Episode 328 - Water Safety Skills

Summary

Episode Overview

Episode Title: Episode 328 – Water Safety Skills
Podcast: ABA Inside Track
Release Date: November 26, 2025
Main Theme:
This episode centers on the crucial topic of water safety skills, particularly for children with autism and other developmental disabilities. The ABA Inside Track team reviews recent peer-reviewed research addressing the high risk of drowning in this population, examines effective behavior analytic strategies for teaching aquatic safety repertoires, and provides practical insights for clinicians, parents, and swim instructors. The episode also explores the broader importance of water safety for all children and the challenges involved in implementing and disseminating these interventions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Water Safety Matters

• High Risk for Children with Autism: Autistic children are at particularly high risk due to tendencies for elopement and can face life-threatening situations near water. Drowning is one of the leading causes of death for children with developmental disabilities ([06:17]).
  • "You're about twice as more likely if you're an individual diagnosed with autism, twice more likely to die from drowning as ... the general population." — Robert Perry Crews [06:59]
• General Need: Drowning is the fifth highest cause of unintentional death for children in the U.S., especially under age 15 ([08:11]).
• Preventability: Many incidents are preventable through systematic skill teaching.

2. Types of Water Safety Skills

• Preventative Skills: Entering/exiting the pool safely, using flotation devices, staying with an adult, walking on wet surfaces.
• Reactionary Skills: Surface after submersion, reaching the pool side, floating, alternative swim strokes ([09:39]).
  • "Everything you do in the water technically would count as a water safety skill." — Robert Perry Crews [04:13]

3. Major Research Articles Reviewed

• Behavioral Water Safety and a Systematic Review of Interventions by Martin & Dillenberger (2019):
  Reviewed 11 studies since 2004; most focused on general swim instruction, not explicit safety behaviors.
  • Behavioral interventions (prompting, modeling, reinforcement, video modeling, BST) were effective for teaching swim skills.
  • Limitation: Most participants had existing verbal and imitation skills; little research on nonverbal or more severely affected individuals ([17:05]).
• Teaching Water Safety Skills Using a Behavioral Treatment Package by Levy et al. (2017):
  Targeted the "underwater submersion" skill—teaching children to put their head under water and re-orient to air.
  • Used shaping (seven-step hierarchy from chin wet to full head submersion).
  • Praise and access to games/reinforcers used for correct responses; non-coercive, gradual approach ([27:16]).
  • Maintained skill at 6, 12, and 24 months post-teaching ([34:11]).
• Teaching Water Safety Skills to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder by Tucker & Inglerson (2021):
  Taught three safety responses: getting to a fixed point (grab the wall), floating on the back and yelling for help, rolling from front to back.
  • Used behavior skills training (BST) in real aquatic settings, with praise and token economies as reinforcement ([38:28]).
  • Adjusted for challenging behaviors with level systems and individualized prompting ([43:47]).
  • All participants eventually acquired and maintained skills; highlighted the need for resources for instructors without ABA backgrounds.

4. Effective Teaching Strategies

• Behavior Skills Training (BST):
  Instructions, modeling, rehearsal, feedback—remains the gold standard for both land and water safety.
  • "Everyone should know how to swim ... but also, teaching safety skills means more than just being able to swim." — Robert Perry Crews [05:53]
• Prompt Hierarchies & Shaping: Gradually increasing demands (e.g., submersion levels) yields strong outcomes, especially for fearful children.
• Reinforcement: Praise, tokens, and tangible rewards (games, toys) are key, though some children may require higher-value "jackpot" reinforcers ([44:19]).
• Adaptability: Interventions must often adapt to individual needs, breaking skills into smaller steps and responding to challenging behaviors.

5. Challenges and Limitations

• Research Gaps:
  • Almost all studies: Participants had some prior skills, relatively few behavioral challenges, and moderate language abilities.
  • Lack of research with children who have significant communication or behavioral difficulties, or those genuinely "non-swimmers" ([17:05],[36:38],[59:04]).
  • Existing studies mostly ignore open-water safety (lakes, rivers) and settings outside managed pools ([53:48]).
• Implementation Barriers:
  • Translating ABA procedures for instructors without behavior analytic training remains a big challenge.
  • More work is needed to create easy-to-use manuals, video models, and reinforcement systems that work in real-world, busy swim environments.

6. Future Directions and Applied Insights

• Manualized Protocols: Need for user-friendly, accessible materials for swim instructors and parents.
• Broadened Populations: Studies should include nonverbal individuals and those with co-occurring intellectual or behavioral challenges.
• Expanding Contexts:
  • Research on open water, clothing vs. swimwear, and generalization to unsupervised settings.
  • Identification of water as inherently dangerous and building "ask for adult" before getting in as a critical communication response ([50:57]).
• Safety Precautions: Always conduct in supervised, lifeguarded environments; some skill components (floating, rollovers) may require qualified swim instructors to avoid unintentional harm ([54:41]).

7. Dissemination and Practice Recommendations

• Clinicians and parents should prioritize basic water safety skill instruction, especially for children with elopement tendencies.
• If not a trained instructor, work in partnership with lifeguards or certified swim professionals, applying ABA strategies.
• Use pools with lifeguards; never practice in unsupervised settings.
• Think of BST not just for clients, but for training swim instructors themselves.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Swimming, while it's great ... if you do not know how to swim ... there's an increased risk for death because of swimming." — Robert Perry Crews [05:53]

• "All kids need to learn how to swim for safety reasons, but then that concern can carry out further if you have a child with a developmental disability."
  — Diana Perry Crews [07:19]

• "Breaking the skill down and modeling it in this fashion seemed very effective for all three of these participants."
  — Diana Perry Crews re: shaping submersion [34:14]

• "Anything that we can do to keep kids out of the water when they're by themselves, I think ... we have to look at some of the elopement literature too, of like, what is that allure?"
  — Robert Perry Crews [51:59]

• "If you are not a swim instructor, either go become a swim instructor, then come back and do safety skills. The family might not want to wait that long ... or go to a common pool with a lifeguard ... and teach the submersion, which anyone can do."
  — Robert Perry Crews & Jackie McDonald [56:52]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction to Water Safety (and stats): [01:05]–[08:35]
• Benefits/Drawbacks of Swimming: [04:28]–[06:17]
• Divide: Preventative vs Reactionary Skills: [09:37]–[10:21]
• Review of Martin & Dillenberger (2019): [11:00]–[17:05]
• Discussion of teaching procedures, BST: [15:15]–[17:03]
• Limitations of prior research (participant profiles): [17:05]–[19:00]
• Levy et al. (2017): Underwater Submersion Shaping Study: [22:33]–[35:19]
  • Steps of shaping: [27:10]–[28:06]
  • Outcomes and generalization: [34:11]–[35:34]
• Tucker & Inglerson (2021): Three Water Safety Skills, BST: [36:21]–[50:14]
  • Description of skills and BST process: [38:28]–[44:19]
  • Challenges and need for instructor training: [44:19]–[44:26]
  • Data collection and reinforcement details: [41:43]–[43:47]
• Limitations & Future Research Ideas: [50:57]–[54:23]
• Practical Recommendations/Dissemination: [54:41]–[57:52]
• Pairings & Related Episodes: [61:31]–[63:54]
• Closing Remarks: [64:21]–[66:52]

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Recap & Flow

The episode maintains its usual lively, slightly irreverent but informative tone, mixing banter with deep dives into empirical research. Real-world problems are foregrounded (elopement, fears, challenging behavior), and the hosts return repeatedly to the need for practical, disseminable approaches and the gaps in available research. The take-home message is one of urgency but also optimism—ABA strategies work when tailored to water safety skills, but more research and resources are needed to empower a broader range of instructors and reach more vulnerable children.

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For Further Listening/Reading

• Episode 325: On "land" safety and BST for safety skills.
• Episode 132: On advanced behavior skills training.
• Episode 89: On chaining procedures with Dr. Stacy Bancroft.

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Final Recommendation

Behavior analysts, parents, and educators should prioritize teaching at least the basics—submersion recovery, turning and grabbing, floating and calling for help—to all children (especially those at risk for elopement or with developmental disabilities), using behavior analytic strategies in partnership with swim professionals and always in safe, lifeguarded environments. There’s a crucial need for manualized, accessible safety curricula and for research extending these solutions to more challenging learners and settings.

Transcript

[Jackie McDonald]

Foreign.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Hey, everybody. Welcome to ABA Inside Track, the podcast that's like reading in your car but safer. I'm your host, Robert Perry Crews, and with me, as always, are my fabulous co hosts.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Hello, Rob. It's me, Diana.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Hi.

[Jackie McDonald]

Oh, goodness. I'm sorry I interrupted your Perry Cruise.

[Diana Perry Crews]

It's okay.

[Jackie McDonald]

That's Diana Perry Crews, and I'm Jackie. Not Perry Cruz? No, Jackie McDonald.

[Robert Perry Crews]

McDonald. And this is a podcast about behavior analysis, behavior analytic research, where every week we pick a topic and discuss it at length, as well as the relevant research articles that you could be reviewing. I was going to do segue, but I just came from work because this is a new recording time for us, and I don't have time. I'm still at work. Busy mode. Let's get this done. So what's our topic this week? Water safety skills. The. I know we did safety skills. The last time we did safety skills, y' all told me you'd never done it. I know. We've done safety skills. Now we're doing it again.

[Jackie McDonald]

We are doing a specific, very important piece of safety skills which focuses around water. And because we all know that drowning is one of the major reasons that many children with autism or adults die.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, I have those stats, don't you?

[Jackie McDonald]

I know. And so when we were doing the safety skills, we, Diana and I were like, oh, look, there's no water safety skills in here. And Diana's like, I'm gonna look this up. And we found three related water safety skills articles. So we decided to make it its own episode because it is that important.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Well, I'm gonna go back and rename the other one Land safety skills.

[Jackie McDonald]

Well, you know, I love that. And then we'll have air safety skills. We really want to expand what we're doing.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Pilots need to really work on their use of the. I don't know what pilots need. Air traffic controllers. I think that's all I know. So, yes, we're talking about water safety skills. It is an important skill, and we will be. And not just one skill. There's a ton of water safety skills.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah, it turns out.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Who knew?

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I thought it was just, don't run by the pool and, you know, don't eat a big lunch before you go swimming. I know. That's a myth. That's a myth. The last one, the running. You shouldn't run by the pool.

[Diana Perry Crews]

That one's true.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So what are these three articles that you hinted that we were going to be talking about? I don't believe it's true.

[Diana Perry Crews]

No, no. It is true. And I will tell you what they are. We are going to talk about three different articles. Let's see, this is in no particular order. Teaching Water Safety Skills to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder by Tucker and Englerson. That was in Behavioral Interventions 2021. Also, let's go under Teaching Water Safety Skills Using a Behavioral Treatment Package by Levy, Ainslie and Hunzinger Harris. That was in Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities 2017. And finally, Behavioral Water Safety and A Systematic Review of Interventions by Martin and Dillenberger. And that was in the review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 2019.

[Robert Perry Crews]

They didn't make it into the published Journal of Autism. They're just reviewing it.

[Diana Perry Crews]

They're two different journals.

[Robert Perry Crews]

They're not sure.

[Diana Perry Crews]

It took me a while to figure this out as well. There's jadd, which is more geared towards research, and then there's the Review Journal, which has a lot of reviews. Yeah, maybe they're like sister publications.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Who knows?

[Diana Perry Crews]

I'm not actually sure.

[Robert Perry Crews]

All right, so water safety skills. Why don't I kick it off? We're going to talk about. Mostly about Martin and Dillonberger to start. And also pull in a little bit of Levy, because both are. Well, all three articles had, you know, here are some stats about water safety. And we only need to talk about. Not levity so many times. Levy.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Because this is a serious.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Levy. I said Levy.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I know.

[Jackie McDonald]

Diana was just being silly.

[Robert Perry Crews]

That's. Well, it's a serious topic. Diana, I wish you would stop.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I'm sorry.

[Robert Perry Crews]

It's really embarrassing. So let's start by talking about swimming. Now, one of the things I never thought about when it comes to swimming and we talk about safety skills, is the fact that you can go swimming is itself a safety skill.

[Jackie McDonald]

That's true. I never thought about that either.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And they brought it up. It's like. Because I always thought. Again, I always thought safety skills with water are like, well, you need to know how to, I guess, you know, wait for an adult and not run. That's kind of where it stopped. But everything you do in the water technically would count as a water safety skill.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yes.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So there are a lot of benefits to being able to swim. One of them being, if you know.

[Jackie McDonald]

How to swim, you won't die.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Well, you could. You're less likely to caught a riptide or something. But in terms of like swimming in a pool, which is mostly what we'd be thinking about for swimming, when it comes to safety skills, you have a lot of positive benefits. One of which is better safety. Another of which is certainly swimming has a lot of great health benefits. There's some developmental advantages. There's some studies looking at. There's a decreased risk for chronic illness if you swim regularly. It can improve arthritis symptoms, decreases risk for heart disease later in life. There's even some research on early, you know, early intervention or not early intervention, but early children development. Kids who swim early have later on have better motor or cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional skills.

[Jackie McDonald]

They also get more skin infections, as I just found out.

[Robert Perry Crews]

This is the good part of the. Of the swim.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I was going to say like learning to read music, but you don't usually get. Then you get staph infection.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Let's put a rest on that.

[Jackie McDonald]

Oh, this is a serious topic so we shouldn't be joking.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Also improved attention, academic performance, improved psychological improvement, social benefit. There are studies cited that say swimming is good. So there's a lot of great reasons to go swimming. Decreased risk for depression and anxiety, improved self esteem. STEAM and family swimming together report better family connections and relations.

[Diana Perry Crews]

So these things are great.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You need to go swimming. Everyone should know how to swim for those reasons. But the other reason is because swimming, while it's great and it's great that people can afford a pool and a place to go swimming, the downside is that if you do not know how to swim, it does. There's an increased risk for death because of swimming. The overall life expect. Drowning when you look. Yes, because of drowning. When you look at autistic individuals, they have a lower life expectancy than the general population.

[Jackie McDonald]

Gosh.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Because 49% of reported, you know, families or individuals with autism report some sort of elopement behavior. And 24% of those children in that group of they are likely to elope are exposed to near drowning situations. So a fourth of that half are exposed to near drowning situations. That's a huge problem. Proportions so big.

[Jackie McDonald]

And the life expectancy data was like an average person will live to be 76 years old or something. And then someone that has a diagnosis of Autumn is like 36 years old. I was like, what?

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, so.

[Jackie McDonald]

And it's because of these major, you know, the major causes of death are accidents.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah. So if you.

[Jackie McDonald]

It's crazy.

[Robert Perry Crews]

It lowers that average when children are, you know, considered fatalities in that. In general. So you're about twice as more likely if you're an individual diagnosed with autism, twice more likely to die from drowning. As like a general population is like all of Americans. You know, when you look at that specific subset, there's a twice as much likely to die from drowning. And this is.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I mean, this is not specific to any particular diagnosis as well. Right. Because all kids, yes. Need to learn how to swim to be safe. But I know that this is an ongoing concern for families that we've worked with in the past. I think it gets paired up with elopement concerns. Right. And sometimes you will hear those stories about an AMBER or not an AMBER Alert, which is a missing child alert. Right. And then they note, like, this child has autism. And like, my heart always just sinks when I see those, because I have read them to turn out badly because of drownings, and it's so scary for families. So I think that all kids need to learn how to swim for safety reasons. But then that concern can carry out further if you have a child with a developmental disability. Right.

[Jackie McDonald]

Because of the concerns of elopement and wandering and then ending up in water and not recognizing.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And you mentioned it. It's not just, oh, this is a problem for children with autism. This is a problem for all children. Back in 2014, when the CDC, you know, had people working there, they're the fifth highest cause of unintentional death in the United States was drowning. And it's worldwide the leading cause of death for children under 15, and it mostly occurs for children under the age of five.

[Jackie McDonald]

It's, like, so sad, right?

[Diana Perry Crews]

So sad.

[Jackie McDonald]

So it could be so sad. Preventable.

[Robert Perry Crews]

That's. That's the other thing is it's one thing to say, like, oh, you know, there's some big issues getting in the way of. But at the end of the day, and I think as we'll sort of talk about some of these studies, with a concerted effort and a plan, many of these situations could definitely be avoided through the use of water safety skill training. And like we said at the top, it's more than just don't run at the pool. There's a lot of safety skills, and some of them are fun to learn and. And children are interested in learning. So the good is swimming's awesome. The bad is drowning is happening way too frequently. And we do need to be looking at, how are we teaching water safety skills now? I liked how Dillenberger and Martin sort of looked at what are those safety skills, and they sort of broke them into two categories, one being preventative safety skills, the other being reactionary, reactioning. I like reactionary safety. You must be reactioning in those situations because you're using your reactionary safety skills. And this is going to be things. So we Talk about some of these kind of preventative ones. We're talking about sort of things like, you know, know how to enter and exit a pool, know how to use a flotation device. And then we talk about the reactionary. It's how do you get out of the water? How do you surface after you've been fully submerged? How do you actually reach the side of the pool when you realize you don't want to be swimming anymore or you're not able to touch the ground of the pool anymore? And then even skills like knowing how to float, knowing various swim strokes are going to be pretty important for a safety skill. Because if you can do those things, you can probably respond to these reactionary and proactive skills and then just general safety skills as well, that you kind of fall out of the category of swim skills. You know, stay with an adult walk when the surface is wet. Right. Those are just kind of what we think of as our general land safety skills.

[Jackie McDonald]

Go down by yourself on a slide.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, exactly. A water slide. You lie down and you put your hands across yourself and put your legs together. Get ready for the splash at the end.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Don't wear your glasses.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Don't. You can wear your glasses.

[Jackie McDonald]

Don't wear the key off.

[Robert Perry Crews]

What? What's. What water slide are you going on?

[Diana Perry Crews]

Are you wearing your glasses on the water slide?

[Robert Perry Crews]

I may have. I don't remember.

[Jackie McDonald]

No, you're not.

[Robert Perry Crews]

When we go to water, we have Typhoon lagoon two summers ago.

[Diana Perry Crews]

You're not doing that.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You're not doing I went on the Humonga Cowabunga.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Okay.

[Jackie McDonald]

But you're not wearing your glasses, and you're also not wearing a bikini.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I may have done both. You don't know. You weren't there.

[Jackie McDonald]

I was.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I was.

[Jackie McDonald]

I come to all your vac involved trips.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So let's start with a quick lit review, which Dillenberger, Martin and Dillenberger decided. Let's do a lit review. What do we got for safety skills? Specifically behavior analytic interventions that are used to improve aquatic safety repertoires for autistic children. So again, it was a very specific set of we want these kinds of studies. And in the end, they got to about 11 papers in the final review. I do love that they would have had 12. But the National Aquatic Journal apparently had shut down after their publication. And they tried really hard. They wanted us to know how hard they tried to find that article. They just couldn't do it. So we only have 11 to talk about.

[Diana Perry Crews]

How sad to have your paper published and then have the journal shut down and no one can access your paper anymore.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No one can find it. So we've had studies on water safety since 2004. But again, a lot of them, as they found in the summary, aren't really about what you'd read and say, this is a safety skills paper. A lot of them are really just about, hey, let's talk about teaching swimming, which we talked about is an important safety skill. If you know how to swim, you are usually able to engage in many of the other proactive and reactionary safety skills. However, it's not exactly, I think, what we're looking for. We talk about land safety skills. We sort of know what we have there with water safety skills. I kind of expected it to look the same. I think they did. The authors did too as well, because they found lots of papers on like, what are the models that are good for teaching swimming? Would the Texas Women's University Aquatic Skills Assessment be useful? What about the four phases of the Haliwick method?

[Diana Perry Crews]

There are so many.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Who knew this existed? Should we use the Aquatic Orientation Checklist or the Humphreys Assessment of Aquatic Readiness? Again, all very interesting, but I think if I were a parent or I were a clinician, sort of like I need a paper on safety skills in the water, I'd be a little disappointed that most of them were telling me about various models of teaching swimming. However, some positives. There were lots of studies with groups one to one sessions. There were lots of techniques used that are very familiar to most behavior analysts, like a time delay prompt, using a TA to describe how to engage in a skill, a swimming skill, a lot of use of social reinforcement to, you know, shape behavior, most to least prompting, some visual schedules. There is even a paper looking at sibling peer modeling, some video prompting, and of course, behavior skills training. So it does seem like a lot of the techniques that you might use related to swimming in general are ones that almost any behavior analyst could engage with. They just would also need to understand some of the basics of swimming, which many of us do not. The good news about all the studies is universally, it seemed like everybody made some meaningful progress. There were lots of skills learned and taught. A lot of times they were maintained. Students would actually participants would actually learn the skills and move past them. They were play skills, flutter kicks, arm strokes, head turns, underwater submersion. All these things could be taught. The how long did it take to learn these skills? Oh, it could take anywhere from 10 weeks or a full year. How often does that sense?

[Jackie McDonald]

Because some of them are very complex.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Some of them were Tricky. And again, how often are you meeting? Is this like a once a day, you know, swimming camp type situation? Is it sort of a once or you know, three times a week situation? How long? 30 minute session to 90 minute session. Right. That's kind of the range that they found. But again, it does seem like hey, everyone learned these skills so the dosage may be less important than are you using some of these pretty consistent procedures. Bad news though, if you're like, well I'll read all 11 studies and know all there is about water safety is many of them didn't really describe their procedures super well or use these very like strange to us, very swim specific packages. So it's hard to say, well what was the. I need to know this because I'm a swim instructor versus I need to know this as a behavior analyst to bring to the swim instruction I am doing. Almost everybody used some amount of prompting. A lot used time delay procedures. Many used most at least prompting. There was one study using BST and then a couple that question mark. Not really sure how they taught the skills other than the curriculum that they used. But again it does seem like everyone learned the skill. So probably it's more about the consistency systemization of whatever you're using. You will most likely see success, we hope.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah, I really like, I can't remember who did the study, but I really liked the study that taught swim instructors how to provide swim lessons. Right. With clear instructions, prompts and praise. Because I have been part of swim instruction now for about eight years, not myself, but my child. And sometimes it goes very well and sometimes it's very horrific. And so without those clear instructions like prompts and reinforcement, I think it's just a big waste of time.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yes.

[Jackie McDonald]

And so I really love that they use BSC to teach the staff those skills and that the students that then benefited from the staff having better training, they learned all those skills.

[Diana Perry Crews]

There was one person that published like a quarter or or more of these articles. Yes, I looked it up. Yule Maz et al. They published several different articles.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Swim instructor and also in school.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Ok, no, that's mine. I'm gonna talk about that.

[Jackie McDonald]

Oh well that's also mine.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Oh fine.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, it wasn't like.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah, that's probably true.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I mean it does seem like they're like I'm a swim instructor on the side to pay for grad school and I need a project for grad school.

[Jackie McDonald]

So yeah, I worked at the Y and so I better use it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Two great tastes that go great together.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah, this person published five articles with their colleagues between 2004 and 2013. But a lot of them are in other types of journals that we might not typically look in. So like Disability and Rehabilitation, Pediatrics International, et cetera. So good stuff, which this might not be that people have thought to look there. But they're included because they're behavior analytically oriented. So people could certainly go check those out.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So it does appear that the techniques. Exactly which techniques don't matter. We know that many of them are effective for teaching. Which surprise behavior analytics techniques are great for teaching new skills. Who would have thunk it?

[Jackie McDonald]

Everybody loves bsc.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Go ahead.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Well, the other challenge though that we run into here is when you look at the participants, you're looking at a very homogeneous group of participants. All of them have language skills. Many of them already knew how to swim, at least some of the swimming skills. At the start of the study, none of the participants had a co occurring learning disability. None of them engaged in severe challenging behavior. They all were able to attend. They got all attend for up to 10 minutes or 7 to 10 minutes and followed instructions. So when we say that these techniques can be useful to teach a variety of swim skills, we know that it does show effectiveness with a specific population of child with autism diagnosis. But again, what would we see if we had a child who didn't know any of the swim skills or had less language ability or less following instruction ability, or engaged in challenging behavior when doing new things? But they loved being in the water. They just don't want to be in the water in the ways you as the swim instructor want them to be in the water. Do we have cusps here? And then when it comes down to that, is there like an active component that, you know, I do love when we can individualize everything. But at the end of the day sometimes it is nice to be like, you should probably just make sure you got some modeling in your package or hey, don't forget the social reinforcement. You know, some of those things that we just want to kind of know, like always make that be present. And then the other stuff you can add or remove based on the, you know, based on the child that you are teaching. So We've got these 11 studies, only one of them are we going to be talking about because at the end of the day that's the only one that is teaching what we would consider, you know, quote unquote safety skill. Because this isn't about how to teach someone how to swim. Because in that case we probably would have gotten a swim instructor guest to be on the show. But safety skills, right? Anyone should hopefully be able to teach safety skills to their child because not everyone has access to a full time swim instructor. So what are some of these skills? Could any parent learn these skills? Well, we got two studies that go into it. One that was in this kind of overall review and one that was not because it's too recent. So we know ABA works for swim skills, but does it work for swim safety skills? Let's take a little break and when we come back, let's talk about the safety part of the water. Safety skills. We'll be right back.

[Jackie McDonald]

Hi. Do you want to be a bcba, also known as a board Certified Behavior Analyst?

[Diana Perry Crews]

Sure, we all do.

[Jackie McDonald]

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[Diana Perry Crews]

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[Jackie McDonald]

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[Diana Perry Crews]

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[Diana Perry Crews]

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[Jackie McDonald]

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[Diana Perry Crews]

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

[Jackie McDonald]

Again, that's www.regiscollege.edu.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Regiscollege.Edu One more time, www.regiscollege. edu. See you there.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And we are back talking about water safety skills. But before we do so, I want to remind our listeners that Aba InsideTrack is ACE and Kwaba approved. And by listening, you're able to earn one learning credit. All you need to do is finish listening, then click the link in your podcast player or go to our website, abainsidetrack.com to enter in some key information, including two secret code words. I'm going to give you the first of those code words now. It is baby B, A, B, Y.

[Jackie McDonald]

So creepy when you say it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Baby. Like hey, baby, no or oh, my wife had a baby.

[Jackie McDonald]

That's Diana's. That's a Diana's nickname.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Gross. Definitely not Baby.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Baby. Where's the baby? Oh, baby yuck. Baby. Find the baby. I want to watch Baby. The Secret of the Lost Dinosaur. Remember that movie?

[Diana Perry Crews]

No, no, nobody does.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Just me. Write in if you remember. Baby.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Nobody does Dinosaur.

[Jackie McDonald]

I like it when they're like right below.

[Diana Perry Crews]

If it's on. If it's on YouTube, technically is.

[Jackie McDonald]

I know. Right below.

[Diana Perry Crews]

And then I do this, but it below. Baby, baby.

[Jackie McDonald]

Sounds creepy.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Anyway, I don't want to talk about cowards anymore. Let's talk about water safety skills. Diana, we talked about that review. There was one paper in that review that dealt with, I think, the traditional idea of safety skills in that if you can do this, you have a lower safer of drowning, dying. Certainly knowing the front crawl is going to help you with that. However, bare minimum, what do you do in an emergency situation? So this is a reactive skill. What do you do when you fall in a pool and you are underwater?

[Diana Perry Crews]

Well, okay, so this is the Levy at all article. And it doesn't teach you how to swim to the side, if that's what you're maybe. No, no, that's kind of what it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Sounded like talking about going underwater and then coming back up. What do you do when you go underwater?

[Diana Perry Crews]

What they did in this article is teach you how to put your head.

[Jackie McDonald]

Underwater so that you know how to.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Take your head out.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Your head out of water.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Right.

[Robert Perry Crews]

That's what I said.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Luckily, when your head is underwater, it is a umo to get your head out of the water.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I don't want to be underwater. I want to come out of the water.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah. So that was the skill that was being taught here, which is more succinctly titled underwater submersion. So they know that underwater submersion and then the subsequent reorienting to air after submersion are critical water safety.

[Jackie McDonald]

It's the first one, usually. Yeah, that's what they usually do.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Exactly. Put your hand on there.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Because it can be scary, right?

[Jackie McDonald]

It is scary.

[Diana Perry Crews]

And if, if you were to unexpectedly put your head under, it's also very likely that you would start to panic if you aren't used to that feeling. So part of it is that this becomes something that's more familiar you. And then you don't panic. Because if you panic, you're going to suck in a bunch of water. Right. And everything could get worse from there.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Tell the child, don't panic.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah, that's always really helpful. And they wanted to address this for those reasons. Right. Because you're like the. The kids in the study could already swim. They could already do some other things, but they didn't want to put their head under the water. But it's. It's a possibility that that could happen inadvertently. So that's why they viewed it as A safety skill and wanted to target it.

[Jackie McDonald]

I agree.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, I would hate to be at, like, a water park and, oh, well, some of the things are fine, but, oh, they want to go in the wave pool. And they're like, I demand to go.

[Diana Perry Crews]

In the wave pool.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And you're like, you want your child to go on the wave pool, but they're going to go underwater. Inadvertently, yes.

[Diana Perry Crews]

But they probably wore their glasses and then their glasses fell off.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Only wear your glasses on a water slide, not in a wave pool, Diana. Get with it.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Anyway, okay, so they had three children in the study. They used, as we said, behavioral interventions in order to address this particular skill. And all three of these participants already were enrolled in swim lessons, and two of them had a diagnosis and one did not. So we also have that level of generalization present in this study. There was Allison, who was 4. She did not carry a diagnosis. There was izzy, who was 4, who had a ASD diagnosis, and Caleb, who was 8, also had an ASD diagnosis. And perhaps fortunately for them, their swim instructor, who was. Okay, get this. He was 32, and he had been a water safety instructor for 18 years.

[Jackie McDonald]

Wow. So he'd been.

[Diana Perry Crews]

So he got it when he was 14, I think. Right.

[Jackie McDonald]

His whole life.

[Robert Perry Crews]

A long time.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I know.

[Jackie McDonald]

Probably was the best water.

[Robert Perry Crews]

14. I don't know. Are you that good at teaching?

[Diana Perry Crews]

Well, yes, but now he'd been doing it for 18 years.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Well, now he was.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Jackie McDonald]

So I wish I took. Did something for that long.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I mean, you have.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Well, you've been swimming.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Current job, probably.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah. You've done a lot of things. That's true, I guess.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yes, you're right. Let's take that out.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Okay. Oops. Hang on.

[Jackie McDonald]

Not really.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Take that, computer man. What's it doing? Like, what is it doing? It just loves it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

This is quality content. Let's.

[Diana Perry Crews]

What I want you to know about this person who's. Is unnamed, but perhaps it's. One of our authors, is that in addition to being a water safety instructor for 14 years, they're also an ABA graduate student.

[Jackie McDonald]

I love that for them, right?

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yes. So they're like, what do you know?

[Robert Perry Crews]

Water instruction, not paying the bills.

[Diana Perry Crews]

They were employed part time while they're going to grad school at this pool, and they were already seeing all these kids.

[Jackie McDonald]

I bet it's a Y pool.

[Diana Perry Crews]

It doesn't say. It was in Western Mass. They tell us that.

[Jackie McDonald]

No, I bet it was a wide.

[Diana Perry Crews]

They describe it in detail in case you want to replicate the pool.

[Jackie McDonald]

Do they call it a natatorium no, only your study.

[Robert Perry Crews]

That was a natotorium.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Oh, my God. I didn't. Rob. I didn't mention in your study that it's British. And so they call it a bathing costume anyway. That's the most adorable thing.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, yours is not. I thought. Let's go under was a behavioral.

[Diana Perry Crews]

No, yours is behavioral with a U. And they were like, everyone could already put on their bathing costumes.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh. Fortunately, it didn't matter what color were they were in. That didn't seem to be important.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Okay. And so, you know, you can sort of see how this study happened. The student. These children were already enrolled. They couldn't put their head under the water. And our swim instructor said, hey, I think I have an idea for this. So they, of course, went through all the proper mechanisms to get this in place as a study. It was designed as a combined multiple baseline and changing criterion design.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And we haven't had changing criterion design in forever.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yep. And the dependent variable here is the putting your head underwater. But they broke it down into seven steps. So it's operating largely like a shaping procedure here. Let me tell you what those steps were. Step one, chin wet. Step two, chin and lips wet. Step three, chin, lips, and nose wet. Step four, chin, lips, nose, and ears wet. Step five, chin, lips, nose, ears, and eyes wet.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, I don't get my eyes wet.

[Jackie McDonald]

It's, like, right here.

[Diana Perry Crews]

No, you gotta take your glasses on.

[Robert Perry Crews]

It just sounds like your eyes are wet.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Like, gross. Number six, chin, lips, nose, ears, eyes, and forehead wet. And finally, number seven, whole head submerged and wet.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I would be surprised if it was.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Not four or five seconds.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yep.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Okay. The approach here is pretty straightforward. In baseline, they said, time to put your head under the water, and they modeled it. And if. If the child had done that, the participant had done that, they would have been given praise. However, they did not do that and.

[Jackie McDonald]

Removed from the study immediately.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Thanks. For another kids, your lessons are over.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Like, that was easy. If it did not occur, then they moved on with the lesson. They only wanted to do one baseline pro per lesson because for two other participants, they cried when they were asked to do this. And then the third participant just said no a lot. Who? And. And he was the one that got put in the third panel of baseline because he probably, I assume, you know, he had the least emotional responding, so they really didn't want to upset them further than that. But that was what baseline looked like because they were only doing this, I think, once a week, Right?

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah, probably for like a half hour.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Half an hour.

[Jackie McDonald]

And they were doing the other swim lesson things.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yes.

[Jackie McDonald]

As well.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yes. So they only got one shot per week to gather these data. So this study took an entire year. This was the one that took a whole year to do.

[Jackie McDonald]

Now, because they had so much baseline.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I know, I'm going to talk about that.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Swim instructor in grad school, and he had to go through so many semesters, like, oh, I gotta pay one more semester. I'm never gonna graduate.

[Diana Perry Crews]

And then for their intervention, they. It was a fairly straightforward approach. The instructor provided the verbal instruction and modeled the behavior just like they did in baseline. However, now, if there was an incorrect response, they repeated the instruction and then they touched the body part on the child that needed to be the target spot that was under the water. That was the prompt. And if they still didn't do it, no worries. They moved on. They did something else, and then they revisit it later in the session. So there was never any type of coercion or anything? Yeah, Nothing big.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Manually guide your head underwater?

[Diana Perry Crews]

No, no.

[Jackie McDonald]

Like I did with my kid. I just picked her up and threw her.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I did that only with one child and not with the other two. Didn't go great.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Which one did you do that for?

[Diana Perry Crews]

The big one.

[Jackie McDonald]

Sylvie didn't mind.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I thought, you know, they say that, but don't do that. I don't.

[Jackie McDonald]

Don't do it.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Don't, don't. He didn't like that after all.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And that's why he swims the least of all our kids.

[Diana Perry Crews]

So the criteria to increase. I'm sorry. So those seven steps. Right. Became our changing criterion criteria. So the criteria to increase was three consecutive lessons. So that's entire three weeks to move up. Right. That's why this thing took so long. Oh, and then I didn't tell you if they did it correctly. They got praise and they got to do some brief game slash activity.

[Jackie McDonald]

It's usually like a bin, and they have lots of toys in the bin and they jump the toys out into the water and then you can, like, play with the toys.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I. Yeah, I assumed that I had written in the notes. It doesn't say if that was. If the game was still in the water, but I would assume it.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah. In every swim class that I've ever been in, this is like the funnest thing. Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Not me personally, but I like a good diving ring. You know when they throw them in and you're like, yeah, I want to get them all in one breath.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right. But they're probably not doing that. Because they don't want to put.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No, they would have kicked me out of this study.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah, My. My kid's swim teacher had, like, a little treasure box, and it had these beautiful gems in it, and they sank and you could go get them. I love and I wanted those very badly. It was a lot like your box over there, Rob.

[Jackie McDonald]

Your birthday's coming up.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Whatever that. What's that thing called?

[Robert Perry Crews]

It's a mimic.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Oh, yeah, It's a mimic box. It's full of dice for anyone who can't see it. It looked a lot like that, but it was full of beautiful rubies and gems. Okay. And then not only did this study take a year, but then they did maintenance and generalization for 24 months.

[Jackie McDonald]

She's this guy, this author started this right when they started their graduate program. Like, I already have an idea. I need to start it now because it's going to take the whole time.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I'm in graduate IRB procedure for, like, we're going to be in the water. It's going to be so safe that. That feels like it would be a full. Full review.

[Jackie McDonald]

Oh, it's definitely a full review.

[Diana Perry Crews]

But he is trained, though.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah.

[Diana Perry Crews]

They have setting. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jackie McDonald]

It's not like you're like, we're at a scary lake.

[Robert Perry Crews]

That one where Jason lives.

[Jackie McDonald]

We're at a lake and there's no one around.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Crystal Camp. Crystal Lake.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Okay. The graph is lovely. No one did it in baseline.

[Jackie McDonald]

Well, the graph is lovely, but it doesn't really represent the changing criterion design. But that's okay.

[Diana Perry Crews]

We're not going to get into it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

They didn't want to tell them, go underwater, but only to your lips, even though your whole head's underwater.

[Jackie McDonald]

Clinically, this is amazing.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I need some great experimental control for.

[Jackie McDonald]

Clinically, they did it, and they have great experimental control at the multiple baseline.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I think that's why they did the multiple baseline and the changing criteria.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I hope so.

[Robert Perry Crews]

They were like, changing criterion is kind of meh.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

As an experimental control.

[Jackie McDonald]

And it's just hard when you're teaching a skill to go back. Right. Like, with changing criterion, you need to do that bidirectionality to really show functional control. Right. So if you get to step four, and then you're like, no, you have to do is this. It kind of like pulls you back if you're teaching a skill. So I love how they did this because I wouldn't recommend doing that.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No. But I would think if you're doing the one probe, you know, we would add time. That doesn't need to be, but you're just, like, great. Now instead of your whole head, can you just go to your eyes or go to your lit? Like, it's not right. It wouldn't be that huge an ask, but I also would then not be like, wow, the experiment troll is so much stronger now.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah, right, Absolutely.

[Diana Perry Crews]

So it's beautiful. Let's talk about changing criterion another time.

[Jackie McDonald]

Oh, my God. It's a full episode.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No.

[Diana Perry Crews]

One thing I do want to know is they started everyone at step one criterion, but no one, you know, kind of needed step one, I guess. So for everyone, when they introduce just going to your chin. For Allison and Izzy, they went all the way to step four, which is chin, lips, nose, ears. So they went all the way up to their ears immediately. And Caleb. Oh, gosh, it's too small. He went to step. Oh, sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Allison only went to step three. She went to nose. And Izzy and Caleb went all the way up to ears immediately. That's good. Yeah. So breaking the skill down and modeling it in this fashion seemed very effective for all three of these participants. And then from there, they systematically increased the number of step the chain that needed to be completed. Or I'm sorry, I guess it's not a chain. It's a shaping procedure, more so all the way up until they did it all completely. And then they probed everyone at 6, 12, and 24 months. And everyone maintained this skill, likely because it was a cusp skill, which allowed them to continue to do more and more things in the pool. Cause they said, like, after that, we weren't just asking them to dunk their head because they were jumping off and off the side and swimming around, and it was happening all the time. So they didn't have to probe it in that way. Right. Because it was being utilized as a. As a fun component of other swimming that they were doing.

[Jackie McDonald]

I see your note. I don't want to get into it, so sorry. I didn't see it.

[Diana Perry Crews]

It's okay. It's okay.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I think we could get it. There's nothing wrong with getting into it. I mean, otherwise, there's not much to the study of, like, hey, what if I just said, don't dunk your whole head? What about just to your lips? Watch me. That was great. Have a toy that's, you know, not the most in depth teaching procedure.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Well, it worked.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, no, it worked. It's good to know when you have a situation like this. Could you break down the skill a little bit more? Make it A little easier for the child model. And then make sure there's some reinforcement as they, you know, engage in that success of approximation. Sure.

[Jackie McDonald]

I just love that.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah. So would this work for other participants? We don't necessarily know. We don't necessarily know the prerequisite skills that these guys had. Right. Like, clearly they had some imitative behavior already.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, I think they probably fell into the same category as the, the overall cohort in the, you know, in the review study of already had some swim skills, already could engage. Were able to, you know, do various imitations.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Jackie McDonald]

Neat.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah. Cool study.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah, really cool study.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So that's one safety skill. Let's move to a more modern, not that modern, but a more modern 2021. Let's move up to see Tucker and Ingerson teaching some water safety skills as well. Not just this one, but again, more, more of the. What do you do if a child falls into a pool? Those are the skills.

[Jackie McDonald]

These are the skills. We're not teaching swimming.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I mean, that's a good skill to have.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yes. But we're not teaching swimming in this skill.

[Diana Perry Crews]

And this is what parents are most worried about, right?

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah, we're not worried if you can do the butterfly stroke.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Right.

[Jackie McDonald]

We're worried about you're running by accident along the pool and then you slip and fall in and what do you do?

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jackie McDonald]

So the current study that I'm going to be talking about, use skills from the YMCA swim set because again, here the experimenter was also a YMCA swim instructor. So this is like students get yourself into the. A swim instructor and you got a plethora.

[Robert Perry Crews]

It totally feels like, listen, if you're in grad school, you're starting grad school and you already have a part time job. Just, just use it, lump it together. Right.

[Jackie McDonald]

It makes sense.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Temptation, bundling with your grad school project and your job, your second job.

[Jackie McDonald]

I love it. Well, this is so helpful too. Right. And they, the side note, they did use some of these skills already. They created a program that they went to higher poverty areas and taught children there because they didn't have as much access to swim instruction. So they're like, oh, I wonder, it worked here. I wonder if we could teach these same skills to children with developmental disabilities. So how neat. And so here they picked the ones that seemed most useful and most socially valid and faced with potential drowning. And so those are, the three are getting to a fixed point of safety. You fall in, can you reach out and grab the wall or whatever. If you can't reach out and Grab the wall. Can you float on your back and yell for help? And yell in a way that people can hear you. Right. Cause that was one of the skills. And then if you fall in and you're on your front, can you turn to your back? And I can tell you that I have been in multiple different swim organizations in the past eight years. And these are the three that they always start with. Right. And they always start with them not in your swim clothes. They always have you swimming in your real clothes until you can do these skills. And then they have you put your bathing suits on.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Oh, wow.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah. If you're going for safety skills. Because it's very different to jump in a pool in your bathing suit than it is if you have long sleeve and pants on. Because it like drags you like an.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Old timey bathing suit.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Which we're just clothes.

[Jackie McDonald]

Okay. So the intervention include a variation of behavioral skills training. Right. It consists of instructions, modeling, rehearsal in the pool, feedback, and they added physical prompts.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Jaggy, I know how much we love behavior skills training on this show. I have to think that's a land based treatment only. So I'm pretty sure the results will be bad.

[Jackie McDonald]

Okay. But they also added a lot of additional reinforcement, including like a jackpot and token economies. So it was really good that the swim instructor also had behavior analytic experience. So they had three boys that were diagnosed with autism, age 7 and 8. So in order to be included, it fit very much along the lines of the previous studies where there was lower levels of problem behaviors, could follow some multi step instructions, had moderate communication skills. But unlike other studies, the participants here had no previous experience in swim lessons and only had experience in the water with a floaty or when a caregiver was present. So they.

[Robert Perry Crews]

This is the, this is the group that one would be worried most about. When we talk about safety skills.

[Jackie McDonald]

They said when alone, they could not make it to the side of the pool.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Okay, so great. So we're teaching some real.

[Jackie McDonald]

We're teaching some real skills. Right.

[Robert Perry Crews]

These Olympians, we got to teach them safety skills. I wonder if tokens or it's. Yeah, no.

[Jackie McDonald]

So this, the setting was a natatorium.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I love it.

[Jackie McDonald]

It's just a pool. It's just a pool place.

[Robert Perry Crews]

A natatorium.

[Jackie McDonald]

It's just where. It's like a place where you hold a pool.

[Robert Perry Crews]

They called it something at first it was like a. They had like. It was like a compound word with natatorium. And I was like, oh, that must be a special type. And then later in the article, they take out whatever the first part, and they just called it Natus. I'm like, that's not real.

[Jackie McDonald]

It's just a pool area with five lanes. They usually call that. It's like. It's like a. It's like a pool house.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Like an auditorium.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, yeah.

[Diana Perry Crews]

For sound. An auditorium. Pool or pool.

[Jackie McDonald]

So they had a pool with five.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I would assume it's for birth. Natal.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah. And this was.

[Diana Perry Crews]

They.

[Jackie McDonald]

They said it was at the. Yeah. Because they were my instructor. So the sessions were in the same lane each time. The participants could not touch. That was important. But it wasn't so deep that the experimenter couldn't touch. So that he could. Or they could save the participants.

[Robert Perry Crews]

At any point, you want to focus on your teaching when you're teaching, rather than, can I tread water for 30 minutes while I teach this?

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah. And so they wanted to know that the pool was used for other things during this time. It was a regular pool day. Like, there was lap swimmers.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I love adults. You know, adult swim would be next to us, and sometimes the team would be doing something.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah. So they just wanted to be aware that it was not quiet, probably. Right. The lifeguards were made aware that the participants were learning new skills and that they would be calling for help, which is very important.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Jackie McDonald]

And I love that they enlisted the help of the lifeguards. So when participants called for help, they would look at the lifeguards and see if the lifeguards thought it was loud and clear enough that they would respond. And so they would give two thumbs up if it was. And I love that. And then they're like, we did not give any money to the lifeguards.

[Robert Perry Crews]

The lifeguards just calling over, I can't hear you. I'm not coming to see you.

[Jackie McDonald]

So they use a multiple probe design across skills used. They did just a general three baseline sessions for each of the skills first, and then a probe, you know, for each. And so the DV here was performance on a cold probe similar to Diana's. They just did a probe first, and then they did the swim lesson.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I used to dislike cold probes, but the longer I go in, the more settings I'm in, it's like, you know what? This, as much as. No, continuous is the best. I understand. But sometimes you just gotta get data. Like, you're not doing continuous swimming probes.

[Jackie McDonald]

And so this. Usually these last sessions really lasted like at most 13 minutes. So it wasn't like a third. They weren't learning anything else. They Were like, doing the skill and then getting out. And so they rated each of the three skills that they looked at. Turn and grab, float and yell and roll, front to back on a score of 0 to 3. 0 is they did not attempt to do it. They said no. 1 is they got in the water.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Right.

[Jackie McDonald]

They did the little bit. Two is they did a little bit more. And three, they did the whole thing.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah. I just want to say, also, folks, if you. I know we have, like, some episodes coming up. We'll be coming back to some of the school practice. But if you are not using your little, like, rating scales like they have in the study of, like, the 0 to 3, where it's like, 0 is no good and like 3 is amazing, that is a real game changer. For. Could you please take data on behavior? Because when you're like, oh, could you do a frequency count on this? Get out. I'm not doing that. That's. It's not happening.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah. So I thought this is really a nice way to look at it. So. Sessions occurred three days a week. In the late afternoon, one participant came to the pool at a time. Right. With the experimenter, who was the swim instructor. If they did the skill correctly or approximated the skill, like, we're getting better from a 0 to a 1. The experimenter provided praise tokens were given for all behaviors surrounding the pool. Right. On an FI1 schedule. And I. I wonder if it really was an Fi1 schedule or if it was a fixed time. Like, I wonder if a One minute. Yeah. So every minute. I wondered if every minute they. If they were engaging in appropriate safe skills in the pool, if they gave a token or if they literally waited for a safe skill to happen and then provided just like, I don't either. It seems like you could do either. I just wondered. And so. But there was also an. They had a. It was a concurrent schedule. So anytime that a student did something correctly in the pool, it was an FR1. So they received a token for that and a token for, like, safe skills, safe behavior in the pool, like, not running. You know, like, one of the participants liked to touch the experimenter's feet. So there was, like, things that they might not want to do in the pool. So they also had to implement a level system for two participants because they were having some pretty increased challenging behavior, cool behaviors. And that seemed to be mostly effective. So one thing I just want to point out here, so I don't forget one thing that the author stated that if this was instruct a swim instructor that didn't have behavioral analytic experience might be really challenging.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right. So how can we then think about how to incorporate this into swim instruction if you're not behavior analytically inclined?

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, it was. It was like non compliance and some. Some running, I think.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah, running and non compliance. And, you know, the running is the scary part.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Right.

[Jackie McDonald]

So they did the pros. They said, show me the skill name. And for one skill, they jumped in. Right. That's the, you know, grab the wall. And then the other ones, they went. They went into the lad. Went in the pool by the ladder. Right. So for the training, the experimenter was in the water, and the participant was out of the water for safety, and the participant was watching the experimenter. And then they got in and tried and feedback was given. Sometimes physical and verbal prompting were given. And then if just BST alone didn't work, and it didn't work for two of the participants, they had an individual component teaching where if they didn't make progress on a skill for three consecutive sessions, that part that they're not making progress in was taken out of the ta. And they only practiced that until this. That part of the skill was acquired and then it was put back in. So once they acquired the skill, they did maintenance probe that one week and after. In that one month.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So it's almost like forward chaining a little bit, but not really.

[Jackie McDonald]

I think it's like a more total task.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, right.

[Jackie McDonald]

Because you're just pulling something out. But it's pretty neat how they did it. And we don't have, like, what that looked like because they didn't give it to us.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I wish they had. Because we're talking about skills where they're, you know, if you ask me, like, break it down. I'd be like, you jump in the pool, step one, you come out of the water, step two, and you grab the side, step three. I don't. How do you break that down more? I'm sure you could, but I. Yeah, it would be probably like very subtle, very small things.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right. Very subtle.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Thing is, if they actually. I don't think probably one of the jumping.

[Jackie McDonald]

Probably when it's probably the turning one where they were struggling and the floating and yelling. Yeah, right.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Like, oh, we're getting the feedback. You're not yelling loud enough. Right.

[Jackie McDonald]

So you might have to pull that out and be like, hey, when you yell, let's practice yelling.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yell. Let's yell for a while. Everyone loves that at the pool. All the echoing.

[Jackie McDonald]

Okay. So for a participant, Dean, baseline levels were really Low across all three skills, then following bst, if they were very high and maintained at one week and one month for all of the skills he did not need. Dangerous kind of rock component teaching. Right. For Casteel.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Castiel.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Castiel.

[Jackie McDonald]

Castiel. Okay. Baseline levels were low.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Did you watch Supernatural? I did all 800 seasons of Supernatural.

[Diana Perry Crews]

So many seasons.

[Jackie McDonald]

I didn't. I'm so sorry. Baseline following BST was actually not great. And so they had to do an individual component teaching and had to increase the reinforcer because they found that it was. I likely was not motivated enough to engage in this.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Don't want to turn and grab.

[Jackie McDonald]

I don't want to turn and grab. I don't want to float and yell. The rolling was great. They liked the rolling.

[Robert Perry Crews]

But that was the last. The last one, too. So maybe he was just kind of used to it.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yep. So that BST was effective for. But the other two skills, they needed to use the individual component treatment. But for the most part, those maintained at one week in one month. And then for the following. The last person, Sam. Baseline levels, again, were low. BST didn't. Wasn't effective for the first skill. They had to do individual component teaching for the first skill, turn and grab, but not for float and yell. Enroll. So all participants acquired the skills, the skills maintained. Future research would really look at how to teach these skills to swim instructors that don't have ABA experience. Right. So they said, we might need a manual. We might need video models. And they.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yes.

[Jackie McDonald]

It seemed like this was.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I wish this existed.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right. Me too. And they said that they taught the three different components because people can fall in the pools in many different ways. Right. And so they're like, we don't want to teach you like. Like what you do because there's these three different things that you can do. So I loved that rationale there, because I bet that was something that the reviewers had pointed out to them. Like, you didn't teach a. Like a coherent, like, safety scan.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right. And I don't think you need to. So I love that they put that in there.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Jackie McDonald]

They did say that reinforcement, like, in the terms of the token economy, was not faded during the study, and they wondered if it would occur under natural contingencies, but hopefully they don't out.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Well, it also, other than who was a Castiel who needed the jackpot would. Was it even. Was it even necessary?

[Jackie McDonald]

Right. And, you know, in the moment, like, a natural contingency would be. They fell in the pool. Right.

[Robert Perry Crews]

But the other piece, though, is these weren't children who, like, hate. As far as we know, they didn't hate water or avoid water because there's no way they would have jumped into the pool in Skill one if they were like, I hate this place. I don't want to be here.

[Diana Perry Crews]

You could not pay me to jump in the pool with my clothes on.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, oh, what about a token jackpot?

[Diana Perry Crews]

No, thank you. Maybe that treasure chest of gems that I just mentioned before. Maybe I would forget that for you.

[Robert Perry Crews]

If you jump in. I'd also be curious, because if we're talking about teaching swim instructors to use the techniques, I feel like the more techniques they need to be taught to use, the more sort of friction you're adding to the procedure. If it was more like, here's how to do good modeling, here's how to do good praise, here's how to break down the skill. Those feel like things that most. I would assume most instructors like. Yep. I do a lot of this already. Totally with them. If you're like, you got to add all this extra. It's like, if they don't want to learn how to swim, why am I doing? You know? No, no. I. I don't think it would be that cynical or response.

[Diana Perry Crews]

I think many swim instructors would see the value in this.

[Robert Perry Crews]

The skills. Yeah, but the more we're like, you have to know how to do a token economy to do all these things versus, like, I'd love to have seen just somewhere like, a first then of like, we're gonna do this, and then we're gonna dump all the toys in the pool.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Oh, you're saying situation.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, yeah. Token economies.

[Diana Perry Crews]

You want some research on how simple. How simple could it be if you.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Can avoid using a token economy? Avoid using a token economy.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah. But not for some kids. You may need.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Oh, it's not that you can never use a token economy, but how effective would it have been with the reinforcement system from the Levy study?

[Diana Perry Crews]

Right.

[Jackie McDonald]

And then their final future area of research would be to see if it would occur under different people and in not swimwear, like maybe clothes that I've seen in. In. You know, in our. In our safety swimming lessons.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Well, if you are a swim instructor who just entered grad school for your master's in behavior analysis, you got a dissertation ready to go, a couple extension ideas right there. Replication. It's gonna be.

[Diana Perry Crews]

There's a lot of work that could be done in this area.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Get there fast, because there's, like, two safety skill articles out there.

[Jackie McDonald]

Number three, can we go into dissemination station?

[Robert Perry Crews]

No, let's talk about a made up article that we don't have. Oh, we're here, we're here. I didn't have time to do that research.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Fast track.

[Jackie McDonald]

I. Yes, it's ABA inside track. Fast track. One thing that I would be really interested in looking at is looking whether some children that have lower discrimination skills to teach them to identify bodies of water. Right. As danger, dangerous. But then.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yes, Right.

[Jackie McDonald]

So I think that might be something that has not been done before. Like if you are just the concept.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Of bodies of water are dangerous, that.

[Jackie McDonald]

Can be dangerous without an adult. Right? So if you're like, like you get out of your house and you're running and you know, most kids when they're running they get attracted to water, right? Because it's pretty and there's things floating in it, right. Like identifying that as a dangerous thing without an adult. It would be hard though, right? Because you don't want them to be scared of water, but you also don't want them to.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I know. I'm sort of thinking, well, if you could, oh, this water will hurt you. Don't go. But that's not what you want to teach because your family wants to go swimming.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Don't go in the water.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Don't go in the water alone.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right?

[Diana Perry Crews]

Like we want to go in the water.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Maybe that's the skill of like ask an adult before getting in a pool. Like strengthen that response so that if they ran to a pool, maybe they'd even run back and be like, hey, I'm back, I need you to take me to the pool.

[Jackie McDonald]

Like something like that too. And I mean, obviously all the things that they're teaching are really important. Right? But anything that we can do to, to keep kids out of the water when they're by themselves, I think, well.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I, I think we have to look at some of the elopement literature too of like what it, what is that allure? I mean, is it, is it. It's probably, I would like to say it's probably as I want to go to a fun activity and I like swimming in a pool, but I don't have all of the independent skills. So I'm going to run to the pool because I can't easily get there unless I go myself or you know, or I run away from my parent when I see a pool nearby that I wasn't expecting. So while like certainly teaching. Stop, stay with parent. All of those are important skills. I think one of the nice things about teaching the safety skills here are, well, if the worst case Happens at least they'd be able to enjoy a swim and get to the edge of the. The pool when they want to get out and know how to get up or to call for help if they don't. They'd have all those. I think you, you talked about really nicely, Jack, that idea of like, we've got three skills rather than the chain of events.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right. Because you can do it anyway.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Jackie McDonald]

You could slip into the water and.

[Diana Perry Crews]

All of this has been pool related. But there's like regular bodies of water don't look like pools. Right. Like, a lake could look very different to a child than a pool and they might not even realize that it's the same skills.

[Robert Perry Crews]

All right.

[Diana Perry Crews]

They may be needed there. Right.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Swim instructor, grad students, here's your. Here are your extensions and replication. You're going to teach the skills with clothes. You're going to add in and you're going to go to a lake.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Right.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And you're not going to use a token board. You're going to use a different, simpler form of reinforcement.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yes.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And you're going to teach and instruct. You're not an instructor. Teach one of your colleagues how to do this procedure. There you go. You put those four in there. We'll get you. You know what, if you do that, you write in. We will do a follow up episode.

[Jackie McDonald]

With you on it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

With you on it.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah. It's going to take you like six or seven years before that's published.

[Robert Perry Crews]

We'll keep going.

[Diana Perry Crews]

We're going to be waiting for this conversation.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You know, what if someone wrote in and said, hey, I listened to that episode when I was just starting grad school and it inspired me to write my dissertation. And now I'm a doctor of Behavior analysis.

[Jackie McDonald]

This.

[Robert Perry Crews]

And I want to be on your show. And we'd be like, oh, we stopped doing that show.

[Jackie McDonald]

We're never stopping.

[Robert Perry Crews]

No, you're guaranteed a spot on the show. There you go. If that, if that entices you come.

[Jackie McDonald]

Back, we'll come back out of retirement.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, yeah. For one last podcast.

[Jackie McDonald]

But anyway, Dana, are there any things that we've talked about similarly.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Wait, Summary. We didn't really summarize. We talked about an extension.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Sorry.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So I guess the qu. Here's the question I have. We have these procedures that are very effective. Most of them are ones that are clearly within the wheelhouse of any behavior analyst. Do you need to have training as a swim instructor to implement these or can you just have a knowledge of swimming and enough safety mechanisms to avoid any Danger while you teach.

[Jackie McDonald]

So the only one that. The only two that might be problematic and how to, like, support someone are the floating on your back. Because there are. There is a way that you want to hold people so that they can feel the flotation. Right. So that one, I think, because you don't want to, like, hold them underneath. Right. Because then that's a whole prompt. So I think that when you might.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Consider people sink if you hold them in the wrong spot on their back.

[Jackie McDonald]

So that one might be one that you'd want to get some additional supervision with. And then also the turning one, because the turning one is really challenging if you don't know the right mechanisms. Right. Because if you start turning with. With the front, like, depending on, like, your shoulders, with your hips, like, it's. It's a little more nuanced and you'll. You're less likely to float. So I would recommend for those two, at least that you. You have someone that is, you know.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Jackie McDonald]

A swimmer.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Diana Perry Crews]

To help with those and all of these examples. They are doing these in pools that have lifeguards.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yes. Right.

[Diana Perry Crews]

And then in the. In our past experience, that was the case as well, because we worked somewhere where they had a pool.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah.

[Diana Perry Crews]

And they. Everyone got swim instruction, which is what I wanted to. About in dissemination station. But there was also.

[Robert Perry Crews]

We're still here.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Hooray. But there was a lifeguard on duty there. So it wasn't solely on the instructor. Because I would be. I would be extremely cautious if you were, like, working in someone's home and they're like. And then you're arguing to go practice. No, no, not under those set of conditions. Right. So there are definitely only a few times where I think that this could be okay. And that's if there is someone who is trained for safety.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Who's there to intervene and has, like, cpr. Because things could go real bad. Right. Like the person could grab onto you and panic and pull you both under.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So if you're a behavior analyst who's working with a family, safety water. Safety skills are important. You would be best to think about using your BST to teach a swim instructor or someone with training to ensure some of those, like, really important skills are taught properly. So if you are not a swim instructor, either go become a swim instructor, then come back and do safety skills. The family might not want to wait that long while you get your certification or teach or.

[Jackie McDonald]

Or go to a common pool with a lifeguard. Right. And teach the. You know, you can teach us or.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Teach the submersion or whoever.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah, teach the submersion, which anyone can do.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Anyone can do that one.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right. And teach the grab the pool.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right. Like if you have to. Because somebody. Skills.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Start with those.

[Jackie McDonald]

Start with those two. With a lifeguard on duty.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yes.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Okay.

[Robert Perry Crews]

But if you're going to do all of them, it does sound like we, we'd recommend that you either use the skills here to teach them using bst. So again, get that, get that replication extension BST to teach BST of the safety swim skills. Right. I bet it works just like we know how BST works. It works in the water just like it works on land. We, we've learned that today. So that would be the recommendation there, there. Even though. Yeah. You read the studies, you're like, that sounds easy. I know those techniques. But Jaguar, good point of I actually don't know how do I turn over on my back. I know I can do it, but I don't know. I can't describe what I do or how I learned it.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

All right.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Water's very serious. So.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Lee fun.

[Diana Perry Crews]

That's dangerous. Yes. As I was saying, where we worked previously had a whole, a whole curriculum.

[Jackie McDonald]

Right.

[Diana Perry Crews]

That they followed and they were using the Red Cross, right?

[Jackie McDonald]

Yeah.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Levels system that started with, you know, just being able to enter the pool at all and then moving all the way up through the steps. So they, they followed that. But there were ots on, on site, lifeguards on site and then the, the rbts who were serving as the instructors underneath the supervision of all of those folks. And I thought that there was going to be more published literature, honestly, that that walked us through what those models might look like for individuals who, based on what the research looks like, had a far different skill set than what has been published. So individuals who had much lower levels of verbal language, what seems to be much lower, like discrimination of safe and unsafe conditions, instruction following behavior, more challenging behavior, and. And they were able to make a lot of progress. Yeah.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I'm wondering why that is that I didn't even think about that yet. It does feel like it would have been tailor made to we're teaching all the safety skills and we run the table on the relevant publications related to these skills.

[Diana Perry Crews]

This is hard research to do just from I think a safety perspective. Right. But to me it's a case where, you know, we talk about research, practice, practice to research, where practice to research could really be beefed up. Right. To show like, oh, this is, this is capable. We, we're capable of doing this. This is beneficial. And here are some of the ins and outs and tips and tricks of how we've been able to make this work for this more severe population. That is the exact population that everyone's so worried about. Right. So a lot of adaptive equipment was in use in those settings. A lot of additional reinforcers were in use. You know, everybody had, like, laminated, like, cards that show that were either data sheets or like showing, like when reinforcers were coming. And like those, like wax pins to, like mark on them to show because everything's wet, you know, and kids that loved their iPad couldn't have that in the pool. What are you gonna do now? You know, there were. And there were very clear guidelines on what your behavior had. Had been in the past 24 hours in order for you to be able to enter the pool. Because there's also big issues on if you have someone having an issue in the pool, how do you get them safely out of the pool without them hurting themselves or somebody else? Right. It's dangerous at the pool, is slippery. It's like so many things going on.

[Jackie McDonald]

Or if there's an accident in the pool. Yes, that happens many times.

[Diana Perry Crews]

That can happen as well. Yep. Yeah. So I think that there's probably a lot of knowledge out there that people have that. I thought maybe there'd be a study that kind of like, summarized it all up, even in a little bit of a more casual way, perhaps. And I didn't. We don't have that in our literature at least. So that's a wide open area that could be really beneficial and tying that in. Like, somebody should make a manual specifically for this group that says, here's where you start, and then let's troubleshoot from there. When you run into issues, these are the ways that you can address that in. In like you said, Rob, like, the simplest behavioral approach that could be had that could be really beneficial to getting this more wide spread available. That's what I gotta say.

[Robert Perry Crews]

All right, let's go to pairings.

[Jackie McDonald]

Oh, here. We made it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

We did it.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Okay. I don't have that many because we.

[Jackie McDonald]

Haven'T really talked about, you know, just until recently.

[Diana Perry Crews]

We just.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah.

[Diana Perry Crews]

In the other episode that we did, which is one. Oh, dad, it's time for pairings. Pairings is where I tell you about past episodes that we have in our catalog that you might be interested in.

[Robert Perry Crews]

If you liked this one catalog with multiple use. If you're in England.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Does it.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I don't know. I assume so. They love their use.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Does. No, I was gonna Say catalog has all the vowels, but there's no I. More to the point, what I wanted you to know is that we just did an episode on safety skills. It's episode 325. It's like, just come out a couple weeks ago, so you can go back and listen to that. That episode was really focused on the land. The BST land based safety skills, behavior skills training, you know, Milton Burgers in situ, jumping in. In the middle of the. The session, that type of stuff. So these were less like that. They didn't.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I want Ray Miltenberger to pop out of the water and be like, wow, you're not using your safety skills.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah, these did not have that.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Found a gun in the pool. Cool.

[Diana Perry Crews]

But you didn't tell anybody, so I'm not recommending all of those episodes. You can just go back and listen to 325 and take it from there. But listen to that. You could also. You could do behavior skills training, episode 132. And then I also put in episode 89, which is where we talked about next level chaining with Dr. Stacy Bancroft. Because we referenced a few things in here that she talked about in there, including taking out a smaller portion of your chain and focusing on that specifically. That's like one of her like, like, top recommendations.

[Robert Perry Crews]

If you love chaining and you're not sure if you've been doing it right, listen to that episode and there's a good chance you'll realize you're not doing it right.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yeah, that's so true. Exactly. And for my snack, I always like to recommend a snack for today. The snack today.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Soggy Cheerios.

[Diana Perry Crews]

No, is. I'm actually. I'm typing it in as we speak. It's chicken fingers, fries, and a pina colada. Because it's pool food.

[Robert Perry Crews]

The pina colada maybe. I don't eat fries and chicken fingers at the pool.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yes, you do. You know, like in Arrested Development, right? Where she's like, pool food. You can get those delivered.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You can get a lot delivered to the pool. Yeah. The Y doesn't have as many pina coladas as I thought when I.

[Jackie McDonald]

My poor food would be a smoothie.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Yeah, like a drink you want to drink by the pool, sit in your tube.

[Jackie McDonald]

Or a water.

[Robert Perry Crews]

When you're in a pool, you just drink the water. Right?

[Jackie McDonald]

Gross.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Pool food. You guys don't know what I'm referencing.

[Robert Perry Crews]

You don't even know you are. You're doing Jessica Walters. Jessica Walters. Yes, I understand.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Okay, that was pairings. Please enjoy.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Thanks. You have to watch like a whole bunch of seasons of television to get.

[Diana Perry Crews]

That pairing or live with Rom.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Well, I didn't even get the parents apparently live with Diana. Who knew Diana was the TV nerd today? Well, thanks everybody for listening. We hope you enjoyed our episode of ABA Inside Track. Like our episode? Like we only have one? No, this episode of the many other episodes of ABA Inside Track. If you have not left us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen to podcasts, we'd really appreciate it if you did give us some feedback, some thoughts. Do your own little BST review for us. We'd love that. That. You can also go to our website, abainsidetrack.com to find links to all of the articles that we have discussed here, as well as to purchase ces. And if you say, you know what, I do want to purchase ces, well, you better know the second secret code word. It's Ruth. R U T H. It's like, like a name. Ruth. That's. That's all I got for Ruth. That's what it is. It is a name. If you want even more ABA InsideTrack content, we should think about joining us on Patreon patreon.com ABA InsideTrack, where you can subscribe at pretty much any level, but if you're subscribing at the 3 and above levels, you get our episodes a week ahead of time. If you're subscribing at the five dollar level or at any level again, you can vote on our quarterly listener choice polls. But at that $5 level, you not only get the video output, so you get to see the raw audio of what this craziness. When we referred to Jackie's hair at one point, you don't know what it looked like unless you're on that tier and you also get a free ce. And then if you say, you know what, I liked your podcast, could it be twice as long? Oh, you bet it could be. It's our quarterly book clubs voted on by our listeners. We get one of those every season and only at the $10 and up level are you going to hear all four of those the moment they are released, as well as get a total of 8 CES just for listening and enjoying those. And if you're thinking about joining us, before we started, we talked about what books we were in the middle of reading in the year, and Jackie said, I think one of the books from this year is the best book club book we've ever read. Better than Walton 2?

[Diana Perry Crews]

Yep.

[Robert Perry Crews]

Better than The Science of Consequences.

[Jackie McDonald]

Yes.

[Robert Perry Crews]

I can't believe this. This is. This is crazy. All right, well, which book is it? Well, even if you find out, you can't listen to it unless you're joining us on patreon.com Aba InsideTrack. Someday you can. We release them eventually. But you're gonna like all your friends will know. And won't you feel silly when you're at the pool with your chicken fingers and pina coladas?

[Jackie McDonald]

So gross.

[Robert Perry Crews]

So final big thanks. Thanks to Dr. Jim Carr for recording our intro and outro music, Kyle Sturry for interstitial music, and Dan Thavet of the podcast Doctors for his amazing editing work. We'll be back next week with another fun filled episode, but until then, keep responding.

[Jackie McDonald]

Bye bye.

[Diana Perry Crews]

Sa.