Episode 340 - Golden Grab Bag (Spring Grab Bag 2026)

Summary

ABA Inside Track - Episode 340: Golden Grab Bag (Spring Grab Bag 2026)

Date: April 8, 2026
Host: Robert Perry Crews
Co-Hosts: Jackie McDonald, Diana Perry Crews

---

Episode Overview

This "Golden Grab Bag" episode features the ABA Inside Track hosts each presenting, discussing, and dissecting a peer-reviewed behavior analytic article of personal interest, spanning diverse topics: adapted preference assessments for people with dementia, behavioral economics in green consumerism (specifically reusable grocery bags), and interventions to increase young children’s preference for engaging with books. The Grab Bag format allows hosts to select articles that may not fit a unified theme but offer rich clinical and research insights for behavior analysts.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

[00:00-05:34] Opening Banter & Format

• Hosts share light, humorous conversation about personal plans and why they favor Grab Bag episodes, noting the flexibility to choose articles they find compelling (“We sort of just pick three articles that are of interest to us and us alone.” - Rob, 01:18).
• Jackie sets the tone: “I love Grab Bags because I get to read whatever I want.” (03:03)

---

Article 1: Making Preference Assessments More Acceptable and Effective for People with Dementia (Bigwood, Staples, & Sharp, 2026)

Presented by: Jackie
Segment: [05:34-28:28]

Main Themes:

• Traditional preference assessment methods, although validated with people with disabilities, have unique challenges when applied to older adults with dementia.
• The study explores how to adapt preference assessments for people with dementia to improve acceptability, accuracy, and social validity.

Key Details:

• Participants: Four older adults with dementia (aged 80–96) in care homes in New Zealand.
• New Zealand's 'Supported Decision Making' process is highlighted for ensuring consent and ongoing assent in vulnerable populations ([13:47]-[14:00]).
• Procedures: Compared standard vs. adapted versions of preference assessments (using MSWO, single stimulus, and free operant methods, based on participants’ abilities).
• Adaptations: Framing instructions to reduce social desirability and confusion (e.g., “These items have already been bought. I did not buy them. You will not offend me or anyone if you do not like them…” [18:13]).
• Measured Outcomes: Quantitative (preference, engagement) and qualitative (indices of happiness/confusion, open-ended statements, social validity from participants and caregivers).

Notable Quotes:

• "They reference a favorite article of mine… Green and Reed in 1996, Indices of Happiness. Oh yeah…” (13:13)
• “They give you an example, an adaptation to consider as well as a specific example of that adaptation.” (27:45)
• “Higher rates of indices of happiness in the adapted version… less confusion…” (24:26)

Insights & Implications:

• Adapting preference assessments for dementia populations increases participant happiness and understanding, even if final item choices don’t change much.
• Social interaction may itself be a highly preferred activity for this group, perhaps more than tangible items.
• Recommendations for practice include modifying instructions and considering social/learning history barriers.
• Mini-pairing: Listeners are referred to earlier ABA Inside Track episodes on behavioral gerontology for deeper exploration ([28:28]).

---

Article 2: A Behavioral Economic Approach to Green Consumerism: Demand for Reusable Shopping Bags (Kaplan, Giano, & Reed, 2018)

Presented by: Diana
Segment: [31:41-49:52]

Main Themes:

• Application of behavioral economics (specifically, operant demand analysis) to the question: What price will consumers pay for reusable shopping bags in efforts to reduce plastic waste?

Key Details:

• Participants: 76 undergraduates; 67 included in analyses (after exclusion for non-systematic data).
• Method: Hypothetical purchase task—participants indicate how many reusable bags they'd buy at escalating price points ($0–$9), controlled for price elasticity.
• Scenario: “Imagine that you and your friends are on vacation… picking up groceries at a supermarket… offered the chance to buy reusable shopping bags…” ([38:23])
• Additional Measure: New Ecological Paradigm Scale to gauge environmental values.

Results:

• Median number of bags purchased for free: 8
• Breakpoint: $3 per bag—consumers would not generally pay more than this; majority dropped out at this price.
• Higher environmental concern = higher willingness to pay.
• Real-world implications: If aiming for broader adoption, pricing reusable bags below $3 may maximize uptake.

Notable Quotes:

• “What you really want to know are these breakpoint values… how much are you going to pay for a reusable bag? $3.” (46:06)
• “Maybe they were still considering that, given that is the real-life scenario that you keep the bags and you use them over and over again.” (48:26)

Insights & Implications:

• Demand curve modeling can inform real-world policy and pricing for sustainability initiatives.
• The study also acknowledges potential SES barriers and highlights the importance of subsidized programs for lower-income consumers.
• Mini-pairing: Past ABA Inside Track episodes with Dr. Derek Reed (behavioral economics) and Dr. Amy Odom (delay discounting) noted for further learning ([49:30]).

---

Article 3: Turning the Page: Increasing Young Children’s Preference for Looking at and Engaging with Books (Loomis, Morales, Yeo, & Finnup, 2026)

Presented by: Rob
Segment: [49:52-69:48]

Main Themes:

• Many children, especially those with disabilities, show low interest in books, affecting later reading proficiency.
• Examines interventions to “condition” books as reinforcers, aiming to increase book engagement in preschoolers.

Key Details:

• U.S. Context: Poor reading proficiency, with 65–66% of 4th graders below expected levels ([50:24]).
• Participants: Preschoolers with developmental disabilities; most used pointing or rudimentary communication and had low initial book engagement.
• Procedures: Replication and extension of prior work (Tsai & Greer, 2006); continuous reinforcement for book engagement (e.g., social praise), followed by “persistence tests” (no praise for 5 seconds) to build independent engagement.
• Measures: Whole-interval recording for book engagement, preference assessments before and after, maintenance probes up to several weeks after.

Results:

• All participants showed increases in book engagement and chose books over preferred toys post-intervention.
• Gains generally maintained at follow-up.
• Experiment 2 demonstrated that books not only competed with other reinforcers but could function as reinforcers for mastered tasks.

Notable Quotes:

• “If you can make books a reinforcer, that’s just foundational to all of the other work that is going to go on with books.” (68:02)
• “I do love how… all they did was like: ‘Hey, look, some books! Wow, look at these books! You’re looking at… what a great job looking at books!’” (69:43)

Insights & Implications:

• Simple, explicit social reinforcement for book engagement can make books more attractive—even for children initially uninterested.
• Could inform home and school interventions; may begin to address part of the literacy proficiency gap.
• Mini-pairing: Listeners referred to episode 218 (“ABA and Literacy Skills with Dr. Denise Ross-Page and Dr. Douglas Greer”) for in-depth discussion ([69:48]).

---

Notable Patterns, Quotes, & Memorable Moments

• Frequent personal asides and playful banter (e.g., discussions of furniture assembly, travel, and favorite musicals) keep the tone light and engaging.
• Rob, in a moment of self-awareness: "340 is just kicking my butt. I don't know. I prepared for it, I swear." ([04:19])
• Jackie’s enthusiasm for the social validity and comprehensive nature of her article: “I was just so thrilled that this is, like, so comprehensive. I just love that.” ([11:48])
• Diana’s tongue-in-cheek on the math-heavy behavioral economics article: “I’ll just define the terms when we get down to the results.” ([43:41])
• The hosts repeatedly emphasize the clinical utility of research that makes even small improvements in quality of life and understanding for diverse populations.

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–05:34: Show opening, banter, format/setup
• 05:34–28:28: Jackie’s article on adapting preference assessments for dementia
• 28:28–31:41: Episode pairings & break (skip for content)
• 31:41–49:52: Diana’s article on behavioral economics and reusable bags
• 49:52–69:48: Rob’s article on conditioning book engagement in young children
• 69:48–End (~73:00): Wrap-up, episode pairings, announcements, closing banter

---

Conclusion

This episode exemplifies the adaptable, curiosity-driven spirit of the Grab Bag format, demonstrating both practical and theoretical applications of ABA in a wide array of settings—from improving wellbeing in elder care to guiding sustainability policies and building foundational reading skills in children. The hosts’ selections reinforce the breadth of behavior analytic research and its continued relevance for both practitioners and researchers.

---

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

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

[C]

Oh, my gosh. Like, hey there, Rob. Like, hey, it's Jackie McDonald's.

[A]

And hello, it's me, Diana Perry Cruz.

[B]

All right, great. Everybody, it's here. We're here.

[C]

We're here.

[B]

We're here. It's a behavior analytic podcast about behavior analysis in which we pick a topic and discuss relevant research articles about it. I'm sorry, I'm a little low energy. This is the second we've had to record this weekend. So I'm a little. I got. I'm out of. I'm out of practice.

[A]

The second one of this episode, no man recorded one.

[B]

And then we realized we needed to reschedule some things around, so, you know, and she's gotta get back into it. Get back into it.

[C]

I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I love Grab Bags because I get to read whatever I want.

[B]

You know, it's a grab bag. I haven't said that. So it could be a totally different. Actually, Jackie, this is a different episode. This is a delayed discounting episode. It's very complicated.

[C]

Can you imagine if that was the case? And I was like, okay, I'm ready, I'm ready.

[B]

I'm so excited about Grab Bags. But sadly, the topic is something very complicated and sensitive issue. Now, this is a grab bag, which is one of our episodes where we sort of just pick three articles that are of interest to us and us alone. Do you like them? We don't even care. Go ahead. Like it or not like it. But you probably will. If you've listened to the show long enough. You sort of have a sense of what types of articles we like to read about. Sometimes we go off script a bit.

[C]

I did a little bit. I did a little bit.

[B]

Yeah. But we really just sort of picked the original. Conceit was sort of. What if we just randomly picked three articles? But the would make for a really bad episode because you'd have to listen to us reading them and thinking about them for a while. So instead we just said, let's pick articles. But they're not themed around any. Any one thing for this episode. So here we are. That's what we're doing. And with that great intro out of the way, that was the best intro I think I've ever done.

[C]

It's because we're intending. We're. We're heading into the 11th year now.

[B]

So it's one of those things, like, when you know you're doing podcasts, you're like, all right, let's get ready to go. And when we're sort of like, quick, we have to make sure to schedule another podcast. And it's like, well, I'm glad I already had. You know, Grab Bag's a good one for that. Like, it could have been worse. We could have had to do, like. But then we would have planned better head anyway.

[A]

But we're rescheduling it so we can do fun things.

[C]

Right. I'm going to be in New York watching my cousin Riley be the lead in a play, the Addams Family. He's Gomez and he's very excited about it.

[B]

Oh, that's play.

[C]

And I'm also helping my mom.

[A]

I was going to say, we saw that play and it was good.

[C]

Well, I don't. He's going to be amazing.

[B]

So he might be amazing and be like, I loved every scene you were in, but sadly, anytime you weren't on screen, I just sat there or staged. This place sucks.

[A]

It didn't. It didn't.

[C]

And then I'm gonna have.

[A]

That's cute.

[C]

And then I'm gonna help my mom build some things, like IKEA things like furniture that she bought. And then she's like, I bought an entire bedroom set and it is sitting here in these boxes waiting for you.

[A]

Oh, boy.

[C]

Can you fly up to build these? And so I'm gonna do that.

[B]

It wasn't that great a play. I would rather see the Addams Family play than build furniture.

[C]

I'm gonna do both. So how lucky am I?

[B]

Oh, so I don't know if that's

[C]

an additive process and I get to fly in a six seater plane. Wow.

[A]

That is not what I want to do.

[B]

Those are.

[A]

That's just in the winter.

[B]

This is a bunch of great activities.

[A]

Our nephew's going to be in newsies.

[C]

Oh, exciting.

[A]

So exciting. Because you guys know I love newsies.

[C]

I've never seen it.

[A]

Oh, you're missing out. We could do that after this, actually, Jackie. But Rob, what are we gonna do? What was I responsible for? No. Oh, do you not know?

[B]

I know. We're gonna go. We're gonna go visit some record shops.

[A]

I'm taking Rob on a record store road trip.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Awesome. For his birthday.

[A]

I'm really excited. I think I'm more excited than Rob.

[B]

I. No, I am. I am. I'm sorry. I'm like, really?

[A]

Rob had a snap out of it.

[C]

Rob. Rob Had a great night last night, and it is affecting his today.

[B]

I don't know. Somehow I just even know you were doing this today. I just feel like I was like, I was like, what do you mean? Like, we did a podcast. We just did. I don't know. I can't wrap my head around doing.

[A]

You only had 339 in you.

[B]

We've done. Yeah, I was good at 339. 340 is just kicking my butt. I don't know. I prepared for it, I swear.

[A]

Maybe we should get yours out of the way then.

[B]

You know. You know what it was? It was. We have a game. We have a game on the, on the recording table. And suddenly the dichotomy of, why is my recording studio a place where there's a game and wearably for these microphones. It broke my mind. I'm sorry. It broke me.

[A]

When Rob and I open up our gaming store, slash coffee shop, slash bookstore, slash cocktail bar. We're going to move either the games and, or the recording equipment into that space.

[B]

All right. Yes. That sounds good. I'm so, I'm like, wow, wow, wow. Okay, anyway, let's, let's get into the episode because I think I'm spiraling out of control here, and I'm curious, do you all think I should reach into the grab bag first and then take some of this terrible negative energy, stop talking, get it all out, or should I wait and then come in later, hoping that I've remembered how to do this podcast thing we've done so many years.

[C]

It is up to you, Rob. You get to choose who goes first.

[B]

I like my article a lot and I want to give it a good time rather than like, oh, no, look at this dumb, stupid research. So why don't I go later?

[C]

Okay, I'll go first.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

So my article was, I think, one of the better articles that I have read in a while. And it was so thorough. And I did actually did not want to use it for grab bag because I wanted to do an article that I had to read for something else, right? For work or for, you know, I was like, oh, this will be easy. Because we did choose this. We had to do this quicker than I imagined. I was like, all right, I'm going to pick an article that I need to read for something else. But then as I was double duty, right? As I was scrolling through, through the table of contents to go to the article that I need to read, this one popped up and I was like,

[B]

no, I, I, I'm, I'm I'm like that too, Jay. I've kind of gotten in the habit of when I am reading articles and I have one that I'm like, I want to read this. But like, it's not relevant to my daily work. It's not for a podcast episode. I'm like, you know what, I'm just gonna save it and then I'll have like two or three that I. I read sort of, you know, for fun. And then I'm like, and then I'll bring it to a grab bag so I can spend, you know, the extra time right on it. I love having a couple go that way.

[C]

Even though I did not want to pick an article that wasn't something I had to read, I did pick this one and it is by Big Wood, Staples and Sharp and it was just published in February 2026 and it is online only access and it is making preference assessments more acceptable and effective for people with dementia. So this goes widely off of what I usually pick. Dogs I only picked.

[B]

That's it.

[C]

And there was.

[B]

Well, you did wolves once.

[C]

Oh yeah, I did do wolves once. I'm going to that sanctuary, by the way, this year.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

After you build all the furniture, you

[A]

take a two seater, very busy, two

[B]

seater plane to the wildlife.

[C]

Wolves, very busy in Ipswich. Okay. And the reason that I love this article and chose it is because they reference a previous favorite article of mine by Green and Reed in 1996, Indices of Happiness. Oh yeah, and that's one of my favorite articles. And what they were looking at is looking at preference assessments because previous research really has only focused preference assessments or validated preference assessments with people with disabilities. And although research has, there's limited research that shows that preference assessments can be used with people with dementia, they haven't really looked at like, how well they apply to that. So they did suggest that preference assessments are really helpful for improving quality of life for, for those with dementia. Right. Because then they can have access to preferred items in their day. And previous research says that it is effective to identify the. Oh, I just did something funky. Identify preference of the actual person with dementia and not the assessor. That was a problem at some point. But there are unique challenges related to conducting preference assessments that you might not see with developmental disabilities that you do see with people with dementia. Like questions such as, why are you asking me this? I thought I already told you the answer because there's typically repeated presentations and I'm very confused on why we're even doing this. Right. And so these questions are Likely due to the presentation of the stimuli in an unknown way. Right. And if you're not familiar with the preference assessment methodology or even why you're doing it, you might not actually get as accurate results. Right. So previous research has also stated that those with dementia with intact vocal vulva repertoires may actually find preference assessments aversive because they could just tell you what they want. Right. But there's no formally research on that as they talk about only cognitive impairment and not vocal verbal repertoires. And they also posit that older adults have a longer, more established learning history. So you're not just asking them what they prefer. Right. But they may also be considering other types of rules or context of contingencies or contingencies of context that they've had in their life. Right. For sharing with others, paying for unwanted items. So if you put a, an array of things out, do they think that they just get them or do they have to pay for them or do they have to share them with you? Are they going to be upset? Right. If you.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

If you don't choose or they said also taking items from strangers. Another barrier that they have suggested is that older adults may not choose items because they don't want to appear greedy. Or another research suggests that they were helping with a taste test. Right. So they were just like tasting, but they weren't actually giving preference because they

[B]

were like the Pepsi Challenge.

[C]

Right. They're like, this one's more appealing. Right. And so. And finally, there might be faulty stimulus control on what preference assessment you're using. And because they're working with patients with dementia, they might have trouble remembering what the. If you've told them what they're doing, they might forget what they're doing midway through the preference assessment.

[B]

So these are a lot of factors that I never, ever would have thought about in terms of preference assessment.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Because peak behind the reproduction curtain. We just did an episode with Dr. Casey Clay about social preference. Social preference assessments. And I feel like I said the thing that we say every time we're doing a preference assessment episode of feels like we've really answered like almost all the questions and. No, I guess not even close. Got a bunch more. Very exciting.

[C]

So on.

[B]

There we go. I'm getting it back, I'm getting it back.

[C]

There you go. On the second page.

[B]

Love this field.

[C]

They give the purpose. So it's threefold to add to the body of literature that shows that preference assessments can be used to identify preference, including infrequently used preference assessments, such as the single stimulus Assessment or the free operant assessment. They wanted to provide some examples of ways in which preference assessments can be framed or presented to mitigate those challenges, such as the learning history of older adults or social rules, and to measure the social validity of preference assessment for people with dementia both qualitatively and quantitatively. Ooh. I just was like sweating with happiness when I read that.

[B]

That's what happens when.

[A]

Is that an indice of happiness?

[C]

It is. Yep.

[B]

They're like profuse sweating.

[C]

And you can see that she's sweating under her armpits.

[B]

Oh, those are the happy sweats.

[C]

I was just so thrilled that this is, like, so comprehensive. I just love that. So they had four adults with dementia that could consent to participant participate. They all had an intact vocal verbal repertoire and a mild or moderate cognitive impairment. But check out these ages. The youngest was 80. His name was Luca. And he did not think that he had dementia, even though he had a diagnosis of dementia.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

And it was in a care home. And the other ladies were 96 years old.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. All of them. Yeah, 96.

[C]

96. The youngest, I said, had a mild cognitive impairment, but did not think he had dementia. All of them were ambulatory. One used a walker and one had a mild visual impairment. And one had a hearing aid. And they were like, sometimes she had trouble hearing if she didn't turn her hearing aid up. But once you turn her hearing up, she's 96. Like, give her a break.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

Right. And they picked the best old lady names. Anna and Nina and Dorothy. These are like the best old lady names. I'm sorry if you are a young person and those are your names, but just feel happy that those are great old ladies.

[B]

Dorothy, golden girl's name. You know, it's great name. Dorothy. You know that it's an old lady name.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Or you're in the land of Oz.

[C]

Right. They lived in two care homes. One was a large retirement village with a variety of options such as palliative care, respite care, individual care suites. And one of the participants, Dorothy, best old lady name, too, resided in a care home for independent living, assisted living, personalized care, and specialized dementia care. They did the sessions at the person's house, like in there. So they met with the residents and the residents could choose one person to come with them to talk about the study. And they used a support decision making process. I guess this is very popular in New Zealand, but I had never heard about it. The supported decision making process involves providing easy to understand information to the potential participant. And a support person of their choosing. A meeting with a member of the research team to ask questions and gain clarification as well as time to consider options.

[A]

Oh, this is for consent.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[C]

I just love that. That's like a thing that they have that makes sense.

[A]

I just didn't know that term.

[C]

I didn't either, but I love it. So they had a very thorough discussion of consent. And. And when they signed it, they had to sign who was there when it was signed, what's included when they're not going to participate. And they reviewed that every single session. Which I love. Yeah, right. They told what they told the family member what was going to happen. And the family member had to consent as well for them to participate. So they had both. I love that. So they sought assent before each session by reintroducing themselves. Cause likely the researcher wasn't well known to them, so the participant had forgotten them. They told the purpose of the study and then gave either verbal or nonverbal assent. But prior to each session, they talked to the caregivers in the family and conducted a disability distress assessment tool to identify any behaviors that may indicate that the participant was distressed. But that never happened. Which is nice. So they used a multi element design to compare the standard preference assessment results to an adapted version of the assessment based on the standard preference assessment that they conducted first. So they conducted four sessions of a standard preference assessment first to identify any variables that may be adaptable to help clarify what they were doing. And also they included this to see whether repeated exposure would increase confusion with the participants.

[A]

Got it.

[C]

Right. So they alternated between standard and adapted measures. For a pre assessment, they interviewed participants, staff members and family members to identify preferred items and those. They used the pleasant events schedule to structure the discussions and interviews. That sounds fun, right? I hope my whole day tomorrow is a pleasant event schedule. And they use the items included books, word searches and puzzles. You're not surprised, right?

[A]

I love all those things.

[C]

I know. I'm like Diana, you're like pretty much

[A]

ready for the retirement home? No.

[C]

For the retirement home.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And one thing.

[A]

Bingo.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. You're there.

[C]

You're there.

[A]

You love chair yoga.

[C]

I do. I'm gonna lead it when I'm a 96 year old lady.

[A]

Yeah. Swim aerobics.

[C]

I do.

[A]

Yeah. We're ready.

[C]

Gardening. Love all of that.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

Bees can't wait, Right?

[A]

That's you, not me.

[C]

I know.

[A]

Crochet.

[C]

Yeah. There you go. I'm gonna get there.

[A]

You both love tea? Yes. Yeah. Oh my Gosh.

[B]

Oh, no. Also sounds terrible.

[C]

One caveat is that in order for the stimuli to be included in the preference assess, both the participant and the other person, either it was a caregiver or a family member, had to agree on both, which I liked. I liked that they had that. So the stimulus preference assessment were conducted as in previous literature. So they had an MSWO used for two participants because they could scan and were ambulatory and could engage in longer sessions, like 10 minutes. One participant used a single preference assessment due to her inability to scan and move around without support. And one used a free operant preference assessment because she could move around, but she was engaging in so much conversation with the researcher that they thought that if they use any other assessment that they would have to engage in her. That would preclude her from making any choices. So, yeah, so they did sampling across social preference assessment.

[A]

No, that's what I said.

[C]

Right. We'll get there. That's one of the, I think future research, they said. So did sampling across all types. They told them they could pick and interact with the items, but they didn't have to. And then they had a staff member or a family member sit in on one or two of the sessions to determine social validity of the procedures. So the adaptive preference assessments were adapted specifically for each participant based on the standard preference assessment. And for one of the participants, her name was Dorothy, she did an mswo. They changed what they said to her at the beginning. They said, I have some items with me today. These items have already been bought. I did not buy them. You will not offend me or anyone if you do not like them. And there is no judgment if you don't like them or not. We are not selling these items. We are just looking to see what kind of things you might like to do in your spare time. And they had to change that because previously she wouldn't choose. Oh, she would choose something but not engage in the activity. And she may have been engaging in social niceties. Like she was offering tea a lot and forgetting that she didn't. That she didn't have to host.

[A]

Oh, my God. It makes perfect sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder too, if, like, what these considerations are. Will change as generations change. Right. Because this is like greatest generation.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Kind of stuff.

[C]

Right. Yeah. So for Luca, who was the youngest at 80 years old, he also used an MSWO, but they had to change what they said to him as well as these are not my items, so you will not offend me if you do not like them. He also asked the researchers to ask him why he chose or liked the item after. And so they recorded his verbal explanation.

[A]

Wait, he asked them?

[C]

Yeah, he said, I want you to ask me why I chose these items. Yeah. And so they did. And they took that. And they did this because. No, number one, he asked them to do it and so they did it. And number two, they said that he may have just been engaging with items previously just to please people. So the participant that had the free operant, anna, was provided 10 minutes access prior to the session. She was the one that they thought that she couldn't do the other assessments because she was talking too much to the researchers. So they gave her that 10 minute access. And then their starting session was, I hope that you don't mind that I have to quickly fill out these papers, but while I'm busy, feel free to interact with any of the items available if you would like. So. Right. So she didn't engage in any items previously in the standard or very little with the standard preference assessment, but just chose to try to engage with the researcher.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So she's lonely. Yeah, she just wants to chat it up.

[A]

She got chatty. Noted on her report card.

[C]

She did. And then with the single stimulus again one, the participant, Nina, said that she was lonely a lot in the standard preference assessment. So when she selected an item in the adaptive assessment, they asked her why she liked it and recorded that answer. And then if she responded to the question, they gave her one minute of social attention. So they were increasing the amount of social interaction that she had because she stated that she was lonely, which is sad. So the author suggested that priding social interaction allowed us to acknowledge her statements that she was lonely while still assessing preference for activities. So they. I like that too. They recorded data using a county app and they did continuous data for the mswo. They did choice responses for the free operant. It was a duration of engagement and the single stimulus was duration of engagement. And whether Nina said that she liked the response or liked the item, yes or no. So they did. They did measured indices of happiness or unhappiness. This was based on Green and Reed as continuous frequency data. And they were just looking at, are they smiling? Are they laughing? Do they look excited? Are they frowning? Are they crying? Are they saying no. But they, they added another indice of confusion and recorded all the statements that participants said during the assessment. And so the confusion was like a confused look on their face saying, I am confused. I don't understand why you're here.

[A]

I already answered this question.

[C]

Right Those types of things. And so they had both the qualitative right. And the quantitative measures. And with all of those qualitative statements, the researchers identified five categories which included on topic statements about the items being sold. Did you buy this? On topic statements of social politeness. How lovely is this? I could totally see that. Right. Off topic questions to the researcher such as how is your family? Or an off topic statement, I have three sons. Or off topic statement about being lonely. No one here talks to me. And so the researcher said that all of the participants engaged in all of these responses at least a little bit. So before the preference assessments, the researchers asked questions about boredom, whether the participants were bored, the availability of activities and whether the staff knew the participants preference assessments. And then they asked, at the end they asked about the acceptability of the procedure, whether they understood what was being asked of them. And then they had an open ended part where the participants themselves could fill that out. So the last two studies or the last two were done by both the participants and the caregivers. And the researcher was not there. So they asked somebody else to be there to help. Eye weight was really good. The research, I haven't heard of this. Actually the statements were really low rate behavior. So they used I think an F1. It's a new way to calculate low rate behaviors recommended by Cox and colleagues in 2025. Looked great. They gave, if you want to look at it. I was like, oh, we don't really need to talk about that.

[A]

I don't doubt it.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

David Cox says what he's doing.

[C]

He does. And procedural integrity was really high. So final results. They did identify preference both in the standard preference assessment as well as the modified preference or adapted preference assessment. And when they asked the caregivers and then everyone correlated, which is different from previous literature when you look with developmental disabilities. Yeah, right. That someone with a vocal verbal repertoire can tell you what they want and then they'll see it. You'll see it reflected in the preference assessment. So the stimuli were mostly the same, except one said Nina wanted to do this and she did not pick it or say it. So the verbally reported highest preferred stimuli were highly correlated with the preference assessment. Both of the preference assessment indicated the similar responses. And here's where it's interesting, right. There was higher rates of indices of happiness in the adapted version instead of the standard preference assessment and there was less confusion in the adapted version. So I think modifying what you're saying in those preference assessments actually increase happiness and decrease confusion. So I think they said you know, even though we saw same results, we should also be looking at social validity. And it appears, based on the results, that the participants really liked the adapted preference assessment better because they understood it better. So the social validity was mixed because all of the participants said that they had access to the stimuli, they found it easy to talk to people, and they knew their support. People knew what they liked, but then they also said that they were bored and didn't know what they liked to do. So.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And their social validity data, I think is really important. Right. Because it is. It is. No one really knew why they were doing the preference assessment. They. Because everything was good before that, they were just all reported that they were lonely. They had items they knew what they liked, but they didn't have that social interaction. And so the authors said that future research should look at. It is likely that the items that these individuals were choosing were also paired with social interactions previously. Right. Like doing puzzles and let's do it together. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And so that might be an interesting future area of research is to look at how much that social interaction piece plays a part. And it seems like it really did.

[A]

Right.

[C]

I think if they added just general social interaction into this assessment, that would have been the highest preferred for all the participants. Right.

[A]

Like free operant might be the way to go. Yeah. Right, Right. Like, oh, you can do a puzzle with Gladys, and over here you can do the word search with Ethel.

[C]

Right.

[A]

You know, and just see like, where do you go? Where do you go?

[C]

Yeah. So some limitations or they said that really this is the last thing for their discussion is that there's actually no training for staff to do preference assessments. And then if they did do assessment, what to do with those, assess those results afterwards.

[A]

Right.

[C]

So that might be an area of future research for staff that are working at these care homes.

[A]

Right. Is it intended as like a contingent reinforcer for staff or is it just about environmental enrichment?

[C]

Right. Yep.

[A]

Wow. My gosh. It looks like.

[C]

I read the article and so some limitations, although I don't think they're limitations. I think these are ones that they put in. They said they didn't systematically choose the preference or they, they. They systematically chose the reinforcer assessments based on what they knew about the participants. They did not like experimentally choose them. I think that's fine. Seems like they got their responses and they said that the viewer 2 strikes again and the short access in the MSWO might have not made the interaction as meaningful. Right. And then one thing that the last thing I want to talk about that they do that I love is that they had a table in here and they call it possible barriers to implementing what just happened right there. Looks like variables, actually possible barriers to implementing stimulus preference assessment and suggestions of adaptations for practitioners. So the barrier of social politeness. Right. Or a barrier of motivating operation for attention, overshadow preference or misunderstanding the purpose of the assessment. They give you an example, an adaptation to consider as well as a specific example of that adaptation.

[A]

I just love that. I love this table. Yeah. And it's not, you know, solely relevant for this population. No.

[C]

That's what they say.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. So. Oh, I'm so glad that I stopped everything and read this paper because it was so well done. It was written lovely, and I think it really has a lot of clinical significance. Right. Not that the results were different, but the social validity changes were highly relevant.

[A]

Yeah. And they took a lot of consideration and the procedural approaches and then they laid it out in a lot of detail. So it's like a great roadmap for people who need to maybe off road a little bit.

[C]

Yeah, it was really nice.

[A]

All right, so for each episode, I'm going to give us a mini pairing.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Right. With a little appetizer, a little amuse bouche. Just one or two past episodes that may relate. So for this one, we've had two previous episodes where we talked about behavioral gerontology, episode 56 and episode 227, which was with Miranda Trahan and Amanda Ripley. So you guys could go check those out if you're so inclined.

[B]

Sounds great. All right, let's take a little break and when we come back, we will continue on with our granddad picks. We'll be right back.

[C]

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

[A]

Sure. We all do.

[C]

Now you can come to Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts to get your graduate degree just minutes outside of Boston.

[A]

Choose from any one of these Masters

[C]

of Science in Applied Behavior Analysis, Master's

[A]

of Science in Special Education, dual degree in Special Ed and aba, or be

[C]

eligible for your Postmaster's Certificate.

[A]

You can complete your degree and be ready to sit for the exam in two years.

[C]

And our 2022 graduates had a 92% pass rate on the BACB exam.

[A]

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

[C]

And don't forget, our program is accredited by the association of Behavior Analysis International, or ABAI, as a Tier 1 master's degree program.

[A]

Don't delay supplies are limited.

[C]

Learn more at regiscollege.edu Again, that's www.regiscollege.edu.

[A]

regiscollege.edu.

[C]

One more time, www.regiscollege.edu.

[A]

see you there.

[C]

Bye.

[B]

And we are back diving into the grab bag this beautiful spring.

[A]

Russell, Russell.

[B]

Russell Day. So, for those of you listening, if you would like to earn a CE for doing so, learning ce. Well, lucky you. Where Ace and Kwaba approved. All you need to do is finish listening and then go to our website, abainsidetrack.com or click the link in your podcast player. That will take you magically to our new and updated webpage where you'll need to enter in some information all about yourself, all about the episode, but specific to continuing to listen. Not only do you need the information of what we talked about, you also need two secret code words. The first one is melt. M, E, L, T. Something we hope happens at a nice, steady pace here in Massachusetts because we have a lot of snow. We want it to go away, but if it all goes away in one day, then we'll all have flooded basements as well.

[C]

I just redid my basement, so that would be so sad.

[B]

That happen a nice slow melt. There we go. Or a tuna melt. How about that? Yum, yum, yum.

[A]

Now you're talking my language.

[B]

All right, Diana, would you like to dig into the grab bag next?

[A]

Would I? Yes. I already have an article. It's right here on hand. And I have also decided to, you know, stray from my usual wheelhouse in that I chose an article that it's actually an oldie. It is a goodie, but it's not something that I usually talk about and because it is behavioral economics. But I. I know. So I'm gonna do my best here. Apologies to anyone who this is your

[C]

specialty, especially Derek Reed, who came on

[A]

the show, especially Derek Reed and then Jason Beret as well as he was our teacher for this. But I'm gonna do my best because I think it's a really cool, interesting article and I'm trying to teach myself more about this area. Yeah. So the article is titled A Behavioral Economic Approach to Green Consumerism. Demand for Reusable Shopping Bags. And that is by Kaplan, Giano and Reed and published in Behavior and Social Issues during the Year of our Lord 2018. You mean common era BCE which one is which?

[B]

That would be before the Common Era.

[A]

Oh, no, the ce. It's a ce

[B]

does anyone ever wonder, like, what did they do before the Common Era? And the Only thing I can never think of is pyramids. I think that was the thing that was really big back then.

[A]

They loved them.

[B]

They were building pyramids.

[A]

Okay, all right, so here we go. Behavioral economics. Our authors let us know that they can provide scientific models for us of behavior that can have useful impact on public policy. So in the past this has been largely utilized in the areas of addiction and consumption research.

[C]

But really is not your wheelhouse. I'm very proud of you.

[A]

Thank you. I know. Well, we'll see how it goes. So everyone, you know, get your slack ready to cut, but you could certainly utilize it in other applications. So specific to this article, we're going to talk about sustainability and how we can use these approaches to help people make decisions about sustainable practices and what might actually be feasible to implement to the public at large. So there's two relevant approaches here in the behavioral economics realm that could be used to inform decision making and they are delay discounting and an operant demand model. So with delayed discounting, that could be defined as the extent to which reward is devalued due to its delayed receipt. So you get it later, not as good as if you got it right away. And how long are you willing to wait for something bigger? And then operant demand is the extent to which an organism defends its free operant consumption of a commodity amidst increasing constraints. So those were direct quotes, just so you all know. So if you. How much of this thing will you continue to access as it gets harder and harder to access? And usually that access is limited via increasing cost. Right, that's how these usually break down. So with delayed discounting, it's most likely going to tell us about the likelihood of, of a sustainable decision based on either longer or shorter outcome. And they reference another study there by Barry et al that looked at air pollution remediation and the cost of that. And then the operant demand model may tell us more about how to go about price structuring to hit sort of like the sweet spot of adapting attractive pricing for consumers while addressing longer term benefits. So for the purposes of the study today, the operant demand analysis model is probably going to be a little more useful because that is focused more on how we could make decisions for policy. And this has been used previously for several different research approaches including alcohol consumption, cigarettes, marijuana and indoor tanning.

[C]

All the good things.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, and the indoor tanning one. I don't think Derek Reed talked about that one on when he came on the show with us, but I have heard him talk about it. And I think, as I recall, it was at a Babbitt, and the talk was called under the Dome. Did you guys go to that one? Yeah, it was like a packed room. And he got up at the front and he goes, I think you're all here because you thought this talk was about football. Oh, my God. But it's about behavioral economics

[C]

because, like,

[A]

under the Dome, like the standard distribution.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Anyways, I think I heard him talk about tanning beds at that point in time. Although I could be wrong, but all of these studies use the hypothetical purchase task. And so saying, okay, let's imagine you're buying something. How many would you buy at this price? How many would you buy at this price? And on and on and on until you start to see. Where do people say, oh, I'm no longer paying that particular price for this particular item?

[C]

I like when you ask students, and they're like, you're like, I'll give you $25 now. And $100 are like, they're like, I'll take the $25 right now.

[A]

Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Because we all remember what it is like to be a graduate student. But this hypothetical task can be helpful in determining pricing when in the. In the real world, the free market is not elastic enough to determine that breaking point where, you know, price. Price has exceeded consumption. Right. Okay. So in terms of our topic for today, there is the term green consumerism, which is attempting to evaluate the value of things when you incorporate the sustainability perspective into the model. Several businesses have done this or want to do this in order to, you know, meet the needs of the current environment as well as what their consumers prefer or will maybe tolerate within the market. So one of these areas has been reusable shopping bags. Many places now have these available for purchase. They are in place in order to help alleviate the number of plastic bags that are floating around which are not good for our environment. And in some places, there are plastic bag bans. Right. At the time of this publication, there were 250 ordinances to ban plastic bags I wrote. Seems like most of those are probably here in Massachusetts because it's. It's hard to find a plastic bag in Massachusetts. Honestly, most places, when you get one,

[C]

you hold onto it tight.

[A]

Yeah, I know most places around here, you. You can't get them. You either they'll. You have to pay for a paper bag or you bring your own recycle reusable bags. Right. So that is. That is in place, and they talked about the difference there. So if there are taxes or fees on the plastic bags or bands. And those are push methods of reducing plastic bag use. And then on the other side, there could be other things in place to convince people to buy reusable bags voluntarily. And those are pull methods. So both of them are trying to move behavior away from plastic to reusable, but they sort of use different tactics. So in this study they want to figure out, well, if we're going to have these reusable bags available for sale and what's the right price point for people to say, oh yeah, I would be willing to spend x amount of money to get one of these, you know, cool, trendy reusable bags and thereby help to save the environment. So you got to price it right or people will just continue to use the plastic bags. So what they have seen out in the real world is that it's been more successful for middle and upper income folks to be able to make this switch because there is an an upfront cost to buying the new bags. And if those bags are initially subsidized, then they see more adoption of that for folks from lower ses. So again, what's the breakdown? What's the price point? And can we try to get more people in at a lower price point in order to move that consumption over? So in our study they say, can we establish a demand curve model for consumption that will fit what we see from people when they provide us this information as it reflects demand elasticity for reusable shopping bags? So that's what we're doing here today. There were 76 undergraduates who were participants in this study. They all completed this in 30 minutes at varying times in a computer Lab that held 12 people. And they were each given a hypothetical purchase task that was a little. It was built into like a qualtrics that they made. It had a hypothetical vignette that asked them how many bags would they purchase at a given price point. The vignette is a little bit long, but I'm going to read it to you so you can hear it. Okay, here it goes. In the questionnaire that follows, we would like you to pretend to purchase reusable shopping bags. Imagine that you and your friends are on vacation in a city far away from where you live and are picking up groceries at a supermarket. This supermarket is locally owned and operated and not available in your hometown. Upon entering the supermarket, you're offered the chance to buy and use reusable shopping bags instead of using the store's paper plastic ones. These reusable bags are not available at the checkout. The following questions ask how many bags you would purchase at various prices. These reusable bags are standard size and hold approximately the same amount as paper plastic ones. Assume that you do not bring your own bags with you and that you need to purchase about a week's worth of groceries, about a hundred dollars worth. Well, that aged poorly, you will only be at the supermarket once this week and will not be able to reuse the bags at the supermarket ever again. You cannot use, it's just for the study, okay. You cannot use one of your friends bags. They're just saying like buy all the bags you need. Assume that the bags are about, you're about to purchase or for your use only. Yes, okay, we get it. Okay. And it, it continues on in that vein. Everything you buy is therefore for your own personal use today. And so then it says how many bags would you purchase if they were x amount each and the amounts. And then you answered for each subsequent value. Right. And then it went to a new screen and it had the next value. So the values were $0 free, $0.25, $0.50, $1, $152, $253, $4, $5, $6, $7, $8 and $9. Okay. And that's what you did. At some point people would say, oh, I'm not, I don't want to buy any more bags. Right. It went from, you know, some higher number presumably to some low number. So what they're trying to do is, is see where does everyone sort of congregate around what number where people start to say, actually I'm all set, I don't want to buy these bags anymore. In addition to completing that qualtric study, they also filled out the new Ecological Paradigm scale, or the NEPS, which was developed by Dunlap in 2000. It had 15 questions on attitudes and values about the environment, such as the ones that follow. Plants and animals have just as much right as humans to exist or humans were meant to rule over the rest of nature. Higher scores indicated greater ecological concern or consideration. Now we have to know, and I'm not going to get too into it, but you do have to know that they did math here. Oh, math, yep. And there was an equation that they were using in order to evaluate the demand elasticity curve. So I'm just going to tell you what it is and then we won't keep talking about it. I'll just define the terms when we get down to the results. Q Equals Q naught times 10 to the K in parentheses E to the negative A times Q naught times C to the sub negative one.

[C]

You can make that a rap song.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. And then just so you know, Q represented the purchasing. Q naught was the intensity of the demand or purchasing when the price of the commodity was free. K is the range of quantity purchased, C was the price, and then A was the elasticity across the range of prices. Okay, now I'm going to tell you about the results they started with. How many did I tell you? I think 76, nine they could not use. Four of them they said had non systematic results, meaning the people picked things at random. And then five, because these five people said they'd only take a free bag, they wouldn't pay any amount of money. So they're like, we can't use your data. So they were left with 67. And the main thing that they're looking at here is the break point, right? Which could be calculated one of two ways. It's either the price right before purchasing stopped so the highest they would pay or the price at the first time that they put that they would purchase. Zero, which. So you're getting at the same answer really in just two different ways. So they told us both of those. That's nice. Yeah. And they said, okay. We looked at all the data and what we found fit the, fit the equation very well. So they saw the operant curve that they were expecting to see. Operant demand. It had an R squared value of 0.86. So that was all, all good. This was an appropriate equation for the results that they found. They found that the median demand intensity, meaning how many bags would you like to purchase at if it was free, was eight bags. So if it didn't cost anything, they would take about eight. I guess that was their estimate of how many at the time. A hundred dollars worth of groceries. Now you only need two bags for your hundred dollars worth of groceries.

[C]

Maybe one.

[A]

Yeah. At the time it was eight. And then they, they evaluated or they determined the P max, which is the price where purchasing decreased at a rate disproportionately greater than the price increase, which was $2. And then the Omax, which was the total amount on average people were willing to spend, which was $6. But what you really want to know are these breakpoint values. So like how much, how much are you going to pay? That's what you're finding out. How much are you really going to pay for a reusable bag? And it was $3. That is the result of this study.

[C]

That's actually Expensive.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. On average. And then they. They broke it down as well. They. They overlaid that onto those ecological scores, the NEPS scores. And those are broken into quartiles. And so what they found there was absolutely what they were expecting to find was that the lower. The lower the ecological score, the less likely you were to pay more for bags. They said that the lowest group actually took more free bags, which they thought meant that they just maybe like, didn't value the free product as much and didn't really estimate how much they would need and just took. They. They're like, oh, I just take. I would take as many as I could. Right. So they felt like that still kind of fit with them, with the profile that they were expecting. And then certainly the more. Or the. I'm sorry, the higher the ecological score, the more those folks were willing to pay per bag. Mm. Yep. So that was the overall finding there. And I don't know, it was kind of cool. I hope you guys enjoyed listening. Is there anything else I want to tell you about it? Just that this was hypothetical data. Right. Like, that's always the case with these types of studies. But they. There is another study that they referenced, Amlong et al, that looked at the correlation between hypothetical and real reward spending models, and there is a high correlation there generally. So they felt that this was very likely to map on to what people would actually do. So if you are in the reusable bag business and want to know how much to charge for your bags, maybe about $3. Right. Or maybe less. I mean, I see them for a lot less.

[B]

Well, certainly if I were to get eight bags, like, I knew I needed eight bags.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I went to the grocery and I'm adding, you know, that much money to my purchases, that would probably lower the amount of. Potentially lower the amount of groceries I would get, or I would look for things that were more condensed. So I didn't need as many bags.

[A]

Right. I don't need my milk in a bag. I'll carry that. Yeah.

[C]

Or if. I mean, also if they're of higher quality, because I would spend more if I could use them more.

[A]

Totally. Yeah.

[C]

You can't.

[B]

Right?

[A]

You can't reuse them. Yeah.

[B]

That's why I'm shocked because if I were told, wait, I get to buy these bags and then immediately what, like, throw them in a landfill? Yeah. I probably wouldn't be paying more than, you know, 50 cents a bag, if you ask me that. But if it was a no, you can save the bags and use them. Forever and ever. Like, maybe $3.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. And maybe they were still considering that, given that that is the real life scenario that you. You keep the bags and you use them over and over again. So maybe that was sort of factored in. I don't really know. I mean, not everybody wanted to pay $3 per bag. So, you know. Right. And that was kind of like the. The breakdown. I also feel like around here, there's, like, different, you know, different bags, different designer bags. There's bags from different grocery stores. Right. And it sort of ends up becoming like, oh, do I have the most recent bag? Like, oh, Trader Joe's has a new design. They always got to go buy the new design. Right.

[B]

Nonsense.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they do eventually break down, I think. Right. The reusable ones.

[C]

They do. I have a few that I've had for, like, 15 years that I can't use anymore.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, you're throwing a bunch of stuff in them. You're dragging them around. You're smacking them into things. You're throwing them in your closet you're not taking good care of.

[C]

No, no. They turn into, like, beach bags, dog bags, and shopping bags.

[A]

Right, right. But they. They have a sustainable future, I guess you could say.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

All right. And that's that. Oh, and then my mini pairing appetizer here is two episodes we've done that might be of interest. Episode 126, we talked about behavioral economics with Dr. Derek Reed. And episode 248, we talked about delayed discounting with Dr. Amy Odom. And they both did a better job than I did. So you can go check that out if you want to know more.

[B]

All right, last but not least, my topic for grab bag is relative relevant to things that I do, a lot of which is reading. And this article is Loomis Morales, yo. And Finnup from 2026 in the journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Turning the page, increasing young children's preference for looking at and engaging with books. And I'm not sure if this. If the print version has come out yet, because I could only get electronic page numbers, which was weird. Yeah, I didn't like that.

[A]

So probably not out yet.

[B]

It's. Wait. I mean, it's. It's out and. But usually they don't stick a volume on it until the paper version is out. Was just very weird. I don't know. It blew my mind. I didn't like it, but I did like the article, so we'll move on. So I know that all you in the U.S. and probably outside the U.S. you're thinking, man, America really going down the tubes. It sucks in terms of trust, how much it's actually really benefiting other countries in the world, how much it's benefiting its people. Well, guess what? We also can't read here in America. According to the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress study, only 65% of American 4th graders are actually. Sorry, 65% of American 4th Graders are below the level that that group has set. So they are not proficient readers. But don't worry, in 2022, those numbers went up to 66%. So we're, you know, really doing great. We're, we're, we're holding steady at not doing a good job at teaching kids how to read. So unfortunately, when we look at reading, there's lots of different reading interventions, and we certainly want to think about them in terms of kind of a developmental stage. This article is really about those early readers, you know, children who are working on pre reading skills like looking at a book or being interested in looking at a book, or sitting and listening with someone to a book. And then later on, you know, we certainly switched to reading to learn. So I want to be able to read the information, use that information to write something, make decisions, all that. And the authors and a lot of authors on reading really want to think of getting kids more motivated to read as what if we could turn reading itself into a conditioned reinforcer? Right? The content of the reading certainly can reinforce our engagement, whether it's picture, whether it's text, whether it's the information. But ideally, wouldn't it be great if every aspect of the reading process served as a conditioned reinforcer for continuing to access reading later on? The authors even, even conceptualize reading as could it be a form of automatic reinforcement? For some of us, probably that percentage that is reading proficiently, but it's not necessarily the fault of children. There's a lot of reasons that kids aren't as interested in reading and might not see reading as a conditioned reinforcer. But one of the earliest ways, and this is considered best practice for sharing reading and for building reading as a condition reinforcer, is establishing it that way. When you are a tiny little child and you just are enjoying the time that you are reading, maybe with your parents and with, maybe with friends or siblings, and you're just sitting and enjoying, you love touching the books, holding the books, talking about the books, right? And probably your parents are saying things like, yeah, you, you named that, or you're pointing at something, or you looked and smiled and they're reinforcing your looking at book behavior with their own social praise, maybe some, you know, physical contact. Right? And there's a lot of great research to point to. Hey, when kids really enjoy accessing books or they show this kind of establishment of reading as a reinforcer, you see improvements in their language skills, you see improvements in other reading repertoires, and you even see reading achievement gains up to like second grade just by, you know, wanting to be in the presence of books. But if you wait too long, or maybe your family isn't one that engages with books in that way, reading hasn't become a conditioned reinforcer. You start seeing delays in reading proficiency, which makes a real barrier to doing further reading instruction. So the big problem there becomes if Johnny hates books because he never learned to find them valuable as a form of reinforcement, well, guess what? He's really going to hate when he's told, I know you hate these books, but you've got to look at these books and read them and do more work. And now you hate every aspect of this chain of events. And now the whole thing just becomes more and more and more aversive. So we need to do something to ensure that kids love books. That doesn't mean they then become great at reading. It's not going to overnight turn that 65% into 0% of non of, you know, of non proficient readers. But it's a start, right? If I say I hate books completely, there's no phonics program in the world that's going to make me love them even more potentially. I mean, there's. And you know, we're talking about preschoolers mostly in this study.

[A]

The children love the books.

[B]

You know, I love hearing that. It's great. So could we add some sort of intervention to make reading a conditioned reinforcer at the early stages? There have been other studies looking at this. There was a study by Nuzlo Gomez et al. In 2002 that prompted an autistic preschooler to look at books and delivered social reinforcement contingent on their making eye contact with the book for five seconds. They were able to demonstrate an increased time where the child would look at books. And the nice part about that intervention was it generalized to unstructured playtime in that they would choose to look at books when other toys and loud, clangy objects were also available. Singer Dudek did another study. It's an extension of that original one where they did this kind of observational procedure. This one feels a little mean to me. I'm glad they didn't totally Replicate this one where they had a number of preschoolers, some with developmental delay, and they had. Some students could earn access to free reading time when they finished their work. But some were told, no, you can't look at the books. And just being told, hey, those kids got to look at the books because they did their work actually increased the contingency at play. So there was a reinforcement value for books. But that feels kind of mean to be like, oh, if only we tell kids they can't have books, they'll decide they want books. I don't love that study. I didn't read the study itself. So maybe this summary is not doing it justice. And there was a lot more in there, but I don't want to use that procedure. So let's go back to that first procedure, shall we? There was another study by Tsai and Greer in 2006 that really looked at kind of stimulus, stimulus pairing procedures where they would deliver vocal praise for continuous book engagement. And then they'd have a no reinforcement component where just book engagement was put on extinction in terms of like. Like, at least extinction in the form of social praise. You still will hopefully be developing whatever reinforcing value that the book of looking at the book had for you. And in three out of four of their participants, they saw an increase in, you know, preference for choosing books over other stimuli. And that lasted for about a month. So the goal here was to replicate that last study with young preschool children with disabilities and with fewer repertoires or history of reading instruction using this continuous reinforcement procedure. Now, if only I read a little bit farther into this article before I picked it, saying, I love this intro, I love this title, and, and realize that this is a two study in one research paper.

[C]

It's not really, though. It's not really. It's like experiment one, Experiment one A.

[B]

I don't love it though. It kind of. It's kind of like, why don't you think of that second one? Couldn't you think of that second one first? Just put it all together. Now I got to read to two studies. Come on. The boringest part of research is hearing all the descriptions of your IOA procedure and your participants and your materials don't care. Want to get to the procedure, want to get to the results and discussion. So shame, shame, shame, shame. But anyway, let's see what we got here. It could have been worse. At least the study was interesting. At least the topic was valuable. So we have three preschool age children with a disability who were learning in aba. It was an ABA school Model. And I think sort of, you know, knowing that this is an extension of the Greer procedure, I'm wondering if it's more of like the educational component of like how to do aba, so more of like a, you know, using the principles of ABA in education rather than like what I originally when I think of that, I think, oh, like D CT and incidental teaching. I think this was more of just like using principles of behavior more tied into kind of traditional general education type procedures. But at a preschool. They don't get into too much detail about it. All of their participants were at a pre listener or pre speaker level of verbal behavior based on the early learner curriculum and achievement record assessment. They mostly pointed as their communication method. They had a history of behavior improving when reinforced by praise and social reinforcers, which was good to know because that's the only social reinforcer that's going to be delivered in this procedure. They had interest in looking at pictures and objects and they were able to sort of orient and follow vocal directions related to gaining attention, like hey, look at me or let's go over to the table. And they could match stimuli with gestures and cues. Again, all of this being important in that this is a different group than the 2006 Sion Greer study which used typically developing preschoolers. These are children with disabilities. So will this same procedure result in the same change? They had a couple different settings they ran this in because they were both looking at, hey, can we make book engagement increase as well as, hey, does anyone care about books when there's a lot of other cool preschool toys around? So the study was done either at a table as well as at a preschool area that had like a bookshelf with a lot of books. Preschool age books on things like cars and colors and animals. You all know those preschool books. Simple, simple, one picture, I'm guessing, per page. And also a toy shelf with puzzles, cause and effect toys like a toy farm, little blocks, little chairs and everything. And those are sort of the distractor items to some extent. Although they weren't programmed to be distractor items. They just were present throughout. They were looking at the measure of book engagement through a whole interval recording method where you'd have these five second intervals broken into a five minute total observation. And they kind of score this during a free operant probe. How much is the child looking at the book versus how much are they making contact with other items in the environment? They also would have to have physical contact with the book for some of these probes. So again, if it was with the researcher, I think there was a little bit more room for not making total contact, but they wanted them holding the books as well as looking at the books. And they were seeing, can we get book engagement to like a 90% across that, that sampling method across a number of sessions. All right, so different procedures being used here. They had a preference assessment to make sure to see if there was a preference for book relative to other stimuli, which they did at the table and they did in that free play area. They did it before the intervention and after the intervention to see, hey, are books preferred? More so than they originally were. They did a reinforcer screening where they identified stimuli that would be used as reinforcers throughout the free operant engagement preference assessments. Then they did a reinforcer assessment with that with mastered instructional readiness tasks like go over here or come over here. So again, that's how they determined what their social reinforcers were going to be. And then the main dish, the intervention itself, you sat at a table with the child, the child had a bunch of books. And they set up a number of trials. Trials, about 20 trials in which they combined continuous reinforcement with a persistence test in which no reinforcement was delivered. So basically, if the participant was engaging with the book for one second, they would begin the continuous reinforcement, five seconds saying, you know, praise or engaging in their social reinforcement. During that time. If the child stopped engaging in that five second block, they stopped the trial. Then they prompted the child to, you know, get back and engage with the book by labeling items in the book, by pointing at pictures, by modeling, turning the pages. And they use least to most prompting if need be, you know, first pointing, then a partial hand direction to the book. And once the child was re engaged with the book, they restarted that five second reinforcement component. Once they got five seconds of book engagement with the continuous reinforcement, they did the persistence test, which just was five seconds. But they didn't do anything. They just kind of let the child engage or not engage. They did this for 20 trials and that was it. That was the intervention. So, for example, for a trial to be scored as successful, you'd have, you know, the child getting the book for a second, five seconds, where they're looking at the book, they're getting continuous reinforcement of that social reinforcement being delivered. And then five seconds with no reinforcement with the child continuing to look at the book. You could also have had one second, then three seconds with a continuous reinforcement, then some time where they needed to sort of prompt them to engage with the book again, then five seconds with the continuous reinforcement, and then five seconds at the persistence test. So really, the persistence test was the key component, and you could have as many kind of fail little continuous reinforcer five seconds as need be until you got five seconds of continuous reinforcement and book engagement. And then five seconds, you know, nothing. No, no reinforcement, just engagement. Once you saw that the children were engaged in eight for at least 18 of those 20 trials with five seconds of book engagement during that persistence test across two consecutive sessions or one where they just loved the books and they always looked at the book during those persistence tests, they'd repeat the free operant probe at the table. If the child was successful at the table in terms of choosing books over other items, they do it at the. At the toy area. And if they didn't, well, they go back and do intervention, and they just increase the interval to 10 seconds pretty much of continuous reinforcement. And they did the whole thing across a concurrent multiple probe across their three participants. So what were the patterns we had here in experiment one? Well, we had Jackson, who didn't really engage with books when there were toys available. During the free operant probe, he did two rounds of the intervention in which the second round, it was the 10 seconds of continuous reinforcement, and they did see an increase in book engagement both at the table and then when placed in the toy area with books. And that maintained for four weeks after the experiment was over. And there's only a slight decrease when they looked again seven weeks later. So Jackson was into books. Now, Mike had a little bit of book engagement during that initial free operant preference assessment in the toy area, but not at the table. He also had two rounds of the intervention and again, increase in book engagement across both of the settings and maintenance up to seven weeks. So Mike also really loved booksnow. Benjamin a little bit of engagement more so than the others. To start, he only took one round of intervention before engaging in more book book engagement than other item engagement, and that maintained up to seven weeks for maintenance. So Benjamin really loved books. All right, so what does that tell us? Well, certainly using this procedure is pretty easy and effective means to increase book engagement with preschoolers, and in this case, preschoolers with disabilities. So we know children with and without disabilities. This can be an effective, effective procedure. What they weren't sure about, though, was, yeah, but was there, like, a direct effect of reinforcement at play here, or was it that the books had actually become conditioned reinforcers? So was it just enough, you know, pairing of the new behavior with the continuous reinforcement that, like, yeah, I just. I do books because I get all this great condition reinforcement and it sort of carried over. Or was it books are now conditioned reinforcers. So here's experiment two, where we sort of just, hey, what if we also added a reinforcement assessment of books with previously mastered responses? Would we see an increase in those responses? Because the kids love the books and they function as a reinforcer. They also said, you know what, how many times did we have to do that sort of start and stop continuous reinforcement procedure before we got to five full seconds? And does that add a significant amount of time to this procedure? So it looks really good on paper, but in reality it takes like a thousand trials.

[C]

Seems like a lot there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So let's find out. I'm not going to go through the detail because pretty much it's all the same experiment, new participants, except for those additional parts. So we're just going to kind of jump down to the results. I think the only real change here was they scored anytime. They didn't get those. Those first five seconds of continuous reinforcement engagement, and they had to, you know, repeat, restart, and kind of continuing on. And then they had the reinforcer assessment before and after intervention where they'd said, do you want books? And then they gave books and mastered tasks. If they were correct within five seconds, it was mostly following instructions, then they'd get to look at the book for 10 seconds, and if they made a mistake, they just continued on to the next trial. So new participants we got. Ethan really didn't engage much with books before intervention. Took him one cycle of the procedure at 36. Sorry. He had one cycle of the intervention, then he did a second cycle with those 10 second trials, it took 36 times, 36 intervals the first time, 54 the second. In the free operant probe, Sabrina, again, not really into books before intervention, but two cycles reached criterion. And Matthew, not interested in books before, after one cycle, did a second cycle. So 32 intervals the first time, about 50 the second time, and then they were all into books, at least in the same way as in experiment one. What about the reinforcer assessment? Well, Ethan was only doing about 2.33 correct responses per session before intervention when books were available. So not that into books, but moved up to 11 responses correct responses in the session after the one phase of intervention. So before books had even become kind of hit their. Their arbitrary criteria for being seen as condition reinforcers or at least seen as being engaged with enough, but moved up to 17.33 responses in a session after that second phase. So when he hit criteria of choosing to engage much more with books than with other Available items that maintained it even increased some. So yes, for Ethan, books are a reinforcer for, you know, his response, responding behavior. Sabrina immediate increase after intervention and she only took that one the one cycle. So for Sabrina, again, books really were a conditioned reinforcer. And Matthew looked almost exactly the same as Ethan. It took the two cycles but was showing some improvements in books being delivered as reinforcers, showing some increase in his responses. And it increased even further when books were almost primarily chosen as what he would engage in. So books reinforced performance. And then when you had to look at those attempted reinforcement components where they like just didn't quite make those five seconds, it actually wasn't that much of an add to the procedure. So for example, I think it was Ethan. It took, there were 340 completed little mini intervals and only 13 attempted. So it was a pretty small percentage where it didn't quite work out the way they'd wanted. Sabrina, no problems. Hers always hit the five seconds. Right off the bat, it was a little bit higher for Matthew where he had 220 completed little 5 second intervals, but only 38 attempted. So again, not a huge add on to do this procedure. So seems like a successful intervention for increasing book engagement with preschoolers. Great. So, you know, again, there's a couple limitations in terms of like, will this really work for all preschoolers? Is this a synchronous reinforcement procedure? Is this an overlapping reinforcement procedure so you can get into the weeds about sort of exactly the mechanisms at play here? Is it possible there was a factor of the book that actually was functioning as a reinforcer before the study that sort of, you know, minimizes the results they're getting here? But at the end of the day, this seems like a really easy way to kind of capture that golden reading moment with parents in an early intervention type setting. And if you can make books a reinforcer, that's just foundational to all of the other work that is going to go on with books. But another question we might want to ask is for parents who are struggling to help their children see books as condition reinforcers or learn to see books as condition reinforcers, could they use this procedure at home? I'm guessing a lot of them probably aren't engaging in books with their child for reasons not necessarily related to I just don't know how to read with my child. It's probably more about time commitments. Maybe they're working multiple jobs. Maybe there are, you know, other other insecurities that just not make it a priority. But there might be some parents that are just Finding, like, they just don't seem to like books or I really don't know how to do this. So this might be kind of a simple intervention that could be used in the home setting as well in the public school settings and the preschool settings. So there you go. Books, books, books.

[C]

I like that idea.

[B]

Yeah, I do. I do love how long this study was given. At the end of the day, all they did was like, hey, look, some books. Wow, look at these books. You're looking at. What a great job looking at books.

[A]

Books are fun.

[B]

Seem to like those books. Like, that's kind of the intervention.

[A]

All right, to go with this one, your Appetizer is episode 218, ABA and literacy skills with Dr. Denise Ross Page and Dr. Douglas Greer.

[B]

That was good. I like that episode. I like talking to them about reading. All right. And with that, no dissemination station, because these are three articles that don't have a theme other than, you know, we're done. We love books, bags, and preference assessments. Yay. And that brings us to the end of our spring 2026 grab bag. Thanks so much for listening. If you have not, please rate and review and subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to get your podcasts. If you haven't seen our new webpage, you might want to head over there. You can see links to all the articles that were discussed in this episode. You can also see that in your podcast player, too. But you can go there and get even more access to things like a transcript. And if you want to get CES, that's the place to go. That's abainsidetrack.com Speaking of those, CES, second secret code word is ICE. I, C, E. It's something that's in our gutters and caused our roof to leak.

[A]

Oh, yeah, but also, I crocheted these adorable little ice cream cone covers for our microphones.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah. That's also good ice can be good and bad ice. Oh, and if you haven't noticed, you might have noticed our new website, but have you noticed our Patreon page? That's still the same. It hasn't changed too much. But if you go to patreon.com Aba InsideTrack, you can subscribe there for free for $3, $5, $10, $20. Whatever works for you. That'll give you access to all of our shows. If you are at any of the paid tiers, you'll get the episodes a week ahead of time, as well as get access to all of our polls for things like our upcoming spring listener choice or next year's the 20262027 slate of book Club choices. And speaking of those book club choices and speaking of those listener choice episodes, the only way you're going to get those early and the only way you're going to get free CES for listening is if you are a patron at the five dollar level for the listener choice and ten dollar level for our book clubs. So if you say I much like many of the preference assessments in today's Grab Bag, love choosing things, well, you're going to want to join at patreon.com sl aba inside track and if like those people who hate paying for garbage bags say I don't like paying additional money for CES, well, another reason to [e-mail] ABA Inside Track maybe that's maybe we should add a tier where you get a free tote bag to take your groceries with. Maybe not a bad idea. Anywho, that brings us to the end of our episode. We're going to do a final couple final thanks. First of all, thank you all for listening. Thanks to the Grab Bag for being there for us to have all these great articles in it.

[A]

Thanks for being there. Thanks for being there.

[B]

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