here.

[A]

Okay, Okay. I mean, we haven't changed two thirds. All right. Anywho, what are we talking about? Oh, yeah, end in the show.

[C]

Oh, I already did end the show. I said bye badly.

[A]

Because you have to tell everyone about the Patreon page about going to ABA. InsideTrack.com if you want CES for this episode. Don't you want your second secret code word? I know I do. It's flashback. F, L, A, S, H, B, A, C, K. Do you remember back on that other episode we did about transitions? Let's flashback to it right now. Remember that there's a flashback to an old movie?

[C]

I do. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

[A]

Nope, that is not the movie.

[C]

Oh, Wayne's World. I always get the two mixed up because they're both dudes. They're two friends.

[A]

There are two. It's a podcast, not a podcast. It's a movie about two friends. Some final thanks. Nice to. Thanks to Dr. Jim Carr for recording our intro and outro music, Kyle Sturry for his interstitial music and anthabit of the podcast doctor for his amazing editing work. If you're not on the Patreon feed, he's probably going to cut out a lot of this episode because it was a bunch of nonsense. Just leave the good stuff either way, we'll be back next week with another fun filled episode, but until then, keep responding. Bye Bye, Sam.